Faces from the Border: Choosing Friends

New Yorker: Today, about half of the guardians of the border—U.S. Border Patrol agents—are Hispanic, and many have roots in both countries. Consider agent Yesenia León, aged thirty-three. She was born in a small town in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua and came across the border legally when she was four thanks to her father, a U.S. citizen. León, the youngest of six children, was raised in El Paso.

She graduated from Bowie High School, which back then, she says, was known as “La Bowie” because the south-central school had a reputation for its cholos, or gang members. It was also known as the place that had, through a 1992 federal lawsuit, changed the way the agents operated in border cities. The Border Patrol agency routinely stopped and questioned Hispanics near the high school, located just a few feet from the border. The lawsuit brought by Bowie students and staff successfully made a case against racial profiling that has had a major impact on Border Patrol procedures throughout the Southwest. Read more.

Mexico halts immigration inspection at Otay Mesa

UTSanDiego: Following protests from Baja California business and political leaders, Mexican immigration authorities on Tuesday suspended a program at the Otay Mesa border crossing requesting that foreign pedestrians show a passport and say how long they plan to stay in Mexico.

The head of the Baja California office of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, Rodulfo Figueroa Pacheco, confirmed that it was back to business as usual at the port, where some 6,000 visitors cross southbound on foot on any given day. Pedestrian visitors can voluntarily register with Mexican immigration authorities, but won’t be asked to do so, he said. Read more. 

Texas Bolsters Border Patrol With Its Own

New York Times:  Along the Rio Grande here, the suspected smugglers trying to slip into the United States have certainly noticed their adversaries on the water: burly commandos in black-and-white boats mounted with .30-caliber machine guns and bulletproof shields. The patches on the officers’ camouflage fatigues identify them not as federal Border Patrol agents but as another breed of law enforcement entirely.

Texas game wardens.

Pool photo by Eric Gay

A team of them — whose routine duties include investigating fishing tournament cheaters and making arrests for B.U.I., or boating under the influence — patrol the Rio Grande, pulling smuggling suspects from the river and dodging rocks thrown from the Mexican side. Members of the Texas Rangers have also traded in their familiar white cowboy hats for camouflage so they can blend into the brush on covert nighttime operations.

Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused In Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed

Breitbart Texas
By Brandon Darby
June 5, 2014

Houston, Texas - Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil.

The photos illuminate the conditions of the U.S. Border Patrol’s processing centers, as well as the overwhelming task Border Patrol is facing.

Breitbart Texas Border Expert and Contributing Editor Sylvia Longmire reviewed the photos.

“Given the deteriorating security and economic conditions in the Central American countries where most of these children and adult immigrants came from, it's hard to understand how DHS didn't see this coming,” Longmire said. “The trend towards increased cross-border movement towards south Texas and away from Arizona has been apparent; the trend of Central Americans starting to outnumber Mexican crossers has been apparent. Even worse is believing that DHS knew this was coming, but didn't have the resources or ability to cut through bureaucratic red tape to prepare more quickly. Read more.

New urgency to cross along tougher U.S. border

The Washington Post

That’s when many of these men crossed over for the first time, in their late teens or early 20s.

Today the area is perhaps the toughest part of one of the most heavily guarded and closely watched international boundaries in the world. The Department of Homeland Security has doubled border security and immigration enforcement spending since 2006 to $18 billion a year, deploying sensors, cameras, fencing, surveillance drones and federal agents.

The immigration overhaul proposals from Congress and the White House promise to harden the border even more.

The Department of Homeland Security does not estimate how many illegal migrants make it across, but researchers and the migrants themselves say the odds of getting caught are greater than ever.

Since 2005, the United States has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents deployed along the Mexico boundary to 18,516, an all-time high.  Read more. 

Border Patrol Opens Unmanned Crossing on U.S.-Mexico Border

ABC/Univision 

Get ready for the very first "unmanned" border station on the U.S.-Mexico border. Slated to open at the end of this month, the Big Bend National Park in Texas will be staffed by, you guessed it, computers.

The station will be equipped with machines that can scan citizenship documents and conduct live video interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at a station in El Paso, Texas, Tech News Daily reports. While Mexican citizens will be able to use the crossing, U.S. officials maintain that Americans tourists to the national park are more likely to do so. When a similar CBP crossing was open in the same location more than a decade ago, few Mexicans used it. In 2002, because of increased security measures, U.S. officials closed the original crossing, forcing tourists to travel more than 100 miles to the next nearest crossing to get to Mexico, according to Nextgov.

For anyone worried about the effectiveness of an unmanned station, federal officials maintain that the technology is both effective and cost-efficient, given the number of border crossers in the area. Natural barriers, such as the Rio Grande river, already make illegal crossings more difficult in the region than in other segments of the border, Nextgov reports. Cameras and surveillance tools will be set up in the vicinity, like at any other border station and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials will also be able to travel from the El Paso station should the need arise. Read more. 

US & Mexico Plan for New Border Inspection Station in Tijuana

Fox News Latino 
January 03, 2013

Commercial shipments crossing the Mexican border with the United States will have now have a new layer of screening before they can enter the country thanks to the announcement of a planned customs inspections station in Tijuana that will for the first time ever permit U.S. agents to screen loads before they cross into the U.S.

Funded by the Mexican federal government, the facility will operate on the same compound as the busy Otay Mesa border crossing and will have U.S. and Mexican officials operating in the same facility. This idea of the building is to speed up the process for which certain goods – namely produce – cross the border.

The site supposedly has a laboratory, rooms for cold storage and state-of-the-art inspection equipment and U.S. officials would enter the compound from a secure road on the U.S. side of the border. The site will officially be opened once U.S. President Barack Obama and newly-inaugurated Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto give the joint go-ahead. Read more. 

Agent shot dead while patrolling Mexico border; 2nd agent wounded

LA Times: By Molly Hennessy-Fiske. Oct. 2, 2012. HOUSTON -- A U.S. Border Patrol agent was fatally shot Tuesday while patrolling near the Mexico border in Arizona, according to Department of Homeland Security officials.

The agent was shot and killed while patrolling near Naco, Ariz., about 1:50 a.m. MDT, according to a statement sent to the Los Angeles Times by Tucson Border Patrol spokesman Victor Brabble.

Another agent was wounded in the shooting and taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the statement. The Associated Press has reported he was shot in the buttocks and ankle. Read more.

APNewsBreak: US halts Mexico flights for migrants

AP: ELLIOT SPAGAT | September 11, 2012 02:30 AM EST |  

TUCSON, Ariz. — The U.S. government has halted flights home for Mexicans caught entering the country illegally in the deadly summer heat of Arizona's deserts, a money-saving move that follows a seven-year experiment that cost taxpayers nearly $100 million.

More than 125,000 passengers were flown deep into Mexico for free since 2004 in an effort that initially met with skepticism from Mexican government officials and migrants, but was gradually embraced as a way to help people back on their feet and save lives.

The Border Patrol hailed it as a way to discourage people from trying their luck again, and it appears to have kept many away – at least for a short time.

But with Border Patrol arrests at 40-year lows and fresh evidence suggesting more people may be heading south of the border than north, officials struggled to fill the planes and found costs more difficult to justify. Flights carrying up to 146 people were cut to once from twice daily last year.

And this summer, there haven't been any.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Border Patrol, said Monday that it anticipates flights will resume next month in a redesigned program.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because an agreement has not been reached said flights in the redesigned program would be for Mexicans arrested throughout the United States and run year-round. It would be designed for a mix of Mexicans who committed crimes in the United States and non-criminals. Read more. 

US border guards found guilty of people-smuggling

BBC: Two former officers of the US Border Patrol have been found guilty of using their position to smuggle hundreds of illegal immigrants across the border from Mexico for personal gain.

Raul Villarreal and his brother, Fidel, were also convicted of accepting bribes and conspiring to launder money.

Before the case, Raul Villarreal often appeared as a high-profile spokesman for the US Border Patrol agency. Read more.

Grand jury probing death hears from witness to stun-gun shooting by US border officials

AP: SAN DIEGO — A man who saw an illegal immigrant from Mexico get shot with a stun gun by U.S. border authorities said he testified Thursday to a federal grand jury amid signs that prosecutors are considering criminal charges in the immigrant’s death after more than two years of silence on the politically charged case. Read more.

Mexico Accuses Border Patrol of Shooting Underage Mexican

Fox News Latino: SAN ANTONIO – An FBI investigation has been launched on the U.S. border with Mexico regarding the possible connection between two incidents that may have resulted in the death of an underage Mexican citizen.

On Saturday, U.S. Border Patrol agents reportedly opened fire along the Rio Grande after being pelted by rocks and having a gunman point a weapon in their direction. On Sunday, Mexico confirmed and condemned the fatal shooting of a Mexican citizen on the Mexican side of the border on Saturday as well. Read more.

House approves waiver of border environmental laws

CBS News: WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday approved a bill that would allow the Border Patrol to circumvent more than a dozen environmental laws on all federally managed lands within 100 miles of the borders with Mexico and Canada.

Supporters said the measure is needed to give border agents unfettered access to rugged lands now controlled by the Interior Department and Forest Service. Laws such as the Wilderness Act and Endangered Species Act often prevent agents from driving vehicles on huge swaths of land, leaving it to wildlife, illegal immigrants and smugglers who can walk through the territory undisturbed, they said. Read more.

Human rights group accuses U.S. of abuses along Mexico border

Reuters U.S. policing along the Mexico border discriminates against Hispanics and Native Americans and contributes to the deaths of illegal immigrants, according to a study by the human rights group Amnesty International USA.
 
The report, titled "In Hostile Terrain: Human Rights Violations in Immigration Enforcement in the U.S. Southwest," identifies what it says are systemic failures of federal, state and local authorities to enforce immigration laws without discrimination.

"Communities living along the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly Latinos, individuals perceived to be of Latino origin and indigenous communities, are disproportionately affected by a range of immigration-control measures, resulting in a pattern of human rights violations," the study said.

The U.S. government has tightened security along the nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico in recent years, adding additional fencing, surveillance technologies and Border Patrol agents. The federal government also has partnered with some state and local police forces to give officers immigration-enforcement powers.  Read more

Full Report from Amnesty International here:

IN HOSTILE TERRAIN: HUMAN RIGHTS ... - Amnesty International 
www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/.../en/.../amr510182012en.pdf

Drug War and U.S. Corruption: Santa Cruz Sheriffs Deputy sentenced for trying to smuggle cocaine

KVOA: "A former Santa Cruz County Sheriff who allegedly used his position to smuggle nearly 5 kilograms of cocaine across the U.S./Mexico border was sentenced today in U.S. District Court.

Jesus Rene Contreras, 31, who was a six-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department, was sentenced to six years in federal prison for conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine - he pleaded guilty to the charge back in July 2011.

Court documents reveal Contreras worked with Ernesto Castro and another individual to use Contreras' position as a deputy sheriff to transport cocaine past the I-19 Border Patrol checkpoint. On March 2, 2010, he drove about 4.9 kilograms of cocaine past the checkpoint while in uniform and driving his official patrol vehicle." read more