Category Archives: South of the Border

Mexico’s drug war

Calderon’s sending the army to Acapulco and other areas seems to have slowed the drug gang killings of late, says the Statesman’s Mexico City correspondent Jeremy Schwartz:

"The operations have met with mixed success. Even critics acknowledge that soldiers have brought order to some far-flung pockets that have long existed beyond the rule of law. While experts warn it’s too early to tell, it seems as though the pace of drug killings — more than 2,000 in 2006 — has slowed since the military was unleashed."

Mexico penal innocents

One more excellant reason not to get arrested in Mexico for anything even remotely serious. Forty-two percent of Mexican prison inmates are legally innocent because they have never been sentenced, says Mark in Mexico.

"And the reason they’ve never been sentenced is usually because there is not enough evidence to convict them. So the prosecutors never call their cases. The inmates have no lawyers representing them to force the issue. So they are forgotten."

So you have a lawyer, right? Good for you. Next up, bureaucratic entropy. 

Those lovable Iranians

They are incensed–incensed!–at perceived injustice, wherever they find it in the world, particularly if it’s outside of Iran and in Texas–in this case right up the road from the Rancho in a little town called Taylor.

"There is a prison camp in Taylor, Texas named Hutto Residential Center [actually, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center]. It opened in May of last year. It has hundreds of children from six months old and up with their moms imprisoned there — in cells, 22 hours a day, prison uniforms, behind razor wire walls — for profit by a private prison company called Correctional Corporation of America (CCA)."

This is a holding facility for some of the hordes of illegal immigrants from Mexico who are flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border at the rate of about 1 million a year–presumably accompanied by lots of Iranians bent on mischief. The ACLU (who else?) got into the act Friday, telling the Austin daily they will investigate alleged violations of human rights at the facility. The heinous "for profit," bit apparently scars the souls of socialists everywhere, but is increasingly common in the USA as a means of keeping taxes low. Not that I believe that the Iranians or anyone else are more humane, you understand. Quite the contrary.

Via Simply Jews 

Illegals and the price of tortillas

Don’t look now, but the pressure of illegal immigration from Mexico could be about to grow, and all because of the rising price of tortillas. But it’s complicated and Mark in Mexico explains why:

"To get the prices for tortillas down, Calderón must allow the importation of more corn. In fact, he has to encourage it. The state of Iowa alone is capable of burying Mexico in a mountain of cheap and quite affordable corn meal [subsidized by U.S. government largess to argibusiness] …When that cheap corn meal hits Mexico, the country’s own producers, in most cases the small, already dirt poor farmers, will be out of business…If Mexicans want to enjoy lower tortilla prices, they’ll have to buy corn meal from Iowa…[which Mexican politicos hate to do]…For millions of Mexico’s poor, the tortilla is about all they’ve got and all they’ve ever had. And now they cannot afford even that."

Watching the border

The results were few but the $200,000 test convinced state officials that the dozen or so Web-connected cameras set up on the Texas-Mexico border last fall should be expanded.

The "monthlong test…of a Web site allowing ordinary citizens [to] monitor the border via live video resulted in [almost 28 million hits, 14,800 emails, and] the apprehension of 10 undocumented immigrants, one drug bust and one interrupted smuggling route."

Gov. Rick Perry wants the Legislature, which convenes Tuesday, to spend $5 million on the effort.

Attack on the border

Army National Guard overrun at the border? Well, they retreated, anyhow:

"U.S. Border Patrol officials are investigating the 11 p.m. Wednesday incident and trying to determine who the armed people were and why they approached the post near Sasabe, in the desert corridor between Nogales [Arizona] and Lukeville. Balaban said the troops didn’t know how many people were involved because it was so dark."

What? No night-vision equipment? It would be interesting to know why the guard didn’t stand and fight.

UPDATE  Well, it turns out that "very few" of these Arizona guard folks are armed. The ones in Texas and New Mexico are armed, but "very few" in Arizona and California. That is remarkably stupid.

One solution to illegal immigration

Everybody (well, almost everybody) complains about illegal immigration, particularly the millions coming across the southern border (not far, as it happens, from where I sit), but nobody does anything about it. Certainly not the politicians in Washington, who seem only interested in mining the new vote-getting possibilities. Well, almost nobody, that is, except Hazelton, PA, which has passed a creative new ordinance making it illegal to rent property there to illegals. Naturally the ACLU is fighting this, as the ACLU is wont to fight anything that seeks to solve any local problem or preserve any local way of life with which the ACLU disagrees. Consequently little Hazelton, population 22,000 or thereabouts, needs help and here’s a place where you can join in providing it.