Posted on 08/29/2005 8:46:17 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
HARLINGEN — From far away, she looked like a child sitting on the curb at the U.S. Border Patrol Station in Harlingen, her backpack beside her. She was shielding her eyes from the sun with a forearm.
A school bus full of children, too, was letting out less than a quarter of a mile down the street.
Upon closer inspection, though, Elizabeth Martinez didn’t appear to be a kid anymore.
"Veinte y tres (Twenty-three)," she said when asked her age. Nor was she from here.
Martinez said she was from a town called Progreso in Honduras. She walked, rode and ran her way from there to here in about 25 days. She spent a night in the mountains of Mexico. She also dealt with "corrupt" Mexican police who solicited her for money. She sprained her ankle and stressed her muscles.
The final stretch of her journey took place in an inner tube on the "Rio Bravo," and then the U.S. Border Patrol caught her as she came to rest on the riverbank near the Los Indios Bridge in Harlingen.
Now, on Thursday afternoon, she was sitting outside the Harlingen Border Patrol station next to Pedro Angel Galvéz, an 18-year-old El Salvadoran whom she met at an area detention center.
They were at the center for about 24 hours, she said.
Martinez is two months pregnant, Galvéz said, reasoning why he stayed with her.
Martinez and Galvéz said at around 2 p.m. Thursday, Border Patrol agents opened a gate and let them go with their notice-to-appear papers.
It is common, because of a lack of bed space at the detention centers, for OTMs (other than Mexicans) with no criminal histories to be released on their own recognizance.
The agents then asked them to leave the property, but Martinez said she hadn’t been able to walk very far because of her hurt leg.
One Border Patrol field agent working in the Rio Grande Valley sector and who wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job said this sight is common.
The agents used to drive the illegal immigrants with notices to appear to the bus station "to at least make sure they didn’t get run over," he said. But once that practice was reported on television news, it stopped. At least in Harlingen, agents shoo the immigrants out the gate now, in close proximity to a neighborhood and near where a bus load of children get dropped off after school.
Martinez and Galvéz seemed innocent enough.
However, the Border Patrol does not know if they have criminal histories back in their home countries.
The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) used by the Border Patrol is a biometric identification technology that enables agents to search the Customs and Border Protection’s and the FBI’s fingerprint databases at the same time. Agents can accurately identify aliens with criminal histories or outstanding warrants.
But IAFIS does not include foreign criminal histories.
"How many criminal histories can we adequately find when we don’t know what kind of criminal history this person has in their home country?" the agent asked. "They could be the Russian mafia, and we wouldn’t know it."
"That’s the fallacy of the whole process," said Richard Pierce, executive vice president for the National Border Patrol Council. "IAFIS doesn’t mean a thing unless you’ve been arrested in the United States."
Both Pierce and the agent agree IAFIS does a good job singling out those who’ve been deported before or who have a criminal history in this country. According to Monitor archives, from September to November 2004, IAFIS helped agents capture 23,502 criminal aliens — including 84 homicide suspects, 37 kidnapping suspects, 151 sexual assault suspects, 212 robbery suspects, 1,238 suspects of assault and 2,630 suspects implicated in narcotics-related charges.
Yet what about a Mara Salvatrucha gang member who is waiting until he comes to the United States for the first time to get his tattoos, asked one Del Rio Sector agent. The MS-13 gang is known for its propensity for violence and human and drug trafficking.
The agent from the Del Rio sector said he knew of a case where an uncle and a little girl illegally entered the United States and were caught by the Border Patrol. At the detention center, she wanted nothing to do with the man. She claimed he raped her on the trip, but the agents had no recourse because the alleged crime was committed in Mexico. They had to release a possible child rapist.
Pierce criticizes how the fingerprint database could also miss a potential terrorist because the terrorist organization would not send someone to the border with a criminal record in the United States.
FYI
I suspect that the US is planning on adding fingerprints that it takes from terror suspects in other nations, at least. That way if they show up on our doorstep we'll know that they've been suspects in the past. Not much, but better than the current system.
ping
Oh yes, I promise to appear. See yea next month. No problemo!
Forget the crimes they committed before jumping the border, it is the crimes they do that go unpunished after arriving.
Illegal immigrants have murdered more Americans since 911, than the terrorists did on that date:
Getting true crime statistics for illegal immigrant crime in the US appears to be one of the best kept secrets of the powers that be. But I did manage to scrape up this much, read it and weep.
"There are over 4,000 murder warrants out, just in the border states, for people who've committed murder and fled to Mexico. "
Above from AZ Representative Russell Pearce in: http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=24206
I also found this tid bit just for L.A. in 2004, -- "In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in the first half of 2004 (which totaled 1,200 to 1,500) targeted illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens.. "
Full article here: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald04-13-05.htm
Also here in NRO: http://www.nationalreview.com/dunphy/dunphy200401220906.asp
And: http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/opd/2005/opd_05-06-22li.html
Or: http://www.newswithviews.com/Cosman/madeleine.htm
BTTT
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
Notice-to-appear ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
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