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“Corruption is not a disagreeable characteristic of the Mexican political system,” Gabriel Zaid observed in La economia presidencial. “It is the system.”“It is widely known,” Mexican journalist Ricardo Ravelo wrote in June 2018, “how the General Administration of Customs … operates a network of officials linked to large-scale smuggling in the country’s 49 customs offices.” Under previous central administrators Aristotle Núñez Sánchez and Osvaldo Santin Quiroz, Mexico’s Tax Administration Service (SAT) became known for “…unleashing smuggling throughout the country.” Smuggling, said Ravelo, is a business that operates in Mexico without a containment dam, under the protection of senior officials at...

President Joe Biden’s pro-migration policy is so unpopular that it is flipping multiple congressional swing districts towards GOP candidates, according to two polls funded by the Heritage Foundation. For example, 55 percent of swing-voting independents blame Biden for the migrant wave, 48 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for a Democrat, and 67 percent oppose the removal of the border wall, according to the two polls, each of 1,200 people. That is good news for GOP candidates because GOP voters overwhelmingly blame Biden and support the border wall. The two polls of 1,200 likely voters were...

A 6-month-old girl dumped in the Rio Grande River earlier this month was rescued at the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, officials say. The rescue happened March 16 in Roma, a south Texas town about 105 miles from Monterrey, Mexico. The Texas Department of Public Safety said the infant’s mother suffered a broken leg when she was assaulted by smugglers in Mexico. Smugglers then threw the girl out of a raft and into the river, the department said. The woman paid smugglers $3,500 to cross the border, said Department of Public Safety Lt. Christopher Olivarez, KVEO reported. She and her baby...

Sierra County commissioners have passed a resolution opposing the placement of migrants in that area. .... Commissioners say migrants in other parts of southern New Mexico including Las Cruces and Deming are straining the resources. ... the resolution also calls on President Trump to close the U.S. - Mexico border to immigration.

Following an incident involving a pair of lightly armed U.S. soldiers and a squad of more heavily-armed Mexican troops in Texas earlier this month, POTUS Donald Trump announced Wednesday that in the future, American soldiers will also carry additional arms. In addition, the president opined that perhaps the Mexican troops were not really interested in securing their country’s border as they were assisting a drug cartel. “Mexico’s Soldiers recently pulled guns on our National Guard Soldiers, probably as a diversionary tactic for drug smugglers on the Border. Better not happen again! We are now sending ARMED SOLDIERS to the Border....

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s top security official said Wednesday the government will close off illegal entries at its southern border with Guatemala, but didn’t say how the country plans to do it. Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero also said the migrant caravans that crossed the southern border in October “is no longer an issue.” “Do you know why it is no longer an issue? Because in five days this administration solved the issue, five days,” she said, referring to the first week since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office Dec. 1. “The United States was impressed.” The new administration...

There’s a popular saying among those of us in the Mexican American community who grew up on the border: We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us. With Sunday’s election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as Mexico’s next president, the idea to revisit the legality of our southern border, proposed by Mexican leftist leader Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, is suddenly not so crazy.

Many readers likely are wondering why Laura Bush put her name on an op-ed condemning President Trump for enforcing a border protection law that her husband signed into law. The short answer is she is all the Democrats have left Their leadership is too tainted by scandal or incompetence (and in the case of Hillary, both) to persuade anyone. Bill is a joke with his pants around his ankles. Obama's legacy quickly shrank like a cheap T-shirt in its first wash. Not one of their 2020 candidates had sense enough to give President Trump a sportsmanlike chance, which renders their...

"If they show their ugly head in our area, we'll send them to Hell." President Obama promises to “degrade” ISIS, whatever that means. They cut off people’s heads. We respond by “degrading” them (and never with boots on the ground, unless we do, or something). I would feel better if we heard the sort of seriousness from Obama that we hear from Sheriff Gary Painter of Midland, Texas:

NOGALES, Ariz. — Chanting, “Undocumented, unafraid,” three young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children staged an unorthodox — and risky — demonstration at the U.S.-Mexico border to protest U.S. deportation policies and call for immigration reform. The three traveled to Mexico in recent weeks and on Monday walked up to the border crossing here and asked to be let into the United States. By early Monday afternoon, they were being interviewed by immigration authorities. It was unclear how long the interviews would last or how authorities would respond. The action was organized by the National Immigrant Youth...

I spent the last few days down on the Texas/Mexico Border. One of my brothers got married to a Hispanic woman down here so we all came down for the wedding. We had a great time down here and I got to talk to a bunch of new family members. Some of the small talk we had of course wandered into the topic of border violence and life on the border. I have written many articles about this topic because I am very worried about the situation down there. I always love hearing stories from people who actually live...

HIDALGO, TEX. — President Obama’s decision last year to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border may have been smart politics, but a growing number of skeptics say the deployment is an expensive and inefficient mission that has made little difference in homeland security. Critics of the deployment include budget hawks, who say it is a waste of money, and residents here along the border, who say they are tired of seeing armed troops in their back yard. State Department officials worry that the domestic use of U.S. troops increases the perception that the border is militarized, while...

Note: This is the first of a two-part series. The federal government claims the southwest border is more secure than it's ever been. There are more agents and barriers, more choppers, drones, sensors and hi-tech cameras than ever before. Yet, state officials in Texas maintain the illegal flow of people and drugs is worse than ever — proof, they say, the border is out of control. To back up his rhetoric, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has declared his own war on the traffickers. Border Threat: Real Or Rhetorical? President Obama came to El Paso, Texas, in May to praise his...

If top officials in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE)--and, for that matter, in the Department of Justice (and Department of State?)--had thought that media (and congressional) scrutiny of the growing "Project Gunwalker" scandal would go no further than the CBS Evening News segment of Feb. 23, then last night's follow-up must have come as a nasty shock. So, too, must be new articles in the Los Angeles Times, and from the Center for Public Integrity. Last night's CBS story featured courageous whistleblowing Agent John Dodson, who laid out in stark detail just how callously BATFE leadership...

".....agents chased a vehicle to the river's edge near Anzalduas Park this morning. The driver swam to Mexico leaving behind his vehicle loaded with drugs. As agents were removing over a thousand pounds of marijuana armed men in Mexico began shooting at agents patrolling on boats."

SAN DIEGO - The Border Patrol on Tuesday finished installing a razor-sharp, curled wire atop a fence on the Mexican border, saying the tactic has contributed to a sharp drop in attacks on its agents by assailants hurling rocks, bricks and sometimes even exploding bottles of gas. The barbed wire on a violent, five-mile stretch separating San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico, resembles a prison fence, prompting critics to say it's a heavy-handed move and a menacing eyesore. "The effects have been phenomenal," Michael Corley, head of the Border Patrol's Imperial Beach station, said at a news conference after a crew...

(excerpted...) Tactics: Don't just rely on sophisticated machinery and equipment. You need people on the ground using the equipment to pursue the invaders. They need to react fast, they need intelligence, and they need to be tireless. It will only take a couple of months before the flow of immigrants will become much weaker. Intelligence: Recruit people on the Mexican side to be your eyes and ears and to tell you what the smugglers are up to. Make sure you can communicate fast, and react even faster. Good intelligence can be the key factor for success. Routine: The smugglers will...

A group called "Friends of the Border Control" have just begun their own Remote Video Surveillance (RVS) setups costing only several thousand dollars for each camera compared to what Dept of Homeland Security Inspector General, Richard Skinner, said in his testimony, Dec. 16, 2005 before a subcommittee of Homeland Security that their RVS system takes on average 20 months to complete. It was also previously reported by DHS that the cost is $800,000 per camera. Is this the typical mindset of government waste? How about a little creativity here, Richard? FBP's costs are between $5,000 and $7,000 depending on terrain...

Fed up with perennial claims that his government has done nothing to prevent the growing count of migrants dying during illegal crossings, a Mexican senator has come up with a controversial solution more commonly heard north of the border — shut it down. Citing national security interests, Héctor Osuna, a senator from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, wants to dispatch federal, state and local law enforcement officers to the border to impede migrants from crossing into the United States illegally. His bill is meant solely to curb the rising migrant death toll, which reached a record-high of 369 last...

Immigrant patients have inflated medical expenses for insurance companies, Medicaid and paying customers, officials say, and are overwhelming already busy hospitals in one of nation's fastest-growing regions. One recent study by the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition, an American lobbying group, found U.S. border hospitals provided at least $200 million a year in uncompensated emergency care to illegal immigrants, $74 million of that in Texas.