Thread: South Padre Island / Precinct One Corruption & Border Wa

Maybe we should ask America's first domestic line of defence why so many have made the choice to sell out their country to foreign criminals. . .

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Gov. Perry Announces $7.1 Million in Grants
Awarded to 31 Narcotics and Law Enforcement Programs across the State

December 09, 2005
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AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today awarded $7.1 million to 31 programs dedicated to preventing and reducing drug abuse, dismantling drug trafficking organizations, locating and eliminating illegal drug laboratories, and reducing drug-related violent crime. These grants are awarded under the federal Byrne Formula Grant Program and are distributed by the Governor’s Criminal Justice Division (CJD).

“With these grants, we increase the communication between our law enforcement agencies and improve the prevention and treatment resources provided by them, better preparing Texas in the fight against illegal drugs,â€

Office of the Governor Rick Perry - Press Releases - Gov. Perry ...
Dec 9, 2005Â*… $252529 to Cameron County for a regional drugÂ*… task force that will investigate illegal drug activity,Â*…
governor.state.tx.us/../2549/ - Options

Full Copy of Conrado Cantu's Letter : News : KGBT 4
Former Cameron County Sheriff Conrado Cantu is serving a 24-year sentence onÂ*… triple that for protecting drug traffickers, money launders and illegal gamblers .... Costumed wavers considered an illegal sign?Â*…
www.valleycentral.com/news/news... - Options

INVASION USA
Mexican drug cartels take over U.S. cities
Tancredo says gangs buy businesses,

By Joseph Farah
©Â*2010Â*WorldNetDaily.com


WASHINGTON – Mexican drug cartels operating in cities in the U.S. are buying up legitimate businesses to launder money and using some of the proceeds to win local mayoral and city council seats for politicians who can shape the policies and personnel decisions of their police forces, according to Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., who has led the fight to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and enforce the nation's immigration laws.

In his new book, "In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security," Tancredo exposes what he has learned from meetings with law enforcement authorities regarding a concerted effort by the Mexican mafia and drug cartels to extend their corruptive influence in urban areas dominated by illegal alien populations.

Tancredo says some of these small cities have become hostile and dangerous places for legitimate law enforcement officials.

"The Tijuana-based Felix drug cartel and the Juarez-based Fuentes cartel began buying legitimate business in small towns in Los Angeles County in the early 1990s," he writes in his new book published by WND Books. "They purchased restaurants, used-car lots, auto-body shops and other small businesses. One of their purposes was to use these businesses for money-laundering operations. Once established in their community, these cartel-financed business owners ran for city council and other local offices. Over time, they were able to buy votes and influence in an effort to take over the management of the town. They wanted to create a comfort zone from which they could operate without interference from local law enforcement."


Tancredo, the chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, now a powerful force within Congress for opposing amnesty plans for illegal aliens and for promoting tougher border security measures, points, as an example, to the L.A. County city of Bell Gardens – where corrupt elected officials under the influence of drug lords actually tried to shut down the police department.

"City officials who would not cooperate with the Mexican-born city manager were forced out of office," he writes. "Eventually, the L.A. County attorney's office moved in, and the city manager was prosecuted on charges of corruption. Unfortunately, Bell Gardens was only the tip of the iceberg. Other Los Angeles suburbs – including Huntington Park, Lynwood and Southgate – became targets for the cartels."

In fact, similar efforts to undermine law and order by Mexican criminal gangs are under way, Tancredo says, in Texas, Arizona and elsewhere.

"The corruption spreading from south of the border is not confined to Southern California," he writes. "In Cameron County, Texas, the former sheriff and several other officials were recently convicted of receiving drug-smuggling bribes. In Douglas, Ariz. – where the international border runs down the middle of the town and divides it from its sister city of Agua Prieta, Mexico – the mayor's brother was discovered to have a tunnel from one of his rental properties going into Mexico."

Tancredo reports he has had confidential briefings with top officials in big-city law enforcement who say there are entire cities under the virtual control of Mexican criminal street gangs and their associated businesses, in some cases, making it dangerous for county, state and national law enforcement officers to venture in and rendering any interdepartmental cooperation impossible.

This under-reported aspect of the immigration and border problem is just one of the reasons Tancredo believes the U.S., as a nation, is "in mortal danger" as the debate over solutions rages on in Washington.

In his new book, "In Mortal Danger," Tancredo, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the border security issue in the nation's capital, tells the whole story of the threats facing the nation, the solutions within its grasp and his own personal quest to awaken the political establishment to the seething discontentment gripping America as a result of illegal immigration.

Tancredo warns that the country is on a course to the dustbin of history. Like the great and mighty empires of the past, he writes, superpowers that once stretched from horizon to horizon, America is heading down the road to ruin.

English historian Edward Gibbon, in penning his classic "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (ironically published in the year America's Founding Fathers declared independence from Great Britain), theorized that Rome fell because it rotted from within. It succumbed to barbarian invasions because of a loss of civic virtue, its citizens became lazy and soft, hiring barbarian mercenaries to defend the empire because they were unwilling to defend it themselves.

Tancredo says America is following in the tragic footsteps of Rome.

Living up to his reputation for candor, Tancredo explains how the economic success and historical military prowess of the United States has transformed a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles of right and wrong into an overindulgent, self-deprecating, immoral cesspool of depravity.

His recipe for turning things around?

Without strong, moral leadership, without a renewed sense of purpose, without a rededication to family and community, without shunning the race hustlers and pop-culture sham artists, without protecting borders, language and culture, the nation that once was "the land of the free and home of the brave" and the "one last best hope of mankind" will repeat the catastrophic mistakes of the past, he writes.

Tancredo, born and raised in Colorado, represents Colorado's 6th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to his election to Congress in 1998, Tancredo worked as a schoolteacher, was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives in 1976, was appointed by President Reagan as the secretary of education's regional representative in 1981, and served as president of the Independence Institute. He serves on the International Relations Committee, the Resources Committee and the Budget Committee, and is the chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. Tancredo and his wife, Jackie, reside in Littleton, Colo.

INVASION USA
Tancredo blasts Senate 'amnesty'
Says Frist allowed Democrats to outmaneuver him on illegals
Posted: April 06, 2006
7:05 pm Eastern

©Â*2010Â*WorldNetDaily.com

Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., a leading critic in Congress of open borders, blasted the decision today by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to compromise on immigration reform and offer the possibility of citizenship to an estimated 10 million people who entered the country illegally through 2004.

"The Democrats have once again used parliamentary tactics to obstruct the Senate from pursuing its priorities," Tancredo said in a statement. "The only difference this time is that Senator Frist let them. By surrendering to the amnesty demands of Democrats and squishy Republicans, Frist squandered a great opportunity to secure our borders and gain control of our broken immigration system."

A last-minute, tentative compromise today opened the way for the most sweeping immigration bill in two decades. Along with offering legal status to millions in the country unlawfully, the measure enhances border security and regulates the future flow of immigrants into the country.

"We've had a huge breakthrough" overnight, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters.

Frist said President Bush supports the plan.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who co-sponsored legislation with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the plan "tough and fair."

"The American people have made their voices heard in their churches, in their schools and in the streets and the Senate has listened," Kennedy said, referring to massive protests in recent weeks.

The tentative compromise would require illegal immigrants who have been in the United States between two years and five years to return to their home country briefly, then re-enter as temporary workers. After that, they can begin a process to gain citizenship.

Illegals here longer than five years would not be required to return home. Anybody who came within the past two years would have to leave and take their place in line with others seeking entry, with no assurance they would be accepted.

Tancredo called the Senate "amnesty" deal "miserable public policy that will be rejected by the House of Representatives and has already been rejected by the American people."

"It continues the running joke that is our immigration system by treating the same crimes differently," he said. "In a perverse rendition of hide-and-seek, it grants a reward to those who evaded law enforcement for the longest time. And, as we did in 1986, it will encourage more illegal aliens to come into this country in the hope of yet another amnesty.

The Colorado congressman pointed out that the authors of the deal don't dispute the agreement offers blanket amnesty to at least 10 million illegal aliens who entered the country illegally through 2004.

He chides them, however, for not being honest about what will happen to the additional 2 million who have come to the country since then.

"No illegal alien with half a brain would admit that they came here after 2004," he said. "And how could law enforcement tell?"

The Senate deal would require applicants to prove they have been in the country since 2004, but Tancredo points out many illegal aliens have been using fraudulent documents, which law enforcement has been unable to detect.

"Handing out legal identification to millions of illegal aliens will expose our nation's Achilles' heal more quickly than almost any single action this Congress could take," he said.

Tancredo noted that this morning the International Relations Committee heard from a whistleblower at the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service – the agency that would be charged with screening the 10 million illegal aliens – who documented massive fraud and mismanagement in the agency.

USCIS has a security backlog in the millions, Tancredo pointed out, and, in order to reduce the backlog, is encouraging adjudicators to approve visas in fewer than four minutes.

"It is no secret that two-thirds of foreign-born terrorists operating in the U.S. committed immigration fraud prior to or in conjunction with their terrorist activities," he said. "Piling 10 million more applications on USCIS is suicidal in terms of national security."

Window on State Government
Bordering the Future

Shortly before 10 p.m. on August 3, 1997, as fans gathered in the bars and eateries near the Plaza Monumental bullring in Ciudad Juarez, four suspected drug traffickers strolled into the popular Max Fim restaurant, pulled out their guns, and squeezed off 130 rounds into the post-fight Sunday night crowd, killing three men and two women and wounding another four people. On their way out, the assailants paused long enough to claim another victim--an off-duty law enforcement officer who had run into the street from the bar next door, gun drawn, to check out the commotion. 1
Shock waves from the shooting spread beyond Juarez and El Paso. Although score-settling among rival narcotraficantes was commonplace--in the past four years, there had been more than 80 drug-related killings and some 70 disappearances--rarely had it spilled over into public places. The gangland killing at Max Fim threatened to usher in a new era in border crime.
Experts quickly asserted that the stepped-up violence was due to competition to see who would succeed Amado Carillo Fuentes, the infamous head of the "Mexican Federation," a loose amalgam of families that had grown in recent years to rival the fabled operations of the Cali cocaine cartels in Colombia. Carillo Fuentes, a 42-year-old native of Chihuahua, had reportedly died on July 4 while undergoing plastic surgery and liposuction in a Mexico City clinic. Known as El Señor de los Cielos (Lord of the Skies) because of his cool competence in airlifting as much as 70 percent of the cocaine that reached the U.S. each year, Carillo Fuentes had become invaluable to his Cali partners for other reasons, too. He served as a liaison between them and the five major Mexican drug cartels, forming discrete alliances and keeping the peace among traffickers along the border.
In short, he was one to be trusted.
"The Cali dons don't want to deal with some jerk that's running around shooting everybody," explained a veteran drug enforcement agent.
Â* Sidebar:
Thirty-Nine Days of Terror
Explanations, Implications
In the wake of the violence, Chihuahua Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez reported that murders attributed to narcotraficantes in the region had risen only slightly--from 22 in 1995 to 25 in 1996 to 32 through the first eight months of 1997. Others pointed out, however, that in only eight weeks since Carillo Fuentes' death, 18 people had been executed in the streets and businesses of Juarez. And the latest violence had happened in an area measuring only two square miles and containing Juarez' major commercial and tourist enterprises--all within sight of the Cordova International Bridge leading to El Paso.
Hotel and restaurant industry officials in the area reported business dropping by as much as 50 percent. Resident groups on both sides of the border called for arming citizens in self-defense. In November, after a man was shot and killed while dining at a stylish sushi bar, a group called Relatives and Friends of Disappeared Persons International warned residents against crossing the river at Juarez/El Paso. 2 Chihuahua Governor Francisco Barrio said that Juarez residents were trapped in an "atmosphere of psychosis." The governor subsequently convened an emergency meeting of national, state, and local leaders to devise a plan for stepping up public security.
Juarez's Archbishop Manuel Talamas Camandari weighed in against the violence.
"They used to just kill each other," he said, referring to the drug traffickers warring in Juarez, "but now they've gone beyond the pale. They're provoking fear and social unrest. People are afraid to go out to a restaurant. Juarez is being laid to waste." 3
By early 1998, with the violence simmering, a Juarez company was making news by offering bulletproof clothing for $1,200 to $4,000 an outfit.
"Protecting yourself is important," a company representative said, "especially if you're a high-profile person." Sales of bulletproof vehicles were also on the rise. 4
How did this happen? And what did it suggest about drug smuggling and related crime, not just in the twin cities of Juarez and El Paso, but all along the Texas-Mexico border? Experts may have disagreed on immediate causes, or who was precisely to blame for what, but they could not deny that the explosion of narco violence that swept into Juarez in 1997 raised vital questions deeply rooted in an age-old push and pull--the push of illicit drugs ferried from Latin America north, and the pull of continuing North American demands for illegal narcotics.

Supply: The Mexican Connection
The expanding role of Mexico's gangs in illicit drug traffic in the Western Hemisphere can't be denied. Thomas Constantine, administratorof the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told a U.S. Senate committee in 1997 that, with the demise of South American drug syndicates in 1995 and 1996, Mexico's drug trafficking organizations claimed a new prominence. 5 Since the late 1980s, moreover, Mexico had been the principal transit route for South American cocaine and a major source of marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamines. From the mid-1980sinto early 1998, narcotraficantes based in Mexico built criminal empires producing illicit drugs, smuggling hundreds of tons of South Americancocaine, and linking up with drug distribution networks that reach into the U.S. 6
While not on the scale of the Colombia drug smuggling cartels, many of the five major narcotraficante groups in Mexico posed a threat internationally. And two--the Ciudad Juarez and Gulf cartels--focused their business on Texas border crossings. 7
Drug smugglers saw the border as a wide-open door through which to ship drugs into the U.S. Since 1990--despite the Mexican peso devaluation of 1994--northbound truck traffic had increased by 27 percent, vehicular crossings by more than 40 percent, and pedestrian crossings, 10 percent. 8 Starting in 1995, the Mexican drug cartels began solidifying their trafficking infrastructure. They used cities on the Texas-Mexico border and the massive flow of legitimate trade and traffic as springboards into the U.S. Compounding drug enforcement and interdiction problems, the Mexican cartels, unlike the Colombian traffickers, operated as polydrug traffickers, meaning they dealt in heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines, as well as cocaine. 9
Citing a suspected surge in illegal drugs moving through the Texas Border region, the DEA in 1994 designated the Southwest Border Region, extending from San Diego, Calif., to Brownsville, a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. 10 During 1996, the sprawling region accounted for 70 percent of marijuana, 18 percent of cocaine, and 16 percent of heroin seized by the U.S. Customs Service. From fiscal 1995 to 1996, narcotics seizures in the Southwest Border region increased by 25 percent. 11

Laundering Drug Profits
Because the drug trade yields huge cash profits, Mexico became a major money-laundering center as the five narco cartels grew in power and reach. Money laundering is the practice of taking illicit income and "cleaning" it by running it through legitimate businesses. 12 Drug cartels launder drug trafficking proceeds in businesses and financial institutions around the globe. With methods ranging in sophistication from electronic transfers of money to bulk shipments of cash in cargo and private planes, traffickers try many ways to conceal their illegal profits.
In one indication of the export of money laundering, more than $53 million in cash was seized by U.S. Customs agents at Southwest border checkpoints between 1994 and 1996. 13 The U.S. government suggested that drug profits of as much as $50 billion a year--$6 billion more than was appropriated in fiscal 1998 for Texas state government--flowed through Texas into Mexico. The estimate included electronic transfers, exchange-house operations, and bulk cash.
"Money going out is a natural reaction to drugs coming in," said one special agent. 14
Still, border inspectors continue to be surprised at the size of attempted transfers. Some $5.6 million in cash was captured in a single tractor-trailer rig being taken across the border in El Paso. Nearly $200,000 turned up in the baggage of a rider who had hired a taxi in Houston to take him 340 miles to cross the border at tiny Progreso. Within 60 days in early 1998, U.S. Customs agents in Laredo recovered nearly $3 million being smuggled out of the country into Mexico, including nearly $700,000 wrapped in 52 bundles stuffed into a pick-up truck and $1 million ferried by a Dallas couple. 15
In 1996, as a result of U.S.-Mexico cooperative bilateral task forces targeting drug organizations, Mexico improved its drug interdiction efforts to stem the flow of narcotics and related chemicals, eradicate illicit drug cultivation, and arrest and prosecute criminals. Mexico's increased enforcement effort resulted in the arrests of key members of targeted drug groups. 16 The ensuing leadership vacuum in the organizations resulted in numerous turf battles, contributing to at least 57 deaths in the Juarez area alone during 1996 and 1997.
But drug seizures by the Mexican government also surged (see Figure 10.1). In 1996, Mexico seized 1,105 metric tons of marijuana, the highest one-year amount of the decade and a 171 percent increase from seizures in 1990. Cocaine seizures increased slightly between 1995 and 1996 but lagged behind seizures earlier in the decade. The totals underscored the magnitude of the drug smuggling problem along the border and the need for continuing cooperation between the two neighboring nations.
Challenges remain. Despite a six-year increase in drug law enforcement and drug seizure activities, Mexico is still the trans-shipment point for more than half of U.S.-bound South American cocaine shipments. Mexico also persists as the source of as much as 80 percent of methamphetamine-related chemicals. No one need dwell on the obvious explanation for such a situation: location, location, location. Simply by neighboring one of the wealthiest nations in the world, where the demand for drugs seems unrelenting, Mexico is a natural route for drug smugglers. Too many U.S. customers count on that pipeline.

Demand for Drugs
Spurred by the U.S. demand for drugs and the lure of making a great deal of money for their efforts, northbound drug smugglers at the U.S.-Mexico border hide their contraband in planes, cars, trucks, boats, tourist buses, tires, hiking boots, and even baby bottles. Some smugglers swallow heroin- and cocaine-filled balloons or pellets; if the containers burst, the smuggler usually dies. Drug couriers sometimes try to crash their way through border checkpoints. Others swim the Rio Grande, sometimes drowning.
The North American demand for drugs is enormous. In 1996, according to the National Clearing House for Alcohol and Drug Information, an estimated 13 million U.S. citizens were illegal drug users, or 6.1 percent of the population aged 12 and older. 17 In addition, almost 35 percent of U.S. citizens 12 and older had used an illegal drug in their lifetime. Of those, more than 90 percent had tried marijuana or hashish, and about 30 percent had tried cocaine.
The 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse--measuring the prevalence of use of illicit drugs, alcohol, and tobacco products--estimated that 1.7 million Americans were "recent" cocaine users. The number of chronic cocaine users was put at 3.6 million, with about 320,000 occasional heroin users and 810,000 chronic heroin users. Another 10.1 million Americans aged 12 and older were described as marijuana or hashish users. Marijuana was the most prevalent illegal drug in the U.S. Nearly 5 million had tried methamphetamines, according to the survey.
Substance abuse is a multi-faceted problem in the U.S. While the link between substance abuse and crime is complex, the consequences of substance abuse can affect all segments of a community. In neighborhoods where drugs are sold, crime and violence occur more often for many reasons. 18 Drug-related activity attracts predators and victims and destroys neighborhoods. Drug abuse is hazardous to the health of the addict and to the non-user. Substance abuse places additional burdens on the nation's already over-extended health care and criminal justice systems.

Crime on the Border
For most Texans, the murder and mayhem surrounding illegal drug smuggling in Mexico may seem distant. The reality, however, is that drug-related violence in Mexico is spilling over the Texas border. Ranchers in Maverick County, 150 miles southwest of San Antonio, report that armed traffickers dressed in black or wearing camouflage clothing pass through their properties after crossing the Rio Grande. By one account, many ranchers have started carrying handcuffs in case of unwelcome encounters.
"The traffickers have turned [ranch land] into a no-man's land," one rancher said. 19
In the same county, armed encounters between law enforcement officers and smugglers, once rare, have escalated to a rate of at least one per month. 20 Elsewhere, local law officers and the U.S. Border Patrol have been fired upon. One Border Patrol agent was killed in a 1996 shooting.
Since 1993, more than 40 percent of armed encounters by the Border Patrol in the El Paso sector involved narcotics. While armed drug encounters have dropped by half since 1995, Border Patrol officers faced the threat of armed violence about 30 percent of the time during 1997. 21
In August 1997, federal agents forecast that drug smuggling would increase across South Texas with the death of Carillo Fuentes, who had favored shipping narcotics through the El Paso area using Interstate 10 and Interstate 25; the agents noted that the bulk of trade with Mexico goes over the South Texas international bridges. 22 By 1997, drug traffickers in the McAllen area were already more active and more brazen in their operations. Instead of storing smuggled goods in rural isolated areas, traffickers were stashing large quantities of drugs in residential neighborhoods within seven blocks of Department of Public Safety (DPS) offices in McAllen. In 1997, drug raids by DEA and DPS agents netted more than seven tons of marijuana in the same neighborhoods. 23
Adult drug law violations increased substantially in the six most populous counties in the Border region from 1990 through 1996. Drug arrests of individuals 18 years and older increased 21 percent, from 11,000 to 13,300. Almost 75 percent of the adult arrests were for possession of illegal drugs (see Figure 10.2).
Drug law violations among Border residents less than 18 years old more than doubled between 1990 and 1996, from 1,100 in 1990 to 3,600. Arrests of youths 13 to 15 years old--junior high and high schoolers--more than tripled, jumping from 408 to 1,553. In 1996, this group accounted for 43 percent of juvenile drug arrests in the six most populous Border counties (see Figure 10.3).
The Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (TCADA) surveyed 1,665 adults in El Paso, Webb, Hidalgo, and Cameron counties in 1996 to determine the prevalence of substance abuse on the Texas-Mexico Border and its colonias. Overall, 23 percent of Border adults surveyed had used an illicit drug at some time in their lives. Marijuana use accounted for most illicit drug use. 24 About 19 percent of adults reported an alcohol-related problem within the previous year. For the colonias part of the study, TCADA surveyed 500 residents of 52 colonias in Hidalgo and Cameron counties and compared findings to survey results from other residents. The levels of illicit drug use were similar.

Underage Drinking in Mexico
As long as there have been Mexican border taverns, underage youth have crossed to Mexico to drink alcoholic beverages and returned to the U.S. under the influence of alcohol and sometimes drugs.
In February 1997, Border law enforcement departments launched a novel attack on underage drinking. Under the leadership of George Ramon, manager of the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, the law enforcement departments started Operation Caring About Teens (Operation CAT) to warn teenagers about the hazards of drinking in Mexico. Officers from 10 local police departments, U.S. Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission worked together to warn young people crossing into Mexico at the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge that officers would be strictly enforcing public intoxication and curfew laws. During the first three weekends of the operation, 231 teens were detained and released to their parents, and 136 adults were arrested for public intoxication. Police officers reported that youths from as far away as Rio Grande City, 70 miles west, and Padre Island, 30 miles northeast, were crossing the bridge. Despite the detentions, which prevented many individuals from driving while intoxicated, the program soon ended for lack of funds to pay police officers overtime.

60 Violent Crimes a Day
Drugs present the leading crime challenge in the Border region, but other crimes are also a problem. Every 24 hours in 1996, an average of 60 violent crimes and 654 property offenses were committed in the Border region (see Table 10.1). On average, there were four rapes, 15 robberies, and 40 aggravated assaults each day. A murder was committed every 30 hours. In other words, every 24 minutes in 1996, a Border resident was the victim of a violent crime. Estimated average daily property offenses included 120 burglaries, 480 thefts, and 60 vehicle thefts. In short, a property crime occurred every 2.2 minutes somewhere along the border.
As this report went to press, Juarez police were investigating the murders of more than 90 young women, many of whom worked in the city's maquiladoras. The unsolved killings underscore the problems Mexican police are encountering as rapid social and economic change occurrs.
Running counter to a general Texas trend of decreasing crime, the number of violent crimes increased in four of the Border region's six most populous counties--Cameron, Hidalgo, Nueces, and Webb--between 1991 and 1996, ranging from an increase of 9 percent in Cameron County to an increase of nearly 40 percent in Nueces County. Property crime also increased in Cameron, Hidalgo, and Nueces counties during this period.
Adjusting for population, however, only Nueces County saw an increase in property crimes per 100,000 population from 1991 to 1996. And juvenile drug law violations increased 224 percent from 1990 to 1996; in the 13-15 year age group alone, drug-related arrests increased 280 percent.
The increases in crime and drug law violations added to the caseloads of Border counties' state district courts. Texas district court caseloads increased 14 percent between 1990 and 1996--from 329,000 cases to 374,900 cases--while the caseloads in the six most populous Border counties increased 45 percent, from 37,200 to 53,800. During that period, however, only El Paso County obtained additional judges to address the increased workload (see Table 10.2).

Deferred Adjudication, Broken Windows
Critics complain that too many drug-related cases are now disposed of through deferred adjudication, meaning offenders are not sent to jail. Defendants who successfully complete the terms of deferred adjudication can get their drug arrests expunged and restore their clean criminal records. In 1996, the share of drug cases in Texas that ended in deferred adjudication increased from 11 percent to 13 percent. That means that in one of seven drug possession cases handled by Texas judges in 1996, the offender was not sentenced to jail or prison time. One-tenth of all drug sale cases were disposed of through deferred adjudication.

Within the Border region alone, deferred adjudication has made what critics argue is a mockery of the justice system. From 1990 to 1996, the number of drug sale or manufacture cases concluding with deferred adjudication through state district courts in the most populous Border counties increased by 80 percent--from 90 cases in 1990 to 162 in 1996. During the same period, the number of drug possession cases disposed of through deferred adjudication increased 159 percent, from 453 cases in 1990 to 1,173 cases in 1996. The use of deferred adjudication for drug-related cases increased in all the Border counties.
Two political scientists, Dr. James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, use the image of broken windows to explain how neighborhoods might decay if no one attends to their maintenance. 25 Broken windows signify untended property, showing that no one in the neighborhood cares, thus inviting further destruction. From this vantage point, disposing of drug-related offenses through deferred adjudication appears to be a "broken window" in the state's criminal justice system--particularly in Border communities, where drug smuggling has reached such enormous proportions.
According to state and local drug enforcement officers, deferred adjudication as a sentencing option available to drug offenders flies in the face of the time and expense that go into building a drug case.

Overburdened Courts
Drug cases accounted for 40 percent of the increase in Border courts' dockets between 1990 and 1996. In addition, certain drug law violators caught by federal agents were turned over to state courts for prosecution, further burdening county jails and judicial systems (see Table 10.3). Federal courts have complained about being so overburdened with drug cases that the U.S. Attorney's office has asked U.S. and Mexico border state courts to help prosecute cases involving fewer than 150 pounds of marijuana. Working with local prosecutors in this way enabled federal prosecutors to investigate and prosecute cases involving major traffickers or money laundering.
But, counties also carry the cost of prosecuting the smaller cases and housing detainees until reimbursement. South Texas lacks a federal detention center to house federal prisoners---a fact that brings unfortunate implications. Seeking federal reimbursements, for example, Webb County's district attorney estimated in October 1997 that county taxpayers were paying more than $600,000 a year to jail and prosecute offenders caught in federal drug busts. 26
"Such a situation doesn't exist along the Canadian border," one local official said. 27

On The Firing Line
With drug smuggling up and related crime also on the rise, the Border region may be poised at the edge of a uniquely dangerous era, making the border itself a firing line in a growing war on and about drugs. The risk is real and the stakes are high: witness the 39 days of terror in Juarez. In the past two years, federal customs, Border Patrol, and drug enforcement agents confiscated record amounts of illegal drugs in the Texas Border region. From 1995 to 1996 alone, annual marijuana seizures by customs agents in the Border region increased by one third, to 95 tons. In 1997, the Border Patrol seized 65 tons of marijuana in the El Paso sector, a 68 percent increase from 1996; 36 tons in the Laredo sector, a 24 percent increase; and 100 tons in McAllen, a 19 percent increase. 28 In total, the Border Patrol seized 232 tons of marijuana and 14 tons of cocaine in the Border region in 1997. DEA agents seized 56 tons of marijuana in 1997 in Hidalgo and Starr counties, exceeding the total in the two counties for the previous three years combined. 29
The smuggling surge along the Texas Border has long-term implications for U.S.-Mexico drug enforcement collaboration.
"This is a critical period for the U.S. and for Mexico on the counter-narcotics front," said Jane Becker, the U.S. State Department's principal deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. "We are more than just neighbors with a 2,000-mile shared border or trading partners with a mutual interest in expanding business. We are also allies in a struggle against a phenomenon that threatens our peoples, our societies, and our democratic institutions." 30
To meet the challenge of policing the U.S.-Mexico border against drugs, the two nations have annually expanded drug interdiction programs. In 1995, the U.S. Customs Service launched "Operation Hard Line," an interdiction effort applying new technologies along with conventional investigative techniques to stop drug smuggling. 31 In addition to intensifying inspections at border checkpoints, the Customs Service transferred 165 agents to the U.S. Southwest Border to work on narcotics. The agency's fiscal 1997 budget included money for an additional 650 positions and $65 million for Operation Hard Line. Points of entry were fortified with the installation of concrete barriers to help stop attempts to run the border.
In addition, customs inspectors now depend on more sophisticated equipment such as X-ray machines to inspect commercial trucks. In Texas, the first two of four $3.5 million X-ray systems planned for the Texas-Mexico border began operations at customs stations at El Paso bridges and at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge. With these machines, inspectors were able to see hidden cargo that drug-sniffing dogs or physical inspections missed. Laredo and Los Tomates were each expected to obtain similar X-ray stations by the end of 1999. 32
In addition, the Customs Service established a Carrier Initiative Program in 1984 to enlist the support of commercial carriers to deter smugglers from using commercial air and sea carriers to transport drugs. 33 Subsequently, more than 3,300 air, sea, and land carriers in the Border region signed on. By 1995, the Land Border Carrier Initiative Program had been created to concentrate efforts in the Border region. By 1997, the Customs Service had received pledges from more than 836 Border trucking companies to better police trucks and warehouses.
Controlling drugs on the border remains a largely federal issue, but federal and state authorities can do more to help law enforcement and judicial officials in Texas' Border cities and counties.
<--Environment Immigration-->

Window on State Government
Bordering the Future
IMMIGRATION
Crossing the Line
Ahuacatlan, the name of a dusty village hidden high in the cloud-covered mountains of the central Mexican state of Queretaro, means "land of avocados" in the Nahuatl tongue. But the quaint name does not describe the village today, where fruit trees are no longer plentiful on the surrounding slopes. Nor, for that matter, is much else.
So each fall, the men of Ahuacatlan travel north to work en el otro lado (on the other side), mainly in Texas, and return the next summer with the money they've earned. Most of them spend their days in Texas picking crops like those that used to grow in Ahuacatlan, harvesting much of the hand-picked fruits and vegetables produced in the U.S.
When the men are away from Ahuacatlan, the village is populated by women, children, and the elderly. The parish priest complains about teenage boys looking forward to their first trips north rather than to jobs in Ahuacatlan or even San Juan del Rio, the nearest city of any size. Crossing the border for a job has become a modern-day rite of passage. And year after year--wives without husbands, sisters without brothers, young children without fathers, old folks without sons--Ahuacatlan has evolved from a patriarchy without patriarchs into a matriarchy.
Ahuacatlan's eerie, half-empty existence highlights one of the most difficult issues facing the Texas-Mexico border: immigration, with or without benefit of documentation. Debates on legal immigration and the process of obtaining appropriate papers to move from the homeland to the U.S. have long since fallen prey to statistical manipulation and strident claims from xenophobes and advocates alike. And immigration of the illegal variety, possibly far more prevalent, remains by its very nature nearly impossible to measure, study, or manage with accuracy.
Ahuacatlan, one of thousands of such villages in Mexico, also underscores the changing nature of global migration. What was long a steady east-to-west stream has evolved into a flow of unprecedented proportions along an axis running south to north.
In that context, Ahuacatlan is something of an anachronism, too, because its workers still return at least once a year to renew home ties before leaving again. Earlier this century, Mexicans used to venture north in search of work with the idea of sending money home to help their families. Not unlike many immigrants to the U.S. in the early part of this century, most intended to go back home some day, and many did.
By contrast, entire families in the closing decades of this century have been crossing the border. Unwilling to leave their loved ones behind, these new immigrants seem to have more than a temporary visit in mind. More and more, they have been coming to stay.1
And because each nation's immigration policy is set in its own distant federal capital, creative options for border states remain limited. Texas, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, and Chihuahua deal daily with the consequences--intentional or otherwise--of decisions made by bureaucrats and politicians thousands of miles away, in Washington, D.C., or Mexico City.
Finally, the deep ambivalence most Texans and Mexicans feel on the topic of immigration leaves discussions about illegal immigration fraught with danger. South of the line, many wish for greater labor mobility between the two countries. They see emigration as an "escape valve" through which to release in one direction the tensions bottled up below the border and to attract in the other direction much-needed foreign currency.
By one estimate, immigrant workers and others in the U.S. send $4 billion to $6 billion to Mexico each year, making such earnings Mexico's fourth-biggest source of foreign exchange.2 At the same time, that so many of their people are forced to leave Mexico to make ends meet embarrasses, saddens, and angers many Mexicans. In the central states of Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacan, and Queretaro, where most of Texas' illegal Mexican immigrant population originates, public denunciations of the "inhumane treatment" of their countrymen while in Texas are common.3
On the northern side, while many profess to prefer fewer immigrants, even hardened foes hold contradictory views. Some welcome the foreign-born but worry that their presence dilutes the progress of citizens living on or near the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. Others adhere to free-market principles, especially access to cheap labor, but worry about the effect immigrants have on the prevailing culture of the state and nation.
An aspect of immigration rarely noted is the uneven way its disadvantages are distributed. In Texas, for example, immigration is often cited as a drain on taxpayers, from public school budgets to municipal and county law enforcement funds. In Mexico, meanwhile, illegal immigration tends to create "mail-box economies" in communities like Ahuacatlan, which depend on the money sent home annually by undocumented workers, rather than developing local production capacities.
The distance of people from the border sometimes determines the vehemence of anti-immigration opinions. In August 1997, on a day when the El Paso Times lauded the Texas Governor's efforts to improve his Spanish-language skills, the Amarillo Globe-News printed a front-page story about a local insurance company that had fired two employees who had been "hired to speak Spanish" to Hispanic customers--for speaking Spanish to each other. The incident escalated into a debate over "rudeness" and "heritage"--all in a region where a judge had recently ordered a Hispanic mother to speak English to her child or risk losing custody.
Â* Sidebar:
Landmarks in U.S. Immigration Reform
Not surprisingly, those who live and work along the border are sometimes more in tune with its unique symbiosis; border residents tend to embrace the binational nature of their daily lives. With family and business ties north and south, crossing the line is routine, amicable, and generally regarded as beneficial.
But if the Texas-Mexico border becomes more of an economic fault line, coping with explosive growth along its pressure points could be a greater challenge. Any serious look at the region must attempt to strike a balanced, practical view of immigration.

A Short Look at a Long History
Some 80,000 Spanish-speaking people remained in Texas and the Southwest in 1848, when the U.S. acquired the territory at the end of the Mexican War. Under terms of the peace treaty, the former Mexicans were offered U.S. citizenship and full protection of the law.4
Not that the documented protection meant much. Within a few years, Texas settlers and unsympathetic courts had stripped the few remaining Mexican landholders of their property rights, while most continued to live as they had before--except that they were suddenly foreigners in their own land.
During the 1880s, the demand for labor by U.S. railroad companies attracted Mexican workers to West Texas. As the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe lines snaked across the Southwest, railroad officials concluded that Mexican labor was closer and more convenient than Chinese labor because, unlike the latter, Mexicans could easily be sent home when they were no longer needed. By 1910, railroad agents had recruited more than 20,000 Mexicans.
Other industries soon followed, either scouting workers south of the border themselves or paying labor contractors and smugglers to bring workers across the border. These laborers formed the backbone of the westward spread of cotton plantations and the proliferation of vegetable, fruit, sugar beet, and other giant agricultural concerns, as well as the development of copper mining in the Southwest. And during World War I, when U.S. labor was in short supply, Mexican workers, as well as U.S. women, played a crucial role by keeping factories open and the economy humming.
In 1924, Congress created the U.S. Border Patrol, but its latter-day significance was not immediate. Within five years, crossing the border without benefit of documentation would be outlawed--"entry without inspection" became a misdemeanor. But it took a confluence of events--the return of the doughboys from Europe, the postwar recession, and especially the Great Depression--to turn Mexican workers into outcasts. Hundreds of thousands were rounded up and summarily deported, including no small number of U.S. citizens. Others returned home voluntarily after losing their jobs in manufacturing and mining industries.
By the late 1930s, with the Dust Bowl prompting a massive migration west to California, growers concluded that they no longer needed their southern neighbors to perform stoop labor. During that decade, for the first time in U.S. history, more people left the country than entered it.5
The onset of World War II led Mexican migration to rebound, as Uncle Sam again faced a domestic labor shortage. Corporate recruiters flocked across the border afresh, looking for temporary farm workers, and Washington, D.C. and Mexico City searched for creative solutions to the lack of workers. These efforts culminated in the Emergency Farm Labor Act of 1942--better known as the bracero program.
Under the bracero program U.S. officials could hire Mexican workers selected by the Mexican government and then, after guaranteeing transportation and a minimum wage, subcontract them to major agricultural interests. By the late 1950s, more than 400,000 seasonal braceros--the word is derived from the Spanish brazo, or "arm"--toiled legally on farms and orchards in Texas and other states. Their vulnerability to abuse by employers troubled the Mexican government, but the money they sent home was sufficiently valuable to their nation's economy that the program continued until 1964, when the American civil rights and farm worker movements, as well as the continuing mechanization of harvests, led Washington, D.C., to unilaterally call it off.
During the bracero years, illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S. declined--but not necessarily because of the program. A 1954 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initiative, with the unfortunate name of "Operation Wetback," stemmed illegal crossings. The initiative was led by Joseph Swing, a retired U.S. Army general whose view of Mexico dated from his days riding with John "Black Jack" Pershing during a failed expedition into Mexico against Pancho Villa in 1916. During the operation, immigration squads raided barrios and farms, invaded homes, swept the streets for Mexicans, and bragged about how many had fearfully fled back across the border. Inevitably, U.S. citizens were sometimes caught in the raids and deported too, but the public rarely objected. In 1953, the year before the INS operation, 900,000 undocumented foreigners had been caught. The number of "apprehensions" dropped to 250,000 in 1955 and to 88,000 in 1956.6
Operation Wetback was halted along with the bracero program, and illegal immigration subsequently accelerated. In 1976, INS arrests along the border passed the 1-million mark for the first time. Then-INS Commissioner Leonard Chapman, a former Marine commander, warned the nation about "a vast and silent invasion of illegal aliens."7 William Colby, former CIA director, echoed his remarks. "The most obvious threat is the fact that there are going to be 120 million Mexicans by the turn of the century," Colby said. "[The Border Patrol] will not have enough bullets to stop them."8
In the years since, changes in the Mexican economy have bolstered the south-to-north flow of global migration, as political and economic refugees from Central America and, to a lesser degree, the Caribbean have also streamed north. As a result of the Mexican peso's 1994 devaluation and strict bailout requirements set by the international financial community, the Mexican government cut services and domestic subsidies, especially in the agricultural sector. These cuts, together with capital flight and surging unemployment, pushed tens of millions of people from the Mexican countryside to the cities.
Many stayed there only temporarily, though. Finding little in the cities, they headed toward the Rio Grande, hoping to land jobs in the maquilas springing up in every urban border area. By 1998 in Ciudad Juarez, for example, one estimate put the new immigrant arrivals at 35,000 each year--nearly 100 a day.9 Rumored throughout the interior to be havens of opportunity, Mexican border towns grew by leaps and bounds. The leaps and bounds often continued in the direction of Texas and other U.S. states, whose own borders were increasingly used as staging areas from which to "trampoline" into service jobs--restaurants, hotels, car washes--or manufacturing and construction firms.

Attempts at Immigration Reform
Immigration issues occupy one of the murkiest realms of U.S. public policy.
A famous attempt at reform involved a million-dollar operation during the 1980s in half a dozen major cities across the nation--including Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth. During the raid, 400 INS agents, with help from the U.S. Border Patrol, set off in a much-publicized, week-long search for undocumented workers. Dubbed "Project Jobs," the operation was designed to arrest illegal immigrants who, according to the INS, were taking good-paying work away from U.S. citizens. One INS official said, "We could go on arresting bus boys forever, but we know that those jobs are just going to be filled by other illegal aliens. What we're looking for now are aliens working in the higher-paying jobs."10
In Houston, federal agents raided a tree-trimming company, arrested 135 undocumented workers, then seized dozens more at construction sites around the city. In Fort Worth, a mobile home manufacturer lost 170 workers, nearly half his workforce. At a pipe-fitting company in Houston, another 71 illegal immigrants were rounded up. At the time, the INS predicted that the true test of the operation's success would be whether jobs vacated by the mass arrests--1,105 in Texas alone--were ultimately filled by U.S. citizens.
By that standard, the raids were a total failure.
The tree-trimming company in Houston advertised its vacant jobs and received hundreds of inquiries, but not one position was filled by a U.S. citizen. The Fort Worth mobile home manufacturer replenished his work-force, mainly with the same undocumented workers who had been deported and then swiftly returned. As for the Houston pipe-fitting firm, a complete crew of citizens was hired to replace the undocumented workers lost in the sweep--but the new crew lasted only one day before quitting. In the end, the company filled 16 of the 71 jobs held by illegal immigrants before the raid with citizens, at a time when Houston was billed as the "Golden Buckle of the Sunbelt" by unemployed northerners flocking to the boomtown.
All told, the Texas Employment Commission found a total of 42 unemployed citizens to apply for the 1,105 Texas jobs vacated in the raids. Of those, the agency eventually managed to fill three.
Meanwhile, Mexico City newspapers compared the INS raids to Gestapo actions in Nazi Germany, and Hispanic groups in Texas expressed concern that the roundups would bring on waves of anti-Mexican-American sentiment.
One problem, it turned out, was that the wages offered by the raided employers were far less than what the INS had claimed: most paid the minimum wage or only slightly above it. Another problem was that out-of-work citizens did not want to stand in line for the jobs. Yet another was that the INS was looking in the wrong places to nab highly paid undocumented workers. Tree-trimming outfits and construction sites were unlikely candidates, because the illegal immigrants making really good money didn't work there. They worked in office buildings, and most of them weren't Hispanics, either. They had come from Asia or Europe or the Middle East. They were well educated, spoke English, and possessed internationally marketable skills.
The underlying mistake, it seemed, was that the INS had overcommitted itself to border enforcement, arresting unskilled Mexican and other workers who posed little threat to the job security of U.S. citizens. The undocumented workers competing against citizens for higher-paying jobs arrived on airplanes, usually with legal visas, and then overstayed them.
Moreover, the raids had seemingly been timed to coincide with the opening of U.S. Senate debate on the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, which passed after much wrangling in 1986. The law, in a nod to the premise that illegal immigration could not entirely be stopped at the border, contained two important provisions. The first was an attempt to close what some considered the largest loophole in immigration laws with employer sanctions. These sanctions took the form of fines or jail terms for employers who failed to record their new hires on an INS form, the I-9 document. The second offered legal amnesty to immigrants who could prove that they had been living continuously in the U.S. since 1982--a tacit acknowledgment by officials that these workers were entrenched and difficult to identify.
Under the amnesty program, more than 3 million people--three-quarters of them Mexican, the rest mostly Salvadoran--emerged from the shadows to claim permanent residence. They remained in the U.S. while their applications were pending, and untold tens of thousands more who either knew they did not qualify, or who were afraid to take the necessary steps to find out, waited for the dust to settle.
They needn't have worried. IRCA was soon a shambles, its major legacy yet another ineffective federal bureaucracy. Employer sanctions were rarely applied. A black market in phony documents sprang up, too. For the right price, anyone could buy a fake Social Security card, permanent resident card, or U.S. birth certificate, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Either way, employers were off the hook, and immigration dropped off the table of public debate for awhile.
Â* Sidebar:
Border Monument No. 1
Next came the Immigration Act of 1990, which expanded the quota for legal immigration from 270,000 to 340,000 per year. In the midst of the debate, then-Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who had co-sponsored the attempt at immigration reform four years earlier, tried to place the issue in stark public terms.
"Uncontrolled immigration is one of the greatest threats to the future of this country," Simpson said.11
The new law separated "independent" visas, granted for job-related or investment purposes, from "family preference" visas to make sure that applicants in the two categories did not compete with one another. Most of the quota increase went to "independent" visas, although the quota for immediate relatives of permanent residents within the "family preference" category was doubled. Immediate relatives of U.S. citizens continued to be exempt from immigration quotas.
Dovetailing with the legislative initiatives were sporadic efforts to beef up the border patrol's presence along the porous border. Into the early 1990s, the border patrol focused on apprehending aliens once they had crossed the border, then returning them to their country of origin. In September 1993, Silvestre Reyes, then-head of the El Paso Border Patrol office, tried something new. In "Operation Blockade," later renamed "Operation Hold the Line," Reyes directed his officers to form a human blockade--more than 400 agents and vehicles, posted every 100 yards from one end of El Paso to the other--that would discourage people from attempting to cross.
Unlike a similar 1988 attempt in McAllen that had to be abandoned when it became too expensive, Reyes' blockade stayed in place until the INS could fund it permanently. "Operation Hold the Line" was credited with a 72 percent drop in apprehensions in the El Paso sector (covering the border area between Tucson and Marfa) between fiscal 1993 and 1994, when other sectors averaged only a 3 percent drop.12 It was also seen as the cause of 286,000 fewer aliens crossing in fiscal 1994, 146,000 fewer in 1996, and 105,000 fewer in the first nine months of 1997 in the El Paso sector.13
Buoyed by the El Paso experience, the border patrol launched "Operation Rio Grande" in Brownsville in August 1997 as the next step in the INS enforcement strategy for Texas and New Mexico's southern borders. The initiative brought 69 Border Patrol agents to Brownsville from other INS stations and offices, as well as additional support personnel, an increased overtime budget, new vehicles, helicopters, floodlights, and such technology as night- and low-light vision equipment, hidden electronic sensors, and a criminal record checking system. Plans were to spread agency resources west and north to join those of "Operation Hold the Line," after control of the Brownsville-McAllen-Harlingen area's border had increased sufficiently to claim success. Eventually, the INS anticipated applying the controls all along the border through New Mexico, Arizona, and California.14
In March 1998, the INS announced that Texas would get 625 of the 1,000 new Border Patrol agents. The boost in manpower would give Texas 2,957 Border Patrol agents by the end of 1998, compared to 2,688 for California.15
In the area of employer sanctions, the INS district office in Dallas began drawing national recognition for doing more than just raiding workplaces. Its "Operation Jobs" initiative began in 1994 in an attempt to minimize business disruptions when undocumented workers were arrested and removed and to link employers to local employment agencies trying to place unemployed U.S. citizens or legal residents, welfare recipients, or other job-seekers. While exact figures did not exist to document how many jobs once held by undocumented workers were refilled by people with legal work status, anecdotal evidence was strong enough to support expanding the program to the 18 states in the INS' Central Region in March 1995.16
Despite these and other efforts to gain control of the nation's borders, by 1998 few believed that things had improved much. Although the INS budget had more than doubled, to $3.8 billion in fiscal 1997, since the 1990 immigration debate, The New York Times in 1997 termed the agency still a "calamity" and "exceptionally inept at its most essential tasks." The Dallas Morning News called for a "shake-up," saying that the agency had had time to reform itself and had "not adequately done so."17
In response, a September 1997 report from the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform suggested abolishing the INS, which had been placed under jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice during World War II when fears of foreign saboteurs became a national concern. The commission urged reassigning INS functions to the departments of Justice, Labor, and State. The White House, while acknowledging that critical reforms were necessary, did not support dismantling the agency. Instead, the INS, White House, U.S. Department of Justice, and consultants presented Congress with a plan in March 1998 that proposed separating border control and other enforcement functions from the processing of citizenship or legal permanent residency applications and other service functions.18
In February 1998, the President proposed increasing the INS budget to $4.2 billion--enough for staffing levels of 31,600 in fiscal 1999, up 22 percent from 26,000 in 1997. More than half of the increase in the INS budget would pay for stepped-up border controls.19
Among other calls for immigration reform, high-technology industries urged increased ceilings on H-1B and other kinds of visas for high-skilled foreign workers. Legal entry channels such as the H-1B visas were described by some as a backdoor route to permanent U.S. residence. By INS estimates, about 41 percent of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 1996 originally entered on a legal but temporary basis and then overstayed their visit.20

Who is Immigrating and at What Cost
According to the INS, Texas was home to 700,000 illegal immigrants in October 1996, second only to California's 2 million. The INS estimate of the total U.S. undocumented immigrant population ranges from 4.6 to 5.4 million. Nationally, 54 percent of illegal immigrants were from Mexico, followed by El Salvador (7 percent), Guatemala (3 percent), and Canada (2 percent). As a share of the total population, illegal immigration is highest in California, Washington, D.C., and Texas.
Legal permanent resident immigrants in Texas numbered 825,000 in April 1996, about 8 percent of the U.S. total of 10.3 million.21
Within the state, legal and illegal immigrants tend to settle in certain counties and cities. County-level estimates from the U.S. Bureau of the Census indicate that from July 1990 to July 1996, the 43-county Border region had a net gain of about 158,100 residents because of international migration, compared to 333,900 for the rest of Texas (see Map 11.1). International migration accounted for 29 percent of the region's population growth during the same period, compared to 21 percent in non-Border counties. Within the Border region, El Paso, Hidalgo, and Bexar counties together became home to an additional 105,200 international migrants in the 1990s, while Harris, Dallas, and Tarrant counties saw population gains through net international migration of 235,600 (see Table 11.1).22
In 1993, the annual cost to Texas state and local governments for public education, emergency health care, social services, and incarceration for undocumented immigrants was pegged at $1.3 billion. At the time, Texas joined Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and New Jersey in unsuccessfully suing the federal government to recover some of these costs.23 Another study by the Urban Institute, commissioned by the federal government, put the Texas costs at $454 million, but the study also estimated that illegal immigrants paid about $202 million each year in state sales taxes.24
Federal relief to states and local communities for the costs of illegal immigration has been short-lived and sporadic. From 1988 through 1995, the State Legalization Impact Assistance Grants (SLIAG) program helped Texas and other states pay for educational and social services provided to undocumented immigrants applying for amnesty and citizenship under IRCA during a limited time. Nationally, SLIAG grants to state and local governments peaked at $825 million in 1991.25
In Texas, SLIAG funding was largest in 1990, when state agencies received $64 million, half of which went to the Texas Education Agency for distribution to local public school districts. The Texas Department of Health also received a major part of SLIAG funds.26
Over the course of the program, Texas state agencies received $338 million in SLIAG funds, almost 10 percent of the U.S. total $3.5 billion in SLIAG payments to state and local governments from 1988 to 1996.27 Midway through that period, Texas was estimated to be home to 10 percent of the nation's illegal immigrants.28
Federal funds for refugee and entrant assistance, emergency immigrant education, and transition programs for refugee children have helped cover the costs of legal immigration, but to a lesser extent than SLIAG aid. From 1987 through 1995, such funds fluctuated between $9 million to $15 million a year for Texas. In 1996, funding for the three programs combined had increased to $18.3 million. The amount, however, was still not enough to compensate for the phasing out of SLIAG once the time for applying for amnesty was over.29
The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), a federal program begun in 1995, was designed to help states and localities defray the costs of imprisoning undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies or two or more misdemeanors. SCAAP funding also supported efforts to identify criminal aliens and expedite their transfer from state and local prisons to federal custody before deportation. In fiscal 1998, SCAAP was expected to provide almost $493 million in grants nationwide.30 The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is slated to receive $90 million in SCAAP funds over the 1998-99 biennium to help pay for immigrants' incarceration.31
Prospects for future federal funding of programs dealing with immigration are not bright, given federal timetables for balancing the budget and ensuring the long-term viability of Social Security and Medicare. Even with more adequate funding, too many programs appear to be tailored for specific functional areas or certain kinds of immigrants. As one analyst has said, "One is struck by how few major federal initiatives there are to help immigrants; the limited number of resources dedicated to them; their minor and disjointed character; and by the lack of coherent policy goals."32
Analyzing long-term decreases in federal assistance to states and local communities for immigrant services, the same author said, the solution is not to develop new programs but to better serve immigrants with existing ones.
Beginning in the 1970s, states began cutting back and eliminating undocumented immigrants' eligibility for state and federal programs. In the 1980s and 1990s, even legal immigrants' eligibility for benefits has been reduced or eliminated. In early 1998, Congress was debating whether to restore some of the benefits for legal immigrants that had been eliminated in earlier rounds of welfare reforms.

Another black eye for Cameron County
May 28th, 2008, 3:11 pm by lmartinez
It’s getting to the point where I hate to open any e-mail from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I know it’s not going to be good news.
Such was the case today.Â* The e-mail said another Cameron County lawman was busted by federal authorities on drug trafficking charges.
Another black eye for Cameron County.
Constable Saul Ochoa is third third elected official and lawman to be busted by the feds in the past five years.Â* He joins former constable Jose Alfredo Jimenez and former Sheriff Conrado M. Cantu who remain in federal prison.
They says there’s a bond between lawmen. It makes one wonder how many others could join join this particular band of brothers.
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