Free Republic

PHOENIX - Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is appeals a federal judge's ruling that prohibited his deputies from detaining people under Arizona's immigrant-smuggling law based solely on the suspicion that they're in the country illegally. ---------

Obama picks immigration reform advocate to lead domestic policy By Amie Parnes and Erik Wasson - 01/10/12 01:27 PM ET President Obama has picked a strong advocate of immigration reform to head the Domestic Policy Council. The White House announced Tuesday that Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, would replace Melody Barnes at the top of the council. White House press secretary Jay Carney announced the appointment during his press briefing. Muñoz is now serving as the White House's director of intergovernmental affairs and is in charge of outreach to state and...

ROCKPORT (Kiii News) - The Rockport Police Department is responding to allegations of racial profiling. An attorney claims his clients were pulled over for bogus traffic violations and then asked for their papers. 3 News first started looking into those claims on Friday. When we went to get a response from the police chief, he wouldn't come out of his office. On Saturday, Commander Mark Cory came to our news station to speak on the departments behalf. In a letter to the mayor and city council, the attorney alleges the police department receives a bounty of 600 dollars for each...

Authorities are investigating human remains found at the same U.S. border lake where a Colorado man was reported to have been killed by Mexican drug cartel members last year. A professional fisherman found the skeletal remains on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake on the Texas-Mexico border, according to multiple reports. The skeleton was found about 15 miles from where 30-year-old David Hartley was last seen alive on Sept. 30, 2010. His wife, Tiffany Hartley, said the couple had set out on Wave Runners to take photos of a half-submerged church on the Mexican side of the lake when they...

The hotline, run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, is available 24/7 for detained individuals to phone if they think they “may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime.” The hotline will have translation services available in several different languages. ICE personnel will gather the caller’s information and send it to a field office for immediate action, according to the press release. The purpose of the hotline and other measures, including a new detainer form, are “to ensure that individuals being held by state or local law enforcement on immigration detainers are properly notified about their potential...

Firefights, grenade explosions and chases broke out in Reynosa once again Wednesday night defying regular assurances by state officials that all was well. And unconfirmed reports from sources outside law enforcement point to the capture of a ranking lieutenant in the Gulf Cartel, possibly a plaza boss. Mexican authorities wouldn’t confirm or deny the capture. The clashes began as a chase between gunmen shortly after 7:30 p.m. before authorities got involved, according to preliminary information released by a local law enforcement official not authorized to speak publicly. The official wouldn’t comment on the gunmen’s affiliation but said the fighting was...

Miscommunication and bad maps contributed to the deaths of 24 Pakistani troops in a NATO airstrike last month, a military investigation concluded Thursday. A statement issued by the Pentagon on Thursday said "inadequate coordination by U.S. and Pakistani military officers ... resulted in a misunderstanding about the true location of Pakistani military units." "This, coupled with other gaps in information about the activities and placement of units from both sides, contributed to the tragic result," Pentagon spokesman George Little said. The U.S. investigation also conceded a critical error by U.S. troops - telling Pakistan the cross-border shooting was taking place...

A U.S. Border Patrol agent fired his service weapon at several alleged drug smugglers who were throwing rocks at him and another agent. The incident happened at around 7 p.m. Monday near the B&M International Bridge in Brownsville, said Border Patrol spokeswoman Rosalinda Huey. The agents were patrolling when they encountered several people who appeared to be carrying bundles of marijuana, authorities said. When the agents confronted the individuals, they began throwing rocks at the agents, Huey said. “One of our agents, in defense of himself and his partner, fired his service-issued rifle at the subjects. None of our agents...

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION at the link below to show you Stand With Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and AGAINST the political witchhunt of Obama's Department of Justice. This Administration and its open-borders allies La Raza, MALDEF and the ACLU, will stop at nothing to try and destroy the most prominent national symbol in the fight against illegal immigration. Sheriff Joe will not back down. Please sign the petition to show we stand behind him. [Note: The opposition already has a petition AGAINST Joe with 11,014 signatures (as of 6:32PST). Let's blow past them with 20,000 signatures or more by the end...

In all of my years fighting on behalf of the National Rifle Association to defend the Second Amendment, I never thought I would see a White House so vehemently opposed to gun ownership that it would be willing to arm violent criminals and endanger American lives in pursuit of a gun control agenda. Readers will recall that a little over two months ago, in this same space, I wrote: "I would like to believe that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder – no matter how much they oppose our Second Amendment rights – would never break the law...

Arizona authorities have arrested some 200 people, and seized $7.8 million in cash and more than 1,200 pounds of drugs following an investigation they say has dismantled an "extensive" drug trafficking cell tied to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, federal and state authorities announced Tuesday. Authorities announcing the 15-month-long investigation said that although the Sinaloa cartel almost immediately regenerates after one of its cells have been taken down, their investigation certainly struck a blow. "Arresting a drug dealer is one thing but if we can actually follow that backwards and take out the head of the snake of this organization, we...

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION at the link below to show you Stand With Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and AGAINST the political witchhunt of Obama's Department of Justice. This Administration and its open-borders allies La Raza, MALDEF and the ACLU, will stop at nothing to try and destroy the most prominent national symbol in the fight against illegal immigration. Sheriff Joe will not back down. Please sign the petition to show we stand behind him. [Note: The opposition already has a petition AGAINST Joe with 3,400 signatures. Let's blow past them with 5,000 signatures or more by the end of today!]

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate. Operation...

The federal government issued a scathing report Thursday that outlines how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office has committed a wide range of civil rights violations against Latinos SNIP The Justice Department's conclusions in the civil probe mark the federal government's harshest rebuke of a national political fixture who has risen to prominence for his immigration crackdowns and became coveted endorsement among candidates in the GOP presidential field. SNIPThe report will require Arpaio to set up effective policies against discrimination, improve training and make other changes that would be monitored for compliance by a judge. Arpaio faces a Jan. 4...

The wife of former U.S. Border Patrol agent Jesus Diaz, who was jailed over his treatment of a drug smuggler, says she's outraged that the government has told her husband he won't be allowed to return home to be with her or associate with any other law enforcement-linked member of his family while on probation. "I have to ask what does the DOJ want me to do? I can't retire, I'm too young. Divorcing him is not an option as he would still have to come around for the children. What is Chito going to do about his brother, not...

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas (AP) -- The bloody drug war in Mexico shows no sign of relenting. Neither do calls for tighter border security amid rising fears of spillover violence. This hardly seems a time the U.S. would be willing to allow people to cross the border legally from Mexico without a customs officer in sight. But in this rugged, remote West Texas terrain where wading across the shallow Rio Grande undetected is all too easy, federal authorities are touting a proposal to open an unmanned port of entry as a security upgrade. By the spring, kiosks could open...

by John HillStand With Arizona Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Human Smuggling Unit arrested 17 illegal aliens over 48 hours - including 2 smugglers, in the north valley region. The illegals had paid the smugglers between $1,000 and $2,000 each to be smuggled across the border. Demonstrating how Arizona is a critical gateway for the entire nation, most of those arrested were heading to locations in the east: Mississippi, Virginia, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey. They are now headed to Sheriff Joe's Tent City instead. Way to go, Joe! But the shocking detail of this arrest is the...

Terrorists from several Middle Eastern groups have infiltrated Latin American countries -- especially Mexico -- in order to plot and carry out attacks against the United States, according to an alarming exposé broadcast this week by the world’s largest Spanish news network.

American Ethnic Studies and Leadership Studies will be teaming up for a new intersession course beginning in summer 2012. The course will involve cultural awareness and service learning projects involving Latino migrant workers in the American southwest. The idea for this course began with Jonathan Berhow, academic counselor for the Academic Assistance Center. Berhow said he had wanted to start a course like this for some time to raise awareness and dispel myths about migrant workers from Mexico and other countries who come to the United States for work. Migrant workers take many risks in coming to the U.S. for...

"The Iranian Threat" ("La Amenaza Irani"), a documentary that looks at Iran's growing political, economic and military ties in Latin American, will premiere Dec. 8 on the Univision Network ... the documentary also looks at the threat Iran's ties pose to the Latin American regions and the United States.The documentary, which was produced in collaboration with Univision News' Investigative unit, reveals exclusive findings, including secret video and audio recordings that provide a rare window into an alleges Iranian-back cyber attack against the United States from Mexico ... also features unseen video footage from extremists linked to Iran and an interview...