Free Republic

MCALLEN - The U.S. Coast Guard patrols the coasts, and a limited stretch of the Rio Grande, but a bill in the works would change that. Congressman Henry Cuellar wants the coast guard to work out a plan that would help secure the 1200 miles of the river. It's aimed at addressing drug and human smuggling along the river. Right now, the river is only patrolled by local law enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The bill is called the Coast Guard Authorization Act.

GUERRERO VIEJO, Mexico — As soon as he stepped onto the mud shore below the church ruins, Eric Ellman could visualize the party. The racers would storm across the Rio Grande, landing their kayaks and canoes to the cheers of fans lining the streets of this 200-year-old, half-sunken and abandoned town now exposed by a drought-lowered lake. After an awards ceremony in front of the church’s cleaned-up facade, camps would be set up. A band would play. Where cows now stood, couples would dance under a star-studded sky. The Rio Grande again would be a uniting element, not just a...

State Trooper Mike Franklin circled the water-logged Jeep Grand Cherokee, puzzling over a way to get inside. Freshly plucked Monday morning from the bottom of the Rio Grande, the vehicle likely held cargo lost years ago by the river’s flow. So far, though, all efforts to crack open the twisted hunk of steel had failed. The rusted trunk door lock barely budged even with the keys found in the ignition. A crowbar offered little help in removing the years of accumulated sludge caked on the hinges. “And this isn’t the only one,” said State Trooper Johnny Hernandez, spokesman for the...

Eric Ellman called it the Plymouth Rock for Mexican-American history. If Ellman, executive director of an organization that promotes the cultural and environmental aspects of the Rio Grande from Laredo to South Padre Island, and members of the South Texas delegation get their way, the historic Los Caminos del Rio could get another designation. A bill filed by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, will start a process to designate the 200-mile corridor between the cities of Laredo and Brownsville known for early colonial Spanish settlements, military conflicts and recent trade growth as a National Heritage Corridor. The designation, which is...

Texas wildlife officials say there are six alligators living in the Rio Grande, east of Fort Hancock in Hudspeth County. "There were approximately six alligators that were observed, three of them that were in the 2- to 4-foot range, and about three of them in the 5- to 6-foot range," Texas Game Warden Ray Spears told KFOX-TV, El Paso, Texas. Spears said the alligators are in a rural area, so they don't pose much danger to humans. He said it is believed they were dropped off in the area by someone who was previously keeping them. The warden said his...

Time is almost up for Texas residents who wish to submit a comment on the proposed Trans Texas Corridor, which must be received by the Texas Department of Transportation by Wednesday. Submissions of comments would have to be made either by mail or online at this point, and can be sent to I-69/TTC, P.O. Box 14428, Austin, TX 78761, or go to keeptexasmoving.com, then click on “question or comment” on the left side of the screen. Previously, throughout February and March, TxDOT held 47 well-attended hearings at which oral comments from the public were taken into account. The TTC has...

A proposal for combining the federal border-fence project with a federal levee-repair project is gaining traction, according to Rio Grande Valley officials. But mixed messages from the federal government suggest that realizing the plan is anything but a certainty. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is expected to move forward on a design that combines the two projects, said Godfrey Garza Jr., flood plain administrator and manager of Hidalgo County’s Drainage District No. 1 in Edinburg. Growing acceptance of the proposal at the federal level means the county could get its long-neglected levees repaired by November next year. Garza and...

Texan mayors opposed to a planned border fence with Mexico want to widen and deepen the Rio Grande river instead, and say it will be more effective in keeping out illegal immigrants. The U.S. government aims to build 700 miles of new fencing along the frontier with Mexico to boost security and try to stem the tide of immigration from the south.

EL PASO, TX. - The El Paso and Juarez fire departments responded simultaneously today to a call about a body floating in the Rio Grande. The male victim appears to have been 30-35 years and apparently died while trying to cross the border illegally in the early morning hours just south of Chihuahua Street in the Rio Grande. U.S. crews arrived first on the scene in South El Paso. The fire department says it appeared the body was closer to the U.S. side of the river. As crews prepared to suit up and recover the body - firefighters from Juarez...

EDINBURG — The Texas National Guard has reassigned hundreds of soldiers deployed along the state’s southern border and expects to remove several more before the end of the summer, military officials confirmed this week. The shift is expected to free up more guardsmen for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and bolster the state’s preparedness for emergency management at home. But it could also stymie the U.S. Border Patrol’s efforts to increase manpower along the Rio Grande and slow the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants across the border. The drawdown comes as part of a planned de-escalation of Operation Jump...

A piece of living history with this special charter freight on the narrow gauge Durango and Silverton on February 11, 2007 (formerly the Denver and Rio Grande Western). The railroad hosts several private trips each year. Winter snow adds to the beauty of the scene. Additional photos at the link above and at Narrow Gauge Discussion Forum -- charter freight pictures.

City office haunted? Odd occurrences can’t be explained, employees say December 31,2006 Sara Perkins Monitor Staff Writer RIO GRANDE CITY — Haunted houses are nothing new in Starr County. At the historic La Borde House, which is home to county offices, a restaurant and a hotel, the locals say things go bump in the night — and during the day. At the county courthouse, lawyers and clerks tell stories of whispering ghosts in the halls. But knowing about these haunted buildings didn’t lessen the surprise of the county’s compliance and collection department when pictures started falling off the walls of...

McALLEN — Jose Sandoval’s kidnapping has the same hallmarks of most of the other 20 kidnappings reported this year to the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department: He knew his kidnapper and it was drug-related. And though no one will confirm that Sandoval’s Oct. 20 kidnapping is a sign the drug-related kidnappings in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo have hit the Rio Grande Valley, the Federal Bureau of Investigations in McAllen has joined the investigation. FBI agents cautioned that so far innocent bystanders in the Valley have not been caught in the crossfire. But increased cooperation between the FBI and local law enforcement...

HARLINGEN - Five bodies pulled from the Rio Grande are believed to be illegal immigrants who probably drowned while trying to cross into the United States through currents unusually turgid from recent rain, authorities said Tuesday. The bodies of four men and one woman were recovered Monday evening, after a Mexican fisherman spotted them and notified U.S. authorities. The bodies, found in a rural area below a dam about 65 miles west of McAllen, were decomposed and could have been dead for a week, said Carlos Delgado, an investigator for the Starr County district attorney's office. Autopsies were to be...

McALLEN, Texas- Authorities pulled five bodies from the Rio Grande River in an area known as a crossing place for illegal immigrants. Starr County Sheriff Reymundo Guerra said Mexican authorities notified Starr County deputies that the bodies were floating in the river near the U.S. side. The bodies were found Monday evening just below Falcon Dam. The cause of death for the five people was unknown. An autopsy was planned. Authorities said a search for more bodies would continue overnight. An official with the Salineno Volunteer Fire Department said the dead included four men and one woman, all dressed in...

Two countries separated by a single stretch of river came together Saturday to clean up land along the Rio Grande and beautify the sister cities.The event was part of the binational-turned-international observance of Dia del Rio, which on Saturday joined the two countries in a single purpose: to improve the quality of the Rio Bravo, known locally as the Rio Grande, and its environmental surroundings. “This part of the river is our river. It belongs to both (U.S. and Mexican) sides, and we feel that it is our responsibility to help clean up for several reasons,” said Gustavo Pantoja of...

See the upper left corner of the page for the video of congressional candidate Raj Peter Bhakta riding an elephant across the Rio Grande with a mariachi band playing in the background. They were unchallenged by the Border Patrol, as there were no Border Patrol agents in the vicinity. The stunt was to demonstrate the lack of security on our southern border.

Protesters in Port Isabel say border barrier a bad idea PORT ISABEL - Building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border will not stop people from coming to the United States, immigration advocates and immigrants say. The two groups gathered here on Wednesday during a two-hour rally to protest what they called slow movement in Congress toward a comprehensive immigration reform package. They also condemned the proposed fence, which some lawmakers want to see built to deter illegal immigration. "Building a wall is not the solution to the immigration issue," said Maria Gomez, a member of La Union del Pueblo. "This...

DEL RIO, Texas - Standing in a cramped federal courtroom last month, illegal immigrant Walter Oscar Portillo-Machado pleaded with a judge for mercy. But he came to the wrong place for that. The Salvadoran man was caught along a 210-mile stretch of the Texas-Mexico border that has been set up as zero-tolerance zone for illegal immigration. Instead of merely getting sent back home, immigrants here are arrested, prosecuted, and sometimes sentenced to prison before they are formally kicked out of the country. The effort began late last year along a border area that includes the Rio Grande border towns of...

La Joya, Donna officials: Campuses are fundamentally safe McALLEN - Almost 5,000 Rio Grande Valley high school students will begin the new school year at campuses rated "persistently dangerous" by the state education agency. Jimmy Carter High School in the La Joya school district and Todd Ninth Grade campus and Donna High School in the Donna district received the "dangerous" designation this year from the Texas Education Association. The three campuses are among just five statewide to be rated as such. This is Todd's second year on the TEA list. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to...

MISSION — President Bush is scheduled to visit Anzalduas Park on Thursday, the latest in a multi-city stump for immigration reform. The president will tour the park, which borders the Rio Grande, and discuss his five-point immigration plan unveiled in a primetime address on May 15, a White House spokesman said. Since May, Bush has visited the border cities of Yuma, Ariz. and Laredo to push a guest-worker program for immigrants and the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops to the border for at least two years. More than 2,500 of those troops are expected to work on the Texas...

McALLEN — About 100 more National Guardsmen arrived in the Rio Grande Valley on Monday to supplement the U.S. Border Patrol and the three dozen soldiers that came a month ago. "Badges back to the border," is how the chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s RGV Sector characterized the second phase of Operation Jumpstart, the short-term plan to increase security on the border while up to 6,000 more agents are trained over the next two years. "We’ve been able to put more Border Patrol agents on the front line," said Chief Lynne Underdown at Monday’s press conference at the...

DONNA — Bandits shot hundreds of rounds of automatic gun fire at Hidalgo County Sheriff’s deputies and Border Patrol agents Wednesday from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. The deputies were responding to a call from two brothers who swam across the river after an initial gunfight at a ranch in Mexico, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said. Treviño would not identify the two brothers, but said the two U.S. citizens are suspects in other criminal investigations. The two brothers called 911 around 7:45 p.m. Wednesday and told the operator that they were near the Brewster Ranch south of...

Gunmen invade Mexican ranch house, shoot at American law enforcement DONNA - Border Patrol agents and Hidalgo County Sheriff deputies are pinned down by automatic weapons fire from across the Rio Grande.

McALLEN — The FBI has posted a reward of up to $5 million for another Mexican drug cartel suspect. The reward promotes Jorge Eduardo "El Cos" Costilla Sanchez, believed to be a leader of the Matamoros-based Gulf Cartel that controls most narcotics shipments into South Texas, into the top echelon of wanted men in the bloody world of drug smuggling. It's the same price that's on the heads of other notorious narcotraffickers wanted along the U.S.-Mexico border, such as Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, alleged head of the powerful Juarez Cartel, and Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, who's...

MEXICO CITY – Acapulco authorities discovered the decapitated bodies of two police officers Thursday along with a chilling message from suspected drug traffickers operating in the resort: "So that you learn some respect." "One of them was a police commander and the other an officer," a city spokesman said. The spokesman said he could not confirm media reports that the two slain officers had participated in a shootout in January in which four suspected drug traffickers were killed. The two officers' bodies found Thursday were dumped near the site of that shootout. The handwritten sign demanding respect was taped to...

Are twisted individuals introducing Piranah into border river? Are Piranha fish being maliciously and quietly stocked in the Rio Grande by twisted individuals and groups hoping to slow the entry of illegal aliens into the United States? Have jokes about Piranahs (Scientific Name: Pygocentrus nattereri) being put into the Rio Grande gone too far? Escape San Antonio is investigating the possibility that this insane practice has started or is about to start. Readers report hearing suggestions on stocking the Rio Grande with the flesh eating import. Some say that the images of men being devoured in a matter of minutes...

DEL RIO — It began as a routine nocturnal encounter between the U.S. Border Patrol and a group of Mexicans illegally crossing the Rio Grande. It ended with the deaths of three immigrants amid allegations of misconduct by the American agents. A federal wrongful death lawsuit filed last year accuses the agents of contributing to the drownings of the two women and teenager early Sept. 24, 2004, near Eagle Pass. "These agents threw rocks ... and used profanities in an effort to make them return to Mexico by swimming across the Rio Grande," reads the lawsuit, which claims the agents...

AUSTIN - Gov. Rick Perry launched a new border safety initiative today dubbed "Operation Rio Grande" to combat growing violence, though he warned that border law enforcement remains mainly the federal government's responsibility. "The state will not wait for Washington to take all the necessary actions," Perry said. Perry's program involves shifting existing Texas Department of Public Safety officers and state equipment to provide more border security, but not necessarily hiring new officers. Perry and Texas Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw would not disclose precisely where the DPS officers would be placed along the border. The governor cited examples of...

— Border Patrol agents have increasingly become targets of unknown snipers along the banks of the meandering Rio Grande. Twenty-five assaults on agents were reported in the last four months, a new high for this region, and all signs point to increasing violence along this stretch of the border. “I think we’re just getting collisions because we’re getting more agents,” said Charles Bowden, an author who has written extensively on border violence and the drug trade. “Increased vigilance by the Border Patrol is kind of frustrating the traffickers,” Bowden said. Sneak attacks on agents patrolling coveted drug routes could be...

(SIERRA BLANCA, TEXAS) -- Local lawmen in remote west Texas came face to face with ten armed men wearing what appeared to be Mexican army camouflage uniforms who came to the aid of one of three suspected drug dealers' vehicles when it became stuck in the riverbank of the Rio Grande, law enforcement officials said today. The incident happened in Hudspeth County, east of El Paso, yesterday, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez, Jr, chairman of the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, told 1200 WOAI news. Gonzalez says it started when Hudspeth County deputies and Texas State Police officers spotted three vehicles...

Border patrol agents on boat patrol say smugglers are trying something new to get them hurt while on patrol on the Rio Grande. The smugglers are putting out ropes in the narrow parts of the river to attack the agents while they cross those areas on the boats. Agents believe smugglers do this in frustration because they're putting a stop to drug and human smuggling. Agents tell NEWSCHANNEL 5 that they usually find the ropes during night patrol when it is harder for them to see them.

SAN YSIDRO, Calif. — Assaults against U.S. Border Patrol agents nearly doubled along the Mexican border over the last year as patrols cracking down on drug trafficking and migrant smuggling encountered increasing resistance ... rocks, Molotov cocktails and gunfire. At least 687 assaults against agents were reported during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up from the previous year's total of 354 and the highest since the agency began tracking assaults across the Southwest border in the late 1990s, according to Border Patrol officials. Most assaults occurred near urban smuggling havens such as Nogales, Ariz., and Tijuana, but cross-border...

Alexander Enrique Hernandez arrived in San Angelo this week with a phone number and a court date he probably will not keep. The 20-year-old El Salvador native slipped across the U.S.-Mexican border near Eagle Pass on Monday. Almost immediately, an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol arrested him, just another face among the 150 illegal aliens caught each day by the department's Del Rio sector. Instead of processing him on the border, however, agents shipped him to San Angelo, served him paperwork telling him to be in a federal immigration court next month, and dropped him off at the Concho...

Some western parts of the Rio Grande are nearly dry and U.S. officials blame it on Mexican farmers diverting water for irrigation. Water flow from Presidio to El Paso has nearly stopped, and water officials claim that a makeshift earthen dam about 50 miles upriver from Presidio is the cause. Ken Rakestraw, chief of water accounting with the International Boundary and Water Commission in El Paso, said that very little water is flowing on that segment of the river. "They (Mexican farmers) pushed dirt across the river near Candelaria and there is very little water coming down right now," he...

Border Patrol: Can we give you a ride to the bus station?Posted by: McQ on Sunday, June 05, 2005  You're an illegal immigrant from a country other than Mexico. You're at the Rio Grande and you set out across the river into the US. Once you get across, what's the first thing you do? You look for a US Border Patrol agent and surrender yourself.In the silvery-blue light of dusk, 20 Brazilians glided across the Rio Grande in rubber rafts propelled by Mexican smugglers who leaned forward and breast-stroked through the gentle current. Once on the U.S. side, the Brazilians...

SOUTH OF ALAMO – Border Patrol agents come under automatic weapons fire from across the Rio Grande after finding a truck being loaded with drugs at the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge south of Alamo. No agents were injured in the exchange. All Border Patrol agents in the area, as well as all local law enforcement agencies responded to the scene. It is unknown if agents were able to wound their attackers across the border.

Flocks of the faithful are flocking to the Eagle Pass Police Department to see a mysterious statue of Christ. Police say the statue of Jesus just came floating down the Rio Grande. The statue is now in the department's evidence room. "There's a reason for it to be here," Officer Henry Cardona said of the statue. "People come, pray and kneel down." Border Patrol agents noticed the life-size fiberglass statue of Jesus Christ in late August stuck on a sandbar in the middle of the Rio Grande. Then on August 31, Border Patrol turned it over to the Eagle Pass...

LOS INDIOS, Texas (AP) Authorities searched the Rio Grande on Sunday for two U.S. Border Patrol agents whose boat capsized in rough water, officials said. Three agents were on regular patrol near the Los Indios International Bridge when their boat overturned Sunday afternoon, assistant chief Cruz Rodriguez said. Agents on a nearby boat heard a distress call and were able to rescue one agent within minutes by throwing out some ropes. That agent was ``doing well'' at a Harlingen hospital, Rodriguez said. Rodriguez said the river was exceptionally high following several days of heavy rain. Border Patrol agents routinely patrol...

<p>Dozens more migrants seized at Newark airport Monday, April 12, 2004 Associated Press More than 40 illegal immigrants on two flights were detained this weekend when their planes landed at Newark Liberty International Airport, authorities said.</p> <p>Four other illegal aliens awaiting the planes' arrivals were arrested and charged with smuggling the immigrants, said Janet Rapaport, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.</p>

Pressure on Mexico to pay a decade-old water debt to the United States continues to mount even as South Texas produce growers head into their planting season with more stored water than they've seen in a decade. After turning over a significant amount of water in the Amistad and Falcon reservoirs to U.S. ownership this month, Mexico has surpassed its yearly obligation of about 350,000 acre-feet under a 1944 treaty to divide the waters of the Rio Grande. But that has done little to stem the frustration with Mexico among Texas officials who want the entire water debt paid this...

Mexico delivered enough water to Rio Grande reservoirs this month to fulfill its entire annual obligation to the United States under a 1944 treaty, but remains uncommitted to paying the almost 1.4 million acre-feet of water it still owes. Mexico has released 383,554 acre-feet of water since the current accounting period began Oct. 1, said Sally Spener, a spokeswoman with the International Boundary and Water Commission. The most recent delivery, a substantial 200,000 acre-feet, was made Jan. 16, three days after President Bush visited with Mexican President Vicente Fox at the Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico. The payment...

Christ Chavez / Special to the Chronicle Sunbaked, cracked earth shows the effects of low water levels along the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park. TERLINGUA -- Jan Forte's company runs rafting trips on the Rio Grande, or at least it used to. In recent years, canoes have been about the only craft the river would bear and as often as not the adventurers spent as much time in portage as paddling. "I tell them, `If your canoe dumps you, just get up and dust yourself off and get back in,' " she says. A decade of drought...

Farmers may lose water to minnowWed, Jan. 29, 2003 9:27 AM ETBy the Associated Press ALBUQUERQUE (AP) Indian pueblos along the Rio Grande and others who use the river's water could face a very dry year if the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a federal judge's decision on the silvery minnow, a Bureau of Reclamation official said Tuesday. The bureau made public the federal government's draft biological assessment for 2003 for the middle Rio Grande, where the tiny endangered fish lives. U.S. District Judge James Parker last year said the bureau and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife should...