Free Republic

Investigators say they believe 64-year-old Paulette Locklear was beaten to death outside her home Tuesday afternoon after confronting a man who was trying to break in. Julio Cesar Ramos, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in Locklear’s death. Ramos, who is from Honduras, has been deported from the U.S. several times and is in the country illegally, said Debbie Tanna, spokeswoman for the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. Ramos told investigators he is homeless and unemployed., Tanna said. Cumberland County sheriff’s deputies responded to Locklear’s home on the 1200 block of Wilmington Road after she called 911 Tuesday afternoon to report...

When he was caught selling crack in San Francisco's Tenderloin in April, the Honduran immigrant who called himself Javier Martinez first told police he was 18. Then he said he was 16. Because he insisted he was underage, police were duty-bound to take him to Juvenile Hall, where he would be shielded from deportation under the city's long-standing policy of not reporting juvenile offenders to federal immigration authorities. He was soon put up in a $7,000-a-month group home in Southern California at city taxpayer expense. In short order, he became one of the eight offenders who walked away from unlocked...

Last year, Gaby Gonzalez wore black nail polish and black eye shadow. She had a messy room, standoffs with mom and occasional drinks.  Today, the Honduran-born 20-year-old is known as Sister Gaby.   She proudly wears her jade-green hijab, which forms a nearly perfect frame around her delicate features and large brown eyes. She prays several times a day and does not wear makeup, eat pork or even utter the phrase "happy hour" – that is all haram, she said, or prohibited in Arabic."In my past, I focused on myself. I didn't think about other people, about my parents, just myself...

A Honduran woman pleaded guilty to being an "enforcer" in a slave labor ring that smuggled girls as young as 14 into the country and used threats of violence to force them to work in North Hudson bars. Xochil Nectalina Rosales Martinez, 29, also had been smuggled into this country and forced to work in one of the bars, but was later told she was in charge of running the Guttenberg apartment the ring used as a safehouse. She said she was told that if "any of these bitches get out of line, you should beat them." She said she...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - An HIV-positive transgender woman from Honduras can stay indefinitely in the United States because she would face physical threats and a lack of medical care if she returned to her native country, a federal judge ruled. Judge Jan D. Latimore ruled Tuesday that Cristina Gomez Ordonez should not be deported, allowing Ordonez, 34, to work in the United States and receive medical treatment. "We are happy that the judge granted withholding ... and acknowledged that our client was going to face a lot of problems if she were returned to Honduras," said Shiu-Ming Cheer of Catholic...

A nationwide crackdown on a violent Latin American street gang called MS-13 has so far led to the arrests of more than 100 alleged gang members in six states, including several in New Jersey, federal immigration authorities said yesterday. The gang, established in Los Angeles in the 1980s by refugees of the Salvadoran civil war, has spread to Hispanic communities around the country while developing a reputation as one of America's bloodiest criminal organizations. In New Jersey, where officials estimate there are hundreds of MS-13 members, the gang is believed to be responsible for several murders, but its activity has...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- It's a U.S. Homeland Security Department nightmare, and Honduras' most outspoken Cabinet member says it's happening: Al-Qaida operatives recruiting Central American gang members to carry out regional attacks and slip terrorists into the United States. Yet U.S. and Central American officials say they have found no evidence supporting Honduran Security Minister Oscar Alvarez's allegations. And human rights groups accuse Alvarez of trumping terrorism reports to justify his crackdown on gangs, who in response have adopted terror-style tactics such as beheadings _ 20 so far _ and threatened the government.

Three states are electing state officers (governor, attorney general, et al) in 2003, and so far Republicans are fielding a more ethnically diverse slate of candidates than are Democrats.  Currently no ethnic minority holds statewide office in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky, but Republicans have the potential to put forward four nominees and Democrats two, both in Mississippi.KentuckyRepublican Osi Onyekwuluje is a (black) Nigerian immigrant seeking the office of state auditor.  Onyekwuluje (pronounced On-yay-kool-oo-jay) came to the United States as a teenager, obtained a law degree in 1987 and has served the public as an assistant state attorney general, Kentucky...