Free Republic

CBNNews.com - NASHVILLE, Tenn. - It's a day in the life of the U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as he boards a plane to launch the first Freedom Initiative to protect religious liberties. Along for the ride, we ask about a report that says discrimination against Muslims after 9/11 in part prompted this new program. "It's something we worry about, naturally, when people see images on the television screen that these are the enemies of America, they may naturally assume anyone who looks like these people, or have the same religious belief - that, in fact, they constitute enemies of...

The US25 million will go to groups that help protect the nations's heavily logged forests.The U.S. Agency for International Development has pledged US25 million over the next five years to protect Mexico's forests, the U.S. Embassy said Friday.The donation will funnel US900,000 to Rainforest Alliance, an environmental group that works with logging interest to ensure they obtain wood from sustainable forests and the develops new markets for certified timber.On Dec. 1, a Mexican logging concern that has been working with Rainforest Alliance since 2000, the Ejido Pueblo Nuevo in northern Durango state, will make its first furniture shipment to Swedish...

Diversification into new areas of crime is bringing people traffickers into contact with terrorists.Migrant smuggling through Mexico into the United States has become a major national security risk, according to a report from the Interior Ministry.The report says migrant trafficking organizations are diversifying into others areas of crime, which broaden their international connections and creates a national security risk."Connections between people trafficking and other crimes, relating to terrorism as well as trafficking of minors, organ smuggling, money laundering and forging documents," is creating a major national security risk, the report says.Over 100 people-trafficking organizations, whose guides are known as "polleros,"...

AUSTIN-- Mexican President Vicente Fox is to cap off a tour of the U.S. Southwest here today by promoting cross-border business ties while striving to kickstart his legislative priority: giving millions of Mexicans the opportunity to legally work in the United States.This is Fox's first visit to Texas as president.Previously, two trips were canceled, one in protest of the execution of a Mexican citizen convicted of killing a Dallas police officer and another in light of mounting tension over the dispute about Mexico's water debt to the United States.Today, he's to meet with political and business leaders, students at the...

As the U.S. generation of baby-boomers reaches retirement age, a growing deficit of workers will require increased migration to fill jobs and keep the U.S. Social Security System solvent, according to a government report.The working age population in both the United States and Canada will begin to shrink by the middle of the next decade, while the Mexican pool of laborers will continue to increase, according to the National Population Coucil (Conapo).The number of Americans reaching the age of 60 every year will jump from around 900,000 per year today to around 2 million per year during the period between...

SAN PABLO ETLA, Oaxaca U.S. citizen Mary Ellen Sanger doesn't know how long she will have to stay in a Oaxacan prison, but she is adamant she shouldn't be there."We are unconditionally innocent and we're in jail," she says of herself and two fellow Americans John Barbato and Joseph Simpson arrested on Oct. 13 for an alleged land takeover. "We don't trust andybody anymore."Dubbed "The Oaxaca Three" by their friends and supporters, these jailed Americans claim they are innocent victims of a vicious land dispute between a 92 year-old U.S. widower and a Mexican university headed by a member of...

President Fox and U.S. counterpart Bush arranged for officials to hold immigration talks in Washington.Immigration policy will be at the top of the agenda when U.S. and Mexican officials meet in Washington next month the Mexican government announced Monday.Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said he would meet with U.S.Secretary of State Colin Powell on Nov. 13 to "outline a timetable and very concrete actions" regarding migration policies.Derbez told reporters the meeting was arranged when President Vicente Fox and his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush, met at the Asia-Pacific summit in Bangkok.There was no breakthrough in that meeting. But Derbez said...

LAREDO--The government routinely releases undocumented immigrants caught along the U.S.-Mexican border while it decides whether to deport them, and roughly half of them don't show up for their date with an immigration judge.Federal officials say they don't have the resources to detain them all, and the releases create an opportunity for thousands to bypass the nation's Border Patrol barrier along the Rio Grande.Another federal agency, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is chronically short of space at its own facilities or out of money to pay for jail beds at local lockups to house immigrants awaiting court hearings.So patrol agents...

Charlotte, N.C.(AP)-Sixty-two alleged members of Charlotte-area gangs were arrested Tuesday in an effort to rid the city of a growing gang problem that has caused the deaths of 11 people over the past 2 1/2 years, federal officials said."We will not passively accept the encroachment of gangs and the taking over of our neighborhoods," U.S.Attorney Bob Conrad said at a news conference.Of those detained in "Operation Fed Up," 53 were being held on immigration charges and will have deportation hearings, Conrad said. Six suspects were arrested and released pending a hearing to determine their immigration status.The other three were being...

Houston-Mexico's foreign secretary said Friday he thought progress on the stalled issue of an immigration accord with the United States was possible before the next U.S. presidential elections in 2004."We are not talking about the entire agreement, not right now," Foreign Secretary Ernesto Luis Derbez said after emerging from a day of closed-door meetings with Mexican consular officials who gathered here from throughout the United States and Canada."We are looking at steps toward completing and agreement," he said.He said Mexico's refusal to back the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is in the past, and the two governments are working together on...

MEXICO CITY-A man tossed two gasoline bombs Sunday at the U.S.Embassy here but caused little damage and no injuries, police said.The man threw two gasoline-filled bottles over security barricades, according to police. One burned out on the concrete stairs leading up to the building without causing major damage, while the other apparently failed to ignite.It was unclear why the man threw the bombs.Police arrested a suspect, and embassy officials were checking the building