Bloody Border

Statistics show danger for Border Patrol agents is increasing. Are U.S policies partially to blame?

By TIM VANDERPOOL

In Nogales, the borderline pulses like an angry vein through skinny canyons, up knobby ridgelines and across pallid ravines. It pierces the shade of walnut trees, leaps the sewer stench of the Nogales Wash, snakes down haphazard slopes and creeps behind downtown storefronts, before flowing without remark into the barren Arizona desert.

Barely south of this line, on a clear afternoon right before Christmas, gunshots echo through the tough and narco-riddled Mexican barrio of Buenos Aires. This causes Agent Jim Hawkins, U.S. Border Patrol, to clench his jaw in the slightest way. "Just another day in the neighborhood," he says.

Too many times, Hawkins says, those shots are aimed for him and other agents patrolling this rugged turf. "Every night, there's something going on. You get this close to the fence at night, they're at least gonna try to hit you with a rock."

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Chertoff launches California crackdown on immigrant smugglers

By ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press Writer

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Thursday declared a crackdown on migrant smugglers at two California border crossings, even as the federal government increasingly focuses border enforcement in Arizona.

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Bush ICE nominee criticized left, right

Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - President Bush dodged a fight by installing Julie Myers, his controversial pick to head U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while Congress was out of town.

But the move could backfire if the agency, the federal government's second-largest investigative force after the FBI, doesn't quickly improve its financial and management problems and begin aggressive enforcement of immigration laws.

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Mexican officials arrest gunmen hired by drug traffickers on U.S. border

ASSOCIATED PRESS

TIJUANA, Mexico – Investigators have arrested three gunmen accused of participating in killings and kidnappings ordered by a Tijuana-based drug smuggling cartel and who allegedly used acid to dissolve the bodies of some victims, state authorities said.

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Few expatriate Mexicans seek absentee ballots for elections

By Peter Prengaman
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LYNWOOD – Luis del Angel Garcia perks up as the first person in an hour approaches his information booth to ask about voting in the Mexican presidential election in July.

But like millions of other Mexican citizens living in the United States, the man has no voter card and cannot return to Mexico to get one because he is in this country illegally. And without the card, he cannot apply for an absentee ballot.