Illegal Immigration News

The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government's "continued failure to secure our international border," saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.

In a recent campaign video posted to YouTube, Mrs. Brewer - standing in front of one of the BLM signs - attacked the administration over the signs, calling them "an outrage" and telling President Obama to "Do your job. Secure our borders."

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.

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EL PASO, Texas (AP) -- The first bullets struck El Paso's city hall at the end of a work day. The next ones hit a university building and closed a major highway. Shootouts in the drug war along the U.S.-Mexico border are sending bullets whizzing across the Rio Grande into one of the nation's safest cities, where authorities worry it's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt or killed.

At least eight bullets have been fired into El Paso in the last few weeks from the rising violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, one of the world's most dangerous places. And all American police can do is shrug because they cannot legally intervene in a war in another country. The best they can do is warn people to stay inside.

"There's really not a lot you can do right now," El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. "Those gun battles are breaking out everywhere, and some are breaking out right along the border."

Police say the rounds were not intentionally fired into the U.S. But wildly aimed gunfire has become common in Juarez, a sprawling city of shanty neighborhoods that once boomed with manufacturing plants. It's ground zero in Mexico's relentless drug war.

More than 6,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels started battling each other and Mexican authorities for control of the city and smuggling routes into the U.S. Nationwide, more than 28,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive against the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.

Until now, communities on the U.S. side of the border have been largely shielded from the violence raging just across the river. But the recent incidents are the first time that live ammunition has landed in American territory.

On Saturday, as gunmen and Mexican authorities exchanged gunfire in Juarez, police in El Paso shut down several miles of border highway. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said his agency asked for the closure - a first since the drug war erupted - "in the interest of public safety."

No one was injured on the U.S. side, but one bullet came across the Rio Grande, crashed through a window and lodged in an office door frame at the University of Texas at El Paso. Police are also investigating reports that another errant round shattered a window in a passing car. Witnesses at a nearby charity said at least one bullet hit their building, too.

El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry said authorities have only confirmed the single bullet found at the university, but it is possible that several other shots flew across the border.

"As a local municipality, we are doing everything we can," Petry said. "Looking where we're at, the community we live in, that's all we've got. It's the reality of life here in El Paso for right now."

Officers say the types of bullets used in the drug war can travel more than a mile before falling to the ground.

In Saturday's shooting, the bullet that hit the campus building may have flown just under a mile before lodging in a door jam. Back in June, at least seven shots fired from Juarez flew more than half a mile before hitting City Hall.

In some places, El Paso is separated from Juarez by little more than a few yards of riverbed.

Andrew Kunert was napping Saturday when police started banging on his door at an apartment building just feet from the border. He said officers with high-powered rifles slung across their chests warned him to stay inside and away from windows until the shooting stopped.

The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire to the south is nothing new, but bullets coming north is a worrisome new development, Kunert said.

"About once a week, you can hear gunfire," he said. He worries about the children who live at the Old Fort Bliss apartment building and routinely play outside when gunmen are trading shots across the river.

At the Rescue Mission of El Paso, kitchen manager Bill Cox said several bullets hit a pair of old silos on the charity's property, which is down a hillside from the university campus. Volunteers and homeless people coming to the mission for food or other help could easily be in the line of fire, he said.

"Someone can be walking down the street out here and be hit," Cox said.

In a letter to President Barack Obama after the City Hall shooting, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said it was "good fortune" that no one was injured and insisted the shooting was evidence of the need for more border security.

"Luck and good fortune are not effective border enforcement policies," Abbott wrote. "The shocking reality of cross-border gunfire proves the cold reality: American lives are at risk."

And Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement demanding more security.

"It's time for Washington to stop the rhetoric and immediately deploy a significant force of personnel and resources to the border to protect our homeland," Perry said.

Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman, said the governor believes that more security - in the form of federal agents and even troops - could all but shut down the border to smuggling and help put Mexico's warring cartels out of business.

The only way cartels "are being successful is by being able to operate on both sides of the border," Cesinger said. "If you shut down that border, they are out of business. They are not able to continue."

Obama has ordered about 1,200 National Guard troops to the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to help the Border Patrol and officials from Customs and Border Protection.

But the federal government has insisted that the troops will only help federal agents with intelligence, surveillance and other duties that do not involve actually arresting anyone.

Sheriff Wiles says more security in El Paso won't solve the problem because the war is in another country.

"Juarez is experiencing a major wave of violence, and we are feeling some of that," Wiles said. "I don't know of any way around that. Until that issue is resolved in Juarez, we are going to be dealing these kinds of things."

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Concerned about the Obama administration's plan to grant amnesty to illegal aliens? Guess what. It's already happening.

According to The Houston Chronicle:

The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.

Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients' deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.

In some instances, the article notes, illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes will be allowed to stay in the country as long as these crimes do not involve a DWI, family violence or sexual assault. But other than those specific circumstances, right now it appears the other deportation candidates are in the clear. (Most of these folks are in the system because they were arrested for committing crimes, so to release those who have only been "convicted" means that illegal alien violent criminals are being set free.)

The court "was terminating all of the cases that came up," said one immigration attorney who was notified that the government requested dismissals in three of his deportation cases. "It was absolutely fantastic."

According to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo, this new policy could impact up to 17,000 cases.

CORRUPTION CHRONICLES

• U.S. Hires "Ebonics" Linguists
• ICE Won't Arrest Illegal Aliens Caught In Traffic Stops
• U.S. Tells U.N. It Discriminates Against Muslims, Blacks, Latinos
• Homeland Sec. Dismisses Deportation Cases
• U.S. City Under Fire From Mexican Drug Cartels
• Maxine Waters Blows Off Fundraising Rules
• Biden Touts Corrupt Welfare Program As Stimulus Triumph
• Illegal Aliens Want Sanctuary Policies In Writing

And what is the justification for this lawlessness? The Obama administration is pretending it does not have enough money to do its job of deporting all aliens living in the United States illegally.

So there you have it folks. The Obama administration has decided that neither the will of the American people nor the rule of law matter at all. Obama is implementing illegal alien amnesty by hook and by crook.

But are we really all that surprised?

Remember, it was just a few weeks ago that an Obama administration memo surfaced outlining a comprehensive strategy to grant amnesty without approval by Congress. The two-faced Obama administration vehemently downplayed the significance of the memo. (Administration officials called it "brainstorming.") But all the while the administration continued to push forward with its backdoor amnesty plan.

Following the memo's disclosure, on August 23 Judicial Watch joined a number of other conservative organizations and sent a letter to the president expressing our extreme dissatisfaction with the Obama administration's unlawful strategy as outlined in the memo:

"There have been reports that your administration is considering usage of its administrative authority to effectively legalize significant numbers of illegal aliens. We strongly urge that you refrain from pursuing that tactic. We believe that such an abuse of power would further polarize the immigration issue, which already is so controversial that reasonable discussion is confounded."

The letter (and a related press conference that included Judicial Watch's Chris Farrell) earned widespread press coverage: "A group of conservative activists slammed the Obama administration Monday for allegedly planning to use its administrative authority to undercut immigration restrictions in the wake of congressional inaction on a comprehensive reform bill," CNN's Paul Courson wrote. "In a letter sent to the White House, leaders of 17 conservative grass-roots organizations cited reports that the administration is considering using its executive power 'to effectively legalize significant numbers of illegal aliens.'"

But nonetheless, President Obama has failed to alter his administration's reprehensible and unlawful behavior one single bit. And it is causing a revolt in the Imigration and Customs Enforcement bureuacracy. Even the liberals at The Washington Post have noticed that ICE's front-line immigration enforcement personnel are opposing the non-enforcement program being implemented by Obama political appointees. In a rare action, a major ICE union announced a unaminous vote of "no confidence" in the Obama leadership team at ICE. The detail of the union's complaint is devastating and documents a crisis of law enforcement at ICE. The union notes, for instance, that:

Criminal aliens incarcerated in local jails seek out ICE officers and volunteer for deportation to avoid prosecution, conviction and serving prison sentences. Criminal aliens openly brag to ICE officers that they are taking advantage of the broken immigration system and will be back in the United States within days to commit crimes, while United States citizens arrested for the same offenses serve prison sentences. State and local law enforcement, prosecutors and jails are equally overwhelmed by the criminal alien problem and lack the resources to prosecute and house these prisoners, resulting in the release of criminal aliens back into local communities before making contact with ICE. Thousands of other criminal aliens are released to ICE without being tried for their criminal charges. ICE senior leadership is aware that the system is broken, yet refuses to alert Congress to the severity of the situation and request additional resources to provide better enforcement and support of local agencies.

What an ugly mess caused by the Obama administration's radical hositility to the rule of law! And U.S. citizens and legal alien residents suffer as a result.

Judicial Watch's investigations team is on top of this burgeoning scandal, trying to uncover the details behind this de facto amnesty. More to come...

Judicial Watch Counters Obama Legal Assault on SB 1070 in New Court Brief

While the Obama White House continues with its stealth illegal alien amnesty strategy, the administration's legal assault against SB 1070, Arizona's tough new illegal immigration law, continues. Just this week, Judicial Watch filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on behalf of our client Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, the author of the SB 1070. (You'll recall Judicial Watch filed a motion to intervene on behalf of State Senator Pearce in the Obama administration's lawsuit seeking to invalidate the law altogether.)

On July 28, 2010, just hours before the law was to take effect, a federal court judge put a hold on several of the legislation's key provisions to determine if they are constitutionally sound. The court filing asks the appellate court to reverse the partial preliminary injunction granted by the lower court and to allow all of the provisions of the law to be enforced immediately.

Here's how we summarize Senator Pearce's argument in our brief: "Even though the Arizona Legislature has done nothing more than enact a series of law enforcement provisions under its well-recognized police powers to protect its citizens from serious public safety concerns, the district court has denied Arizona law enforcement officials the opportunity to reasonably interpret and apply the provisions in a constitutionally valid manner."

In other words, SB 1070 is completely consistent with federal law.

With respect to the four specific provisions the court prevented from taking effect, here's a summary of how we addressed each of them. (You can read the brief in its entirety here):

• Section 2(B) [reasonable attempt to determine a person's immigration status] imposes no "new" burden on lawfully present aliens because Arizona law enforcement officials have the discretion to inquire about a person's immigration status regardless of Section 2(B). Section 2(B) also does not place any undue burden on federal resources because Congress has mandated that the federal government respond to requests from state and local law enforcement officers about persons' immigration status.
• Section 3 [willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document] does not regulate the conditions under which a lawfully present alien may remain in the country. Instead, Section 3 utilizes ordinary state police powers to create criminal penalties for the failure to comply with a federal registration scheme.
• Invoking Arizona's broad authority to regulate employment under its police powers, Section 5 [unlawful employment of illegal aliens] seeks to strengthen Arizona's economy by protecting the state's fiscal interests and lawfully resident labor force from the harmful effects resulting from the employment of unlawfully present aliens.
• Section 6 [warrantless arrest] does not grant Arizona law enforcement officers the authority to determine whether an individual has committed a public offense that makes him removable. Section 6 only authorizes Arizona law enforcement officers to make a warrantless arrest of an individual who has already been determined to have committed a public offense that makes him removable.

We conclude by asking the appellate court to lift the preliminary injunction and to allow all of the provisions of SB 1070 to be enforced immediately. State Senator Pearce specifically crafted SB 1070 to be entirely consistent with federal law. The district court jumped the gun by invalidating components of the law on a purely speculative basis. It is shameful that the Obama administration has chosen to mount a legal assault against the State of Arizona for simply trying to protect its citizens. It is little wonder that the situation at the border continues to deteriorate given the Obama administration's unwillingness to secure the border and enforce the law. We hope the appellate court respects the rule of law and allows SB 1070 to be put into full force.

State Senator Pierce agrees, saying:

This ought to be a no-brainer for the courts. I hope the appeals court allows our state to enforce the rule of law because the Obama administration doesn't seem to care one whit for the safety of the citizens of Arizona. SB 1070 simply reflects federal immigration law. This Obama team doesn't want immigration laws enforced - but that doesn't mean that Arizona can't take common sense steps to protect its own citizens.

According to the Phoenix Journal, 22 states are currently considering legislation modeled after Arizona's SB 1070. So this battle, which began in Arizona, has gone national. And you can be sure that Judicial Watch will be right in the middle of it fighting on the side of the rule of law.

Countrywide CEO Personally Approved Fraudulent VIP Mortgage Loans

Remember that controversial Countrywide VIP lending program where certain influential individuals were given preferential loan terms? It was known as "Friends of Angelo." So I guess we should not be too surprised that federal officials now say the program's namesake, company CEO Angelo Mozilo, personally approved some of the loans.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Countrywide Financial Corp.'s ex-chief executive Angelo Mozilo approved loans for favored borrowers that contradicted the company's lending policies.

The SEC's statements came in federal-court filings filed last week in its pending civil fraud case against Mr. Mozilo and two other former top Countrywide officials. It appears to be the first time in the year-old case that the SEC has addressed Mr. Mozilo's role in the controversial VIP lending program, where borrowers sometimes received better loan terms and service than were generally available. Some of the borrowers included public officials.

Indeed, a number of politicians did improperly take advantage of the program, including soon-to-be-retired Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND). The accusations were particularly damaging for Dodd, who chaired the Banking Committee, which is responsible for regulating the mortgage lending industry, including companies such as Countrywide.

You may recall that the two Senators denied any knowledge of preferential treatment. But Robert Feinberg, who worked in Countrywide's VIP program, contradicted the repeated denials by Dodd and Conrad regarding their knowledge of the program during testimony before Congress. When asked directly whether the two Senators were aware they were receiving special VIP treatment, Feinberg simply said, "Yes."

Nonetheless, the Senate Ethics Committee did what it does best. It whitewashed the scandal and let the two Senators off the hook. (The WSJ editorial board notes that Dodd received as many as six loans from Countrywide.)

According to The Associated Press, Dodd and Conrad are apparently not the only "Friends of Angelo" in Congress: One member of Congress recently said that "more senators and congressional staff members than previously known received favorable mortgages from Countrywide based on their perceived ability to help the company."

So now maybe we have a better sense of why Dodd and Conrad's colleagues were not eager to hold them accountable?

But wait, it gets better. The AP's article continues:

Documents provided to another congressional panel under a subpoena show that Countrywide gave preferential mortgages to more than three dozen employees of Fannie Mae while the two big companies were locked in an expanding, multibillion-dollar business relationship in subprime mortgages.

And so it appears Fannie and Freddie, Countrywide and their friends on the Hill were all in cahoots over this program to secure sweetheart mortgage deals. (Countrywide, as a major purveyor of subprime mortgage loans, depended upon Fannie and Freddie to buy and create a market for its loans.)

By the way, on the subject of influence peddling, Judicial Watch continues to pursue its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama administration regarding documents related to campaign contributions made by Fannie and Freddie over the last several election cycles. The president has advanced the shocking argument that government-run Fannie and Freddie are not FOIA-able, a ridiculous assertion we are countering in our groundbreaking federal lawsuit.

These latest revelations provide further evidence that the nearly $150 billion (and counting) implosion of Fannie and Freddie is perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in American history.

The Obama administration is moving to release thousands of illegal immigrants detained at facilities across the country if the immigrants have a potential path to legal residency.

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The move could affect as many as 17,000 immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. It comes amid a push by ICE to focus on illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, rather than seek to deport all illegal immigrants. Officials say that the shift is needed to reduce massive clogs in the nation's immigration courts - where detainees wait for months or years before their cases are decided - and to use deportation as a tool for public safety.

"ICE is dedicating unprecedented resources to the removal of criminal aliens," said Richard Rocha, deputy press secretary at the immigration enforcement agency. "The focus now is clearly on criminal aliens. . . . We want to ensure convicted criminal aliens are not only removed from the community, but from the country as well."

Rocha said that the deportation of criminals accounts for about half of all removals, an all-time high. If the immigrants released under the new policy have their applications for legalization turned down, ICE will resume removal proceedings.

While immigration advocates applauded the move and said it reflected a more humane approach to illegal immigrants in detention, Republican lawmakers and groups that favor stricter limits on immigration denounced it as a form of back-door amnesty.

The number of immigrants being detained in the United States has doubled in the last decade, to 369,000 annually. There are now about 248,000 cases awaiting review in backlogged immigration courts, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks immigration statistics.

The increases have triggered huge logistical problems and exposed successive administrations to charges that those who are in the country illegally, a violation of civil statutes, are being exposed to unnecessarily harsh conditions.

Simultaneously, ICE officials maintain, clogged immigration courts divert officials from identifying, tracking down and deporting illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes and other offenses.

In a memo dated Aug. 20, ICE Director John Morton wrote that as many as 17,000 illegal immigrants have pending applications for legal status with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, ICE's sister agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

As those applications are being reviewed, immigrants in detention who do not have criminal backgrounds might be eligible for release, Morton said. Local ICE officials have discretion in releasing detainees, he added, and would take into consideration a number of factors, including "national security and public safety."

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter controls on immigration, warned that the move would demoralize agents working for ICE and also send the wrong message about illegal immigration.

Krikorian acknowledged that the government has to set immigration enforcement priorities, but said the shortfall in resources is stems partly from the Obama administration's not seeking sufficient means to expedite the review of cases and the deportation of detainees.

"Simply letting them go sends a harmful message to immigration agents and to illegal immigrants," he said. Agents feel "their work is not valued. The message sent to the illegals is that even if you are put into deportation proceedings, we will let you go."

vedantams@washpost.com

The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to sources familiar with the efforts.

Culling the immigration court system dockets of immigrants who aren't believed to be dangerous started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients' deportations only to learn that the government was tossing their cases.

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Tuesday that the review is part of the agency's broader, nationwide strategy to prioritize the deportations of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety.

Critics assailed the plan as another sign that the Obama administration is trying to create a kind of backdoor "amnesty" program.

Immigration attorney Raed Gonzalez, who is liaison between the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Homeland Security has assigned five attorneys full time to review all active cases in Houston's immigration court.

Gonzalez said Homeland Security attorneys are conducting the reviews case by case. However, he said their general guidelines allow dismissal of cases for defendants who have been in the U.S. two or more years and have no felony convictions.

In some cases, defendants can have one misdemeanor conviction, but it cannot involve a DWI, family violence or a sex crime, Gonzalez said.

Opponents of illegal immigration were critical of the dismissals.

"This situation is just another side effect of President Obama's failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year," said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens."

Gonzalez said the dismissals are necessary to unclog a massive backlog in the immigration court system. In June, there were more than 248,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the country, including about 23,000 in Texas, according to data compiled by researchers at Syracuse University.

Immigrants who have had their cases terminated are often left in limbo and are not given any form of legal status, immigration attorneys said.

"It's very, very key to understand that these aliens are not being granted anything in court," said immigration attorney Elizabeth Mendoza Macias. "ICE is just saying, 'At this particular moment, we are not going to proceed with trying to remove you from the United States.' "

Susan Carroll,

MEXICO CITY—The U.S. consulate in Monterrey warned local U.S. citizens that Friday's shootout in front of the prestigious American School Foundation stemmed from a failed kidnapping, and advised personnel to keep their children out of school—stoking fears authorities have lost control of the city to drug traffickers, kidnappers and other criminals.

"At this point it appears that [the gunfight] was an attempted kidnapping targeting the relatives of a local business executive," the consulate said in a message posted on its website Sunday night. The investigation into the shooting incident was continuing, it said.

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Detectives and soldiers investigate after Friday's shooting near the American School in Monterrey. The U.S. says it involved a failed kidnapping.

While U.S. families didn't appear to be targeted, the consulate urged Americans in Monterrey—Mexico's business capital and home to many divisions of U.S.-based companies—to increase security measures.

"The sharp increase in kidnapping incidents in the Monterrey area, and this event in particular, present a very high risk to the families of U.S. citizens who might become incidental victims," the message said. U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual urged consulate employees to keep children at home "while we assess the risks and what measures can be taken to reduce it," the message said. The American School is attended by the children of many leading Mexican businessmen and U.S. executives who work in the city.

On Monday, a Mexican official whose children attend the American School said the school appeared normal except for the absence of children of U.S. consular staff. The American School didn't answer an email seeking comment.

Monterrey isn't Mexico's only wealthy city now stalked by barbaric drug violence. On Sunday, the mutilated and decapitated bodies of four men were found hanging from a bridge in Cuernavaca, a city about 50 miles south of Mexico City where many affluent Mexicans have weekend homes, and Americans come to learn Spanish. After drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed by Mexican marines in December, Cuernavaca became a battleground for cartels fighting to take over his organization.

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Nearly 23,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006, according to the government, with northern border states experiencing the worst of the violence.

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In Monterrey, the U.S. warning was a reaction to a 20-minute gun battle Friday between bodyguards working for Mexican beverage company Femsa SAB de CV and alleged drug-cartel gunmen in front of the American School, In the shootout, which sent children dashing for shelter into the school's cafeteria, two Femsa security guards were killed and four others were taken by the gunmen, presumed to be members of one of the drug cartels that is fighting to control the city. They were released in front of a Femsa installation early Saturday.

Mexican authorities and Femsa deny that there was any kidnap attempt. Both say the gun battle erupted when Femsa security guards patrolling the area around the school, which is attended by children of the company's executives, got into a verbal dispute with a group of armed men who were driving in front of the school. The dispute turned into a firefight. where the Femsa guards were outnumbered by the gunmen, who killed two and captured the other four."It wasn't a kidnapping attempt," said a high ranking Nuevo Leon state official. "It was a confrontation."

Mexico is one of the world's kidnapping centers. In 2009, there were 1,128 cases of kidnapping reported to Mexican authorities. But the real number of kidnappings is estimated to be many times higher by analysts. In May, Mexico was shocked when kidnappers grabbed Diego Fernandez de Ceballos, a lawyer and former presidential candidate who is considered to be the grand old man of President Felipe Calderón's PAN party. The whereabouts of Mr. Fernandez de Ceballos remain unknown.

Last week's violence has put many affluent residents of Monterrey on edge. Many are thinking of either sending their children to study in the U.S., or moving the whole family abroad. "The big topic is whether to move to the U.S. altogether," emailed a Mexican executive with children at the American School. "I don't know the actual numbers, but there's a feeling of "diaspora" from families moving to San Antonio, or Austin or Houston. I personally have two friends who have done so."

The violence pushing the migration is the result of a turf war by violent drug cartels for control of Monterrey's drug markets and drug routes to the U.S. that run by the city.

Speaking at a recent conference in El Paso, Mr. Pascual, the U.S. ambassador, said the city's security environment had deteriorated in a few months from "seeming benevolence to extreme violence." According to the newspaper Reforma, which tracks killings in Nuevo Leon, where it also runs a newspaper in the state capital of Monterrey, says drug-related murders have shot up in the state from 56 in 2009 to 420 so far in 2010.

Just last week, the mayor of a tourist town where many businessmen from Monterrey keep weekend houses, was kidnapped and killed. So far, seven police officers, apparently in the pay of drug traffickers, have been arrested in the case. In Mexico, some 28,000 people have died since 2006 when President Calderón sent out thousands of soldiers and federal police to reclaim the country from powerful drug traffickers.

A year ago when Monterrey residents chatted about security, no one could offer a first-hand anecdote about a friend or relative who had suffered a violent crime, the American School parent, who is an investment banker, wrote in his email. "Today it's different," he added. "My dentist's son was kidnapped two weeks ago, the brother of a friend was kidnapped two months ago, the best friend of the entrepreneur where my fund was invested was kidnapped in December, and never returned, and this past Wednesday, a close acquaintance was kidnapped."

AUSTIN – Texas taxpayers spent at least $250 million last year in state prison and health care costs for illegal immigrants, but figuring out the precise cost will be difficult, state officials testified on Wednesday.

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The House State Affairs Committee solicited information about services and benefits provided to noncitizens – a preliminary review in preparation for a legislative session certain to see a push for tougher immigration laws similar to those enacted in Arizona.

"We want to focus on what the real costs are for state services," said committee Chairman Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton. "There's really not a lot of wholly accurate data."

Along the way, committee members said the hearing dispelled some of their beliefs, including that Texas law enforcement doesn't check the citizenship status of those arrested for crimes.

Department of Pubic Safety director Steve McCraw assured members that automated fingerprint checks are routinely performed against FBI and other national databases that check citizenship status.

"The perception that police are arresting people and they are being let go without their status being checked is incorrect," McCraw said, adding that since 2006, law enforcement agencies have referred 48,000 cases to Border Patrol officials.

Over the past three years, the state has provided $240 million to add troopers, equipment, Texas Rangers and other resources to South Texas to beef up border security.

While 7,400 federal border agents are in Texas – with another 250 on the way – McCraw said it still will not be enough.

"To get to a level where we're secure, it's not going to be 100, 500 or even 1,000 more. Someone's going to have to make a serious investment in border patrol," he said.

Jerry McGinty, the chief financial officer for the Texas Department of Corrections, said that last month, state prisons held 11,766 offenders who are foreign citizens – about 7.5 percent of the prison population. Housing them costs about $171 million per year, and the federal government reimburses about 10 percent of the expense.

Rick Allgeyer, director of research for the Health and Human Services Commission, told the committee that health care to illegal immigrants last year cost the state nearly $100 million, mostly for emergency hospital care.

The figure includes the cost of 63,000 births – including 11,000 at Parkland Memorial Hospital, as The Dallas Morning News reported last week.

Also testifying was Denton County Judge Mary Horn, who described a new county initiative that collects information on whether patients in Denton's indigent health care program are undocumented.

Of the 398 clients served in 2009, 18 were not citizens. Of the 273 clients served thus far this year, 21 were undocumented. The illegal immigrants both years have accounted for less than 5 percent of the program's costs and averaged about $3,000 per client, Horn said.

Over the past five years, Horn said, Denton County also has had about $845,000 in jail costs for housing a total of about 2,800 offenders who were eventually deported or taken into federal custody.

Dallas County Criminal Justice director Ron Stretcher said in an interview after the hearing that the county jail does not know the citizenship status of its entire inmate population, but last month, it turned 196 non-citizens over to federal immigration authorities.

Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, said that an Arizona-type law allowing police to question those stopped about their citizenship status could fill every county jail in the state.

"It would bust all our counties," he said.

Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, also was skeptical after hearing officials say that federal authorities are mostly interested in the bigger criminals and will leave local prosecutors to handle more routine crimes.

"Every time they run in the groundskeepers and the welders and the dishwashers, who pays for that?" he said after the hearing. "If the decision is that we pay for that, at least we need to know that that is what the deal is."

ACALA, Texas – On each side of a towering West Texas stretch of the $2.4 billion border fence designed to block people from illegally entering the country, there are two metal footbridges, clear paths into the United States from Mexico.

The footpaths that could easily guide illegal immigrants and smugglers across the Rio Grande without getting wet seem to be there because of what amounts to federal linguistics. While just about anyone would call them bridges, the U.S.-Mexico group that owns them calls them something else.

"Technically speaking it's not a bridge, it's a grade control structure," said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, which maintains the integrity of the 1,200-mile river border between the U.S. and Mexico. The structures under the spans help prevent the river — and therefore the international border — from shifting.

Whatever they're called, there are fresh sneaker tracks on the structures — indicating they're being used as passages into the country.

"This is outrageous and yet another example of the federal government failing miserably in its duty to secure the border from those who wish to do us harm, and they need to take immediate action to address this situation," Katherine Cesinger, spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, said in a Wednesday statement.

The realization that a section of the border fence is sandwiched between two footbridges comes at a time of heightened alarm along the U.S.-Mexico border as the drug war in northern Mexico continues unabated. President Barack Obama ordered thousands of National Guard troops to the border but Perry has railed that the federal government isn't doing enough to keep Americans safe and illegal immigrants out.

The steel fencing that dots about 600 miles of border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California was built under former President George W. Bush's administration amid a national outcry for border security. The steel fencing appears in rural areas, while urban areas have shorter, concrete vehicle barriers.

"If we are spending so much money on a fence, why not put some into cutting (the bridges) out, eliminating an easy access at a place that is not a port?" said Don Reay, executive director of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition.

The footbridges were built in the 1930s as part of a treaty with Mexico, Spener said.

On a recent visit to a bridge west of the fence line near Acala, Border Patrol Special Operations Supervisor Ramiro Cordero spotted an hours-old adult-sized sneaker print in the soft sand at the foot of the bridge facing into the United States.

In a border tour with the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office in March, Associated Press journalists happened upon the bridge moments after a man with a bicycle used the bridge to cross the river from Mexico. The border crosser, who told authorities he was only trying to fish from the north side of the river, was promptly arrested.

"If he can do it, so can drug cartels with loads of narcotics of any kind," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "Even a terrorist could pass here with weapons of mass destruction and be in the United States and up on the interstate and gone in a short time."

It's unclear how often the bridge is used, but it's common to see people on the Mexican side lingering around the crossing or others playing in the river in the area.

The bridges may have made sense decades ago when they were built, Wilson said, but times have changed and the once quiet area across the border from rural Hudspeth County has been enveloped in Mexico's drug war.

Cartel fighters have overrun a series of small towns in the Valle de Juarez, about 50 miles east of Ciudad Juarez, ground zero in the bloody drug war. Residents have been forced to flee north to Fort Hancock after cartel fighters burned down houses, tried to torch a local Catholic church and threatened to kill anyone who stayed.

"It made a lot of sense for flood control when the boundary commission built them," Wilson said. "Now with the way things have progressed, it's pretty silly there are no controls here."

Cordero insists agents in the area pay close attention to the bridges and other areas easily crossed on foot or by car. He said there also are numerous underground censors around the bridges that alert agents to area traffic.

But patrols in such an open area can appear to be sporadic to the average observer as marked Border Patrol trucks cruise up and down a river levee road along the border.

The crossings are owned by both the United States and Mexico and are needed for workers to maintain and occasionally fix cement structures that support the bridge, Spener said. Any changes to the structures, she said, would have to be approved by officials in both countries. And no one has ever asked to secure the bridges or remove them, she said.

"We would be happy to work with Border Patrol if they have security concerns they've identified," Spener said. "It would be a challenge, but we'd be happy to discuss it."

Cordero said he's not aware of any requests by Border Patrol or the Department of Homeland Security to secure the crossings. But still, he concedes, it would be nice if there was more security around the remote crossing.

"Obviously this is where technology and the experience of our agents comes into play," Cordero said. "Do we have to pay more attention here? Yes, because we're talking seconds that they can get in."

No one can deny that increasing numbers of children of illegal immigrants attend public schools in the United States and that U.S. taxpayers pay the costs. Those sympathetic to illegal immigration tend to remain silent about these costs, while illegal-immigration opponents often fall short on specifics. In the interest of more informed discourse, here are the numbers.

According to a study released last year by the Pew Hispanic Center, as of 2008, 11.9 million illegal immigrants lived in the United States, more than triple the 3.5 million who lived in the country in 1990.

Among the states, California has the largest number of illegal immigrants with 2.7 million, nearly double the 1.4 million in Texas. California’s illegal-immigrant population has swelled by 1.2 million since 1990, while Texas has added a million. A large proportion of illegal-immigrant households are families.

Nearly half, 47 percent, of illegal-immigrant households consist of parents with children. This proportion is more than double that of U.S.-born households, where just 21 percent are parents with children. Over the years, the number of children of illegal immigrants has increased significantly.

In 2003, there were 4.3 million children of illegal immigrants. By 2008 that number had climbed to 5.5 million, more than the entire population of Colorado. The large number of children of illegal immigrants greatly impacts public schools and education-funding costs.

The Pew study found that in 2008, “Children of unauthorized immigrants are 6.8 percent of students enrolled in kindergarten through grade 12,” an increase from the 5.4 percent in 2003. The proportion was double in California, where 13.5 percent of k-12 students in 2008 were the children of illegal immigrants.

Given these percentages, cost estimates of educating these children are staggering.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released 2008 figures showing the national average total per-pupil funding from all revenue sources was $12,028. Although estimates of the number of school-age children of illegal immigrants don’t separate those attending public vs. private schools, it’s reasonable to assume that nearly all attend public schools since most come from lower-income families. Therefore, if one multiplies $12,028 by the roughly 3.7 million students with illegal-immigrant parents, then one gets a national total funding cost of $44.5 billion.

In California, total funding per pupil from all state, federal and local revenue sources was $11,649. With roughly 923,000 students in the state with illegal-immigrant parents, these students represented a total cost of nearly $10.8 billion out of a total 2008 k-12 education budget of $72 billion. An important caveat is that these totals rely on average per-pupil funding numbers.

The actual cost of schooling these children could be higher because many education dollars are earmarked for special purposes. At the federal level, Title I funds are sent to schools to support disadvantaged children, which benefits many children of illegal immigrants. In California, the state’s Economic Impact Aid program provides tax dollars to fund English-language acquisition, which aids children of illegal immigrants. Capital costs for school construction may have increased at a higher rate because of the influx of children of illegal immigrants.

Although almost three-quarters of the children of illegal immigrants were born in the United States and are therefore citizens, had their parents not entered the U.S. illegally these children likely wouldn’t be in U.S. public schools and wouldn’t require taxpayer funding. Thus, it’s fair to say that their education cost stems from their parents’ illegal entry into this country.

The public-education establishment can’t have it both ways on this issue. The Los Angeles school board, for instance, harshly criticizes Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, but also complains about its own budget shortfalls. The numbers, however, confirm that illegal immigration imposes large costs on the public school system. Policymakers should acknowledge and wrestle with this expensive reality instead of satisfying themselves with cheap rhetoric.

Lance T. Izumi is Koret senior fellow and senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

As the debate over birthright citizenship rages across the United States, a statistic has surfaced that is sure to add fuel to the birthright fire in Texas: 60,000 to 65,000 babies automatically gain U.S. citizenship each year when they're born to the estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants who live in the Lone Star State.

That figure, reported by the Dallas Morning News, comes from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. The yearly birth number is equivalent to the population of Austin suburb Cedar Park—about 62,000, according to a 2009 estimate.

Last year, births to illegal immigrants represented nearly 16 percent of the total births statewide, according to the newspaper.

Between 2001 and 2009, births to illegal immigrant women totaled 542,152 in Texas, the Dallas Morning News reported. That’s about the same number of people who live in the city of Atlanta.

Critics of birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, complain that the so-called “anchor baby” phenomenon is a magnet for illegal immigration. The amendment, passed after the Civil War, overruled the famous Dred Scott court decision, which said that blacks could not be U.S. citizens.

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, states:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he supports a legislative review of birthright citizenship.

“We need to consult constitutional scholars and study what the implications are,” Cornyn told the Dallas Morning News. “We need to tread carefully in this area, because we would be changing, frankly, settled law.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is among the most vocal opponents of birthright citizenship. He has recommended a constitutional amendment to fix what he’s called “a mistake" that spurs "drop and leave" pregnancies by illegal immigrants.

In an recent interview on Fox News, Graham referred to birthright citizenship as a “problem where thousands of people are coming across the Arizona-Texas border for the express purpose of having a child in an American hospital so that child will become an American citizen, and they broke the law to get there.”

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio, a Republican whose district includes part of the Austin area, said Graham “is going in the right direction” on the 14th Amendment. But Smith, the ranking GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee, said birthright citizenship could be reversed through congressional action rather than a more complicated constitutional amendment.

Smith said on Politco.com that the granting of automatic citizenship arises from a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment.

“Citizenship is the highest honor a country can give. It is not something that should be handed out on first-come, first-serve basis; but rather reserved for those who respect our laws and value our freedoms,” Smith said.

One of Smith’s House colleagues from Texas agrees.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Lake Jackson, whose congressional district stretches from north of Galveston to north of Corpus Christi, said in 2008 during his run for president that “we should not be awarding automatic citizenship to children born here minutes after their mothers illegally cross the border. It just doesn’t make sense. The practice of birthright citizenship is an aberration of the original intent of the 14th Amendment, the purpose of which was never to allow lawbreakers to bleed taxpayers of welfare benefits.”

On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin said in 2005 when asked about a constitutional repeal of birthright citizenship that he doesn't like the idea of tampering with the Constitution.

A fellow Democrat, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, said the 14th Amendment should be left alone.

The amendment, he told The Hill newspaper, “allows for citizenship that’s not based on political considerations. Once you introduce political considerations, it degrades citizenship. If you’re born here, you’re a citizen. Period. No tests, no profiling, nothing else.”

Another Democrat, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, told The Hill that the anti-birthright movement is “outrageous.”

“To target children on this makes no sense. It’s the Constitution. It’s what we’ve done our entire lives,” Brown said. “It’s all about politics and Republicans trying to gin up their base. It’s one of those distractions that just puzzles me.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham calls birthright citizenship "a mistake."