Free Republic

<p>Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, accompanied by the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Joseph Dunford, was visiting a border site called Monument Site 3 near El Paso, Texas, where National Guard troops are working with Customs and Border Protection. Shanahan and Dunford were getting a look at vehicles used for border surveillance. The Department of Homeland Security has requested Pentagon help in operating cameras mounted on the vehicles. Later, the officials planned to fly over two border control sites farther west. These sites are on a list of high-priority projects DHS submitted to Shanahan on Friday to support its request for money to pay for construction of roads, replacement of vehicle barriers and dilapidated pedestrian fencing, and installation of lighting. The pedestrian fencing would include detection systems that could alert border patrol agents when someone is attempting to damage or break through the fencing. The money would come from the Pentagon's drug interdiction programs.</p>

The year 2010 is about money and power. In the Rio Grande Valley, local officials are focusing their efforts on ensuring tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants are included in the count. The census seeks to count not just citizens but residents. With big money and political clout both depending on those numbers, governments are hoping that not a single person falls through the cracks. For local governments, the stakes are high. Census data are used to help make decisions about how the federal government distributes $300 billion to state and local governments for schools, senior programs, libraries, infrastructure and...

Customs agent let drugs slip through Case is example of border official lured to 'dark side' by easy money By JAMES PINKERTON Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle PROGRESO - With surveillance cameras secretly rolling, U.S. Customs Inspector Lizandro Martinez greeted the driver of a truck that pulled into his inspection lane at 5:30 a.m. The driver, a pal from the inspector's days as a police officer more than a decade earlier, told Martinez that the cargo he'd been expecting was right behind his truck. And sure enough, a white Ford pickup appeared. It carried 1,635 pounds of marijuana, packed and ready...