Wednesday, July 1, 2009

FLORIDA COPS ID illegals CATCH 800 CRIMINALS

Florida police can now match fingerprints to immigration status
Associated Press
Officials say a new program that allows Florida law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of people arrested has found nearly 800 immigrants with serious criminal convictions in the first four months of 2009.

The program began operating in nine Florida counties in January. It allows the agencies to compare booking fingerprints against those found in Department of Justice and immigration databases. Previously, local agencies could only check the DOJ database.

Immigration officials in Miami said Friday that about 8,400 individuals have matched both lists.

The goal is to more quickly identify and deport individuals convicted of serious crimes. Authorities are using the program in 60 counties across the country.

Frederick Douglass on CHEAP LABOR 1871

Frederick Douglass on Cheap Labor



Below is an article by Frederick Douglass from the August 17, 1871 issue of his newspaper, "The New National Era." America had its cheap labor lobby back in 1871, and it has one today in the form of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ImmigrationWorks, and Bill Gates himself testifying before Congress for more H-1B visas. Frederick Douglass attacked the cheap-labor lobby's "fair-seeming phrases" immediately in the first sentence. We all know that today's cheap labor lobby has similar "fair-seeming phrases" that I will not repeat here since they are all over the mainstream media. The issues that deeply concerned Frederick Douglass in 1871 are very relevant today.

Note 1: I have highlighted some of the most relevant parts of the article in green since it is challenging due to its archaic language.

Note 2: In 1996, the Center for Immigration Studies published an excellent historical review of the thoughts of African-Americans on immigration. Click here to view it.
_____________________________________________________________

Cheap Labor
by Frederick Douglass


How vast and bottomless is the abyss of meanness, cruelty, and crime sometimes concealed under fair-seeming phrases. Take the one we have made the caption of this article as an illustration. Ostensibly the demand for cheap labor is made in the interest of improvement and general civilization. It tells of increased wealth and of marvellous transformations of the old and the worthless into the new and valuable. It speaks of increased travelling facilities and larger commercial relations; of long lines of railway graded, and meandering canals constructed; of splendid cities built, and flourishing towns multiplied; of rich mines developed, and useful metals made abundant; of capacious ships on every sea abroad, and of amply cultivated fields at home; in a word, it speaks of national prosperity, greatness, and happiness. Alas! however, this is but the outside of the cup and the platter--the beautiful marble without, with its dead men's bones within.

Cheap Labor, is a phrase that has no cheering music for the masses. Those who demand it, and seek to acquire it, have but little sympathy with common humanity. It is the cry of the few against the many. When we inquire who are the men that are continually vociferating for cheap labor, we find not the poor, the simple, and the lowly; not the class who dig and toil for their daily bread; not the landless, feeble, and defenseless portion of society, but the rich and powerful, the crafty and scheming, those who live by the sweat of other men's faces, and who have no intention of cheapening labor by adding themselves to the laboring forces of society. It is the deceitful cry of the fortunate against the unfortunate, of the idle against the industrious, of the taper-fingered dandy against the hard-handed working man. Labor is a noble word, and expresses a noble idea. Cheap labor, too, seems harmless enough, sounds well to hear, and looks well upon paper.

But what does it mean? Who does it bless or benefit? The answer is already more than indicated. A moment's thought will show that cheap labor in the mouths of those who seek it, means not cheap labor, but the opposite. It means not cheap labor, but dear labor. Not abundant labor, but scarce labor; not more work, but more workmen. It means that condition of things in which the laborers shall be so largely in excess of the work needed to be done, that the capitalist shall be able to command all the laborers he wants, at prices only enough to keep the laborer above the point of starvation. It means ease and luxury to the rich, wretchedness and misery to the poor.

The former slave owners of the South want cheap labor; they want it from Germany and from Ireland; they want it from China and Japan; they want it from anywhere in the world, but from Africa. They want to be independent of their former slaves, and bring their noses to the grindstone. They are not alone in this want, nor is their want a new one. The African slave trade with all its train of horrors, was instituted and carried on to supply the opulent landholding inhabitants of this country with cheap labor; and the same lust for gain, the same love of ease, and loathing of labor, which originated that infernal traffic, discloses itself in the modern cry for cheap labor and the fair-seeming schemes for supplying the demand. So rapidly does one evil succeed another, and so closely does the succeeding evil resemble the one destroyed, that only a very comprehensive view can afford a basis of faith in the possibility of reform, and a recognition of the fact of human progress.

In our paper last week we took occasion to say a word of the ``Coolie Trade'' now prosecuted in the interest of cheap labor, and as kindred in character and results to the African slave trade of other days. Our reading on the subject since that writing, shows the points of resemblance between the two schemes to be more striking than they at that time appeared, and the coolie trade but little behind its predecessor in every species of baseness and cruelty.

It is now three centuries since the first recognition of the slave trade by our authority in England. It was during the reign of the great Queen Elizabeth, in 1562, and it is remarkable that the great princess, while sustaining the scheme in furtherance of cheap labor, professed great abhorrence of bringing away the Africans without their ``consent.'' According to her the Negroes came (to use a soft phrase of the American Colonization Society) to be colonized with ``their own consent.'' The same scrupulous regard for the rights of volition appears in the contracts and schemes by which Coolies are transported from India, China, and other parts of the globe. What all these pretensions were worth in regard to the African slave-trader, the history of that traffic as told by Thomas Clarkson and by a thousand witnesses, has abundantly shown.

The trade of the slave-trader across the sea was a track of blood. Her wake drew into it a procession of hungry sharks to feast upon human flesh, diseased, dead, and dying. The slaves were literally stowed between decks, without regard to health, comfort, or decency. The great thought of captains, owners, consignees, and others, was to make the most money they could in the shortest possible time. Human nature is the same now as then. The Coolie Trade is giving us examples of this unchanged character. The rights of a Coolie in California, in Peru, in Jamaica, in Trinidad, and on board the vessels bearing them to these countries, are scarcely more guarded than were those of the Negro slaves brought to our shores a century ago. The sufferings of these people while in transit are almost as heart-rending as any that attended the African slave trade. For the manner of procuring Coolies, for the inhumanity to which they are subjected, and of all that appertains to one feature of this new effort to supply certain parts of the world with cheap labor, we cannot do better than to refer our readers to the quiet and evidently truthful statement in another column of one of the Coolies rescued from the ship Dolores Ugarte, on board which ship six hundred Coolies perished by fire, deserted and left to their fate by captain and crew.

CHARLES BREITERMAN is an attorney and writer/researcher with NumbersUSA

MORE FARM WORKERS NEEDED NOW! But no legals need apply WE PAY SLAVE WAGES ONLY!

FARM WORKERS NEED MORE FEDERAL HELP - NOW

President Bush finally has granted some relief to the thousands of farmworkers who have been struggling to feed and house their families in the aftermath of the severe cold wave that struck California's farm areas in January. But the aid is far too little and comes far too late.



Bush's action on March 14 came after more than a month of urgent pleading by California's governor, its U.S. senators and many others. It will provide workers $17 million in food supplies and an extra six months of unemployment insurance payments.



But that's "simply not enough," as President Arturo Rodriguez of the United Farm Workers said. "Families are in a state of crisis. While food donations are critical, federal relief needs to apply toward mortgages and rental assistance and utility payments or thousands of families will lose their homes."



Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed. He urged the Senate Appropriations Committee to quickly approve a bill by Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein that would provide funds to help workers meet their housing costs.



The workers are victims of a devastating cold wave that plunged temperatures to the low 20s in an area ranging from the Mexican border up though central California. It destroyed at least half the citrus crop and did great harm to several other crops. Damage amounted to more than $1 billion.



The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to offer help to growers by designating 18 counties as ³disaster areas.² That made the 3,500 growers in those hardest hit locations eligible for low-interest loans of up to $500,000 each, providing they¹d lost at least 30 percent of their crop and could not get loans from private sources or, presumably, crop insurance payments.



In finally granting some relief to farmworkers in 12 of the counties, Bush granted more aid to growers -- $10 million to help them prune frost-damaged trees. There hadn¹t been much federal help, however, for the estimated 12,500 grower employees 5,000 harvesters and 7,500 packing house workers who were affected. Many have been jobless or working only part-time since January and aren¹t likely to find much work -- if any -- until the fall harvests begin in October.



In the meantime, they have little to live on. Farmworker¹s pay is so low few have savings to tide them over. Lacking steady work, they must rely on government aid and private charity to help them feed, clothe and house their families and cover other essentials.



Citrus worker Guadalupe Florez, a widow and mother of three cited by the United Farm Workers union as typical of those needing help, said she¹s ³started to look for work but there aren¹t any jobs. All we know is field work and there aren¹t any oranges to pick, sort or pack. I can get $118 every two weeks from unemployment benefits but it is not nearly enough to cover my $742 mortgage and the $250 in monthly gas and electric bills.²



California¹s state government has helped with unemployment insurance payments and nearly $6 million in grants to individual workers and county-run food banks.



Farmworkers can apply for that aid and other help such as health care and job counseling at ³one-stop centers² the state has set up in farming areas. Many of the needy workers are undocumented immigrants and thus not eligible for government aid, but non-governmental groups have moved in to help them as well as domestic workers.



Service clubs, churches and others have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to food banks, and utility companies have reduced their rates in some farming areas. The United Farm Workers has launched a major campaign to spread word of the workers¹ plight throughout the country, is widely soliciting donations of food and money, and is helping communities organize to take effective action. The UFW calculates that $32.5 million will be needed just to cover the workers¹ basic living costs -- $500 a month for at least 10 months for 6,500 households.



But the state and the UFW and other private groups can¹t possibly meet the enormous need by themselves. The federal government must provide much more than Bush has authorized.



Certainly the farmworkers deserve that. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, "they are part of an economically marginal population that helps drive the state¹s economy, and allows consumers to buy fruit and vegetables at an enviably low cost.²


…………………
From the Los Angeles Times
Farm bill keeping subsidies is OKd in Senate
Taxpayer groups, environmentalists and doctors have all pledged to try to change the legislation, for different reasons. Bush has threatened a veto.
By Nicole Gaouette
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday approved a farm bill that would continue to funnel billions of dollars in subsidies to wealthy landowners and farmers who are earning record-breaking prices for their crops, rebuffing a concerted campaign by some senators to shift money to conservation, nutrition and deficit reduction.

The bill has drawn a veto threat from President Bush, who has criticized the subsidy payments and the creation of a $5-billion permanent disaster fund.

The White House has an unlikely set of allies in taxpayer groups, environmentalists, physicians and rural community advocates who tried vigorously to change the bill's priorities. They pledged to continue lobbying as the House and Senate now try to reconcile the differences in their respective bills.

Supporters of the Senate bill point out that it institutes significant changes, including support for biofuels and for fruit and vegetable farmers, who make up the bulk of California growers. "California is well-served by this farm bill," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). "It contains a number of reforms, which are a step in the right direction."

Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) fought for some of the reform measures during what he called "a hard week" of debate before the bill passed 79 to 14, a margin wide enough to override a presidential veto.

"We were able to work within a very strict budget allocation . . . and pass a farm bill that is good for agriculture, good for rural areas and good for the health of Americans," he said.

But other lawmakers pointed out that the bill did not significantly alter the subsidy system, which allows one resident of the Beverly Hills 90210 ZIP Code to receive $1 million in farm subsidy payments. "This farm bill fails to provide the fundamental reform we need in Washington," said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who proposed a failed amendment that would have phased out subsidies and used the money for nutrition, conservation and free crop insurance for all growers.

The administration noted that the Senate and House farm bills would approve the creation of $22.4 billion in new taxes while failing to do much to limit subsidies. "Congress has refused to significantly limit farm income subsidies for the wealthiest Americans," the White House said in a statement. The $288-billion farm bill sets agriculture policy for five years, but its influence extends to school lunch programs, conservation programs, alternative fuel development, food safety and the amount of help that hungry Americans receive.

About 66% of the farm bill deals with nutrition programs, such as food stamps, but the bill also gives billions of dollars in subsidies to farms that grow a few major crops, including corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat. Activists and some lawmakers say that the subsidies contribute to diet-driven epidemics such as childhood obesity and diabetes, cause pollution and squeeze small-scale farmers out of business.

The bill does establish some limits on subsidies. Currently, farmers with an adjusted gross income of $2.5 million can receive commodity payments. The bill would gradually lower that to $750,000 by 2010, except for growers for whom 67% of their adjusted gross income comes from a farm. Current law allows owners of former farmland that has been subdivided for residential use to continue to receive commodity payments. The bill would limit those payments.

But four major efforts to change the bill's subsidy system and to shift dollars into conservation and nutrition programs failed as a bipartisan group of senators from the Midwest and South banded together to defeat them.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced an unsuccessful amendment that would have immediately banned subsidies for full-time farmers earning more than $750,000 a year and part-time growers earning more than $250,000. "I believe in a safety net, but I believe it is time to move to some reform," said Klobuchar. Acknowledging growing anger about farm spending, she said: "If we don't do the reform in the farm states, it is going to happen to us."

The 1,360-page bill adds $4 billion more than the 2002 farm bill for conservation programs that include wetlands and grasslands, Harkin said.

The energy section of the bill would give farmers money to grow crops that can be used to make alternative fuels, and supports the construction of refineries to process biofuels.

The section of the bill that deals with nutrition would expand a snack program Harkin created to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to the 4.5 million children in elementary schools nationwide. It would also increase food stamp benefits and ensure they keep pace with the cost of living. The bill strengthens mandatory country-of-origin labeling popular with consumers. It also provides more than $100 million to help farmers transition to organic agriculture, collect data on organic crops and conduct research.

For California growers, the most significant impact comes with more than $2 billion in funding for research and marketing for specialty crops, which include fruits, nuts and vegetables. "This is monumental in that from this point on, specialty crops will always be a significant part of any farm bill," said Tom Nassif, president of the Irvine-based Western Growers.

Advocacy groups believed Congress could have done more and said much of the blame rested with the Senate's Democratic leadership. Senate leaders agreed to a 60-vote threshold for some amendments that would have trimmed subsidies after Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who supports subsidies, threatened a filibuster.

Because of that decision, an amendment by Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that would have capped annual payments to farmers at $250,000, down from $360,000, was defeated even though it garnered 56 votes. Klobuchar's amendment also gained a 48-47 majority.

"Those two amendments would have passed but for backroom shenanigans," said David Beckman of Bread for the World, a hunger advocacy group.

He and other advocates said they think they still have a chance to shape the final bill as the House and Senate reconcile their versions in a conference committee, particularly if the administration also applies pressure.

There are some significant differences between the bills, including the Senate's $5-billion permanent disaster fund, which is not in the House version.

"This thing is far from done. The abuses in the farm bill are well-understood," Beckman said. "We have an opportunity to win in the conference."

FEINSTEIN DEMANDS MORE ILLEGALS

Waiting for the Obama and the La Raza Dem whores’ “AMNESTY”?

It’s already here! They don’t need to make it official, they simply don’t enforce the existing laws against being invaded by a foreign peoples that come to wave THEIR FLAG, THEIR LANGUAGE, and THEIR CUSTOMS in our face, and then rant how much more we owe them! They have our jobs, destroy our communities, drench the place in graffiti, vote illegally and line up in welfare lines and I can guarantee you the elected whores in Sacramento and Washington work much harder for them than they ever will for any STUPID GRINGO that must bear the staggering cost of all that “cheap” labor.
Feinstein, and her sidekicks, Boxer and Pelosi flip off their constituents daily on behalf of their corporate paymasters, BIG BANKS, BIG AG BIZ, BIG HIGH-TECH, BIG WALL STREETERS, and Feinstein’s global criminal pimp-husband, Richard C Blum. We said NO to more illegals, and they said NO TO THE WALL, NO TO E-VERIFY, NO ENGLISH ONLY, NO ID TO VOTE (you’ve heard of the “Hispanic vote!”) and CHAIN MIGRATION which will make it legal for the 38 million illegals to bring up the rest of MEXICO.
Dianne Feinstein has long hired illegals at her San Francisco hotel. Her sidekick, Nancy Pelosi hires illegals at her Napa winery.
Feinstein, the old corrupt whore, is once again pushing for amnesty for millions of illiterate and crime prone Mexicans as “cheap”, in fact quasi slave labor illegals to work for her BIG AG BIZ donors. Whore Feinstein does this despite the fact illegals have devastated the job markets for AMERICANS in construction and these jobs don’t exist period due to the depression. THESE LAID OFF CONSTRUCTION WORKERS CAN’T WORK THE FIELDS FOR FEINSTEIN’S BIG AG BIZ DONORS? Of course they can’t. Farm workers are slaves. They are paid miserably and make up for it with welfare paid by the stupid gringos.
ONE-THIRD OF ALL FARM WORKERS RECEIVE WELFARE.
CALIFORNIA ALREADY PAYS OUT $20 BILLON IN SOCIAL SERVICES TO ILLEGALS.
DUE TO THE MEXICAN OCCUPATION CALIFORNIA PAYS FOR THE LARGEST PRISON SYSTEM IN THE U.S.
LOS ANGELES PAYS OUT $1,000,000,000 IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS.
LOS ANGELES PAYS OUT $40 MILLION PER MONTH IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS
LOS ANGELES HAS A TAX-FREE MEXICAN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY CALCULATED TO BE $2 BILLION PER YEAR.
LOS ANGELES HAS NEARLY 1,000 GANG RELATED MURDERS EVERY YEAR THAT COST ONE MILLION DOLLARS EACH TO PROSECUTE.
YET, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, PELOSI, WAXMAN, HONDA, ESHOO, LOFGREN, BACA, FARR all are working for EVEN MORE ILLEGALS.
……………………

Dianne Feinstein and other legislators today have introduced an Ag Jobs bill for mucho mas illegals = cheap depressed labor for Feinstein’s paymasters in the BIG AG BIZ sector
________________________________________
Reply to: see below
Date: 2009-05-15, 2:57PM PDT

A farm workers dusts a vineyard along Byron Highway near State Route 4 near Point of Timber in Brentwood, Calif., on Thursday May 14, 2009. For the fourth time this decade, Senator Diane Feinstein and other legislators today have introduced an "AgJobs" bill that, if enacted, would legalize more than one million undocumented farm workers, many of them in California. (Susan Tripp Pollard/Staff)


New Day, New Push to Legalize Farmworkers

By Matt O'Brien
Contra Costa Times
May 15, 2009

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday introduced a bill that would grant amnesty to up to 1.35 million farm workers who are working in the country illegally, many of them in California.
Nicknamed the AgJobs Bill, the measure has been proposed multiple times this decade, without success, by Feinstein and other legislators. Some supporters are hoping it might fare better under the Obama administration.

JUST AS FEINSTEIN VOTED FOR ANY WELFARE FOR HER BIG BANKERS, EVEN WHILE THE PILLAGED, RAPED AND FORECLOSED, THE OLD WHORE WORKS JUST AS HARD AND JUST AS CROOKED FOR HER BIG AG BIZ DONORS!
………………………….
From the Los Angeles Times
Farm bill keeping subsidies is OKd in Senate
Taxpayer groups, environmentalists and doctors have all pledged to try to change the legislation, for different reasons. Bush has threatened a veto.
By Nicole Gaouette
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday approved a farm bill that would continue to funnel billions of dollars in subsidies to wealthy landowners and farmers who are earning record-breaking prices for their crops, rebuffing a concerted campaign by some senators to shift money to conservation, nutrition and deficit reduction.

The bill has drawn a veto threat from President Bush, who has criticized the subsidy payments and the creation of a $5-billion permanent disaster fund.

The White House has an unlikely set of allies in taxpayer groups, environmentalists, physicians and rural community advocates who tried vigorously to change the bill's priorities. They pledged to continue lobbying as the House and Senate now try to reconcile the differences in their respective bills.

Supporters of the Senate bill point out that it institutes significant changes, including support for biofuels and for fruit and vegetable farmers, who make up the bulk of California growers. "California is well-served by this farm bill," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). "It contains a number of reforms, which are a step in the right direction."

………………………..
WHILE FEINSTEIN HAS NEVER DONE ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T PUT MONEY IN HER POCKET, OR SERVICE THE SPECIAL INTERESTS THAT PUT MONEY IN HER POCKET, OR CUT DEALS WITH HER PIMP, RICHARD C BLUM, YOU WON’T FIND A SINGLE WORD TO HAVE EVER COME OUT OF HER BIG MOUTH ABOUT THE STAGGERING COST TO THE PEOPLE OF CALIFORNIA FOR THE MEXICAN INVASION AND OCCUPATION.
NOR WILL YOU EVER HEAR FEINSTEIN OPEN HER BIG MOUTH ABOUT FORECLOSURE OR JOBS. SHE WORKS FRO WELLS FARGO AND BANK OF AMERICA. NEITHER HIRE AMERICAN BORN EMPLOYEES. ONLY THIRD WORLDER CHINESE, INDIAN, ANYONE BUT AMERICANS. BOTH BANKS ARE LA RAZA DONORS AND ILLEGALLY OPEN BANK ACCOUNTS FOR ILLEGALS.
Date: 2008-05-20, 4:58AM
It's time to get some petitions circulating and get this FRAUD out of office! How disgusting of Dianne Feinstein to sneak an amnesty provision into the Iraq War Funding bill. She knows darn well that most senators will vote for funding for our troops. She thinks she can sneak this through by putting this provision in at the last moment - even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the Iraq war. Well it's time to stop playing all these games. If Ms. Feinstein can't operate in an honest and above-board fashion, she needs to find a different job! I'm a liberal who is fed up with her sneaky, conniving, and CORRUPT ways. IT'S TIME TO RECALL THIS B*TCH!!!!!
…………………………….
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Immigration bill sticker shock $127 BILLION (dated)
A government study puts the cost of the Senate's version of reform at $127 billion over 10 years.

By Gail Russell Chaddock - Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON
The price tag for comprehensive immigration reform was not a key issue when the Senate passed its bill last May. But it is now.
One reason: It took the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - the gold standard for determining what a bill will cost - until last week to estimate that federal spending for this vast and complex bill would hit $127 billion over the next 10 years.
At the same time, federal revenues would drop by about $79 billion, according to the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. If lawmakers fix a tax glitch, that loss would be cut in half, they add.
In field hearings across the nation this month, House GOP leaders are zeroing in on the costs of the Senate bill. It's a bid to define the issue heading into fall elections and muster support for the House bill, which focuses on border security. They say that the more people know about the Senate version, including a path to citizenship for some 11 million people now in the country illegally, the less they will be inclined to support it.

“WE ARE NOW JUST BEGINNING TO SEE A GLIMPSE OF THE STAGGERING BURDEN ON AMERICAN TAXPAYERS” OF THE MEXICAN INVASION.......
"We are now just beginning to see a glimpse of the staggering burden on American taxpayers the Reid-Kennedy immigration legislation contains," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, who convened a field hearing at the State House in Concord, N.H., Thursday on the costs of the Senate bill.
But business groups and others backing the Senate bill say that the cost to the US economy of not resolving the status of illegal immigrants and expanding guest-worker programs is higher still. "In my opinion, the fairer question is: How will illegal immigrants impact the costs of healthcare, local education, and social services without passage of comprehensive immigration reform?" said John Young, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, at Thursday's hearing.
"Had we solved this problem in a truly comprehensive way in 1986 ... we would not have the daily news reporting outright shortages of farm labor threatening the very existence of agricultural industries coast to coast," he adds.

Experts are poring over the new CBO data - and coming up with radically different assessments of the social costs of reform, ranging from tens of billions of dollars higher to a net wash.
On the issue of border security - a feature in both bills - there is little disagreement. The CBO estimates that the cost of hardening US borders in the Senate bill is $78.3 billion over 10 years, or about 62 percent of the bill's total cost.
The fireworks involve new entitlement spending in the Senate version. The CBO sets the price tag for services for some 16 million new citizens and guest workers at $48.4 billion through fiscal year 2016. That includes $24.5 billion for earned income and child tax credits, $11.7 billion for Medicaid, $5.2 billion for Social Security, $3.7 billion for Medicare, and $2.4 billion for food stamps.
But it's easier to estimate the cost of a mile of fence than to assess the prospects for millions of workers, once they can work legally and claim benefits.

“THE AMNESTY ALONE WILL BE THE LARGEST EXPANSION OF THE WELFARE SYSTEM IN THE LAST 25 YEARS” Heritage Foundation
"The amnesty alone will be the largest expansion of the welfare system in the last 25 years," says Robert Rector, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and a witness at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in San Diego Aug. 2. "Welfare costs will begin to hit their peak around 2021, because there are delays in citizenship. The very narrow time horizon [the CBO is] using is misleading," he adds. "If even a small fraction of those who come into the country stay and get on Medicaid, you're looking at costs of $20 billion or $30 billion per year."

……………………
Illegal Immigration Costs California Over Ten Billion Annually (these figures are dated, and are in fact double this!)
Working to give away your job to an illegal, and keep wages depressed for WALL ST, is Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Farr, Baca, Sanchez, Waxman, Lofgren and Eshoo and OBAMA IS LINING UP RIGHT BEHIND THEM, KISSING THE ILLEGALS’ ASS FOR VOTES!
________________________________________

Date: 2007-06-18, 1:07AM PDT


In hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.

Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals.

"California's addiction to 'cheap' illegal alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state's shrinking middle class tax base," stated Dan Stein, President of FAIR. "Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become."

The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Californians focuses on three specific program areas because those were the costs examined by researchers from the Urban Institute in 1994. Looking at the costs of education, health care and incarceration for illegal aliens in 1994, the Urban Institute estimated that California was subsidizing illegal immigrants to the tune of about $1.1 billion. The enormous rise in the costs of illegal immigrants over the intervening ten years is due to the rapid growth in illegal residents. It is reasonable to expect those costs to continue to soar if action is not taken to turn the tide.

"Nineteen ninety-four was the same year that California voters rebelled and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to limit liability for mass illegal immigration. Since then, state and local governments have blatantly ignored the wishes of the voters and continued to shell out publicly financed benefits on illegal aliens," said Stein. "Predictably, the costs of illegal immigration have grown geometrically, while the state has spiraled into a fiscal crisis that has brought it near bankruptcy.

"Nothing could more starkly illustrate the very high costs of ‘cheap labor' than California's current situation," continued Stein. "A small number of powerful interests in the state reap the benefits, while the average native-born family in California gets handed a nearly $1,200 a year bill."

The Federation for American Immigration Reform is a nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization advocating immigration policy reforms that would tighten border security and prevent illegal immigration, while reducing legal immigration levels from about 1.1 million persons per year to 300,000 per year.


………………
INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants 2006 (First Quarter)

CRIME STATISTICS 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens. 83% of warrants for murder in Phoenix are for illegal aliens. 86% of warrants for murder in Albuquerque are for illegal aliens. 75% of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Albuquerque are illegal aliens. 24.9% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally 40.1% of all inmates in Arizona detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally 48.2% of all inmates in New Mexico detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally 29% (630,000) convicted illegal alien felons fill our state and federal prisons at a cost of $1.6 billion annually 53% plus of all investigated burglaries reported in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas are perpetrated by illegal aliens. 50% plus of all gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens from south of the border. 71% plus of all apprehended cars stolen in 2005 in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California were stolen by Illegal aliens or “transport coyotes". 47% of cited/stopped drivers in California have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 47%, 92% are illegal aliens. 63% of cited/stopped drivers in Arizona have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 63%, 97% are illegal aliens 66% of cited/stopped drivers in New Mexico have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 66% 98% are illegal aliens.
BIRTH STATISTICS 380,000 plus “anchor babies” were born in the U.S. in 2005 to illegal alien parents, making 380,000 babies automatically U.S.citizens. 97.2% of all costs incurred from those births were paid by the American taxpayers. 66% plus of all births in California are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers
Subject: From the L.A. Times Newspaper
1. 40% of all workers in L. A. County (L. A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. Los Angeles County reports 2 billion dollars in the underground economy is lost.
2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens. There have been 2000 Californians murdered by illegals who then fled back to Mexico to avoid prosecution.
3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
4. Over 2/3's of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally. Los Angeles County spends millions in jail cost for illegals still actively drug trafficking. To solve this problem, the county dispersed the Mexican drug dealers to jails over the states. This only propagated the drug dealers operations. The County spends millions in fighting Mexican gangs which have spread all over the United States. The County also spends millions on graffiti abatement.
6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.
7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border. It’s assumed the vast majority of the other half are Mexicans living here legally.
8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.
9. 21 radio stations in L. A. are Spanish speaking. They united Mexicans in protest demanding “rights” they presume to be entitled to. (They seem to have one program. Convince the Mexican invaders this country actually belongs to the Mexicans. )
10. In L. A. County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in L. A. County). ( How many Mexicans do you know that have contempt for the English language?) Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare. Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.
OTHER SOURCES: Similar figures LOS ANGELES TIMES reports that California spends 9 billion on social services for illegals. 60% of the counties in the United States have serious meth problems. Meth that comes from Mexico. Part of Mexico’s 5 billion dollar drug export business.
An estimated 8,200 Illegal Immigrants cross the border each day. 57,400 a week . 250,000 a month.
84 hospitals in California alone have closed or are scheduled to close due mostly to rising costs of caring for uninsured Illegal Immigrants since 1993. It is estimated that 50% of their services went to Illegal Immigrants who did not pay their bills. According to the American Hospital Association the estimated uncompensated cost of care in 2000 was $21.6 billion. Roughly 6% of total expenses. The government allotted only $1 billion to help cover those costs. Anchor babies account for roughly 10% of all US births. In 2003, anchor babies accounted for 70% of all births in San Joachim General Hospital in Stockton, California.
US taxpayers spent an estimated $7.4 Billion in 2003 to educate illegal immigrants. 34% of students in the Los Angeles school system are illegals or children of illegals. Two thirds of Illegal Immigrants adults DO NOT have a high school degree or equivalent. The illiteracy rate for Illegal Immigrants is 2.5 times higher than that of US Citizens.
Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are illegal aliens from Mexico. 29% or a whopping 630,000 convicted illegal alien felons fill our state and federal prisons at a cost of $1.6 billion annually; not to mention the tragedies in death, drugs, crime and misery they have caused American families. ***************************************************************************** Illegal aliens cost California billions
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published December 7, 2004 (true figures much bleaker)
Illegal immigration costs the taxpayers of California -- which has the highest number of illegal aliens nationwide -- $10.5 billion a year for education, health care and incarceration, according to a study released yesterday. A key finding of the report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said the state's already struggling kindergarten-through-12th-grade education system spends $7.7 billion a year on children of illegal aliens, who constitute 15 percent of the student body. The report also said the incarceration of convicted illegal aliens in state prisons and jails and uncompensated medical outlays for health care provided to illegal aliens each amounted to about $1.4 billion annually. The incarceration costs did not include judicial expenditures or the monetary costs of the crimes committed by illegal aliens that led to their incarceration. "California's addiction to 'cheap' illegal-alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state's shrinking middle-class tax base," said FAIR President Dan Stein. "Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become," he said. California is estimated to be home to nearly 3 million illegal aliens. Mr. Stein noted that state and local taxes paid by the unauthorized immigrant population go toward offsetting these costs, but do not match expenses. The total of such payments was estimated in the report to be about $1.6 billion per year. He also said the total cost of illegal immigration to the state's taxpayers would be considerably higher if other cost areas, such as special English instruction, school meal programs or welfare benefits for American workers displaced by illegal-alien workers were added into the equation. Gerardo Gonzalez, director of the National Latino Research Center at California State at San Marcos, which compiles data on Hispanics, was critical of FAIR's report yesterday. He said FAIR's estimates did not measure some of the contributions that illegal aliens make to the state's economy. "Beyond taxes, these workers' production and spending contribute to California's economy, especially the agricultural sector," he said, adding that both legal and illegal aliens are the "backbone" of the state's $28 billion-a-year agricultural industry. In August, a similar study by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said U.S. households headed by illegal aliens used $26.3 billion in government services during 2002, but paid $16 billion in taxes, an annual cost to taxpayers of $10 billion. The FAIR report focused on three specific program areas because those were the costs examined by researchers from the Urban Institute in 1994, Mr. Stein said. Looking at the costs of education, health care and incarceration for illegal aliens in 1994, the Urban Institute estimated that California was subsidizing illegal immigrants at about $1.1 billion a year. Mr. Stein said an enormous rise in the costs of illegal immigrants in 10 years is because of the rapid growth of the illegal population. He said it is reasonable to expect those costs to continue to soar if action is not taken to turn the tide. "1994 was the same year that California voters rebelled and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to limit liability for mass illegal immigration," he said. "Since then, state and local governments have blatantly ignored the wishes of the voters and continued to shell out publicly financed benefits on illegal aliens. "Predictably, the costs of illegal immigration have grown geometrically, while the state has spiraled into a fiscal crisis that has brought it near bankruptcy," he said. Mr. Stein said that the state must adopt measures to systematically collect information on illegal-alien use of taxpayer-funded services and on where they are employed, and that policies need to be pursued to hold employers financially accountable.
………..
Pelosi's corrupt insider passing of bills that make her rich.
________________________________________
Reply to: see below
Date: 2009-01-16, 10:47PM MST


Check for yourself
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_nancy_pelosi_get_wage_breaks_and.html


Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's home House District includes San Francisco.

Star-Kist Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi's home district.

Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.

Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan workforce.

Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock.

In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their competition's.

Last week when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an "economic development credit in American Samoa".

Pelosi has called the Bush Administration "corrupt".

Check some more for yourself

http://www.snopes.com/politics/pelosi/americansamoa.asp


GIVE A WHORE A CALL:
ASK HER WHAT SHE’S DONE TO PUT MONEY IN HER PIMP’S POCKETS TODAY.
San Francisco
One Post Street, Suite 2450
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: (415) 393-0707
Fax: (415) 393-0710



Los Angeles
11111 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 915
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Phone: (310) 914-7300
Fax: (310) 914-7318


San Diego
750 B Street, Suite 1030
San Diego, CA 92101
Phone: (619) 231-9712
Fax: (619) 231-1108


Fresno
2500 Tulare Street, Suite 4290
Fresno, CA 93721
Phone: (559) 485-7430
Fax: (559) 485-9689

SPEAK ENGLISH? not here!

If you drive from the Mexican border up California to San Francisco you will have to hunt to hear the English language. CA has about 15 million of those “12 million” illegals!

There are approximately 38 million illegals according to the PEW. And none of them have any affection for this nation. You didn’t think it was by accident that hundreds of thousands that marched on us demanding unconditional amnesty had Mexican flags, did you? They’re here by invitation of our government, on behalf of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce which fronts for the corporate interests. You know, La Raza Hillary’s WALL ST donors that demand wages be depressed, and depressed even more.

Even with unemployment in double digits, FEINSTEIN, BOXER, PELOSI, WAXMAN are all busting their fat corporate bribed asses to get AMNESTY, NO E-VERIFY, NO ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS AGAINST EMPLOYERS HIRING ILLEGALS WITH STOLEN IDs, NO WALL and ….. NO ENGLISH ONLY!

In fact FEINSTEIN and BOXER, both LA RAZA endorsed whores, have fought endlessly for NO ENGLISH, and NO ID to vote. They know that Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez of Mexican occupied Orange County obtained her seat with the votes of illegals. With 47% of those that have a job in Los Angeles County using fraudulent ID did you think they would not vote just because it is illegal for illegals to vote?

Pay a visit to SANTEE EDUCATION COMPLEX and you will find the student body almost entirely illegals. Like most illegals they have contempt for this nation, our laws, borders, flag, and language so they are taught in SPANISH. Their books are in SPANISH, their hand outs are in SPANISH, and they conclude their school assemblies with VIVA MEXICO! VIVA MEXICO.

And to think, La Raza Feinstein and Boobs Boxer are working for the BIG AG BIZ donors to get amnesty for 4 million illegal farm workers, despite the fact that statistically more than one-third will end up on welfare. Cost for welfare paid out to illegals in Los Angeles County is nearly $40 million per MONTH!

To save our state and nation we must rid ourselves of these lifer-whore politicians that have gotten filthy rich off elected office by selling us out to their corporate paymasters. We need a vision of ENGLISH IS OUR LANGUAGE, THE MEXICAN FLAGS BELONGS IN MEXICO, EMPLOYERS THAT HIRE “CHEAP” ILLEGAL LABOR GO TO PRISON, AND WE NO LONGER ARE MEXICO’S WELFARE SYSTEM.


January 11, 2009
In Nashville, a Ballot Measure That May Quiet All but English
By ROBBIE BROWN
NASHVILLE — In crisp Japanese, the metropolitan councilman read aloud his resolution to limit Nashville government workers to communicating only in English.
“Kono jyoukyou wa kaeru bekidesu,” said the councilman, Eric Crafton, who is fluent in Japanese. Translated, it meant, “This situation must change.”
The fact that few people, if any, attending the council meeting understood Mr. Crafton proved his point. Nashville, like most cities in the country, allows government officials to communicate in any language they choose, and Mr. Crafton wants to end that practice.
In a proposal that has defined him publicly and dominated local politics for two years, Mr. Crafton hopes to make Nashville the largest city in the United States to prohibit the government from using languages other than English, with exceptions allowed for issues of health and safety. On Jan. 22, city residents will vote on the proposal, which Mr. Crafton calls English First and critics call English Only.
“I happened to see a state legislature meeting in California where several of the state representatives had interpreters at their desk because they couldn’t speak English,” Mr. Crafton said. “That’s not the vision I have for Nashville.”
But the vision he does have for Nashville — and eventually America — has drawn criticism from Mayor Karl Dean and a broad coalition of civil rights groups, business leaders, ministers and immigration experts. The leaders of nine institutions of higher education in Nashville wrote an opinion article in The Tennessean newspaper opposing the proposal, which they said would sully the city’s reputation for tolerance and diversity.
“The irony of the city known as the ‘Athens of the South’ becoming the first major metropolitan community in America to pass ‘English only’ is a distressing prospect,” they wrote.
The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, in a rare alliance with liberal groups like the Green Party, has opposed the proposal for business reasons.
“Economics is global, and to be competitive you cannot drive away immigrants and the businesses that rely on them,” said Ralph J. Schulz, the chamber president. “Businesses from outside Nashville have been calling and saying, ‘Is Nashville a xenophobic place?’ ”
The city government spends more than $100,000 on translation and related costs every year, Mr. Crafton said, adding that he believes the cost of those services should be borne by the constituents who require them.
Mr. Crafton, 41, who became fluent in Japanese after serving in the Navy in Japan in the 1990s, said he also believed that encouraging immigrants to learn English would help them assimilate.
Jonathan Z. Crisp, a former chairman of the county Republican Party and a supporter of the proposal, said: “Our opponents talk about Nashville being the ‘Athens of the South.’ But if you go to the other Athens, in Greece, all of the government workers are speaking Greek.”
Thirty states, including Tennessee, and at least 19 cities have declared English the official language, according to Rob Toonkel, a spokesman for the U.S. English Foundation, which advocates such policies. But most of the cities are small, places like Hazelton, Pa., and Culpeper, Va.
In Nashville, which has a population of about 600,000, two factors have been driving interest in Mr. Crafton’s proposal: the booming immigrant population and the faltering economy.
In the 1990s, the number of immigrants in Nashville tripled, according to government estimates, and more than 10 percent of residents were born outside the country. But over the past year, as the state unemployment rate rose to 6.9 percent from 5 percent, experts say, immigrants came under greater criticism.
“While the immigrant population burgeoned, there was very little organized anti-immigrant attitude,” said Daniel B. Cornfield, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University. “But the anti-immigrant sentiment seemed to mobilize as the economy slowed down.”
On a recent weekend, volunteers for a coalition called Nashville for All of Us, which opposes the proposal, knocked on doors and distributed campaign literature in Woodbine, a heavily Hispanic neighborhood.
Melissa Gordon, 29, a graduate student, and Laura Barnett, 24, a recent college graduate, rang the doorbell at David Morales’s ranch-style house. Mr. Morales, a Mexican immigrant and language translator, told them he already knew about the proposal and planned to vote against it.
“It’s part of a larger problem of people not understanding immigrants: their habits, their languages, their barbecues in the front yard,” he said. “It’s more than just fear about jobs. It’s fear about a whole way of life.”
But Mike Watson, 40, a construction worker interviewed in downtown Nashville, said he supported Mr. Crafton’s proposal. “It’s not about racism or anything,” Mr. Watson said. “I just think we need to save our money in this economy, and we can’t be translating everything into any language all the time.”
Early voting began on Jan. 2 and will continue until Jan. 17. With low turnout expected, as with any ballot initiative, the election will depend on which side can rally supporters without mobilizing the opposition, said Michael P. McDonald, a political science professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
“There are high levels of support for these types of measures if people don’t view them as punitive against immigrant communities,” Mr. McDonald said. “The trick is, you don’t want to somehow motivate your opponent’s voters with emotional rhetoric.”
In 2006, Mr. Crafton drafted his first resolution to make English the official language of Nashville. The Metropolitan Council approved the bill in 2007, but Bill Purcell, the mayor at the time, vetoed it. In response, Mr. Crafton collected more than 5,500 signatures, nearly twice the number necessary, to force a referendum.
Mr. Crafton’s singular focus on changing the language policy has earned him a far larger profile than most council members.
In October, a Vanderbilt professor was investigated by the police for placing threatening phone calls to Mr. Crafton about the English proposal. Last month, an alternative newspaper spoofed a famous red-and-blue Obama poster, with the word “English” replacing “Change” under a drawing of Mr. Crafton.
Still, critics say he has wasted at least $350,000 of taxpayer money on a special election for an issue that does not matter to most voters. “I don’t think English Only would be an issue if it weren’t for Eric Crafton,” said Mr. Schulz of the Chamber of Commerce.
But Mr. Crafton insists that momentum is on his side in Nashville and across the country. “We’ll make English the official language here,” he said. “After that happens, we’re going to go city to city, show them how we’ve done it here, and let the dominos fall.”

MEXICAN MAFIA murder in Los Angeles... nearly 1,000 per year!

MEXICAN PRISON GANG MEMBER ACCUSED OF ORDERING A KILLING IN ROSEMEAD
Case could support suspicions about Mexican Mafia involvement in street crime.
By Sam Quinones
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 28, 2007
A day before Thanksgiving 1998, Donald "Pato" Schubert was shot to death in the carport of his apartment building in the San Gabriel Valley city of Rosemead.
A member of the Lomas Rosemead street gang pleaded guilty to killing Schubert, a plumber and former gang member.
With that, the case was filed away, forgotten by nearly everyone except Schubert's family.
Then, earlier this month, the case suddenly returned to life. At a hearing in Pasadena Superior Court guarded by a dozen deputies, including two SWAT officers, a judge ordered Eulalio "Lalo" Martinez, 46, a reputed member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang, to stand trial for Schubert's killing.

MEXICAN GANGS TAKE OVER CENTRAL VALLEY of CALIFORNIA - Obama says get 'em registered to vote!

SMALL TOWNS, BIG GANGS TAKE OVER CENTRAL VALLEY OF CALIFORNIA
Law enforcement officials are trying to crack down on the urban problems that have begun to spread into the Central Valley.
By Tim Reiterman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 24, 2008 DELANO — Here in the birthplace of Cesar Chavez's nonviolent farm labor movement, a 14-year-old who aspired to become a policeman is cut down by gunfire on his front porch. In the farm town of Merced, billed as the gateway to Yosemite, an armed gang member shoots an officer after a vehicle stop -- the first police slaying in the city's 118-year history. And in Red Bluff, which prides itself on its Victorian homes, rodeos, hunting and fishing, a teenage gangster pumps seven bullets into another high school student outside a party. Along the 450 miles of the Central Valley, an explosion of gang violence in recent years has transformed life on the wide, tree-lined streets of California's agricultural heartland. As jobs and relatively affordable housing in the fast-growing region have attracted families from the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, law enforcement officials say, some have brought gang ties with them, aggravating the valley's home-grown street crime. "What we are seeing is a migration of gangs from larger cities . . . to more rural areas," said Jerry Hunter, who oversees state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown's anti-gang units. "The gang activity . . . is a huge crisis for those communities." The spread of gang violence has strained police resources and rendered some playgrounds and streets off limits. Bullets have shattered the peace in parks and strip malls. Some graffiti cleanup crews in Stanislaus County have bulletproof vests or police escorts. Lifeguards in Turlock no longer sport traditional red or blue swimwear -- those gang colors might provoke gunfire. Schools in many places have adopted anti-gang dress codes, and rumors of impending gang attacks sometimes scare students from classes. Fear has silenced witnesses to gang crimes. Up and down the valley, task forces have been formed as evidence mounts that street hoodlums are committing homicides, robberies and car thefts and trafficking in drugs. Some communities have taxed themselves to pay for more police. Local, state and federal sweeps have produced thousands of arrests -- but tens of thousands more gang members remain on the streets, authorities say. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has appointed former Sacramento U.S. Atty. Paul Seave as his anti-gang chief, hoping to improve the effectiveness and collaboration of state agencies that spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to prevent and combat gang violence. And Brown has declared the gang problem a top priority, likening it to domestic terrorism. His office is providing local agencies with expertise, intelligence and agents for raids. The Central Valley contains eight of the 22 counties that had the most gang-related homicides in 2005 and 2006, Seave said. And annual California Department of Justice figures show that the number of valley gang killings has accelerated, as has the number of law enforcement agencies reporting such crimes. In 1997, 50 gang-related homicides were reported, compared with 80 in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Gang violence came with startling brutality to the Tehama County town of Red Bluff, at the northern reaches of the Sacramento River. After a 17-year-old Sureño gang member repeatedly shot a 16-year-old Norteño gang member outside a house party, rumors of an attack on a local high school caused many students to stay home. The young gang member was sentenced last year to 25 years to life in prison for the 2006 shooting. "This is a small town, and . . . we're not used to those types of things happening," said Greg Ulloa, the county's juvenile probation chief. "But it is getting worse." The lower end of the valley has long been known as the Mason-Dixon Line of California's major Latino gang rivalry. But now clashes between the Sureños, or southerners, and the Norteños, northerners, have migrated through the state. "In the eastern part of the county, families are moving in from the L.A. basin," said Kern County Sheriff's Sgt. Mike Whiting. The gang members who come with them, he said, "are small fish there, but they can be bigger fish here." The North-South conflicts are particularly pronounced in Delano. It is territory claimed by the Norteños, whose traditional strongholds are farming communities and who have adopted as their insignia a version of the United Farm Workers Union's Aztec Eagle symbol. But the town has Sureños too and is only seven miles from that gang's turf in McFarland. One night last year, 14-year-old Steven Fierro, a freshman at Delano's Cesar Chavez High School, was standing outside his tidy tract home with his older brother and two of his brother's friends when they were strafed by rifle fire from a car. Steven was killed and the others wounded in what police say is an unsolved shooting rooted in the gang rivalry. Steven's mother Isabel keeps a small, candlelight shrine inside her front door to remind her of a son she describes as good-hearted, loving and not a gang member. He wanted to be a policeman, she said, and hoped to buy a bigger house and nice car for his mom, who works in a horticultural facility. She left Steven's room untouched -- with his video games, baseball photos and paintball gun. "Maybe this way I'm thinking he has gone off to school and will be back," she said, weeping. "The same night they killed my son, they killed me also." Police, school officials and community groups say gang violence cannot be curtailed without prevention and intervention. Some towns teach parents to be on alert for signs, such as red or blue clothing, shoes and handkerchiefs, that their children might be drifting toward gangs. Other towns have stepped up recreational activities to keep youngsters busy. Even when law enforcement agencies record successes against a gang, members often move elsewhere, as some may have done after crackdowns on Fresno's Bulldogs gang. It has an estimated 6,000 members. Police in nearby Selma are now seeing Bulldogs, with their dog-paw tattoos, standing on street corners literally barking warnings when squad cars approach. There have been drive-by shootings in midday, and police say one crime witness was wounded by gang members who shot through her front door. The rise of gang violence "has caught us off guard and shocked our community," said Selma Police Chief Tom Whiteside, noting that the town of about 24,000 had five gang homicides in the last three years. "Today, gang crime is probably No. 1 on everyone's radar screen in the valley." Selma voters overwhelmingly approved a half-cent sales tax in November that will allow its police force to nearly double in the next decade

SAN JOSE - Mexican gang murder

SAN JOSE KILLINGS OUTPACE 2006 RATE, AND GANGS ARE BLAMED!
INCREASE IN HOMICIDES REIGNITES DEBATE ABOUT POLICE STAFFING LEVELS
By Joshua Molina Mercury News 11/27/2007
On the heels of losing its cherished "Safest Big City" title, San Jose is struggling with a jump in gang related homicides, sparking widespread concern among officials and community members.
The shooting deaths of two men on Friday brought the number of homicides to 31 already one more than the total in 2006, and within striking distance of a six year high.
The deaths have reignited debate over staffing levels at the police department and budget priorities for gang prevention.
News Release: CALIFORNIA IS THE DIM PICTURE OF AMERICA'S FUTURE
Visit CAPS website at www.capsweb.org.
The Golden State today bodes ill for the U.S. of tomorrow
SANTA BARBARA--October 5, 2006
America prepares to surge past a population of 300 million people sometime around October 15, one need only to look at what has happened to California over the past two decades to see what is in store for the rest of the nation. "Three hundred million people is neither an achievement nor an endpoint, but just a landmark on the way to a billion people," said Diana Hull, President of Californians for Population Stabilization. "It is time to remind everyone again, that perpetual growth is the philosophy of a cancer cell." Hull delivered her comments at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, where some of the nation's top population and immigration experts warned that 300 million people is nothing to celebrate. The grim foretelling in California of the impacts that massive population growth will have on the nation's environment and quality-of-life demonstrates how fast the 'tipping-point' can be reached. "The California Experiment is an example of how far and how fast a magnificent natural inheritance can be squandered and plundered," Hull said. "How fast the skid and how far the fall." Hull, a behavioral scientist trained in demography who served on the Sierra Club's Population Committee and the Southern California Demographic Forum, said California's cultural penchant for fast-if-easy living was quickly outstripped by its unchecked appetite for simply 'more.' "In our state, the race to gargantuan-size has progressed so far and so fast that we can barely move," Hull said. "Freeways have become like doors that the morbidly obese can no longer fit through, thus the size of everything has to expand." It's unlikely that Governor Pat Brown, who invested heavily in California's infrastructure, could have envisioned in 1965 the human tidal wave that would eventually swamp his fabled public works. But it was in 1965 that real sustained population growth began in California that would take on what Hull described as "astonishing momentum" over the next four decades. In 1965, California's population was just over 18 million people. Today, California has more than 37 million people, and sustains a net-gain of about 500,000 more people annually. The vast majority of people flowing into the state, Hull said, are legal and illegal immigrants; the vast majority of them are poor and uneducated and require social assistance. The resulting cultural arguments over immigration have obscured the most basic question the state government and the media should be openly discussing: how many more people can the state take? The answer may be found in the devolution of California over the past four decades, from a sun-dappled state that could provide its people an enviable quality of life to a gritty jumble of jammed public schools, failing emergency rooms, overwhelmed social services, vanishing green space and suburban sprawl so vast that three hour commutes to and from work are now a reality. As Hull noted on Tuesday, the overpopulating of California occurred not with popular support, but rather amid a collective slumber. "The state became a pilot project in a failed social experiment that no one had agreed to beforehand," she said. "All around us there were more people, more traffic, more crowds, more long waits, more houses and more shopping centersbut never enough." The resulting dislocations caused by a deteriorating quality of life, which has seen large numbers of Californians fleeing the state, has been more than made up for by surging net gains in the population fueled by immigration. Yet amazingly, the nation's bi-partisan leadership at virtually every level of the federal government seems unwilling to learn from what has happened to California, but to the contrary seem more than prepared to let California's fate become America's future. Despite four decades of hard evidence of the potentially catastrophic impacts--particularly for the environment--of unmanaged population growth, Hull said the nation's leaders have been shamefully silent. "As demographic momentum accelerated, the pace of this growth and the changes it wrought were never systematically observed and monitored, nor even officially acknowledged," she said. "And little interest was shown in evaluating outcomes." Those outcomes are evident everyday now in California, from the implosion of trauma centers across Los Angeles County to the bulldozing of some of the most fertile farmland in the Central Valley to make way for more homes. "The two very worst outcomes are that infrastructure over-use wears everything out faster than we can replace it," Hull said. "And there is an insatiable demand on natural resources that are now unable to replenish themselves." ABOUT CALIFORNIANS FOR POPULATION STABILIZATION (CAPS) Californians for Population Stabilization is a non-profit organization dedicated to formulating and advancing policies and programs designed to stabilize the population of California at a level which will preserve a good quality of life for all Californians; www.capsweb.org.

AN ACTUAL RAID FOR ILLEGALS? 70 CAUGHT 6 MILLION ESCAPED

LOS ANGELES TIMES
70 Illegal Migrants Found in Raid
Agents find the captives locked in 'utter squalor' in Willowbrook duplex. Efforts to find leaders of human smuggling rings have proved futile. By Andrew Blankstein and Anna GormanTimes Staff WritersMarch 4, 2006Nearly 70 illegal immigrants packed into a small "drop house" in Willowbrook were discovered Friday by law enforcement officers, underscoring the difficulty authorities have faced in cracking down on human smuggling in Southern California. Immigration agents have made some strides but acknowledge that they continue to encounter obstacles. The biggest problem is getting beyond the men who operate the drop houses and finding the kingpins who actually run the smuggling rings. Friday's bust points up that difficulty: Authorities said the five men apparently operating the house appeared to be gang members hired by the smuggling ring to keep the immigrants from escaping. At least one of the guards has been identified as belonging to the notorious Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, gang, agents said. All of the guards, now in custody, are believed to be illegal immigrants. Southern California is considered a hotbed of human smuggling. After a widely publicized case in Watts two years ago, federal officials announced a major crackdown that included operations at Los Angeles International Airport and greater cooperation with local law enforcement. They also started going after the money behind the smuggling rings by tracking fund transfers and freezing bank accounts.As In the last two years, ICE has discovered approximately one dozen major drop houses throughout Southern California. The agency is seeing an increasing number in the Inland Empire. In December, authorities found 25 illegal immigrants in a drop house near downtown Riverside.Although arrests have been made, officials have said it's difficult reaching the upper echelons of the rings, the kingpins who are for most part based in Mexico or Central America. The ringleaders use a network of underlings, including illegal immigrants and gang members, to operate the houses.Even when safe houses are found, law enforcement often cannot track down the smugglers who run them because they distance themselves from daily operations, often running the rings from their native countries. So after a raid, a smuggling ring can hire new guards, find a new house and start operations again.In the most recent case, federal agents received a tip Wednesday from a relative of a migrant about a possible hostage situation. With the help of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department SWAT team, immigration agents executed a federal warrant at 6 a.m. Friday.They discovered the immigrants crammed into four bedrooms with no light fixtures and no furniture except for unplugged televisions. On the walls were a red painted cross and scrawled phone numbers. Clothes were piled in the bathtub, and the immigrants' shoes had been taken from them, authorities said. The immigrants had been fed chicken, tortillas, hot sauce and orange juice, authorities said.The windows were barred and covered with blankets, and surveillance cameras monitored the outside of the 1,500-square-foot converted duplex in a neighborhood of homes costing roughly $300,000 to $400,000 just south of the 105 Freeway. There were two entrances, both guarded. Authorities also found a loaded .357 magnum handgun under a bed in one of the rooms where the guards slept."They were obviously held against their will," said Frank Johnston, ICE assistant special agent in charge. "The conditions were utter squalor."One of the illegal immigrants has active tuberculosis, agents said. The immigrants, including 13 minors and nine women, came from Nicaragua, Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Honduras and Guatemala.The immigrants told agents they had paid between $3,000 and $10,000 to be guided across the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities said, but smugglers demanded more money after they arrived in Los Angeles County.Some had been in the house for as long as eight weeks; others had arrived Thursday. Agents said smugglers took new illegal immigrants into the house through the side entrance. "The coming and going of the immigrants was in the dead of night," said Kevin Jeffery, acting special agent in charge for ICE.Neighbors said they didn't notice anything unusual except for residents frequently taking in bags and bags of groceries, and the wooden barriers on the side of the house, apparently meant to block views from the street. "I've never seen anything out of the ordinary there," said Irene Martinez, 37, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years. "I've never seen [lots of] people coming in and out of the house."Amy Mendoza, who lives next door, said the house appeared quiet. "Everything was normal," she said.On Friday morning, Mendoza, 18, said she saw about a dozen law enforcement officers, guns drawn, descend on the property. Outside, law enforcement officers talked to people in the rain, many barefoot, some sitting or standing on the curb. Two buses retrieved most of them, but a small group was taken away in a van, she said.Because drop houses are usually in residential neighborhoods, they can go undetected for months or even years. Federal agents also frequently have trouble persuading the illegal immigrants to cooperate with law enforcement. Many fear retaliation or plan to hire the smugglers again. "Once they are sent home, they will try to come back in," Johnston said. "They'll use the same smugglers."

EL MONTE, CA under Mexican gang occupation

From the Los Angeles Times
El Monte is down on its luck
This working-class city once plagued by crime was on an upswing until the economy changed its fortune.
By Hector Becerra

May 3, 2009

The boy found it hard not to think about getting bonked with a baseball as he played a game of catch with his father in a park in El Monte. It was early in the evening, but in the fast-fading light, Jose Rocha, 9, said the baseball looked like a wad of paper.

"It's kind of hard to see it," the boy said in Lambert Park.

Anxious to find savings as city coffers take a hit, El Monte turns off half the lights in all its parks.

"We used to play till 8," the boy's father, also named Jose, said. "Not anymore."

In El Monte, the fear these days is about backsliding.

The city pool has closed, after-school programs have been cut, and El Monte's nearly 400 city employees were told to either take a 10% pay cut or see colleagues lose their jobs. Seventeen police officers were laid off. Violent crime is up 16% while crime is dropping elsewhere in L.A. County.

The recession has hit El Monte hard. The city has improved in the last two decades thanks in large part to revenues from car dealerships. Auto sales provided 60% of El Monte's revenue, helping the working-class city give its employees raises, beautify streets, hire more police officers, staff a $14-million aquatic center and build a network of after-school programs.

But in the last nine months, three of the city's eight largest car dealerships have closed. The rest struggle. The city's tax revenues have plummeted. And El Monte is now faced with some tough choices. To longtime residents, the reversal of fortune is bringing back memories of the bad old days, when gang violence plagued the streets and the city had a reputation for being run-down.

"Please, you guys," one woman pleaded at a council meeting. "Think about it: This is El Monte, not Pasadena. We need our officers."

Maria Bascunan, an elderly Chilean immigrant, said she remembers when she couldn't walk past the driveway of an apartment building she managed without being confronted by a throng of loitering gang members.

"It was bad. There were a lot of gang members hanging around. There were a lot of robberies, people fighting in the streets," Bascunan said.

That began to change as the Police Department started receiving enough funding to combat the crime problem and as after-school programs started keeping children busy.

Mayor Ernie Gutierrez, whose family moved to El Monte in 1937, said the reversal is a humbling experience for a tough-luck city that was trying to leap forward.

"When times are fine, you're drinking Champagne," the 74-year-old said. "Before you know it, you have to start drinking Kool-Aid again."

'Suburban sprawl'

El Monte, with a population of 126,000, never had it easy. In 1971, a national magazine described the city as a "blur of suburban sprawl." Most of the citizens were "unskilled or semi-skilled workers from the South and the Midwest." But the Mexican and Mexican American community was growing fast, with many leaving the barrios of East L.A.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE MEXICANS OCCUPY

By the 1970s, El Monte's white population was in flight and the city became a hub for immigrants from Latin America. The city's population exploded while its median household income declined. Crime remained a big problem, along with graffiti and general urban blight. Many of the mainstream retailers left, including stores like J.C. Penney.

MURDER! When Mexican occupy

The vast majority of the killings have been blamed by sheriff's officials on gangs.
Compton Records Its 68th Homicide
In the third killing this week, a teen allegedly stabs her sister. A minister vows to create a community task force and broker a gang truce.
By Megan Garvey
Times Staff Writer
December 15, 2005
A teenage girl allegedly stabbed to death her 15-year-old sister Wednesday morning on the edge of Compton, the third homicide this week in a city that has had at least 68 killings this year, far outpacing the rest of Southern California and its own recent homicide rates. The stabbing — apparently the result of a family dispute — took place shortly before 9 a.m. in the 14000 block of North Central Avenue. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies arrived to find the 17-year-old alleged assailant on the front lawn with her sister, Carmen Duncan, 15, who was fatally wounded, authorities said. Sheriff's deputies detained the suspect, whose name they have not released because she is a minor. They said she told investigators that she and her sister had been involved in a fight. The latest homicide came within days of two fatal shootings, one Tuesday night that killed Derrick Richard, 23, and left another man wounded. In another double shooting Sunday, Lubrina Pullard, 17, was killed and her boyfriend wounded as they sat in a parked car on a residential street. The rise in violence this year in Compton has been "absolutely incredible, absolutely too much death," said the Rev. Carl Washington, a former assemblyman who represented the area until forced out by term limits in 2003. "All around town today people are saying, 'Why are so many people dying in this city?' That's what we have to answer."In addition to the deaths reported within the city limits, at least nine other homicides have taken place in unincorporated areas just outside Compton. The vast majority of the killings have been blamed by sheriff's officials on gangs. Washington announced Wednesday that he intended to create a community task force to respond to the violence, including efforts to broker a truce among the city's many active street gangs. Washington, who helped mediate a gang truce in the early 1990s in Watts, said he believed that the time had come to try again.

MEX DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING - WHY BIG BANKS ARE LA RAZA DONORS!

From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Drug crackdown has little effect on money laundering
In many cases, the network that turns ill-gotten gains into legal tender, crucial to operations and lavish lifestyles, continues to spin unhindered.
By Tracy Wilkinson

December 22, 2008

Reporting from Mexico City — For a B-team, Los Mapaches sure seemed to be living it up. The soccer club from the small town of Nueva Italia in western Mexico had the finest vehicles, new uniforms every game and unusually high salaries.

Little wonder, then, when the team's owner was arrested and accused of laundering millions of dollars for one of Mexico's most powerful drug gangs.

The team was one of many covers, federal prosecutors allege, that Wenceslao Alvarez, alias El Wencho, used to hide and move millions of dollars for the so-called Gulf cartel.

In the Mexican government's bloody, 2-year-old war on drug traffickers, one component of the trade remains largely untouched: money laundering. The network that helps turn ill-gotten gains into legal tender is a crucial linchpin that enables traffickers to live large, expand their operations deep into the U.S., pay off cops and politicians and buy increasingly sophisticated weaponry.

"You can arrest thousands of [traffickers] but if you don't touch the financial enterprises, the business just goes on . . . and becomes more violent," said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on organized crime who has advised both the United Nations and Mexican officials.

Until the government goes after traffickers' cash, Buscaglia and other critics say, the networks will continue to grow and fortify themselves, no matter how many state security forces are thrown at them.

Money-laundering is the process of concealing the origin of illicit drug profits by funneling them into businesses (legitimate or fake), real estate and financial institutions.

Estimates vary widely, but as much as $20 billion is laundered and stays in Mexico annually, with up to four times that amount continuing to other destinations, experts and Mexican officials say.

Some of the money is stuffed in suitcases and walked across the border into Mexico, or hidden in cargo containers and shipped. But investigators also suspect international courier services are moving the cash.

Banking controls are notoriously lax in Mexico, making it easier for money to be wired or deposited into accounts, then spent on goods or services. All-cash transactions are common, especially for big-ticket items such as mansions, and Hummers and armored BMWs, and to pay the legions who work for the drug mafias. The money also is increasingly being sunk into artwork, gems, gold and commodities.

Blacklisted

Every year, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklists scores of individuals and companies, most of them Mexican or Colombian, believed to be involved in money-laundering or other activities supporting drug-trafficking networks.

Rarely has the Mexican government acted on the information. Mexican authorities cannot easily confiscate traffickers' property and assets, a practice common in the U.S. and one that helped give the Colombian government an upper hand in cracking that country's cartels.

"It is a very powerful tool against narco-traffickers because it hits their interests -- their purchasing power and their ideal way of life," Colombian Vice Minister of Defense Sergio Jaramillo Caro said during a recent meeting here of Latin American public security officials. A new law that would give Mexicans that authority has been passed only in Mexico City; a national version is languishing in Congress.

The two main agencies that investigate and prosecute suspected money launderers are hamstrung and underfunded. The Finance Ministry's Financial Intelligence Unit and the attorney general's office are required to communicate with each other in writing, a clumsy process, and they are not allowed access to federal police reports, financial records or other key databases to build organized-crime cases.

The case of the Mapaches (Raccoons) was more exception than rule. Federal agents arrested El Wencho in October while he was in Mexico City at the headquarters of a top soccer club. In addition to the Mapaches, El Wencho's holdings included car dealerships, an avocado export firm, hotels and restaurants, prosecutors say.

The alleged money-laundering operation, which authorities say extended into six U.S. states and parts of Central and South America, came to light in September as part of a U.S. federal indictment that named top leaders of the Gulf cartel and led to the arrests of more than 500 people in the U.S., Mexico and Italy.

An estimated $7.6 million of El Wencho's assets were seized by U.S. authorities in Atlanta and other U.S. cities, according to a senior Mexican official who did not want to be named because such investigations are kept secret until a formal indictment is issued. Mexican and U.S. agents spent a year tracking El Wencho's movements through tapped telephones and other surveillance, the official said.

The official said the soccer team was more of a "whim" and not particularly effective at laundering large amounts of money because it was too junior. It may have been a way for El Wencho to curry favor in Nueva Italia, a typical ploy of traffickers who do good works for their hometowns as a way to buy loyalty and protection.

Shrouded in secrecy

Mexican officials say their financial system is relatively unregulated, shrouded in secrecy laws and so complex that it is difficult to penetrate. But critics wonder if politicians blanch at changing those laws because too many of the country's elite would be implicated.

They note that the interior minister, the second most powerful person in the Mexican government, once helped defend a prominent banker who was acquitted in one of the few high-profile laundering cases to reach the courts.

There is also a general, if unspoken, tolerance of laundered money among many Mexicans, who reason that if the dollars have passed through other hands, it no longer is dirty money.

"It has been relatively useless to try to determine the amounts of money being laundered in Mexico," President Felipe Calderon told Congress last month. An official report that Calderon submitted to lawmakers said the Finance Ministry had detected 60,000 suspicious financial transactions in the 12-month period ending in June. But only 0.5% ended up in court.

A handful of money exchange houses are being prosecuted, but the gradual dollarization of the Mexican economy has diminished the role of exchange houses in suspect transactions, experts say.

Five years ago, Mexican authorities arrested accused money-launderer Rigoberto Gaxiola. Yet, from prison, he continued to wash money for traffickers from Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug-running, as recently as summer, U.S. and Mexican officials say. At that point, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted Gaxiola along with 17 associates, including his wife and three children, and 14 of his businesses. However, the Mexican government has not made further arrests, shut down the businesses nor announced any other sanctions.

Efforts to obtain comment from officials of the Financial Intelligence Unit or from investigators with the attorney general's office were unsuccessful.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, worry that money-laundering operations could have deeper security implications.

"Once you've set up the scheme, you can launder anything," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. "Human slavery, arms trafficking -- even terrorists."

MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS RAISE STAKES ON HUMAN SMUGGLING - then why open borders?

From the Los Angeles Times
Drug cartels raise the stakes on human smuggling
Exploitation of illegal immigrants has become worse, officials say, and the failure of U.S. agencies to work together has hindered efforts to stop the organizations.
By Josh Meyer

March 23, 2009

Reporting from Washington — Mexican drug cartels and their vast network of associates have branched out from their traditional business of narcotics trafficking and are now playing a central role in the multibillion-dollar-a-year business of illegal immigrant smuggling, U.S. law enforcement officials and other experts say.

The business of smuggling humans across the Mexican border has always been brisk, with many thousands coming across every year.

But smugglers affiliated with the drug cartels have taken the enterprise to a new level -- and made it more violent -- by commandeering much of the operation from independent coyotes, according to these officials and recent congressional testimonies.

U.S. efforts to stop the cartels have been stymied by a shortage of funds and the failure of federal law enforcement agencies to collaborate effectively with one another, their local and state counterparts and the Mexican government, officials say.

U.S. authorities have long focused their efforts on the cartels' trafficking of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines, which has left a trail of violence and corruption.

Many of those officials now say that the toll from smuggling illegal immigrants is often far worse.

The cartels often further exploit the illegal immigrants by forcing them into economic bondage or prostitution, U.S. officials say. In recent years, illegal immigrants have been forced to pay even more exorbitant fees for being smuggled into the U.S. by the cartel's well-coordinated networks of transportation, communications, logistics and financial operatives, according to officials.

Many more illegal immigrants are raped, killed or physically and emotionally scarred along the way, authorities say. Organized smuggling groups are stealing entire safe houses from rivals and trucks full of "chickens" -- their term for their human cargo -- to resell them or exploit them further, according to these officials and documents.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) said greed and opportunity had prompted the cartels to move into illegal immigrant smuggling.

"Drugs are only sold once," Sanchez, the chairwoman of the House Homeland Security border subcommittee, said in an interview. "But people can be sold over and over. And they use these people over and over until they are too broken to be used anymore."

The cartels began moving into human smuggling in the late 1990s, initially by taxing the coyotes as they led bands of a few dozen people across cartel-controlled turf near the border.

After U.S. officials stepped up border enforcement after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the price of passage increased and the cartels got more directly involved, using the routes they have long used for smuggling drugs north and cash and weapons south, authorities said.

Sometimes they loaded up their human cargo with backpacks full of marijuana. In many cases, they smuggled illegal immigrants between the two marijuana-growing seasons, authorities said.

Kumar Kibble, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement's office of operations, said the cartels made money by taxing coyotes and engaging in the business themselves.

"Diversification has served them well," Kibble said.

Unlike the drug-trafficking problem, the cartels' involvement in human smuggling has received scant attention in Washington.

That is the case even as the Obama administration and Congress increasingly focus their attention on Mexico, fearing that its government is losing ground in a battle against the cartels that has resulted in the deaths of more than 7,000 people since the beginning of 2008.

At one of many congressional hearings on the subject last week, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) unveiled a chart that he said described the cartels' profit centers: drugs, weapons and money laundering.

"I would add one thing, senator," said Arizona Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard, who then described to Durbin his concerns about the cartels' movement into illegal immigrant smuggling. "It is really a four-part trade, and it has caused crime throughout the United States."

Arizona has become the gateway not only for drugs, but also illegal immigrants. Fights over the valuable commodity have triggered a spate of shootings, kidnappings and killings, Goddard and one of his chief deputies said in interviews.

In Arizona, the cartels grossed an estimated $2 billion last year on smuggling humans, Goddard said.

Senior officials from various federal law enforcement agencies confirmed that they were extremely concerned about the cartels' human smuggling network.

In recent years, the U.S. government has taken significant steps to go after illegal immigrant smugglers on a global scale, setting up task forces, launching public awareness campaigns and creating a Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center to fuse intelligence from various agencies.

But at the southern border, the effort has stumbled, in part because Homeland Security and various Justice Department agencies have overlapping responsibilities and are engaging in turf battles to keep them, Goddard and numerous other federal and state officials said.

The vast majority of ICE agents cannot make drug arrests, for instance, even though the same smugglers are often moving illegal immigrants.

The reason: The Drug Enforcement Administration has not authorized the required "cross-designation" authority for them, according to Kibble and others. A top DEA official said that was partly to prevent ICE agents from unwittingly compromising ongoing DEA drug investigations and informants working the cartels.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives focus almost exclusively on cartel efforts to smuggle large quantities of American-made weapons into Mexico.

"The only way we're going to be successful is to truly mount a comprehensive attack upon the cartels. They're doing a comprehensive attack on us through all four of these different criminal activities," Goddard told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

"I'm afraid in this country we tend to segregate by specialty the various areas that we are going to prosecute. And our experience on the border is we can't do that. We've got to cross the jurisdictional lines or we're going to fail."

Kibble agreed, saying that the cartels' diversification will require federal agencies to work together. "It means we need more teamwork so things don't slip through the cracks."

He added: "We are very focused on it and applying law enforcement pressure to all aspects of the cartels' activities."

Asked for comment, Justice Department officials referred calls to Homeland Security.

But authorities are also hampered by budget shortcomings and other obstacles.

Even though ICE has primary responsibility over illegal immigrant smuggling, it has only 100 agents dedicated to the task, Kibble said.

There is no line item in ICE's budget for human smuggling, so no one knows how much money is being spent on it, he told Sanchez's border subcommittee, before acknowledging that the agency needs more resources to fight the problem.

There are also not enough resources for providing medical treatment and protection for those illegal immigrants who are caught, so many of them are not available to testify, said Anastasia Brown, the director of refugee programs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

As a result, there have been relatively few prosecutions and convictions.

In fiscal 2008, ICE initiated 432 human smuggling investigations, including 262 cases of alleged sexual exploitation and 170 cases of suspected labor exploitation.

Those efforts resulted in 189 arrests, 126 indictments and 126 convictions related to human smuggling, according to Homeland Security documents provided to Congress.

Cameron H. Holmes, an assistant Arizona attorney general at the front lines of the fight against cross-border human smuggling, agreed that federal authorities were trying to collaborate better.

"Are they working together enough? Absolutely not. Are they being successful? Look around," Holmes said, before describing details of illegal immigrant smuggling cases in which people were killed or enslaved for years.

"We have a multibillion criminal industry that has grown up in the last 10 years and it all involves violations of federal law. I would not call that a success."

DETENTION FEES: who pays for prison costs for ILLEGALS? YOU, STUPID GRINGO!

From the Los Angeles Times

“Washington paid nearly $55.2 million to house detainees at 13 local jails in California in fiscal year 2008, up from $52.6 million the previous year. The U.S. is on track to spend $57 million this year.”

Cities and counties rely on U.S. immigrant detention fees
The L.A. County Sheriff's Department and other agencies cover budget shortfalls and save positions using the federal payments.
By Anna Gorman

March 17, 2009

At a time when local law enforcement agencies are being forced to cut budgets and freeze hiring, cities across Southern California have found a growing source of income -- immigration detention.

Roughly two-thirds of the nation's immigrant detainees are held in local jails, and the payments to cities and counties for housing them have increased as the federal government has cracked down on illegal immigrants with criminal records and outstanding deportation orders.

Washington paid nearly $55.2 million to house detainees at 13 local jails in California in fiscal year 2008, up from $52.6 million the previous year. The U.S. is on track to spend $57 million this year.

The largest federal contract in the state is with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, whose 1,400-bed detention center in Lancaster is dedicated to housing immigrants either awaiting deportation or fighting their cases in court. The department received $34.7 million in 2008, up from $32.3 million the previous year.

Some smaller cities have seen their income rise much faster. Glendale received nearly $260,000 in 2008, triple what it got the previous year. In Alhambra, last year's $247,000 was more than double the previous year's payments.

For some cash-strapped cities, the federal money has become a critical source of revenue, covering budget shortfalls and saving positions.

Santa Ana's Police Department, for example, expects as much as a 15% budget cut and has had a hiring freeze since October that has resulted in more than 60 sworn and civilian positions remaining vacant, Police Chief Paul Walters said. To offset reductions, Walters plans to convert two multipurpose rooms at the 480-bed jail into dormitory rooms this spring. That will accommodate an additional 32 immigrant detainees, which he expects will bring in $1 million more in revenue each year. He also hopes to get approval to raise the nightly price per detainee from $82 to $87.

"We treat [the jail] as a business," Walters said. "The cuts could have been much deeper if it weren't for the ability to raise money there."

When Santa Ana received bond money to build a police headquarters and jail, it did so with the future in mind. Rather than constructing a facility to house its own inmates, it built a much larger facility and soon started contracting with Orange County and state and federal governments.

The federal contracts cover nearly the entire cost of the jail, said Russell Davis, the jail administrator. On a recent day, the jail housed 20 Santa Ana arrestees, 283 U.S. Marshals prisoners and 165 immigration detainees. Some of the detainees, from Mexico, Vietnam, El Salvador and elsewhere, had landed in immigration custody after serving state prison sentences. Others were arrested after ignoring deportation orders or because of criminal records that made them eligible for deportation.

The contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency brought in more than $3.7 million in 2007 and $4.8 million last year.

If he had to do it all over again, Davis said, he would have built another floor on the jail.

The immigration agency "is inundated with detainees," he said. "If I had 100 more beds, they'd fill them."

Immigrant detainees stay in the local jails anywhere from a few hours to many months. At most jails, they are not separated from the rest of the population.

Not everyone is as pleased as Davis over those arrangements. Immigrant rights advocates have raised concerns about local jails not following federal detention standards and not segregating detainees from people suspected of committing crimes.

"Immigration detention is civil, not criminal," said Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "If you are holding them in the same place, that distinction is meaningless."

Even though the cities may benefit financially, the savings do not get passed along to taxpayers, he said. "We're still paying for it," he said. "It's still a waste of resources to detain people who do not need to be detained."

Several of the foreign nationals housed in Santa Ana said they believed they should be let out on bond rather than incarcerated while fighting their immigration cases, especially if they had no criminal records or had already served their time.

Victor Hidalgo, 36, finished a five-year sentence in state prison on a drug charge before being transferred into immigration custody. Hidalgo, who is from Nicaragua, said he and others have jobs, families and homes here and are not a danger to society.

"We're not national security risks," he said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the jails that house detainees for more than 72 hours -- including in Santa Ana and Lancaster -- are subject to "stringent detention standards" and undergo inspection by a contracted company. Other jails are inspected regularly by the immigration agency.

The federal contracts with local jails began about a decade ago but have expanded over the last few years. The federal government operates some of its own detention centers and contracts with private companies to run others but relies heavily on the local jails.

The cost varies from around $80 to just over $100 per detainee per day, generally less expensive than the cost of housing detainees at federal immigration facilities.

"These facilities enable us to place detainees at appropriate sites with minimal travel so we can begin the removal process quickly," Kice said.

In Southern California, the need for bed space became more pressing after the immigration agency closed the San Pedro detention center on Terminal Island in 2007. And in Northern California, where there is no dedicated immigration detention center, Santa Clara County began housing the detainees in 2003.

"It was a strategy to help us financially," said Edward Flores, chief of Santa Clara County's Department of Correction.

Those budget cuts have only gotten worse, with the county expecting $1.25 million less in fiscal year 2010.

In turn, the federal contract has become even more important. Flores said he expects to make up about half the expected deficit with federal contracts, both with the immigration agency and the U.S. Marshals Service. He is also trying to negotiate a higher nightly rate.

The county received nearly $7 million to house detainees in 2008.

"We have become very reliant on this revenue," Flores said.