Desert Invasion - U.S.

...LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): CAFTA is much more than a trade agreement. If it passes, it would become the highest law of the land, determining rules from health care, to zoning, to immigration....

LORI WALLACH, PUBLIC CITIZEN: Any violation of 1,000 pages of international law imposed on us is taken to an international tribunal, not U.S. courts, where if the U.S. does not conform its law, we face perpetual trade sanctions. It's a huge attack on our sovereignty and our democracy....

Any company wishing to come into the United States, and either start a business or complete a contract, can bring their employees in from the country of origin. Even if our visa system is -- or even if our visa quota is full....

DOBBS: Well, it seems Vice President Dick Cheney isn't aware of those back-door immigration provisions in the CAFTA agreement.

Two U.S. Border Patrol agents were shot while working east of Nogales early this afternoon, according to U.S. Border Patrol officials....there were a total of 118 of assaults on agents in each of the previous two fiscal years, which begin October 1 and end on September 30.

"The border has become more violent in the last couple of years. This fiscal year we are 195 through today, 23 of which are shooting, 105 rockings, 30 physical, 33 vehicular assaults and four others, steel pipe etc."...

Encouraged by highly organized groups of smugglers offering relatively cheap packages, Brazilians recently have been migrating in record numbers to the United States.

With direct entry to the United States tougher than in the past, more often than not their route of choice is through Mexico, which in recent years has stopped requiring entry visas of Brazilians.

During just two days in late April, Border Patrol agents in south Texas detained 232 Brazilians who had entered the United States illegally. All told, more than 12,000 Brazilians have been apprehended trying to cross the United States-Mexican border this year, exceeding the number detained in all of 2004 and pushing Brazilians to the top of the category known as "other than Mexicans."...

The Labor Department worked for more than a year to maintain secrecy for studies that were critical of working conditions in Central America, the region the Bush administration wants in a new trade pact.

The contractor hired by the department in 2002 to conduct the studies has become a major opponent of the administration's proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.

The government-paid studies concluded that countries proposed for free-trade status have poor working environments and fail to protect workers' rights. The department dismissed the conclusions as inaccurate and biased, according to government and contractor documents reviewed by The Associated Press....

The contractor is the International Labor Rights Fund....

Behind the scenes, the Labor Department began as early as spring 2004 to block public release of the country-by-country reports.

The department instructed its contractor to remove the reports from its Web site, ordered it to retrieve paper copies before they became public, banned release of new information from the reports, and even told the contractor it could not discuss the studies with outsiders.

The department has now worked out a deal with the contractor to make the reports public, provided there is no mention of the federal agency or government funding....

MEXICO CITY — Mexican agents in Tecate captured two Iraqis who had hoped to sneak into U.S. territory without proper documents.

Federal authorities say Samir and Munir Yousif Shana told investigators they were contacted by a person in their hometown of Baghdad, who said he could smuggle them into San Diego....

Federal agents yesterday arrested the pair, along with two accused Mexican immigrant smugglers...

The Iraqis said they met the accused smugglers in Tijuana, then accompanied them by bus to Tecate. The group was walking toward the U.S. border when they were apprehended.

TORONTO Jun 28, 2005 — The United States, Canada and Mexico pledged Monday to shore up security by integrating their terrorist watchlists and beefing up joint protection of borders and bridges.

At the same time, they promised to expand what is already the world's largest trading partnership by developing a single program to facilitate the free flow of people and goods across their shared borders....

... A Colorado congressman is accusing the administration of trying to hide documents showing that President Bush sparked a surge in illegal immigration last year by proposing a guest-worker program.

The documents - obtained by the public-interest group Judicial Watch through Freedom of Information Act requests - show that aliens crossing America's southern border in the weeks after the president's Jan. 7, 2004, announcement interpreted his proposal as a general amnesty, said Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Republican and chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus....

Once the outcome became apparent and could prove embarrassing, according to Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, "the Bush administration abruptly shut it down. The Border Patrol, at the behest of the White House, instructed its agents not to provide the information about the negative impact of the proposed amnesty program."

Agents were given a document from Homeland Security, marked "internal use only," that was described as "White House approved talking points" on Bush's temporary-worker program. Agents were told, "Do not talk about amnesty, increase in apprehensions or give comparisons of past immigration reform proposals" and "do not provide statistics on apprehension spikes or past amnesty data."...

A federal crackdown on fraud at state motor vehicle departments across the country has nabbed more than a dozen illegal immigrants licensed to transport hazardous materials.

While none of those apprehended has any known links to terrorism, federal agents said Thursday that the recent busts have revealed a significant threat to homeland security. In one case, a Pakistani man ordered to leave the United States nine years ago was instead driving a tanker truck filled with gasoline for Exxon.

"This is a national security issue," said Elissa Brown, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office in Chicago, where six men were taken into custody.

"Illegal aliens should not have the freedom to transport hazardous materials throughout the United States."...

News: The INS crackdown along the Mexico-US border is driving thousands of would-be illegal immigrants to cross in remote desert areas, where the harsh conditions send many to nearby US hospitals. But the government won't pay for their care, saddling already strapped rural hospitals with billions of dollars in unpaid bills....

No one at El Centro Regional was surprised. The public hospital is losing more than $1 million a year treating undocumented immigrants, many of whom were injured trying to cross the border -- people who've broken bones jumping from the 20-foot border fence in Calexico, nearly drowned trying to swim the All-American Canal, or become dehydrated in the Imperial Valley desert.

Neighboring Pioneers Memorial Hospital lost more than $500,000 on similar cases last year, not to mention unpaid ambulance service and physicians' fees. The two hospitals have to cover 150,000 people in a county that already has some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the country....

...bills are now pending before the House and Senate that would allocate $800 million over four years to states and counties to reimburse medical-care costs for undocumented immigrants. But those funds would be divided among 17 states, and would cover only a fraction of what hospitals spend annually treating illegal immigrants -- a figure Congress estimated at $2.8 billion two years ago. And in fact, says a spokesperson for Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-CA, who introduced the House bill, the legislation may not even come to a vote this session....

(Washington, DC) – A CATO Institute-sponsored report intended to discredit efforts to secure the U.S. border has instead bolstered findings that immediate deployment of troops in support of the Border Patrol is the only means of stopping the current hordes of illegal immigrants invading U.S. territory....

[CATO author] "Dr. Massey has pointed out with jarring candor the real agenda of the ‘open borders’ movement - the destruction of the United States as an independent nation," says Norwood. "We can fight and win this war right now without a shot being fired through a relatively minor deployment of state and federal forces, or we can let our children either surrender their nation, or be forced to fight a major civil war to defend our Constitution and liberties against globalism."

The CATO report, Backfire at the Border: Why Enforcement without Legalization Cannot Stop Illegal Immigration, points out that like the success of the Minuteman Project in Arizona this spring, past enforcement demonstration projects using intense manpower increases have successfully stopped illegal immigration in multiple test areas....

But for the first time, actual cost estimates for securing the entire southern border with 36,000 state troops are known. According to data obtained through the >National Guard Bureau, annual deployment costs are estimated at $2.5 billion a year....

The ultra-violent, U.S.-trained elite, Mexican paramilitary commandos known as the "Zetas," responsible for hundreds of murders along the border this year, have expanded their enforcement efforts on behalf of a drug cartel by setting up trafficking routes in six U.S. states.

A U.S. Justice Department memo says the U.S.-trained units have recently moved operations into Houston, San Antonio and the states of California, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. They have been operating in Dallas for at least two years, according to the feds....

LAS CRUCES ... Illegal immigration in the El Paso Border Patrol sector, which includes the entire New Mexico-Mexico border, is on the rise, according to Border Patrol statistics. The number of [illegal] immigrants apprehended since Oct. 1 - the start of the Border Patrol's fiscal year - is up 12 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Sixty-three percent of people captured this year have been caught at least once before.

The growth has been steady, according to Border Patrol statistics. Apprehensions in the El Paso sector during the 2003-04 year were up 17 percent from the previous year's total of 88,840....

FALFURRIAS - The governor of Texas has discouraged an Arizona civilian border patrol group from coming to Texas in October, but a half-dozen local ranchers and farmers say they may welcome the Minutemen.

During a tour of South Texas with an Arizona delegation Sunday, the ranchers said they're fed up with the destruction and occasional violence caused by illegal immigrants crossing their land. They said the problem has worsened in recent years, and they want to draw attention to the issue.

"Sometimes I wonder if the rest of the country understands what's happening on the border," said Fred Schuster, a vegetable farmer along the Rio Grande. "As someone who was born and raised here, I can say it is out of control."...

Simcox [of the Minuteman Project] argued that one of the best reasons to do civilian patrols is that it draws attention to the problems and prods the federal government into action: "If they don't want us to do the job, they had better get on the ball."

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Sixteen foreign-born construction workers with phony immigration documents were able to enter a nuclear weapons plant in eastern Tennessee because of lax security controls, a federal report said Monday....

One in every 11 people born in Mexico is now living in the United States, according to a a study of immigration trends by the Pew Hispanic Center (search). That's 10.5 million Mexicans, more than half of whom are here illegally.

“The situation is simply out of control,” said immigration activist Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for Immigration Reform.

Over the past 10 years illegal immigration has surpassed legal immigration into the United States, and there's no end in sight. By many estimates the number of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, could double in the next 15 years.

Lou Dobb's show on June 9, 2005, was an eye popper and even Lou couldn't contain his shock:

Lou Dobbs, CNN Anchor: Good evening, everybody. Tonight, an astonishing proposal to expand our borders to incorporate Mexico and Canada and simultaneously further diminish U.S. sovereignty. Have our political elites gone mad? We'll have a special report. ... Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada."

Christine Romans, CNN Correspondent (voice-over): On Capitol Hill, testimony calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country.

For constitutionalists like myself, this is treason talk and Lou Dobbs should be thanked by the American people for exposing this evil plan. The fact that it is even being discussed in the U.S. Congress is putrid. The Council on Foreign Relations is an organization whose mission is to redefine American policy and slide this republic into a one-world government – a nightmare beyond what most Americans can't even imagine. Rear Adm. Chester Ward was a member of the CFR for 16 years and later warned the American people as to the true intentions of this treasonous operation:

Georgia chicken farmers are trying to sell poultry in Central America under a 160% import tariff, while Central American farmers sell their chicken in America tariff-free. Any five-year old will tell you that’s cheating. So what are we going to do about it?

The global trade crowd says we ought to reward these “competitors” by offering them the chance to cheat us on textiles and sugar, by approving the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. In return, they agree to stop cheating us on chickens after another 18 years during which they put our poultry industry out-of-business. Amnesty for trade cheats, just like the same crowd’s proposals on amnesty for illegal aliens....

The undeniable end result is a net loss of dollars and jobs to Americans. A few people gained; the majority lost.

NAFTA alone is bad enough, but the globalists have piled one bad trade deal on top of the next ever since. Congress approved U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, and the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act and the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act in 2000....

Every new trade deal we pass sacrifices another U.S. industry, and more U.S. jobs, to satisfy the globalists, who care nothing for the economic well-being of America or any other nation, as long as they make their percentage off these bad deals....

It’s time for smart and fair U.S. trade policies. A pre-requisite for any such policies is that they benefit the vast majority of Americans, at the unfair expense of no one.

CAFTA fails that test on all counts. And if it passes, just remember – you’re next.

One in every 11 people born in Mexico and still alive is a U.S. resident, and about half of these immigrants crossed the border illegally, according to a comprehensive report released Tuesday....

"This is costing us billions in health care, the criminal justice system and education," said Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, who advocates a more stringent employment-verification system. "You can't run and stick your head in the sand."...

Read more of the article.

Mexican lawmakers told their American counterparts this weekend that Mexico has not done enough to stop the flow of illegal aliens across the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly non-Mexicans who first illegally cross Mexico's southern border.

"For the first time, the Mexicans really acknowledge this is a two-way problem and has to be dealt with on both sides of the border, and I've never really heard them say that before," Rep. Jim Kolbe, Arizona Republican, said yesterday after returning from a weekend meeting of the Mexico-United States Interparliamentary Group....

DETROIT -- An illegal immigrant from Lebanon was sentenced Tuesday to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to raise money for the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, which the United States has designated a terrorist group.

Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, 34, pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to support a terrorist organization. Kourani was accused of hosting fund-raising meetings at his home in suburban Detroit in 2002, at which a Hezbollah representative spoke....

The government said Kourani paid a Mexican consular official in Beirut $3,000 for a visa to enter Mexico, then sneaked across the U.S.-Mexican border in 2001 and settled in Dearborn, the center of Michigan's Arab-American community of about 300,000....

With federal police and military units forced to secure the border town of Nuevo Laredo, U.S.-trained anti-drug commandos now protecting the drug cartels and Mexican narcotics pouring into the America, some experts are suggesting Mexico's instability is a direct result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the economic pact meant to be create a border boom.

NAFTA has driven many legitimate Mexican farmers out of business, and many have turned to drug cultivation, charges Charles Bowden, author of "Down By The River," and other acclaimed books about the drug business....

In effect, some economists see the cheap labor flooding into America helping the U.S. agribusiness concerns squeeze out Mexican family farmers. The more that smaller farms collapse, the more migrant workers trek north and the more cheap labor is available to big U.S. farmers. It's a vicious cycle, they say....

ALTAR, Mexico — They arrive daily by the hundreds. In vans and buses, migrants from all over Mexico and beyond converge on the small town of Altar in the Mexican state of Sonora. Some 60 miles south of the U.S.- Mexico border, Altar has become a major staging ground for illegal immigration.

Around the town square, migrants make connections with human smugglers — who are also called “coyotes” or “polleros” — who can sneak them into the United States.

“These guys charges us $800-1,500 dollars to cross, a lot of money,” said one 27-year-old man who declined to give his name....

Last year, in Arizona alone, more than 200 migrants died along the nearly four-day journey across the harsh desert....

... He drapes select findings on barbed-wire fences along main roads - creating an eclectic collection of jackets, shirts, backpacks, hats and water bottles - to draw attention to the trash left by illegal immigrants as they make their trek through the county....

Petrello's artistic expressions are carefully arranged and clearly visible from main roads, all strategically placed in locations that are known as coyote pick-up and drop-off points, or areas where there is a high volume of illegal traffic.

"It irritates the heck out of the coyotes," Petrello said as he scanned an approaching car through his binoculars. "They know my art alerts the Border Patrol, and they don't like it."...

Imagine this: your state government puts a transportation corridor in your neighborhood. It’s nearly a quarter-mile wide. It will serve vehicles and trains and incorporate oil, gas, electric and water lines. Try to fight it and you’ll not only face the combined might of your local, state, and federal governments, but foreign interests as well. The internationalization of U.S. roads has begun.

We’re not just talking about isolated instances of privately-built toll roads with foreign management, as we’ve seen in Southern California. We’re talking about networks of toll roads that may be built by foreign builders, managed by foreign operators, function primarily to accommodate foreign goods, and connect U.S. roads to similar networks in Canada, Mexico and, later, Central and South America.

Interstate 69, for example, is a planned 1600 mile national highway connecting Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. Eight states are involved in the project: Once completed, I-69 will extend from Port Huron, Michigan to the Texas/Mexico border.

In Texas, I-69 will be part of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) project – a 4000 mile network of existing and new toll roads – which will create the largest private highway system in America. Interstate 35, also called the Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast element, will be developed as part of the TTC.

Plans call for the TTC to be 1200 feet wide with 10 vehicle lanes (three passenger vehicle lanes in each direction), truck lanes (two in each direction), six rail lines (three in each direction), two tracks for high-speed passenger rail, two for commuter rail and two for freight. The corridor will include a 200 feet right-of-way for oil, gas, electric and water lines....

Without any substantive discussion or debate and without public comment, the Commission approved it, a plan projected to cost up to $185 billion and take up to 50 years to build....

The trade agreements that have already transformed America’s culture and economy; will now slice up America’s heartland – at U.S. taxpayers’ expense – decimating farmland, small communities and, of course, property rights. Our shredded borders will open fully to trucks, busses, and people from all points north and south, the trucks delivering products and services once produced in the U.S.A. by Americans.

President Bush is demanding Congressional approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Many legislators – even those who express outrage over present border problems -- have already caved. Call your Congressman toll free at 1(877)762-8762. Demand a No! vote on CAFTA.

LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everybody. Tonight, an astonishing proposal to expand our borders to incorporate Mexico and Canada and simultaneously further diminish U.S. sovereignty. Have our political elites gone mad? We'll have a special report.

DOBBS: Border security is arguably the critical issue in this country's fight against radical Islamist terrorism. But our borders remain porous. So porous that three million illegal aliens entered this country last year, nearly all of them from Mexico.

Now, incredibly, a panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada....

ROBERT PASTOR, IND. TASK FORCE ON NORTH AMERICA: What we hope to accomplish by 2010 is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border....

Of the 800,000 illegal aliens caught trying to sneak across the U.S.-Mexico border since October, more than 10 percent are from countries other than Mexico, posing serious national security issues.

"We're now concerned about the potential for terrorists coming across the border because of the huge increases in 'other than Mexicans,' people coming from abroad through Mexico, across our southern border," says Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz. "Our country has intelligence that tells us that al-Qaida specifically desires to bring people across our border."

According to new Border Patrol numbers, a record 98,000 of these "other than Mexicans," or OTMs, have been apprehended in the last eight months. That's up 175 percent from this same time last year.

While OTMs are supposed to be held for deportation, because of overcrowded conditions in detention centers, 70 percent are released and few show up for immigration hearings.

Even those from countries on terrorist watch lists are released into the general population after a 180-day detention.

WASHINGTON – Ronald Reagan's defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, credited with engineering the demise of the Soviet Union, once predicted – because of illegal immigration and social unrest south of the border – the U.S. would be at war with Mexico by 2003....

Likewise, in a 1994 Pentagon briefing paper dealing with "deployment of U.S. troops in Mexico as a result of widespread economic and social chaos," Donald E. Schultz, a professor of national security at the U.S. Army's War College around the same time wrote: "A hostile government could put U.S. investments in Mexico in danger, jeopardize access to oil, produce a flood of political refugees and economic migrants to the north."...

Oddly, however, the border with the U.S. was a very low priority for Fox and his advisers. They were concerned more with their own southern borders with Belize and Guatemala, where Mexico faces its own illegal immigration crisis.

It seems unavoidable that the U.S.-Mexico border is going to be the big issue in the 2006 mid-term elections in the U.S., whether or not it is a major issue for Mexican politicians vying for political office next year...

The Mexican and the U.S. administrations, each government for reasons of its own, are doing their utmost to dodge issues around the border-crossing epidemic from Mexico to the U.S. As politicians in Washington are trying to avoid coping with public opinion or evade voicing support to such initiatives as the Minuteman Project and the Yuma Patriots, these very issues do not escape the eyes of the Department of Homeland Security and immigration authorities.

The above data when added to the overall, possibly shaky, political situation in Mexico, and with Fox's open disregard for mutual border respect, the U.S. is faced with a dangerously looming confrontation with her supposedly friendly neighbor in the south.

Illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico often gather at the bus station in Harlingen, Texas, call friends and relatives and catch a bus out of town.

Once on the U.S. side, the Brazilians scrambled ashore and started looking for the Border Patrol. Their quick and well-rehearsed surrender was part of a growing trend that is demoralizing the Border Patrol and beckoning a rising number of illegal immigrants from countries beyond Mexico.

"We used to chase them; now they're chasing us," Border Patrol Agent Gus Balderas said as he frisked the Brazilians and collected their passports late last month.

What happened next explains the odd reversal.

The group was detained overnight and given a court summons that allowed them to stay in the United States pending an immigration hearing. Then a Border Patrol agent drove them to the McAllen bus station, where they continued their journey into America.

The formal term for the court summons is a "notice to appear." Border Patrol agents have another name for it. They call it a "notice to disappear."

Of the 8,908 notices to appear that the immigration court in nearby Harlingen issued last year to non-Mexicans, 8,767 failed to show up for their hearings, according to statistics compiled by the Justice Department's Executive Office of Immigration Review. That is a no-show rate of 98 percent....

LIVE OAK SPRINGS – A U.S. Border Patrol agent was wounded in the leg by a shotgun blast Friday morning when he tried to intercept a pickup truck loaded with hundreds of pounds of narcotics....

The shooting occurred about 8 a.m., according to Border Patrol Agent Raul Martinez. The single occupant of the pickup shot the agent, then drove off in the truck before abandoning the vehicle a short time later and running into the brush....

...the shooting took place in the Tierra del Sol area near the U.S.-Mexico border, about 60 miles east of San Diego. The area is notorious for both drug and illegal immigrant smuggling.

U.S.-MEXICO BORDER – The dead include university students, assembly-plant workers, farm hands, businessmen, journalists, money couriers, drug gang henchmen and dozens of police officers....

At least 550 people have lost their lives in drug-related executions in Mexico so far this year – with 300 of those killings in the six Mexican states bordering the U.S. All are thought to be linked to organized crime, according to a review of press accounts by The Dallas Morning News. ...

The killings have rattled residents on both sides of the border. A State Department warning about travel in the region is in effect through the end of July. And the rising death toll is shaking many Mexicans' faith in their government's ability to stop the violence brought on by drug gangs caught in a bloody turf battle....

The most violent spot on the Texas-Mexico border has been Nuevo Laredo with 45-drug-related murders so far this year. That's up from 37 for all of 2004, according to the Reynosa human rights center....

"More than 95 percent of the crimes committed in Mexico go unpunished," said Mr. Nahle Garcia, a member of Commission on Public Security in the Chamber of Deputies....

"Some people have stopped going out at night,"...

The U.S. Border Patrol answered a Valley woman’s questions Wednesday night, regarding problems she’s having with illegal Brazilians entering through her back yard....

Just south of Palmview, Gonzalez has discovered illegal Brazilians are using her family's land as a gateway into the United States....

Currently Brazilians do not need a passport to travel through Mexico...

According to the Border Patrol’s latest figures, last year there were a little over 2,600 Brazilians captured in the Rio Grande Valley.

Already this year, there have been more than 14,000.

A smuggling ring specializing in bringing Iranians into the U.S. over the Mexico border has been broken up in an FBI sting operation.

A 39-year-old Iranian with permanent legal residency status who is suspected of having smuggled 60 other Iranians into the U.S. was arrested Thursday in Mesa, Ariz., according to the U.S. Attorney's Office....

U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints near the Mexican border are essential in stopping the flow of illegal aliens and drugs into America, say law-enforcement authorities, but permanent checkpoints in southern Arizona are not allowed.

While Border Patrol agents in Arizona accounted for more than half of the 1.15 million illegals caught last year, Congress -- led by Rep. Jim Kolbe, Arizona Republican -- steadfastly has approved appropriation bills that prohibit permanent checkpoints along a 260-mile section of the Arizona border known as the Tucson sector.

Tucson is the only one of 20 Border Patrol sectors nationwide not permitted to set up permanent checkpoints....

Mr. Aguilar testified before a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee that agents "cannot control our borders by merely enforcing the line," adding that the Border Patrol strategy "incorporates a defense-in-depth component" to include permanent checkpoints away from the border.

"Checkpoints are critical to our patrol efforts," he said. "Permanent checkpoints allow the Border Patrol to establish an important second layer of defense."...

In 1997, Mr. Kolbe successfully killed a $1 million allocation by Congress for the construction of a permanent checkpoint on Interstate 19 north of Nogales, after area residents complained it would disrupt traffic and lead to increased numbers of illegal aliens crossing through residential areas.

EAGLE PASS, Texas (Reuters) - The number of illegal immigrants from Central America and Brazil caught crossing into this Texas border city jumped threefold in the past year as they rush to exploit a legal loophole, U.S. authorities said.

The U.S. Border Patrol has nabbed 15,195 non-Mexican migrants crossing over the Rio Bravo around Eagle Pass in the past eight months, a rise of almost 240 percent on the same period last year, officials said on Monday.

Agents say what they call "OTMs" -- "other than Mexican migrants" -- now account for 90 percent of all migrant detentions in the sweltering trade and ranching hub of 40,000 people. That is up from the 5 percent to 10 percent nationwide normally recorded by the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement....

Whereas Mexican citizens are processed and swiftly deported, non-Mexicans are either detained or let out on bail pending an appearance before an immigration court....

The immigration summons, dubbed "the diploma" by local residents in the remote border community, allows them to travel on into the United States legally, crossing Border Patrol road blocks set up to collar illegal migrants in south Texas....

According to American Border Patrol residents living near the San Pedro River and the Mexican border in Cochise County, Arizona, encountered heavily armed Spanish- speaking people last night. In one incident, when a resident turned on an exterior light the intruders fired a burst from an automatic weapon. The light was extinguished. Another resident encountered a man in his yard carrying an automatic weapon. The man said, with a heavy Mexican accent, "go inside!" "The Border Patrol wouldn't get near these guys." one resident reported. "A UAV was orbiting the action, however," he added.

Condoleezza Rice needs training in Constitutional matters.... Per San Jose Mercury News, when asked about what role, if any, would armed volunteers play in enforcement of the American-Mexican border, she said: "As to [border] enforcement, that is a role for the United States government and the United States government alone."

Well, not quite so, Ms. Rice.

Although in the part Powers Granted to Congress (that Ms. Rice seems to be familiar with),... the Constitution imposes on the U.S. Congress a duty to [repel] Invasions, nowhere in the entire Constitution is written that this responsibility lies with "the United States government and the United States government alone [emphasis added]." In particular, there is no clause in the Constitution, or in its Amendments, that would prohibit We the People from defending the borders of our country as a need may arise.

On the contrary, Amendments IX and X (see text below) to the Constitution clearly stipulate that it is the government and not We the People whose powers and rights are restricted to those specifically listed in the Constitution....

So, there is nothing in the Constitution that could be construed as granting an exclusive power of repealing an invasion, and enforcing the border that comes with it, to the U.S. government, because the states and the people do retain it, at least under certain circumstances....

Amendment IX: Rights Retained by the People

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X: Powers retained by the States and the People

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.

Protesters on Sunday gathered outside a meeting where members of a controversial civilian group that has been monitoring the Mexican border gathered with other activists seeking to curb illegal immigration.

More than 150 demonstrators used placards and bullhorns and waved Mexican flags to get their message out: "Racists, go home!" they screamed.

Hundreds of people had gathered for the two-day summit titled "Unite to Fight Against Illegal Immigration" at a Las Vegas convention center....

In a 45-minute speech Sunday, Gilchrist said a declaration of war is committed every time a Mexican flag is planted on American soil.

"If this isn't a declaration of war, I don't know what is," Gilchrist said....

MCALLEN - The Border Patrol checkpoint on a remote stretch of South Texas ranchland was the ideal route for a drug trafficking ring to move tons of marijuana.

To make sure their product got through, traffickers paid $1.5 million to U.S. Border Patrol agent Juan Alfredo Alvarez, 35, to wave trucks loaded with a ton or more of marijuana through checkpoints outside Hebbronville, according to a plea bargain Alvarez agreed to earlier this month.

As Mexican drug cartels have transformed the Texas-Mexico border into one of the major transport corridors for marijuana, cocaine and heroin, traffickers have stepped up their efforts to bribe agents....

Assaults against U.S. Border Patrol agents along a 260-mile stretch of the Arizona/Mexico border known as the Tucson sector, a desolate expanse of territory that is the nation’s major artery for illegal immigration, are on a record clip. In the first eight months of fiscal year 2005 there have been 163 recorded acts of violence against border agents compared with 118 for all of fiscal year 2004, according to the U.S. Border Patrol...

WASHINGTON – Elite Mexican commandos, trained by U.S. forces to combat the drug cartels have switched sides and are working for the drug smugglers in the border area posing a special hazard to American law enforcement and Border Patrol agents, according to a U.S. Justice Department memo.

The commandos, trained by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Ga., are known as "Los Zetas."...

There are reports of the commandos making cross-border runs into U.S. territory in military-style vehicles, armed with automatic weapons.

Students living in Mexico have been regularly crossing the border to attend school in a remote southern Arizona community, a misuse of taxpayer funds, the state's top education official said Wednesday.

State schools Superintendent Tom Horne said an investigator he sent to the port of entry in Lukeville videotaped students walking across the border to a bus stop 200 yards north, then taking school buses to the community of Ajo....

The deployment of 36,000 National Guard troops or state militia on the U.S.-Mexico border would stop the illegal flow of foreigners into America, says a congressional report that credits the Minuteman Project with proving that additional manpower could "dramatically reduce if not virtually eliminate" illegal immigration.

The 33-page report, written by investigators for the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, said the Minutemen — who shut down a 23-mile stretch of the Arizona border last month — served as a model for a government effort to reclaim the southern border of the United States.

"The tide of illegal crossings on the borders of the United States is beyond unsatisfactory; it is catastrophic. It does not ebb and flow — it only grows. It is rising without measure and eroding the very fiber of our safety, life and culture," the report said.

"As we wage the war on terror in foreign lands, we have all our doors and windows open at home. ... The insanity of such a policy, or silent toleration of such a policy is almost criminal in itself," it said. "The Minuteman Project demonstrated that illegal immigration on America's southern border can be dramatically reduced to manageable levels."

The report, to be released today, also said the U.S. Border Patrol failed "through no fault of its rank-and-file enforcement officers" to protect the United States from an influx of illegals.

It said the agency's uniformed leadership should be pointed in a "new direction" as it is in "total denial of the magnitude of the disaster" and — as currently organized, staffed and supported — "cannot be relied upon" to remedy the situation soon.

"The Border Patrol needs new direction from the Department of Homeland Security if it is to shake off the lethargy from years of undermanned frustration," the report said. "The patrol needs to empower its outstanding field officers to act as necessary to accomplish the patrol's mission ... to energize its leadership to think outside the box."

The report said Congress and the states could sustain the success of the Minuteman Project...

The report said that sufficient reinforcements exist in current National Guard units and could be put on the border by governors and the secretary of defense within one month, if the political will exists....

Illegal immigrants are creating havoc for ranchers all along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The problem is especially prevalent in remote regions of southern Arizona, where illegal border crossers surge through Cochise County every year by the thousands, leaving a trail of garbage and damaged property as they make their way through the desert.

For Sands Ranch, located more than 40 miles north of the border in Whetstone, illegal immigration traffic has been an overwhelming problem.

"Almost on a daily basis, we're picking up garbage, closing gates that have been left open, relocating cattle that have strayed into areas where they're not supposed to be, and repairing fences and water systems that have been damaged," said Les Shannon, who has managed the ranch for 10 years.

It's a problem that costs the ranch thousands of dollars a year, he said....

"I've talked to people from Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, all over South and Central America," he said. "I know this for a fact because I've asked them. They use Mexico as a corridor to get into Arizona and then into other parts of the country. I see this as a national threat. It makes me wonder how many other countries are getting through our border and escaping into the interior of the United States."...

Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) called for the resignation of Michael Nicely, Agent-in-Charge of the Tucson Sector of the Border Patrol, after a dozen Border Patrol agents confirmed that he ordered them to reduce the apprehension of illegal aliens crossing the border.

U.S. Border Patrol agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens along the section of the Arizona border where protesters patrolled last month because an increase in apprehensions there would prove the effectiveness of Minuteman volunteers, The Washington Times has learned.

More than a dozen agents, all of whom asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said orders relayed by Border Patrol supervisors at the Naco, Ariz., station made it clear that arrests were "not to go up" along the 23-mile section of border that the volunteers monitored to protest illegal immigration.

"It was clear to everyone here what was being said and why," said one veteran agent. "The apprehensions were not to increase after the Minuteman volunteers left. It was as simple as that."...

CAFTA would build on the three-nation North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by expanding the trade bloc to include Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. Congressional ratification of CAFTA is coveted by the White House, its political allies in Central America, and politically connected corporate interests who stand to profit from outsourcing production to low-wage nations in the region. It is stoutly opposed by U.S. agricultural and textile producers, who are reeling from the economic impact of NAFTA and are understandably worried that CAFTA would trigger another flood of imports and another hemorrhage of industrial jobs. Most importantly, since the agreement would further undermine our nation's ability to control its economic destiny, it has prompted opposition from Americans who seek to preserve our national independence....

...Why CAFTA Must Be Defeated

* Taken together, the six CAFTA nations have a minuscule consumer economy — but represent a huge pool of low-wage labor. Thus the only export encouraged by CAFTA would be U.S. manufacturing jobs.

* CAFTA is a critical steppingstone toward creation of a 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an embryonic regional government modeled after the socialistic European Union.

* Under CAFTA, barriers to agricultural imports from our "trading partners" would be removed immediately, while barriers to U.S. exports wouldn't be lifted for anywhere from 10-20 years — thereby crippling U.S. agricultural producers. And this precedent would almost certainly be followed in the FTAA.

* Promoters of CAFTA clearly perceive the pact to be a form of foreign aid to "emerging democracies" in Central America — tacitly recognizing that it wouldn't result in genuine free trade, but rather a huge transfer of wealth from the U.S. to the region.

A critical network of cameras and sensors installed for the U.S. Border Patrol along the Mexican and Canadian borders has been hobbled for years by defective equipment that was poorly installed, and by lax oversight by government officials who failed to properly supervise the project's contractor, according to government reports and public and industry officials.

The problems with the $239 million Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System (ISIS), which U.S. officials call crucial to defending the country against terrorist infiltrators, are under investigation by the inspector general of the General Services Administration.

That probe, into whether government officials allowed the contractor to cut corners on the project and receive huge overcharges during its eight-year lifetime, could lead to administrative or criminal charges, the officials said. Perhaps tens of millions of dollars were wasted, the GSA suggested....

The story of ISIS, designed to monitor the large swaths of the nation's borderlands that agents cannot physically protect, is a tale of wasted taxpayer money and bureaucratic dysfunction.

The GSA inspector general's report said official inattention to the system "placed taxpayers' dollars and . . . national security at risk." A GSA inspection of eight Border Patrol zones found that $20 million had been paid to IMC for work there but that none of its camera systems was fully operating.