Chuck Schumer said that the number of people captured between Oct. 1, 2008 and May 15 this year was down 27 percent from the same period the previous year.

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer cited reports from the Customs and Border Protection officials saying that most of the decrease has been in the number of people taken into custody as they tried to illegally enter the U.S. along the border with Mexico. 

The New York senator said the lower demand for labor in the U.S. and stepped-up border enforcement measures are behind the decrease.

“The border is far more secure than it’s ever been,” Schumer said.

The Obama administration has promised to increase border security even more on the southern border to crack down on border violence and work with Mexican authorities against drug cartels. Hundreds of federal agents, along with high-tech surveillance gear and drug-sniffing dogs, are being deployed to the Southwest.
<>
Face Forward Comments:

I have to raise my hand on this on and call BS. I am pretty sure that this report is right up there with the reports that stated hundreds oops, no thousands of Mexican workers were going back across the border because of our poor economy and that 90% of the Mexican guns came from the US.

Note the phrase that Schumer uses, “take into custody”. If you tell the agents (ICE) that they cannot take people into custody and that you can no longer deport people found in raids……then sure the number drops. “The borders are far more secure than they have ever been”,certainly he not making that statement based the false data he used, is he? As a hack for his party, you don’t think he is trying to down play the illegal immigration problem so that amnesty will be pushed through, do you? Or perhaps he is still responding to all of the criticism the administration took for not closing the border from the swine flu outbreak. No matter his reason, it is political spin at its worst.

A highly trusted former deputy attorney general, who later became Mexico’s drug czar and was embraced by Washington until his death, is accused in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report of taking bribes from one of Mexico’s oldest narcotics trafficking cartels.

Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, killed in November in a mysterious plane crash over Mexico City, is among three senior federal law-enforcement officials named in an April 21-page DEA briefing on organized crime and drug trafficking south of the border.

Vasconcelos was never charged with a crime. The other two are being prosecuted by Mexico.

The report, prepared as a primer on drug cartels, does not say when, or how much money was allegedly taken by Vasconcelos, who spearheaded counternarcotics efforts for President Felipe Calderon and had similar duties as deputy attorney general over fighting organized crime for Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox.

He is alleged to have been snared by the Beltran Leyva organization, which the DEA report says is known to use bribery and assassinations to ensure its share of Mexico’s drug trade, and go “toe to toe” with larger syndicates.

When contacted Wednesday, DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney, said the agency could neither refute nor offer a source for the highly charged allegation, which appears in the report as fact. The information was included without being fully vetted for release, Courtney said.

The Calderon administration declined comment.

Sadly, this flag is draped over the coffins of too many honest Mexican soldiers while corrupt Mexican Government Officials get rich

PLease got to http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/6423131.html fo he rest of the story

FaceFwd.com Comments: It should come as no surprise that the reason the Drug/Border war continues is that the government supports it. Should the Drug Cartels be shut down, there would be no retirement program for government employees

Immigration rally to be held in Elizabeth

Saturday April 25, 2009,

Thousands were expected to attend a rally in Union County today to push for comprehensive immigration reform.

The “Family Unity” day rally is part of a national effort to end deportations and raids that immigration activists say destroy families. Among those expected to attend were several federal lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Robert Menendez and Rep. Albio Sires, both D-N.J.

A consortium of churches, national and local immigration advocates and individuals have been organizing prayer vigils, town-hall meetings and rallies in 20 U.S. cities.

The New Jersey gathering took place at the Jesus Christ is Savior Church in Elizabeth.

<>

Face Fwd Comments:

Destroys families? What? Are we forcing those families to separate? Do you really think that the ICE teams are forcing those families to go their separate ways. I just can’t imagine our officials telling anyone that they can’t go back to whatever country they came from with the family member is here illegally. The way I see it, if the person person being deported has family here then, that family will have a decision to make. They can stay here or go back to the appropriate country with the family member being deported.

The term used by the Illegal Alien Activist, “Destroying Families” is totally misleading. It is used to try to evoke sympathy for lawbreakers. It is from the same play book and probably the same people that stand outside of prisons protesting the executions of killers.

It is a problem we can no longer afford to pay for or ignor. The Democrats want the illegals to here to expand their power base but want you to pay for keeping them in power. Here are just a few of the cost you are picking up because of the illegal alien problem.

Lower Wages

Emergency Room Healthcare

Prison/Jail care

Court System

Dollars wired out of our economy

Uninsured Drivers (3 of my family members were hit by illegal aliens with no automobile insurance)

Classrooms dumb down for non-English speaking students

Additional classes/teachers for non English speaking students

Government support in the form of Food stamps, Free Lunches, and other social service paid for by our tax dollars

Unpaid Taxes lost on “Cash Economy”

Unpaid Social Security wages

Look at the cost in just three states for cost for services and missed revenue cost:

4.7 Billion or $725 or each tax payer in the state of Texas

10.7 Billion or $1,183 for each Tax Payer in California

1.3 Billion or an extra 700 or each tax payer in Arizona
These cost do not include the huge state cost for the responsibility of patrolling the border trying to stop the drug runners.
So, I say to you again. Protest deportation all you want, but you pay for it because I am sick of it

 A Mexican border town has “declared war” on the United States, vowing to clog the U.S. court system with illegal immigrants, because, city officials say, the U.S. Border Patrol is dumping in their town Mexican nationals caught crossing the border illegally.

Officials from Agua Prieta, a Mexican city of about 130,000, are also claiming that the U.S. government has repeatedly neglected to inform them about new waves of immigrants before they are routed there from points in the U.S. after capture.

Consequently, Agua Prieta leaders are teaching Mexican nationals how to cross into the U.S. and stay there, by instructing them to request a court hearing — a tactic sure to clog the judicial system with possibly thousands of illegal immigrants who want their day in court.

See the rest of this great article at:  http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=15378     Article by Jon E. Dougherty is a Missouri-based writer and the author of “Illegals: The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border.”
<>
Face Fwd Comments:
Part of me finds this article pretty funny in that a Mexican town doesn’t want the illegals in their town just dropped off there either.  I don’t blame them.  If I were a government official there, I would not want the crime and the overwhelmed city/state services these illegals bring with them either.  However, the problem is not that we are dumping the illegals on this city…. The problem is that Mexico is not doing anything to help us stop the flow of their country’s poor and discriminated against into our country.  By the way, flip through Spanish televisor next chance you get and see if any of the people on television look like the people crossing the border. You’ll understand the discriminated comment.  The people coming across the border are not the same people we see on Mexican television or as they are often touted as the norm for political reasons.  The people swimming rivers to get here are those citizens of Mexico with little or no European heritage…. the poor and discriminated against.

We still believe that the greatest economic crisis is not the banking or the manufacturing industry problems.  We can figure that out given enough time.  The biggest financial problem facing America right now is the millions of Illegals that have come into this country from south of the border.  If our government officials have their way and grant amnesty we will never recover and our “American Way” will be lost forever. 

The small Mexican town of Agua Prieta is a microcosm of what we face permanently if we are not careful.  The people coming into this country illegally over the Mexico border are not here to give, they are here to take.  Not only are our hospitals, schools and jails being drug (no pun) down with people at the expense of our families and tax dollars, countless millions of dollars from our economy are leaving this country via wire transfer weekly. 

How do we handle it?  Remember that wall?….Build it now, build it deep and build it long.  We have laws now.  That is why these people that are illegally crossing our borders are called illegals.  They are breaking the law.  It seems to me that the costly option is to hunt them down after they are here.  Wouldn’t it be cheaper to stop them before they get here?  Oh and how about stopping wire transfers to Mexico?