illegal immigration

Children walk across the U.S.-Mexico border with crystal methamphetamine strapped to their backs or concealed between notebook pages. Motorists disguise liquid meth in tequila bottles, windshield washer containers and gas tanks.

The smuggling of the drug at land border crossings has jumped in recent years but especially at San Diego's San Ysidro port of entry, which accounted for more than 40 percent of seizures in fiscal year 2012. That's more than three times the second-highest _ five miles east _ and more than five times the third-highest, in Nogales, Ariz.

The spike reflects a shift in production to Mexico after a U.S. crackdown on domestic labs and the Sinaloa cartel's new hold on the prized Tijuana-San Diego smuggling corridor.

A turf war that gripped Tijuana a few years ago with beheadings and daytime shootouts ended with the cartel coming out on top. The drugs, meanwhile, continue flowing through San Ysidro, the Western hemisphere's busiest land border crossing with an average of 40,000 cars and 25,000 pedestrians entering daily.

"This is the gem for traffickers," said Gary Hill, assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego. "It's the greatest place for these guys to cross because there are so many opportunities."

Customs and Border Protection officers seized 5,566 pounds of methamphetamine at San Ysidro in the 2012 fiscal year, more than double two years earlier, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit. On the entire border, inspectors seized 13,195 pounds, also more than double.

From October 2012 through March, seizures totaled 2,169 pounds at San Ysidro and 1,730 pounds at Otay Mesa, giving San Diego 61 percent of the 6,364 pounds seized at Mexican border crossings. Much of the rest was found in Laredo, Texas; Nogales; and Calexico, Calif.

San Ysidro _ unlike other busy border crossings _ blends into a sprawl of 18 million people that includes Los Angeles, one of the nation's top distribution hubs. By contrast, El Paso is more than 600 miles from Dallas on a lonely highway with Border Patrol checkpoints.

Rush-hour comes weekday mornings, with thousands of motorists clogging Tijuana streets to approach 24 U.S.-bound inspection lanes on their way to school or work. Vendors weave between cars, hawking cappuccinos, burritos, newspapers and trinkets.

A $732 million expansion that has created even longer delays may offer an extra incentive for smugglers who bet that inspectors will move people quickly to avoid criticism for hampering commerce and travel, said Joe Garcia, assistant special agent in charge of ICE investigations in San Diego.

Children are caught with methamphetamine strapped to their bodies several times a week _ an "alarming increase," according to Garcia. They are typically paid $50 to $200 for each trip, carrying 3 pounds on average.

Drivers, who collect up to $2,000 per trip, conceal methamphetamine in bumpers, batteries, radiators and almost any other crevice imaginable. Packaging is smothered with mustard, baby powder and laundry detergent to fool drug-sniffing dogs.

Crystals are increasingly dissolved in water, especially during the last year, making the drug more difficult to detect in giant X-ray scanners that inspectors order some motorists to drive through. The water is later boiled and often mixed with acetone, a combustible fluid used in paints that yields clear shards of methamphetamine favored by users. The drug often remains in liquid form until reaching its final distribution hub.

The government has expanded X-ray inspections of cars at the border in recent years, but increased production in Mexico and the Sinaloa cartel's presence are driving the seizures, Garcia said. "This is a new corridor for them," he said.

The U.S. government shut large methamphetamine labs during the last decade as it introduced sharp limits on chemicals used to make the drug, causing production to shift to Mexico.

The U.S. State Department said in March that the Mexican government seized 958 labs under former President Felipe Calderon from 2006 to 2012, compared with 145 under the previous administration. Mexico seized 267 labs last year, up from 227 in 2011.

As production moved to central Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel found opportunity in Tijuana in 2008 when it backed a breakaway faction of the Arellano Felix clan, named for a family that controlled the border smuggling route for two decades. Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, had long dominated nearby in eastern California and Arizona.

Tijuana registered 844 murders in 2008 in a turf war that horrified residents with castrated bodies hanging from bridges. After the Sinaloa cartel prevailed, the Mexican border city of more than 2 million people returned to relative calm, with 332 murders last year and almost no public displays of brutality.

Alfonzo "Achilles" Arzate and his younger brother Rene, known as "The Frog," have emerged as top Sinaloa operatives in Tijuana _ the former known as the brains and the latter as the brawn. The elder Arzate has been mentioned on wire intercepts for drug deals as far as Chicago, Hill said.

He appears to have gained favor with the Sinaloa cartel brass after another cartel operative raided one of his warehouses in October 2010, leading to a shootout and the government seizing 134 tons of marijuana.

Methamphetamine has also turned into a scourge throughout Tijuana, becoming the most common drug offense for dealers and consumers in the last five years, said Miguel Angel Guerrero, coordinator of the Baja California state attorney general's organized crime unit.

"It has increased a lot in the city because it's cheaper than cocaine, even cheaper than marijuana," he said.

Disputes among street dealers lead to spurts of violence in Tijuana, said Guerrero, including April's murder tally of 56 bodies. But the killings pale in numbers and brutality compared to the dark days of 2008 and 2009. While president, Calderon hailed Tijuana as a success story in his war on cartels.

"The Sinaloa cartel, their presence here has been strong enough to the point that no one is pushing back," said the DEA's Hill. "They just simply want to focus on making money and moving the dope across."
  Read more about Meth floods US border crossing

An unusual amusement park attraction in the central Mexican state of Hidalgo offers visitors the thrills and chills of an illegal border crossing. The attraction takes visitors through a fake United States-Mexico border, complete with fake smugglers and fake border patrol agents.

The aim is to dissuade would be migrants from making the trip. The coyote, or smuggler, leading this simulated illegal border crossing used the name Simon and wore a face mask. Before setting off, he addressed his charges that evening, about 40 students from a private school in Mexico City.

"Tonight we're going to talk about migration," Simon said in Spanish. "But for us it isn't just something rhetorical, but rather the opposite. Because we have endured, we have suffered, of hunger, thirst, injustice, heat, cold, we have suffered from everything."

Then, under the cover of night, Simon herded them into the woods, toward the fake frontera.

The actual U.S.-Mexico border is nearly 800 miles away from the Parque EcoAlberto. The park is part of the indigenous HñaHñu community. Tourist can enjoy other recreational attractions like hot springs and rappelling, in addition to the recently added fake border crossing.

But for those who want to simulate the experience of fleeing across the border, without the real danger, the latter attraction is for you. For three hours, tourist groups endure sirens, dogs, chases and the fake border patrol yelling threats.

Maribel Garcia works as an administrator for the park. She says the purpose of the Night Walk is simple.

"Our objective is to stop the immigration that exists amongst our citizens, principally from the state of Mexico to the U.S.," Garcia said in Spanish.

Garcia says traditionally this region subsisted on agriculture, but that wasn't bringing the community what it needed.

"Because we didn't have sewer systems, light, telephone, roads," she said.

So people went north. The HñaHñu community has lost about 80 percent of its population to the U.S., Garcia estimates, mainly to Arizona and Nevada. Garcia says it was the HñaHñu youth returning home after crossing the real border who thought up this tourist attraction as a way to create income for the community and encourage others to stay in Mexico.

During the tour, participants have an encounter with the fake border patrol. Photo by Irina Zhorov/Fronteras

Titi, who also works as a coyote on the Night Walks, was emphatic that it was not training for future generations.

"We try to help people so that they won't leave," Titi said in Spanish. "It's time to create some employment, to work with our own and regenerate everything, or at least what we can, even though it might be slow going."

The HñaHñu's efforts are well timed. According to one estimate, for first time since the 1960s there is net-zero migration from Mexico to the U.S. Increased border patrol, stricter laws in the U.S., rising smuggling fees, violence in the desert and the struggling U.S. economy are keeping more Mexicans at home.

Garcia, the administrator, is hoping the Night Walks convince youth in particular to put their energies into their home communities.

"The youth that already have something figured out, that already have something visualized for the future, they're the youth that in that moment think, 'How difficult,'" she said.

S

tudents get on the ground during an encounter with a fake violent drug smuggler. Photo by Irina Zhorov/Fronteras

The tours cost the equivalent of about $20. The visitors are typically middle-class Mexicans or, like tonight, students from private schools -- in other words, not the most likely group to attempt an illegal crossing into the U.S.

Still, there were some who had been thinking about it. Over tea and sweet breads at the end of the walk, Jazmin Arely Moreno Alcazar said she got the message.

"It's not worth risking it because if we can't stand a few hours, we won't be able to stand days. Because it's very ugly," Alcazar said in Spanish.

Garcia said it's difficult to quantify how effective the tours are for other visitors. But as the park's tourist offerings expand and the number of visitors grow, she said there is a new hope that enough money will come in and that the attraction will encourage more community members to stay put.

This story was reported by the Fronteras: Changing Americas Desk, a multimedia collaboration among seven public radio stations. It is led by KJZZ in Phoenix and KPBS in San Diego and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of its Local Journalism Center initiative. Read more about Mexican Amusement Park Offers Fake Border Crossing Attraction

According to Sen. John McCain, a member of the Senate’s Gang of Eight, criminals will not be legalized under the proposed bipartisan immigration bill.

“Anyone who has committed crimes in this country is going to be deported,” the Arizona Republican declared on the Senate floor last week.

However, as Washington Examiner columnist Byron York recently reported, “the bottom line is an immigrant could have more than three misdemeanor convictions in his background check and still qualify for legalization.”

Furthermore, the following chart published June 21 by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit organization that opposes liberalization of immigration law, compares the consequences for an array of crimes and discovered that while illegal immigrants might be exonerated and legalized, U.S. citizens and legal immigrants face years of incarceration or temporary expulsion from the country.

The Gang of Eight’s bill would allow illegal immigrants who entered the country before Dec. 31, 2011, and committed up to three misdemeanor offenses including but not limited to assault, battery, identity or document fraud, tax evasion, to remain eligible for Registered Provisional Status. Meanwhile, U.S. citizens and persons who entered the country legally could incur up to $100,000 in fines,15 years of imprisonment, or be prohibited to reenter the country for up to 10 years.

  Read more about Illegal immigrants who commit crimes face lesser punishment than U.S. citizens

“Today, the Schumer-Corker-Hoeven rescue amendment was dropped on the Senate floor. Members and Staff have only until Monday afternoon to read through the 1,187 pages of this modified proposal...Already, in a short time, we have identified grave and deep flaws in the modified bill – both in terms of failure to live up to new promises made as well as some shocking changes that actually further weaken the underlying bill. The special interests who wrote these provisions know exactly what they do and designed them not to work – but I fear some of the Senators who sponsored this amendment have no idea they’re even there… These are undoubtedly only some of the new flaws that will be uncovered in the proposal”

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement about the Schumer-Corker-Hoeven Gang of Eight substitute amendment:

“When the Gang of Eight first introduced their plan, they made a series of promises about their proposal. Each of those was subsequently proven to be false. Today, the Schumer-Corker-Hoeven rescue amendment was dropped on the Senate floor. Members and staff have only until Monday afternoon to read through the 1,187 pages of this modified proposal. Already, in a short time, we have identified grave and deep flaws in the modified bill – both in terms of failure to live up to new promises made as well as some shocking changes that actually further weaken the underlying bill. The special interests who wrote these provisions know exactly what they do and designed them not to work – but I fear some of the Senators who sponsored this amendment have no idea they’re even there:

--The Schumer-Corker-Hoeven amendment doesn’t change the bill’s amnesty first framework. Instead it goes even further and creates an automatic amnesty for future illegal aliens. Section 2302 says if you overstay your visa in the future you can still apply for a green card and become a citizen. It is permanent lawlessness. Joined with existing language that restricts future enforcement, it guarantees unending illegal immigration.

--Contrary to their rhetoric there is no border surge. The Secretary doesn’t even have to start hiring new border patrol agents until 2017, and the amendment only gives her until 2021 to increase the number by 20,000. According to the National Association of Former Border Patrol Agents, this hiring process could take up to 20 years. Much like the 2006 law requiring a 700-mile border fence, it’s never going to be happen.

--To raise money, the amendment increases fees on visas for legal immigrants, but keeps the same low fees and fines for those applying for amnesty – favoring illegal over legal immigrants. Under the 2007 comprehensive immigration bill, amnesty applicants had to pay up to $8,000 – vastly more than the fines in the current plan which total only $2,000 and are subject to numerous waivers. The Gang has repeatedly claimed their bill is completely paid for by fees. However, under the Schumer-Corker-Hoeven amendment, the American taxpayers are on the hook for $38 billion.

These are undoubtedly only some of the new flaws that will be uncovered in the proposal. And the largely unchanged original bill retains its scores of many flaws including: amnesty first, legalization for criminal aliens, decimated interior enforcement, and a massive increase in low-skill legal immigration.

The Gang of Eight’s proposal – modified or not – still guarantees three things: amnesty, lower wages, and higher unemployment.”

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) serves on four Senate committees: Armed Services, Judiciary, Environment and Public Works, and as Ranking Member of the Budget Committee. Visit Sessions online at his website or via YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Note: Please do not reply to this email. For further information, contact Sen. Sessions’ Press Office at (202) 224-4124. Read more about Shocking New Loopholes Snuck Into Amended Immigration Bill

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., June 5 (UPI) -- The governor of Florida has vetoed a "well-intentioned" bill that would have allowed children of undocumented immigrants to get temporary drivers' licenses.

The "Dream Act Driver License" bill had passed through both chambers of the Legislature with only two dissenting votes, The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times reported Tuesday.

The bill used as its foundation a 2012 policy of the Obama administration that suspended for two years deportation actions against children illegally brought to the United States by their parents.

Gov. Rick Scott said lawmakers were "well-intentioned" in approving the measure, but that "it should not have been done by relying on a federal government policy adopted without legal basis."

Scott said the Obama policy did not have the force of law, noting that Florida law already allows non-citizens with federal work permits to get temporary drivers licenses.

Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, called the governor's veto "simply unconscionable," adding that Scott had "missed an opportunity."

Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte, a former Florida state legislator, said the lack of citizenship does not prevent anyone from practicing any profession regulated by the state.

"Somebody in Florida who is not yet a citizen can get a doctor's license but not a driver's license," he said. "How absurd can we be?" Read more about Florida governor vetoes 'Dream Act' driver's license bill

Congress is boring. It can't even make new false promises.

On border security, it keeps making the same assurances. The Gang of Eight immigration bill, which could well be the signature legislative accomplishment of President Barack Obama's second term, travels in the well-worn ruts of past immigration promises. The Gang of Eight is offering this basic deal: "We will pretend to enforce the law, if you pretend to believe us."

The Gang of Eight bill purports to create an exit-entry visa system that Congress has been mandating since 1996. Back then, only the most cynical of observers would have believed that 17 years later, Congress would seek to pass a new amnesty for roughly 11 million illegal immigrants partly in exchange for the very same entry-exit system. But in the immigration debate, cynicism always pays.

In 2006, Congress passed a law calling for about 700 miles of double-layer fencing on the border. We've built about 36 miles, or a good, solid 5 percent. At this rate, we'll have all the double fencing in another 130 years. The rest of the mileage is various forms of inferior fencing, in keeping with a loophole Congress passed the very next year giving the Department of Homeland Security discretion in how it would go about building the fence.

Executive discretion is where border enforcement goes to die, and as it happens, the Gang of Eight enforcement provisions are entirely at the mercy of the executive. The secretary of homeland security merely submits a plan to do the things the executive branch has been mandated to do, but failed to do in the past. Who decides whether it is working? The secretary of homeland security.

This is so self-evidently ridiculous, even the Gang of Eight apparently realizes it needs to make some gesture toward toughening the bill. For his part, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is doing the best Hamlet since John Gielgud. He is refusing to say whether he will vote "yes" on his own Gang of Eight bill after spending months drafting, defending and helping shepherd it to the floor. He has supposedly discovered that the enforcement provisions are inadequate, although he has done countless interviews insisting the bill contains the "toughest immigration-enforcement measures in the history of the United States."

Another basic problem in the architecture of the bill is that the amnesty comes before anything else, giving the Obama administration, ethnic interest groups and the business lobby every incentive to resist any enforcement measures after they pass.

Rubio is loath to admit that the amnesty comes first, although in a recent interview on Univision, he indeed admitted it: "First comes the legalization. Then come the measures to secure the border. And then comes the process of permanent residence." In a subsequent interview, he said he was inartful, which in Washington is a synonym for "frank." When he's speaking more artfully, he is careful to blur the difference between the initial amnesty and the process of getting a green card to give the misimpression that enforcement has to happen before anything else does.

Not that he'll use the word "amnesty." A hallmark of Republican supporters of the Gang of Eight bill is stating their earnest opposition to amnesty at the same time they support amnesty. They call the status quo a "de facto" amnesty, but refuse to make the basic concession to logic that codifying the "de facto" amnesty makes it a "de jure" amnesty. They readily call the 1986 immigration reform "amnesty," even though the essential features of the Gang of Eight bill -- legalization with a few symbolic hoops for the newly legal immigrants -- are exactly the same.

The Gang of Eight bill is powered, in large part, by pretense and word games. If this bill passes, and then a decade or so from now we need another amnesty, the road map to passage will be easy: Congress can promise to follow up on the Gang of Eight's enforcement measures -- yet again. Read more about Gang of Eight's immigration bill neglects enforcement, favors amnesty: Rich Lowry

House Speaker John Boehner appears to have put to rest rumors that he may break what is informally called the “Hastert Rule,” an unwritten guideline that a majority of the majority party should be needed to bring a bill to the House floor, in order to pass a version of amnesty like the “Gang of Eight” bill currently moving through the Senate.

A source with direct knowledge of these matters told Breitbart News that Boehner has decided to abide by the Hastert Rule in regards to immigration reform. “No immigration bill will be brought to the floor for a vote without a majority of the Republican conference in support,” the source told Breitbart News on Monday.

Around Washington, conservatives have worried that Boehner may back down from conservative principles on immigration and support the Gang of Eight bill. They fear he may rush the bill to the floor if the Senate passes it and try to move it through the House with a majority of Democratic votes.

Even though those rumors continue to fly, signs now indicate that Boehner will not break the Hastert Rule and will only bring a bill to the floor with the support of the majority of Republicans.

Reports from Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker and David Drucker at the Washington Examiner appear to support the idea that Boehner will not break with Republicans. It did take Rep. Steve King (R-IA) banding together more than 50 of his colleagues to call for a special GOP conference meeting on the topic, at which they expressed their dissatisfaction with the Senate bill and their hope that Boehner will stick to the Hastert Rule.

In addition to King’s efforts, conservative groups have circulated letters around Washington calling on the conference to formally codify the Hastert Rule into the House GOP conference rules so that it must be followed, instead of just being a guideline.

  Read more about Source: Boehner Says No to Immigration Bill Without House GOP Support

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system designed to make signing up easier.

The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law.

Federal law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself," Justice Antonia Scalia wrote for the court's majority.

The court was considering the legality of Arizona's requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "motor voter" registration law. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which doesn't require such documentation, trumps Arizona's Proposition 200 passed in 2004.

Arizona appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

The case focuses on Arizona, which has tangled frequently with the federal government over immigration issues involving the Mexican border. But it has broader implications because four other states -- Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee -- have similar requirements, and 12 other states are contemplating such legislation.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the court's ruling.

The Constitution "authorizes states to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied," Thomas said in his dissent.

Opponents of Arizona's law see it as an attack on vulnerable voter groups such as minorities, immigrants and the elderly. They say they've counted more than 31,000 potentially legal voters in Arizona who easily could have registered before Proposition 200 but were blocked initially by the law in the 20 months after it passed in 2004. They say about 20 percent of those thwarted were Latino.

But Arizona officials say they should be able to pass laws to stop illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from getting on their voting rolls. The Arizona voting law was part of a package that also denied some government benefits to illegal immigrants and required Arizonans to show identification before voting.

The federal "motor voter" law, enacted in 1993 to expand voter registration, requires states to offer voter registration when a resident applies for a driver's license or certain benefits. Another provision of that law -- the one at issue before the court -- requires states to allow would-be voters to fill out mail-in registration cards and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but it doesn't require them to show proof. Under Proposition 200, Arizona officials require an Arizona driver's license issued after 1996, a U.S. birth certificate, a passport or other similar document, or the state will reject the federal registration application form.

Arizona can ask the federal government to include the extra documents as a state-specific requirement, Scalia said, and take any decision made by the government on that request back to court.
  Read more about Supreme Court: Arizona law requiring citizenship proof for voters is illegal

Read more about Boxer Amendment: Redirect Border Funds for Immigrant Health Care