Free Republic

A Nogales, Sonora, police commander is in the Santa Cruz County jail after immigration authorities matched his fingerprints to a warrant out of California. On April 4 at about 10:30 p.m., U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detained Jesus Rolando Villanueva Ramos, 45, as he attempted to pass through the Dennis DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., said Roger Maier, Customs and Border Protection spokesman. Officers pulled Villanueva Ramos over for a secondary check and discovered a California warrant for his arrest after running his fingerprints through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), Maier said. He was detained...

The driver of a pickup truck that ran a checkpoint at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on Tuesday headed back to his native Mexico in an ambulance Thursday and may never be prosecuted, Tucson police said. The driver, an illegal entrant, was taken from University Medical Center to a medical facility in Sonora, said Sgt. Mark Robinson, a Tucson Police Department spokesman. Police had no choice but to let him go, Robinson said, because their investigation isn't finished and no criminal charges have been filed against the man. "There are times when people leave the jurisdiction before we can make a...

BULLETIN HURRICANE OTIS ADVISORY NUMBER 9 NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 2 AM PDT FRI SEP 30 2005 ...OTIS BECOMES A HURRICANE.... A TROPICAL STORM WARNING AND A HURRICANE WATCH REMAIN IN EFFECT FOR THE SOUTHERN PORTION OF THE BAJA CALIFORNIA PENINSULA...FROM SANTA FE SOUTHWARD ON THE PACIFIC COAST AND FROM LA PAZ SOUTHWARD ON THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA COAST. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. INTERESTS ELSEWHERE...

Could affect option to import, replenish stock of Ariz. birds. The pygmy owl population dropped sharply during the past five years in northern Sonora, a new study has concluded. The findings could spell trouble for U.S. government plans to possibly import northern Mexican birds to enhance Arizona's small cactus ferruginous pygmy owl population, said two University of Arizona researchers who wrote the study. The study doesn't play directly into legal issues that have the Arizona owl's endangered status in limbo, they said. But its results make it important to protect the Arizona and Sonoran populations, said the researchers at UA's...

Sheriff says he may not have known he'd shot drug backpacker, who died. Criminal investigators have determined that a U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot and killed a drug backpacker last Saturday was not being threatened at the time, officials with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department said Friday. The agent, though, may not have known he had shot somebody, said Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada. The dead man, Julio Cesar Yenez Ramirez, 31, from Nogales, Sonora, was shot through the right arm and the bullet pierced his heart and lung, exiting through the left armpit, Estrada said. He...

The arrest this month of two Tucson men on charges of smuggling marijuana inside coffins isn't the first time traffickers have used strange methods to try to get their drug loads into and through the United States - nor will it be the last. Officials have had little to say about their investigation into the recent coffin case. Robert Dean Harper and Timothy Gavin Hynd face charges in connection with the smuggling of 610 pounds of marijuana through Oklahoma, where they were stopped by the state Highway Patrol on Dec. 10. Both men, who told investigators they were working for...

TUOLUMNE COUNTY, Calif. -- Tuolumne County sheriff's detectives are looking into what they are calling two potential homicide cases. Two bodies were found over the weekend. One was on the grounds of Columbia State Park near Sonora, and the other was near the town of Groveland. In the Sonora case, the adult male body was badly decomposed and had probably been at the location for several months, according to authorities. In Groveland, the remains had likely been there for a few days, according to investigators. Autopsies are being performed on both bodies in hopes of revealing more clues.

Man remembered as victim is now a fugitive11 years after mother shot alleged molester, he's a murder suspect08:43 PM CDT on Friday, July 30, 2004Associated Press SONORA, Calif. – William Nesler was once known as a young rape victim whose vigilante mother walked into a courtroom and shot his accused molester five times in the head 11 years ago. Since the acts that led to that day, Mr. Nesler's life has never been the same, friends and family members say. He has been in jail nearly 20 times in the last five years, in cases ranging from complaints about his...

Rural communities divided by redistricting BY APRIL CASTRO Associated Press Writer SONORA, Texas - To folks in this hamlet on the western edge of the Texas Hill Country, redistricting seemed an issue for cities such as Houston, Dallas or San Antonio. That was until state lawmakers divided Sutton County between two U.S. congressmen, splitting a place where natural gas fuels the economy and where hunters fill the main drag each autumn. "It's an absolute absurdity," said John Tedford, the Republican party chairman for Sutton County. "With just 3,000 people here, it's just absurd." The Texas Legislature approved in October a...

PUERTO PEÑASCO, Sonora - Concerned about the growing number of armed civilians in southern Arizona patrolling the Arizona-Sonora border on their own, the leaders of both states and a powerful cross-border lobbying group called Friday for investigations to see if any of the patrols are breaking the law. The Arizona-Mexico Commission took up the issue during its semi-annual conference this week in Puerto Peñasco, also known as Rocky Point, recommending that Arizona officials "address the vigilante situation in Cochise County." The commission is a public-private organization with offices in Arizona and Sonora, chaired by each state's governor and which...

Courtroom shooter sentenced on meth charges SONORA -- In a brief hearing that featured none of the theatrics that gained her fame, Ellie Nesler was sentenced Monday to six years in state prison for furnishing methamphetamine and possession with intent to manufacture the drug. Nesler, whose stunning 1993 courtroom shooting of a man accused of molesting her son made her the subject of a made-for-television movie, did not speak during her sentencing hearing in Tuolumne County Superior Court. Instead, Nesler -- who pleaded guilty last month but maintained her innocence -- sat quietly in black-and-white striped jail garb, turning around...