Free Republic

Matías Romero (Mexico) (AFP) – Hungry and exhausted after three weeks walking across Mexico in a migrant caravan, Elsa Pineda implored US President Joe Biden to give her daughter a chance to escape the dangers of Honduras' gangs. "He has to help those of us who really need it," she said after a night on a concrete floor near the side of a road with hundreds of other migrants. Despite the perils of walking along busy highways through violence-plagued Mexico, sleeping outdoors at night, Honduras in comparison is "a thousand times" more dangerous, said Pineda, 35. "Although we've faced hunger,...

A key part of the Brexit negotiations has been the border that separates Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The border is a matter of great political, security and diplomatic sensitivity in Ireland. Therefore the UK and EU agreed that whatever happens as a result of Brexit there should be no new physical checks or infrastructure at the frontier. This is where the controversial "backstop" comes in. Go on then, what is the backstop? The backstop is a position of last resort, to maintain a seamless border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves...

A multi-day eradication effort by the Southern Oregon Multi-Agency Marijuana Eradication Team.... removed more than 40,000 pot plants estimated to be worth as much as $120 million. ....on Aug. 23, Josephine County sheriff's detectives stopped a vehicle with five Hispanic men in it on Forest Road 4105, which wends into the hills above the Sixmile recreation site toward the roughly 5-acre marijuana garden. Four of the men inside the vehicle wore camouflage clothing... The driver, David Barragan-Salazar,told investigators that he was paid $500 to take men to the growing operation in the forest. All are suspected of being in the...

SOMEONE OUGHT to tell the Bush administration that prisons are for criminals, not law-enforcement personnel trying to do their jobs. On Thursday, a federal judge in Texas sentenced two former Border Patrol agents to 11 and 12 years in prison because they shot at a drug smuggler who was evading arrest. In February 2005, Border Patrol agent Jose Alonso Compean got in a scuffle with smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, who was driving a van that carried 743 pounds of marijuana. Compean and fellow agent Ignacio Ramos shot at Aldrete-Davila -- they say they thought he had a gun, which Aldrete-Davila denies....

PHOENIX — Public-safety officials from across the Southwest gathered here Tuesday to learn about new strategies needed to control the borders from both illegal immigrants and potential terrorists intent on making their way into the country. But they heard mostly shocking statistics and dire predictions on the cost and complexity of controlling the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, with tales of understaffed law-enforcement agencies, overwhelmed fire departments and increasing violence on the border. The story wasn't unexpected — law-enforcement officials in Arizona and elsewhere on the border have been complaining bitterly about the numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border for...

The U.S. Border Patrol could add up to 10,000 agents in the next five years. The training this sometimes-controversial agency requires can seem brutal, and the job can be deadly. So who would sign up for work like this? ARTESIA, N.M. - On Independence Day 2004, Pedro Infante was driving through Mosul, Iraq, manning a 50-caliber gun atop a cargo truck, when an explosion hurled shrapnel into his helmet. A year later, Infante is here in another desert, training for another dangerous and highly politicized job: working as a Border Patrol agent in Southern Arizona, the nation's hot spot for...