Border Patrol: El Salvadoran sex offender picked up
DEMING, N.M. (AP) - Border Patrol officers have arrested a registered sex offender from El Salvador who they say was trying to cross into the United States in southern New Mexico.

35 year-old Francisco Estanislaos-Mendoza was one of five people apprehended Saturday 15 miles west of Columbus during a routine patrol.

Mendoza had been deported from the United States in 1998. He's now being held in Luna County pending federal prosecution for re-entering the country.

The Border Patrol says Mendoza has eight previous arrests in California for charges ranging from rape to drug possession dating back to 1987.

Records show he was convicted in 1991 for burglary, in 1992 for assault to commit rape and 1997 for battery.

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Attacks add urgency to DHS push for border technology
By Wilson P. Dizard III,
Contributing Staff Writer
The Homeland Security Department highlighted its determination to deploy advanced technology along U.S. borders to stem illegal immigration, drug smuggling and violence as part of a comprehensive program that will also use additional personnel, detention beds and fences.

The Bush administration’s Secure Border Initiative is gathering steam amid increasing violence at the border in the form of attacks on Border Patrol agents, officials said.

Yesterday, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff told reporters at a briefing that the department would continue with plans to field advanced technology via the SBI.net program. “The department intends to build an integrated border security system,” Chertoff said.

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New Mexican checkpoints find 5 illegal Iraqi immigrants
BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER

SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — Five illegal aliens from Iraq carrying fake passports were among 736 illegal immigrants apprehended in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico in 2005, according to National Institute of Migration (INM) statistics, the arm of the Mexican government that regulates immigration.

Almost all of those apprehensions, including the five Iraqis, were made at checkpoints the agency set up in the last quarter of 2005 as part President Vincente Fox's Secure Mexico plan.

Primarily because of the checkpoints, the INM's apprehensions of illegal immigrants in San Luis Rio Colorado are 14 times what they were in 2004, according to the director of the San Luis Rio Colorado INM office Ismael Miranda Cruz.

Due to the success of the checkpoints, the INM has started up the most active checkpoint — located on Mexican Highway 2 East of San Luis Rio Colorado — again this year.