U.S./Canada Border station

Nobody crossed the border with proper screening...Another comedy perspective of the Border Patrol agents at the Borders. You be the judge.

Frozen River at the Northern Border

Frozen River at the Northern Border.



film about borders, both physical and psychological, "Frozen River" (Sony Classics) is the somber, understated but dramatically effective feature debut from writer-director Courtney Hunt.

It opens with the arresting image of a woman silently but passionately weeping, then gradually unfolds the reasons for her despair. Upstate New York working-class mom Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), we learn, has just been abandoned by her gambling-addicted husband, who's taken with him the down payment on the family's desperately needed new trailer home.

So, leaving her 5-year-old son, Ricky (James Reilly), in the care of his 15-year-old brother, T.J. (Charlie McDermott), Ray sets off to retrieve the funds. Her hunt leads instead to a violent confrontation with Lila (Misty Upham), a local Mohawk woman now in possession of the deadbeat's abandoned car.

A former cigarette smuggler, widowed Lila has more recently turned to transporting undocumented aliens across the ice-covered St. Lawrence River from Canada into the United States. Wielding a gun, she compels the normally timid Ray to make such a run, assuring her that, since she's white, the patrolling troopers will let her pass unchallenged.

Though shaken by the ordeal, Ray is drawn to the financial rewards of this human trafficking and volunteers to make another trip. As she and the reticent Lila slowly bond, their repeated border crossings become riskier and they become increasingly desensitized to the plight of the people they're ferrying.

Yet by the film's conclusion, a series of harrowing events breaks the cycle of victimization, pulling both women back from the moral margin across which they've strayed.

An unflinching study of hard times, racial divisions, the plight of migrants and the lure of fast money, "Frozen River" is also, ultimately, a celebration of barrier-transcending friendship, rediscovered decency and the quiet, self-sacrificing heroism that makes for a morally satisfying, if less than happy ending.

Leo and Upham give powerfully restrained performances, with Leo in particular presenting a fully rounded character whose flaws and limitations are as clearly delineated as her virtues. Every detail of the Rust Belt setting adds to the air of authenticity.

The film contains a human trafficking theme, some rough and crude language, and a brief strip-club scene without nudity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Empirical Image. Sealing the U.S. Mexico Border doesn't match the reality. .






To maintain a climate of uncertainty and fear of immigrants, it is necessary to portray the border region as unstable, porous, and the source of society’s ills. Despite being accepted as biblical truth, the image does not really match the reality.

The U.S.-Mexico border is the most traversed border in the world. With an average of 250 million crossings annually, only less than 1 percent estimated occurs without authorization and attracts all of the political attention.

In San Diego alone, over 70,000 Mexicans cross over daily, mainly to buy consumer goods. In 2003, shoppers spent $40.8 billion in the local economy, adding an extra $3.3 billion through sales tax. Considering there are several major twin cities that straddle the border, Mexicans help sustain the whole border economy by contributing taxes and creating jobs.

While the regularized influx of migrant workers is nothing new, the shaping of the imagery is a recent phenomenon.

According to Peter Andreas:

Public perception is powerfully shaped by the images of the border which politicians, law enforcement agencies and the media project. Alarming images of a border out of control can fuel public anxiety; re-assuring images of a border can reduce such anxiety…[therefore], successful border management depends on successful image management and this does not necessarily correspond with levels of actual deterrence.

This “image management” is used in the current context to criminalize migration while moving the focus away from the real issues. While no “terrorists” have been caught crossing through the Arizona desert, there is the permanency of fear (and perpetuation of the belief) that terrorists are coming across, blending into the stream of migrant workers.

The other phantom of border enforcement, drug trafficking, is also linked with migration through the “unguarded wastelands.” In fact, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report in the aftermath of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the further opening of the borders to cargo traffic, it was estimated that most cocaine coming into the U.S. entered through official ports of entry, occasionally with the collusion of corrupt customs agents.

According to José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, federal deputy attorney general and the head of the elite SIEDO anti-organized crime unit, the Mexican government is currently investigating possible links between state police in Baja California and U.S. Border Patrol agents in drug trafficking.

Migrants themselves face the greatest danger along the border. Pushing the crossing routes into the desert and mountains has created a human rights tragedy. Dying at the rate of one a day, casualties on the border will soon surpass the number of people killed on 9/11, and are ten times the number of people who died escaping over the Berlin Wall. Border militarization has not stopped migration, only imposed new, deadly rules on it.

But the biggest smuggler or coyote is the U.S. immigration system that forces them into such a perilous journey in the interests of big business in the first place.

Lou Dobbs reported his madness, fear and bigotry against Mexico and Mexicans.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Transcript from Yesterday. Click here.

LOU DOBBS TONIGHT

Flooding Costs Rises; University of Iowa Campus Flooded; Taliban Attacks on the Rise; Your Food Safety; Border Security Crisis

Aired June 16, 2008 - 19:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


LOU DOBBS, HOST: Tonight tens of thousands in Iowa still unable to return to their homes. Floodwaters in some cities are beginning to recede tonight, but there are new concerns now for towns along the Mississippi River, as those waters are rising.
The shocking results tonight of a Congressional investigation into our broken borders after years of promises and billions of dollars, it's as easy as ever to cross into this country, especially from Mexico

SCHIAVONE: In a study that preceded the latest tomato scare, the Harvard School of Public Health found more than half of those surveyed only barely trust the food inspection process. More than half do not trust food imports from communist China and almost half don't trust foods from Mexico

The FDA reports the overwhelming majority of tomatoes consumed in the U.S. at the time of the salmonella outbreak were from inside the U.S., Central Florida and outside the U.S., Mexico.


How Schiavonne, Lou Dobbs and FDA found out Salmonella outbreak is from Mexico? When they had admitted there is no regular inspections or enough inspectors.!!

SCHIAVONE: Not only will they not reveal what the chain is, which wouldn't all of us like to know what the chain is. They won't even say what the region of the country was that this chain was located in, but they know they have this cluster of nine people that they feel they can now do a more disciplined trace back.

DOBBS: I've got to say Congress should be removing everyone at the top of the FDA right now. They should just be simply removed and get out of the way because they're not public servants. They're not acting responsibly or intelligently or effectively.

What in the world are they doing? Secondly, the idea that there is no inspector in the field either in Central Florida or Mexico, more than a week after this outbreak, a week and a half.
What!!!!!!!! That's your answer Lou blame Mexico for your arrogance and your ignorance....

SCHIAVONE: They don't have anybody in any farm anywhere because they say they just don't know where to go.

Another example how Lou Dobbs pandering and make waves of Anti Immigrant sentiment against Mexico and Mexicans..

it's as easy as ever to cross into this country, especially from Mexico.

A new Congressional investigation tonight shows what we've been reporting on this broadcast literally for years. That our borders remain virtually wide open, that our border with Mexico is wide open, and as Casey Wian now reports, undercover investigators had a more than 90 percent, 90 percent success rate as they tried to enter this country illegally.

Casey Wian relied on a GAO SECRET INVESTIGATIVE report performed on 2006.

Even the test with explosives or Radioactive Material were performed on the Northern Border. Why he didn't Mentioned Northern Border.(Canada)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is an undercover tester for the Government Accountability Office packing phony radioactive material and then smuggling it across unguarded sections of the U.S./Mexico border. The same GAO study of border security over the past five years found that even at legal crossing points testers were able to use fake ID to enter illegally 93 percent of the time.

GAO concluded that terrorists or other criminals could use counterfeit identification to pass freely through most of the tested ports of entry with little chance of being detected.

None of this Investigative report from Casey Wian mentioned Northern Border either Canada just Mexico.. Why?
Even they didn't took the time to read this Important statement on page 7.

Safety considerations prevented our Investigators to performing the same assessment work on the U.S./Mexico Border as performed on the Northern Border. In Contrast to our observations on the Northern Border, Our Investigators observed

The blind side of Lou Dobbs on War on drugs. B.C. Cannabis on the Northern Border.




Stopping smugglers is left to a multitude of government agencies and agents on both sides of the border. The political intrigue and sovereignty issues symbolized by anti-smuggling efforts became clear to me when I tried to interview top government bureaucrats in Ottawa and Washington, DC. Obfuscation, unreturned phone calls and non-responsive answers were the rule rather than the exception.

Because they are losing the war, officials are unwilling to provide stats or policy statements regarding smuggling. They're embarrassed. Federal officials in both nation's capitols sheepishly told me to contact local offices of the US Border Patrol and Customs Service, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Vancouver.

When I spoke to representatives of local agencies, I found them to be candid, affable and good-humoured about the obvious challenge of interdicting the total Canadian marijuana outflow. They seem like nice people.

"We're doing as much as we can," said Gene Davis of the US Border Patrol, "but marijuana is just one of many things we're trying to catch. We have a serious alien smuggling problem because Canada has a relatively open policy toward Third World immigrants, and that's a stepping stone for them entering the United States. The Southern border has gotten all the attention for so many years, but when Congress found out that even terrorists were coming across the northern border, and how few agents we had up here, they were really shocked."

Davis says that seizures of Canadian marijuana are up six hundred percent over last year's figures.

"Seizures are up because demand has increased, and so has supply. Why? Because the Canadian marijuana is so potent, between 25 to 30 percent THC, and everybody wants it. The BC bud is second to none in the drug world. The Blaine office has to patrol a very busy corridor which covers from the top of the Cascades west and includes the Olympic peninsula. There's lots of rugged hills and mountains. There are roads parallelling each other on both sides. We've asked for more manpower, and it looks like we might get it, but we've got so much territory, they could give us another 100 officers and it wouldn't be enough," he said.

US Border Patrol Intelligence Specialist Dave Keller says 42 agents are responsible for interdicting the 40 mile smuggling corridor near Vancouver.

"If we're getting more than two percent of what's coming across, we're lucky," he says. "The bulk of it is in commercial vehicles, but an average load is 35 pounds, enough to fit in one duffel bag. We haven't had the resources to examine the sea routes, and we don't think the air routes are significant. Many of the people we catch are ethnic minorities, like Central and South Americans who are also involved in gun and hard narcotics smuggling.

"We're seeing a rapid infiltration of organized crime, apparently a more rapid infiltration than what happened on the Mexican border. They're bringing marijuana south and sending guns, meth, cocaine and heroin. Definite Hells Angels involvement, Asian Triads, the works. Sometimes we see personal use smugglers: people who pick up one to three pounds of BC bud and bring it across for their own smoke."

The safe of the Canadian Border still remained on the limbo. Unknown how many people enter U.S. We don't know how many were taken across for sure but being picked up by co-conspirators in the U.S. Koreans came to Canada because they could enter the country without a visa.


A one-time Windsor resident is one of seven suspects from Canada facing extradition to the U.S. to face charges of operating human smuggling operations that sent approximately 100 undocumented workers to the United States in the last two years.

A U.S. indictment says that Jun Park, 50, whose last known residence was in Windsor, was involved in picking up illegal aliens arriving at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, charging them US$5,000 to $10,000, housing and feeding them and dropping them at night in remote areas on the Canada-U.S. border.

Park was one of four suspects arrested in Toronto recently.

RCMP investigators also arrested Chol Ming Jang, 49, his wife Dal Sung Jang (also known as Seonee Jang) 44, and Sang Hoon Lee, 35, all from the Toronto area. They appeared in Ontario court in Toronto Nov. 19.

In addition, Sang Soo Ko, 28, was arrested in Seoul, South Korea by the Korean national police service's international crime squad, according to indictments made public by Thomas Anderson, U.S. attorney for Vermont.

A sixth suspect, Myong Ho Tong, 46, is believed to be a resident of New York and is being sought there by U.S. agents.

Also arrested in an accompanying sweep of the second smuggling ring based in Quebec was Jose Manuel Galdamez Serrano, a native of El Salvador, believed to be from Montreal.

RINGLEADER

He has been described by U.S. authorities as the ringleader of the second, so-called Galdamez Organization.

Two other suspects from that alleged ring were also arrested: Ruben Damas Hernandez, 29, and Norvin Gonzalez-Morales, 26.

The indictment states that U.S. and Canadian authorities broke up the two conspiracies, based in Toronto and Montreal, responsible for smuggling as many as 20 people a month into the U.S. from a variety of countries, including Korea, Pakistan and India, and Central America.

Cpl. Cathy McCrory, a media relations officer with the RCMP in Toronto, said Park was apparently the only Windsor connection to the alleged conspiracy and there is no evidence that the Windsor-Detroit border crossings played any role in the operations.

Staff Sgt. Ed McNorton, media relations officer for the Windsor Police Service, said Park was never under investigation in the Windsor area and is unknown to police.

Attempts to reach Park's relatives were unsuccessful. McCrory said it is not known if Park is a Canadian citizen.

According to the U.S. indictment, Park was charged with bringing at least five aliens to the United States border on or about Nov. 21, 2006.

After picking them up at the airport, he housed them, waiting for an opportunity to bring them to the international border, either through New York State or Vermont.

McCrory said the illegals were dropped at the border at night and were expected to travel on foot on paths through heavy forest, avoiding major roads and sometimes running through bush for several miles, before being picked up by co-conspirators in the U.S.

It is believed they were then driven to large cities on the East Coast, such as New York or Boston, where they disappeared into the population.

We don't know how many were taken across for sure," said McCrory.

"Approximately 100 over a two-year period in 13 separate attempts.

"They were let go in heavily wooded areas, despite the enforcement there, and covertly got across the border."

McCrory said the majority of those smuggled were Koreans. She said they came to Canada because they could enter the country without a visa. But they would not have had the proper paperwork or visa to enter the U.S. and would likely have been refused entry.

Why they would risk running the border rather than applying for a visa, McCrory said, remains a mystery.

"I don't know why they wouldn't do that," she said. "It would be interesting to get their perspective."

McCrory said the arrests have effectively broken up the two smuggling rings, with no outstanding warrants remaining. But she added that investigators believe there are other human smugglers operating in border areas and investigations are ongoing.

McCrory said the Jangs can fight extradition since they are Canadian citizens. She said that Park, and other suspects arrested whose citizenship status is unknown, will also go through some formal process and won't simply be handed over.

If convicted, they could face up to 15 years in prison on each charge.

U.S. judge questions Canadian's border arrest. All media back in Croatia are covering this story and it was covered by a number of Canadian media outlets but not from CNN; Isn't Lou Dobbs talking about broken borders? Immigration? So why is that Mr. Lou? or just because he Isn't a Mexican?

DETROIT -- A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday questioned why a Canadian citizen, accused of war crimes and facing possible deportation to Croatia, wasn't simply turned back instead of being arrested when he tried to drive across the Windsor-Detroit border a month ago.

United States Magistrate Judge Virginia Morgan also asked for briefs to be filed by Dec. 19 on whether U.S. District Court even has jurisdiction to hear the case of Kitchener long-haul trucker Goran Pavic, 42, arrested Nov. 7 on an Interpol war crimes warrant.

He is accused of ethnic cleansing in his home town of Vukovar in the early 1990s. A Croatian court, which added Pavic's name to a lengthy war criminals list in 2006, alleges that the ethnic Serbian helped burn down Croatians' homes, beat a man, and a took a number of people off buses at gunpoint, 35 of whom are still missing.

The father of four has lived in Canada for 10 years and crossed into the United States hundreds of times as a trucker, the last few years for Provider Transportation and Logistics.

One day after receiving an Interpol "red alert," however, U.S. customs agents arrested Pavic.

"He had not yet cleared customs," Morgan said of Pavic's most recent attempt to enter the U.S.

"What we have done is taken this Canadian citizen and instead of turning him around and letting the Canadians deal with him ... we're going to deal with this."

U.S. attorney Karen Reynolds argued that it is normal procedure for U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to arrest somebody with an outstanding warrant trying to enter the country.

Pavic's lawyer Linda Babich argued that, in fact, many Canadians are simply turned back at the border, though she noted that her client even has a government-issued FAST Pass for speedier border crossing.

Babich asked that her client be transferred from Wayne County jail to a less dangerous facility. So the judge ordered him moved to the lower-security Milan federal prison.

Some 20 friends and family packed one side of the courtroom to support Pavic who, sitting in grey pants and shirt emblazoned on the back with Wayne County Jail Prisoner, listened to the proceedings through a Serbian translator.

When the burly Canadian was led from the courtroom, a number of his supporters yelled encouragements and gave the thumb's up sign.

Pavic's sister Gorana Krstic, who has previously acted as family spokesperson, said she could not really address the case on her lawyer's advice.

"We're all expecting him to be home very soon," Krstic said. "It has been very hard because he is in jail for nothing."

Tuesday's proceeding was covered by a number of Canadian media outlets, as well as by Croatian national television.

"This is a really big story back in Croatia," said Branka Slavica, the network's Washington correspondent, who likened the Vukovar incident in Croatia to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that came to define the war in Bosnia. "All media back in Croatia are covering this story."

Why in the World we continue diminishing, stereotyping, criticizing, provoking, instigating, and making derogatory statements against Mexicans and Mexico because they can not control the Border? Why we are not criticized our Norther Border?
Border Patrol found 150 pounds of Marijuana in three Hockey bags. I did not know Drug dealers playing Hockey? Did you?


Border Patrol agents find 150 pounds of pot in Bottineau County.

A Border Patrol agent working with a police dog unit found 150 pounds of marijuana west of Lake Metigoshe, near the Canadian border in Bottineau County, authorities say.

Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Brett Baumann said the pot was found Nov. 26, on a routine patrol, in three hockey bags and six plastic garbage bags. He estimated its street value at around $500,000.

The hockey bags had no markings to indicate where they came from, he said.

"Somebody walked them across the border is the assumption," Baumann said.

"There are no suspects, and the investigation is continuing," he said. "The Canadian authorities are doing their thing up there, and our U.S. guys are, as well."

Feds: Human smuggling spiking in WA region.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.

SPOKANE, Wash. - Federal authorities in Spokane say the smuggling of humans across the U.S. border near Danville, northwest of Spokane, is spiking.

The special operations supervisor with the Spokane Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol told The Spokesman-Review that during the last two months, Border Patrol agents grabbed 11 undocumented immigrants.

Lonnie Moore says that total is more than the total for the previous fiscal year. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Border Patrol arrested 10 undocumented immigrants in the Danville area.

Moore says the latest arrests came late last week when Border Patrol agents, tipped by a local farmer, spotted eight Korean citizens, including two children, walking through a field in the United States. The Border Patrol says the Koreans couldn't speak English.

The Border Patrol says the Koreans were being led by Harry Edward John Harrison, a Canadian citizen, who was arrested on federal smuggling charges.

Harrison was ordered held in jail after an initial appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno.

The Korean citizens likely will be deported after being processed through U.S. immigration proceedings, unless they are repeat offenders. The juveniles, a 12-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, also face likely deportation