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Authorities target group in Texas and across U.S. PHARR, Texas – Shortly after midnight in late September, a Texas National Guard soldier with night-vision equipment spied four figures slipping through the brush and alerted Border Patrol agents. The men were arrested, and one in particular stood out for the extensive tattoos across his face, body and arms. Wilmer Matamoros, 23, a Mara Salvatrucha gang leader, was imprisoned earlier this year in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A fingerprint check showed Santos Chileno-Gomez, a 23-year-old Salvadoran, had been deported for an assault on a Long Island, N.Y., police officer. His lengthy criminal record –...

WASHINGTON, DC (AgapePress) - A Republican senator is hailing it as the strongest effort to secure the U.S. border with Mexico in his lifetime. But one expert on political violence and terrorism doubts the border fence authorized by President Bush's signature on Thursday will ever become reality. Yesterday the president signed a law authorizing construction of 700 miles of fence along a third of the U.S.-Mexico border. At the signing Bush acknowledged "the United States has not been in complete control of its border for decades." If the barrier is built as planned, the state of Arizona would be virtually...

SOMEONE OUGHT to tell the Bush administration that prisons are for criminals, not law-enforcement personnel trying to do their jobs. On Thursday, a federal judge in Texas sentenced two former Border Patrol agents to 11 and 12 years in prison because they shot at a drug smuggler who was evading arrest. In February 2005, Border Patrol agent Jose Alonso Compean got in a scuffle with smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, who was driving a van that carried 743 pounds of marijuana. Compean and fellow agent Ignacio Ramos shot at Aldrete-Davila -- they say they thought he had a gun, which Aldrete-Davila denies....

Oklahoma City (AP) - State Senator Daisy Lawler says she is disappointed federal officials didn't come to Oklahoma City today to participate in an immigration hearing. Lawler heads a Senate task force examining immigration issues. She says she wanted to hear from federal immigration officials about what Oklahoma could do to help stem illegal immigration. A federal immigration official from Dallas declined to attend the meeting, saying funds were not available for this purpose.

LOS ANGELES - Alejandro "Bird" Martinez and a crew of fellow gangbangers were joyriding in a stolen van when they came upon a black man parking his car — and decided to kill him. Three of them riddled Kenneth Kurry Wilson and his Cadillac with bullets from a .357-caliber revolver and a 9 mm semiautomatic and blasts from a 12-gauge shotgun. This month, Martinez and three other members of the Avenues, a Hispanic gang entrenched in one Los Angeles neighborhood, were convicted of federal hate crimes usually tagged on white supremacists. Although the slaying was seven years ago, the verdict...

"ORGAN PIPE CACTUS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. - Drug smugglers fleeing Mexican police crossed into this desert park and fatally shot a ranger four years ago, prompting That steel-and-concrete wall stops most cars from speeding in from Mexico. But drug and human traffickers have switched to rural entryways into Arizona. Thousands of people now cross on foot. They leave piles of trash, build fires, damage the park's famous cacti and create countless trails through the fragile desert vegetation." "Park workers spend most of their time backing up Border Patrol officers and dealing with border issues. " "But superintendents say the costs...

The governor of Texas wants to turn all the world into a virtual posse. Rick Perry has announced a $5 million plan to install hundreds of night-vision cameras on private land along the Mexican border and put the live video on the Internet, so that anyone with a computer who spots illegal immigrants trying to slip across can report it on a toll-free hot line. "I look at this as not different from the neighborhood watches we have had in our communities for years and years," Perry said last week. Some say it is a dangerous idea and a waste...

<p>So, is there is a real wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time?</p> <p>Given our messy borders and chaotic response to disasters, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff seems fair game.</p> <p>During the Clinton era he definitely was the right person in the right place at the right time. Either that or really, really lucky. You see, Chertoff, a Bush 41 appointee, holds the distinction of being the only U.S. attorney not fired when Clinton took office.</p>

NOGALES, Mexico — One by one, men and women crawled on their knees and bellies across the hot desert sand about 100 yards from where rumbling tractor-trailer rigs crossed from Mexico into Arizona. In temperatures near 100 degrees, they looked like they were on a military reconnaissance mission, but their tattered clothing said these weren't soldiers. They were trying to make their way from southern Mexico to the United States. President Bush and Congress have vowed to seal America's porous border with thousands of National Guard troops, miles of fences, surveillance cameras and aerial drones. But in the Mariposa Canyon,...

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew P. Thomas in Phoenix accuses Mexico of being behind a lawsuit challenging Arizona's alien-smuggling law. He has asked the State Department to protest Mexico's "concerted attempts to undermine" U.S. law and its "interfering in the internal affairs" of Arizona. "The citizens of the state of Arizona will be deprived of their right to uphold public order and to protect themselves against the Mexican government's systematic, unlawful export of humanity into the state," Mr. Thomas told The Washington Times...

SONOYTA, Mexico -- Many illegal immigrants no longer hike. They bike. The 110-degree heat and rough terrain of the Arizona desert would exhaust the fittest of cyclists, but these migrants are often middle-aged housewives or farmers, riding battered second-hand bikes for 30 or 40 miles. The bikes also carry their supplies and belongings, so if rocks or cactus spines shred the tires, they get off and push. The prize? A chance at a low-wage job. "We've seen them going by on bicycles right by our offices ... in whole groups," said Mario Lopez, an agent for Mexico's Grupo Beta migrant...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1638092/posts -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skip to comments. Q1 GDP growth fastest in 2-1/2 years(Bush's fault) Reuters ^ | May 25, 2006 Posted on 05/25/2006 7:31:40 AM PDT by Kaslin WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy shot forward at an upwardly revised 5.3 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the fastest growth in 2-1/2 years, as companies built up inventories and exports strengthened, a Commerce Department report on Thursday showed. First-quarter growth in gross domestic product was more than triple the 1.7 percent annual rate recorded in last year's fourth quarter, though still slightly below Wall Street economists' forecasts for a 5.7...

President George W. Bush seemed unusually heartfelt when he addressed the nation last week on immigration reform. For the president, immigration is not just a matter of politics or policy, it's personal. Bush has always been drawn to stories of Latino immigrants who came up by their bootstraps. In an interview with Hispanic Magazine in 2004, he described Paula Rendón, "who came up from Mexico to work in our house" when Bush was a boy growing up in Midland, Texas. "She loved me. She chewed me out. She tried to shape me up," said Bush. "And I have grown to...

LOS ANGELES - More than 1 million mostly Hispanic immigrants and their supporters skipped work and took to the streets Monday, flexing their economic muscle in a nationwide boycott that succeeded in slowing or shutting many farms, factories, markets and restaurants. From Los Angeles to Chicago, Houston to Miami, the "Day Without Immigrants" attracted widespread participation despite divisions among activists over whether a boycott would send the right message to Washington lawmakers considering sweeping immigration reform. "We are the backbone of what America is, legal or illegal, it doesn't matter," said Melanie Lugo, who with her husband and their third-grade...

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) - Chris James needed help moving a piano and three dozen boxes of records from his music studio - so instead of corralling some buddies, he rented a truck and hired some labor from outside the local Home Depot. Within minutes, two Guatemalan men promised $12.50 an hour were in his truck. If James, 31, worked solo "it would take all day." The two men finished the job in an hour and a half while James looked on. For hauling a piano and wedging a sofa into his condo, then stacking the boxes in a back room,...

Beyond the speeches, rallies and marches, the expected flood of immigrant activism Monday will be felt by many Northern San Joaquin Valley businesses. Owners of businesses that employ many Latinos said they expect at least some of those workers to skip their jobs Monday — affecting operations. "It's going to be creating a lot of problems for everyone," said Manuel Tovar, owner of Tovar Landscape Maintenance in Ceres. He said he expects three of his five employees to miss work Monday, although he's got work appointments to keep. Owners and managers of local dairies and chicken processing plants are expecting...

NEW YORK - "Today we march! Tomorrow we vote!" It's been a popular slogan at recent immigration rights rallies, and now organizers are trying to make it reality. Advocates nationwide are aiming to boost low voter turnout among foreign-born citizens and to file naturalization papers for the millions who qualify for citizenship. "How do we translate grass roots power into political power?" said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. "We've always done voter work, but now we're turbocharged." Many are focusing on next Monday, when dozens of planned rallies will include speeches, banners and fliers urging...