More of the same

Border Patrol agents accused of aiding drug smugglers
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN Associated Press
Dec. 5, 2008, 12:04AM

MCALLEN — Two South Texas Border Patrol agents appeared in federal court Thursday on charges alleging they helped drug traffickers move their product across the U.S.-Mexico border.

A grand jury in Houston returned sealed indictments Dec. 1 against Leonel Morales, 30, of the Border Patrol’s Laredo sector and Salomon Ruiz, 34, of the Rio Grande Valley sector.

Both men made their initial appearances in federal courthouses in McAllen and Laredo on Thursday after the FBI arrested them Wednesday. They will remain in custody until their respective detention hearings next week, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Ruiz, of McAllen, faces four counts, including taking about $14,000 in bribes to escort drugs between October 2006 and September 2008, conspiring to possess and distribute cocaine, possessing cocaine, and aiding the possession of the drug.

Each drug charge carries a sentence of 10 years to life.

It was not immediately known Thursday if Ruiz or Morales had retained lawyers. Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling said weeding out corrupt agents is something the agency takes seriously.

“We have several open investigations going on,” Easterling said.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs, and the Border Patrol participated in the investigations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Morales, of Zapata County, faces three counts, including taking about $9,000 in bribes to escort drugs between June and August of this year, conspiring to possess cocaine and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. The FBI arrested Morales without incident late Wednesday.

“The recent arrest of Leonel Morales is a reminder of the sever consequences of succumbing to avarice and the promise of ill-gotten gains,” said Carlos X. Carrillo, the Laredo Sector’s chief patrol agent.

Inspector guilty plea

National Briefing | West

California: Inspector Admits Bribes

By ANDREW BECKER

Published: December 2, 2008

A rookie customs inspector in California has pleaded guilty to letting smugglers drive hundreds of pounds of marijuana into the country for $200,000 worth of bribes. The inspector, Luis F. Alarid, 32, admitted in a plea agreement filed Nov. 25 to conspiring to smuggle more than 100 kilograms of marijuana into the country and bribery charges. He also agreed to forfeit $200,000, including $175,000 in cash.

Extraditions at record pace

In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Ken Ellingwood writes about the “record” number of extraditions of drug suspects and other wanted criminal suspects from Mexico to the US.

Ellingwood writes,

The government of President Felipe Calderon is extraditing drug suspects and other fugitives to the United States at a record pace, reflecting a quiet but seismic shift in Mexican policy that many analysts say could help dismantle trafficking gangs.

Calderon’s administration has handed over more than 150 criminal suspects since coming to power in December 2006.

The extradition rate is double what it was before Calderon took office. And it represents a radical policy change from a decade ago, when Mexico, sensitive about its sovereignty, rarely handed suspects over for prosecution in the United States.

I’d heard something similar about a month ago, and checked in with different sources. I was pointed to a web site for the US Embassy in Mexico City that details the breakdown of extraditions. As of August 2008, about 48 percent of the extraditions involve drugs, while 33 percent are for murder. Overall, more than half the extraditions are for offenses other than drug trafficking, including murder, sexual crimes against children, rape and kidnapping. Most of the fugitives returned are Mexican nationals.

These figures are up from 40 percent of extraditions involved drug trafficking while down from 37 percent involving murder from figures that appear to be about a year old.

See: http://mexico.usembassy.gov/eng/eataglance_law.html

The overall numbers are certainly up — Mexico extradited only four people in 1995, for instance, compared with 83 people last year and about 70 this year, as Ellingwood reports (the latest figures I have from August are at 57 for the calendar year). A telling number, however, is that 51 extradition cases remain before Mexican judges (at least two involve the Villarreal brothers, as mentioned previously here.)

What I don’t know is if the actual rate of extraditions has increased, as Ellingwood reports. Are the number of extradition requests increasing as well? Or are the requests static and the number of approved extraditions increasing?

Anyway, there has been a trend upward in extraditions going back to 2000. As this State Department press release points out, 2003 saw a record, too. The fact is, we’ve heard about new records before:

Stats

These are courtesy of UCSIS and CBP

USCIS

Refugee and Asylum Statistics 2007

http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/YrBk07RA.shtm

CIS stats page

http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/index.shtm

CBP

Apprehensions 2007

http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/YrBk07En.shtm

M3 Report 10/28/08

Organized crime infiltrating SIEDO (Mexico’s principal federal agency in the war against organized drug traffic)

Courtesy: National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers/ http:www.nafbpo.org

[Leading the Mexican news today was the public revelation of corruption in SIEDO, the principal federal agency in Mexico's war against organized drug traffic.]

El Universal (Mexico City) 10/28/08

Narcotraffic has been embedded in the structure of Mexico’s principal anti-drug agency for 11 years, according to the US government.  Since 1997, one of principal officials in the anti-drug war, Miguel Colorado González, has been in the service of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, according to a diplomatic note delivered by the US to Mexico.  The communication refers to the official, known as “El Viejito del Cielo” [the little old man from heaven], as using his position for aiding the illegal activities of the cartel by supplying information regarding police and military operations and the names of those involved, according to the official document.

Mexican Senator Ricardo Monreal considered that the Senate should demand an in-depth investigation regarding the infiltration of organized crime into SIEDO.  He said the situation had been reported several years ago and is only the “tip of the iceberg.”  He called for the Senate, as well as the Department of Justice, to conduct investigations.  ”It seems important to me, worth emphasizing, the acknowledgement of what everyone has known, but that the government has not admitted: the drug cartels have infiltrated police agencies even to the federal level,” he said.

The newspaper’s editorial also addressed the situation in much the same line, but added, “If we are to believe the versions that run far and wide along the border with the United States, the cartels have begun also to infiltrate some of the US organizations presumably charged with vigilance, like the Border Patrol or ICE.  Some of the arms used by the hired killers were stolen from US National Guard armories and most have been acquired more or less by legal means in the country to the north.”

KQED Forum discussion on presidential campaign and immigration

KQED FORUM with Michael Krasny: Presidential candidates and immigration

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

• Irene Bloemraad, assistant professor of sociology at UC Berkeley and author of “Becoming a Citizen: Incorporating Immigrants and Refugees in the United States and Canada”
• Marc Rosenblum, associate professor of political science at the University of New Orleans
• Tyche Hendricks, staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle

Frontline/World update

This update on the Villarreal brothers went up last Friday, Oct. 24, on the Frontline/World web site. There’s also parts of the video in which Raul Villarreal plays a smuggler.

Chertoff and the “State of Immigration”

This is from a longish speech and Q&A session with reporters that Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff held yesterday, Oct. 23, in Washington D.C.

I’ve snipped the text in a lot of areas for the sake of brevity. Most of what I snipped dealt with no-match letters, court cases and other specific topics that didn’t deal directly with border security and enforcement.

To read the entire speech, click here.

I won’t comment much at this point, but he gives DHS a lot of credit for the considerable reduction in illegal immigrants entering the country, although he says that enforcement is one indicator of success. He later alludes to the economy, which, as many have pointed out, may be the larger force driving the dip in illegal immigration. Though, stepped-up enforcement, i.e. raids, by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, may play some role.

Interestingly, as the Houston Chronicle points out here, Chertoff calls for a temporary guest-worker program.

Chertoff:

I think what will be evident, if you have an objective evaluation of the facts, is that we have achieved a tremendous amount over many fronts in turning the tide on illegal immigration. We developed a comprehensive multi-year strategy for dealing with the issue of illegal migration, we have implemented that strategy, and today we are seeing positive results of our actions. In fact, we are seeing the kinds of results that the country hasn’t seen for many years.

As I always do, I have to emphasize that to get the problems of illegal migration under control in a sustainable long-term way, it has to be part of comprehensive immigration reform so we take the economic pressure that drives migration illegally into this country, and we take some of that off the table, which makes it much easier for our enforcement agencies to do their job.

We have to work with the law, as it currently exists. Of course we have to assure the American public that we will enforce the law that is on the books. As a consequence, using existing laws and using existing tools as they may be, we have put our country on a path moving in the right direction, with respect to illegal migration. We have reversed the trend of increasing illegal immigration into our country, which I think is something that would not have been thought possible just a few years ago.

“Securing the Border”: Latest statistics from CBP

Here are the latest stats from US Customs and Border Protection, a bureau of the Department of Homeland Security. According to CBP claims, the Border Patrol is on track to meets its 2008 target of 18,000 agents by year’s end.

Some federal officials have voiced their concern about the Border Patrol’s ability to vet properly the crush of applicants and new hires. They fear that things will get worse before they get better, in terms of corruption and misconduct among border agents.

Courtesy of CBP

• DHS has completed more than 216 miles of pedestrian fence and 154 miles of vehicle fence on the southwest border, for a total of approximately 370 miles.
• The Border Patrol now has more than 17,600 agents and by the end of this year we will have more than 18,300 agents. This doubles the size of the Border Patrol over the Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 level.
• We are using technology along the border in connection with tactical infrastructure, where Border Patrol deems necessary. Some technology currently used includes: unattended ground sensors, truck-mounted mobile surveillance systems, remote video surveillance systems, unmanned aerial systems, and fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft to detect, classify, track and respond to illegal border crossings.
• DHS saw a more than 17 percent reduction in apprehensions of illegal aliens at the southern border in FY 2008. This is an indication that there are fewer attempts to cross the border illegally.

The whole press release is after the jump.

Pew Hispanic Center: Latinos Account for Half of U.S. Pop. Growth

According to a new report out today by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos account for more than 50 percent of the U.S. population growth since 2000. The report states,

In a reversal of past trends, Latino population growth in the new century has been more a product of the natural increase (births minus deaths) of the existing population than it has been of new international migration. As of mid-2007, Hispanics accounted for 15.1% of the total U.S. population.

The report’s authors used U.S. Census Bureau data from 2007 and 2000 to conduct its analysis. I’ve written in the past on the change needed in California’s education system (change is an understatement — state education overall needs a major overhaul, not just on this issue) to address and adapt to this demographic shift (read: population growth) and its importance to the state’s economy and future.