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MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press:
"A baseball players agent illegally smuggled Cuban players into the United States, eventually shipping them to California in hopes that they would be signed by major league teams, federal immigration officials said Tuesday.
The agent, Gustavo "Gus" Dominguez, is charged with paying four aides to transport the athletes and other Cubans to the U.S. in two trips from the island nation. Dominguez, of California-based Total Sports International, has represented several Cuban baseball defectors, including Andy Morales, who was signed into the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox minor league systems after fleeing Cuba six years ago.
Also charged in the 53-count federal indictment were Geoffrey Rodrigues, Robert Yosvany Hernandez, Ramon Batista, and Guillermo Valdez."
New America Media ("NAM") bills itself as "the country’s first and largest national collaboration of ethnic news organizations."
Lately it has cranked out several immigration stories:
Yesterday We Marched, But Today We Wait;
Fearing a Knock at the Door - The Black Undocumented Life;
A Wild-Eyed Gamble with the GOP’s Future;
Mapping the Movement; and
The banners at the meeting read "Somos America," or "We are America." Mexican and Asian immigrants there invoked the dignity of all immigrants, whether legal or not, and declared the current system for entering this country "broken."
Outside, a small group of U.S. citizens held signs of their own: "Wake up and smell the invasion," and "Honk if you want the borders secured."
This showdown took place Oct. 22--not in El Paso, Texas, or Tucson, Ariz., but in the western suburb of Carol Stream. Nearly 1,500 miles from the Rio Grande, border security and illegal immigration have emerged as defining issues in two bitterly contested congressional races in the Chicago suburbs. By OSCAR AVILA and JOHN BLEMER for the Chicago Tribune.
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) -- public enemy number one at pro-immigration marches in Chicago last spring that drew hundreds of thousands of protesters -- attended a press conference to support Roskam's bid for the 6th Congressional District seat in the west suburbs. About a dozen people protested outside the downtown event. DAVE NEWBART in the Chicago Sun-Times.
PAMELA COLLOFF in the November 2006 issue of Texas Monthly: "His name was Ezequiel Amaya Escobar, although no one knew who he was when his body was discovered one morning last August under a mesquite tree. He was lying five and a half miles from the nearest paved road, in a stretch of South Texas scrubland that Spanish explorers once called El Desierto de los Muertos, or the Desert of the Dead. The austere landscape, which extends from Kingsville to Raymondville, is a patchwork of ranches that includes two of the largest in the country: the King Ranch, to the north, and the Kenedy Ranch, to the south. A Border Patrol checkpoint stands roughly in the middle, on U.S. 77, and Ezequiel had died trying to walk around it. When he was found, his head was resting on his backpack, as if he had stopped in the wilderness to take a nap. He almost looked alive; he had thick black hair that fell just below his ears, and his face was soft and round. But his lips were cracked, his eyes wide open. He was thirteen years old."
P.S., President Bush today signed into law the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but "a leading House Democrat, Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who served with the Border Patrol for more than 26 years before running for Congress, charged today that the bill 'represents the worst in election year politics.' Reyes, a member of the House armed services and intelligence committees, called it 'an empty gesture for the sole purpose of sending a false message about the security of our nation.'"
But a year and a half later, with many of her friends planning proms and applying to college, Ms. Bah, now 18, was still wearing an electronic ankle bracelet and tethered to a 10 p.m. government curfew, restrictions that were conditions of her release. And she was still facing deportation to Guinea, where she has not lived since she was 2. By NINA BERNSTEIN in The New York Times.
Here in a state where the wave of border crossers is so great that it washes over every aspect of life, illegal immigration is a flash point in virtually every political race this fall. Moreover, there's a candidate for every view - from those saying "send 'em back and bar the door" to those who'd provide a path for citizenship for some undocumented workers. By GAIL RUSSELL CHADDOCK for the Christian Science Monitor.
DNA testing has emerged as a powerful and sometimes controversial tool for U.S. residents seeking to help overseas relatives enter the country legally. The tests have been invaluable for thousands of citizens or permanent residents who want to sponsor relatives but lack birth certificates or other documents to prove the family relationship. But some immigration lawyers worry that U.S. authorities are increasingly requiring DNA tests even when the paperwork is in order -- adding substantial costs and delays to an arduous process. N.C. AIZENMAN in the Washington Post.
The bad news seems worse when one considers that as Hispanics gain in the U.S. population, the share of Hispanics in poverty doubled from 12 percent in 1980 to 25 percent in 2004. Recent immigrants fared worse. In 2006, the U.S. government drew the poverty line at $20,000 annually for a family of four, or a little more than $1,600 a month. But for those newly arrived from Latin America, the average monthly salary was $900, according to a new report released this week by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). By MARCELA SANCHEZ in the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
Bribery of federal and local officials by Mexican smugglers is rising sharply, and with it the fear that a culture of corruption is taking hold along the 2,000-mile border from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego. By RALPH VARTABEDIAN, RICHARD SERRANO, and RICHARD MAROSI for the Los Angeles Times.