Free Republic

Downtown Los Angeles boasts some big-city perks like spacious lofts and trendy restaurants, but living there is a different kind of beast. By Mike Armstrong July 17, 2011 "Look, Daddy, that man's going to the bathroom!" No, not the words any daddy wants to hear from his 10-year-old daughter, especially during a stroll through their brand-new neighborhood. Moving my wife and kids into a downtown Los Angeles loft may not win me "Dumbest Dad of the Year" honors, but it should at least get me into the quarterfinals. The loft itself was great. More like a movie set than an...

A Mexican national who has been deported at least three times since being convicted in Ramsey County of sexual assaulting a 12-year-old girl was again found in the United States and jailed after traffic infractions, federal authorities said. Juan Dominguez-Soriano, 35, of Little Canada, was being held in the Carver County jail Friday afternoon at the direction of immigration officials on a charge of illegal reentry into the United States.Dominguez-Soriano was picked up Feb. 6 for failing to provide a driver's license and proof of insurance, according to the U.S. attorney's office for Minnesota.

MEXICO CITY - As his fellow officer was dying in the seat beside him after gunmen ambushed their vehicle this week, U.S. special agent Victor Avila, wounded himself, telephoned the U.S. Embassy here to shout that they were under attack. Avila and Jaime Zapata were traveling in an armored Chevrolet Suburban with diplomatic license plates on a popular four-lane highway four hours north of Mexico City. They were returning from a meeting with fellow agents in Monterrey, who had met them at a halfway point near San Luis Potosi to exchange technical equipment. According to U.S. officials who spoke on...

Former first lady Barbara Bush said on Greta Van Susteren's "On the Record" this past week: "We've got a real problem in public schools. ... This is a national crisis. It's as bad as anything in our country." When Van Susteren was pointing out from Bush's own op-ed piece that "Texas (is) 36th in the nation in high-school graduates (and) 3.8 million Texans don't have a high-school diploma," Bush said, "No more, you're killing us." Bush was commendably protecting Texas pride as she told Van Susteren not to cite any further degrading statistics about the state of Lone Star education,...

Said Jaziri was seen getting in the trunk of a smuggler's car by bystanders, captured only by luck and their patriotism. When chaos reigns supreme in a nation that shares an almost two-thousand mile border with the United States, and that border is not protected to the extent it should be, undesirable elements sneaking their way from Mexico into the U.S. becomes the rule instead of the exception. We have all been made aware of the drug shipments that come into the U.S. through the porous and undermanned Mexican border, and we all know of the steady stream of Mexicans...

NUEVO LAREDO— The city's newest police chief was killed late Wednesday night when unknown assailants blocked off a downtown street shortly after he had left police headquarters and machine-gunned his vehicle. Manuel Farfan Carriola, a retired Mexican Army general, had been outspoken about fighting crime in his city, especially drug traffickers who are fighting for control of lucrative illegal trading routes. He was named to the position when the new mayor, Benjamin Galvan Gomez, took office on Jan. 1. Farfan Carriola was usually accompanied by several bodyguards and a personal assistant. Early reports indicated that some of those men may...

Reporting from San Diego — U.S. border authorities have arrested a controversial Muslim cleric who was deported from Canada to Tunisia three years ago and was caught earlier this month trying to sneak into California in the trunk of a BMW, according to court documents. Said Jaziri, the former imam of a Muslim congregation in Montreal, was hidden in a car driven by a San Diego-area man who was pulled over by U.S. Border Patrol agents near an Indian casino east of San Diego on Jan. 11. Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling group $5,000 to get him across...

Federal agents early Thursday morning arrested 14 Ellensburg area residents related to criminal charges of manufacture and purchase of counterfeit identity and employment documents, according to a news release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Another 16 were taken into custody on administrative immigration violations, and three of those were later released for humanitarian reasons, according to the news release issued this morning. All 30 are Mexican nationals, according to ICE/HSI spokeswoman Lorie Dankers in Seattle, and the three released were women.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fatally shot after he encountered several suspects in southern Arizona, officials announced Wednesday. Agent Brian Terry was killed late Tuesday near Rio Rico, Ariz., according to a statement released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials. At least four suspects are in custody and another is still being pursued.

SAN DIEGO — A suspected drunken driver who killed five people when his car slammed into a group of motorcyclists has been released from custody in Southern California.The California Highway Patrol says Carlos Bobadilla of Mexicali, Mexico, was freed Sunday but could still face drunken driving charges when blood tests come back.

An eyewitness has come forward in the case of the American who was allegedly attacked by Mexican pirates to claim he saw the man's panicked wife as she fled to the American side of the lake. As a safety precaution, the witness spoke in shadow and with voice alteration to avoid identification because he said he feared for his life. "It was hard, just remembering everything about us going in to go take pictures and enjoying the sunny day and enjoying the nice weather," Tiffany Hartley, wife of missing David Hartley, told "Good Morning America" today, just hours after returning...

BUSTED Columbus man, 10 others arrested; 2,500 pot plants seized The pot-picking has been plentiful for authorities across Ohio this summer, but they had failed to find the men tending the lucrative cash crop. That changed Monday when more than two dozen officers from federal, state and local agencies surrounded woods in the river bottoms of Muskingum County as a marijuana work crew went about its business. Chasing some of the men as they fled along the Muskingum River, authorities arrested 10 Mexican nationals and charged them with conspiracy to cultivate marijuana in two carefully tended fields about 90 miles...

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- The bodies of four decapitated and mutilated men were left hanging Monday at a bridge in Cuernavaca, Mexico, south of Mexico City, officials said. Officials said the bodies were discovered Sunday hanging by their ankles from the bridge and the heads were on the roadway beneath the bodies, El Universal reported Monday. Police said the slayings likely were tied to the drug wars.

Federal agents guarding the U.S.-Mexico border have been ordered to stay away from the most crime-infested stretches because they’re “too dangerous” and patrolling them could result in an “international incident” of cross border shooting.This unbelievable development was made public this week by a veteran law enforcement official in an Arizona county located along the Mexican border. In a video taped interview with a conservative newspaper, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever reveals firsthand accounts from U.S. Border Patrol supervisors stationed in his southeastern Arizona county. Middle and upper management won’t allow agents to work in certain violent portions of the border...

Jose Ezequiel Galicia Gonzalez, an alleged member of the Zetas criminal organization, was in federal court Wednesday for a competency hearing after he tried to kill himself with plastic cutlery. According to testimony given before U.S. Magistrate Judge Felix Recio, Galicia used either a plastic knife or a plastic spoon to cut his wrists and then slit his throat. According to defense attorney Reynaldo Cantu, Galicia almost succeeded and ended up in intensive care. Cantu stated that Galicia might suffer from a mental disease or defect and requested a psychiatric evaluation. Galicia will be evaluated by a court-appointed psychiatrist on...

Jackson County sheriff's deputies on Wednesday shot and killed an armed man guarding a marijuana garden deep in the woods north of Sams Valley. The sheriff's SWAT team was searching for the garden on BLM property at around 7 a.m. when they encountered a man armed with a loaded shotgun, law enforcement authorities said. Two deputies fired at the man, who is described as a Hispanic adult... A SWAT medic performed emergency aid on the man but he died at the scene, OSP said. After the shooting, deputies spotted a second man fleeing the area. He disappeared in the woods....

A man alleged to have been a member of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel and later of the Zetas criminal organization appeared in U.S. federal court Friday and – when he saw his mother, wife and sister in the room – broke down sobbing, his big frame shaking visibly. Wearing khaki pants, a wrinkled blue shirt and shackles on his wrists, Luis Alberto Blanco Flores, known as “El Pelochas,” appeared at a preliminary hearing as a follow-up to his arrest on July 23 for illegal entry to the United States. At the hearing, an agent for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified...

When measured by the number of criminal defendants charged with federal crimes by U.S. attorneys, the top five U.S. judicial districts for fiscal 2009 were all on the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, these five judicial districts are the only five on the U.S.-Mexico border—covering its entire expanse from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. There are 94 federal judicial districts covering the area of all 50 states, plus Guam, the North Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In the Southern District of Texas, which covers a stretch of border from Brownsville past Laredo, the U.S. attorney’s...

... The ranches are said to be "near Mines Rd. and Minerales Rd. about 10 miles NW of I-35". Whether it is lone members or squads is not certain. Anonymous sources in law enforcement in the Laredo area tonight have passed on word that US law enforcement agencies are in the area and are weighing their options regarding the ranches. The media has been silent on this incident and some law enforcement in the area says that they are furious that the media is not reporting the whole story of the continued violence along the border. Their frustrations are understandable...

MEXICO CITY — Authorities found the remains of at least 23 people in a series of pits and scattered on the ground at a suspected drug-gang dumping site near the industrial hub of Monterrey in northern Mexico, an official said Friday. Investigators were using heavy equipment to search for more bodies at the rural site outside Mexico's third-largest city, local media said. Photographs showed charred spots on the soil suggesting some bodies may have been partially burned.