Desert Invasion - U.S.

Pima County supervisors voted yesterday to again support water stations that help illegal immigrants survive treks across the desert, after hearing that it costs the county more to recover and deal with bodies than to fund the lifesaving program.

It costs about $300,000 annually to recover and store the bodies of illegal immigrants who die in Pima County, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said.

The supervisors voted 4-1 to provide $25,000 for another year to Humane Borders, the Tucson faith-based agency whose members have provided more than 65,000 gallons of water to immigrants [criminal illegal aliens] who have crossed into Arizona's deadly deserts over the past five years....

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...Ranchers along this stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border face the heaviest amount of foot traffic because illegal entrants and drug smugglers have been chased away from Cochise County and the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation this year. A concentration of U.S. Border Patrol agents in those areas moved border crossers into the Altar Valley, where these ranchers now deal with them. The agency's Tucson station, which covers much of this area, has had a sharp rise in apprehensions up to 60 percent from last year....

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Following on the heels of Gov. Janet Napolitano's Aug. 15 declaration of a border emergency, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday morning took similar action....

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Splayed in the desert just south of I-10 along Rita Road is an unruly collection of backpacks, flannel shirts, coats, water bottles, soft-drink cans, pill packages, toothbrushes and toilet paper rolls....

It has estimated that the average desert-walking immigrant [illegal alien] leaves behind 8 pounds of trash....

...the Tohono O'odham Tribe has cleaned 40 tons of trash from 84 sites in the past year...

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New Mexico Governor Richardson:

"I don't want to close the border. I just acted on an emergency declaration that triggers more funds for me. I believe, for instance, that if you look at New Mexico, we're one of the most immigrant-friendly [illegal alien friendly] states. We provide licenses to undocumented workers [criminal illegal aliens], tuition for undocumented kids [children of illegal aliens]."

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You have been invaded, America. There are reportedly 20 million illegal aliens in this country now, and the number could be much higher. These people are not supposed to be here, nobody knows who they are, and our president, George W. Bush, is doing nothing more than winking at them and promising them a huge "amnesty" program. Meanwhile, two border-state governors have recently declared their borders "disaster areas" because many of the people running the federal government sit on their hands, frozen in fear, and they refuse to address this problem in any meaningful way. 40% of the people still in Mexico say they want to come here....

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armed guards often are paid to protect marijuana farms, and an unwary hiker could lose his or her life...

...six farms or groves have been found this year in the Coconino and Tonto national forests with about 100,000 plants. Eleven suspects have been taken into custody in connection with the groves, including four in the most recent bust....

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Prominent Democrats have recently taken to striking pro-enforcement poses on immigration. They see the gap between the president's stance and that of the overwhelming majority of the Republican base, and they want to peel off enough of those voters — or just induce them to stay home — to overcome the GOP's narrow majorities in the past few elections.

During the third debate of last year's presidential campaign, John Kerry promised to "toughen up our borders" and "crack down on illegal hiring." Hillary Clinton has turned heads with remarks like "I am... adamantly against illegal immigrants." And over the past week, the Democratic governors of both New Mexico and Arizona have declared their border counties disaster areas; New Mexico's Bill Richardson blasted Washington for not showing "the commitment or the leadership to deal with border issues," while Janet Napolitano of Arizona explained that "the federal government has not done what it needs to do and has promised to do."...

...open immigration has become an immutable value of the Left. There is no policy the liberal establishment won't abandon, no election it won't forfeit, no constituency it won't sacrifice to ensure the survival and success of open borders.

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DOUGLAS, Ariz., Aug. 18 - Spent shells litter the ground at what is left of the firing range, and camouflage outfits still hang in a storeroom. Just a few months ago, this ranch was known as Camp Thunderbird, the headquarters of a paramilitary group that promised to use force to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking across the border with Mexico....

Now, in a turnabout, the 70-acre property about two miles from the border is being given to two [illegal criminal] immigrants whom the group caught trying to enter the United States illegally....

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Arizona's national forests are quickly becoming prime real estate for pot farmers, with about 100,000 marijuana plants discovered this year alone, authorities said Thursday....

Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, said some gardeners were armed with assault weapons....

"It's not just the cultivation," Poague said. "It really impacts the environment."

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...a survey released Tuesday showed that four in 10 Mexicans would immigrate to the United States if given the chance and more than half would consider participating in a guest worker program like the one proposed by President Bush....

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Authorities have uncovered a vast marijuana farm in a remote ravine north of Strawberry on the Coconino National Forest.

The mile-long field included "thousands and thousands and thousands" of plants...

A Department of Public Safety commander told the Arizona Daily Sun that it may be one of the biggest busts on record....

Three of them [apprehended] admitted they had been paid to tend the marijuana plants. All were illegal immigrants...

...the farm near Strawberry was one of a number local authorities have discovered on Forest Service land this year. Five others were found on the nearby Tonto National Forest....

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More than 20 million Mexicans are now living abroad, the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) announced on Sunday, and 4.2 million of them have voting credentials....

According to the new IFE numbers, 20.7 million Mexicans living outside the nation's borders are on the American continent. In Europe, there are 23,000 Mexican expatriates, while 4,000 live in Asia. There are less than 1,000 Mexicans in Oceania and Africa.

The United States is by far the country with the largest number of Mexican residents, with 20.64 million....

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Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declared an emergency Monday in four border counties because of problems related to lax border enforcement and moved to provide local governments in those counties with up to $1.5 million in state funding.

Napolitano's order directly released $200,000 from the state's emergency fund for disasters while her emergency council released an additional $1.3 million...

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Millions upon millions of illegal aliens already in this country. Nobody has a clue how many there really are. Thousands more coming in every day...

Our "primary mission" is to stop people from entering this country illegally. PERIOD. Always has been our "primary mission".

It's just that we have always had people like George W. Bush, John McCain, Raul Grijalva, Jim Kolbe, and others who have been selling us out while we take a beating trying to carry out this "primary mission". They don't really want us to carry out this "primary mission"....

Note to newspaper: Management won't give you the real story. They'll just bombard you with meaningless phrases and refuse to answer tough questions.

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Charles Cape, zone manager for the [U.S. Department of Homeland Security] agency’s wireless initiative in the Southwest, told the Tribune last month that as much as $60 million earmarked by Congress for technologies to secure the U.S.-Mexican border was misspent.

He ultimately learned that the money had gone to other projects in violation of congressional directives.

Cape, who was put in charge of wireless communication in the Southwest region in 2004, says he grew frustrated when he learned he couldn’t put in place basic systems that would enhance border security.

The money was supposed to be used for weather balloons to carry radio repeaters for reliable radio service, wireless computers for agent’s vehicles and wide-area radar already being used by the U.S. Marine Corps near Yuma, Cape said.

Cape, who has filed complaints with his department’s inspector general and the independent Office of Special Counsel, believes that technology lapses have made the southwestern U.S. border vulnerable to terrorist infiltration....

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Gov. Bill Richardson on Friday declared an emergency in four New Mexico counties along the border, an action that lets him free up money to be spent on everything from fighting drug smuggling to fencing a livestock yard.

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Lyle Robinson's Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the Mexican border. It's a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the brick house and oak trees--bellotas in Spanish--decorate the surrounding landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries....

Everyone in America has a stake in what's happening on the Tres Bellotas.,,,

This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground. The Tres Bellotas is a battleground in the relentless, ugly, nonstop invasion of drugs and illegals across our southern border....

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...Researchers along Arizona's border these days must balance their desire to study wildlife in the Sonoran Desert - where the chance to observe long-protected desert-dwelling populations proves an irresistible lure - with a growing fear of theft by desperate border crossers or violence from drug and people smugglers.

The fears are fueled by a surge of assaults this year on Border Patrol agents and by some close calls involving researchers: stolen cars, a work trailer hauled into Mexico before it was recovered and a University of Arizona student robbed at gunpoint....

"The assaults are also going up in severity,"..."In the outskirts, they're using the vehicles to try to ram our agents, shooting our agents in an attempt to avoid arrest."

Of 383,413 apprehensions so far this year, records checks on 28,900 of the people involved revealed criminal backgrounds....

...a couple of hunters were assaulted last fall and "one Mexican national was shot in the back a couple of months ago because he got too close to a drug load,"

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A renegade band of Mexican military deserters, offering $50,000 bounties for the assassination of U.S. law-enforcement officers, has expanded its base of operations into the United States to protect loads of cocaine and marijuana being brought into America by Mexican smugglers, authorities said.

Many of the Zeta leaders belonged to an elite anti-drug paratroop and intelligence battalion known as the Special Air Mobile Force Group, who deserted in 1991 and aligned themselves with drug traffickers.

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Imagine that you came home tomorrow and found a stranger living in your home. Would you pay $148 to have him removed, or would you instead just legally adopt him and give him the run of the place to save the $148? The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., thinks the “practical” thing to do would be adopt the “undocumented family member” that broke into your home.

At least, that is what I can extrapolate from the report they released last week purporting to document the true cost of deporting –rather than amnestying-- the 10 million illegal aliens that have smuggled themselves into our homeland over the past two decades. According to the study, which was dutifully reported by the Washington Post and others, it would cost the Federal Government $41 billion per year over the next five years to take the “draconian” step of actually enforcing our immigration laws.

...the 10 million criminal aliens in this country have $50 billion worth of assets subject to seizure. If taken over the five year period covered by the report from the fine folks at the Center for American Progress, this would mean that deporting illegal aliens would earn the United States a profit of $9 billion per year. And that’s enough to fund Medicare for almost two whole weeks—for those worried about Medicare funding.

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The number of Other than Mexican or OTM apprehensions is up more than 30% from this time last year, and that's causing logistical and financial problems for the U.S. Government.

Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector have caught roughly 376,000 illegal entrants since last October 1st, which is the start of the 2005 fiscal year. About 9,400 of them are from countries other than Mexico....

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"Our neighborhood." That’s how President Bush described countries in the region during a March 23 joint press conference with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. They were announcing the creation of their Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America (SPP), which is nothing less than an instrument for merging nations of the Western Hemisphere through trade agreements.

The SPP is intended to set an example for other hemispheric countries, the three leaders explained, and to advance the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), followed by the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)....

For most Americans, the ideal neighborhood represents home and hearth, welcome and refuge. It’s inhabited by people of similar circumstances and amambitions who live by the same rules. Thus, "neighborhood" is a perplexing metaphor for a group of nations with drastically different cultures, economies, forms of government, and national goals....

Even before NAFTA, Mexico was a captive of drug cartels.... Under NAFTA, the drug trade has flourished....

Mexicans living in the U.S. send money home. In 2004, Mexico’s remittances totaled $16.6 billion, constituting one of that country’s largest sources of income. It’s quite a deal. Mexico exports its people for the U.S. to educate, medicate, and incarcerate while importing U.S. dollars generated by the same people. "Human capital," Vincente Fox calls them....

But what would the CAFTA countries bring to the neighborhood? A study done by the pro-CAFTA Heritage Foundation and cited in testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere April 20, indicates we can expect poverty, drugs, crime, and more illegal immigration....

Who cannot see that the "neighborhood" of today – pre-CAFTA – is in danger of becoming a Third World slum?

Just ten days before the Heritage Foundation presented its study, the New York Times reported on U.S. illegals: "Nationally, 80,000 to 100,000 undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes walk freely on the streets, federal officials said. But the problem appears most acute in Los Angeles County, where 30,000 of the nearly 2 million undocumented immigrants are criminals."

A word of advice to President Bush: When discussing the bankrupt, crime-ridden, gang-controlled countries of the hemisphere, drop the "neighborhood" metaphor; just call it "the hood."

One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is this: Why does the federal government refuse to accept its responsibility to enforce immigration laws and border security?

Now the answer is becoming clear.

And it's not pretty.

The shadow government – the elitists – do indeed have a plan. And it is a plan that does not include any vestige of U.S. sovereignty or constitutional government. It is a plan for merger – a European Union-style government for North America and eventually the rest of the Americas and the world.

It's all spelled out in the latest reports by the Council on Foreign Relations. There's a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."

Though there has been no national debate on merger with the corruption and socialism of our neighbors to the north and south, there is a roadmap. And unless the American people rise up in righteous indignation against this plan, the roadmap to merger will become the inevitable, guiding force in setting U.S. policy....

The CFR's strategy calls specifically for "a more open border for the movement of goods and people." It calls for laying "the groundwork for the freer flow of people within North America."...

By the way, even though you didn't hear any national debate about this plan, your president has already committed you, your children and your grandchildren to this policy...

It is a stunning betrayal of the will of the American people, the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and all of our notions of limited government, self-government, freedom, sovereignty, the rule of law and justice.

I don't know how else to say it: It is an open conspiracy to commit treason.

It's time to fight the War of Independence all over again.

SEATTLE — Federal agents have shut down a drug-smuggling tunnel built under the U.S.-Canadian border near Lynden, Wash., a federal source told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Authorities had been monitoring construction of the tunnel for eight months and sealed it Wednesday, shortly after it opened...

...It ran from a building on the Canadian side to a house on the U.S. side, 300 feet from the border, the source said....

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LOUDON COUNTY (WATE) -- Sixteen illegal immigrants were caught traveling through Loudon County Sunday morning, but a short time later immigration officials let them all go.

Fourteen Brazilians and two Mexicans were found packed into a van. The passengers made it all the way from Texas to Tennessee before being caught.

Tennessee Highway Patrol officers say they got a tip the illegal immigrants would be traveling through Loudon County. When troopers spotted their van, they were pulled over.

But the illegal immigrants weren't in custody for long. A few hours later, officials set them all free.

"The reason why they would let them go is because of budgeting issues," explained a local immigration attorney, Anita Patel....

Many of them are simply given a court date and set free....

Gary Slaybaugh, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who worked the case Sunday told 6 News his office only has six agents. They simply don't have the manpower to catch all illegal immigrants that come through East Tennessee.

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...CAFTA would do more than just phase out tariffs and open new markets ---- a lot more. For example, buried among its nearly 1,000 pages, the agreement contains an expansive definition of "cross-border trade in services." This definition would give people in Central American nations a de facto right to work in the United States. CAFTA is more than a trade agreement about sugar and bananas. It is a thinly disguised immigration accord....

One article of CAFTA reads, "Cross-border trade in services or cross-border supply of services means the supply of a service ... by a national of a party in the territory of another party"... and to guarantee that our domestic laws are "not in themselves a restriction on the supply of the service."

What those provisions mean is that a foreign company would be empowered under CAFTA to challenge the validity of our immigration laws.

To most of America immigration is a distant issue. But that's not the way those in Arizona and other border states view this topic. In those states illegal migration is a very serious issue which threatens not only our culture and our safety but jeopardize the very principals of the American way of life as we know it.

It’s doubtful that many Americans outside of the southern border states with Mexico truly understand the seriousness of illegal immigration.... It is estimated that just the Arizona border with Mexico is crossed by 8,000 to 10,000 illegal immigrants on any given day.

It is not until one actually lives in a place like Arizona that one can see the diabolical nature of the Mexican government and the truly lackadaisical and in some cases treasonous attitude of the US Federal Government and the Arizona state government. As far north as Phoenix, approximately 200 miles from the boarder, the street corners and drive way entrances near almost any Home Depot or Lowe’s store are cluttered with Mexicans looking for work. Are they illegal? Who can tell in America? The better question is: who checks to ensure their citizenship? The frightening answer appears to be no one. Even when illegal immigrants are identified by authorities they are often let go due to the lack of capability to handle the quantity of people apprehended....

Fact: America is for Americans. But surely one could never know this from the actions of the nation’s politicians. Arizona politicians are sacrificing America’s future generations while providing privilege to those who have no claim to the fruits of American labor....

The United States currently has troops in many countries worldwide: Germany 69,200, Japan 40,100, South Korea 38,500, Afghanistan 12,000, England 11,200, Italy 11,200, Portugal 3,000, Turkey 2,000 and many more in places like Kosovo and Kuwait. Yet only 9,150 border patrol agents extend across the 1,989 mile US border with Mexico?...

Until such time that Americans once again cherish its national identity and reject the concept that wealth means evil they will sacrifice the well being of future generations to try to soothe this misguided guilt complex it has...

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In what is being characterized as international blackmail, the former foreign minister of Mexico has told a Senate committee his nation will not cooperate with the U.S. on border-security issues unless a number of immigration-related action is taken – including aamnesty for illegal aliens.

On Tuesday, former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing: "No border security is possible without Mexican cooperation" and "there can be no cooperation [from the Mexican government] without some sort of immigration reform package."

According to a report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, Castaneda, now a professor at New York University, went on to describe immigration reform as amnesty for all Mexicans living illegally in the U.S., the admission of some 5 million additional Mexican citizens to the U.S. over the next 10 years, and massive increases in U.S. aid to that country....

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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has just let the cat out of the bag about what's really behind our trade agreements and security partnerships with the other North American countries. A 59-page CFR document spells out a five-year plan for the "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter."...

The CFR's "integrated" strategy calls for "a more open border for the movement of goods and people."...

The CFR document calls for creating a "North American preference" so that employers can recruit low-paid workers from anywhere in North America. No longer will illegal aliens have to be smuggled across the border; employers can openly recruit foreigners willing to work for a fraction of U.S. wages.

Just to make sure that bringing cheap labor from Mexico is an essential part of the plan, the CFR document calls for "a seamless North American market" and for "the extension of full labor mobility to Mexico."...

Why have we allowed the government of Mexico to execute a de facto war by encouraging tens of millions of their citizens to illegally enter America? The illegal alien invasion is an 'act of war' that has reduced our country to nothing but a lawless territory, with little or no sovereignty left! It is absurd for America to continue to live under wave after wave of invading Mexican 'armies' of illegal aliens who will, by their sheer numbers, take over our society, culture and language! Perhaps it is time for "We the People" to rise up and take back our country!

How Mexico is Waging and Winning the War:

1. By enacting laws that are the inverse of American laws!...

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CAFTA includes over 1,000 pages of international law that will contain some ugly surprises for American labor. One thing conspicuously absent from CAFTA is any mention of embedded visas....

One major question begs to be answered: how could the CAFTA signatories fail to get visa concessions from the United States in such a far-reaching trade agreement?

The answer isn't in what CAFTA explicitly says - it's what it doesn't say! Authors of CAFTA cleverly inserted text that allows an international tribunal to decide if visas are to be issued. Decisions by the tribunals would come after CAFTA is ratified, and more importantly, well after the public's attention has been diverted somewhere else....

Rosemary Jenks wrote the excellent analysis: Will CAFTA Affect Immigration to the United States from Central America?. By taking the time to read it you will learn a lot about the WTO and GATS, and why Modes 3 and 4 of GATS mandate that countries who sign FTAs must allow the free flow of "natural persons" across their borders....

... Al-Qaida has obtained at least 40 nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union ­ including suitcase nukes, nuclear mines, artillery shells and even some missile warheads....

There is virtually no doubt among intelligence analysts al-Qaida has obtained fully assembled nuclear weapons, according to Williams. The only question is how many. Estimates range between a dozen and 70. The breathtaking news is that an undetermined number of these weapons, including suitcase bombs, mines and crude tactical nuclear weapons, have already been smuggled into the U.S. ­ at least some across the U.S.-Mexico border....

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National parks on the U.S. border have spent millions of dollars since Sept. 11, 2001, to block terrorists and illegal immigrants from entering the country, straining park budgets, House Republicans say.

Congress has given the National Park Service about $120 million to beef up security since the 2001 terrorist attacks. But parks have spent more than $21 million more on security — money that otherwise might have been used for maintenance and other needs, according to the House Resources Committee.

Parks, including Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, have hired more rangers and built barriers to prevent people from crossing into the U.S. through federal land....

"Protecting these cathedrals of nature ... remains one of the chief national security challenges our nation confronts," said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M....

The issue is particularly acute in border parks, including Organ Pipe, where people crossing from Mexico have created hundreds of miles of illegal roads and trails, left piles of trash and threatened rare wildlife, Interior Department officials say....

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Two U.S. Border Patrol agents wounded last week near Nogales, Ariz., were shot by assailants dressed in black commando-type clothing in what law-enforcement authorities say was a planned ambush by drug smugglers a mile north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

More than 50 rounds were fired at the agents after they spotted suspected drug smugglers in a canyon east of Nogales, authorities said....

A Border Patrol report on the incident said the agents observed a dozen men dressed in dark clothing sitting under a tree and that as they approached from different directions, they identified themselves in Spanish and ordered the men to stay seated.

The report said all but two of the men fled, but one man "put something up to his mouth, as if talking on a radio," pointing at the two agents as the second man began firing. It said the agents returned fire, moved to cover and then began "receiving gunfire from another direction." After the first agent was hit, the second was wounded as he tried to reach his partner, the report said.

Two Black Hawk helicopters responded, but the gunmen had fled. Authorities later found 500 pounds of marijuana.

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Qui vult decipi, decipiatur – Let him who wishes to be deceived, be deceived....

What is behind the constant stream of statements issued by Mexican officials, especially President Vicente Fox, that are influencing U.S. legislation – national, state, and local? Why does Mexico stridently object to every action by U.S. citizens to protect U.S. borders from illegal entries by undocumented aliens?...

Mexican immigration into the United States is Fox's central concern. Mexico depends on emigration – legal and illegal – to relieve the pressures of over-population, under-education, lack of employment opportunities, and the desire to reclaim lost lands....

A number of Hispanic politicians admit to being members in their youth of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). Aztlan is the group's name for the U.S. lands they seek to re-colonize. Their goal is to do away with European-American heritage, culture, and language by sheer numbers, and they are succeeding. They support illegal immigration to provide foot soldiers in the battle against the gringos....

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There's new information about two Border Patrol agents who were wounded in the line of duty last Thursday....

Could those armed men have been members of a team of rogue Mexican commandos called the Zetas?

The Zetas are former members of the Mexican Army. They were trained by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia to battle against the powerful drug cartels.

Some of those commandos changed sides and are now working with drug smugglers.

Sheriff Estrada says, "It's a possibility. I'm sure the FBI and other agencies are looking at that because of the way the individuals were dressed. Because of the way they were set up, they were protecting a group of individuals for whatever reasons. They were obviously sending a real strong message."...

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...Assaults against Agents continue to escalate, including "gunfire" from Mexico. Two Nogales Arizona, U.S. Border Patrol Agents were investigating a narcotics backpacking report, and both were "shot in the legs", rifle fire from across the line. This is an international incident, just one of many sent to the F.B.I. including Mexican Military Incursions reported from 2002.

Concerned citizens who have assisted authorities, rural residents, ranchers to home owners who for decades have reported suspicious activities, criminal events along the Border are still labeled by the "clueless" in D.C. as Vigilantes in 2005.

This Fourth of July weekend, as a property owner in a remote area, ranching community which is also a high density smuggling area 34 miles north of Sasabe, I had the opportunity to meet members of the Minutemen Project. After arrival on the 1st. of July, small teams were taken to various locations, smugglers trails on ranches to load up sites long used by human and narcotics traffickers. When illegal activity was observed, the U.S. Border Patrol was contacted and responded. Citizen's reports from rural to urban areas have always been an important part of effective law enforcement investigations during my tenure of service.

The only thing which seems to "upset" Washington is the fact that concerned citizens are becoming organized and very outspoken on the very serious issue of illegal immigration as well as national security concerns on our borders....

In this politically correct society, with conservative values little different from Democrats in the State of Arizona, voters and taxpayers are basically on their own with little representation from any quarter....

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Terrorists never take a holiday, and neither does the United States Border Patrol, assigned to watch the waters of Lake Ontario for illegals trying to sneak into the country....

Last spring, the United States Office Of Homeland Security opened a full-time Border Patrol office in Irondequoit. It's the first time agents are making the rounds along the Canadian border on the fourth of July....

...they know it's a matter of time before the bad guys attempt to cross over, and when it happens, agents say they'll be waiting....

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...Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, more than 118,000 undocumented [illegal criminal] migrants who were caught after sneaking over the nation's borders have walked right out of custody with a permiso in hand.

They were from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil. But also Afghanistan,
Iran, Pakistan, the Philippines, Yemen — among 35 countries of "special interest" because of alleged sponsorship or support of terrorism.

These are the so-called OTM, or "Other Than Mexican," migrants too far from their homelands to be shipped right back. More than 70,000 have hit U.S. streets just since this past October.

The rate of release is increasing....Releases have soared again this year. With four months still left in the fiscal cycle, 70,624 OTMs have been released on their own recognizance — or 70 percent of all non-Mexicans apprehended by the Border Patrol. That includes 50 undocumented migrants from "special-interest" countries, Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora says....

Of the 834,731 apprehensions made by the Border Patrol so far this fiscal year, 100,142 were non-Mexican arrests. That's a 137 percent increase from the 42,167 non-Mexicans arrested in year leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks....

"Catch and release," the arrangement is commonly called.... Arrests of illegal immigrants from "special-interest" countries such as Eritrea, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq doubled in the region from two dozen in fiscal 2003 to about four dozen in fiscal 2004, the internal figures show. Nationally, Zamora says, 644 migrants from "special-interest" countries were apprehended by Border Patrol in fiscal 2004; more than 450 have been nabbed so far this fiscal year....

ICE estimates a cumulative 465,000 undocumented immigrants — visa overstays, illegal entrants and others unlawfully in the States — have received final orders of removal but remain at-large....

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..."Several al-Qaida leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry," Jim Loy, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional committee in February. Further, he said, "entrenched human smuggling networks and corruption in areas beyond our borders can be exploited by terrorist organizations."...

"Today they could be smuggling people, tomorrow weapons," said John Torres, deputy assistant director for smuggling and public safety investigations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. "The vulnerability there is a criminal or terrorist organization could take advantage of that existing infrastructure."...

Intelligence suggests that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups, according to the Sept. 11 commission's terrorist travel report Kephart helped write. Prior to Sept. 11, al-Qaida employed smugglers to get jihad recruits into Afghanistan for training, the report said....

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TUCSON, Ariz. Biologists are concerned that an increase in migrant traffic on the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge could have deadly consequences for the endangered Sonoran pronghorn. Biologists say they've noticed a spike since early spring during which traffic has gone from a handful of crossers a night to 200....

The refuge shares a 60-mile border with Mexico but the increased migration has been funneled though a single, narrow valley.

That's the same area where biologists and volunteers have been installing watering holes and irrigation plots to bolster the native plants that pronghorn graze on....

...The Minuteman Project is a call to bring national awareness to the decades-long careless disregard of effective U.S. immigration law enforcement. It is a reminder to Americans that our nation was founded and governed by the rule of law, not by the whims of mobs of illegal aliens who stream across U.S. borders. The Minutemen and women are willing to sacrifice their time and comforts to do what their government has refused to do: Stop the illegal invasion – the tens of millions of invading illegals.

Imagine our amazement to discover that the ACLU chapter in New Mexico has suspended an entire chapter of the local organization because a member of the board of directors is reported to be leading the state's Minuteman group! The state organization has suspended its Las Cruces chapter after learning that a member of the group's board, Clifford Alford, is heading the formation of a Minuteman group in New Mexico.

The ACLU actually mobilized nationally against the Minuteman Project. The organization stationed its own volunteers on the border in order to watch the border monitors watch the illegal aliens, reporting any civil liberties violations to authorities.

This reporter has had a lifelong battle with the ACLU, which maintains that it is wholly nonpartisan, advertising itself as an objective organization – neither liberal nor conservative, Republican nor Democrat – that is devoted exclusively to protecting the civil liberties of all Americans.

But the facts indicate otherwise.

Roger Baldwin, founder and leading force in the ACLU until his death in 1981, asserted the partisan nature of the ACLU agenda. Said Baldwin, "I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek social ownership of property." And he concluded with "COMMUNISM IS THE GOAL."...

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CABEZA PRIETA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE - Biologists working on this remote stretch of desert in western Arizona have noticed a troubling spike in migrant traffic since early spring. It's gone from a handful of crossers a night to 200.

Biologists here have never seen numbers that high, and they worry it could have deadly consequences, both for the migrants and for the Sonoran pronghorn, one of the most endangered animals in the world.

While Cabeza Prieta shares a 60-mile border with Mexico, the increased migration has been funneled though a single, narrow valley....

Today, only 58 adult Sonoran pronghorn survive in the United States. They've been on the endangered species list since the list was created in the mid-1960s....

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In a long awaited move, the Senate late Thursday night barely approved implementing legislation for the Central America ­ Dominican Republic ­ United States Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). CAFTA's approval was assured in the Senate, so this is no surprise. What is a surprise is that it was approved with the least number of votes for a trade bill in recent history. While CAFTA squeaked by with a 54-45 vote, past Senate "yes" votes on trade agreements include 83 for China PNTR, 76 for the WTO, 80 for the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, 64 for Fast Track in 2002, and 61 for NAFTA. The biggest upset was Hillary Clinton, who voted against CAFTA ­ a surprise to many who projected that her national aspirations would portend a Yes vote, and whose husband shepherded NAFTA through the Congress 11 years ago.

Usually, trade votes are taken up in the House before the Senate. However, because the Bush Administration still does not have the votes in the House ­ even well over a year after CAFTA was signed on May 28th, 2004 ­ the Administration is attempting to contrive an artificial sense of 'momentum' by having the Senate vote on it first. At last count, over 166 Representatives had publicly stated their opposition to CAFTA, while a mere 65 had publicly stated their approval. The House Ways and Means Committee passed implementing legislation out of committee this Wednesday, setting a 15-legislative day clock ticking for the Bush Administration to make a last-ditch attempt to shore up Representatives' votes for the massively unpopular treaty. The Congress returns from a July 4th recess on July 11th, so the vote must come this July.

With approval ratings at an all-time low, support for the war plummeting, and efforts to privatize social security going nowhere, the Bush Administration appears to be opening up the pork barrel bank in a desperate attempt to pass something, even if it destroys American jobs and our environment....

This week, studies came to light that were commissioned by the US Department of Labor and carried out by the International Labor Rights Fund (www.laborrights.org). The studies showed that the 5 Central American countries violate basic ILO standards in at least 20 different ways, including violations of freedom to organize and freedom of assembly, forced overtime, lack of payment of minimum wage, and others. Although funded by US taxpayers, the studies were censored by the Bush Administration for almost a year...

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