No widespread complaints about Arizona's new voter ID requirement
By Jacques Billeaud
Associated Press Writer

Phoenix (AP) -- Officials and voting rights advocates said the new requirement that Arizonans show identification before voting didn't appear to be generating a large number of complaints or problems in Tuesday's local elections.

The elections served as the first test of the new requirement, which is part of a 2004 voter-approved law that also denied some government benefits to illegal immigrants. The voter-ID rules were cleared by federal officials in October.

Election officials say a small number of people have voiced their opposition to the identification requirement, but nearly all of them still voted by provisional ballots.

Several people outside a polling place in downtown Phoenix said they didn't mind having to show their IDs and that they experienced no hassles when voting.

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Agents rescue illegals lost in Yuma desert
From Staff Reports

Ten illegal immigrants, two of whom were injured, were found on the Barry M. Goldwater Range Saturday by U.S. Border Patrol agents responding to reports that a group of people were lost in the desert.

A female traveling in the group was suffering near-hypothermia and a possible broken leg, while a male in the same group had an ankle injury, the patrol said.

They were airlifted to Yuma Regional Medical Center for treatment, while the other eight, all from Mexico, were processed by the Border Patrol for deportation. Condition reports for the two were unavailable Monday.

The rescue came after the Yuma County Sheriff's Office received a 911 call at 11:30 a.m. from a man who said he was lost in the desert with 10 others. The sheriff's office referred the call to the Border Patrol, which sent out its Border Search Trauma and Rescue team and aircraft to find the group.

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Agents find load of marijuana under branches
From Staff Reports

U.S. Border Patrol agents working an Interstate 8 checkpoint over the weekend seized nearly a half-ton marijuana partially hidden beneath citrus tree branches in a pickup bed.

The seizure occurred at 10:30 a.m. Saturday after a black 2005 Ford F-150 pickup was stopped at the checkpoint near Milepost 17 on Interstate 8. Agents at the checkpoint noticed part of a bungee cord-wrapped tarpaulin beneath the tree branches.

Agents found 43 bundles containing 982 pounds of pot. The driver of the pickup and two passengers, all U.S. citizens, were arrested and later turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration along with the truck and marijuana.

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Bill changes immigration appeals path
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Tucked into a wide-ranging immigration bill now before a U.S. Senate committee is a proposal to send all future appeals in deportation and asylum cases to a court in Washington, D.C., where a single judge would have the authority to dismiss them.

The office of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the bill's author, says the proposal would make immigration law uniform throughout the nation and relieve the other 12 federal appeals courts — particularly those in San Francisco and New York — of a glut of immigration cases.

But immigration lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union say the plan is ill-conceived, dangerous and a thinly veiled attack on the Ninth U.S Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which now hears about half of the nation's immigration appeals. The critics were joined Friday by the Ninth Circuit's chief judge, Mary Schroeder.

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English-only backed in teacher hires
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services

Phoenix — State representatives voted Monday to bar schools from requiring teachers to speak anything other than English.

They also agreed to ask Arizonans to once again declare English the official language of the state.

Proponents of both measures say they're designed to recognize English already is the language of Arizona and make that fact part of public policy.

Rep. Chuck Gray, R-Mesa, said his plan to restrict school hiring practices goes a step further. It ensures applicants for teaching jobs who don't speak a foreign language are not blocked from employment.

"We're in an English-speaking country, we're in an English-speaking state," he said. "The (teaching) materials are in English."

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City considers curfew near bridges to deter teen drinking
David Crowder
El Paso Times

People younger than 17 will be banned from areas around the two international bridges in El Paso's Downtown from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly if the City Council approves the creation of two special curfew zones today.

The measure is aimed at keeping teenagers from going to Juárez to drink.

Marge Bartoletti, executive director of Rio Grande Safe Communities, said she hopes to fill the council chambers with parents and young people in support of the ordinance.

Her organization and the Police Department are sponsoring it.

The is a major problem at the Algodones/Andrade, CA port as well. I have see dozens of teens going into Mexico at 8 or 9 pm on a Sunday when the port closes at 10pm. The CBP personnel say they know the problem exists but they have no authority to do anything about it! -mm

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Nine stabbed to death in weekend prison riot
Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

JUAREZ -- Nine inmates died Saturday and Sunday in the second deadly gang riot at the Cereso prison in Juárez in two months, Juárez police said.

Another nine men were injured during the attack. Autopsies showed the victims were stabbed to death. Juárez Mayor Hector Murguia said the target of the attack was Alejandro Ferrer Pérez, 26, the alleged leader of the Aztecas prison gang. Ferrer died from stab wounds.

Murguia said that around 300 Aztecas members broke down doors and walls to get to Ferrer, who they believed had betrayed them.

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Mexico to close office of special prosecutor for 'dirty war' crimes
By E. Eduardo Castillo
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY – Mexico will close a special prosecutor's office dedicated to investigating atrocities committed by the government during its two-decade campaign to weed out suspected guerrillas and leftists, the attorney general said Monday.

President Vicente Fox took office in 2000 vowing to punish those responsible for the brutal campaign, but the office failed to secure convictions – or even successful indictments – against all but a few former government officials.

“It's an office that had an objective, which was to investigate the past,” Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said Monday. “Having concluded its principal investigations, the office should close.”

He said it could cease operations as soon as April 15, after a final report from the special prosecutor that is expected to conclude Mexican presidents from the late 1960s to the early 1980s orchestrated a systematic campaign in which anti-government activists were detained without cause and soldiers carried out summary executions, raped women, and set entire villages on fire.

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25% of Mexico cargo inspected at Nogales
Checking more is called impossible, but a new radiation detector will help guard the border.
SUSAN CARROLL
Arizona Republic Tucson Bureau

NOGALES - Outside a towering inspection bay at the busiest commercial port of entry in Arizona, the line of trucks snakes back into Mexico as far as the eye can see, with hundreds of heavy rigs creeping forward foot by foot.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents here say they physically inspect or X-ray roughly 1 in 4 cargo trucks, a standard considered high in comparison with the screening of shipments into the nation's seaports. The recent controversy over a proposed deal with a Dubai company to manage six U.S. ports highlighted a statistic that many have found alarming: Though CBP agents screen all seaport cargo for high-risk shipments, only about 6 percent of cargo is physically inspected on American soil.

Experts say the sheer volume of traffic makes physically checking each truck virtually impossible, with more than 13.7 million containers shipped across the nation's land borders last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. In Arizona, 346,035 commercial trucks and 61,142 train cars crossed from Mexico into the United States during the same period, according to CBP statistics.

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Cold Forces Illegal Immigrants' Surrender
By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press Writer
TUCSON, Ariz.

Frigid temperatures over the weekend killed four illegal immigrants trying to cross the Arizona-Mexico border and forced many others to turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents.

The four men likely died from hypothermia or exposure, said Gustavo Soto, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which covers nearly all the Arizona-Mexico border.

As temperatures plunged to around freezing across the area because of a late-winter storm, numerous groups of immigrants _ numbering a half- dozen to more than a dozen _ walked out onto roads to flag down agents or other law officers, Soto said.

"They knew they were in over their heads and started making their way out to the roads," he said.

Officials were still waiting to get a count on how many people turned themselves in. In March 2000, a wintry storm forced hundreds of illegal immigrants crossing the Arizona deserts to turn themselves in.