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Border law enforcement, civilians say military incursions common

Behind the war of words between Mexico and the United States concerning military incursions, the people who live and work along the border tell stories of helicopters, soldiers and dangerous encounters. A survey by the Daily Bulletin of border-area county and city law enforcement officers found a variety of experiences involving what some believe is activity by the Mexican military in the United States. On Monday, local law enforcement and Border Patrol agents had an armed standoff 50 miles east of El Paso with what they said they believed were Mexican soldiers. No shots were fired and the soldiers retreated back across the Rio Grande. Residents and lawmen along the border have reported similar stories for more than 10 years, said Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez. Gonzalez, a member of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, a group of 16 departments along the border, said incidents similar to the standoff near Sierra Blanca are common. But, he said, some are worse than others. On March 3, 2005, a special task force investigating reports of Mexican soldiers crossing the border encountered what appeared to be a military incursion. "These individuals were wearing (battle dress uniforms), very clean-cut and in good physical condition," Gonzalez said. "They were walking in with backpacks and long-armed weapons inside our border." That night, 18 miles southeast of Laredo, Texas, the task force, which was made up of people from more than three law enforcement agencies, conducted a stakeout for what they said they believed were Mexican military. The group hid in the brush near an old gravel path called Caliche Road and waited, Gonzalez said. Later that night, one of Gonzalez's deputies spotted a group of five men in fatigues scouring the brush. Minutes later, more than 20 men followed them, dressed in military fatigues, wearing backpacks and armed with machine guns....

Gang plots border attack

Members of a violent international gang working for drug cartels in Central and South America are planning coordinated attacks along the U.S. border with Mexico, according to a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by the Daily Bulletin. Detailed inside a Jan. 20 officer safety alert, the plot's ultimate goal is to "begin gaining control of areas, cities and regions within the U.S." The information comes from the interrogation of a captured member of Mara Savatrucha, or MS-13, a transnational criminal syndicate born from displaced El Salvadoran death squads from the 1980s. The MS-13 member, who claimed to have smuggled cocaine for the Gulf Cartel, explained a plan to amass MS-13 members in Mexican border towns such as Nuevo Laredo, Acuna, Ojinaga and Juarez. The Gulf Cartel runs its drug smuggling operations from Del Rio, Texas, to south of Matamoros, Mexico. "After enough members have been pre-positioned along the border, a coordinated attack using firearms was to commence against all law enforcement, to include Border Patrol," the alert states. Law enforcement officials along the border said they had not received the alert. Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez of Zapata County in Texas said he was angry about the alert because he has never received information from the Department of Homeland Security about this or any other threat along the Texas border....

Alert says 5 Mexicans headed to S.F. to sell explosives to Iraqi

Despite assurances from government officials that the border with Mexico is secure, a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by the Daily Bulletin reveals that law enforcement officials are seeking five Mexican nationals suspected of bringing explosives into the United States. The internal "Intelligence Alert" from the Office of Border Patrol -- issued to law enforcement officials Jan. 12 -- stated that the Mexican nationals were heading to San Francisco to sell the explosives. But Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said the document is an internal memo and that there are doubts to the credibility of the threat. "The source stated that five individuals would attempt entry by foot with an unknown quantity of plastic explosives hidden in the soles of their shoes. The report indicated the group's final destination is San Francisco. Once in the city, they are to sell the explosives to an unknown Iraqi national," the memo stated. On Jan. 11, at about 5 p.m., Tucson, Ariz.-sector headquarters received information from a "source of unknown reliability" that the five individuals would travel from Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico, en route to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, according to the document....

Mexico Official Arrested For Human Smuggling

The Border Patrol has arrested a Mexican immigration official caught traveling in the U-S with a group of undocumented migrants. Authorities say the 43-year-old man could be charged with human smuggling. Immigration agent Francisco Javier Gutierrez was stopped yesterday at a checkpoint near Alamogordo, New Mexico, about 80 miles north of the Mexican border. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier says Gutierrez was traveling with three Mexican citizens who are believed to have sneaked into the U-S. All four detainees are held by the Border Patrol in El Paso pending charges. The Mexican government has promised to cooperate in the investigation of Gutierrez....

Former Border Patrol agent pleads guilty to human smuggling

An illegal immigrant pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to smuggle people into the United States while working as a Border Patrol agent, the U.S. Attorney's office said. Oscar Antonio Ortiz, 28, admitted to conspiring to smuggle at least 100 people when assigned to the Border Patrol's El Cajon station, east of San Diego. He also pleaded guilty to making a false claim to U.S. citizenship. Ortiz applied for the Border Patrol job in 2001 with a fake birth certificate that said he was born in Chicago even though he is a Mexican citizen who was born in Tijuana, Mexico, according to the federal complaint. He resigned after his arrest in August. "Ortiz became a Border Patrol agent through fraud, and his conduct threatened the security of the community," said Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego. According to prosecutors, Ortiz began smuggling people in his Border Patrol vehicle in 2004, picking up four or five people at a time in his area of patrol and driving them farther inside the United States....

DHS asks industry to help secure borders

Homeland Security Department officials said last week they are open to ideas from the private sector on improving the nation's border security, including outsourcing work currently done by government employees and using satellites to monitor remote regions. Hundreds of representatives from private companies crammed into an auditorium at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington Thursday for a presentation on the department's multibillion-dollar Secure Border Initiative. "This is an unusual invitation," Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson told the crowd. "We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business." The initiative will replace and expand upon previous efforts that failed to materialize, namely the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System and America's Shield Initiative. The difference this time is that DHS plans to develop a comprehensive border security approach that integrates surveillance technology, physical infrastructure, personnel and processes, department officials said....

Ohio sheriff bills U.S. government for jailed illegals

An Ohio sheriff has billed the Department of Homeland Security $125,000 for the cost of jailing illegal aliens arrested on criminal charges in his county, saying he's angry that the federal government has failed in its responsibility to keep them out of the United States. Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones yesterday said that although the government may not be legally obligated to pay the three bills he has sent since November, he intends to send similar ones every month until the federal government gains control of the border. He said 900 foreign-born inmates have been booked into the crowded Butler County jail in the past year. "Why should Butler County taxpayers have to pay for jail costs associated with people we don't believe should ever have been in this country, let alone this state or county, to begin with?" Sheriff Jones said. "They are in my jail because they have committed crimes here. "It's time the federal government should at least pay for the criminals they let stay here," he said. "If they don't want to pay for them, then they can deport them."....

NSA Expands, Centralizes Domestic Spying

The National Security Agency is in the process of building a new warning hub and data warehouse in the Denver area, realigning much of its workforce from Ft. Meade, Maryland to Colorado. The Denver Post reported last week that NSA was moving some of its operations to the Denver suburb of Aurora. On the surface, the NSA move seems to be a management and cost cutting measure, part of a post-9/11 decentralization. "This strategy better aligns support to national decision makers and combatant commanders," an NSA spokesman told the Denver paper. In truth, NSA is aligning its growing domestic eavesdropping operations -- what the administration calls "terrorist warning" in its current PR campaign -- with military homeland defense organizations, as well as the CIA's new domestic operations Colorado. Translation: Hey Congress, Colorado is now the American epicenter for national domestic spying. In May, Dana Priest reported here in The Washington Post that the CIA was planning to shift much of its domestic operations to Aurora, Colorado. The move of the CIA's National Resources Division was then described as being undertaken "for operational reasons." The Division is responsible for exploiting the knowledge of U.S. citizens and foreigners in the United States who might have unique information about foreign countries and terrorist activities. The functions extend from engaging Iraqi or Iranian Americans in covert operations to develop information and networks in their home countries to recruiting foreign students and visitors to be American spies. Aurora is already a reconnaissance satellite downlink and analytic center focusing on domestic warning. The NSA and CIA join U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) in Colorado. NORTHCOM is post 9/11 the U.S. military command responsible for homeland defense. The new NSA operation is located at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, at a facility commonly known as the Aerospace Data Facility. According to Government Executive Magazine -- thanks DP -- "NSA is building a massive data storage facility in Colorado, which will be able to hold the electronic equivalent of the Library of Congress every two days." This new NSA data warehouse is the hub of "data mining" and analysis development, allowing the eavesdropping agency to develop and make better use of the unbelievabytes of data it collects but does not exploit. Part of the move to Denver, Government Executive reported, was to expand NSA's base of contractors able to support its increasingly complex intelligence extraction mission....

Senate Must Reject Cybercrime Treaty

An internationalist assault on the sovereignty of the United States and the privacy of U.S. citizens is currently awaiting action by the full Senate. The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime is being aggressively pushed by Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), who reported the treaty out from his committee in early November. That should come as little surprise, in that Lugar has also been a leading proponent of the better-known Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), another key building-block in the structure of world government. Originally conceived as a tool to facilitate international cooperation in the pursuit of computer hackers and the like, the Cybercrime Treaty evolved during 15 years of negotiations to encompass any criminal offense that involves electronic evidence -- which in the 21st century is essentially limitless. As written, it could require more surveillance on Americans who have been accused of violating the laws of foreign countries -- even if they haven’t violated U.S. law. Treaty cheerleaders paint menacing pictures of hackers and child pornographers. But in reality the Convention is drafted so broadly that it encompasses virtually every area of law where the possibility exists of computerized evidence. That could affect thousands of innocent people, including not only political dissidents, but also the politically incorrect. Fortunately, one heroic, albeit currently anonymous, conservative senator has placed a “hold” on this Cybercrime Convention, a procedural maneuver that prevents an immediate, unannounced vote on the floor of the whole Senate. Conservatives concerned with sovereignty and the Bill of Rights need to both become aware and raise others’ awareness of the dangers posed by the Cybercrime Treaty, lest the Senate acquiesce in this subjugation of Americans to European-style “hate speech” laws through an electronic back door....