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Cross-border firefight shocks U.S. lawmen Hundreds of rounds of automatic weapons fire rained down on South Texas sheriff's deputies and Border Patrol agents in Hidalgo County last night from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. The deputies were answering a call from two U.S. citizens who swam across the river to escape a gunfight at a Mexican ranch, reports the Monitor newspaper of the Rio Grande Valley. The two American brothers are suspects in other criminal investigations, said Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño, according to the report. The brothers reportedly called 911 at 7:45 p.m. saying gunmen burst into their family ranch in Mexico, killed a ranch hand and kidnapped their father. The brothers were able to make it across the river to the U.S. where they continued to attract gunfire – even after law enforcement authorities arrived. When several deputies and four Border Patrol agents took the two brothers back to the riverbank to see if they might find any evidence or the shooters, they were met with a hail of gunfire – alternating from the south and east, suggesting some of the shots were also fired from U.S. territory. The fire continued for almost 10 minutes, according to authorities....
Bribery At Border Worries Officials Federal law enforcement officials are investigating a series of bribery and smuggling cases in what they fear is a sign of increased corruption among officers who patrol the Mexican border. Two brothers who worked for the U.S. Border Patrol disappeared in June while under investigation for smuggling drugs and immigrants, and are believed to have fled to Mexico. In the past month, two agents from Customs and Border Protection, which guards border checkpoints, were indicted for taking bribes to allow illegal immigrants to enter the United States. And earlier this month, two Border Patrol supervisory agents pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $200,000 in payoffs to release smugglers and illegal immigrants who had been detained. Authorities say two factors are causing concern that larger problems may develop: The massive buildup of Border Patrol agents in recent years has led to worries that hiring standards have been lowered; and, as smugglers demand higher and higher fees to bring illegal immigrants into the United States, their efforts to bribe those guarding the border have intensified. While the main corruption problem along the border is still among Mexican law enforcement officials, there have been numerous arrests of U.S. officers, too. Last year in Texas, for example, 10 federal agents were charged with or convicted of taking bribes from drug dealers or human smugglers. Also last year, a U.S. Justice Department operation arrested 17 current or former military and law enforcement officers who were paid $220,000 by undercover agents to allow counterfeit drugs to cross into Arizona. In 2004 and 2005, federal authorities in Arizona uncovered numerous relationships, including marriages, between Border Patrol agents and Latina women illegally in the United States....
Senate denies funds for new border fence Less than two months after voting overwhelmingly to build 370 miles of new fencing along the border with Mexico, the Senate yesterday voted against providing funds to build it. "We do a lot of talking. We do a lot of legislating," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican whose amendment to fund the fence was killed on a 71-29 vote. "The things we do often sound very good, but we never quite get there." Mr. Sessions offered his amendment to authorize $1.8 billion to pay for the fencing that the Senate voted 83-16 to build along high-traffic areas of the border with Mexico. In the same vote on May 17, the Senate also directed 500 miles of vehicle barriers to be built along the border. But the May vote simply authorized the fencing and vehicle barriers, which on Capitol Hill is a different matter from approving the federal expenditures needed to build it. Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who historically has fought to increase border security and enforcement of federal immigration laws, was among those who opposed Mr. Session's amendment. "We should build these walls; there's no question about it," he said. "But the real issue here is the offset that's being used, and the offset creates a Hobson's choice for almost everyone here." Mr. Session's amendment would have required across-the-board cuts to the rest of the Homeland Security appropriations bill, Mr. Gregg said, which would mean cutting 750 new border-patrol agents and 1,200 new detention beds for illegal aliens that he included in the bill....
Senate votes to patrol Canadian border with remote-controlled aircraft Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rancher Gloria Fey has gotten used to the idea that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents could be watching her every move. Fey said she and her husband, Albert, often joke about giving border protection agents an eyeful whenever the couple answers nature's calls while fixing fences out on their Hi-Line ranch located just a mile from the U.S.-Canadian border. The U.S. Border Patrol now uses high-altitude airplanes, low-flying helicopters, ground-based sensors and cameras and uniformed officers to monitor the border. With that much activity already, Fey said she and her husband aren't worried about losing their privacy if the agency puts new remote-controlled surveillance airplanes along the U.S.-Canadian line. The Senate this week approved a plan pushed by Montana Sens. Conrad Burns, R, and Max Baucus, D, and inserted into the 2007 Homeland Security spending bill to require the border agency to test an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at one of its three Northern Border Air Wing bases. The measure now goes to the House for consideration. Critics say the unmanned planes are too expensive and unreliable and could open the door to real-time aerial snooping by a host of government and police agencies....
Criminal immigrants not being deported Border Patrol agents say immigrants convicted of crimes are remaining in the United States because of a lack of space in detention centers. J.T. Bonner, an agent in San Diego and president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing agents, said the problem is getting worse, the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune said. "We don't have enough money for bed space," he told the Tribune. "We don't have the resources to check the prisons." Under federal law, non-citizens convicted of crimes are supposed to be deported once they have served their sentences. A report by the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department said many are released because there is no place to hold them while deportation hearings are held. The report said that 8,500 more beds in detention centers are needed. The report also said that between 2001 and 2004 30,000 immigrants with criminal records were identified in prison, in traffic stops or by other means and were not deported.
Activists want sheriff to stop arrests Hundreds of immigrant-rights activists sparred with the sheriff of Arizona's most populous county Friday, calling him heartless for arresting illegal immigrants under a state smuggling law. More than 200 protesters marched through a small area of downtown Phoenix and stopped in front of the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known for female chain gangs and forcing inmates to wear pink underwear. Protesters walked diagonally through an intersection and met Arpaio on the other side. "Sheriff, we are here to get on our knees and implore you to stop the hostility against the Hispanic community," said Elias Bermudez, president of activist group Inmigrantes Sin Fronteras, or Immigrants Without Borders. Bermudez knelt in front of the sheriff as he spoke, saying, "We believe that your enforcement of the law is an affront to the poor victims — the people who are coming here to work and serve this country."....
Agents find dead, dying in desert Border Patrol Agent J. Kicklighter admits to being an adrenaline junkie, which may be what it takes to save illegal immigrants lost in the inhospitable terrain of deep South Texas. A member of an elite Border Patrol unit focused on rescues, he can track someone with a faxed image of a shoe tread, or find a 911 caller by juxtapositions of windmills and mesquite trees mapped in his head. "It's not checkers," he said. "It's chess." The Border Patrol regularly releases tallies on rescues, which it defines as "any incident where lack of intervention by the Border Patrol would result in death or serious bodily injury." Since last Oct. 1, there have been more than 400 in the Rio Grande Valley sector - one of five sectors in Texas - compared with 159 all of the previous year. For the full U.S.-Mexico border, more than 2,350 rescues have been made so far this year; 2,577 were made the previous year....
Bush Would Let Secret Court Sift Wiretap Process After months of resistance, the White House agreed Thursday to allow a secret intelligence court to review the legality of the National Security Agency’s program to conduct wiretaps without warrants on Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists. If approved by Congress, the deal would put the court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in the unusual position of deciding whether the wiretapping program is a legitimate use of the president’s power to fight terrorism. The aim of the plan, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told reporters, would be to “test the constitutionality” of the program. The plan, brokered over the last three weeks in negotiations between Senator Arlen Specter and senior White House officials, including President Bush himself, would apparently leave the secretive intelligence court free to consider the case in closed proceedings, without the kind of briefs and oral arguments that are usually part of federal court consideration of constitutional issues. The court’s ruling in the matter could also remain secret. The court would be able to determine whether the program is “reasonably designed” to focus on the communications of actual terrorism suspects and people in the United States who communicate with them. That determination is now left entirely in the hands of the security agency under an internal checklist. If the court were to rule the program unconstitutional, the attorney general could refine and resubmit it or, conversely, appeal the decision to the FISA appellate court and ultimately perhaps the Supreme Court, officials said....
Secret court may end up hearing AT&T illegal surveillance lawsuit A lawsuit in San Francisco federal court accusing AT&T of illegally collaborating with the Bush administration's electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens would be transferred to a secret court accessible only to the government under new legislation backed by the White House. A provision of the bill introduced Thursday by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, would allow the government to move the AT&T case and all other lawsuits involving the surveillance program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in Washington. The three-judge court meets behind closed doors and hears arguments only from the Justice Department. The court was created in 1978 to consider government appeals from another secret tribunal that reviews requests for wiretaps and searches of foreign agents. "The government has a stacked deck and may be the only meaningful party in the litigation'' if Specter's bill becomes law, Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, said Friday. The foundation represents AT&T customers who sued in January over the company's alleged collusion with the National Security Agency surveillance program. That case was the first of about 30 suits filed around the nation challenging the program and telecommunications companies' participation in it....
U.S. Terror Targets: Petting Zoo and Flea Market? It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.” But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database. The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation. The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha. In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.” Even people connected to some of those businesses or events are baffled at their inclusion as possible terrorist targets....
Vermont judge rejects U.S. Supreme Court search ruling A Vermont District Court judge has rejected a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the power of police to search a private home, concluding that the state offers greater protections in such cases. Judge Robert Bent said that under the state Constitution police must knock and announce themselves before conducting a search, even if they have a warrant, or face the prospect that any evidence they find could be thrown out. The Supreme Court said June 15 that evidence obtained without first knocking could be used at trial, but Bent said that would not apply in Vermont. "Evidence obtained in violation of the Vermont Constitution, or as the result of a violation, cannot be admitted at trial as a matter of state law," Bent wrote, citing an earlier state case as precedent. "Introduction of such evidence at trial eviscerates our most sacred rights, impinges on individual privacy, perverts our judicial process, distorts any notion of fairness and encourages official misconduct." A defense lawyer in the Vermont case said Bent's ruling was an important statement. "Sanity prevails in Vermont," said attorney David Williams. Bent agreed with the dissenting opinion in the federal case, which said allowing otherwise illegally obtained evidence to be used could lead law enforcement officers to ignore the law....
A Year Later, Cybersecurity Post Still Vacant One year after the Department of Homeland Security created a high-level post for coordinating U.S. government efforts to deal with attacks on the nation's critical technological infrastructure, the agency still has not identified a candidate for the job. On July 13, 2005, as frustration with the Bush administration's cybersecurity policy grew on Capitol Hill, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the new assistant-secretary job opening. Critics say the year-long vacancy is further evidence that the administration is no better prepared for responding to a major cyber-attack than it was for dealing with Hurricane Katrina, leaving vulnerable the information systems that support large portions of the economy, from telecommunications networks to power grids to chemical manufacturing and transportation systems. "What this tells me is that [Chertoff] still hasn't made this a priority," said Paul Kurtz, formerly a cybersecurity adviser in the Bush administration and now a chief lobbyist for software and hardware security companies. "Having a senior person at DHS . . . is not going to stop a major cyber-attack on our critical infrastructures," he said, "but [it] will definitely help us develop an infrastructure that can withstand serious attacks and recover quickly."....
Agency recovers from computer break-ins The State Department is recovering from large-scale computer break-ins worldwide over the past several weeks that appeared to target its headquarters and offices dealing with China and North Korea, The Associated Press has learned. Investigators believe hackers stole sensitive U.S. information and passwords and implanted backdoors in unclassified government computers to allow them to return at will, said U.S. officials familiar with the hacking. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the widespread intrusions and the resulting investigation. The break-ins and the State Department's emergency response severely limited Internet access at many locations, including some headquarters offices in Washington, these officials said. Internet connections have been restored across nearly all the department since the break-ins were recognized in mid-June. Tracing the origin of such break-ins is difficult. But employees told AP the hackers appeared to hit computers especially hard at headquarters and inside the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, which coordinates diplomacy in countries including China, the Koreas and Japan. In the tense weeks preceding North Korea's missile tests, that bureau lost its Internet connectivity for several days....
No Prison for FBI Network Hacker, Judge Decides A government consultant who cracked the FBI's classified computer network and learned the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of the director, was spared a prison sentence yesterday. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon sentenced Joseph Thomas Colon to six months of home detention after finding that the computer consultant did not try to harm national security or use the information for his own benefit or profit. "This is not a case of al-Qaeda people trying to sneak into the FBI system," Leon said. Instead, it was a case of someone being "too clever by half." Colon, 29, pleaded guilty in March to four counts of intentionally accessing a computer while exceeding authorized access and obtaining information from any department of the United States. He could have received as much as 18 months in prison. Colon admitted he entered the system using the identity of an FBI special agent and two computer hacking programs found on the Internet to get into one of the nation's most secret databases. As a result, the bureau said it was forced to shut down its network temporarily and commit thousands of hours and millions of dollars to ensure no sensitive information was lost or misused....
Goodlatte: Bad Bet Bob Goodlatte says online gambling is illegal, and he wants to ban it. He sees no contradiction between these two positions. The Virginia Republican is co-author of a bill approved yesterday by the House of Representatives that threatens operators of online casinos and betting parlors with a five-year prison sentence. The legislation, which the Senate has not considered yet, also requires banks and credit card companies to block payments to such sites. Goodlatte says "it is time to shine a bright light on these illegal sites and bring a quick end to illegal gambling on the Internet." Yet he concedes that "under current federal law, it is unclear whether using the Internet to operate a gambling business is illegal." Confused? You're not the only one. The online gambling ban, which dictates what adults may do with their own money on their own computers in their own homes, is part of what Republicans proudly call their "American Values Agenda." Evidently those values do not include privacy, freedom of choice, individual responsibility, or free markets....