Aliens hiding in mobile home arrested

Yuma sector Border Patrol agents arrested 45 illegal aliens who had been packed into a motor home Monday morning near Andrade, Calif. The patrol made the bust after receiving a phone call from the Bureau of Land Management, informing agents of the motor home, according to a Border Patrol news release. The 45 subjects were all in good condition, the release said.

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Border Patrol rescues five illegals in area desert
By Blake Schmidt, Sun Staff Writer

With the help of a rescue beacon and a tip from an illegal alien, Yuma sector U.S. Border Patrol agents rescued five illegal immigrants from two separate groups this weekend, according to a Border Patrol news release.

So far this fiscal year Yuma sector agents have rescued 129 illegal aliens — nearly three times the number of rescues that had been made by this time last year, which was a record year.

On Saturday evening, a rescue beacon was activated by three illegal aliens in the desert southeast of Wellton and about 35 miles south of Interstate 8, according to the patrol.

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New Details of Mexico's 'Dirty War'

A leaked draft from an inquiry commissioned by President Fox finds the government guilty of crimes against humanity in 1960s and '70s.
By Héctor Tobar
Times Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican government and military committed "crimes against humanity" through a "scorched-earth" campaign against rural guerrillas in the 1970s, according to a draft report released Sunday of the first official investigation into Mexico's "dirty war" against leftist rebels and activists.

The investigation by the country's "Special Prosecutor for Social and Political Movements of the Past" was commissioned by President Vicente Fox about a year after his election in 2000 ended decades of one-party dominance here. The Washington-based National Security Archive published the leaked draft Sunday on its website.

"The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which … led it to commit crimes against humanity, including genocide," the draft report says.

The alleged crimes outlined in the report were committed from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s under three Mexican presidents. The special prosecutor, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, received the report from a team of 27 researchers in December.

Military and security forces executed or "disappeared" hundreds of Mexican civilians and "armed militants," the report says. Thousands more were tortured or illegally detained.

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Tennessee suspends alien license program

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Tennessee yesterday suspended a program that issued driving certificates to illegal aliens, after recent federal investigations showed widespread abuse.

The decision comes as Maryland lawmakers are considering a similar program.

The shutdown in Tennessee followed a series of arrests in recent months that exposed scams such as shuttle services that brought illegals from other states to obtain driving certificates unlawfully and bribes paid to state license examiners who provided illegals with drivers' licenses and certificates without testing.

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Pa. senator's plan would let migrants work legally
Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Millions of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before 2004 could work legally under a new plan that the Senate will start debating next week. If passed, it would bring sweeping changes to border security and immigration laws.

The plan would set up a temporary-worker program, letting an unlimited number of foreigners work for three years, which could be extended for another three years if they paid a $500 fee and passed security and medical checks. Spouses and dependent children could come, too.

Employers would have to certify that no U.S. worker could be found for the job first. Temporary workers would have to leave after their six years expired and could not apply for a green card without going through channels, a provision similar to one in Kyl's proposal with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who also sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Undocumented immigrants who have been working in the United States since before Jan. 4, 2004, could pay the same fee and get legal permission to work without first leaving the country, as in the McCain-Kennedy plan. Yet unlike that bill, Specter would not allow a guaranteed path to a green card or citizenship. His plan would increase the number of green cards available through regular channels, but not by enough to cover the millions of undocumented immigrants here now.

But the bill includes no requirements to cut fraud in the Social Security system, as both Kyl's and McCain's bills do, nor does it establish a new, tamper-proof credential to prove identity for temporary workers.

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3 weekend incidents near the border net 2,300 pounds of pot

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Law enforcement authorities seized about 2,300 pounds of marijuana over the weekend in three separate incidents near the border.

At 6:30 a.m. Saturday on U.S. 191 north of Douglas, U.S. Border Patrol agents encountered two men driving a stolen Dodge pickup heading north, according to Johnny Bernal, spokes-man for Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.

When the agents attempted to stop the vehicle, the men turned around and headed back south. Agents temporarily lost sight of the pickup but found it again near Arizona 80 and Golf Course Road in east Douglas. There, the two men hit an impassable wash and ran from the pickup. Officers from the Douglas Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement got involved and helped capture the men, who were turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Agents found 659 pounds of marijuana in the truck, Bernal said.

Later that morning at 9:30 a.m., a 25-year-old woman drove a U-Haul truck through the Border Patrol's immigration checkpoint on Interstate 19 north of Rio Rico after agents asked to inspect the truck further, Bernal said. Border Patrol agents caught the woman on a frontage road near Carmen and discovered 1,329 pounds of marijuana packed in 68 duct-taped bundles in the truck, Bernal said.

Sunday morning on Arizona 82 just north of Patagonia, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies found 364 pounds of marijuana in an abandoned 1998 Chevy van, said Sheriff Tony Estrada. He said the driver probably had car problems and abandoned the load.

The street value of the drugs seized is about $1.176 million.