Free Republic

In a dramatic move to protect America’s cattle industry, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has warned Mexico that the U.S. will halt imports of live animals — including cattle and bison — if Mexico doesn’t step up efforts to combat a dangerous pest creeping northward. In a letter sent Saturday and obtained by Fox News, Secretary Rollins put the Mexican government on notice to act immediately to fight the spread of the New World screwworm or face serious economic consequences on the border. The USDA has set a firm deadline of April 30 for Mexico to address the growing crisis, or...

A sixth-century "mini" ice age may have been "the straw that broke the camel's back" that led to the final disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, a new study claims...By studying rocks carried by icebergs from Greenland all the way to Iceland's west coast, a team of researchers has uncovered what they believe is more evidence for the severity of this mini ice age. Their findings, published April 8 in the journal Geology, point to the prolonged cooling being a key factor in the eventual decline of the Western Roman Empire — although not all historians agree...Economic crisis, government corruption,...

SANDY — A Utah couple is being accused of money laundering and smuggling oil into the U.S. alongside Mexican cartels, after they were arrested during a multi-state raid by U.S. Marshals, according to court documents. James Lael Jensen and his wife, Kelly Anne Jensen, were booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on Wednesday. The couple and two of his sons are being federally indicted for allegedly conspiring to smuggle 2,881 shipments of oil from Mexico that they knew were illegal. The family is accused of moving at least $300 million from Mexico to the U.S. The couple was arrested...

A federal judge has sentenced former Detroit Riverfront Conservancy CFO William Smith to 19 years in federal prison for embezzling more than $44 million from the nonprofit over more than a decade. The judge also ordered him to pay more than $48 million in restitution. The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy released a statement after the sentencing. It reads: "Today, we move forward to a bright future. We are incredibly grateful to U.S. District Judge Susan DeClercq for imposing a sentence commensurate the damage Will Smith inflicted on the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and its community of visitors, donors, and supporters. The U.S....

An illegal alien from Mexico released into the interior of the United States by Joe Biden was arrested for raping a 13-year-old boy. The Charlotte County, Florida, Sheriff on Thursday announced 20-year-old Samuel Cobos-Carmona was arrested and charged with committing sexual battery on a child. Sheriff Bill Prummell said Cobos-Carmona illegally entered the US for the first time in 2021 on Joe Biden’s open borders invitation. He was deported but made his way back over the US border in 2022. Cobos-Carmona fled from Texas authorities and ended up in Florida. He was caught by law enforcement in Sarasota in the...

Mexico moves to ban Noem ads on illegal migrationMEXICO CITY – A Trump administration publicity campaign aimed at discouraging illegal migration is off to a rocky start, with Mexico’s government calling for the ads to be pulled and promising to ban such foreign “propaganda” in the future. The ads are part of an unusual, multimillion-dollar initiative paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars. Shortly after taking office, Kristi L. Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, announced the campaign, aimed at encouraging undocumented immigrants in the United States to self-deport, and warning foreigners against attempting to slip over the border. But the...

Last December, escaping from the dank, dark English winter, I spent a week in Tenerife during which time I made a fairly sophisticated attempt to eat my body weight in guacamole made from fresh local avocados. This week I will explore the history of this delicious foodstuff, forever, it seems, the byword for spendthrift millennials. Let me start by dispelling a myth around the name. You may find online that the word guacamole means ‘ground testicles’. The rationale for this is that the word ‘avocado’ comes from the Nahuatl word meaning ‘testicle’ and in combination with the Spanish word moler...

The 75-year-old star has teamed up with a group of ecologically minded real estate moguls to develop a remote stretch of the Mexican shoreline in a way that doesn't make the locals hate them.Costalegre, a 200-mile ribbon of Pacific coastline stretching between Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo, is one of the last truly wild corners of Mexico. There are no mega-resorts here. No spring-break beach clubs or 20-story condos. Just sandpipers skimming the surf, green sea turtles digging moonlit nests — and, every so often, Richard Gere strolling on the beach. This is Xala, a 3,000-acre development so “low-density,” it’s practically...

Two Mexican nationals were arrested in Colorado last month after authorities found them transporting 180,000 rounds of ammunition during a traffic stop, federal officials have announced. Caesar Ramon Martinez Solis, 41, and Humberto Ivan Amador Gavira, 24, were pulled over on March 26th in Cañon City, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado. Detectives from Fremont County stopped their white Chevrolet van after it failed to dim its headlights, didn’t signal a turn, and had a broken license plate light, according to an arrest affidavit.

Smugglers living along key migration routes thrived off the U.S. border crisis, but are now left with next to no income after illegal migrants have largely given up trying to reach the southern border under the Trump administration’s watch. Residents living in the Darien Gap — a vast jungle region between Colombia and Panama that serves as a pivotal way station for northbound migrants — took advantage of the endless number of illegal immigrants who trekked across their lands during the Biden-era, according to locals who spoke with the Associated Press. Noticing an opportunity from those that needed to be...

BELTON, Texas (KWTX) - The highly-anticipated trial of Caysen Allison, 21, charged with murder in the killing of Joe Ramirez at Belton High School back in May 2022, began on April 14, 2025, in a 146th District Court packed with families, friends, witnesses and many others who have been waiting three years to learn Allison’s fate. EDITOR’S NOTE: Some of the details mentioned below could be graphic to some readers. Allison has been out on bond since July of 2022 after a judge dropped his $1-million bond down to $175,000. He has been on house arrest ever since. An arrest...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced its intent to withdraw from the 2019 Agreement Suspending the Antidumping Investigation on Fresh Tomatoes from Mexico, with termination effective in 90 days. The current agreement has failed to protect U.S. tomato growers from unfairly priced Mexican imports, as Commerce has been flooded with comments from them urging its termination. This action will allow U.S. tomato growers to compete fairly in the marketplace.With the termination of this agreement, Commerce will institute an antidumping duty order on July 14, 2025, resulting in duties of 20.91% on most imports of tomatoes from...

President Donald Trump threatened Mexico on Thursday with tariffs and sanctions if it continues "stealing" water from Texas. Trump's comments referred to a 1944 water treaty for the "Utilization of Waters of the Colorado and Tijuana Rivers and of the Rio Grande," which requires Mexico to send 1.75 million acre-feet of water from the Rio Grande every five years. The U.S. is required to send Mexico 1.5 million acre-feet of water every year from the Colorado River. The New York Times, based on International Boundary and Water Commission data, stated that from October 2020 to October 2024, Mexico provided only...

There is one chair in the room, and they sit him in it. He pulls out his wallet. He's looking for a number. A phone number, an address. That is why he is here. Fernando the lawyer. Fernando the drug trafficker. He's got a load of marijuana, and they want it.Fernando thinks he's in the company of friends. He thinks this man standing in front of him, this Lalo, is going to deliver the marijuana for him to New York. That's what the numbers are for. They are contacts. They are the people Lalo will call, the people who are...

US federal agents have uncovered a sophisticated “narco tunnel” equipped with electricity and a working ventilation system that smugglers had been using between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico. Homeland Security Investigations EL Paso said the man-made tunnel, which is about 4 feet wide and 6-feet high, burrowed into El Paso’s Boone Street storm-drain system, which is located just a few blocks from the border, KTSM reported. Shocking video from inside the tunnel, which was enforced with only wood beams, shows its sprawling path beneath the border that smugglers used to transport people and drugs in and out of the...

San Diego officials say Mexico is continuing to release millions of gallons per day of raw sewage into the city’s waters despite its promises to end the flow that has sickened Navy SEALs and San Diego residents. “Mexico just dumped 6 million gallons of sewage into the Tijuana River—after promising they wouldn’t,” said San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond on X. “We are at the mercy of a foreign government that continues to pollute our waters—while we get stuck with the consequences.” Desmond also said Navy SEAL training is often being shifted farther north in San Diego from Coronado, where...

President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs, and possibly sanctions against Mexico, if it continues to rob South Texas farmers of Rio Grande water promised under a decades-old treaty. In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump proclaimed that Mexico owes Texas 1.3 million acre-feet of water under the 1944 Water Treaty, though Mexico was violating their obligation. “This is very unfair, and it is hurting South Texas Farmers very badly,” the president wrote. “Last year, the only Sugar Mill in Texas CLOSED, because Mexico has been stealing the water from Texas Farmers. Ted Cruz has been leading the...

According to a statement released by Brown University, an international team of archaeologists discovered an altar in the Maya city of Tikal that is characteristic of the Mesoamerican culture centered at Teotihuacan. Teotihuacan, located outside of present-day Mexico City, thrived between the first and eighth centuries a.d., when it had a population of as many as 100,000. The new discovery is some of the strongest evidence to date that they had cultural interactions with Maya cities more than 600 miles to their southeast. The four painted panels of the late fourth-century altar, which was found in an elite residential complex,...

Venezuela's most violent gang, which has already sparked chaos across the US, has moved its headquarters to the outskirts of a major American city, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. Dubbed the 'epitome of evil', the notorious criminal organization Tren de Aragua, or TdA as it is known by federal agents, previously operated out of an infamous South American prison so completely under gang leaders' control that it had its own zoo, swimming pool and nightclub. But after kingpin Hector Guerrero Flores escaped last year, the mafia moved its command center to Ciudad Juarez in Mexico on the US border - directly...

The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, declared a state of emergency in the capital city, Lima, on March 18. The decree, which came amid a wave of violence, gives the police and military full control of the security situation there for a period of 30 days. Peru is no stranger to emergencies of this kind. Only last year, in September 2024, Boluarte’s government declared a 60-day state of emergency in 12 districts of the capital. The rationale for declaring the emergency now, as in the past, remains the same: to address the threat posed by criminal gangs. The latest emergency...