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by Breitbart News18 Jun 2016

  Read more about AZ Anti-Trump Protester: ‘Make America Mexico Again’

TAPACHULA, Mexico/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mexico is struggling to stem the flow of Central American migrants traveling to the United States ahead of the U.S. presidential election, causing major concern in Washington, which is weighing sending more agents to help.

In 2014, Mexico moved to strengthen its southern border when a surge in child migrants from Central America sparked a political crisis in the United States.

Last year, Mexico detained over 190,000 migrants, more than double the number in 2012.

But official data examined by Reuters shows that fewer migrants have been captured in Mexico this year even as the number caught on the U.S. border has soared.

The slowdown in detentions on Mexican soil is frustrating U.S. officials who feel that Mexico could be doing more, according to a source familiar with internal briefings on the topic at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Illegal immigration is stoking a fierce debate ahead of the U.S. election on Nov. 8 with Republican candidate Donald Trump vowing to deport millions of people and build a wall along the Mexican border if elected president.

Mexico says its National Migration Institute (INM), which regulates migration in the country, is already working flat out...

The number of families stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border jumped 122 percent between October 2015 and April 2016...

The number of detained "unaccompanied minors" - children traveling without relatives - was 74 percent higher. Most of the Central Americans come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Despite those increases, fewer migrants are being caught as they move through Mexico....

The DHS is considering sending more agents south to train Mexican officials on how to track human traffickers and stop migrants crossing the Mexico-Guatemala border, according to an internal briefing document obtained by Reuters.

U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, who sits on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said DHS officials told him they hope to help Mexico strengthen its southern border.

"When you're constantly working at full speed and don't have all the resources because your primary mission is to fight the drug cartels, yeah, you're going to be stretched," Cuellar said....

Roque Villanueva attributed the migrant surge to people finding new routes past checkpoints...

LEAKY BORDER

In 2014, Mexico launched the "Plan Frontera Sur" to tighten border controls, register migrants and stop them using the perilous network of trains known as "La Bestia", or "The Beast".

But migrants quickly adapted.

Elisabel Enriquez, Guatemala's vice-consul in Tapachula, said migrant smugglers now rent trucks and shuttling migrants from southern Mexico all the way to the U.S. border over 2,000 km away for up to $8,000 per person.

Two such trucks were stopped in recent weeks, she said, one stuffed with about 115 migrants and the other about 60.

Some migrants immediately apply for asylum on arrival in Mexico. Once granted a refugee visa, they can travel through Mexico without fear of being deported, said Irmgard Pund, who runs the local Belen migrant shelter.

So far this year, asylum applications with Mexican refugee agency COMAR are up over 150 percent compared with 2015...

The rise in families heading north is partly due to a 2015 U.S federal court decision limiting the time mothers and children can be held in detention, which has created the mistaken impression they can stay in the United States, U.S. officials say.

A regional drought in Central America has also increased pressure to leave, while some migrants are trying to cross ahead of the election in case Trump wins and follows through on his campaign promises, making it more difficult for them in the future.

Compared to their U.S. counterparts, Mexico's migration authorities get by on a shoestring. The INM spent 4.14 billion pesos ($228.37 million) in 2015, less than 2 percent of the CBP's budget request for 2016.

The United States has tripled its border force under President Barack Obama to 60,000 staff, while the INM has 5,383 employees.

Roque Villanueva said the fall in the price of oil, which funds about a fifth of Mexico's federal budget, makes it even harder to put new resources into the INM.

Nonetheless, he said Mexico and the United States would continue to work closely together as Washington has plenty of reasons for wanting a robust southern Mexican border.

"The Americans are not so worried by how many Central Americans get through, but rather about making sure nobody with even the slightest chance of being a terrorist does," he said.

($1 = 18.1287 pesos) Read more about 'At the limit,' Mexico buckles under migrant surge to U.S.

The last of four men who attacked an inmate in federal prison with punches to the back of his head, kicks to his back and strikes with a chair was sentenced Wednesday to more than three years in custody.

The victim, identified in court papers only as E.I., suffered a broken jaw, a broken nose and a brain hemorrhage and was hospitalized at Salem Hospital for 2 ½ weeks.

Ten days after the attack, the victim told FBI agents he didn't remember anything about the assault and had no idea who hurt him. But he did recall that he had upset some of the "Southsiders'' when he complained they were trying to act like they wanted to be black, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hannah Horsley wrote in a sentencing memo.

According to court records, the assault occurred a year ago, the morning of May 31 in a common area of the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan.

The victim was sitting at a table watching TV when one of the defendants, Jose Carlos Acosta Jr., gave a hand signal. With that, Acosta, Omar Mendoza, Javier Rodriguez Tijerina Jr. and Victor Alas-Felix converged on the victim. Mendoza struck E.I. in the back of the head with a closed fist, knocking him off his chair. The three others then stomped and kicked him and punched him while he was on the floor. E.I. appeared to be unconscious after the attack and stayed on the floor for a few minutes before he came to.

When he stood and tried to return to his cell, he was attacked a second time. Alas-Felix kicked him hard in the back and Acosta struck E.I. with a plastic chair.

Alas-Felix, 40, ditched his bloody shoes in a trash can near his cell, and they were later recovered.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Justice Michael W. Mosman sentenced Alas-Felix to three years and four months in prison.

Assistant federal public defender Thomas Hester told the court that Alas-Felix had tried to drop out of the Surenos gang, but once the assault was ordered, he feared that if he didn't participate, his life would be threatened as well.

"He isn't saying he should not be punished,''  Hester added.

....Alas-Felix was serving a sentence for illegally entering the United States from Mexico and has other weapons, drugs and burglary convictions.

Alas-Felix, his arms and neck covered in tattoos, is "rather conspicuous,'' ...

Hester argued for a 30-month sentence, while the federal prosecutor urged a 46-month sentence to send a clear message that gang assaults in prison will be seriously punished...

The judge said he was convinced that Alas-Felix had tried to remove himself from gang life behind bars, but Mosman didn't cut him any slack.

"I'm unwilling to judge you by the rules of prison life. It just turns everything upside down,'' Mosman said. "I'm not judging you by the rules of your criminal organization. I'm judging you by the standards of this country where we live.''

The judge asked that Alas-Felix be placed in a federal prison outside of the Western or Southwestern regions of the country and be placed in some type of special housing to isolate him from gang influences.

Alas-Felix's co-defendant Tijerina previously was sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison; Acosta to three years and four months; and Mendoza to two years and two months for the assault. The four also have been ordered to pay a total of $58,811 in restitution to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which paid for the victim's medical expenses.

After serving his sentence, Alas-Felix will be deported to Mexico. Read more about Gang-related assault in federal prison sends four men back to serve more time

The constitutional challenge to President Obama’s executive action on immigration keeps getting more remarkable. A federal judge has now exposed how the Justice Department systematically deceived lower courts about the Administration’s conduct, and he has imposed unprecedented legal measures to attempt to sterilize this ethics rot.

On Thursday District Judge Andrew Hanen of Texas found that Obama Administration lawyers committed misconduct that he called “intentional, serious and material.” In 2015 he issued an injunction—now in front of the Supreme Court—blocking Mr. Obama’s 2014 order that rewrote immigration law to award legal status and federal and state benefits to nearly five million aliens.

When 26 states sued to block the order in December 2014, Justice repeatedly assured Judge Hanen that the Department of Homeland Security would not start processing applications until February 2015 at the earliest. Two weeks after the injunction came down, in March, Justice was forced to admit that DHS had already granted or renewed more than 100,000 permits.

Justice has also conceded in legal filings that all its lawyers knew all along that the DHS program was underway, despite what they said in briefs and hearings. One DOJ lawyer told Judge Hanen that “I really would not expect anything between now and the date of the hearing.” As the judge notes, “How the government can categorize the granting of over 100,000 applications as not being ‘anything’ is beyond comprehension.”

Justice’s only explanation is that its lawyers either “lost focus on the fact” or “the fact receded in memory or awareness”—the fact here being realities that the DOJ was required to disclose to the court. The states weren’t able to make certain arguments or seek certain legal remedies because the program supposedly hadn’t been implemented, leaving them in a weaker legal position.

More to the point, an attorney’s first and most basic judicial obligation is to tell the truth. Judge Hanen concludes that the misrepresentations “were made in bad faith” and “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” Many a lawyer has been disbarred for less.

Yet the misconduct he has unmasked should trouble Americans of all political persuasions. Prosecutors often abuse their powers in run-of-the-mill cases. But this is a constitutional challenge with major consequences for the separation of powers, and the deceit must have required the participation and coordination of dozens of political appointees and career lawyers. That suggests a serious institutional failure, not mere rogue actors.

Main Justice may have figured that the state challenge would be tossed for lack of standing, and thus its dissembling wouldn’t matter. This would mean that President Obama’s refusal to recognize the legal limits of his executive power has spread a culture of lawlessness among his lawyers too.

AG Lynch could salvage the credibility of the Justice Department by explaining how this breakdown happened. Whether you worry about how Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would wield government powers, everyone has an interest in an honest accounting of the facts that were denied to Judge Hanen. Read more about The Miscarriage of Justice Department

HOUSTON, TX - For over a decade, mothers have given congressional testimony and pouring out their hearts about the preventable killings of their children and, yet, politicians have done nothing.  

Read the Sean Hannity article posted today. Read more about Prez Candidate Officially Commits

On Tuesday, April 19, 2016, the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security conducted a hearing on the topic, “The Real Victims of a Reckless and Lawless Immigration Policy: Families and Survivors Speak Out on the Real Cost of This Administration’s Policies.”

I urge you to watch the entire video of that important hearing...

The witnesses at this hearing were: Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland; Michelle Root, the mother of Sarah Root; Laura Wilkerson,  the mother of Joshua Wilkerson; and Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the United Methodist Church.

The timing of the hearing could not have been better because the day before, on Monday, April 18^th, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the administration's implementation of the DAPA program (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents)...

...President Obama stood in the White House Rose Garden to proclaim that “since Congress failed to act” he was going to take action. Of course to Obama, his concept of a "failure of Congress to act” was the refusal of Congress to pass bad legislation. When Congress votes down bad legislation, they most certainly are acting.

Obama also deceptively said that this was about children, kids and young people, even though illegal aliens as old as 31 years of age could apply for this program...

...Incidentally, I cannot pass up the opportunity to note that while the term “alien” has come under attack by Obama and his supporters, the open borders anarchists, the term “DREAMers” is derived from the acronym for the “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors” Act. 

The “a” in DREAMers stands for “aliens.” ...

The congressional hearing that was conducted on the heels of oral arguments at the Supreme Court illuminated the level of carnage that Obama's executive orders, policy decisions and misuse of prosecutorial discretion has unleashed on America and Americans.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, the Chairman of the House Immigration Subcommittee, opened the hearing with his statement that set the stage and the tone for what would follow. Breitbart.com used one of Rep. Gowdy's statements as the title for the article “Trey Gowdy: More Illegal Immigrants Convicted of Crimes At Large in the U.S. Than The Population of Pittsburgh.” Gowdy noted that simply stating that there are more than 350,000 known criminal aliens at large throughout the United States is a statistic and statistics are often not persuasive, so he thought he needed to put that huge number in perspective. And, indeed, he did....

Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas had previously chaired the House Immigration Subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee...

Smith's understandable outrage at the April 19^th hearing became readily apparent when he stated rhetorically that he wondered if President Obama might be an accessory to the crimes committed by illegal aliens since he has implemented policies that he knows are going to result in the loss of life to innocent Americans, noting that the administration had released from custody some 100,000 aliens who had been convicted of committing serious crimes. He also noted that although it has been estimated that illegal aliens account for about 3% of the U.S. population, they account for 30% of all murders -- making illegal aliens 10 times more likely to commit murder than anyone else.

Congressman Smith came up with some additional staggering and infuriating statistics. He noted that of the 100,000 aliens that Obama had released from custody, 473 had been previously convicted of committing homicides, 375 of these criminal aliens had been convicted of kidnapping, 890 of these released criminal aliens had been previously convicted for committing sexual assaults and others of this stellar group of “pre-citizens” (the term I decided to use when, during the Carter administration all INS personnel were told to stop using the term “illegal alien” to describe aliens illegally present in the United States) had been previously convicted of committing 10,731 assaults...

As bad as these statistics are, Smith went on to report that since the release of these criminal aliens, many have gone on to further their criminal careers by committing 124 additional (known) homicides from 2010 until 2014 and an additional 1,423 sexual assaults.

...two of the witnesses who testified at the congressional hearing, as I noted at the beginning of this article, were Michelle Root, the mother of Sarah Root, and Laura Wilkerson, the mother of Joshua Wilkerson.

Ms. Root and Ms. Wilkerson both lost their children to illegal aliens.

The title of a Breitbart.com news article posted on the day of the hearing was based on Michelle Root's poignant and heart-breaking prepared testimony at the hearing: “Mother of Daughter Killed by Illegal: His Bail Was ‘Less Than it Cost to Bury My Baby.’”

The illegal alien in this case was released on bail and it is believed he fled to his native Honduras, availing himself use of the “escape hatch” foreign criminals and terrorists frequently avail themselves of: the ability to flee our nation to escape the long reach of the law.

The day after the hearing CNS News posted a report about the compelling testimony of Laura Wilkerson at that hearing in an article that summed up the anguished mother's demands of our elected “representatives.”

The title of that article was, “Mother of Teen Murdered by Illegal Immigrant Tells Congress: ‘Do Something – It Is Your Job.’”

Wilkerson’s prepared testimony provided horrific details about the torture and murder of her high school student son by Hermilo Vildo Moralez, an illegal alien.

Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland discussed how since the “surge” of “unaccompanied minors” the high schools and even lower grade schools have witnessed a massive increase in gang activity by those aliens who flooded across our southwest border. Sheriff Jenkins noted that the majority of those gang members who have been arrested arrived across that border after 2013...

Rep. Bob Goodlatte is the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and participated in this hearing. His final statement in his prepared testimony will serve as the conclusion for my commentary today:

By releasing known criminal aliens and refusing to secure our border, the Administration has sent a clear message to the American people that their safety and security are far less important than ensuring that these individuals remain here. I want to see these dangerous policies stopped, and I will continue working to stand in the way of President Obama’s pen and phone. The real costs of illegal immigration are something no family should be forced to pay.

The owner of a dog found dead inside his stolen car told a judge Monday he hopes the accused thief never leaves jail.

Bill Robbins' minute-long statement came during a Multnomah County Circuit Court arraignment for Francisco Vincent Gonzalez, who was arrested April 14 after police found him in a North Portland hotel. Police said Gonzalez stole Robbins' car with the dog, named Kona, inside.

A Multnomah County grand jury indicted him on new charges Tuesday including felony unauthorized use of a vehicle, possession of a stolen vehicle, first-degree theft, identity theft and possession of methamphetamine. He was also charged with five misdemeanors related to animal abuse, animal neglect and animal abandonment. Gonzalez pleaded not guilty....

Prosecutor Brian Davidson declined to discuss specifics of the case but said the nature of the animal crimes doesn't happen often in the county. When they happen, however, the cases are significant and troubling, he said.

Robbins reported the theft occurred April 7 about 3:30 p.m...

Officers arrested Gonzalez on April 12 at the Super Value Inn Motel in North Portland. Gonzalez confessed to detectives that he stole the car and dog, then abandoned the car with the pet inside, according to a probable cause affidavit filed April 15. Officers also arrested his wife, Linda Kathy Gutierrez, 33, on accusations of hindering prosecution.

Circuit Court Judge Karin J. Immergut raised Gonzalez's bail from $33,000 to $135,000 after prosecutor Brian Davidson requested it, noting that Gonzalez has been the subject of federal prosecution twice before on immigration offenses. Read more about Owner of dog killed in car theft says he'll never forget 'Kona'

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Laredo Sector had an impressive first five months of the current fiscal year which began in October 2015. 17,945 apprehensions were made of illegal aliens who had crossed the border from Mexico...  In addition, large quantities of drugs were seized and 33 bodies of illegal immigrants were found.

The Laredo Sector covers 101 counties in Texas. This area represents 86,793 square miles of the Lone Star State. It covers a distance of 171 miles of the Rio Grande River border with Mexico and runs northward from Laredo through Dallas to the Oklahoma border on the Red River.

Highlighting the accomplishments of the sector during that period, Border Patrol officials reported the seizure of 41,188 pounds of marijuana, 341.17 pounds of cocaine, and 863.17 pounds of heroin. Unfortunately, 33 bodies of illegal immigrants who died while entering the U.S. were found by these agents. Additionally, 184 rescues were carried out.

“These statistics represent the hard work, commitment, honor and dedication that the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol provide everyday while securing our Nation’s borders,” Laredo Sector Chief Mario Martinez said in the statement obtained by Breitbart Texas...

“We are very proud of our Border Patrol agents and grateful for the hard work these numbers represent,” Garza continued. “Unfortunately, what we do not know is how many people successfully crossed the border undetected...

The report was sent out by officials late Friday afternoon...  The report does not disclose how many of the 17,945 people apprehended were returned to their country of origin or how many of those people were released into the United States, with or without a notice to appear for an immigration hearing...

The sector is also in the process of adding an additional all-weather road to allow agents to more quickly access sections of the river area and respond to situations where either people or drugs are crossing the border.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and is a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX. Read more about 18,000 Illegal Aliens Caught in 5 Months — In Single Texas Sector