Free Republic

El Paso County Judge Ruben Morales on Monday dismissed riot charges against 140 illegal aliens who participated in a ‘border riot’ on April 12 and released them from state custody. The illegals cut through the concertina wire and rushed over the border illegally on April 12. Judge Morales said he doesn’t believe probable cause exists to keep the illegals in custody for participating in a riot.

The state Senate has given preliminary approval to a measure that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition at colleges and universities, overcoming the objections of some who said the proposal is too costly, violates federal law and will displace U.S. citizens. The bill, called the Maryland DREAM Act, passed Wednesday evening after six hours of debate that spilled into a rare evening session. The Senate is expected to vote on final passage on Monday. Wednesday’s vote is a strong signal that the measure will be successful. Strong emotions flared during the debate on both sides, with proponents arguing...

An attorney who has been working with a case challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president says it is appalling the Supreme Court justices are allowing the constitutional rule of law to be destabilized by their "avoidance behavior," and it's even worse that two of Obama's appointees apparently participated in the recent case conference. "Their defiance of the court cases, their attitude they don't really need to adhere to the law, is really unparalleled," said Laurence Elgin, one of the experts working with the Constitutional Rule of Law Fund and website and monitoring the case brought by attorney John Hemenway...

Despite two arrests since a judge ordered his deportation in 2002, Jose Oswaldo Reyes Alfaro -- accused of killing three and wounding three more in Manassas Thursday night -- remained in the United States.

NEW YORK — A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday. Federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere charged 73 people. Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, but there also were arrests in New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio. The scheme's scope and sophistication "puts the traditional Mafia to shame," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at a...

Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez of Zapata County, Tex., said Tuesday that the head of Rolando Flores, a Mexican police commander investigating the reported shooting of an American on a border lake plagued by pirates, was found in a suitcase outside a Mexican Army base. Sheriff Gonzalez said “reliable sources within the law enforcement community of Mexico” told him that Mr. Flores’s head was discovered Tuesday morning.

From the Courthouse News Service, a federal district judge has rejected a motion to dismiss the suit brought by the Obama Justice Department against the state of Arizona: PHOENIX (CN) – A federal judge rejected motions in which Gov. Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu sought dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s new immigration law. The complaint filed by civil rights groups, including Friendly House and the American Civil Liberties Union, contains sufficient allegations that S.B. 1070 perceptibly impairs the ability of the organizational plaintiffs to provide the services that...

Four men were arrested Thursday for hunting illegally in Kelly Canyon, southeast of Spanish Fork. According to a police affidavit, a Utah Division of Wildlife Resources contacted two men in a vehicle Thursday morning in the canyon. The men reportedly had two shotguns and a muzzleloader, and the officer asked them if they had a deer tag to hunt in the area, as he had previously heard a shot. The men, Albertico Salazar Betancourt and Alberto Vergara, allegedly said the shot was probably from their friends, who had tags and were hunting deer on the hill. The officer left and...

The link is to East Tennessee Catholic, and the article I'm responding to is "Triptych of Love," by Richard Stika, Bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville. (When you use the link, you'll have to go to page 3; I don't know how to link there directly.) The first half of Bishop Stika's article does a fine job of pointing out that the Biblical teaching of God's concern for "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger" can be applied in our day to the unmarried mother, the unborn child, and the immigrant. This much, I think, is true, accurate, and pastorally...

LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of human rights groups are asking the Obama administration to end programs that allow local police to check the immigration status of arrestees. A letter to the president Wednesday says it encourages racial profiling and calls it a dangerous merger of the federal immigration enforcement system with state criminal justice systems. The letter is signed by the AFL-CIO and a broad range of criminal justice, peace, religious, ethnic and immigrant rights groups around the country, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding a program that permits local police officers to run...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hazleton, Pa., may not enforce its crackdown on illegal immigrants, dealing another blow to 4-year-old regulations that inspired similar measures around the country. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said that Hazleton's Illegal Immigration Relief Act usurped the federal government's exclusive power to regulate immigration

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Thursday the Justice Department "sandbagged" him with the lawsuit it filed earlier in the day against him. The Justice Department claims in its suit that the controversial Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics. It surprises me because our lawyers have been meeting with the Justice Department officials the last week and we were cooperating," Arpaio told Fox News' Neil Cavuto.

PHOENIX — The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics. The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office's defiance "unprecedented," and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against people with limited English skills. Arpaio had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents it first asked...

(CNSNews.com) – Sheriff Larry Dever, whose officers patrol Cochise County along the border between Arizona and Mexico, said he finds it “amazing” that the U.S. State Department would refer the recently passed immigration law in his state to the United Nations Human Rights Council for review. “Well, it’s just amazing to me,” Dever told CNSNews.com. “Course, I have about as much regard for the U.N. as I do the vermin that hides in the rocks around my house here and reaches out and tries to bite me every now and then.” The Bush administration refused to join the U.N. Human...

<p>Well, just as soon as we write that the controversial immigration law in Arizona is about to go in effect, the whole regime gets upended.</p> <p>That’s right. A federal judge in Phoenix put on hold the most controversial provisions of the state immigration law slated to take effect Thursday. Click here for the Associated Press story.</p>

At the beginning of July, more than 2,000 families with undocumented immigrants stopped receiving food stamp benefits due to a change in Utah’s rules. Now a growing number of them are showing up at emergency food pantries confused and needing help. “But, of course, I have to feed my family,” said an undocumented mother of five who works as a housekeeper at a nursing home. She is among those who recently lost food aid. Earlier this year, the state announced it would begin to fully count the income earned by all members of a household when determining food stamp eligibility....

A federal judge is preventing a New York town from enforcing its “unconstitutional” law prohibiting illegal immigrant day laborers from seeking work on public property and people from hiring them. Oyster Bay, a Long Island town of about 300,000 residents, passed the public safety measure last fall because day laborers—and those who hire them—were creating dangerous traffic situations in the municipality’s main roads. The ordinance prohibits pedestrians from soliciting employment and bars drivers from stopping to hire workers. This week a group of day laborers filed a lawsuit claiming that the town enacted a law with a “discriminatory community animus”...

...A man suspected in a weekend hit-and-run crash that injured two female pedestrians near downtown Los Angeles was in custody Tuesday and police urged possible witnesses to come forward. Mynor Antonio Rodriguez, 44, of Los Angeles, was booked on suspicion of felony hit-and-run following his arrest Monday, LAPD Officer Gregory Baek said. Bail was set at $50,000 and Rodriguez could face up to five years in prison, if convicted. The women were hit by an SUV at around 1:40 a.m. Sunday as they crossed West 3rd Street at Boylston Street, Baek said. Police say one of the women suffered a...

Qoute: "Complete betrayal of the nation!" From CNN no less!

PEORIA, Ariz. - Peoria police are looking for a father suspected of running down his daughter because she was becoming too "westernized" and was not living according to their traditional Iraqi values. Peoria police say 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale allegedly ran his daughter down Tuesday at an Arizona Department of Economic Security parking lot in Peoria. "When I walked out the door I saw two ladies on the ground, so my first thought was some kind of domestic dispute," says witness Synthia Diaz. The victim, 20-year-old Noor Faleh Almaleki of Surprise, is hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. A second...