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A weekend domestic disturbance call for San Juan police led officers to a shocking case of child abuse. A three-month-old baby girl was found severely beaten. Her mother, Brenda Robles, spoke exclusively to Action 4 News. She is now pointing the finger at the infant's own father. "He beat her. I don't know why," Robles told us shortly after her arraignment. San Juan investigators say little Lucia Denim Medina Gonzalez had been subjected to beatings over several weeks. Cuts and bruises covered the three month old's tiny body. Police say it even appears that her father pushed down repeatedly on...

Editor's Note: While President Bush talks about immigration reform, but makes no promises, those here legally face hard choices when their less-fortunate compatriots ask for help. SAN JOSE, Calif.--I was glad to hear that President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox met yesterday to discuss immigration, and that Bush is pushing for a guest worker program and amnesty for illegal immigrants. But immigration reform has been stalled for years in Washington, and no one was making any promises that things would actually change. In the meantime, some of us who are in this country legally, but have immigrant roots, are...

NUEVO LAREDO, Tamaulipas In less than six hours, this raucous border town saw the execution of a convict, a prison riot, the deadly ambush of a Mexican police officer, and a fiery shootout that ended just yards from the U.S. border and sent bystanders scrambling for cover behind telephone poles and concrete walls. By the time it was over, two people were dead and seven injured, local authorities said. "It's not every day that you face enemy fire from the other side of the border," said Laredo police Officer Octaviano "Tony" Rodríguez, clutching a .45-caliber pistol after a gunbattle erupted...

Robbers shot and killed an ice cream vendor Saturday and held up two other ice cream vendors in separate incidents in Oak Cliff, police said. Dallas police investigate the shooting death of a man who was selling ice cream on Emmett Street near Brighton Avenue. Alfonso Fuentes, 28, of Dallas was shot in the chest, police said. He died about 6:20 p.m. Authorities think two teenagers committed all three robberies

The Costa Mesa Job Center will close June 30, surprising supporters who lauded it as a model for finding jobs for day laborers since its 1988 opening and appeasing longtime critics who argued that the center should not be bankrolled by the city. Believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, the site has often been at the center of debate over the government's role in job assistance and illegal immigration. There have been repeated attempts to close the center.

WINSTON-SALEM -- A Greensboro lawyer once nationally recognized for her pro bono work with immigrants was sentenced Wednesday to a year and a day in federal prison for breaking the law for immigrant clients. Minutes after hearing her fate from Judge James A. Beaty in U.S. District Court in Winston-Salem, Manlin Chee, 53, plopped down in her chair, looked up at her lawyer and smiled. Shortly after, she walked over to the front row of the courtroom, where her 15-year-old daughter, Leia, sobbed. "It's OK," she told her daughter. "At least it's ended." Chee pleaded guilty on Nov. 23 to...

MEXICO CITY – A team of rogue Mexican commandos blamed for dozens of killings along the U.S.-Mexico border has carried out at least three drug-related slayings in Dallas, a sign that the group is extending its deadly operations into U.S. cities, two American law enforcement officials say. The men are known as the Zetas, former members of the Mexican army who defected to Mexico's so-called Gulf drug cartel in the late 1990s, other officials say. "These guys run like a military," said Arturo A. Fontes, an FBI special investigator for border violence based in Laredo, in South Texas. "They have...

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer MEXICO CITY - The bodies of 12 men killed by hitmen believed linked to drug gangs were found Tuesday in the northern state of Sinaloa, in what appears to be one of the deadliest one-day tolls in violent drug battles in recent years. The victims — all apparently executed with close-range gunshots — turned up in clumps along an 80-mile stretch of highway between the state capital, Culiacan, and the well-known beach resort of Mazatlan. "Given the type of weapons used, the type of people (killed) and the objects found at the scene, we...

FEBRUARY 7, 2005 - Action 4 News undercover cameras catch Border Patrol agents dropping off illegal immigrants at a local bus station by the van load. How do we know the immigrants are not possible terrorists? You'll soon find out we don't! Could this be a sign of border breakdown? New Year's Eve morning agents pull up to the Valley Transit bus station in Harlingen, open the back of their van and a hand full of illegal immigrants jump out. But that's just the beginning, six days later more illegal immigrants were set free, free to travel anywhere they want...

By John Rice ASSOCIATED PRESS 10:26 a.m. February 5, 2005 ACAPULCO, Mexico – An unknown number of assailants staged three almost simultaneous guerrilla attacks in Acapulco on Saturday, killing three police officers and a teenage boy a day before a key tri-state gubernatorial election. Around 8:30 a.m. a few miles (kilometers) from this resort city's airport, a group of people in a white sedan, at least one of them a woman, sprayed bullets at a small police post as one gunman jumped from the vehicle and killed a police officer who was sitting nearby, said Maribel Angelito, of the preventative...

February 2, 2005 TIJUANA – An American man and two Iraqis arrested at the Tijuana airport last week have been charged with immigration violations, according to Mexican authorities. A Mexican federal judge will determine whether to dismiss the charges or proceed with a trial. The men are being held at a state prison in Tijuana. The three flew to Tijuana from Mexico City Jan. 26 on an Aeromexico flight, but they were stopped by Mexican immigration authorities who inspected their documents, according to Mexican authorities. The Iraqis – later identified as Steven Yohanan Kurkis and Kaml Meti Bashar – showed...

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TheU. S. government is spending a lot of money for medical equipment…in Mexico. The idea is to improve health care across the border so fewer Mexican citizens will seek it here legally or illegally. On Monday, October 11, 2004, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson met with Mexican President Vicente Fox. The secretary then traveled to Nogales, Sonora to showcase a hospital where American taxpayers are pumping in well over a million dollars for new equipment and a couple of operating rooms. Before a crowd of a thousand people, Thompson stressed the importance of getting health care to...

President Vicente Fox said Monday he would fight to defend the consular identity cards used by migrants in the United States, amid proposals in the U.S. congress to limit the use of the cards in applying for government services. Fox appeared to play on his name -- which in Spanish would be "Zorro," the legendary masked sword fighter -- saying he would defend the so-called matricula cards "with a cape and a sword." "The Matricula Consular cards are again being questioned, but we will defend them with a cape and a sword, because our countrymen who live up there are...

OCTOBER 9, 2004 - A smuggling ring involving children backfires. Sources tell Action 4 News questions are being raised on what role if any a CNN news crew played in the illegal operation. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells Action 4 News two women were arrested Thursday night at the Veterans International Bridge in Brownsville while trying to cross five Mexican children into the United States illegally. U.S. Customs says everyone in the car was detained and adds CNN reporters were not authorized to be at the bridge and were asked to leave. The two unidentified women reportedly said they...

LAREDO, Texas — The new chief of the U.S. Border Patrol said Tuesday the nation's southwest border is secure, even as hundreds of thousands continue to cross illegally and the Sept. 11 commission cautioned terrorists could be among them. "We have implements ... to ensure that even if they get past the border, they're going to be caught up in that net of enforcement," said Chief David Aguilar. The Border Patrol has cameras, agents and other resources to catch illegal immigrants at and beyond the border, Aguilar said during a stop in Laredo to publicize the next phase of an...

A pair of illegal immigrants agreed not to contest their deportation, and by doing so avoided five-year prison sentences for molesting a Mundelein girl. Cousins Antonio Reyes-Angeles, 25, and Isidro Reyes-Lorenzo, 20, pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual abuse during a Monday hearing before Circuit Judge Victoria Rossetti. The two were sentenced to five years in prison, but Rossetti agreed to put the prison time on hold in exchange for their agreement to cooperate with the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's efforts to deport them. "They cannot assert their right to remain in the United States in any way,"...

Woman With Possible Terror Ties Arrested Federal agents believe a South African woman they have in custody may have ties to terrorists. Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed was taken into custody Monday when she tried to board a plane at McAllen Miller International Airport. The Federal Bureau of Investigation would not release any information Thursday, but NEWSCHANNEL 5 obtained court papers filed by an FBI Special Agent assigned to the bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force. The documents show that Border Patrol Agents stopped Ahmed at the airport while conducting an inspection. When asked for her status in the United States, Ahmed...

The House appropriations subcommittee that funds the Treasury Department, on a 9-7 party-line vote, blocked a Treasury rule that permits banks to accept the matricula consular as a valid ID document. The measure's sponsor, Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, said use of a foreign ID card viewed as insecure by the FBI and Homeland Security Department presents a national security threat.

ASSOCIATED PRESS 9:22 a.m. April 23, 2004 MEXICO CITY – The U.S. Treasury Department has suspended cooperation with the Mexican government on financial investigations, a move that could potentially affect drug, money laundering and terrorism financing investigations. The U.S. Embassy said the Treasury Department sent a letter to the Mexican government saying that, because confidential U.S. information was leaked to the public during a political scandal here, it would no longer cooperate in cross-border investigations. The letter said the suspension of cooperation, which began Thursday, would be in affect until there are "guarantees that all delicate information will be protected."...