Free Republic

A humanitarian group said on Tuesday it has given emergency GPS location devices to Mexican human smugglers in a controversial bid to save immigrants' lives as they break into increasingly remote desert stretches of the U.S. border this summer. Rev. Robin Hoover, founder of Tucson-based Humane Borders, said he gave five cell-phone sized location beacons to a church group in Mexico's northern Sonora state earlier this month to distribute to human smugglers, known as "coyotes." The aim is for the coyotes to use the devices to summon rescue if they get into trouble as they guide migrants on the dangerous...

A surge in the number of volunteers fanning out across Arizona's southern deserts to aid illegal immigrants is expected this summer. The increase comes despite the ongoing prosecution of two volunteers arrested last summer on federal charges they intentionally conspired to transport illegal entrants, leaders of illegal immigrant aid groups said. Shanti A. Sellz and Daniel M. Strauss, both 24, were arrested as they drove illegal entrants to a clinic on July 9 and face trial in October. Leaders of two faith-based groups, No More Deaths and Samaritan Patrol, say they've signed up hundreds of volunteers to deliver food, water...

MEXICO CITY - It has been a trying week for Mexico-U.S. relations: a tense border confrontation between U.S. agents and apparent drug traffickers, a Mexican group's offer to print maps of the Arizona desert for illegal migrants and an exchange of terse diplomatic notes. The administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox has its share of quarrels with other countries, but this promised to be one of the trickiest — involving the country's northern neighbor and largest trading partner at a time when the U.S. Congress is debating immigration reform. For Mexico, migration to the United States is a mainstay of...

The map being distributed by Humane Borders and Mexico's Human Rights Commission shows, using semicircles, how far people entering the United States illegally can expect to walk in one, two and three days. The text at bottom center warns people "Don't go!" into Arizona because of insufficient water and says, "It's not worth it!" Circles show where entrants have died, flags are water tanks and stars are rescue beacons. Emergency phone numbers are at lower right; the graph at the top shows the most dangerous months. ...A Tucson human-rights group has teamed up with Mexico's Human Rights Commission to provide...

The Pima County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to keep paying $25,000 annually for a nonprofit group's effort to use water stations to prevent illegal border crossers from dying in the desert. Republican Ann Day became the first supervisor to oppose the annual payment since the board first approved it in 2001. Day said she's now is questioning whether payments to Humane Borders put the county in conflict with U.S. immigration policy and could encourage illegal immigration. "I feel there is a lot of ambiguity and unanswered questions," Day told the board. After the vote, she said board members...

PHOENIX (AP) - When burglars broke into Rep. Jim Kolbe's cabin last month, they ignored an antique rifle and other valuables. Instead, the intruders ate some food, used the shower and took some clothes from the home less than 30 miles from the Mexican border, near the nation's busiest corridor for illegal immigrants. Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada regularly hears about migrants burglarizing homes as they cross the Arizona desert. Two or three such break-ins are reported in the county each month, and residents complain about trespassers every day, he said Thursday. "It happens. And it probably happens more...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Flying low over the Sonoran Desert, Border Patrol agents spotted a skeleton sprawled in the brush. The harsh terrain just inside Arizona is a busy trafficking corridor for illegal immigrants; the person could have died while trying to sneak into the United States. But busy Interstate 8 runs nearby - the person could have been a slain U.S. citizen, a suicide, a runaway. The Border Patrol is grappling with just how to count the dead found along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. "It's rarely a cut-and-dry decision," said Joe Brigman, spokesman for Yuma Border Patrol. "In some...