Friday, September 27, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Sept 25, 2013: Immigration advocates say....(International Bus. Times) Sept 17, 2013
Immigration Reform 2013 Is Just Waiting For Takeoff, Say Advocates
House Republicans will find a solution for legalizing the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., but it won’t be a straightforward path to citizenship and it won’t bar these people from achieving legalization through existing channels, a leading Republican advocate of immigration reform said.
“It’s a path to legal status that makes no mention of citizenship,” says Tamar Jacoby, president and CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation of small-business owners with a mission to advance better immigration law. “It doesn’t bar citizenship, but this is the key point, it doesn’t create a new or direct or special path for people who broke the law. So, a path to citizenship, but not a special path for them.”
Jacoby was a part of a panel hosted by the progressive think tank New Democrat Network on Tuesday. The only problem then, she says, is whether Democrats will accept such a compromise. After all, Jacoby sees that as the way forward since there’s no optimism the House will put the Senate-passed bill for a floor vote, and the prospect of a comprehensive immigration reform bill itself is just as unlikely.
Even given all that, Jacoby says immigration reform is not dead.
“The conventional wisdom out there [is] that this is dead,” she says. “I think it is undue alarmism. ... No one in the House has decided not to do this. What’s happened is the climate and context has changed.”
Overhauling what lawmakers describe as a broken immigration system has gone from a high priority earlier in the year to a maybe as lawmakers find themselves brushing up against fiscal deadlines that, left unchecked, could cause a government shutdown and possibly trigger a default by the U.S. on its debt.
Republicans have often been criticized as the hurdle to overcome in order to push reform forward. However, GOP leaders have come out either batting for the pro-reform team, like Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., or acknowledging that finding the appropriate legal status for the undocumented needs to be a priority, like Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
The problem is they don’t know what a bill doing these things would look like.
But for Frank Sharry, executive director of the nonprofit America’s Voice, the argument has already been won. His nonprofit is advocating for a path to citizenship for the undocumented.
“If House Republicans come forward with a commonsense approach to deal with the 11 million, I think we can get across the finish line this year,” Sharry said.
Sharry said he is less troubled about how the House gets to a negotiation with the Senate than what they bring to the mix. He believes there’s a way to deal with immigration reform in a step-by-step process so long as there is a “comprehensive solution.”
“We’re not interested in the blame game,” he said. “We’re interested in results.”
Jacoby was a part of a panel hosted by the progressive think tank New Democrat Network on Tuesday. The only problem then, she says, is whether Democrats will accept such a compromise. After all, Jacoby sees that as the way forward since there’s no optimism the House will put the Senate-passed bill for a floor vote, and the prospect of a comprehensive immigration reform bill itself is just as unlikely.
Even given all that, Jacoby says immigration reform is not dead.
“The conventional wisdom out there [is] that this is dead,” she says. “I think it is undue alarmism. ... No one in the House has decided not to do this. What’s happened is the climate and context has changed.”
Overhauling what lawmakers describe as a broken immigration system has gone from a high priority earlier in the year to a maybe as lawmakers find themselves brushing up against fiscal deadlines that, left unchecked, could cause a government shutdown and possibly trigger a default by the U.S. on its debt.
Republicans have often been criticized as the hurdle to overcome in order to push reform forward. However, GOP leaders have come out either batting for the pro-reform team, like Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., or acknowledging that finding the appropriate legal status for the undocumented needs to be a priority, like Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
The problem is they don’t know what a bill doing these things would look like.
But for Frank Sharry, executive director of the nonprofit America’s Voice, the argument has already been won. His nonprofit is advocating for a path to citizenship for the undocumented.
“If House Republicans come forward with a commonsense approach to deal with the 11 million, I think we can get across the finish line this year,” Sharry said.
Sharry said he is less troubled about how the House gets to a negotiation with the Senate than what they bring to the mix. He believes there’s a way to deal with immigration reform in a step-by-step process so long as there is a “comprehensive solution.”
“We’re not interested in the blame game,” he said. “We’re interested in results.”
Sept 25, 2013: Mexican Muslims "Sixth Pillar of Islam" (anon. invest. journalist) Inernational Bus. News
The Gods of Chiapas: Mexican Muslims In The Shadow Of Zapatistas
"The Sixth Pillar Of Islam"
SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico – “We used to have the god of rain, the god of sun – lots of gods, until the Spaniards came and they imposed their god and blond saints on us,” said Manuel, with the bitterness of a man who feels shortchanged of his divinities.
At that moment, a summer downpour lashed San Cristóbal de Las Casas, setting in motion a confusion of shapes and colors as birds took flight from the rain and Tzotzil Indian women in purple dresses ran for cover. As Manuel, a young attorney of European-Spanish descent, mourned the ancient gods of this land of thick jungles and densely packed cities, a few miles away, just inside the periphery of San Cristóbal, Ibrahim Chechev, a Tzotzil and the leader of a local Muslim group, was honoring the solitary God of the Arabian desert.
It was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and Ibrahim was supervising the meal the Chechev household’s women were preparing for the iftar, the fast break after the last prayer in the evening. He also pitched in, chopping some onions. When he was done, he went into his bedroom and came out with papers, then took them to the gallery of the courtyard to review. They were the Jumah prayers, used in the ceremony that would take place a little later at the musalla, a prayer hall a few yards down the road from his home. Asked if they would have any special meal for Ramadan, as is customary in Muslim countries, he said, “Yes, chicken tacos,” and broke into an infectious laugh.
There are now approximately 400 Muslims in Chiapas, a state in the south of Mexico bordering Guatemala, among an estimated 3,700 in all of Mexico. The small yet vibrant Muslim community in Chiapas is divided into three factions, including Ibrahim’s, comprised of approximately 100 members, mostly from his clan. There is disagreement over how Islam was first introduced to Mexico -- some say it was brought by Lebanese or Syrian immigrants -- and which Mexican state is its religious center. Chiapas does not have the most Muslims among Mexican states; in fact, it has Mexico's largest Protestant community, owing to a general drift among the locals to alternative religions. Chiapas is noted, however, for its strong ties to Muslims in Granada, Spain.
However these people came to be Muslim, and where they fall on the Islamic spectrum, is less important to Ibrahim's father, Mohamed, than what he considers the final station in his family's quest for God. “Mohammed is the last Prophet,” he said.
Ibrahim was just back in his hometown after three years of training at the Great Mosque of Granada, and his return had reenergized the Chiapas Muslim community. In less than 30 years, he, his extended family and the rest of Chiapas have experienced more religious conversions than the whole of Mexico since the conquest of the New World. Although the country went through phases of violent upheaval along the religious-vs.-secular divide, a convergence of factors has contributed to the proliferation of religious denominations and sects in the state. Today, only 58 percent of the population declare fealty to the Catholic Church, which previously had almost exclusive hold on Mexicans’ souls since Hernán Cortés set foot on Aztecan lands and scuttled his ships.
Few people outside of Mexico had heard of Chiapas prior to the sudden uprising led by a pipe-smoking rebel commander who hid his face behind a balaclava as he and his Zapatistas overran the local government of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and other municipalities in the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Subcomandante Marcos, formally the spokesperson of the Zapatistas, said they were rebelling against misrule and mistreatment of Indians, who had been marginalized on their own land since the European conquest. According to Marcos, the rebellion was intentionally timed to coincide with the beginning of NAFTA because he considered the accord “a death certificate for the Indian peoples of Mexico.” Marcos soon became an icon for liberation movements around the world, many of which were still reeling from the inglorious demise of leftist political and ideological currents associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Zapatista insurrection became a cause célèbre for the masses of disowned idealists in search of new utopias.
It also attracted Emir Nafia, or Aureliano López Yruela, as he was known in his Catholic life prior to discovering Islam in the 1980s. Nafia – now a member of the Murabitun World Movement and the leader of the Sufi order’s Mexican chapter – left his home in Andalusia, Spain, in 1995, and went to the jungle in Southern Mexico and patiently waited for months for a meeting with Marcos, which never materialized. He had sent a letter to the subcomandante urging him and the Zapatistas to join forces with the Murabitun and Islam. Marcos never responded, and it is not known if he ever read it. In fact, Nafia has at times disavowed the missive, but in a telephone interview from Mexico City – where he was on a business trip – he acknowledged he had written it, saying that his previous denials came in the dark days after the terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists on Sept. 11, 2001.
“We, the Murabitun World Movement, invite you to sit down with representatives of the great nations of Chechnya, Kashmir, Euzkalherria [the Basques] and other nations at the forefront of the struggle against the tyrannical world banking order, and with whom we have a relationship of cooperation,” the letter said. “They have asked that we transmit their invitation to share now the effort in the struggle, in order to be able to enjoy together the pride of the final victory.”
This passage led to widespread claims of links to militants, though they were never substantiated. Nafia resents the wild rumors, but others, including San Cristóbal-based analyst Gaspar Morquecho, attribute them to Nafia’s occasional glibness. “He bluffed about it, that’s all there is to it,” Morquecho said with a laugh.
The only Zapatista recruit of the Murabitun was Ibrahim Chechev, by way of a Tzotzil community leader who had been instrumental in his father’s previous conversions from Catholicism to the Presbyterian Church and afterward to the Adventists. The man approached Ibrahim’s father, then known as Manuel, to bring him the Prophet’s message, but this time the senior Chechev turned him down. “You have already fooled me twice,” he said. But the friend insisted: “This Prophet came after Jesus Christ; he has the last word from God.”
Both Manuel and Ibrahim, his youngest son, were disillusioned with religion. The older Chechev had quit all church affiliations and veered into drinking. Ibrahim was disturbed by his father’s behavior: “Is this what Jesus Christ preached? That you mistreat my mom, that you drink?” Around that time, an uncle introduced Ibrahim, then 14, to the Zapatistas, and he started having regular contact with Marcos and the other revolutionary leadership.
He was a loyal Zapatista in the jungle, until one night in 1996 in San Cristóbal when his father told him to go see what all the fuss was over this new faith: “Son, you like trouble; go see what these people want.” So Ibrahim attended his first Muslim prayer meeting, led by Nafia at the complex of the Movement for the Da’wa – the name of the Murabitun organization in Chiapas. He fell in thrall with the new creed and that very night took the oath of Shahada, the first pillar of Islam: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”
The youngest of the Chechevs guided the rest of the family out of 500 years of Catholic faith, followed by a brief evangelical phase, to Islam. “I knew absolutely nothing about Islam, I had not even heard the name,” he said on a recent afternoon during Ramadan as he got ready to walk to the musalla. Some 20 adults had gathered at the prayer hall, the women and children in the back. Mohamed Chechev, twice a pilgrim to Mecca, was proudly wearing his skull cap and reading aloud from a scroll hanging on the wall, with Arabic words rendered into Roman characters.
The imam that day was Daud Chechev, Ibrahim’s adoptive brother, just back from four years in Granada and Fes, Morocco, where he had pursued Islamic studies and became a hafiz, someone who can recite the Quran, the Muslim holy book, by heart. “My father adopted Daud and his sisters when [their] mother died, because his father’s new wife wanted the children out of their home,” Ibrahim said. “Love for a woman trumped love for his children.” Mohamed Chechev also has a second wife with two daughters from her previous marriage, thus assimilating the informal polygamy sometimes seen among the Tzotzils.
Daud prayed in Arabic and then translated some precepts into Tzotzil. “We only talk to Allah and only from Him we beg protection… He shields us from Satan’s whispers.” For those who had trouble memorizing the prayers, the solution was simple: “If you can pray, you pray; otherwise, you bow and touch the floor with your forehead.”
Despite the Islamic inroads in Chiapas, Carolina Rivera Farfán, an anthropologist at the CIESAS Anthropology Research Center in San Cristóbal, is not convinced there has been real conversion of core beliefs. “I don’t know if they are converting or simply switching their religious [affiliation],” she said in an interview.
All Tzotzil Muslims previously converted from Catholicism to Evangelical churches, and all are from San Juan Chamula, a traditionalist Catholic Tzotzil stronghold, a 30-minute drive from San Cristóbal, from which they were expelled in the 1970s over religious conversion and lands.
Tzotzil Muslims eventually split from Nafia, but Ibrahim is diplomatic about that. “I know my people… Nafia and his people fulfilled their mission, and now we have entered a different stage.” In a separate interview, however, Abdulhafid Chechev, Ibrahim’s brother, spoke of the European’s arrogance. “He started telling people to stop talking to their fathers if they didn’t become Muslim too, and things like that. We didn’t like it, and a few quit Islam altogether.” Abdulhafid added that when money started flowing in from Islamic groups in Persian Gulf nations, the Spaniards began leaving the Tzotzils out of the loop. “They would all go to a different room to discuss things among themselves.” In his interview, Nafia said the movement received aid from Islamic organizations around the world but not from governments.
Other than Nafia’s and Ibrahim’s groups, there is a third one, led by a publicity-averse Syrian known as Mudar, who is married to a local woman. They meet in the back room of a small and inconspicuous taco restaurant outside the working-class neighborhood of La Hormiga, which was mostly settled by Tzotzils after they were expelled from San Juan Chamula.
The presence of Islam in this corner of Mexico is a new chapter of the story that began with the conquest of the New World, but Chiapas is actually a field where Spain’s unresolved relationship with Islam is quietly being played out. The Murabitun order is based in Granada, the last Islamic stronghold to fall to the Catholic Monarch’s Reconquest of Spain in 1492.
Most Tzotzil Muslims don’t have that historical perspective on their new religious allegiance, but Ibrahim Chechev says it doesn’t matter. “Zapatismo had brainwashed us, but Islam transcends political ideology and ethnicities… My own wife is Spanish,” he said. “Islam is about the unity of the human soul.”
Nafia, however, is keenly aware of the historical significance and can’t help bragging about it.
“History is coming full circle,” said the Murabitun leader who introduced Islam to Chiapas. “The end of Muslim Spain as a political power and the beginning of the conquest of America are all part of the same historical moment, in the same place and with the same characters: Christopher Columbus’ first expedition to the Americas was financed by the Catholic monarchs of Spain, who approved the decision at the Santa Fe camp, from where they were laying siege and planning the attack on Granada, the last Islamic stronghold of Muslim Spain.”
Nafia predicts a resurgence of Islam, and he sees what's happening in Chiapas as a harbinger. “When I left for Mexico, there were only a handful of Muslims in Spain, and now they are numbered in the millions,” he said. Nafia, who renounced his Spanish identity and describes himself as Andalusian, added, “German philosopher Ernst Jünger said that every great historical epoch starts with a new religion, and we believe that a new era is being born in Latin America, marked by the rise of Islam. The Christian Catholic era has expired. The world is coming to the end of a disastrous era and the beginning of the Islamic one.”
Islamic theology and German philosophy coexist in a strange marriage in the discourse of the Murabitun, whose founder, Abdalqadir as-Sufi, freely quotes the existentialist Martin Heidegger to illuminate points of Quranic doctrine. This eclecticism is not as unusual as it may seem. Born in 1930 in Ayr, Scotland, to an ancient Highland family, Ian Dallas – as-Sufi’s name in his pre-Muslim life – converted to Islam in Morocco in 1967, following a career in acting that included appearances on the BBC and Federico Fellini’s movie “8½,” in which he played the role of “Il partner della telepata.”
Granada reporter and former Murabitun Tomás Navarro finds it a bit too eclectic, disparaging the movement as a “sect.” If they were Christian, he said, they would be comparable to the Branch Davidians of Waco. “The real Muslims, native Muslims or the Arabs of Andalusia, are not buying it; that’s why the Murabitun only capture converts, preying on weak people and going to places like Chiapas to confound simple-minded peasants.” As-Sufi, he said, “is a child of the Seventies: He went to India with the Beatles and to Morocco, had psychedelic drugs and saw Allah, or what he thinks is Allah, and has been peddling his vivid imagination to feeble people ever since.” Navarro no longer belongs to any religion. “I’m a 27th-generation Ladino, and absolutely secular.”
Professor Alan Godlas, an expert on Islam at the University of Georgia, does not believe the Murabitun to be a cult. “They are a genuine Sufi order, and you are now beginning to see some people who were Muslim by birth joining them,” he said. “The reason they don’t have a larger following is the effort by conservative Muslim kingdoms and governments to combat Sufism.” As for Murabitun’s affinity with German philosophy – in which Navarro sees shadows from a sinister past in Germany’s mid-20th century – Prof. Godlas explains it as an attempt “to bridge for the Western mind the more obscure complexities of Sufism.”
San Cristóbal’s three Islamic groups recently came together for the funeral of Suleimán, Ibrahim’s grandfather and the oldest Muslim of Chiapas. While they have cordial relations, the more affluent are those in the Movement for the Da’wa, led by Nafia and the other Spaniards, who are building a mosque and a new complex on their large plot in the Ojo de Agua neighborhood – also settled by former Chamulas – with a tall tower at the entrance that local Muslims have confused for a minaret. The Da’wa also have a number of bakeries and restaurants as well as a carpentry shop and a library in the city, all named La Alpujarra.
Every name in the Murabitun is loaded with symbolism: Alpujarra are the Andalusian mountains, where some Granada Muslims fled after the fall of their city, and where they staged the last Moorish uprising in the late 16th century. Murabit or Murabitun originally described a member of a Muslim community in North Africa who lived in fortified monasteries.
At one of the Murabitun’s restaurants, Aisha, an Andalusian woman with intense blue eyes and an explosive temper, looked displeased when asked if she spoke Arabic to read the Quran in the original language of the Revelation. “It is not one of the pillars of the faith,” she said, going on to list them: the shahada, declaring there is no god but God, and Muhammad is His prophet; the salah, the five prayers a day; the sawm, fasting during Ramadan; the zakat, the giving of alms, and the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.
She made clear this was not going to be an opportunity to discuss an unspoken sixth pillar.
Conversion has been an essential part of Islam since it started expanding by the sword and otherwise from the Hejaz, the Saudi region where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located. It is said that Mohammed urged his followers to spread the creed all the way to China but not beyond. In a world we now know to be round, it really does not matter whether Mexico is beyond or before China; what matters is that there is no sanctioned way back from Islam, which considers conversion to another religion apostasy.
As the Chiapas Muslims await the completion of their first mosque, there are no muezzins calling for prayers from minarets in the wee hours of the day. For now, the city’s roosters fill the void: In the distance late one afternoon, one rooster began to call, and soon the Chechevs’ henhouse joined the choir.
Ibrahim, just back from the musalla, surveyed the gathering clouds and turned to smile at his young son, who was playing with a little insect. “A praying mantis,” Ibrahim said.
Per Ramadan custom, he was avoiding unnecessary activities after nine hours of fasting and had one more prayer to lead that evening, so he politely declined to talk about divisions within Islam between Sunnis and Shias. “We are a Sufi order,” he said, referring to the mystic branch of Islam. “It’s a black insect, standing on a black stone in the immensity of the night.”
It was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and Ibrahim was supervising the meal the Chechev household’s women were preparing for the iftar, the fast break after the last prayer in the evening. He also pitched in, chopping some onions. When he was done, he went into his bedroom and came out with papers, then took them to the gallery of the courtyard to review. They were the Jumah prayers, used in the ceremony that would take place a little later at the musalla, a prayer hall a few yards down the road from his home. Asked if they would have any special meal for Ramadan, as is customary in Muslim countries, he said, “Yes, chicken tacos,” and broke into an infectious laugh.
There are now approximately 400 Muslims in Chiapas, a state in the south of Mexico bordering Guatemala, among an estimated 3,700 in all of Mexico. The small yet vibrant Muslim community in Chiapas is divided into three factions, including Ibrahim’s, comprised of approximately 100 members, mostly from his clan. There is disagreement over how Islam was first introduced to Mexico -- some say it was brought by Lebanese or Syrian immigrants -- and which Mexican state is its religious center. Chiapas does not have the most Muslims among Mexican states; in fact, it has Mexico's largest Protestant community, owing to a general drift among the locals to alternative religions. Chiapas is noted, however, for its strong ties to Muslims in Granada, Spain.
However these people came to be Muslim, and where they fall on the Islamic spectrum, is less important to Ibrahim's father, Mohamed, than what he considers the final station in his family's quest for God. “Mohammed is the last Prophet,” he said.
Ibrahim was just back in his hometown after three years of training at the Great Mosque of Granada, and his return had reenergized the Chiapas Muslim community. In less than 30 years, he, his extended family and the rest of Chiapas have experienced more religious conversions than the whole of Mexico since the conquest of the New World. Although the country went through phases of violent upheaval along the religious-vs.-secular divide, a convergence of factors has contributed to the proliferation of religious denominations and sects in the state. Today, only 58 percent of the population declare fealty to the Catholic Church, which previously had almost exclusive hold on Mexicans’ souls since Hernán Cortés set foot on Aztecan lands and scuttled his ships.
Few people outside of Mexico had heard of Chiapas prior to the sudden uprising led by a pipe-smoking rebel commander who hid his face behind a balaclava as he and his Zapatistas overran the local government of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and other municipalities in the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Subcomandante Marcos, formally the spokesperson of the Zapatistas, said they were rebelling against misrule and mistreatment of Indians, who had been marginalized on their own land since the European conquest. According to Marcos, the rebellion was intentionally timed to coincide with the beginning of NAFTA because he considered the accord “a death certificate for the Indian peoples of Mexico.” Marcos soon became an icon for liberation movements around the world, many of which were still reeling from the inglorious demise of leftist political and ideological currents associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Zapatista insurrection became a cause célèbre for the masses of disowned idealists in search of new utopias.
It also attracted Emir Nafia, or Aureliano López Yruela, as he was known in his Catholic life prior to discovering Islam in the 1980s. Nafia – now a member of the Murabitun World Movement and the leader of the Sufi order’s Mexican chapter – left his home in Andalusia, Spain, in 1995, and went to the jungle in Southern Mexico and patiently waited for months for a meeting with Marcos, which never materialized. He had sent a letter to the subcomandante urging him and the Zapatistas to join forces with the Murabitun and Islam. Marcos never responded, and it is not known if he ever read it. In fact, Nafia has at times disavowed the missive, but in a telephone interview from Mexico City – where he was on a business trip – he acknowledged he had written it, saying that his previous denials came in the dark days after the terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists on Sept. 11, 2001.
“We, the Murabitun World Movement, invite you to sit down with representatives of the great nations of Chechnya, Kashmir, Euzkalherria [the Basques] and other nations at the forefront of the struggle against the tyrannical world banking order, and with whom we have a relationship of cooperation,” the letter said. “They have asked that we transmit their invitation to share now the effort in the struggle, in order to be able to enjoy together the pride of the final victory.”
This passage led to widespread claims of links to militants, though they were never substantiated. Nafia resents the wild rumors, but others, including San Cristóbal-based analyst Gaspar Morquecho, attribute them to Nafia’s occasional glibness. “He bluffed about it, that’s all there is to it,” Morquecho said with a laugh.
The only Zapatista recruit of the Murabitun was Ibrahim Chechev, by way of a Tzotzil community leader who had been instrumental in his father’s previous conversions from Catholicism to the Presbyterian Church and afterward to the Adventists. The man approached Ibrahim’s father, then known as Manuel, to bring him the Prophet’s message, but this time the senior Chechev turned him down. “You have already fooled me twice,” he said. But the friend insisted: “This Prophet came after Jesus Christ; he has the last word from God.”
Both Manuel and Ibrahim, his youngest son, were disillusioned with religion. The older Chechev had quit all church affiliations and veered into drinking. Ibrahim was disturbed by his father’s behavior: “Is this what Jesus Christ preached? That you mistreat my mom, that you drink?” Around that time, an uncle introduced Ibrahim, then 14, to the Zapatistas, and he started having regular contact with Marcos and the other revolutionary leadership.
He was a loyal Zapatista in the jungle, until one night in 1996 in San Cristóbal when his father told him to go see what all the fuss was over this new faith: “Son, you like trouble; go see what these people want.” So Ibrahim attended his first Muslim prayer meeting, led by Nafia at the complex of the Movement for the Da’wa – the name of the Murabitun organization in Chiapas. He fell in thrall with the new creed and that very night took the oath of Shahada, the first pillar of Islam: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”
The youngest of the Chechevs guided the rest of the family out of 500 years of Catholic faith, followed by a brief evangelical phase, to Islam. “I knew absolutely nothing about Islam, I had not even heard the name,” he said on a recent afternoon during Ramadan as he got ready to walk to the musalla. Some 20 adults had gathered at the prayer hall, the women and children in the back. Mohamed Chechev, twice a pilgrim to Mecca, was proudly wearing his skull cap and reading aloud from a scroll hanging on the wall, with Arabic words rendered into Roman characters.
The imam that day was Daud Chechev, Ibrahim’s adoptive brother, just back from four years in Granada and Fes, Morocco, where he had pursued Islamic studies and became a hafiz, someone who can recite the Quran, the Muslim holy book, by heart. “My father adopted Daud and his sisters when [their] mother died, because his father’s new wife wanted the children out of their home,” Ibrahim said. “Love for a woman trumped love for his children.” Mohamed Chechev also has a second wife with two daughters from her previous marriage, thus assimilating the informal polygamy sometimes seen among the Tzotzils.
Daud prayed in Arabic and then translated some precepts into Tzotzil. “We only talk to Allah and only from Him we beg protection… He shields us from Satan’s whispers.” For those who had trouble memorizing the prayers, the solution was simple: “If you can pray, you pray; otherwise, you bow and touch the floor with your forehead.”
Despite the Islamic inroads in Chiapas, Carolina Rivera Farfán, an anthropologist at the CIESAS Anthropology Research Center in San Cristóbal, is not convinced there has been real conversion of core beliefs. “I don’t know if they are converting or simply switching their religious [affiliation],” she said in an interview.
All Tzotzil Muslims previously converted from Catholicism to Evangelical churches, and all are from San Juan Chamula, a traditionalist Catholic Tzotzil stronghold, a 30-minute drive from San Cristóbal, from which they were expelled in the 1970s over religious conversion and lands.
Tzotzil Muslims eventually split from Nafia, but Ibrahim is diplomatic about that. “I know my people… Nafia and his people fulfilled their mission, and now we have entered a different stage.” In a separate interview, however, Abdulhafid Chechev, Ibrahim’s brother, spoke of the European’s arrogance. “He started telling people to stop talking to their fathers if they didn’t become Muslim too, and things like that. We didn’t like it, and a few quit Islam altogether.” Abdulhafid added that when money started flowing in from Islamic groups in Persian Gulf nations, the Spaniards began leaving the Tzotzils out of the loop. “They would all go to a different room to discuss things among themselves.” In his interview, Nafia said the movement received aid from Islamic organizations around the world but not from governments.
Other than Nafia’s and Ibrahim’s groups, there is a third one, led by a publicity-averse Syrian known as Mudar, who is married to a local woman. They meet in the back room of a small and inconspicuous taco restaurant outside the working-class neighborhood of La Hormiga, which was mostly settled by Tzotzils after they were expelled from San Juan Chamula.
The presence of Islam in this corner of Mexico is a new chapter of the story that began with the conquest of the New World, but Chiapas is actually a field where Spain’s unresolved relationship with Islam is quietly being played out. The Murabitun order is based in Granada, the last Islamic stronghold to fall to the Catholic Monarch’s Reconquest of Spain in 1492.
Most Tzotzil Muslims don’t have that historical perspective on their new religious allegiance, but Ibrahim Chechev says it doesn’t matter. “Zapatismo had brainwashed us, but Islam transcends political ideology and ethnicities… My own wife is Spanish,” he said. “Islam is about the unity of the human soul.”
Nafia, however, is keenly aware of the historical significance and can’t help bragging about it.
“History is coming full circle,” said the Murabitun leader who introduced Islam to Chiapas. “The end of Muslim Spain as a political power and the beginning of the conquest of America are all part of the same historical moment, in the same place and with the same characters: Christopher Columbus’ first expedition to the Americas was financed by the Catholic monarchs of Spain, who approved the decision at the Santa Fe camp, from where they were laying siege and planning the attack on Granada, the last Islamic stronghold of Muslim Spain.”
Nafia predicts a resurgence of Islam, and he sees what's happening in Chiapas as a harbinger. “When I left for Mexico, there were only a handful of Muslims in Spain, and now they are numbered in the millions,” he said. Nafia, who renounced his Spanish identity and describes himself as Andalusian, added, “German philosopher Ernst Jünger said that every great historical epoch starts with a new religion, and we believe that a new era is being born in Latin America, marked by the rise of Islam. The Christian Catholic era has expired. The world is coming to the end of a disastrous era and the beginning of the Islamic one.”
Islamic theology and German philosophy coexist in a strange marriage in the discourse of the Murabitun, whose founder, Abdalqadir as-Sufi, freely quotes the existentialist Martin Heidegger to illuminate points of Quranic doctrine. This eclecticism is not as unusual as it may seem. Born in 1930 in Ayr, Scotland, to an ancient Highland family, Ian Dallas – as-Sufi’s name in his pre-Muslim life – converted to Islam in Morocco in 1967, following a career in acting that included appearances on the BBC and Federico Fellini’s movie “8½,” in which he played the role of “Il partner della telepata.”
Granada reporter and former Murabitun Tomás Navarro finds it a bit too eclectic, disparaging the movement as a “sect.” If they were Christian, he said, they would be comparable to the Branch Davidians of Waco. “The real Muslims, native Muslims or the Arabs of Andalusia, are not buying it; that’s why the Murabitun only capture converts, preying on weak people and going to places like Chiapas to confound simple-minded peasants.” As-Sufi, he said, “is a child of the Seventies: He went to India with the Beatles and to Morocco, had psychedelic drugs and saw Allah, or what he thinks is Allah, and has been peddling his vivid imagination to feeble people ever since.” Navarro no longer belongs to any religion. “I’m a 27th-generation Ladino, and absolutely secular.”
Professor Alan Godlas, an expert on Islam at the University of Georgia, does not believe the Murabitun to be a cult. “They are a genuine Sufi order, and you are now beginning to see some people who were Muslim by birth joining them,” he said. “The reason they don’t have a larger following is the effort by conservative Muslim kingdoms and governments to combat Sufism.” As for Murabitun’s affinity with German philosophy – in which Navarro sees shadows from a sinister past in Germany’s mid-20th century – Prof. Godlas explains it as an attempt “to bridge for the Western mind the more obscure complexities of Sufism.”
San Cristóbal’s three Islamic groups recently came together for the funeral of Suleimán, Ibrahim’s grandfather and the oldest Muslim of Chiapas. While they have cordial relations, the more affluent are those in the Movement for the Da’wa, led by Nafia and the other Spaniards, who are building a mosque and a new complex on their large plot in the Ojo de Agua neighborhood – also settled by former Chamulas – with a tall tower at the entrance that local Muslims have confused for a minaret. The Da’wa also have a number of bakeries and restaurants as well as a carpentry shop and a library in the city, all named La Alpujarra.
Every name in the Murabitun is loaded with symbolism: Alpujarra are the Andalusian mountains, where some Granada Muslims fled after the fall of their city, and where they staged the last Moorish uprising in the late 16th century. Murabit or Murabitun originally described a member of a Muslim community in North Africa who lived in fortified monasteries.
At one of the Murabitun’s restaurants, Aisha, an Andalusian woman with intense blue eyes and an explosive temper, looked displeased when asked if she spoke Arabic to read the Quran in the original language of the Revelation. “It is not one of the pillars of the faith,” she said, going on to list them: the shahada, declaring there is no god but God, and Muhammad is His prophet; the salah, the five prayers a day; the sawm, fasting during Ramadan; the zakat, the giving of alms, and the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.
She made clear this was not going to be an opportunity to discuss an unspoken sixth pillar.
Conversion has been an essential part of Islam since it started expanding by the sword and otherwise from the Hejaz, the Saudi region where the holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located. It is said that Mohammed urged his followers to spread the creed all the way to China but not beyond. In a world we now know to be round, it really does not matter whether Mexico is beyond or before China; what matters is that there is no sanctioned way back from Islam, which considers conversion to another religion apostasy.
As the Chiapas Muslims await the completion of their first mosque, there are no muezzins calling for prayers from minarets in the wee hours of the day. For now, the city’s roosters fill the void: In the distance late one afternoon, one rooster began to call, and soon the Chechevs’ henhouse joined the choir.
Ibrahim, just back from the musalla, surveyed the gathering clouds and turned to smile at his young son, who was playing with a little insect. “A praying mantis,” Ibrahim said.
Per Ramadan custom, he was avoiding unnecessary activities after nine hours of fasting and had one more prayer to lead that evening, so he politely declined to talk about divisions within Islam between Sunnis and Shias. “We are a Sufi order,” he said, referring to the mystic branch of Islam. “It’s a black insect, standing on a black stone in the immensity of the night.”
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Sept 24, 2013: New signs of rising illegal immigration into US (anon. sender) Arizona Star
Photo by Gregory Bull
New signs of rising illegal immigration into US
FILE - In this June 13, 2013 file photo, Daniel Zambrano, of Tijuana, Mexico, holds one of the bars that make up the border wall separating the U.S. and Mexico where the border meets the Pacific Ocean in San Diego. After dropping during the recession, the number of immigrants crossing the border illegally into the U.S. appears to be on the rise again, according to a report released Monday, Sept. 23, 2013 by Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
2013-09-23T11:53:48Z2013-09-23T14:07:55ZNew signs of rising illegal immigration into USThe Associated Press
The number of immigrants crossing the border illegally into the U.S. appears to be on the rise again after dropping during the recession.
The total number of immigrants living in this country unlawfully edged up from 11.3 million in 2009 to 11.7 million last year, with those from countries other than Mexico at an apparent all-time high, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project.
The change is within the margin of error, and there will be a more precise census measure released later this year. Still, based in part on other factors such as increased U.S. border apprehensions, the sharp decline in illegal immigration from 2007-2009 has clearly bottomed out, with signs the numbers are now rising, Pew said.
Pew said that among the six states with the largest numbers of immigrants here illegally, only Texas had a consistent increase in illegal immigration from 2007 to 2011, due in part to its stronger economy. Its number was unchanged from 2011 to 2012. Two states _ Florida and New Jersey _ had an initial drop but then increases during the same 2007-2011 period. Three states _ California, Illinois and New York _ showed only declines.
"As a whole, with the recession ending, the decrease in illegal immigration has stopped," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew.
Passel noted that historically the level of illegal immigration has been closely tied to the strength of the U.S. economy and availability of jobs. Since 2009, the average U.S. unemployment rate has dropped from 9.3 percent to 8.1 percent last year, with signs of strength in the construction industry, which yields jobs generally attractive to newly arrived Latino immigrants.
The Pew analysis is based on census data through March 2012. Because the Census Bureau does not ask people about their immigration status, the estimate on illegal immigrants is derived largely by subtracting the estimated legal immigrant population from the total foreign-born population. It is a method that has been used by the government and Pew for many years and is generally accepted.
Analysts said it was hard to predict whether immigrants in the country illegally could eventually exceed the record total of 12.2 million in 2007. Continued modest increases are possible, but another big surge like the one seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s isn't likely, due in part to demographic factors such as Mexico's aging workforce.
"Labor demand in the U.S. is still slack and wages are eroding, whereas there are jobs in Mexico and wages are slowly rising as labor force growth there decelerates," said Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University who is co-director of the Mexican Migration Project. "The pressures for mass migration are diminishing for now, but who knows what kind of disasters lie ahead?"
Analyses of census data from the U.S. and Mexican governments show that the number of immigrants here illegally peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, during the U.S. housing boom, and before the recession hit. It then dropped roughly 7 percent to 11.3 million in 2009, the first two-year decline in two decades, due to the weak U.S. economy which shrank construction and service-sector jobs. Much of the decline came as many Mexican workers who already were here saw diminishing job opportunities and returned home.
Since then, the U.S. economy has shown some improvement, while public opinion regarding immigrants has shifted in some cases in favor of granting legal rights. For instance, some state legislatures this year have passed immigrant-friendly measures such as college tuition breaks and rights to driver's licenses, even as others enacted laws aimed at tightening the system.
A look at some immigration details, by the numbers:
_In all, the number of Mexicans here illegally stood at roughly 6 million last year, down from the 2007 peak of 6.9 million and largely unchanged since 2010. Mexicans now make up 52 percent of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, down from 57 percent in 2007.
_The level of illegal immigration from countries other than Mexico rose to a record 5.65 million, higher than the 5 million in 2009 and apparently surpassing the 2007 peak of 5.25 million. The record number in 2012 is a preliminary determination because of margins of error in the surveys.
_In past surveys, non-Mexican immigrants here illegally have come primarily from Central America, at roughly 15 percent; followed by South America, the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America at 12 percent; and Asia, at roughly 10 percent. The Obama administration has recently said that unrest and poverty in many Central American nations are a large factor behind illegal immigration into the U.S.
_Separately, U.S. Border Patrol data show a modest increase in the number of apprehensions at the Mexican border from 2011 to 2012, increasing to 365,000. That was because of growing apprehensions of non-Mexicans, as opposed to Mexicans, which declined. Historically, increases in border apprehensions have tended to coincide with increases in illegal immigration.
_In particular, analysts have said that immigrants are shifting their migration paths from Arizona to deep southern Texas, due in part to that state's stronger economy, as well as increases in Central American immigrants who seek a more direct route to the U.S. Agents from the Border Patrol in Texas' Rio Grande Valley have apprehended nearly 150,000 so far this fiscal year, a 58 percent increase over 2012. About 94,000 of those border crossers arrested have been from countries other than Mexico.
The latest numbers on illegal immigration come as prospects for passage of a comprehensive U.S. immigration bill appear dim. A bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate and backed by the White House includes billions for border security as well as a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already here illegally.
But most House Republicans have rejected this comprehensive approach, and the House Judiciary Committee has moved forward with individual, single-issue immigration bills that could come to the floor sometime later this year or next. It's unclear whether the GOP-dominated House will ever pass legislation that could form the basis for a final deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Steve A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that advocates tighter immigration policies, said the immigration issue will be tough to resolve.
"The numbers remind us the problem of illegal immigration isn't going away anytime soon," he said, "unless we take steps to enforce the laws or have legalization of those here illegally."
___
Associated Press writers Erica Werner in Washington and Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.
___
The total number of immigrants living in this country unlawfully edged up from 11.3 million in 2009 to 11.7 million last year, with those from countries other than Mexico at an apparent all-time high, according to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project.
The change is within the margin of error, and there will be a more precise census measure released later this year. Still, based in part on other factors such as increased U.S. border apprehensions, the sharp decline in illegal immigration from 2007-2009 has clearly bottomed out, with signs the numbers are now rising, Pew said.
Pew said that among the six states with the largest numbers of immigrants here illegally, only Texas had a consistent increase in illegal immigration from 2007 to 2011, due in part to its stronger economy. Its number was unchanged from 2011 to 2012. Two states _ Florida and New Jersey _ had an initial drop but then increases during the same 2007-2011 period. Three states _ California, Illinois and New York _ showed only declines.
"As a whole, with the recession ending, the decrease in illegal immigration has stopped," said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew.
Passel noted that historically the level of illegal immigration has been closely tied to the strength of the U.S. economy and availability of jobs. Since 2009, the average U.S. unemployment rate has dropped from 9.3 percent to 8.1 percent last year, with signs of strength in the construction industry, which yields jobs generally attractive to newly arrived Latino immigrants.
The Pew analysis is based on census data through March 2012. Because the Census Bureau does not ask people about their immigration status, the estimate on illegal immigrants is derived largely by subtracting the estimated legal immigrant population from the total foreign-born population. It is a method that has been used by the government and Pew for many years and is generally accepted.
Analysts said it was hard to predict whether immigrants in the country illegally could eventually exceed the record total of 12.2 million in 2007. Continued modest increases are possible, but another big surge like the one seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s isn't likely, due in part to demographic factors such as Mexico's aging workforce.
"Labor demand in the U.S. is still slack and wages are eroding, whereas there are jobs in Mexico and wages are slowly rising as labor force growth there decelerates," said Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University who is co-director of the Mexican Migration Project. "The pressures for mass migration are diminishing for now, but who knows what kind of disasters lie ahead?"
Analyses of census data from the U.S. and Mexican governments show that the number of immigrants here illegally peaked at 12.2 million in 2007, during the U.S. housing boom, and before the recession hit. It then dropped roughly 7 percent to 11.3 million in 2009, the first two-year decline in two decades, due to the weak U.S. economy which shrank construction and service-sector jobs. Much of the decline came as many Mexican workers who already were here saw diminishing job opportunities and returned home.
Since then, the U.S. economy has shown some improvement, while public opinion regarding immigrants has shifted in some cases in favor of granting legal rights. For instance, some state legislatures this year have passed immigrant-friendly measures such as college tuition breaks and rights to driver's licenses, even as others enacted laws aimed at tightening the system.
A look at some immigration details, by the numbers:
_In all, the number of Mexicans here illegally stood at roughly 6 million last year, down from the 2007 peak of 6.9 million and largely unchanged since 2010. Mexicans now make up 52 percent of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, down from 57 percent in 2007.
_The level of illegal immigration from countries other than Mexico rose to a record 5.65 million, higher than the 5 million in 2009 and apparently surpassing the 2007 peak of 5.25 million. The record number in 2012 is a preliminary determination because of margins of error in the surveys.
_In past surveys, non-Mexican immigrants here illegally have come primarily from Central America, at roughly 15 percent; followed by South America, the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America at 12 percent; and Asia, at roughly 10 percent. The Obama administration has recently said that unrest and poverty in many Central American nations are a large factor behind illegal immigration into the U.S.
_Separately, U.S. Border Patrol data show a modest increase in the number of apprehensions at the Mexican border from 2011 to 2012, increasing to 365,000. That was because of growing apprehensions of non-Mexicans, as opposed to Mexicans, which declined. Historically, increases in border apprehensions have tended to coincide with increases in illegal immigration.
_In particular, analysts have said that immigrants are shifting their migration paths from Arizona to deep southern Texas, due in part to that state's stronger economy, as well as increases in Central American immigrants who seek a more direct route to the U.S. Agents from the Border Patrol in Texas' Rio Grande Valley have apprehended nearly 150,000 so far this fiscal year, a 58 percent increase over 2012. About 94,000 of those border crossers arrested have been from countries other than Mexico.
The latest numbers on illegal immigration come as prospects for passage of a comprehensive U.S. immigration bill appear dim. A bill passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate and backed by the White House includes billions for border security as well as a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already here illegally.
But most House Republicans have rejected this comprehensive approach, and the House Judiciary Committee has moved forward with individual, single-issue immigration bills that could come to the floor sometime later this year or next. It's unclear whether the GOP-dominated House will ever pass legislation that could form the basis for a final deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Steve A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group that advocates tighter immigration policies, said the immigration issue will be tough to resolve.
"The numbers remind us the problem of illegal immigration isn't going away anytime soon," he said, "unless we take steps to enforce the laws or have legalization of those here illegally."
___
Associated Press writers Erica Werner in Washington and Christopher Sherman in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.
___
Sept 24, 2013: Expanded Border zone draws cold reeaction (anon. sender) Arizona Star
PRESCOTT — Officials in Yavapai County panned a proposal to expand the zone in Arizona where visitors from Mexico can legally visit for shopping or other purposes for up to 30 days.
The opposition came during a meeting of the Central Yavapai Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Prescott Courier reported.
Dennis Smith, of the Maricopa Association of Governments, told the Yavapai group that expanding the zone would help the economy by encouraging visits from Mexico’s middle class.
However, Prescott City Councilman Chris Kuknyo and Yavapai County Supervisor Craig Brown voiced strong concern, with Kuknyo saying a broader zone could increase illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Currently, the border zone is 25 miles deep in some areas but 75 miles if entry is made at certain ports.
The opposition came during a meeting of the Central Yavapai Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Prescott Courier reported.
Dennis Smith, of the Maricopa Association of Governments, told the Yavapai group that expanding the zone would help the economy by encouraging visits from Mexico’s middle class.
However, Prescott City Councilman Chris Kuknyo and Yavapai County Supervisor Craig Brown voiced strong concern, with Kuknyo saying a broader zone could increase illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Currently, the border zone is 25 miles deep in some areas but 75 miles if entry is made at certain ports.
Sept 24, 2013: SUE KRENTZ TO BE HONORED and Fugitive in Border Agent killing unlikely to be turned over to U.S. (anon.sender) Arizona Star
16 hours ago •
Mexican police, aided by American investigators, recently arrested one of the fugitives wanted in the slaying of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, but it may be years before he’s brought to the United States.
On Sept. 11, Mexican authorities, with Interpol and the FBI, arrested Ivan Soto-Barraza, 35, near the town of El Fuerte in Sinaloa, the newspaper El Debate reported. Soto-Barraza is accused of murder, robbery and other crimes in connection with Terry’s slaying.
Out of the five men linked to the shooting, three have been arrested and two remain at large, officials say.
Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, who was wounded at the scene and arrested the night of the shooting, pleaded guilty last year. He is set to be sentenced in December in federal court. His sentencing date, however, has been pushed back four times.
Another man, Jesús Leonel Sánchez Meza, was arrested in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, last year and is in prison awaiting extradition to the United States.
Terry, an agent in the patrol’s elite BORTAC unit, was killed on Dec. 14, 2010, in a gunfight with the group of suspected border bandits west of Rio Rico.
The case sparked national controversy when it was revealed two weapons found at the scene were sold by a Phoenix-area dealer to a man suspected in a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigation called Operation Fast and Furious in which the federal agency lost track of about 2,000 weapons.
The last 2½ years since the shooting have been a waiting game for the family, but members are encouraged by the latest developments, said Robert Heyer, Terry’s cousin and chairman of the Brian Terry Foundation.
The foundation raises funds for the families of fallen Border Patrol agents and for scholarships for those who pursue an education and career in law enforcement.
“We won’t be happy ultimately until both outstanding fugitives being sought in connection to Brian’s murder are taken into custody,” he said. “But we are very appreciative of the efforts being made by the Mexican government and law enforcement involved.”
They are resigned that it’s not going to be a quick process, he said.
Extraditions can take anywhere from six months to six years, said David Shirk, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington, D.C.
“It depends on how quickly the materials can get processed and how much cases are prioritized on both sides of the border,” he said.
In the past, it has taken anywhere from several months to five years to extradite Mexican nationals wanted for murder of federal law enforcement officers.
After the 1998 murder near Nogales of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Alexander Kirpnick, it took five years for the last of four defendants to be captured and extradited to Tucson, according to news archives.
On Sept. 11, Mexican authorities, with Interpol and the FBI, arrested Ivan Soto-Barraza, 35, near the town of El Fuerte in Sinaloa, the newspaper El Debate reported. Soto-Barraza is accused of murder, robbery and other crimes in connection with Terry’s slaying.
Out of the five men linked to the shooting, three have been arrested and two remain at large, officials say.
Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, who was wounded at the scene and arrested the night of the shooting, pleaded guilty last year. He is set to be sentenced in December in federal court. His sentencing date, however, has been pushed back four times.
Another man, Jesús Leonel Sánchez Meza, was arrested in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, last year and is in prison awaiting extradition to the United States.
Terry, an agent in the patrol’s elite BORTAC unit, was killed on Dec. 14, 2010, in a gunfight with the group of suspected border bandits west of Rio Rico.
The case sparked national controversy when it was revealed two weapons found at the scene were sold by a Phoenix-area dealer to a man suspected in a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigation called Operation Fast and Furious in which the federal agency lost track of about 2,000 weapons.
The last 2½ years since the shooting have been a waiting game for the family, but members are encouraged by the latest developments, said Robert Heyer, Terry’s cousin and chairman of the Brian Terry Foundation.
The foundation raises funds for the families of fallen Border Patrol agents and for scholarships for those who pursue an education and career in law enforcement.
“We won’t be happy ultimately until both outstanding fugitives being sought in connection to Brian’s murder are taken into custody,” he said. “But we are very appreciative of the efforts being made by the Mexican government and law enforcement involved.”
They are resigned that it’s not going to be a quick process, he said.
Extraditions can take anywhere from six months to six years, said David Shirk, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington, D.C.
“It depends on how quickly the materials can get processed and how much cases are prioritized on both sides of the border,” he said.
In the past, it has taken anywhere from several months to five years to extradite Mexican nationals wanted for murder of federal law enforcement officers.
After the 1998 murder near Nogales of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Alexander Kirpnick, it took five years for the last of four defendants to be captured and extradited to Tucson, according to news archives.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Sept 17, 2013: Iran recruiting in LA to infiltrate US (Anony Sender)ACT FOR AMERICA 2013
Iran’s “invisible army” in Latin America
Although the immigration issue has been pushed out of the headlines for now, it’s still an issue that has enormous consequences for our national security.
Please read the chilling article below. This is another reason why we are calling on Congress to protect our national security before doing anything else on immigration.
Iran Aggressively Recruiting ‘Invisible Army’ of Latin American Converts to Infiltrate U.S. Through ‘Soft Belly’ of the Southern Border
Sep. 3, 2013 2:51pm Sara Carter
Iran is recruiting an “invisible army” of revolutionary sympathizers in Latin America to infiltrate the U.S. through the “soft belly” of the southern border, U.S. officials and national security experts told TheBlaze. And they’re using one website in particular to do it.
The Iranian regime’s conversion efforts are becoming increasingly aggressive, especially over the Internet, with the goal of conducting operations against United States interests in the Western Hemisphere, according to U.S. government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of their work in the region.
Islamoriente.com, which focuses on religion and politics, is one of Iran’s main recruitment and conversion websites for Latin America on the Internet, TheBlaze has learned. The site, which launched in 2008, includes links to Iranian television for Spanish speakers, anti-American news stories, essays on reasons to convert to Islam, chat rooms and a personal message from the Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.
Even as President Barack Obama waits for Congress to make a decision on Syria, the Iranian website wastes no time and has no shortage of stories ridiculing the U.S. administration for threatening to strike President Bashar Assad’s regime, a staunch ally of Iran.
Jim Phillips, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and expert in Iranian affairs, said Iran’s focus on Hispanic converts is a new evolution in Iranian operations in Latin America. Phillips said Khamanei’s message titled “The Importance of Work and the Nobility of the Worker” in Islam, is significant because the Ayatollah is “normally a background player in these sorts of efforts and doesn’t usually play such a public role.”
“Historically, Iran has tried to recruit agents from the Lebanese Shi’ite diaspora in South America and West Africa,” Phillips said. ”This emphasis on Hispanic converts is something new.”
In the past, “U.S. intelligence focused on Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah but now with the people they are recruiting it could be much more difficult to gauge who is infiltrating the U.S.,” Phillips added.
In August, the U.S. State Department decided to order a new review of Iranian terror activity in Latin America, based on a 500-page report issued by Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman on Iran’s terrorist strategy in the region. Nisman was the original prosecutor in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more. Nisman believes Hezbollah, on orders from Iran, was responsible for the bombing.
The report states that Iran has attempted to infiltrate “for decades, large regions of Latin America, through the establishment of clandestine intelligence stations and operative agents which are used to execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah. These actions have been taking place within the so-called ‘export of the revolution,’ which was never masked by Tehran and is, in fact, written in their own constitution.”
Nisman’s report supports the evidence U.S. officials say they’ve found in the region. Iran’s revolutionary guard is focused on Latin America and has ramped up its efforts over the past decade, utilizing the same Internet tools they censor and ban from their own citizens. It is ”part of their effort to build an invisible army to penetrate the U.S. and our interests without suspicion, and it’s something we should be extremely mindful of,” said a U.S. official familiar with Iranian operations in Latin America.
The official said recent Iranian activity in Latin America shows the importance of the region in Iran’s political and ideological goals. Those goals are not only to cultivate anti-American sentiment in the region but also to build a network of support among Latin American converts in positions of power, the official said.
TheBlaze attempted to trace the domain and creators of the server hosting IslamOriente.com but the site is protected by a privacy company based out of the U.S. Attempts to call the number on the website led to a voice recording from a telephone number out of Queensland, Australia, which said that the website is protected by privacyprotect.org.
According to a 2012 report from the Middle East Media Research Project (MEMRI), a think tank providing translation on video and Internet websites from the Middle East, privacyprotect.org is one among many U.S. companies that are used by Al Qaeda and other nefarious groups use to hide their information. MEMRI also attempted to trace the Iranian website to no avail.
Ayelet Savyon, the director of the Iran desk for MEMRI, told TheBlaze that Iranian activities seem to be focused more on recruiting from the local populations with more sophisticated approaches.
“(Iran) is doing so in all parts of the world with the aim at targeting the U.S. soft belly,” said Savyon, who is based in Israel. “Latin America is a long-term goal for them with direct national security implications for the U.S., and I do think it’s of special interest to the U.S.”
She referred to The Washington Post’s recent report revealing how Iranian embassies in Latin America use cultural attaches to recruit young impressionable students to special conversion programs in Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was elected in June to replace the openly anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in a recent public address that his support for Latin America is strong. Rouhani told Vasquez Bucaro, the president of the Central American Parliament and the head of Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly, that he welcomes increased interaction between the two groups and Iran’s legislature to strengthen their relations.
“Just because Iran has a new president, that hasn’t changed their goals,” Savyon said. “They are looking to recruit people who can support Iran’s revolutionary values. Their agenda hasn’t changed, only thing that has changed is the image they are trying to present to the world.”
A U.S. counterterrorism official said Iran’s activities are being closely monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies and “there’s no question that Iran has tried to cultivate ties with some of Latin America’s left-leaning governments.”
“As an element of this strategy, Tehran has mounted a charm offensive that includes using Internet propaganda to influence public opinion in these countries,” he added.
Another U.S. official, who has worked in Latin America for more than a decade, said Iran has dedicated a large number of resources to recruiting and converting people in Mexico, who have easier access to the U.S. border and can easily blend in with other migrants crossing the border.
In 2009, six U.S. officials confirmed in an earlier investigation conducted by this reporter that the designated terrorist group Hezbollah, which is supported by the Iranian government, had been using the same narcotics routes used by drug cartels into the U.S.
That has not changed but now “Iran’s goal is to recruit people that can be utilized against U.S. interests” and blend in without raising suspicion, the U.S. official said.
Hezbollah is based in Lebanon and was founded after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It has grown into a major political, military and social welfare organization, which is controlled and financed by Iran and in 2006, it fought a 34-day war against Israel.
Hezbollah members and supporters have entered the U.S. through the southern border as early as 2002, with the case of Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Mexican authorities on charges of organized crime and immigrant smuggling. Mucharrafille had owned a cafe in the border city of Tijuana, near San Diego. In 2002, he was arrested for smuggling 200 people into the the U.S., including Hezbollah supporters, according to a 2009 Congressional report.
In 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, the brother of a Hezbollah chief, pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hezbollah after being smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border and settling in Dearborn, Mich.
“Now what they desire is a proxy terrorist group that can easily slip past U.S. border security,” the U.S. official added. “Who’s going to suspect an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, Mexico, or anywhere else for that matter, of being a jihadist?”
http://www.theblaze.com/
Although the immigration issue has been pushed out of the headlines for now, it’s still an issue that has enormous consequences for our national security.
Please read the chilling article below. This is another reason why we are calling on Congress to protect our national security before doing anything else on immigration.
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Iran Aggressively Recruiting ‘Invisible Army’ of Latin American Converts to Infiltrate U.S. Through ‘Soft Belly’ of the Southern Border
Sep. 3, 2013 2:51pm Sara Carter
Iran is recruiting an “invisible army” of revolutionary sympathizers in Latin America to infiltrate the U.S. through the “soft belly” of the southern border, U.S. officials and national security experts told TheBlaze. And they’re using one website in particular to do it.
The Iranian regime’s conversion efforts are becoming increasingly aggressive, especially over the Internet, with the goal of conducting operations against United States interests in the Western Hemisphere, according to U.S. government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of their work in the region.
Islamoriente.com, which focuses on religion and politics, is one of Iran’s main recruitment and conversion websites for Latin America on the Internet, TheBlaze has learned. The site, which launched in 2008, includes links to Iranian television for Spanish speakers, anti-American news stories, essays on reasons to convert to Islam, chat rooms and a personal message from the Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.
Even as President Barack Obama waits for Congress to make a decision on Syria, the Iranian website wastes no time and has no shortage of stories ridiculing the U.S. administration for threatening to strike President Bashar Assad’s regime, a staunch ally of Iran.
Jim Phillips, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and expert in Iranian affairs, said Iran’s focus on Hispanic converts is a new evolution in Iranian operations in Latin America. Phillips said Khamanei’s message titled “The Importance of Work and the Nobility of the Worker” in Islam, is significant because the Ayatollah is “normally a background player in these sorts of efforts and doesn’t usually play such a public role.”
“Historically, Iran has tried to recruit agents from the Lebanese Shi’ite diaspora in South America and West Africa,” Phillips said. ”This emphasis on Hispanic converts is something new.”
In the past, “U.S. intelligence focused on Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah but now with the people they are recruiting it could be much more difficult to gauge who is infiltrating the U.S.,” Phillips added.
In August, the U.S. State Department decided to order a new review of Iranian terror activity in Latin America, based on a 500-page report issued by Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman on Iran’s terrorist strategy in the region. Nisman was the original prosecutor in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more. Nisman believes Hezbollah, on orders from Iran, was responsible for the bombing.
The report states that Iran has attempted to infiltrate “for decades, large regions of Latin America, through the establishment of clandestine intelligence stations and operative agents which are used to execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah. These actions have been taking place within the so-called ‘export of the revolution,’ which was never masked by Tehran and is, in fact, written in their own constitution.”
Nisman’s report supports the evidence U.S. officials say they’ve found in the region. Iran’s revolutionary guard is focused on Latin America and has ramped up its efforts over the past decade, utilizing the same Internet tools they censor and ban from their own citizens. It is ”part of their effort to build an invisible army to penetrate the U.S. and our interests without suspicion, and it’s something we should be extremely mindful of,” said a U.S. official familiar with Iranian operations in Latin America.
The official said recent Iranian activity in Latin America shows the importance of the region in Iran’s political and ideological goals. Those goals are not only to cultivate anti-American sentiment in the region but also to build a network of support among Latin American converts in positions of power, the official said.
TheBlaze attempted to trace the domain and creators of the server hosting IslamOriente.com but the site is protected by a privacy company based out of the U.S. Attempts to call the number on the website led to a voice recording from a telephone number out of Queensland, Australia, which said that the website is protected by privacyprotect.org.
According to a 2012 report from the Middle East Media Research Project (MEMRI), a think tank providing translation on video and Internet websites from the Middle East, privacyprotect.org is one among many U.S. companies that are used by Al Qaeda and other nefarious groups use to hide their information. MEMRI also attempted to trace the Iranian website to no avail.
Ayelet Savyon, the director of the Iran desk for MEMRI, told TheBlaze that Iranian activities seem to be focused more on recruiting from the local populations with more sophisticated approaches.
“(Iran) is doing so in all parts of the world with the aim at targeting the U.S. soft belly,” said Savyon, who is based in Israel. “Latin America is a long-term goal for them with direct national security implications for the U.S., and I do think it’s of special interest to the U.S.”
She referred to The Washington Post’s recent report revealing how Iranian embassies in Latin America use cultural attaches to recruit young impressionable students to special conversion programs in Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was elected in June to replace the openly anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said in a recent public address that his support for Latin America is strong. Rouhani told Vasquez Bucaro, the president of the Central American Parliament and the head of Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly, that he welcomes increased interaction between the two groups and Iran’s legislature to strengthen their relations.
“Just because Iran has a new president, that hasn’t changed their goals,” Savyon said. “They are looking to recruit people who can support Iran’s revolutionary values. Their agenda hasn’t changed, only thing that has changed is the image they are trying to present to the world.”
A U.S. counterterrorism official said Iran’s activities are being closely monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies and “there’s no question that Iran has tried to cultivate ties with some of Latin America’s left-leaning governments.”
“As an element of this strategy, Tehran has mounted a charm offensive that includes using Internet propaganda to influence public opinion in these countries,” he added.
Another U.S. official, who has worked in Latin America for more than a decade, said Iran has dedicated a large number of resources to recruiting and converting people in Mexico, who have easier access to the U.S. border and can easily blend in with other migrants crossing the border.
In 2009, six U.S. officials confirmed in an earlier investigation conducted by this reporter that the designated terrorist group Hezbollah, which is supported by the Iranian government, had been using the same narcotics routes used by drug cartels into the U.S.
That has not changed but now “Iran’s goal is to recruit people that can be utilized against U.S. interests” and blend in without raising suspicion, the U.S. official said.
Hezbollah is based in Lebanon and was founded after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It has grown into a major political, military and social welfare organization, which is controlled and financed by Iran and in 2006, it fought a 34-day war against Israel.
Hezbollah members and supporters have entered the U.S. through the southern border as early as 2002, with the case of Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Mexican authorities on charges of organized crime and immigrant smuggling. Mucharrafille had owned a cafe in the border city of Tijuana, near San Diego. In 2002, he was arrested for smuggling 200 people into the the U.S., including Hezbollah supporters, according to a 2009 Congressional report.
In 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, the brother of a Hezbollah chief, pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hezbollah after being smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border and settling in Dearborn, Mich.
“Now what they desire is a proxy terrorist group that can easily slip past U.S. border security,” the U.S. official added. “Who’s going to suspect an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, Mexico, or anywhere else for that matter, of being a jihadist?”
http://www.theblaze.com/
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Sept 17, 2013: CA move: 1 mill immigrants to receive driver's licenses (Wash. Post 9/15//2013) AnonySender
Brown expected to sign license measure
California’s move to allow more than a million immigrants to receive driver’s licenses marks a significant advance in the long campaign to decriminalize the day-to-day lives of those in this country illegally.
The plan was the most prominent of several pieces of legislation approved this week aimed at strengthening the rights of immigrants in California. But it also brought new protests from critics who say the state is protecting undocumented workers at the expense of federal immigration laws.
The bill, sent to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) late Thursday, comes after some of California’s top law enforcement officials, including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, expressed strong support for the idea. They argued that immigrants should not fear cooperating with police or feel harassed simply because of their immigration status.
The bill, AB 60, would authorize the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a driver’s license to people who cannot prove that they are authorized under federal law to be in the country as long as they meet all other qualifications for having a license. Brown is expected to sign the bill, having said in a statement it would “enable millions of people to get to work safely and legally.”
— Los Angeles Times (The Washington Post, 9/15/13)
California’s move to allow more than a million immigrants to receive driver’s licenses marks a significant advance in the long campaign to decriminalize the day-to-day lives of those in this country illegally.
The plan was the most prominent of several pieces of legislation approved this week aimed at strengthening the rights of immigrants in California. But it also brought new protests from critics who say the state is protecting undocumented workers at the expense of federal immigration laws.
The bill, sent to Gov. Jerry Brown (D) late Thursday, comes after some of California’s top law enforcement officials, including Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca, expressed strong support for the idea. They argued that immigrants should not fear cooperating with police or feel harassed simply because of their immigration status.
The bill, AB 60, would authorize the Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a driver’s license to people who cannot prove that they are authorized under federal law to be in the country as long as they meet all other qualifications for having a license. Brown is expected to sign the bill, having said in a statement it would “enable millions of people to get to work safely and legally.”
— Los Angeles Times (The Washington Post, 9/15/13)
Sept 17, 2013: New phone ap to help parents protect children child predators (Anony sender KGUN-TV Tucson)
New App helps concerned citizens track child predators, pornographers
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations office has launched a new APP to help parents and concerned citizens keep watch for child predators and rescue children from sex abuse and exploitation.
The Operation Predator APP allows people to see those who have active arrest warrants and others who are considered to be "John Does" whose photos have been captured from child pornography sites.
The APP allows people to remain anonymous and call in tips about the locations of suspects. In the first 36 hours the APP was in operation this weekend, police were able to use a tip to find and arrest a suspect they had been trying to track.
The free APP is only available for I-Phones now, but should be expanded to include Android devices in the near future.
Sept 17, 2013: Killing spree in Nogales
9OYS Border Watch
Killing spree south of border prompts U.S. alert
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - They are two sister cities. They share a name, an economy, but are divided by a towering border fence. The U.S. city of Nogales hasn't seen a murder all year. Nogales, Mexico, south of the border, can't say the same.
"Hopefully they can combat this," said Nogales, Arizona Mayor Arturo Garino.
There have been five murders in the last two weeks in Mexico. Several of them just blocks away from the Deconcini Port of Entry. The last homicide was a double murder in the heart of downtown Nogales, Sonora.
These numbers are no where near the record of more than 200 back in 2010. But the recent trend was enough for the U.S. to alert travellers.
"It's a lot," said one U.S traveller who chose to remain anonymous. "It's way too much."
The most recent crime left a U.S. car riddled with bullet holes and a Nogales, Arizona man dead.
"I'm hoping this is just an isolated incident," said Garino.
It's this spree of murders that pushed the U.S. Consulate to issue a travel alert to Americans. Mayor Garino believes it was premature.
In Nogales, Sonora life goes on. 9OYS saw more Federales downtown, but fewer Americans.
"All these shopkeepers I've talked to say where is everybody," said one American traveller.
And the ones we did find say they will be more careful. But won't stop coming to do business south of the border.
"There shouldn't be any travel alert," said Gabriel Cordova. "This is a peaceful town."
"I know that if I go to the southside on Friday night, I am ten times more likely to get shot down there, than down here," said another U.S. traveller.
9OYS checked in with Border Patrol. The agency tells us it hasn't noticed any uptick in illegal activity north of the border. The same goes for the Nogales Police Department. Nonetheless Mayor Garino says he plans to meet with his counterpart in Mexico to see how both parties can help curb the violence to ensure it doesn't cross over to the U.S.
If you plan on travelling to Mexico, click here for travel tips from the U.S. State Department.
Arpaio says the movie is "a very biased look" at the way MCSO enforces immigration laws in Arizona. Video by Two Americans
Web Producer: Laura Kittell
PHOENIX (AP) - A new movie has been released about illegal immigration and focuses partly on how the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office handles it.
But Sheriff Joe Arpaio isn't giving the film a thumbs up approval rating.
His office says the movie is "a very biased look" at the way MCSO enforces immigration laws in Arizona.
Phoenix TV station KTVK reports that Arpaio's office cooperated with filmmakers during production.
The movie entitled "2 Americans" was screened Wednesday night in Phoenix.
It focuses partly on Arpaio and partly on a 9-year-old girl whose parents were arrested during an immigration raid.
Producers say they gave each side equal time, but their goal was to show the impact the current laws have on families with members in the U.S. illegally.
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Information from: KTVK-TV, http://www.azfamily.com/
Sept 17, 2013: AZ Border Ranchers: "It's not our country anymore...anony.sender(The Westerner Sept 16 2013)
Monday, September 16, 2013
AZ Border Ranchers: “It’s Not Our Country Anymore, We’re Living By The Law of The Cartel” and Border Sheriffs Say D.C. Not Taking Border Seriously
by Rachel Pulaski
Border Sheriffs, frustrated with D.C. politicians, are once again speaking out. They say Congress is not listening and their ideas are not enough. Border Sheriffs, including Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels and Doña Ana County, N.M., Sheriff Todd Garrison, are fed up and want better security for their borders.
WLTX reported:
Dannels’ complaints about the lack of Border Patrol agents along the border suggests he supports a Senate plan to flood the Southwest border with 20,000 new agents. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t think border security proposals in the House will do much, either.“The people in my county are very frustrated,” Dannels says, looking at the lush green of a valley that will soon shrivel to brown in the desert sun. “They feel border security hasn’t been taken seriously.”Congress returned from recess this week facing a busy schedule, featuring debates over Syria, health care and the debt limit.But Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they also will find time to dive into immigration.The Senate and House have spent months crafting their own versions of overhauls to the nation’s immigration laws. Yet Dannels is among more than a dozen sheriffs interviewed by USA TODAY who police the border from California to Texas and say the plans from Washington will do little to secure the border.They say they have proposals that will work – more prosecutions of border crossers, closer screening of people going through border crossings, putting pressure on Mexico to do its part. But they feel they’ve been shoved aside by a Congress more interested in cutting a deal than finding solutions.“They’ve had every organization up there except law enforcement. I just don’t understand that,”said Doña Ana County, N.M., Sheriff Todd Garrison. “If we just had a seat at the table and could express our concerns, it would at least shed some light on these issues.”
Arizona ranchers living along the Mexican border are fearful of the drug cartel and say the U.S. is “borderless”. The Arizona ranchers are speaking out to The Blaze and airing a special on the “For the Record” show this evening. The show promises to provide“never-before-seen surveillance videos taken from their ranches: proof that their ranches are being seized by drug traffickers and nefarious groups that use the cover of darkness to cross into the United States.”
The Blaze reported:
Mary, an Arizona rancher who spoke to TheBlaze on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from the drug cartels, warned, “it’s not our country anymore.”“We may be bound to the laws of our country,” she said. “But we’re living by the law of the cartels.”Like Mary, many of the ranchers chose to speak on condition that they not be named out of fear for their lives but their stories are all similar. They say the U.S. is“borderless.”Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who works closely with the ranchers living along his county’s 83-mile border with Mexico, told TheBlaze the increased violence along his community’s southern border is an example that the federal government is failing when it comes to border security.“Border security should be a primary issue even before we talk about immigration reform,” said Dannels, who has spent more than 25 years in law enforcement along the border. “The biggest change from 1984 until current is the violence on the border.”
Originally posted at Gateway Pundit.
By: Rachel Pulaski
By: Rachel Pulaski
By: Rachel Pulaski
Dannels’ complaints about the lack of Border Patrol agents along the border suggests he supports a Senate plan to flood the Southwest border with 20,000 new agents. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t think border security proposals in the House will do much, either.Arizona ranchers living along the Mexican border are fearful of the drug cartel and say the U.S. is “borderless”. The Arizona ranchers are speaking out to The Blaze and airing a special on the “For the Record” show this evening. The show promises to provide “never-before-seen surveillance videos taken from their ranches: proof that their ranches are being seized by drug traffickers and nefarious groups that use the cover of darkness to cross into the United States.”The Blaze reported:
“The people in my county are very frustrated,” Dannels says, looking at the lush green of a valley that will soon shrivel to brown in the desert sun. “They feel border security hasn’t been taken seriously.”
Congress returned from recess this week facing a busy schedule, featuring debates over Syria, health care and the debt limit.
But Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said they also will find time to dive into immigration.
The Senate and House have spent months crafting their own versions of overhauls to the nation’s immigration laws. Yet Dannels is among more than a dozen sheriffs interviewed by USA TODAY who police the border from California to Texas and say the plans from Washington will do little to secure the border.
They say they have proposals that will work – more prosecutions of border crossers, closer screening of people going through border crossings, putting pressure on Mexico to do its part. But they feel they’ve been shoved aside by a Congress more interested in cutting a deal than finding solutions.
“They’ve had every organization up there except law enforcement. I just don’t understand that,” said Doña Ana County, N.M., Sheriff Todd Garrison. “If we just had a seat at the table and could express our concerns, it would at least shed some light on these issues.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.Mary, an Arizona rancher who spoke to TheBlaze on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from the drug cartels, warned, “it’s not our country anymore.”“We may be bound to the laws of our country,” she said. “But we’re living by the law of the cartels.”Like Mary, many of the ranchers chose to speak on condition that they not be named out of fear for their lives but their stories are all similar. They say the U.S. is “borderless.”Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, who works closely with the ranchers living along his county’s 83-mile border with Mexico, told TheBlaze the increased violence along his community’s southern border is an example that the federal government is failing when it comes to border security.“Border security should be a primary issue even before we talk about immigration reform,” said Dannels, who has spent more than 25 years in law enforcement along the border. “The biggest change from 1984 until current is the violence on the border.”
NM ranchers voice concerns on border issues
Ranchers and rural residents voiced concerns about border security issues that they deal with on a daily basis. The Southwest New Mexico Border Security Task Force met with ranchers and rural residents on Wednesday to discuss these concerns at the Deming Special Events Center. Law enforcement agencies representing Santa Teresa, Deming, Luna County and Lordsburg were in attendance. Field Representative Marco Grajeda was on hand to represent U.S. Senator Tom Udall's office. Local rancher Joe Johnson spoke about his concerns of illegals that get away from authorities. "I'm worried this is headed back the way it was not that long ago where hundreds a day came across my ranch," he said. "It impacts my life and it effects my business." The Border Patrol did not have figures on hand of how many illegals have gotten away, but the statement was made that drug smuggling and illegal crossings have increased between Arizona and Southwest New Mexico. The Lordsburg Border Patrol Station representative stated they have seen an increase in drugs and illegal behavior along the bootheel. Indications show that illegals know there are better resources available in the U.S. and it is getting harder to get documentation for illegals. Border Patrol agents are preparing for an influx of illegals in anticipation of immigration reform...more
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