Arizona Sheriff's Office in Bed with Drug Lord.

Three employees of the self-proclaimed strictest sheriff in the USA, were arrested on charges of trafficking people and drugs, authorities reported on Monday.

Maricopa county sheriff, Joe Arpaio said that three of his employees, two of them women, were among 12 people detained for forming an international narco trafficking network, centered in Phoenix.

One worker, Marcela Hernández, told authorities she was married to the presumed leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

See complete story:  El Universal

AMERICANS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

Some Americans have to cross the Border Fence to get back into America.

According to Reform Immigration for America, The federal government has spent over $2 billion already building a border fence with Mexico that even Sen. John McCain called ineffective. And for what? Apparently, to keep Americans on the other side:

Lately, though, there’s been a distinctly surreal flavour to Ms Taylor’s colourful display of patriotic identity. About 350 metres from her porch, an imposing metal fence looms into view. It is supposed to divide the US from Mexico, but by a cruel twist of fate, the 83-year-old grandmother’s family home has ended up on the “wrong” side. Four years ago, amid the seemingly endless hand-wringing over the flow of drugs and illegal migrants across their southern border, Washington politicians voted to erect a tall fence that would stretch thousands of miles from San Diego, on the Pacific coast, to Brownsville, on the Gulf of Mexico. The best-laid political schemes do not always work out as planned, though. When government engineers arrived in Ms Taylor’s neighbourhood, their plan hit a snag: the Mexican border follows the meandering Rio Grande in this area. And the river’s muddy banks are too soft and too prone to flooding to support a fence.
As a result, this corner of south-eastern Texas had its barrier constructed on a levee that follows a straight line from half a mile to two miles north of the river, leaving Ms Taylor’s bungalow – along with the homes and land of dozens of her angry neighbours – marooned on the Mexican side.

Click to see the rest of this story:  Reform Immigration For America

Tea Party Divided

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"Tea Party activists who are debating whether to embrace “family values” issues in a year when the economy could make or break the Democrats and sweep their candidates to power are also divided over another hot-button issue — immigration.
One leading Tea Party group has decided to work closely with Roy Beck’s Numbers USA, a well-known “restrictionist” lobby that wants to see immigration, both legal and illegal, reduced.  Together these groups are opposing passage of the DREAM Act, the stand-alone legislation that immigration reform advocates have rallied around as the prospects for passing a broader immigration bill have faded.
However, two other key Tea Party groups, including FreedomWorks, whose co-founder, former House majority leader Dick Armey, supports expanded immigration, say they’ll stay out of the fight over the DREAM Act.
Ideologically, support for immigration is thoroughly consistent with the Tea Party’s enthusiastic endorsement of the unfettered free market.  In fact, for years, libertarian, pro-free enterprise groups like the CATO Institute have joined business groups and immigration advocates in calling for less government regulation of immigration — a position that critics call an “open borders” policy."

See more of this and other articles in  The Daily Caller

ICE Raids on Elem Schools

Another Side of the Broken Immigration System

May 02, 2011 - Posted by Maurice Belanger

National Immigration Forum

At the end of March, and again in early April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted enforcement actions at two Detroit elementary schools.  These actions unleashed a firestorm of public criticism, and resulted in a decision by ICE headquarters to investigate these and other incidents in Detroit.

The ICE union, in a statement, denied allegations that the school was being raided and blamed ICE headquarters for indicating the agents may have been acting against ICE policy.

ICE agents are, according to their union, feeling besieged. The publication Working In These Times reported on an e-mail interview with the ICE union president Chris Crane.  Mr. Crane noted that, in a survey of local ICE union leaders, the number one issue the leaders felt needed addressing was “redefine officers, agents and employees to the American public.”  A couple of excerpts from that interview:

ICE employees are ridiculed and hated by all; from the public, to special interest groups, to other law enforcement agencies and the media, to politicians and our own president.

Our employees are incredibly understaffed and absolutely overwhelmed with their workloads, but remain dedicated and work extremely hard for extremely long hours every day, but in the end practically everyone has some type of negative opinion about them.

Here is the real problem: ICE agents are charged with enforcing broken immigration laws that Congress has, for the past 10 years, refused to fix. 

Ordinarily, a law enforcement agent might expect public appreciation for arresting a criminal who might pose a threat to the public.  ICE agents do some of that, but they also arrest community members who  pose no danger and are loved and respected by a lot of people.  To the extent that ICE agents stray from the agency’s own rules and priorities, they are, in the public’s eye, not arresting people who are public safety threats, but people who are friends, co-workers, classmates and parents of classmates, employees, parishioners, neighbors.  These are people who, having lived in the U.S. for years and who have been contributing members of communities all across the U.S., should be given a way to gain legal status.  That’s Congress’ job, and it doesn’t look like Congress will be doing their job anytime soon.

ICE Raids

Click to see more of this and other articles from the National Immigration Forum