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Alien smuggling suspect shoots at Ariz. Border Patrol officers

U.S. Border Patrol agents were fired on by a suspected immigrant smuggler west of Yuma Tuesday night, officials said. The gunfire came at the end of a 20-mile chase of a motorhome packed with illegal immigrants, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Michael Gramley said. The incident began about 10 p.m. Tuesday when a citizen called in a tip about a large group of apparent immigrants who were seen getting in the motor home several miles west of Yuma. Agents tried to stop the motor home as it drove west on Interstate 8 near Andrade, Calif., but the driver wouldn't stop until the tires were flattened by a spike strip after about 20 miles. As the vehicle stopped, the driver reportedly fired one shot from a pistol at the agents, striking the rear tail light of a Border Patrol vehicle. The driver and 22 illegal immigrants got out of the motor home and began running. All were captured....

Mexican incursions inflame border situation

Armed men in Mexican military uniforms have illegally crossed into the United States to provide cover for drug smugglers, and have fired upon U.S. Border Patrol agents on several occasions, a congressional panel was told Tuesday. Border Patrol Union President T.J. Bonner detailed three incidents since 2000 in which U.S. agents were chased and fired upon by what he characterized as Mexican soldiers operating inside U.S. borders. Bonner testified before the House Homeland Security Investigations Subcommittee on Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security said there have been 231 documented incursions by Mexican military and law enforcement personnel into the U.S. since 1996. “There is little doubt that the majority of these incidences are accidental,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas., chairman of the Security Investigations Subcommittee. “However, there are several reports of intentional violations of U.S. sovereignty by groups, often smuggling hundreds of pounds of drugs, which appear to be associated with members of the Mexican military or police forces,” McCaul said....

Border Patrol and sheriffs take differing views on border incursion

The chief of the Border Patrol urged U.S. House members Tuesday not to lose sight of the daily dangers faced by federal agents as the lawmakers respond to a recent confrontation between law enforcement and military-uniformed drug smugglers along the Rio Grande. He urged the lawmakers to "not allow the high media profile" of the recent confrontation to cause them to "lose sight of the everyday threats" agents face. But his characterizations of the border were not shared by Texas sheriffs who followed Aguilar as witnesses in a hearing before the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations. Hudspeth County Deputy Sheriff Esequiel Legarreta, who was one of the first on the scene at the river Jan. 23, showed a video in which a Humvee can be seen amid desert brush and bales are being tossed from a vehicle before heavy smoke and flames appear. The Humvee was parked on the American side of the river. Their skepticism was shared by McCaul, R-Austin, and New Mexico Republican Rep. Steve Pearce, a Homeland Security member who sat in on the hearing. Holding up a photo showing individuals firing on border agents from Mexico, McCaul said: "It just seems to me it's getting worse, not better and cartels are getting more dangerous." Pearce disagreed that the border is not under siege as Aguilar said. "My constituents believe it to be and seeing that video makes me believe it to be," Pearce said....

Border guards seek military's help

The U.S. military should be called out to protect the border against military-style incursions from Mexico, the head of the Border Patrol union told a congressional homeland-security committee Tuesday. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 10,500 agents, recommended active or reserve military units be put "on standby" at strategic locations along the border. "If the Mexican military is coming into the United States, our law-enforcement agents do not have the training to deal with that," Bonner told the House Homeland Security subcommittee on Investigations. The Mexican Embassy maintains the suspected smugglers, who were not arrested, were members of a drug cartel posing as soldiers, not members of the Mexican military. But Texas officials testifying Tuesday said they think the suspects might be both. "It's everything,' said El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego. "It's the military, it's cartels buying off military, buying off civilians and dressing as the military." Bonner, who said he also believes the incursions are the work of military officials, added, "It's immaterial. If Mexico is allowing this to happen, they bear a large part of the responsibility."....

US Marines Convicted of Alien Smuggling to Be Sentenced

A US Marine Corps recruiter stationed in Laredo, TX who was convicted of transporting three illegal Mexican alien women on July 22, 2005 will be sentenced on February 13, 2006. Victor Domingo Ramirez, 27, faces up to 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000.00 fine for his crime. During the re-arraignment hearing, the United States presented evidence proving that on July 22, while in uniform and driving a US Government van, Ramirez knowingly transported three illegal aliens. At the time, Sergeant Ramirez was an active-duty member of the US Marine Corps stationed in Laredo, Texas, as a recruiter. The minivan was an official government vehicle assigned to the Marine Corps recruiting station in Laredo, and Ramirez was wearing his Marine uniform. The second US Marine recruiter charged in this case, Sergeant Vic Martin Martinez, 31, also of Laredo, has also been convicted after pleading guilty to knowingly making a materially false statement to federal agents. Martinez, who rode as a passenger in the government vehicle driven by Ramirez, lied to federal agents about his reasons for traveling to San Antonio in the government minivan with Ramirez. Martinez pleaded guilty Oct. 11, and faces a maximum punishment of five years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine....

Activists on Right, GOP Lawmakers Divided on Spying

Despite President Bush's warnings that public challenges to his domestic surveillance program could help terrorists, congressional Republicans and conservative activists are split on the issue and are showing no signs of reconciling soon. GOP lawmakers and political activists were nearly unanimous in backing Bush on his Supreme Court nominations and Iraq war policy, but they are divided on how to resolve the tension between two principles they hold dear: avoiding government intrusion into private lives, and combating terrorism. The rift became evident at yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into the surveillance program, and it may reemerge at Thursday's intelligence committee hearing. "There are a lot of people who think you're wrong," the committee chairman, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), told Gonzales. Specter asked why surveillance requests were not taken to the FISA court "as matter of public confidence." "The overriding issue that's at stake in these hearings is the stance of the administration that they're going to decide in secrecy which laws they're going to follow and which laws they can bypass," said Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's project on criminal justice. Conservative Web sites and blogs appear to be "fairly evenly divided" on the NSA program, he said. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) joined Specter in challenging Gonzales's assertion that Congress implicitly approved the surveillance tactics when it voted to authorize military force in combating terrorism shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks....

Republican Who Oversees N.S.A. Calls for Wiretap Inquiry

A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program. The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why. Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists. The congresswoman's discomfort with the operation appears to reflect deepening fissures among Republicans over the program's legal basis and political liabilities....

Senior House Republican wants answers on wiretap program

The Republican Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has issued 51 questions to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on President Bush's warrantless wiretap program. The letter, issued to Gonzales today and acquired by RAW STORY, demands answers to myriad legal questions on the program, which involved eavesdropping on Americans' calls overseas. Sensenbrenner has given Gonzales a Mar. 2 deadline to respond. Combined with a move by the chairman of a House subcommittee on intelligence, and hearings in the Senate, the move is likely to signal that Republicans are not going to swallow the President's justification for the surveillance, and may be a precursor to hearings in the House. Still, Sensenbrenner seems to leave room for accepting the taps, at one point referring to them as "terrorist surveillance," the Administration phrase for the program....you can view the letter here.

Bush faces Congress revolt over spying

Congressional Republicans are threatening to force a legal showdown with President George W. Bush over his claim that he has the constitutional power to order domestic surveillance of Americans in the name of national security. Arlen Specter, Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, said on Wednesday he was drafting legislation that would require the administration to seek a ruling from a special US intelligence court on whether the spying programme was legal. The move could put the Republican-controlled Congress on a collision course with the administration, which has insisted that it is acting legally in monitoring calls and e-mails that might help disrupt future terrorist plots. Mr Specter said his proposed legislation would require the administration to take that issue to the Fisa court. He said the administration's claim "may be right, but on the other hand they may be wrong". He said the Fisa court should determine whether the programme is legal, and if it is not what changes would be required. Mr Specter's threat is only the latest sign that the NSA spying revelations have divided Republicans, with some in the party fearing that Mr Bush's expansive claims may pose a danger to civil liberties....

Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data

Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events. The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen. The two heads of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were the only judges in the country briefed by the administration on Bush's program. The president's secret order, issued sometime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and contacts overseas. James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, discovered in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information. He alerted Kollar-Kotelly, who complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the sources said. Yet another problem in a 2005 warrant application prompted Kollar-Kotelly to issue a stern order to government lawyers to create a better firewall or face more difficulty obtaining warrants. The two judges' discomfort with the NSA spying program was previously known. But this new account reveals the depth of their doubts about its legality and their behind-the-scenes efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence. The new accounts also show the degree to which Baker, a top intelligence expert at Justice, shared their reservations and aided the judges....

Homeland security keeping our country safe from kindergarteners

WHILE ATTORNEY GENERAL Alberto Gonzalez assures the U.S. Senate that the Bush Administration’s domestic eavesdropping program is a vital “early warning system” for terrorists, another homeland security measure strikes at a local elementary school. The kindergarten class at Lakewood’s Taft Elementary was planning a field trip to NASA Glenn Research Center. It’s a popular trip because it’s free, because the NASA staff already has age-appropriate tours that fit well with school curriculum, and, well, it’s outer space, for pete’s sake. They’ve got rocket ships. And NASA works the education angle hard. According to the agency, “A major part of the NASA mission is ‘To inspire the next generation of explorers . . . as only NASA can.’” And of course they talk about math and science. NASA says about 400 school groups took tours last year. But school principal Margaret Seibel says this year’s trip for Taft kindergarteners — we’re talking 6-year-olds here — had to be canceled due to homeland security concerns. Since new security regulations went into effect in May 1, 2005, access to the Visitor Center is restricted to United State citizens. All others might be terrorists. No tourists from France, no exchange students from Tokyo and, no foreign national kindergarteners on field trips. “I was told they would not make any exceptions,” Seibel says. Because two kids in the kindergarten class are not U.S. citizens, the teacher had to cancel the trip....