The Americas Post - Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher speaks to congress. Photo Credit: CBP

The U.S. Border Patrol is preparing to implement tougher punishments on undocumented immigrants entering the United States from Mexico, to change the revolving door policy that has been in place for years.

Instead of simply being sent back across the border to try again, immigrants captured on the U.S. side will now face harsher consequences for illegal entry.  These range from inconveniences like being bused hundreds of miles away to distant border crossings, to aggressive prosecution for criminal offenses in the United States or by Mexican authorities upon their return.

Young, first-time illegal aliens may be allowed a “voluntary return” option without facing criminal consequences.   Repeat offenders and smugglers, however, will be singled out for felony prosecution in the United States.

The U.S. Border Patrol is more able to develop such individualized sanctions now that the number of illegal entries has fallen sharply,  from 1.6 million in 2000 to only 327,577 last year.  At the same time, the Border Patrol has grown to 21,000 agents with 652 miles of pedestrian fencing and vehicle barriers in place at busy crossing points.

The new approach will “break the smuggling cycle and deter a subject from attempting further illegal entries or participating in a smuggling enterprise” by imposing “ideal consequences to impede and deter further illegal activity,” according to U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher.

A test program in the Tucson sector has already dramatically lowered the number of illegal immigrants released to Mexico without administrative or criminal penalties, says Border Patrol Tucson sector chief Rick Barlow.   Approximately 85 percent of illegal immigrants arrested on the U.S. side of the border were returned to Mexico without any penalty three years ago.  That figure has now been reduced to around just 10 percent of detainees.

The customized consequences are more expensive, the Border Patrol’s chief has admitted in testimony before Congress.   Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, however, have promised their budgetary support to meet the additional costs.

The Americas Post - It doesn't look like much, but this boat carried over a ton of marijuana

Federal authorities captured a Mexican motorboat with over a ton of marijuana north of Los Angeles early Wednesday,  arresting 10 suspects in the latest of a growing number of West Coast maritime smuggling attempts.

U.S. Border Patrol agents found the 27-foot craft packed with numerous bales of marijuana on the coast of Ventura County shortly before dawn, according to a news release from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Authorities also impounded two vehicles in the landing area suspected of involvement in the smuggling attempt.

Four of those arrested arrived on board the boat, while the other six were detained in the landing area, the agency reported.

In recent years improved security along the United States border with Mexico has increasingly forced traffickers to smuggle drugs and illegal immigrants north by sea.  Between January and October of 2011, authorities recorded 26 maritime smuggling attempts in the greater Los Angeles area, including seven in Ventura County.  Since then, 10 further cases included two in Ventura County and one in Santa Barbara County.

In response to increased activity in the Los Angeles area, authorities have extended the use of marine patrols, land-based surveillance and collaboration with the Mexican government.

The Americas Post - Al-Saadi Gadhafi wanted to go Al Puerto Vallarta. Photo Credit: AP

Mexican authorities said Wednesday that a surviving son of late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and three other relatives planned to enter Mexico under false names and hide at a Pacific coast resort.

The plan to smuggle in al-Saadi Gadhafi allegedly involved two Mexicans, a Canadian and a Danish suspect, all of whom have been arrested according to Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire.

The plot was discovered by Mexican intelligence agents in September as al-Saadi fled Libya shortly after his father’s downfall.  He never made it as far as Mexico, ending up in the Western African country of Niger where he currently resides.

The plotters allegedly flew to Mexico, opened bank accounts and bought safe houses in several parts of the country, including one just outside Puerto Vallarta.

“The great economic resources which this criminal organization has, or had, allowed them to contract private flights,” Poire told a news conference.

Poire named Canadian Cynthia Vanier as the group’s ringleader.  He said she had been picked up on Nov. 10 and is now under house arrest with three other suspects on suspicion of document falsification, human smuggling and organized crime.

Poire said Vanier “was the direct contact with the Gadhafi family and the leader of the group, and presumably was the person in charge of the finances of the operation.”

The plot also allegedly depended on a Mexican woman living in the United States, who Poire said obtained the falsified Mexican identity documents.

A Danish man acted as “the logistic liaison” for the plan, Poire said.  He said the alleged conspirators also traveled to Kosovo “and several Middle Eastern countries.”

The Mexican officials made no mention of Moammar Gadhafi himself being involved in the plan, and Poire did not say which relatives may have planned to accompany the son to Mexico. The elder Gadhafi fell from power in late August and was killed in Libya on Oct. 20.

Poire said that false documents were issued in the names of “Daniel Bejar Hanan, Amira Sayed Nader, Moah Bejar Sayed and Sofia Bejar Sayed.”  The Gadhafi name does not appear anywhere in the documents.

The Americas Post - The USA is not as attractive as it used to be. Photo Credit: Getty Images

Arrests of illegal migrants crossing the US-Mexico border have plunged to levels not seen since the early ’70s, according to tallies released by the US Department of Homeland Security, a major change which could affect the debate over immigration reform.

The Border Patrol apprehended 327,577 illegal crossers in fiscal year 2011, numbers not seen since the Nixon administration and a huge decline from the 1.6 million captured in 2000.

Over 90 per cent of the migrants caught on the south-western border were Mexican.  The number of illegals arrested at the border has been dropping over the past few years, but is down a record 25 per cent this year.

Census and labor data from both countries also show far fewer Mexicans arriving in the United States and many returning home instead.

”We have reached the point where the balance between Mexicans moving to the United States and those returning to Mexico is essentially zero,” Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said.    That opinion is shared by other migration experts.

Such a steep drop gives supporters of immigration reform ammunition to argue that now is a good time to tackle the issue. Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have already been fencing over the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the US.

Mr Gingrich says it would be heartless to kick out migrants who have worked and raised families here for years, while Mr Romney has attacked Mr Gingrich for supporting ”amnesty” for illegal residents, but not given a clear answer on what he would do.

Hispanics remain the fastest-growing group in the nation, but for the first time, according to US census data, that growth is driven more by births than immigration.

Mexican survey data show the amount of money sent back from the US is falling, from a peak of $US24 billion in 2007 to $US21 billion last year, according to Mexico’s Central Bank.

The reasons for the downturn in migration are multiple.

Increasing violence in Mexico has made the journey more dangerous, and smugglers have increased their fees to US$3,000 for a quick hop from Mexicali. Increased enforcement and tough new laws against illegal immigrants in Arizona and Alabama are taking a toll, and some Mexicans are seeing better conditions at home.

But immigration experts say the biggest cause of the steep drop is the US economy, which dipped into a recession in 2008 and continues sluggish growth.

The Americas Post - Calderon doesn't want so many crooks back

Mexican President Felipe Calderon this week accused the United States of dumping criminals at the border to avoid the cost of prosecuting them, and claimed the practice has increased violence in Mexico’s border region.

US officials have reported a record number of deportations in fiscal year 2011, and said the number deported with criminal convictions had nearly doubled since 2008.

“There are many factors in the violence that is being experienced in some Mexican border cities, but one of those is that the American authorities have gotten into the habit of simply deporting 60 (thousand) or 70,000 migrants per year to cities like Ciudad Juarez or Tijuana,” Calderon said at an immigration conference.

Among them “there are many who really are criminals, who have committed some crime and it is simply cheaper to leave them on the Mexican side of the border than to prosecute them, as they should do, to see whether they are guilty or not,” Calderon complained. “And obviously, they quickly link up with criminal networks on the border.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said Tuesday his agency deported nearly 400,000 individuals during the fiscal year that ended in September, the largest number of removals in the agency’s history.

Morton released the 2011 figures in Washington, saying about 55 percent of those deported had criminal convictions. Officials said that number was up 89 percent from 2008. The majority of US migrants, and deportees, are from Mexico.

The U.S. embassy did not comment on Calderon’s speech.

When undocumented Mexicans finish prison terms in the United States, they are transported to the border and released.  Both the United States and Mexico are experimenting with new communication channels for deportations, and U.S. officials said that they do warn Mexico when former inmates are considered particularly dangerous.

Mexicans with U.S. criminal records cannot simply be detained in Mexico if they have not violated the law there.  Officials in some Mexican border cities have complained about their inability to run criminal background checks on deported inmates to check for pending charges.

One famous deported convict, Martin Estrada Luna, is accused of becoming a cell leader for the Zetas drug cartel in the border state of Tamaulipas just over a year after being deported from the United States. Estrada, who had a long criminal record in Washington state, is now in custody in Mexico City, where he is accused of planning the murders of over 250 people.

Mexican police chopper hovers over prison riot

Mexican authorities have reported that a minimum of 20 prisoners were killed and 12 injured in Saturday rioting at a prison housing drug gang members  in the violent border city of Matamoros.

According to the Tamaulipas state government’s public security office, fighting broke out between two inmates but quickly spread among dozens more.

Federal and state police were called to assist guards in restoring order at the prison, the statement said. News video showed helicopters hovering above the prison’s gray watchtower.

The state public security office did not specify how the inmates were killed, what weapons were used or which gangs the prisoners belonged to.  Bodies are on the way to forensic officials for autopsies, the statement said.

Matamoros, in Tamaulipas state, is situated directly across the border from Brownsville, Texas. It has been an important theater in the ongoing war between the once-dominant Gulf cartel and the powerful Zetas paramilitary gang, as both struggle for control of the valuable drug- and human-smuggling corridor.

Violent riots are frequent in Mexican prisons, especially in the north, where rival gang members are often jailed in the same overcrowded institution.

Last week seven prisoners were killed in the state of Nuevo Leon, which borders Tamaulipas. In July, another 17 were killed in a riot at a prison in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso.

In addition to being unsafe inside, Mexican prisons can also be poorly contained.  Last year hundreds of inmates escaped, including 40 from the Matamoros facility in March.  In that case, 50 guards and the warden were held for questioning.

Last month, 32 prisoners broke out almost simultaneously from three jails in the coastal city of Veracruz, in a state that also borders Tamaulipas.

Yury Fedotov has a right to look concerned these days

Addressing the press after meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderón this week, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Director Yury Fedotov stressed the impact that organized crime has on that region as well as other parts of the world.

“These criminals are responsible for the death and misery of people across the globe through their increasingly diversified illicit operations,” said Mr. Fedotov “We have to remember however that such violent crimes form part of a much bigger, worldwide picture in which we face a complex and shifting threat; we have to remember that while the crimes are often violently local, our solutions must be global.”

His two day visit followed UNODC discussions with the Mexican Government as the two aim for a strategic alliance against organized crime in Central America. The meetings with President Calderón and other senior Mexican leaders covered topics from human trafficking and migrant smuggling to illicit drugs and corruption.

Reflecting on those most affected by organized crime, Mr. Fedotov expressed solidarity with the people of Mexico:  ”On too many occasions, it is the citizens who have become victims while attempting to pursue a peaceful existence.” Referring to last month’s massacre at a Monterrey casino, the Director pledged continued support to Mexico, whose location between South and North America makes it ground zero for transit of illicit drugs as well as people.

Before traveling on to South America, the Director praised Mexico’s fight against organized crime and warned the international community against viewing this as a localized problem.  Calling for greater cooperation on both regional and global levels, Mr. Fedotov said “tackling organized crime and the criminals behind these networks without international collaboration is futile. If this is done without considering the wider region, we simply run the risk of having criminal networks relocate to a new country.”

Susana Martinez was the only US governor to attend

Governors along the U.S.-Mexico border agreed on Thursday to study the possibility of shared databases to exchange suspect DNA and other biometric data in order to curb the flow of guns and drugs between the two countries.

The agreement was announced at the end of an annual conference of regional leaders from both sides of the border, which this year failed to attract many chief executives.

New Mexico’s Republican governor Susana Martinez was the only U.S. governor who attended, along with three governors (out of six invited) from the Mexican side.  Texas governor and US presidential candidate Rick Perry did not attend, nor did his state sign the final agreement.

Drug-related violence has skyrocketed along the border in the last few years, as the Mexican government, with U.S. backing, confronts powerful cartels smuggling narcotics, illegal immigrants and weapons across the 2,000-mile long zone.

“The hope is that every convicted criminal (deported from the United States) will return with biometric information that follows him back into Mexico,” said Baja California governor Jose Osuna.  That data could then be used by Mexican authorities to fight crime, he said.

As Mexican President Felipe Calderon points out, voracious U.S. drug consumers are partly responsible for the violence, which has killed more than 42,000 people in Mexico during his five years in office.

Calderon has also complained about the flow of U.S. guns across the border, including high-powered assault weapons used in the drug battles that are becoming a daily occurrence.

The Governors at the meeting called on U.S. officials to better track weapon sales and expressed support for President Barack Obama’s efforts to stem the flow of guns.

Nearly three decades old, the annual conference is designed to soothe tensions along the busy dividing line.  Last year, Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer canceled after her Mexican counterparts protested that state’s tough immigration laws. This year she declined again at the last minute, claiming she had to attend to “pressing state government business”.