HIS PANIC !!!!! It's getting ugly out there!!!!!!!!!!



There's no safe place for Hispanics, Latinos do to a heavy wave of fear mongering, scapegoating and racial profiling by some Anti Immigrants, Anchor News, ICE and even school officers.

The deportation of a high school student in Roswell, N.M., presents yet another example of the need for immigration reform.

Last November, Karina Acosta, a senior at Roswell High, was dropping off a student at a middle school when a police officer noticed she was blocking a fire lane.

The officer followed Ms. Acosta to the high school, and ticketed her when he discovered she had no driver's license. He asked her for proof of legal U.S. residency. An Undocumented immigrant, Ms. Acosta had no documentation. He called immigration authorities.

Thus, even though Ms. Acosta was a senior at the school and making good grades, she was sent back to Mexico.

Teachers, parents and other people in Roswell are upset over the incident, the Associated Press reports. They may have legal justification from a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that guarantees children who are in the country illegally the right to a public education.

Federal authorities generally do not enforce immigration policy on school grounds, AP notes. But the officer in the case was a member of Roswell's police force who was assigned to the school.

After parents protested the action, the officer was taken off the school beat and the program that placed him at the high school was suspended.

In a similar case in 2004, three students who were arrested at an Albuquerque high school on immigration charges sued the police, who later settled, reports the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Making students vulnerable to deportation at school interferes with their right to public education, said Jennifer Moore, who teaches human rights and refugee law at the University of New Mexico.

School is supposed to be a safe place, and the 1982 law indicates a right to education for young undocumented immigrants. But the larger issue has to do with immigration policy as a whole — it is in disarray.

Ironic but truthfully when we talking about to secure our borders and ports. Why isn't somebody fencing in Miami, Florida, San Diego Beaches, where is the fence at Malibu beach, Long Beach, Ca. Port, Oakland,Ca port? The real terrorist they caught was coming out of Canada with his trunk full of bombs.

The Border Patrol agent was a 30-year veteran. He walked me across a patch of desolation to the Mexican border. There was no border fence there yet. Just Arizona desert, a dusty dry creekbed, and Mexican desert beyond, indistinguishable from the United States.
If you want to hear philosophical reflections from an agent, you have to talk to old-timers. The hundreds of new Homeland Security-era officers who have flooded the border are extremely well trained - the Border Patrol academy is a monster among law enforcement training programs - and they are certainly gung-ho. But the old guys will tell you the new ones don't know the territory very well. There are fine points it might take 30 years to learn.
"My dad was a rancher," the veteran agent said. "I'm a rancher. I come out here and you know who I chase? Ranch hands and farmers." He wiped his brow, toed some possibly Mexican dirt. "Buddy, I am chasing my own people."

This hotly contested stretch of sand and cinders stands to become a beneficiary of the $1.2 billion border fence that will seal off the southern American border. Well, it will seal off part of it. OK - it will seal off small areas of the border. Just east of where we stood, for example, the fence will stop. There are big scary mountains in place that will be included in the plan as natural immigration barriers. These are the same mountains over which many of the undocumented are already walking to avoid the good men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol.
But, the thinking goes, we have to start somewhere. On the Mexican side, among much gnashing of teeth, there is a joke that has been circulating the whole time. The gist of it is: Let them put up a fence! They'll hire us to build it! Then, when it's done, we'll run the tourist concessions and the taco stands. Then, when they get tired of it, they'll hire us to tear it down!

What are you getting for your 1 billion tax dollars? Well, you're getting a little less than 700 miles of fence. Much of it double-fencing, but substantial segments to be single-fence. That's the kind of security that has so successfully kept kids out of closed softball fields and skinny-dippers from midnight visits to neighborhood swimming pools.

Al Qaeda will weep with frustration when they encounter it and just go home.
Critics like to point out that the plan had originally called for triple-fencing, but somehow the folks who brought us Katrina relief can't manage that on a budget.

Critics also seem to enjoy reminding us that the border is 2,000 miles long. Of course, that would be as the crow flies. If you ironed out the Southwest, spread its many mountains (Homeland Security Immigration Barriers) flat, then pulled the squiggles and turns of the Rio Grande straight, how long would it really be? Buddy, that's a lot of fence for them ranchers to ride.
What is a border? According to Webster's, it is a margin. If one were to look at the margins of the United States, 700 miles of rockin' chain-link might not seem like enough. Although it's macho - it lends the desert a sense of WWF Steel Cage Death Match - a glance at the Canadian border suggests that it's even less secure than we hope. That same Border Patrol veteran pointed out to me that the one real terrorist they caught was coming out of Canada with his trunk full of bombs. And, of course, those 9/11 bastards were "legal aliens."
However, if we keep staring at the map with Zen clarity, a new revelation offers itself. I'll warn you, it takes work. But we suddenly see there is another border of the United States. It's called a coastline. Talk about unprotected. Why isn't somebody fencing in Miami? They hate us for our thongs, people. Where is the fence at Malibu?
Of course, terrorism is only part of the paradigm - it's illegal immigration, stupid.
California has long struggled with remaining a good neighbor while bringing the hammer down. It might have rankled to read the insensitive Mexican jokes about the border fence, but the Golden State Fence Company actually did hire "illegals" to build border fences in San Diego. Not only that, of course, but they seem to have used the undocumented to build fences at military bases, immigration jails and Border Patrol stations. They were fined $5 million in 2006; if you think about it, when you combine the cost-cutting involved in the illegal workforce and the hefty fine, the actual cost of the border fence might have shrunk by several percentage points. Voters and columnists might express outrage, but federal border agents are realists and ironists - they shake their heads and laugh. They know a snafu when they see it.
It's one thing to fence off a few miles of California or Arizona. It is quite another to try to fence off the meandering bed of the mighty Rio Grande in Texas. Somehow, much of the border has remained, for all its media and political notoriety, invisible. Nothing reveals this more than the Rio Grande. (Or, as those darned Mexicans call it, El Rio Bravo - the untamed or brave river.) One of the most interesting border books to appear in recent days is Keith Bowden's "The Tecate Journals." He somewhat maniacally canoes the entire length of the river. The book shows a major American riverine ecosystem that remains ignored and reviled - perhaps because it is also the border barrier of record. Beavers and deer - who knew?
Strangely, a coalition of Texas mayors came up with a proposal to strengthen the border while avoiding the fence. They suggested that the river itself be dredged and deepened and widened. The natural demarcation line between our nations, in other words, could be revived and cleaned up to do its ancient work. Fences? We don't need no stinkin' fences! A plan due to fail.

The problem in Texas is simple - 180 miles of proposed fence must follow the river, but not get too close to the river, because the river itself is the classic illegal alien and will change course, wiggle under fences, even erode banks and topple fences and open big gaps. Obviously, Mexico will stop at nothing - if an old truck won't bust the fence, they'll send a river. So the fence must, at certain points, be built up to a mile from the banks of the river.
Unfortunately, landowners (ranchers and farmers again) have lived on this land for hundreds of years. Some farm plots along the river have been in the same families since 1767. Mexicans were living there eating frijoles before American revolutionaries ate baked beans at the signing of the Constitution? That's awkward.

Although it is true that everyone ought to be willing to suffer for the security of the nation, in Brownsville, the fence line has cut off a section of the college's soccer field and given it back to Mexico. Gen. Santa Anna is rising from his grave, rubbing his hands in glee: He's actually getting back some of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The Chicago Tribune quoted the mayor of Brownsville on Jan. 16: "To appease people in middle America, they are going to kill our communities along the border. The rest of America has no idea how we live our lives here. We are linked by the Rio Grande, not divided by it." Linked? By a border? Not divided? What a concept.
If Americans want security, then they should get real security. If you really want a border fence, build a real border fence. I have some nephews in Tijuana who need work. But please, Mr. Chertoff - fence off Cannery Row while you still can.

Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of "The Devil's Highway" and "The Hummingbird's Daughter." He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His blog is http://lavistaluisurrea. blogspot.com

Minutemen get new adopted highway stretch, farther from border. The risk is in the potential for disruption to the operation of the state highway as well as public safety.



SAN DIEGO—Getting moved farther away from the border might the beginning of the end of anti-illegal immigration group San Diego Minutemen's participation in an Adopt-A-Highway program.

The California Department of Transportation said Monday that the group can't sponsor a two-mile stretch of Interstate 5 near a Border Patrol checkpoint, saying it poses "a significant safety risk."

"The risk is in the potential for disruption to the operation of the state highway as well as public safety concerns for the traveling public and volunteers in the program," Caltrans district director Pedro Orso-Delgado said but did not elaborate.

Although the Minutemen will get another stretch on State Route 52 in San Diego—far from the Border Patrol checkpoint—even that might prove temporary. Caltrans said it was reconsidering whether the group was eligible for any piece of highway.

"We have received information during the past couple weeks that warrants a closer look at the San Diego Minutemen relative to the eligibility criteria for this program," Orso-Delgado said. "The department will pursue this review in an expeditious fashion."

Caltrans did not elaborate on the review and a spokesman did not respond to a phone call Monday night, but its statement said groups that advocate violence, discrimination or illegal activities cannot participate in the program.

San Diego Minutemen founder Jeff Schwilk did not immediately respond to a phone
message Monday night. In November, Caltrans granted a permit for the Minutemen to tend to trash on a two-mile northbound stretch, north of San Diego, near where Border Patrol agents stop motorists and search for illegal immigrants hiding in cars. Adopt-A-Highway signs were emblazoned with the group's name.

Immigration advocates welcomed Caltrans' decision.

"We said from the get-go that those signs were going down," said Enrique Morones, who heads Border Angels, a group that provides water for people who cross the border illegally in remote areas. "Civility prevails."

The Minutemen boasted on its Web site that it removed 15 bags of trash from their own mess.

Why being to obsessed to deported Hispanics specially Mexicans? Why?. I had never heard someone from other Nationality facing deportation or was deported and put their names on Newspapers main pages. Why? Mexicans heading into a black hole where the power of vitriol fuels a lust to target a specific group of people

Student protest after deportation leads to new policy.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- The Tucson Police Department and the Tucson Unified School District no longer will summon Border Patrol officials or immigration authorities to school grounds, officials said.

Tuesday's announcement came hours after dozens of students marched against a family's deportation that played out at two Tucson schools.

Nearly 100 students assembled outside Catalina Magnet High School early Tuesday and marched to the Federal Building and eventually Tucson police headquarters, protesting the process that allowed U.S. Border Patrol agents onto their campus.

The student march was sparked by last week's deportation of a high school student and his family after school officials found a small amount of marijuana in the boy's backpack. The officials called police, who notified the Border Patrol after learning that his family was living here illegally. The family's younger son, attending middle school also was pulled from class and deported.

"We're mad because immigration came into our school," said 16-year-old Mario Portillo, one of the protesting students. "The kid broke the law. He was wrong. This isn't about him."

The effect has been chilling, one of Portillo's classmates said.

"Some students aren't going to school because they don't feel safe," said Lizeth Grijalva, 17. "We can't have this at schools."

TUSD Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer and Assistant Police Chief Roberto Villasenor met late Tuesday morning to discuss the incident.

"They came to an agreement that what happened on Thursday will not happen on a campus again," said Chyrl Hill Lander, a TUSD spokeswoman. "The implementation of immigration law will not be done on school grounds."

Tucson police officers no longer will call Border Patrol agents to schools or churches, Villasenor said. However, police will provide information to the federal government that will allow those officials to follow up on the investigation, he said. The change is based on Border Patrol policy not to respond to schools or churches unless agents are asked to do so.

Under the new policy, Border Patrol agents never would have been called to the high school, although the family of the boy who allegedly brought pot to campus still may have been deported.

Amy Rezzonico, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Education, said she had not heard of deportations resulting from an on-campus incident. School officials are forbidden to ask about a student's legal status, she noted.

"We can't ask. That is a federal law," she said. "We educate students regardless."

Warren Allison, TUSD's school-safety coordinator, said school officials had to contact police because the student was caught with drugs.

"By state law, if you have contraband, we have to call the police," he said. "After that, it's on them."

As students gathered in front of Police Department headquarters, Pfeuffer relayed the same message.

Grijalva, a senior, said the students wanted an explanation from police about why Border Patrol agents were notified this time.

Villasenor said the arresting officer learned through the course of the investigation that the boy and his family were in the country illegally.

"We are obligated to notify the proper authorities when we become aware of criminal activity," he said.

When some of the protesting students learned of the new policy, they said they were glad it barred immigration officials from schools, but they remained concerned about local police enforcing federal immigration laws.

"I still think the Police Department shouldn't be allowed to ask someone about their citizenship," Portillo said. "That's not their job. Their job is to keep us safe and ensure our rights."

The students said they began organizing the march late last week by sending each other text messages and e-mails.

As the students marched through the streets Tuesday, they chanted, "Si se puede" and "We are students, not criminals," and carried signs that read: "Migra out of our schools."

Villasenor and Pfeuffer both acknowledged that the students had protested peacefully and sparked an insightful discussion. Pfeuffer also told the students that it's important to have these kinds of talks in a school setting, not just during protests.

TUSD's regular absence policy will apply to students who took part in the nearly five-mile march, Lander said. A student with a parent's note or whose parents called to explain the absence will be excused.