Free Republic

Mexicans chafed Monday at the notion that President Bush wants to send National Guard troops to help enforce the U.S.-Mexico border, even as President Vicente Fox tried to downplay the seriousness of the move. [. . .] "It's worrying," said Arturo Solis, an immigrant-rights activist in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. "The bad thing is that the American government is insisting on confusing immigration with a criminal problem." The move reminded some historians of 1913, when President William Taft sent troops to the Texas border. Mexico was in the midst of a chaotic revolution, and Taft was warning...

WASHINGTON -- State and federal law enforcement officers appeared before senators Wednesday to paint a horrific picture of life on the Southwest border, telling of violent assaults, running gunbattles, brazen cross-border incursions and threatened contract killings of U.S. officers. The hearing, co-chaired by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., prompted calls for a border crackdown to combat what Kyl described as "bad, nasty, dangerous people." U.S. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar showed slides of battered agents, telling senators that his officers increasingly fall victim to attacks by assailants firing weapons, hurling rocks or pursuing the agents with vehicles....

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico- A Nuevo Laredo police commander was killed and two other people injured in an early morning attack on Monday. Hector Villareal was at a taco stand early Monday when an unknown number of assailants opened fire. He died a few minutes after his arrival at a hospital, said Juan Varela, a spokesman for state police. Police officer Manuel Moreno and Blanca Salazar, who was fired from Nuevo Laredo police last year, were wounded and were in stable condition, Varela said. Police said Villareal was to receive an award Monday for capturing a group of men who had...