‘Algodones Project’ brings Christmas to Mexican poor
BY PAIGE LAUREN DEINER, SUN STAFF WRITER

This Christmas, 146 families near Los Algodones, Baja Calif., will receive presents, thanks to a Yuma organization called The Algodones Project.

For 15 years, this community has received help from a small group of individuals in Yuma, who ask local businesses to adopt a family. The businesses purchase gifts for the youngsters and then caravan along with project members to the outskirts of Algodones, where they deliver the presents at a party.

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Tractor thieves take loot south of border
FROM STAFF REPORTS

More than $160,000 in farm implements was illegally taken south of the border Sunday or Monday, according to the Yuma County Sheriff's Office.

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A New Law in Tijuana Regulates the Oldest Profession

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

TIJUANA, Mexico - She arrived at the clinic at noon, dark sunglasses covering her eyes and a baseball cap pulled down low. She clutched a small pink book with her picture stapled inside. The dates of her examinations for venereal diseases were stamped in inks of various colors, like a passport.

Her name is Olga, and like thousands of other women in this town, she works as a prostitute, recruiting clients at a topless bar. These days, however, unless she is tested every month at a government clinic and has the right stamps in her booklet, the police will arrest her.

The testing is one of the measures that this city has taken to regulate prostitution, which has flourished here for decades. The city council passed a law in June that requires the town's active prostitutes - 5,000 are currently being tested each month - to have monthly medical exams for sexually transmitted diseases and forces brothel owners to adopt more sanitary practices. Those who do not face stiff fines and the loss of their business licenses.

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Mexican official calls House immigration bill 'wrong,' calls for lobbying against it

ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY – A bill that would toughen U.S. immigration enforcement is "wrong," Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said on Monday, and he called for U.S. groups to lobby against the measure.

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Who's Trying to Cross Our Southern Border? Everyone

By Michael Flynn

Last month, when President Bush was promoting what he called a "comprehensive strategy" on border security to prevent "people from coming here in the first place," few Americans had any doubt to whom the president was referring: undocumented Mexicans. Ignored in the rhetoric, as well as in U.S. policy, is a far more complex reality -- that the southern border is no longer just a border with Mexico. It is a global frontier that has become a conduit for illegal immigrants from all over the world.

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Federal judge clears way for construction of border fence

By Elliot Spagat
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO – A federal judge on Monday lifted the final legal barrier to building a triple fence in the southwestern corner of the United States.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups argued that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff lacked authority to waive environmental and other laws that have delayed completion of 14 miles of additional fencing in San Diego.

In September, Chertoff waived all laws and legal challenges to building the final 3½-mile leg through coastal wetlands to the Pacific Ocean.

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Illegal 'hits American jackpot' with $44,000 job, crime spree
'What's to stop an al-Qaida operation from doing exactly the same kind of thing?'
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

An illegal alien twice deported by the U.S. "hit the jackpot" on his third try, gaining a job paying $44,000 a year and a federal loan helping him to buy a home in North Carolina.

Now, the 24-year-old Mexican is accused of terrorizing American women, as authorities believe he committed up to nine rapes in addition to other crimes.