Migrant tally called misleading
Experts: Apprehension numbers aside, most entrants make it in
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

In late February, Border Patrol agents apprehended and deported Roberto Robledo Sandoval after finding him with others inside a drop house in Mesa.

Robledo Sandoval, 45, called the experience — armed men kept them in the house waiting for family members in Mexico to wire more money — the worst nightmare of his life.

Nonetheless, after Border Patrol agents dropped him off the border in Nogales, he found another coyote — a people smuggler — and tried again the next day. A couple of days later, while walking in the Altar Valley southwest of Tucson, Border Patrol agents caught him again.

His story is a common one among the estimated 500,000 illegal entrants who make their way into the country each year, said Princeton professor Douglas Massey. He said research suggests that apprehensions don't stop migrants but rather force them to try repeatedly until they make it.

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Speaker says ‘modern-day slavery’ rife along border
BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, SUN STAFF WRITER

They're just prostitutes.

That's the impression that many people have of Norma Hotaling's clients, she said.

The executive director of Standing Against Global Exploitation, a nonprofit group dedicated to treating victims of commercial sexual exploitation and raising awareness of sex trafficking, Hotaling was the victim of sex trafficking as a child, she said.

"(Human trafficking) exists everywhere, it's sad to think that way, but it does," said Margie Dallabetta, the president of the Soroptimists International of Yuma.

Marisa Ugarte, who has developed social service programs in Tijuana, Baja Calif., said human "trafficking" is different than smuggling.

With smuggling, the relationship between a human smuggler and the immigrant consists of a monetary transaction, which ends when the immigrant reaches a destination.

With trafficking, the transaction does not end at the border. She said victims of trafficking are essentially victims of "modern-day slavery," which can involve abduction, sexual exploitation, and the buying and selling of people.

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Help on border, Mexico told
Restrict perilous crossings, report urges
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY — An immigration study partly funded by the Mexican government recommended Friday that Mexico bar its citizens from the most dangerous illegal border crossings.

The recommendations from the joint report by U.S. and Mexican immigration experts run counter to Mexico's long-standing claim that it cannot prevent its own citizens from massing at the border, because the constitution guarantees freedom of movement.

But Assistant Foreign Relations Secretary Geronimo Gutierrez said his country was willing to consider the recommendation that "restricted-access zones should be established in dangerous areas."

"It's no secret this topic has been taboo in Mexican politics," Gutierrez said at a news conference presenting the report.

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U.S. targets business in new entrant plan
By Brady McCombs

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The government unveiled a new plan for interior immigration enforcement Thursday that places the target squarely on employers' backs.

"Employers are now the bad guys," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that studies international migration. "Which means we have created an environment that if we pass new legislation it will be much tougher on employers than anything we've ever had in the United States."

The Department of Homeland Security plan — phase two of the Secure Border Initiative that first concentrated on border control — reads like a to-do list for a country struggling with illegal immigration:

● Crack down on employers who knowingly hire illegal entrants and eliminate the workers' use of fraudulent Social Security numbers.

● Target and dismantle human-smuggling organizations that traffic in illegal entrants.

● Identify and deport known illegal-entrant criminals, fugitives and immigration violators.

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Department of Homeland Security unveils comprehensive immigration enforcement strategy for the nation’s interior
WASHINGTON, D.C.

The interior enforcement strategy will complement the Department’s border security efforts by expanding existing efforts to target employers of illegal aliens and immigration violators inside this country, as well as the many criminal networks that support these activities. The primary objectives are to reverse the tolerance of illegal employment and illegal immigration in the United States. To meet these objectives, the strategy sets out three primary goals or courses of action that will be carried out simultaneously:

• The first is to identify and remove criminal aliens, immigration fugitives and other immigration violators from this country.

• The second is to build strong worksite enforcement and compliance programs to deter illegal employment in this country.

• The third is to uproot the criminal infrastructures at home and abroad that support illegal immigration, including human smuggling / trafficking organizations and document / benefit fraud organizations.

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'Coyotes' do business in the open in Mexico
By Julie Watson
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY – Sidling up to migrants who arrive at the Tijuana airport and cruising the streets in border towns, “coyotes” in gold chains and dark sunglasses openly find customers for nightly scrambles across the U.S. border.

Mexico's president offered to crack down on smuggling at a recent summit with President Bush. But close to 100 smuggling gangs are still operating, government officials say, in plain sight of Mexican law enforcement.

“While drug smugglers are invisible for the most part, people smugglers are visible, working right in front of authorities,” said Tijuana border expert Victor Clark, who has studied the illegal trade for decades.

Smuggling people into the United States from around the world has become a $10 billion-a-year industry, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Global crime networks use Mexican smugglers to sneak in Cubans, Brazilians, Iraqis, Africans and Chinese, according to Interpol, the international police network.

Border experts say the price for Mexican migrants has quadrupled from $300 to more than $1,200 since 1994, when the U.S. last tightened the rules. The price is higher for migrants from Central and South America – Brazilians said they pay $10,000 to $15,000 for a package that includes airfare to Mexico City and crossing the border into the U.S.

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In Acapulco, heads of police officials found in front of government building
By Natalia Parra
ASSOCIATED PRESS

ACAPULCO, Mexico – The decapitated heads of two police officials were found early Thursday dumped in front of a government building in this Pacific coast resort, authorities said.

The heads of police commander Mario Nunez Magana and officer Jesus Alberto Ibarra were found at the same site where four drug traffickers died during a shootout with law enforcement. The heads of the two – who were involved in the Jan. 27 shootout – were accompanied by sign that warned, “So that you learn to respect.”

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Hispanic leaders split over boycott tactics
Mexican government calls meeting with Latinos, expected to urge U.S. leaders to reconsider May 1

Latino organizers of a May 1 economic boycott in the U.S. remain confident participation will be high, but factionalism has developed over planned tactics and, now, the government of Mexico is interjecting itself in what some see as an attempt to derail the protest altogether.

The boycott, announced in the wake of congressional debate on immigration reform that included making presence in the U.S. illegally a felony, was originally planned as a day on which Latinos and immigrants would refrain from spending. It garnered support from many labor and church leaders in the border states.