Illegal Alien With Al-Qaeda Ties And Mara Salvatrucha Gang Member Caught At Southern Border

I have mentioned before that al-Qaeda is working with south american gangs. Now they have discovered an Muslim illegal alien crossing the border with a group of Mexicans and al-Qaeda related gang members. For more on the ties between this gang -- the Mara Salvatrucha Gang -- and al-Qaeda see my story from September 28 "al-Qaeda Operative Enlisting Help Of Violent El Salvador Gang Leader".

Brownsville Herald

Last week’s arrest of a Bangladeshi immigrant trying to illegally enter the country has federal authorities concerned over the vulnerability of the U.S.-Mexico border to infiltration by terrorists.

Federal court records show Fakhrul Islam, age unknown, was arrested Dec. 4 with 13 other undocumented immigrants as they tried to pass through a wooded area east of Brownsville.

The records said a man later identified by Border Patrol agents as a member of the Mara Salvatruchas gang was traveling in the same group as Islam.

The Central American gang has alleged links to al-Qaida.

"This is alarming," said U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Texas.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Ortiz said the Central American gang members and terrorists are suspected of trying to blend in with Mexican or other immigrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We knew this was happening underground, but now it’s come to the surface," he said.

Yeah, "We knew this was happening underground". Well Mr. Ortiz, underground, above ground it doesn't matter when it comes to a terrorist attack. Stop this flow of al-Qaeda now before a lot of Americans have to bury their relatives. Ridiculous. Stupid politicians are so worried about offending some illegal aliens they refuse to do anything about the terrorists who want to kill us.

Source - http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/000531.html

Cost for illegal aliens in California estimated at nearly $9 billion

California's nearly 3 million illegal immigrants cost taxpayers nearly $9 billion each year, according to a new report released last week by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes stricter immigration policies.

Educating the children of illegal immigrants is the largest cost, estimated at $7.7 billion each year, according to the report. Medical care for illegal immigrants and incarceration of those who have committed crimes are the next two largest expenses measured in the study, the author said.

Pro-immigrant groups and Latino researchers dispute the federation's findings, calling them biased and incomplete.

Jack Martin, who wrote the report, said Thursday that the $9 billion figure does not include other expenses that are difficult to measure, such as special English instruction, school lunch programs, and welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal immigrant workers.

"It's a bottom of the range number," Martin said.

The federation is one of the nation's leading lobbying groups aimed at curbing immigration into the country.

Authors of the report say it culls information from the U.S. Census and other studies addressing the cost of illegal immigration into the country to draw its conclusions.

Gerardo Gonzalez, director of Cal State San Marcos' National Latino Research Center, which compiles data on Latinos, criticized the report. He said it does not measure some of the contributions that immigrants make to the state's economy.

"Beyond taxes, these workers' production and spending contribute to California's economy, especially the agricultural sector," Gonzalez said.

Immigrants, both legal and illegal, are the backbone of the state's nearly $28 billion-a-year agricultural industry, Gonzalez and other researchers say.

More than two-thirds of the estimated 340,000 agriculture workers in California are noncitizens, most of whom are believed to be illegal immigrants, according to a 1998 study on farmworkers prepared for the state Legislature.

Local farmers say migrant farmworkers are critical to their businesses, and without them they would have to close their farms or move their operations overseas.

Martin disagrees. He said illegal immigrants displace American workers by taking low-skilled jobs, keep wages low by creating an overabundance of workers and stifle innovation by reducing the need for mechanized labor.

"The product of the illegal immigrant is not included (in the report) because if that is an essential product it will get done one way or another," Martin said. Employers "would have to pay better wages or invest money on mechanization."

Martin's study looks specifically at the costs of educating illegal immigrants' children, providing medical care to illegal immigrants and jailing those convicted of committing crimes. The report estimates the total cost at $10.5 billion each year, but that is offset by about $1.7 billion in taxes that illegal immigrants pay.

The study assumes that there are about 1 million children of illegal immigrant parents in California, or about 15 percent of the state's K-12 school enrolled population. The estimate is based on a 1994 study by the Urban Institute that concluded there were 307,000 illegal immigrant children enrolled in the state's public schools.

Martin also added an estimate of 597,000 U.S.-born children whose parents are illegal immigrants arriving at a total of 1,022,000 children. Multiplying the number of children by the estimated $7,577 the state spends on average per pupil, the study arrived at the $7.7 billion figure.

Including the number of U.S.-born children in the study is one of the reasons pro-immigrant groups said the study is biased.

"I think FAIR is without doubt an extremist organization that tries to portray itself as a mainstream group," said Christian Ramirez, director of the San Diego office of the American Friends Service Committee, an advocate group for legal and illegal immigrants.

The study's author defended the report, saying that the children were born in the United States as a result of their parents' illegal entry into the country.

"In no way does the report identify them as different kinds of citizens, because they would not have been born in the U.S. had their parents not come into the country illegally," Martin said.

To arrive at the cost of providing health care to illegal immigrants, the federation's study used an earlier 2000 analysis of health expenses paid by border counties that concluded the state spent $908 million on medical care for immigrants.

Martin said he adjusted the 2000 figure for increases in the population and inflation on the cost of providing health care and estimated that the state will spend about $1.4 billion in 2004.

The report also estimated that the state will spend another $1.4 billion to jail the 48,000 illegal immigrants in state prisons. California is compensated by the federal government to offset the cost of housing this population, but the federal payments were a fraction, about $111 million, of the total cost, Martin said.

To figure out the contributions that this immigrant population makes in taxes, the federation's study said it adjusted the Urban Institute's study estimates of $732 million for population increases and concluded that they contribute about $1.7 billion in sales, income and property taxes.

A similar study conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., and released in August, said that illegal immigrants cost the federal government $10 billion more than they pay in taxes.

The federal government pays about $2.2 billion in medical treatment for uninsured immigrants, according to the report. It pays $1.9 billion in food assistance programs, such as food stamps and school lunches, for low-income families. And it pays $1.4 billion in aid to schools that educate illegal immigrant children.

Martin said states bear most of the cost of illegal immigration.

"State costs are much higher on a per capita basis because of the fact that the largest expenses are medical care and education and those are borne at the local level, not the federal," Martin said.

The federation's full report is at: www.fairus.org.

Source - http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/article_5cedf831-9d5d-5335-af7e-2af6730a577c.html

NOT ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS COME HERE TO WORK

You read about it in the newspapers, "They come here for a better life…they come for jobs." Today, in excess of 15 million illegal aliens now operate in the USA--not all of them come here to work. It’s not that we don’t have crime in America. Two million prisoners inhabit our prisons. However, according to the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC, an astounding 30 percent of those prisoners constitute illegal aliens at a cost of $1.6 billion annually. That adds up to 600,000 foreigners ripping off taxpayer dollars as prisoners sit in our cells during their incarceration period.

They shouldn’t have gotten into the United States in the first place, but the crimes they committed brought horrific death, misery and suffering to American citizens. A summer ago in Boulder, Colorado, eight illegal aliens raped eight American women. The aliens fled back to Mexico. In nearby City of Longmont, a used car dealer suffered so much theft from his lot that he went bankrupt. An illegal alien killed a California Police Officer David Marsh, last year. Robberies and break-ins have become the norm in California. They’ve become the pattern in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and dozens of other states. But the sobering realities concerning these crimes point to one fact--they are illegal aliens.

In her recent scathing report in the City Journal, ‘THE ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIME WAVE’ by investigative reporter, Heather MacDonald, demonstrates that our country suffers an imported crime wave.

A full 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide, which totaled 1,500 last year in Los Angeles, pointed to illegal aliens. Soberingly, two thirds of all fugitive felony warrants, totaling 17,000, were for illegal aliens. In 1995, a report showed that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in Southern California included illegal aliens. That gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia on drug distribution schemes, extortion and drive-by assassinations. MS-13 Salvadoran gangs from Central America, with over 8,000 members, operate in 28 American cities. They’re the guys offering free drug samples to our kids with the end result being addiction. Millions of American families spend millions reversing the drug imprint on their children.

More than $120 billion in drugs crosses our porous Mexican borders annually. While Tom Ridge’s TSA screeners pat down gray-haired ladies at airports, drug runners scurry across our borders with cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Smugglers load them up along "Cocaine Alley" with clockwork coordination that rivals Fed Ex, Greyhound, UPS and the US Postal system.

While those passengers on airplanes safely fly in the skies, our kids’ minds fly on their way to drug-induced addictive crashes. All brought to you by our Congress and president who refuse to secure our borders with troops! With over 4,000 illegal aliens crossing the Arizona sector nightly according to Time Magazine’s September report, it’s apparent the U.S. Border Patrol is outgunned, outmanned and out flanked. They catch one out of four border crossers. Congress twiddles its thumbs pretending that Homeland Security works.

How did this crime wave emerge and why is it spreading? In 1979, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates enacted Special Order 40. Astoundingly, as if insanity took the front row seat in their minds, leaders of dozens of cities from San Francisco to New York—adopted this special order. This law prohibits police officers arresting illegal aliens. Even if it aims to avoid racial profiling, the result promotes illegal alien migration. That allows free reign by hardened criminals that know they can’t be stopped.

Boulder, Colorado practices the same ‘sanctuary’ policy for illegal aliens. Boulder’s mayor and city council encourages illegal aliens by assuring the police chief does not arrest illegals. Some of Boulder’s immigration lawyers were so bold as to offer publicly announced classes for illegal aliens on how to avoid arrest, detention and deportation by immigration agents.

Last summer, again in Boulder, two illegal aliens crashed head-on with Colorado University quarterback, John Hessler in the dead of night without lights. They fled. Hessler now works to regain his life in a wheelchair after months long coma.

Not far away in Denver last summer, an illegal alien, Javier Cruz-Caballero, purposely ran down police officer, Robert Bryant, while the officer operated a radar gun in a school walk zone. Witnesses saw the Mexican national rev up his engine while taking dead-aim at the officer. Bryant flew 30 feet through the air while suffering a broken leg and head lacerations.

This year, Governor Baldacci of Maine signed a sanctuary order for that state, which means they will be recording their own illegal alien crime wave in the coming months.

At a higher level, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg supports illegal alien crime by maintaining a ‘sanctuary policy’ in that city. In January, four illegals raped and killed a New Yorker. That crime was one of thousands of felonies committed by illegal aliens who are protected from detention and deportation.

But more horrific in impact of this loss of the rule-of-law, former Mayor Guiliani practiced Special Order 40. Several illegal aliens protected by the Order participated in 9/11. Traffic police stopped terrorist Atta two weeks before 9/11. He produced an expired visa. He was not detained. He drove an airplane into the World Trade Center. The death toll reached 2,800, but the impact on our nation reverberates today. Yet, Special Order 40 continues full force in protecting an estimated 15-20 million illegal aliens in our country. They can’t be checked, detained or deported because of it. They enjoy carte blanc freedom to continue their crime spree. No thanks for the memories Mr. Guiliani--and what may come again Mr. Bloomberg!

Multiply the aforementioned individual crime stories times tens of thousands across America. It casts a different light on illegal aliens coming to America, "To do the jobs Americans won’t do."

These examples of illegal immigrant crime depict a growing menace to our functioning society. While a sleepy American public watches idly and Congress refuses to secure our borders and mayors adopt the ‘sanctuary policy’--we citizens receive an average of 4,000 illegals every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days per year—in the Arizona sector, ALONE! It amounts to 10,000 per night on our northern, eastern, western and southern borders. That equals three million in 2004 according to Pulitzer Prize winning authors Donald Barlett and Jim Steele of Time Magazine’s, September 12, 2004 report, "Who Left the Door Open?" A copy of this expose’ may be obtained by writing to www.frostywooldridge.com

Where does that leave you? If you’re in California, you’re planning on moving to Idaho or Montana because it’s already too late. With over 3.5 million illegals, the crime wave is beyond stopping. Over 800,000 Californians fled the Golden Bear State last year. If you’re in Georgia, you’re probably stewing under your breath, but you don’t have a clue that it’s going to get worse. Another kind of crime hit them last year. Georgians paid $230 million to pay for illegal alien kids in their schools at $7,161.00 per child. In Chicago, they take jobs, rob banks and arrange drug, prostitution and theft rings. It grows worse in every city in America.

It’s called ‘THIRD WORLD MOMENTUM.’ The key is to understand that in the Third World--corruption, crime, child prostitution, bashing in peoples’ heads and worse is the norm. Look at Bogata, Columbia for mayhem and general chaos. Why? Because the rule-of-law no longer applies! THAT kind of corruption burrows itself into America because mayors, governors, senators, congressmen/women and corporations at the highest levels--aid, abet and encourage illegal immigration. Other than Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Charles Norwood and Nathan Deal of Georgia, the sickening majority of our Congress refuses to do its job. Today, in America, concerning illegal immigration, our public officials sworn to uphold the Constitution eschew their oaths of office.

The American public still hasn’t grasped the gravity of this situation or keeps thinking it will go away on its own. IT WILL GET WORSE—MUCH WORSE.

We’re as vulnerable as before December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 because our leaders refuse to uphold our immigration laws.

Lack of leadership at the highest levels in this country aids, abets and encourages our illegal alien crime wave and the loss of the rule of law.

History books have recorded how Rome burned while Nero fiddled. America’s history will record elected leaders at the highest levels fiddling while America burned. Not to be outdone, the majority of Americans sit, watch, wait and pay more attention to Monday Night Football while their own communities, towns, cities and country swirl down the toilet.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -- Edmund Burke 1797

Source - http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty8.htm

Bush revives bid to legalize illegal aliens

President Bush yesterday moved aggressively to resurrect his plan to relax rules against illegal immigration, a move bound to anger conservatives just days after they helped re-elect him.

The president met privately in the Oval Office with Sen. John McCain to discuss jump-starting a stalled White House initiative that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants who broke the law to enter the United States.

The Arizona Republican is one of the Senate's most outspoken supporters of expanding guest-worker programs and has introduced his own bill to offer a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

"We are formulating plans for the legislative agenda for next year," said White House political strategist Karl Rove. "And immigration will be on that agenda."

He added: "The president had a meeting this morning to discuss with a significant member of the Senate the prospect of immigration reform. And he's going to make it an important item."

While the president was huddling with Mr. McCain, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was pushing the plan during a visit to Mexico City.

"The president remains committed to comprehensive immigration reform as a high priority in his second term," he told a meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Binational Commission. "We will work closely with our Congress to achieve this goal."

But key opponents in Congress said Mr. Bush's proposal isn't going anywhere.

"An amnesty by any other name is still an amnesty, regardless of what the White House wants to call it," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus.

"Their amnesty plan was dead on arrival when they sent it to the Congress in January, and if they send the same pig with lipstick back to Congress next January, it will suffer the same fate," he said.

With the House and Senate already clashing over border security and deportation provisions in the pending intelligence overhaul bill, some Capitol Hill aides said it's almost impossible that Congress could agree on a broader immigration proposal.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), said he "suddenly went from calm to stressed out" after learning of the president's renewed push for immigration relaxation.

He predicted the plan would continue to meet vigorous opposition from House Republicans.

"If the House wouldn't deliver this bill before the guy's election, when he claimed he needed it for the Hispanic vote, why would they deliver it after the election, when their constituents overwhelmingly oppose it?" he said. "Why would House leaders follow the president over a cliff?"

White House officials insisted the move was not "payback" to Hispanic voters who supported Mr. Bush in greater numbers last week than in 2000. Although the president first proposed relaxing immigration shortly after taking office, he mothballed the idea after September 11, 2001, and downplayed it on the campaign trail.

"The president has long believed that reforming our immigration system is a high priority," White House deputy press secretary Claire Buchan said yesterday.

Mr. Stein said Mr. Bush is already a "lame duck president" whose proposal "has no credibility." He expressed astonishment that the president resurrected the plan before pushing other second-term agenda items, like tax simplification or Social Security privatization.

"There's a sense of obstinacy in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's a losing approach," he said. "I mean, the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result."

Though most members of Congress agree on the need for a guest-worker program to fill unwanted jobs, House Republican leaders, including Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, have panned other parts of the president's proposal as an amnesty.

Mr. Bush has not sent immigration legislation to Congress, though seven bills have been introduced by members of the House and Senate, according to Numbers USA, an organization that lobbies for stricter immigration controls.

They range from a proposal to give legal status to fewer than 1 million agricultural workers to a bill that could legalize most of the estimated 10 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States. But none of the bills has passed even one chamber.

Mr. McCain is sponsoring a bill, along with Reps. Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake, both Arizona Republicans, that would go further than the president's principles by explicitly allowing those now here illegally to enter a guest-worker program and eventually apply for permanent residence.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the president wants to "provide a more humane treatment" of illegal aliens from Mexico.

"America has always been a welcoming society, and this is a program that will match willing workers with willing employers," he said. "It will promote compassion for workers who right now have no protection."

He added of Mr. Bush: "It's something that he intends to work with members on to get moving again in the second term. It's something he believes very strongly in."

Mr. Powell yesterday insisted that security is an important part of his boss's proposal.

"We must also be innovative in our efforts to stop those who abuse the openness of our societies along the border, who would use this openness to harm our citizens through trafficking in drugs, or trafficking in human beings, or by committing acts of terrorism," Mr. Powell said.

Some on Capitol Hill said Mr. Bush may be emboldened by the fact that he didn't appear to lose support among conservatives in this year's election, and several Republicans who did support guest-worker programs defeated primary challengers, including Mr. Flake, Mr. Kolbe and Rep. Christopher B. Cannon, Utah Republican.

"I think a lot of members around the country saw those results and realized that voters are more interested in a serious solution to this problem," said Mr. Flake's spokesman, Matthew Specht. "So I think that certainly improves the chances for reform next year."

In a 90-minute interview Sept. 22 with editors and reporters of The Washington Times, Mr. Rove said a Bush victory would "be an opportunity" for the president's guest-worker proposal for immigrants, although he declined to call it a "mandate," as he did on such issues as Social Security reform and tax cuts.

Source - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/nov/10/20041110-123424-5467r/

On the payroll: illegal aliens

Long before he left his native Guadalajara, Mexico, Ricardo Robles heard he could easily find a good-paying job in the United States.

So it came as little surprise to him that almost as soon as he arrived in San Francisco two years ago, undocumented and penniless, he was earning $10 an hour pouring concrete for a building contractor, helping construct an apartment complex.

He earned more money in a day than he could in a week doing construction work in Mexico. All he had to do was stand on a street corner with other day laborers, and employers came to him. Best of all, he said, they didn't seem to care about his immigration status.

"They never asked me for my papers," said Robles, 36, who after a brief visit home was recently in Tijuana, waiting to cross the border again. "It was easy to get work."

The U.S. government has spent billions of dollars during the past decade trying to deter illegal immigration along the Southwestern border, installing fencing, setting up sophisticated surveillance equipment and hiring thousands of Border Patrol agents.

The centerpiece of this border strategy has been Operation Gatekeeper. After its implementation in October 1994, Gatekeeper largely sealed off the once-busy crossing zones that led into urban San Diego County, pushing immigrant traffic into the desert and mountains. Nearly 3,000 people have died attempting to cross the border illegally since January 1995, many of dehydration and exhaustion along the remote trails now favored by smugglers.

Yet U.S. employers across the country continue to hire undocumented immigrants in violation of federal law, providing an economic incentive that undermines efforts to curb illegal immigration through border enforcement. Some employers do so knowingly, taking advantage of workers' illegal status to keep wages low and costs down. Others are duped by job applicants with fraudulent documents or turn a blind eye when presented with them.

Legal loopholes place the burden on immigration authorities to prove wrongdoing on the employer's part, so relatively few who get caught are penalized. Sanctions against employers who break the law have declined sharply in the past decade, with the number of fines imposed on employers falling nearly 99 percent from 1992 to 2000.

Politically, enforcement is skewed heavily toward the border, not business. Although talk of national security dominated the presidential campaign this year, there was scant mention of enforcing immigration laws in the workplace.

Meanwhile, as the Border Patrol has roughly tripled in budget and size since the early 1990s, so has the undocumented population in the United States. According to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan economic and social policy research group, there were about 9.8 million undocumented immigrants living in the country as of last year, up from 3.5 million in 1990.

At least 800,000 people are estimated to enter the country illegally each year. They readily find work in labor-intensive industries such as agriculture, where, according to a federal Department of Labor survey, at least half the work force in the late 1990s was unauthorized to work. They also flock to jobs in construction, manufacturing, meat packing, cleaning, hotels and restaurants, all industries that depend on low-wage help.

"If the federal government really wanted to stop illegal immigration, then they know how to seal a border," said Lilia Garcia, director of the Los Angeles-based Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a union-funded watchdog group that investigates illegal practices in the cleaning industry. "The hypocrisy is that they allow for a steady stream of migration to maintain these service industries running because these workers are the engines of these industries."

Finding a way to work

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted amnesty to more than 3 million undocumented immigrants already in the country. It also made it illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers, establishing penalties that include fines of as much as $10,000 per worker and six months in prison for violators.

But the operative word is knowingly. While job applicants must present identification proving their eligibility to work in the United States, employers are not required to verify its authenticity.

"In 1986, we basically said that you are off the hook if you get documents, which can easily be forged," said Philip Martin, a University of California Davis expert on immigration and labor issues. "We didn't quite say that, but it came close."

Many undocumented workers earn a living in the underground economy, although at least half are thought to be on employer payrolls, having presented phony or stolen Social Security numbers, alien identification cards or driver licenses purchased on the black market.

Some employers are fooled by high-quality fakes, according to immigration officials. Others aren't but pretend to be.

Those who know their workers are undocumented sometimes take advantage of the situation, knowing the employees aren't in a position to complain about skimpy wages or unpaid overtime.

In August, a contractor who provided janitors to Target stores agreed in a settlement with the Department of Labor to pay workers $1.9 million in back overtime. In late 2000, janitors working for a contractor who provided employees for more than 600 Albertsons, Vons, Safeway and Ralphs stores in California sued the stores, along with their employer, on similar grounds; a tentative settlement has been reached.

Although the workers' immigration status was not an issue in either case, there were janitors involved who did not have authorization to work.

One 34-year-old San Diego janitor, who identified himself only as Roberto because of his illegal status, recalls working seven days a week for a year with no overtime, sweeping and mopping grocery store floors. He was eventually given one day off every two weeks.

"You need to work, so you have to take it," he said.

The cleaning industry is rife with subcontractors who provide a layer of immunity for their clients. After immigration authorities found more than 250 contracted janitors working illegally in Wal-Mart stores last year, Wal-Mart officials denied knowledge of any wrongdoing, even though several of the company's cleaning contractors had admitted to hiring undocumented workers in the past.

Employers in industries that attract undocumented workers say they do what is required to comply with the law.

"The employers themselves are not standing at the border to decide who should come across and who shouldn't," said Eric Larson, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau. "The employers do everything they possibly can."

But some are all too aware of how their workers entered the Unites States.

While investigating the grocery store contractor last year, Garcia, of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, came across a suspicious payroll document. Next to a deduction of $200 taken from a janitor's pay was written "prestamo coyote," Spanish for "smuggler loan."

A small employer could easily be bankrupted by fines, so Garcia sees only one explanation for such boldness.

"I think it's because enforcement is weak," she said. "There is no fear of government."

Work-site enforcement

If an employer gets caught, the worst punishment usually befalls the undocumented workers, who are deported. Federal audits of San Diego military contractors turned up nearly 160 undocumented workers during the past year, but none of the contractors was penalized.

Nationwide, work-site enforcement has declined significantly since the early 1990s, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. Fines imposed on employers for breaking the law dwindled from 1,063 orders in 1992 to only 13 in 2002. Work-site arrests, warnings issued to employers and cases completed also dropped off sharply during this time.

More recently, from 1999 to 2003, criminal employer cases presented for prosecution decreased to 4 from 182. Only two employers in the city of San Diego have been referred to the U.S. Attorney for prosecution since 2000.

Immigration officials say some of the latest numbers don't reflect investigations still in progress or the recent focus on counterterrorism.

Recent work-site investigations have targeted industries such as airports, power plants and military contractors, which, while they present security risks, do not typically attract undocumented workers. These efforts may not uncover as many violations as audits of "mom and pop" businesses in service industries, said Russ Knocke, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees work-site investigations.

Perhaps most tellingly, investigators are spending less time going after employers: Since 1999, investigative work hours dedicated to work-site enforcement have decreased by more than half. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents spent a total of 471,210 work hours investigating employers in 1999. They spent only 177,975 work hours doing so last year.

Some immigration experts say enforcement is weak because lawmakers find it more politically acceptable to reinforce the border than to crack down on businesses.

"Congress was committed to passing a toothless employer sanctions law," said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego. "It was the only way they could get it through. . . . There was a lot of pressure from business lobbies, from agribusiness, restaurants, hotels."

Over the years, politicians have intervened on behalf of a number of employers caught hiring undocumented immigrants. Some employers who have come under fire are generous political contributors, such as Wal-Mart, which has criminal and civil cases pending.

Last month, President Bush signed a Homeland Security budget for fiscal year 2005 that granted $74 million for additional Border Patrol technology, including $10 million for unmanned aerial drones. Only $5 million was granted to strengthen work-site enforcement, a fraction of the $23 million enhancement initially requested. The Border Patrol's parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, was granted in full its overall budget request for fiscal year 2005. By contrast, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has faced spending constraints this year, requested a little over $4 billion but received $3.6 billion.

Priority is given to the border, but it's not because politicians are soft on business, said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, a proponent of Operation Gatekeeper.

"I agree that having major busts of employers who have hired illegal immigrants would help cut down the magnet," said Hunter, who still supports border-enforcement initiatives. "You have to balance those two priorities, but the main priority has to be the border. . . . Particularly in this time of terrorism, it is important to have barriers."

Congress did vote last year to extend a pilot Homeland Security program that allows employers to verify workers' documents on a federal database at no cost. The program, used in California and five other states, is expected to be available nationwide beginning Dec. 1.

But participation is strictly voluntary. This is perhaps why only 127 employers in San Diego County use it despite the fact that the program has existed in California since the late 1990s.

Some employers have complained of long waits for results, although the program is supposed to verify documents immediately. There also have been reports of inaccuracies.

"For the meantime, having it voluntary is still the preferred way to go," said Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego.

Searching for answers

Numerous guest-worker proposals have been discussed this election year, ranging from a Bush administration idea that would grant foreign workers only temporary stays to Democratic proposals calling for "earned amnesty" for longtime undocumented workers who meet certain criteria.

But regulating the inbound flow of workers will still be difficult without finding a way to reduce the outbound flow from Mexico, where the majority of undocumented immigrants come from. Many are fleeing the effects of economic and trade policies that have failed to produce enough jobs to keep them home and in some cases have cost them their jobs.

"If Mexico were getting a lot richer and cooperated in stopping other people from coming through, that might do something," said Martin of UC Davis. "But I have a feeling that until we come up with an effective internal strategy, you can't put it all at the border."

Until that happens, immigrants who have an economic incentive to cross the border illegally will continue to do so, finding ways around the barriers put up to keep them out.

"There, it's easy to find work," said Robles, the hopeful border crosser in Tijuana, pointing north across the fence. "In Guadalajara, there is no work."

Source - http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20041107-9999-8n7jobs.html

North Carolina Woman Gang Raped By Seven Illegal Aliens

6 men accused of raping woman

Police: Unusual to charge so many, have so much evidence

Topics: gang rape, laws, gangs, crimes, Americans, illegal immigration, aliens, licenses

KYTJA WEIR Staff Writer

Charlotte Observer October 12, 2004

Six men were in custody Monday, charged with gang raping a 37-year-old woman visiting a Huntersville home over the weekend.

But Huntersville police are still looking for a seventh man.

The woman, whom police did not identify, visited a trailer home in the 11000 block of Cimmaron Road on the southwestern edge of Huntersville around 9:30 p.m. Saturday night, said Huntersville police Lt. Ken Richardson.

She was a friend of one of the men who lived there, off McCoy Road, Richardson said.

The friend and six other men held the woman at the home for at least six hours and repeatedly raped her, Richardson said.

The next morning she called police around 11:30 a.m. and went to Lake Norman Regional Medical Center to be treated for physical injuries.

Such rapes with multiple attackers are nearly unheard of in the town of about 32,300 people, Richardson said. Since joining the department six years ago, the lieutenant said, he hasn't seen a rape case with so many suspects -- or so much evidence.

But rape has been on the rise in Mecklenburg County this year. In the first half of 2004, the number of rapes reported to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police increased 11 percent from the same period in 2003. It's unclear, though, how many of the 156 reported rapes were gang rapes, a term for rapes with more than one suspect.

"It's not the victim's fault," Richardson said. "I believe people should be able to go where they want to go and be safe."

Huntersville police visited the home Sunday afternoon to collect evidence and found the men were in the country illegally. It's unclear what country they are from, police said. Investigators called immigration officials who detained the men while Huntersville police continued their investigation.

The woman identified five of the men, Richardson said, and the sixth offered a statement to police. They are still trying to identify and locate a seventh man who raped her, police said.

On Monday afternoon, police charged each of the six men with first degree forcible rape, first degree sexual offense and first degree kidnapping, Richardson said.

The men charged are Blas Ceron Santiago, 27; Rafael Ceron Santiago, 23; Alfredo Munoz Perez, 26; and Antonio Islas Lucio, 24. All lived at the trailer. Also charged are Eladio Castillo Castillo, 28, who lives in Cornelius; and Alejandro Morales Suarez, 25, who lives elsewhere in Huntersville, police said.

Source - http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=30

Al Qaeda seeks tie to local illegal alien gangs

A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States -- including a stronghold in the Washington area -- in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said. Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador's notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans -- mostly gang members -- into the United States. Although they are actively involved in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, Mara Salvatrucha members in America also have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults -- including at least seven killings in Virginia and a machete attack on a 16-year-old in Alexandria that severely mutilated his hands. The Salvadoran gang, known to law enforcement authorities as MS-13 because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13, is thought to have established a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, from where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States. Authorities said al Qaeda terrorists hope to take advantage of a lack of detention space within the Department of Homeland Security that has forced immigration officials to release non-Mexican illegal aliens back into the United States, rather than return them to their home countries. Less than 15 percent of those released appear for immigration hearings. Nearly 60,000 illegal aliens designated as other-than-Mexican, or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border. El Shukrijumah, born in Saudi Arabia but thought to be a Yemen national, was spotted in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in July, having crossed the border illegally from Nicaragua after a stay in Panama. U.S. authorities said al Qaeda operatives have been in Tegucigalpa planning attacks against British, Spanish and U.S. embassies. Known to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada, El Shukrijumah had sought meetings with the Mara Salvatrucha gang leaders who control alien-smuggling routes through Mexico and into the United States. El Shukrijumah, 29, who authorities said was in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called "dirty bomb" and reportedly has family members in Guyana, was named in a March 2003 material-witness arrest warrant by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia, where U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said he is sought in connection with potential terrorist threats against the United States. A former southern Florida resident and pilot thought to have helped plan the September 11 attacks, El Shukrijumah was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in plans to strike new targets in the United States. Citing "credible intelligence from multiple sources," Mr. Ashcroft said at the time that El Shukrijumah posed "a clear and present danger to America." In August, an FBI alert described him as "armed and dangerous" and a major threat to homeland security. Earlier this month, Mr. Ashcroft confirmed that U.S. border agents and inspectors had ramped up efforts to find El Shukrijumah amid reports that the al Qaeda leader was thought to be seeking entry routes into the United States along the U.S.-Mexico border. Mr. Ashcroft noted that increased enforcement efforts were under way in the wake of a rise of arrests of border jumpers from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Authorities said Mara Salvatrucha gang members moved into the Los Angeles area in the 1980s and developed a reputation for being organized and extremely violent. The gang since has expanded into the Washington area, including Virginia and Maryland, and into Oregon, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Georgia and Florida. More than 3,000 Mara Salvatrucha gang members are thought to be in the Washington area, with a major operation in Northern Virginia. Other gang centers, authorities said, include Montgomery and Prince George's counties and the Hispanic neighborhoods of Washington. Mr. McNulty, whose office has prosecuted Mara Salvatrucha gang members, has described the organization as the "gang of greatest interest" to law enforcement authorities. He said gang members are recruited predominantly from Hispanic communities and typically among juveniles, some as young as 13. Recruits are "jumped" into the gang by being beaten by members while others count to 13, he said. Gang rules, he said, are indoctrinated into new recruits and ruthlessly enforced. Those who cooperate with law enforcement are given the "green light," he said, meaning that the gang had approved their killing. In March, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office filed an injunction against Mara Salvatrucha, charging that the gang's criminal activity constituted a "public nuisance" based on the number of killings, robberies and drug crimes. The injunction requires gang members, under public nuisance statutes, to follow curfew rules and regulations and prohibits them from associating, driving or appearing together in designated areas of the city.

Source - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/sep/28/20040928-123346-3928r/

Little to stop illegal aliens from voting

U.S. citizens who go to the polls Nov. 2 to decide local, state and national elections are likely to get more help from noncitizens this year than ever before.

Beyond requiring applicants to sign a pledge on voter-registration forms affirming that they are U.S. citizens, there is no way to prevent the nation's estimated 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens from casting ballots in November, area elections officials said.

Locally, only Virginia requires voters to provide their Social Security numbers, but the state does not require voters to show their Social Security cards.

"There is no way of checking," said Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone. "We have no way of doing that. We have no access to any information about who is in the United States legally or otherwise."

Nationally, immigration experts said it is likely that illegal immigrants vote, but that only a small percentage does so.

"Evidence suggests very few illegal aliens vote, but it's certainly not zero," said Steven Camarota, director of research at the D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies. "Illegal aliens don't come to America to vote, and would generally try to avoid doing so."

Today, there are roughly 8 million illegal aliens in the United States who are of voting age, he said.

Mr. Camarota said more legal immigrants who are not citizens might be voting illegally.

"The whole system isn't well-guarded," he said. "There's no system in place to really prevent illegal aliens from voting or even to deter them from voting."

Six Maryland municipalities -- Chevy Chase, Takoma Park, Garrett Park, Barnesville, Martin's Additions and Somerset -- allow noncitizens to vote only in local elections. However, in state and national elections, voters must meet the state standards for voter registration.

Given the predicted close election this year and the 2000 election that was decided by a small number of votes, Mr. Camarota said even the few aliens who do vote could make a difference in the results.

Only first-time voters are required to provide photo identification in Virginia and the District. No jurisdiction requires voters to show proof of citizenship at the polls.

No federal agency keeps records of which undocumented immigrants are in the country, Mrs. Lamone said.

Maryland does ensure, through an extensive process of cross-database checks and balances, that there are no deceased persons or felons on its voter rolls.

Barbara Cockrell, assistant secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections, said the state has a computerized voter-registration system that uses Social Security numbers as unique identifiers. The state constitution requires that voters provide their numbers, which she said are kept private.

Miss Cockrell said asking on the registration forms whether applicants are citizens provides the needed safeguards.

"They take an oath under penalty of perjury," she said. "After the first time, we don't ask them to bring ID."

Bill O'Field, a spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, said the penalty for lying on the voter-registration form is a maximum five-year prison sentence or a $10,000 fine.

Other than for first-time voters who registered by mail, "there's no checking of ID," he said.

Dan Stein, president of the D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, said relaxed voting regulations and the ability to register to vote through the Department of Motor Vehicles allows illegal immigrants to get a form of legitimate identification.

"There are huge fraud problems out there," he said. "There's no safeguards on it."

He also said those groups pushing voter-registration efforts this year don't check to see if registrants are citizens. This flaw has the potential to "corrupt" the political system, he said.

"Aliens have already shown they are willing to break U.S. law to come here. Why should we expect them to not vote?" Mr. Stein asked. "In a system where virtually no effort is made to ensure integrity, we'd be naive to say it isn't going on. You only need one vote to swing an election."

Peter Rubin, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, said many groups are "interested in suppressing the votes of minorities and using illegal tactics as a way of scaring people from coming out to the polls."

"That has happened in many elections," he said. "These tactics are real, continue to be used, and are underreported. It should be of concern to everyone, especially now, when everyone's vote matters."

Source - http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/sep/23/20040923-104542-8488r/

Illegal aliens used false IDs at fort

Federal authorities investigated an incident Tuesday morning in which officials said two illegal aliens attempted to come onto Fort Gordon with false identification and gave false names.

No arrests were made, said Marla Jones, a deputy public affairs officer at the post.

Ms. Jones said men with false identification attempted to come onto Fort Gordon via Gate 3 in an Atlanta Gas Light Co. truck Tuesday morning.

Post security stopped them and held them for the FBI to interview. She said the individuals in question, who were released at about 11:30 a.m., were denied access to the post because they did not have valid identification.

Ed Reinhold, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Augusta office said that information about the incident was forwarded to the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement.

He said the FBI couldn't make any arrests for immigration violations based on this particular incident.

"If there was a terrorism nexus, we could do an immigration violation arrest, but we saw no indications of that," Mr. Reinhold said.

Robert Chaplin, the Augusta regional manager for Atlanta Gas Light, said his company also is investigating the incident.

He said the men were employed by Benton-Georgia and were under contract with Atlanta Gas Light to replace pipes for the company.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., has proposed legislation that would give local and other law enforcement greater powers to enforce federal immigration law.

The legislation, the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal Act, was introduced into Congress last year but has not made it to the floor for a vote.

Source - http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2004/09/01/met_427149.shtml

Illegal Aliens force another hospital to close

Northridge Hospital Medical Center will be closing by December 31. This follows a recent announcement of the closure of the emergency room at Elastar Community Hospital in East Los Angeles.

Four other emergency rooms have closed in the county in the last two years. The reason given is the high cost of treating uninsured people. The article also states that 70 hospital emergency rooms and trauma centers have closed in California since 1990.

"We're mandated to treat anyone who comes in through those doors, regardless of their ability to pay," Tracey Veal, a spokeswoman for the Northridge hospital, said.
Ms. Veal estimated that the hospital had spent $13 million on so-called charity care in the fiscal year that ended on June 30.

While the New York Times does not exactly specify illegal aliens as the cause, it is quite obvious by these numbers.

"This is definitely cause for alarm," Carol Meyer, director of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, said on Friday in an interview.

Ms. Meyer said 30 percent of the nine million people in the county were underinsured or had no medical insurance at all. Statewide, seven million people are uninsured, according to the California Medical Association.

So, lets break these numbers down. 30% of 9 million is about 3.3 million people or nearly half of the 7 million in California that are uninsured, That's just in their county.

While everyones health insurance goes up to cover the uninsured, we get poorer and poorer service. If you pay your insurance on time for coverage for you or your family and there is an emergency you may just end up having to drive an extra 10-15 miles to get to an emergency room. Upon arriving you may be in line behind someone who doesn't pay, but expects the same services you receive.

Something has to be done of course. Illegal aliens receiving this free service should be number one on the list. Preventing illegals from being here in the first place is a law after all. Hospitals should be able to note whether someone is here illegally. The only way to tackle the issues is with full disclosure and good input data. If you don't know the breakdown of why someone is uninsured how can you fix the problem?

The county estimates the cost of providing them with health care is $340 million annually.

Here's a first hand account of the free ride illegals are receiving from Right Side of the Rainbow

The impending collapse of emergency health care

Earlier this year, I had a patient -- an illegal alien from Mexico -- who came to my institution after his discharge from an acute care hospital for treatment of a traumatic injury. Before that, he'd been in the custody of the Texas prison system, following his conviction for a violent offense.

I and my fellow Texans picked up the tab for his incarceration. But the cost of his acute care and subsequent rehabilitation was left uncompensated. I don't know the tally of his bill at the other institution; but at my facility, the average cost of care is $1800 a day. He was with us for 27 days.

Source - http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/000060.html

The Scam of Voting by Illegal Aliens and Felons

As the country appears so closely divided between the red and blue states, the Democrats are seeking odd-ball constituencies to enhance their numbers. They and their liberal-advocacy law firms and lobbyists have been working for months to get convicted felons credentialed to vote for John Kerry, and now they are going after the votes of noncitizens.

Many millions of noncitizens live in the United States, some legal and some illegal, and the Democrats see this as a win-win effort to get them to the polls on election day. They figure the percentages are pretty good that those constituencies will vote Democratic.

Local decisions to allow noncitizens to vote in city, county and school board elections should not give them a pass to vote in federal elections, but once they are on the precinct registration rolls, who is going to stop them? Certainly not the Democratic polling officials.

Five Washington, DC City Council members (fortunately, not a majority) just announced their support for a bill that would allow thousands of noncitizens to vote in local and school board elections. They are waving signs and slogans such as "Democracy for all" and "No taxation without representation."

The District may have as many as 40,000 resident noncitizens. That's clearly enough to provide the margin in a close election.

Americans don't have to stand by and tolerate this impertinence since, as in so many dilemmas, the U.S. Constitution provides the remedy. Article I, Section 8, gives Congress the power to pass "exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over the District of Columbia, and the Republican Congress would be foolish if it doesn't act immediately to nip this mischief in the bud.

The DC City Council isn't the first to think up this thoroughly bad idea. San Franciscans will vote in November on whether to allow noncitizens, including even illegal aliens, to vote in school board elections even though this is probably a violation of the California state constitution which requires U.S. citizenship to be eligible to vote.

Other efforts to reward noncitizens with the franchise have emerged in New York City, Hartford, Los Angeles, Colorado, New Jersey, and Texas. Scattered municipalities in Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois and New York have already gone down this road.

Giving voting rights to noncitizens is a thoroughly bad idea from every point of view. It cheapens citizenship and it could give legal cover to would-be terrorists who come to this country with hate in their hearts.

Enough problems are already caused by the Motor Voter Law, under which voting registration is offered to everyone getting a driver's license. This even includes those states that grant driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

Becoming a resident of a state may confer the right to get a driver's license, but it does not and should not confer citizenship. According to U.S. law, lawful residents must also speak English and swear allegiance to the United States before they can become citizens.

And they must become citizens before they can vote. We don't want any immigrants voting who haven't made the conscious and sincere decision to renounce loyalty to the country they came from and pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

The Constitution should also be our starting point in the matter of allowing convicted felons to vote. The U.S. Constitution reserves the matter of voting regulations to state legislatures and, in the 14th Amendment, Section 2, specifically authorizes the disenfranchisement of felons.

Nevertheless, the Democrats have persuaded activist judges to force the state of Florida to assist felons, as they leave prison, in getting the right to vote. The Kerry campaign has already set up a nationwide legal network to recruit litigators and election lawyers to challenge the election results in Florida and other close states.

The Democrats have been whining about people who were mistakenly listed as felons on a state database during the 2000 Florida election. But the Democrats are silent about the convicted felons who actually did vote illegally in the 2000 Florida election, as well as the people who received absentee ballots to vote in both New York and Florida.

I suggest that those who are worried about whole groups of people not being able to vote, or not having their votes counted, should look into the matter of guaranteeing that U.S. military personnel serving overseas will have their ballots counted. In the uncertainties that followed the 2000 presidential vote count in Florida, an untold number of military ballots were never counted.

Today, about 150,000 of our service men and women are in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they above all deserve to have their right to vote assured and their ballots counted.

Source - http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2004/aug04/04-08-18.html

Weapons of Mass Destruction Waltz into America

Last week, a band of outlaws brought a simulated weapon of mass destruction from the Mexican border into America as easily as a housewife would fill a K-Mart shopping cart and waltz out to her car in the parking lot.

So much for Tom Ridge and Condi Rice’s assurances that our borders are safer today than 9/11! The facts show our borders as open and vulnerable today as ever.

Not only did (www.AmericanBorderPatrol.com's) former U.S. military veteran Glenn Spencer bring a simulated WMD over the border once, he did it twice! The first time, he didn’t announce it, but the second time, he advertised like Joe Namath when he ‘guaranteed’ he would bring it across. Like Namath, Spencer honored his word.

While the WMD contained no more than foam rubber packed in a case, Spencer and his group performed the mission to demonstrate how a terrorist might bring a real WMD into the USA. "We were careful in making this video to avoid giving terrorists any aid in performing a real mission," Spencer said.

Spencer’s men carried the WMD from the Mexican border to a pick-up point on a main highway five miles north to a main highway. From there, they were picked up and walked right up to the capitol steps in Phoenix. Not once were they stopped. While at the capitol, security guards asked for their ID’s, but never inquired as to what they carried in their packs.

That brings into question the words of Ridge and Rice. Can they be trusted? The unequivocal answer is, "NO!" They’re both out to lunch, on permanent holiday, full of hot air and bravado, or as teenagers would say, "Hey dudes, you’re not in touch with reality!"

This journalist interviewed Glenn Spencer at his base of operations near Sierra Vista, Arizona. His office resembles the War Room at the Pentagon. Spencer sits before five computer monitors that give him instant information on what is happening on the border. He directs a crew of patriots who fly two ‘Border Hawk’ unmanned remote controlled airplanes that can reach across 60 miles of terrain. Each plane carries a video day and night vision camera that can spot illegal aliens below. Each plane is plotted on a video map showing its location at all times. It can pinpoint aliens’ exact locations.

When the cameras spot illegal aliens moving through the high chaparral, Spencer calls in the Border Patrol for pick-up operations. At night, the planes’ night scopes expose illegals’ bodies through infrared sensors.

But that doesn’t solve the fact that a year ago, 30 year veteran Border Patrol officer, John W. Slagle reported that 35,000 OTM (other than Mexican) border crashers hailed from such places as China, India, Brazil and Russia. A total of 7,500 of those invaders came from the Middle Eastern terror sponsoring countries.

While on the border, this journalist hiked well-worn alien entry routes, which usher over 2,200 into our country daily. I viewed the Border Hawk planes in action. I saw the unending trash piled in the washes throughout the desert. I witnessed the lay-up areas and pick-up spots where the illegals are dispersed with clockwork precision. United Parcel Service and Greyhound Bus Lines couldn’t match this operation. They pick up and they deliver, but in this case, Spencer showed how terrorists easily navigate across our Mexican border.

What did he expose? He exposed Vicente Fox as Mexico’s corrupt leader who assists in drug smuggling via his army officers on the take, people smuggling and assisted terror against the American people. What terror? Fox is complicit in allowing millions of poverty and disease stricken Mexicans breaking into our country while he maintains one of the most corrupt regimes in the Western Hemisphere. Instead of taking care of his own countrymen and solving his problems, he pawns them off on us for schooling, welfare, jobs, homes, medical care, anchor babies and colonization of our country. For his impresario work, his minions send him $15 billion annually of our money.

Spencer’s operation made empty rubbish the words of Rice and Ridge as they raise and lower the threat level while doing NOTHING about our southern border. When the next 9/11 occurs, it will originate from terrorists ‘waltzing’ into our country from Mexico. Spencer proved how easy it is, how quick it is and how unguarded it is.

The sad aspect of this operation stems from the fact that U.S. citizens must defend themselves, arm themselves and take action against a foreign enemy while our Congress and top leaders serve wine and gourmet meals inside the Beltway. They were doing the same thing previous to 9/11. Nothing has changed.

We need our troops on our borders! Not another color alert level!

Source - http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_2004aug04.html

Top ten reasons for enforcing America's immigration laws

A recent letter arrived in my mailbox from a distraught American over his personal crisis with illegal immigration in Wisconsin. He wrote, "I am so sick of illegal aliens sucking the life out of our country. Our taxes go up and up and who benefits? The aliens. Our hospitals are overrun and our businesses ruined. I work in a factory and we employ a large number of illegals. How do I know? I ask them. They aren't afraid of being deported. Once they are here and have a job, they get their friends and families jobs. A co-worker of mine said that the illegals aren't a real problem, our country can absorb them. I told her the stories of crime and pollution at the crossing areas in the southwest, she just said I was making it up. I just don't know what to do, I just don't. Help us."

Do you remember Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in the Spanish/American War? Do you remember Audie Murphy a real life hero from World War II? Do you remember GI Joe slinging a rifle over his shoulders to protect America? Do you remember that sailor giving a kiss to that nurse on the streets of New York at the end of WW II?

That was their time; this is yours. It’s time you take action on behalf of your kids and the future of this country. It might be added that we don’t have much time to stop this invasion. The sooner you act and all your friends, the sooner we control our borders. Pass this commentary to all your friends with directions on how to take action.

Team America at www.teamamericapac.org issued ten reasons why America must enforce its immigration laws. They started with the tenth reason and worked up to the first. Why? Because the first nine support the most important reason which you will find out. Mr. Ed Garrison brilliantly wrote them. He declares:

10. It's time to raise the American standard of living. The real minimum wage has been declining for over a decade. Some advocate raising the minimum wage--but this would raise the price of unskilled labor above its free-market value. Mass unemployment would result.

Why has the market value of unskilled labor declined? For the same reason that all prices move: supply and demand. It's hard to change the demand side of the equation: You can't make anyone "need" an unskilled worker who doesn't need one already. For years, however, we have been artificially modifying the supply side by tolerating a massive influx of unskilled workers across our borders. We can reverse the trend by enforcing immigration laws. We won't need to raise the minimum wage. It will raise itself. Millions of Americans will be lifted out of poverty, and millions more from the lower middle class to prosperity.

9. We can immediately create millions of new jobs. Conservative estimates place the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. at 10,000,000. Taking into account minor children and the aged, that's still millions of people who are flooding our labor force. Remove them, and opportunities will abound for Americans.

There's a canard that says that illegals "take the jobs Americans don't want." This is a fallacy! There's no job an American can't or won't do for a living wage. It is a cruel joke on the American worker to allow illegals to depress wages for many jobs below poverty level, and then to mock Americans for being reluctant to participate in the poverty.

8. Breaking the law is crime. Lawbreakers are criminals. Out of deference to the PC crowd, many like to use the term "undocumented workers"--as if illegals were merely missing a piece of bureaucratic paperwork. By the same logic, we can call a car thief an "undocumented driver."

Our immigration laws exist for good reasons: to protect our safety, our national sovereignty, our standard of living, our health, and our culture. Those who break them may "want a better life for themselves," but then again, so do all who enrich themselves by disregarding the law.

Many people who wish to immigrate honestly are waiting patiently. Granting privileges like driver's licenses and social security cards to illegals is a slap in the face to law-abiding citizens and immigrants alike. It's like opening an express window to give titles and owner's cards to car thieves, while making legitimate owners stand in line!

7. Open borders threaten our safety. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, two things have become clear. First, we have enemies, and they are vicious and without conscience. Second, our enemies obviously believe that an attack from within is more feasible than an attack from without.

Even before the horrid events of September 11, our immigration laws had the primary purpose of protecting us. The use of visas and passports allows our government to monitor, and control who enters our country, and why.

Few illegal aliens are terrorists. But it only takes one! More importantly, the creeping ideology of open borders--the (usually unspoken) belief that treating foreigners who enter our country differently than we treat our own citizens is somehow "discriminatory" or "racist"--is creating a terrible dilemma: Either we cease to monitor the aliens (and open ourselves up for even worse attacks), or we create the "equality" of the police state by casting aside constitutional protections for citizens and monitoring everyone. The more resolutely we protect our borders against threats from without, the safer, and freer, we can live within them.

6. We're a nation of 300 million; the Third World population is in the billions. Do the math.

Our country seems large, but its population is tiny compared to that of the Third World. China and India alone have seven times our population.

For whatever reasons, our society has succeeded in creating immense wealth where many others have created only poverty. An American welfare recipient would still be "rich" by the standards of most of the world.

One can't blame the citizens of countries who produce much less wealth per capita than we for wanting to reap the benefits our forefathers have sown for us. But if we open the borders, our island of productivity and prosperity will soon disappear beneath a flood of Third World squalor.

5. American culture is worth preserving. Culture is more than operas and Shakespearian plays--it's the sum total of the customs, beliefs, artistic creations, attitudes, goals, and norms that make a society what it is. It is passed down, as a treasure, from grandparent to parent to child. In other words, culture is what gives us our identity.

Some advocate "multiculturalism"--creating a society in which multiple cultures exist side by side, and believe that "diversity"--having as many cultures as possible, with none dominant—is desirable.

The majority of the media elite believes that we need more multiculturalism and diversity; the majority of the population doesn't. Regardless of how anyone stands on this issue, the fact is that our society is already multicultural and diverse. Anyone who wishes to enjoy, and celebrate, the many cultures now coexisting in America need only visit any American city.

By contrast, genuine American culture--the Founding Fathers, the story of the pioneers and the winning of the West, the Pledge of Allegiance, Columbus Day, the Bill of Rights--is under constant assault. Some of our country's detractors vilify all that is traditionally American, while others would reduce our traditions to one more example of quaint folklore beside those of other nations.

Russian culture can be found in Russia, Mexican culture in Mexico, multiculturalism in any major city... but where can one find American culture? Only in a place where Americans treasure it, and lovingly transmit it from generation to generation. Immigration laws should ensure that those who seek to live permanently on American territory be willing to adopt and preserve its culture. And they are useless unless they are enforced.

4. It's not your father's immigration. Previous generations romanticized immigration. The images are still with us: Starry-eyed Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish arrivees toting their bags and trunks onto shore at Ellis Island... The tablet at the base of the Statue of Liberty exhorting other nations to "Give me your tired, your poor..." The native-born American learning to love pizza and bagels.

That was then. This is now.

Yes, there are still many people in foreign lands who harbor the "American dream," and who seek to come here to realize it.

Millions of illegal aliens, however, have attitudes and motives very different from those of the immigrants in the fading black-and-white photos of yesteryear. It's not fashionable to speak the truth about this group. But the truth must be spoken.

What makes this new breed of "immigrants" different? To begin with, they're not "immigrating" at all--they're sneaking in. They don't have an "American dream" of building this country; rather, though still loyal to their home nations, they want to exploit ours economically. Many even dream of taking over regions of our country, and displacing us. There's already a word for this goal: Reconquista of Aztlan. If the members of this group don't intend to return home, yet have no loyalty to America, what should we call them? Certainly not "immigrants."

A ‘colonist’ is a better term. Today's colonists, like those of the past, want to build enclaves on American soil from which they can expand their own wealth and power, and that of their homeland, while drawing on the resources that were created by the native population. How can we welcome legitimate immigrants while keeping out colonists? By knowing who is coming here, and why, and only admitting those whose presence is in our country's best interests. In other words, by enforcing immigration laws.

3. It's an issue we can all come together on. Conservatives, traditionally, aim to preserve the valuable legacy of the past, and to protect freedom by limiting the power of government. Liberals seek to provide all citizens, even the most disadvantaged, with the opportunity to realize their full potential. Both have worthy goals, but often squabble over how to realize them.

Removing illegal aliens can give us the best of both worlds. We can preserve our traditional culture. And without resorting to costly and intrusive government programs, we can give our poor a genuine "hand up": as the glut of cheap labor dries up, those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder will suddenly find themselves able to climbhigher without ruinous competition.

People of good will on the left and the right can only smile approvingly as the free market provides our unskilled and uneducated with a decent wage, and with a job market that welcomes instead of marginalizes them.

We can "live better than we did four years ago" and have a rebirth of national pride, as President Reagan wanted for us. And we can have a "New Deal" for our poor, a society where no American is left out, which were the ideals of President Roosevelt.

At last, we can come together. That's what patriotism is all about.

2. We either face tough issues now, or tougher ones later. Immigration issues are complex. We need a national debate--which, judging by the 2004 primary and general Presidential campaigns, isn't happening. Most Americans, when confronted with the facts, will probably continue to want what they want now: strict enforcement of our immigration laws.

It won't be easy. We'll have to find workable ways to deport illegal aliens without creating unnecessary hardships for those who have broken our immigration laws, and without creating severe dislocations for the unscrupulous employers who have benefited from their presence. And, of course, we'll have to counter, with quiet reason, the voices of those who scream "discrimination" or "racism."

Some cringe at the challenges that await us.

These challenges, however, pale in comparison to those that future generations will face if we fail to act. Imagine an overcrowded, impoverished America with shrinking wages and expanding burdens on the social service system. Imagine an America where millions of Americans have been driven out of their neighborhoods by throngs of foreign colonists who neither speak our language nor understand the culture that created American prosperity--but who deeply resent the poverty that inevitably results from their own unwillingness, or inabilty, to live as true Americans.

Will Americans be forced to tax away their own shriveling wealth, and to transfer it to the aliens within our borders, if they wish to appease the colonists' anger? Will the shrinking American middle class merge with the alien underclass to form a new "peasant culture" while a tiny American elite trembles behind the walls of heavily policed gated communities? Or will full-scale cultural and racial war break out? None of these possibilities is appealing. Nonetheless, a society is a reflection of the population that comprises it. If we, as an advanced society with a low birthrate, continue to import a Third World population with a high birthrate, we will become a Third World society, and will face the problems, which other Third World societies face as well.

Isn't it better to face the issue of illegal immigration now--and to do something about it?

... and the number one reason is:

1. We owe it to our kids and grandkids. Our children and grandchildren will marvel at the digitized archives of the TV shows of the 1950s and 1960s. They'll see a prosperous, free, united America-- the envy of the world, a place anyone would be happy and proud to call home. This, they'll realize, was the legacy our grandparents and parents left us, the American citizens of the early 21st century.

How will the America we leave to our children stack up against the America our parents left to us? What will future generations think of us? Will we be known as the preservers and expanders of the beautiful legacy, or as its destroyers? By our actions or inactions, we're deciding which it will be. Right now.

Garrison gave us the most powerful and compelling reasons I have seen for each one of us to take actions for preserving our country. It behooves each of you to use your computer, telephone, radio station, TV station, letters to the editor of your newspaper and calls to every senator and congressman every week relentlessly to gain national focus on this immigration invasion. Democracy is not a spectator sport. This nation is in danger of becoming a Third World nightmare with all the corruption, disease, illiteracy, violence and balkanization known all over the world. We need a 10-year moratorium on all immigration to catch our collective breath and we need deportation of over 10 million illegal aliens in a slow and orderly fashion.

This is your nation and this is your time to take action.

Source - http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_2004jul19.html

Illegal Alien Anchor Babies: born in the USA - Enormous taxpayer costs

If you don’t think our Congress is taking Americans for a ride, think again. According to Dr. Madeleine Cosman, "At least 300,000 to 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens in California." In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in maternity units cost taxpayers $215 million in Stockton, California. In 2003, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General maternity ward were from illegal aliens. That number has exploded today with over three million illegal aliens residing in California.

The French economist Frederic Bastiat said, "The unseen is more expensive than the seen." In Stockton, California, the Silverio Family was featured in the Wall Street Journal in 2003. They were fruit pickers who arrived illegally from Oxtotilan, Mexico in 1997. The wife, Felipa had three kids, but popped an anchor baby named Flor. The child was premature and spent three months in a neonatal incubator at a cost to the San Joaquin Hospital of over $300,000.00. They conceived another, Christian. The second baby made them eligible for $1,000 per month welfare. Because Flor is disabled, she receives $600.00 monthly for asthma. Although the illegal aliens made $18,000.00 annually picking fruit, they collected $12,000.00 of your tax dollars for their anchor babies. One night the father, Cristobal crashed his van. He had no license or insurance. Taxpayers paid for all hospital bills. That’s why 77 hospitals in border states were going bankrupt in 2003, but Senator John McCain wrote a rider into the Medicaid Bill for $1.4 billion of your tax dollars. It passed. Not to finish the spending spree on these anchor babies, the children attend California schools at a cost of $7,000.00 per year over and above what their parents pay in taxes. The cost for all five of their children for one school year exceeds $35,000.00 times 18 years for a grand taxpayer total of $630,000.00. This is only one family. No wonder California is $38 billion in debt.

Additional costs for illegal alien children stem from translators, advocates and middlemen. MediCal in 2003 sponsored 760,000 illegal aliens. Supplemental Security Income is a non-means-treated federal grant of money and food stamps. Be assured that scams and fraud run rampant. Over 500,000 ‘mentally disabled kids’ are on drugs for ADHD and ODD. One lady, Linda Torres was arrested in Bakersfield with $8,500.00 in small bills in her pocket. It was her SSI lump award for her disability, which was heroin addition.

Just so Americans across the country don’t feel left out, let’s move to Georgia. Net Fiscal Costs of Illegal Immigration for Georgia: Births of illegal aliens in Georgia cost to taxpayers:
2000-- 5,133 births cost: $13 million
2001-- 9,528 births cost: $23 million
2002—11,188 births cost: $27 million

Additionally, receiving public assistance in 2002 for 25,000 children of illegal aliens cost Georgia taxpayers $42 million annually. Health care costs to Georgia taxpayers for illegal aliens in 2002 was 64,000 doctor visits which ran Grady Health System into a $63 million deficit. What is it in your state? This picture is a small window into the massive fraud being perpetrated on your wallet by your congressional leaders. What is your senator or congressman doing about it? The simple answer fulfills French economist Bisbiat’s rule of the unseen. Your congressional reps assist this fraud! They encourage it every day by doing nothing about 2,200 illegal aliens crossing our borders and they have done nothing since 9/11 to deport the estimated 13 million that are already here.

So what will you do? How about taking action! Join www.NumbersUSA.com and www.SecuredBordersUSA.com and www.TheAmericanResistence.com and www.DeportAliens.com and www.ImmigrationsHumancost.org and www.ReportIllegals.us and www.CommonSenseOnMassImmigration.us.

With over one million illegal aliens arriving annually, they birth 300,000 anchor babies in California alone and you pay the maximum. When those legal ‘American’ babies grow to 18, they can ‘chain migrate’ their kin into our country. We’re talking about a crisis SO huge, your children and this country will not survive it.

Source - http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_2004jul09b.html

Illegal Alien Anchor Babies: Born in the USA -- The Abuse of the Fourteenth Amendment - Part I

Part I

My commute to work exceeds fifty miles but it gives me time to reflect. It is 1987 and I am an obstetrical nurse working in the crowded San Fernando Valley of California. Tonight I drive to my job in "Labor and Delivery," knowing the scenario before I arrive. Eight other nurses will battle through the night in this very busy obstetrical unit. Our patients are 99 percent pregnant illegal alien women who have broken United States immigration law to birth an American citizen child.

This will be their families' entry ticket into the United States. For them, no pesky visa applications and no waiting in line for several years like so many millions that enter this country through the front door. Pregnant Third World women have discovered that the only thing they have to do is cross the U.S.--Mexico border. The Fourteenth Amendment is their ticket.

It is now seventeen years later and things have worsened. The babies I helped deliver are older teenagers. When they turn 21, they will be eligible to bring their family members from Mexico, Central America and South America, i.e., chain migration on an ever-accelerating spinning wheel. Whole industries have now developed around abusing the Fourteenth Amendment. Pregnant Korean tourists come to the U.S. on travel visas to have their "anchor" babies. Coyotes dealing in human traffic are paid $1,500.00 to $25,000.00 per person to shuttle pregnant illegal aliens across our southern border. Our politicians and elites wink at this blatant law breaking and do nothing. The colonization of our country continues with the cooperation of our government. That means your senator and representative aid this illegal baby invasion. None dare call it treason. Most Americans mistakenly trust their politicians to do the right thing. Congressional members from every state betray that trust daily.

The Fourteenth Amendment: It's a simple document, a constitutional amendment drafted after the Civil War to assure that newly emancipated black slaves would never be denied citizenship by the States. The drafters had no idea that years later it would be used to make a mockery of our immigration laws. Alan Wall, an American journalist living in Mexico states, "An illegal alien can cross the border, have a baby five minutes later, and that baby is automatically declared a citizen of the USA automatically."

The illegal aliens don't have to go through any legal doors. They are exempt from that. They are, in fact, rewarded for disobeying U.S. laws by having their children granted automatic citizenship. In addition, the happy family is entitled to welfare benefits. And, illegal alien parents who have children born in the U.S. are seldom deported. That's why their children are called "anchor babies" - they anchor their families securely in the USA.

It doesn't have to be this way. Most European countries have done away with birthright citizenship because they experienced the same abuses we are seeing. The Irish Supreme Court recently ruled that immigrant parents could be deported even if they have an Irish child. "It was becoming common for 'single pregnant woman' to come to Ireland from countries outside the 15-nation EU, most frequently from Nigeria, to claim political asylum," states Shawn Pogatchnik, AP writer. Ireland saw a wave of immigration abuse and promptly put a stop to it. Recently, the Irish voted to end birthright citizenship. Britain and Australia both changed their citizenship laws in the 1980's for the same reasons. If you are born in Switzerland you will not automatically become a Swiss citizen. Why should Americans allow our country to be invaded by people who do not honor allegiance to our laws?

Allegiance is the key word. Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, stated in 1866, "Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons."

The Fourteenth Amendment states,"(A) Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." However a proviso limits foreigners who have babies in America. It couldn't be clearer, children of foreigners, aliens or diplomats, who are subject to the jurisdiction of their home country, are ineligible for citizenship. At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified we didn't have immigration laws. One hundred and thirty eight years later we are paying for the misinterpretation of it.

Congress has the power to step in and correct this wrong, but don't hold your breath. There have been several bills dealing with this issue and most have died in committee. Except for a few brave individuals like Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Rep. Goode of Virginia, there isn't enough chutzpah on Capital Hill to fill a thimble. Where are the Thomas Jefferson's and Ben Franklin's when we need them? An important case, Hamdi vs Rumsfeld was recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yaser Hamdi was captured during the Afghanistan war fighting for the Taliban. It was later learned that he had been born in Louisiana to Saudi nationals when his father was employed as a chemical engineer on a work visa. The family subsequently moved back to Saudi Arabia where Hamdi was raised. Hamdi sued the U.S. government for holding him in a Navy stockade for two years. He demanded full rights of U.S. citizenship since by accident he happened to be born here. The U.S. government wanted Hamdi charged as a non-combatant and denied due process. Rumsfeld representing the U.S. government didn't raise this issue because he wanted to end birthright citizenship but other groups saw the possibility to finally challenge this fatal flaw in our immigration law that is wrecking havoc on our country.

One such group, Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement, submitted a 'friend of the court' or Amicus brief. They asked the Supreme Court to address the issue of whether Hamdi should be considered an American citizen at all, since at the time of his birth his parents were foreign nationals with no fealty to this nation.

The decision came down this week and just like the rest of the elite establishment in this country the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the issue of birthright citizenship except for a brief statement by Justices Scalia and Stevens stating Hamdi was a "presumed American citizen." So we live to fight another day. In the meantime the invasion/colonization of our country marches on. South Korean women can continue to visit www.birthinusa.com and plan their very pregnant United States vacations!

In Part II: The costs of anchor babies will have you reaching for Pepto Bismol, Excedrin, Advil, Motrin, Paxil and Valium. And, you'll still be sick to your stomach!

Source - http://www.frostywooldridge.com/articles/art_2004jul06.html

ICE releasing illegal aliens on nationwide basis

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is releasing certain illegal aliens from federal custody across the country because it lacks the funds to detain them, according to documents obtained by Government Executive.

The releases are designed to cut the number of illegal aliens in ICE's detention system, which is budgeted to hold 19,444 detainees, but has housed thousands more for most of the fiscal year. "Currently we are exceeding the level our resources can support nationwide," wrote Victor Cerda, ICE's acting director of detention and removals, in a June 10 memorandum to regional detention officials.

To ease the strain on the system, Cerda told ICE managers to lower the number of aliens coming into the detention system, while releasing others now being held in federal and local jails. "Discretion and financial constraints shall be considered when deciding whether to accept nonmandatory aliens for detention," he wrote.

Because certain illegal aliens must be detained by law - including those charged with aggravated felonies - Cerda's directive affects how ICE treats aliens charged with lesser offenses, such as simple assault. These aliens are detained at ICE's discretion; generally, about 15 percent of all aliens in the detention system are "nonmandatory" detainees, according to Anthony Tangeman, a former director of detention and removals at ICE.

In ICE's New Orleans district, which encompasses Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi, officials are releasing aliens that are not required to be held by law. Aliens are let go with orders to appear at deportation hearings.

Illegal aliens are being released in other regions as well. In ICE's Philadelphia district, which includes Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware, officials released 77 aliens last week, according to Thomas Hogan, warden at Pennsylvania's York County Prison, which houses several ICE detainees.

Nationwide, the number of ICE detainees is dropping. On June 25, ICE had 21,610 illegal aliens in its detention system, down from nearly 23,000 on June 14, according to Russ Knocke, an ICE spokesman. Knocke said ICE may not trim its detainee population to the 19,444 level. "It might not necessarily mean getting down to that hard number," he said. "It might mean we find other ways to manage within budget."

Homeland Security Department officials describe Cerda's directive as a sensible approach to help ICE stay within its budget limits. "This is routine management," said one official. Knocke said ICE still is detaining aliens that pose a threat to the community, and added that some of those let go are being monitored by electronic ankle bracelets and other alternatives to detention.

But the releases have raised eyebrows in Congress, and angered some agents. "It's sad because the people affected are in the local immigrant community," said an ICE agent in the New Orleans district. Jim Turner, D-Texas, ranking member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, mentioned the releases in a June 25 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

ICE has dealt with an overflowing detention system before - the agency ended fiscal 2003 holding more aliens than it was budgeted for, but officials diverted funds from other programs to pay for the excess. By shelving other projects, ICE freed up enough funds to avoid any releases last year, said David Venturella, a former ICE detention official.

The demand for detention space is up because of a surge in immigration related arrests, the result of programs such as the Arizona Border Control Initiative, a $10 million federal effort to crack down on alien smuggling along the Arizona-Mexico border. But as ICE and the Border Patrol have stepped up enforcement, they have put more aliens into a detention system that has had a static budget for two years. "There's a lot of pressure on the [detention] program from apprehending agencies to detain people," said former ICE official Tangeman.

Venturella said the Border Patrol and ICE's Office of Investigations need to prioritize arrests to stem the flow of new aliens into the system. "They control the intake, Detention and Removals does not," he said.

In a June 24 memorandum, Marcy Forman, acting director of ICE investigations, told ICE special-agents-in-charge to contact detention officials "during the earliest possible stage of planning for an operation," to let them know how much detention space they will need.

But Venturella said this guidance was inadequate. "When a [special-agent-in-charge] reads this, they say 'I guess I can still do operations, all I need to do is let [Detention] know,' " he said. "You should not initiate any new operation unless there are detention resources in place to support it."

Some ICE agents said they are curtailing enforcement. "We're laying off a lot of our lower-level jail cases," said the ICE agent in the New Orleans district. But Knocke denied any let-up in ICE investigations. "We continue to aggressively and proactively enforce immigration laws," he said.

On Wednesday, ICE agents arrested 14 criminal aliens in Graham and Burlington, N.C., who are eligible for deportation because of previous criminal convictions, according to an ICE news release.

Other officials said ICE is still arresting the same number of illegal aliens, but is increasing the use of bonds and other detention alternatives to ensure that aliens that are not detained will still show up at their immigration court hearings.

Source - http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0704/070204p1.htm