Saturday, January 2, 2010

EXECUTION-STYLE MURDER OF YOUNG EL MONTE, CA CIVIC LEADER IN NARCOMEX

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

WHILE BORDER VIOLENCE INCREASES, MEXICAN GANGS SPREAD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, AND WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS HAS BANKRUPTED ENTIRE COMMUNITIES, OBAMA HAS TURNED HIS JOKE OF “HOMELAND SECURITY” INTO “OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS is a PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP and NEW VOTERS”
AT THIS TIME, WITH SOARING UNEMPLOYMENT, DEFICITS AND MEXICAN CRIME WAVES, OBAMA AND THE LA RAZA DEMS ARE PUSHING FOR AMNESTY!
HOW MUCH DO THEY NEED TO SELL US OUT BEFORE WE MARCH?

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Civic leader from El Monte, Calif., is victim of Mexican violence
The killing of an El Monte civic leader on a visit to Durango shows how prevalent lawlessness has grown.

By Sam Quinones and Molly Hennessy-Fiske
January 2, 2010

The execution-style murder of a young El Monte civic leader in Mexico was viewed Friday as a stark sign of just how widely the country's savage drug violence has spread.

Bobby Salcedo, an assistant principal and school board member, had no ties to narcotics trafficking, his family and friends said. He is believed to be the first U.S. elected official killed in the 4-year-old spasm of carnage in Mexico.

Gomez Palacio, the city where he died, was once best known for its industry. But it has grown violent: Salcedo and the five men who died with him were among 11 killed in the city that night with signs of execution, according to media reports.

Salcedo had deep ties to the central Mexican city. The school administrator, who was born and raised in California, was a past president of the South El Monte-Gomez Palacio sister cities organization and raised money for scholarships, clinics, firefighters, orphanages and playgrounds.

He met his wife, Betzy, in 1999 when she went from Gomez Palacio to Southern California on a sister-city exchange student scholarship. They were visiting her family when he was hauled off and shot to death.

"I don't know if we lived in a bubble, but we never thought we would be targeted," said Salcedo's brother Carlos. "We were never looking over our shoulder."

But criminality and lawlessness have descended on Durango state, where Gomez Palacio is situated, like a pestilence, attacking the city of 240,000 people with ferocity. Last year, more than 600 people were killed in Durango, making it the fourth-deadliest state total in the country.

For immigrants from Durango in Southern California, the return home for Christmas was once a hallowed tradition. This year, however, the Federation of Durangan Clubs estimated travel home was off by as much as 60%.

"There's a lot of fear," said Carlos Martinez, the federation secretary. "People don't want to risk it."

Martinez said the federation was promoting a round-trip flight from Tijuana to Durango for $220, cheaper than the cost of a bus, but the airline canceled the flight because of a lack of sales.

Agustin Roberto "Bobby" Salcedo, 33, apparently wasn't very worried.

Joseph Vu, 34, a former co-worker and classmate of Salcedo, said they exchanged text messages hours before Salcedo was kidnapped. "He said he was going to have a few beers. That was it," said Vu, also an assistant principal at El Monte High School.

The Salcedos were dining with Betzy's former classmates at a bar called Iguanas Ranas, next to the Buchacas pool hall, Wednesday evening.

Shortly after midnight a group of armed and masked men burst into the bar and asked who owned a truck parked out front, investigators told The Times. No one claimed it so the gunmen went from man to man, slapping them around until zeroing in on Salcedo and five others. They were hauled away.

Their bodies were discovered several hours later, dumped in a field near a canal. Salcedo was killed by a single gunshot to the head and had apparently not been tortured, said an official in the state attorney general's office in Gomez Palacio, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Most of the other men had also been killed with a single gunshot, but two bore numerous gunshot wounds, suggesting they were the targets, the official said. None of the men killed with Salcedo had criminal records, but investigators suspect one or two might have been drug dealers.

No evidence indicates that Salcedo had been specifically targeted, authorities said.

Residents of Gomez Palacio expressed surprise that Salcedo would have ventured to the strip on Miguel Aleman Boulevard, which has a well-established seedy reputation. Its bars, pool halls and nightclubs have been the scene of kidnappings and shootouts, and the area is an easy place to buy drugs.

"I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and with the wrong people," one resident said.

At Mountain View High School in El Monte, where Salcedo was once student body president, then later football coach and assistant principal, he was remembered as an involved administrator, attending sporting events, dressing up on Halloween and exercising often on the school's track.

"He's helped every aspect of the school," said junior Justin Spence. "Everyone knew him."

Former El Monte Police Chief Ken Weldon described Salcedo as conscientious and hard-working, a "giver" and a leader. "This is a dagger in the hearts of a lot of people," he said.

Salcedo's brother Carlos said that his sister-in-law called Thursday to tell him his brother's body had been found. He was the first in his family to hear the news. He said his mother broke down. "She kept saying, 'They took my Bobby,' " he said. Salcedo said his brother's body probably will be returned Monday and the family is hoping to have a service Wednesday.

The spasm of drug violence that has gripped Durango in the last few years has been fueled by a dispute over the territory.

The Sinaloa cartel and its leader, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, long controlled the area. But moving in from neighboring Coahuila are the Zetas, a ruthless gang that has splintered off the Gulf cartel in Mexico's northeastern border region.

One Southern California immigrant leader, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said people are routinely stopped at roadblocks run by well-armed men outside Santiago Papasquiaro, the town that serves as a gateway to the Durango sierra.

"They ask you, 'Which group are you from: ¿Los Zetas o Los Chapos?' " said the immigrant leader. "This happened to me twice. It's terrifying. The traditional Christmas trip home is over. We go now only when it's an emergency."

This violence has infected the once-peaceful lowland city of Gomez Palacio, which is both the state's wealthiest industrial hub and a distribution center for goods heading to the United States, a strategic point for the battling cartels.

In the last year, generalized criminality has set in across the city, encouraged by authorities' ineffectiveness, immigrants and residents say.

"It could be that a neighbor who doesn't have work calls up and extorts a neighbor," said Salvador Franco, president of the Gomez Palacio club in Southern California, who recently returned from the city. "They pretend to be traffickers or Zetas."

In the last year, many Gomez Palacio businesses have closed as their owners fled. Franco said he knew a family that received extortion and kidnapping threats and sold its two-bus transportation line and left for the United States.

"Things are serious," he said. "You have to be inside by 6 p.m. You can't be in a restaurant. You can't have a good car because you never know who's going to take it from you."

Martinez, the federation secretary, said extortion and kidnapping have become scourges of the city's middle-class business owners. He said a brother-in-law who is an architect moved his firm from an office to his house to avoid seeming wealthy and attracting attention. His brother ran a purified-water store for five years until receiving demands for weekly payment of protection money.

"Car lots, factories and restaurants have closed," Martinez said. "These are things you've never before seen in the state of Durango."
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The Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department.
By Ira Mehlman
Published on 12/07/2009
Townhall.com
The setting was not quite the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with a “Mission Accomplished” banner as the backdrop, but it was the next best thing. Speaking at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Nov. 13, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared victory over illegal immigration and announced that the Obama administration is ready to move forward with a mass amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens already living in the United States.
Arguing the Obama administration’s case for amnesty, Napolitano laid out what she described as the “three-legged stool” for immigration reform. As the administration views it, immigration reform must include “a commitment to serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.”
Acknowledging that a lack of confidence in the government’s ability and commitment to effectively enforce the immigration laws it passes proved to be the Waterloo of previous efforts to gain amnesty for illegal aliens, Napolitano was quick to reassure the American public that those concerns could be put to rest.
“For starters, the security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where it was in 2007,” stated the secretary. Not only is the border locked up tight, she continued, but the situation is well in-hand in the interior of the country as well. “We’ve also shown that the government is serious and strategic in its approach to enforcement by making changes in how we enforce the law in the interior of the country and at worksites…Furthermore, we’ve transformed worksite enforcement to truly address the demand side of illegal immigration.”
If Rep. Joe Wilson had been in attendance to hear Secretary Napolitano’s CAP speech he might well have had a few choice comments to offer. But since he wasn’t, we will have to rely on the Department of Homeland Security’s own data to assess the veracity of Napolitano’s claims.
According to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the department. DHS claims to have “effective control” over just 894 miles of border. That’s 894 out of 8,607 miles they are charged with protecting. As for the other 7,713 miles? DHS’s stated border security goal for FY 2010 is the same 894 miles.
The administration’s strategic approach to interior and worksite enforcement is just as chimerical as its strategy at the border, unless one considers shuffling paper to be a strategy. DHS data, released November 18, show that administrative arrests of immigration law violators fell by 68 percent between 2008 and 2009. The department also carried out 60 percent fewer arrests for criminal violations of immigration laws, 58 percent fewer criminal indictments, and won 63 percent fewer convictions.
While the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers willing to accept substandard wages.
In Janet Napolitano’s alternative reality a mere 10 percent of our borders under “effective control” and sharp declines in arrests and prosecutions of immigration lawbreakers may be construed as confidence builders, but it is hard to imagine that the American public is going to see it that way. If anything, the administration’s record has left the public less confident that promises of future immigration enforcement would be worth the government paper they’re printed on.
As Americans scrutinize the administration’s plans to overhaul immigration policy, they are likely to find little in the “three-legged stool” being offered that they like or trust. The first leg – enforcement – the administration has all but sawed off. The second – increased admissions of extended family members and workers – makes little sense with some 25 million Americans either unemployed or relegated to part-time work. And the third – amnesty for millions of illegal aliens – is anathema to their sense of justice and fair play.
As Americans well know, declaring “Mission Accomplished” and actually accomplishing a mission are two completely different things. When it comes to enforcing immigration laws, the only message the public is receiving from this administration is “Mission Aborted.”
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MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, September 28, 2009

And T.J. BONNER, president of the National Border Patrol Council, will weigh in on the federal government’s decision to pull nearly 400 agents from the U.S.-Mexican border. As always, Lou will take your calls to discuss the issues that matter most-and to get your thoughts on where America is headed.
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