Eideard

As long as police officers have worn uniforms and carried badges, criminals have dressed like them to try to win the trust of potential victims. Now the impersonators are far more sophisticated, according to nearly a dozen city police chiefs and detectives across the country.

In South Florida, seemingly an incubator of law-breaking innovation, police impersonators have become better organized and, most troubling to law enforcement officials, more violent. The practice is so common that the Miami-Dade Police Department has a Police Impersonator Unit.

Since the unit was established in 2007, it has arrested or had encounters with more than 80 phony officers in Miami-Dade County, and the frequency has increased in recent months, said Lt. Daniel Villanueva, who heads the unit.

“It’s definitely a trend,” Lieutenant Villanueva said. “They use the guise of being a police officer to knock on a door, and the victim lowers their guard for just a second. At that point, it’s too late.”

He added that part of the problem was that it was easy for civilians to buy “police products,” like fake badges, handcuffs and uniforms. “The states need to lock this down and make impersonating a police officer a more serious crime because we’re seeing more people using these types of these things to commit more serious crimes,” he said…

Some police impersonators commit violent crimes like home invasions, car-jackings, rapes and, rarely, murders…

Other police impersonators, police chiefs and detectives say, masquerade as officers for more benign reasons, like trying to scare or impress someone. “Usually,” Detective Baez said, “the wannabe cop outfits their vehicles with police lights and fake insignias to fulfill some psychological need…”

Impersonating an officer is a misdemeanor in some states, though it is a felony in Florida. The charge’s severity, and punishment, increases if a criminal charged with posing as a police officer commits a felony. Several chiefs and detectives say the crime is not taken seriously enough by the justice system and the public. Often, the crime goes unreported, the police say.

Detective Hernandez, of Biscayne Park, Fla., said: “People minimize it. They just let it go. They won’t think about how dangerous this potentially can be. They just don’t see it.”

I agree. We’ve had a few of these in recent months here in New Mexico. One of the wannabe coppers had a buddy who was deputy sheriff – who helped him buy the real deal at a local police supply store. Absolutely illegal.

Way too likely some of these crooks are spending their energies in the commission of crimes – and given the size of our undocumentado population – a number of victims never report the crimes because they’re afraid of being deported. A handy-dandy convenience store for gangsters.

Which one will you be hiring to cut your lawn?

A lot of Americans don’t like illegal immigration. But what they like even less is the idea of having to live without the labor provided by illegal immigrants. There you have the great contradiction that lies at the heart of the U.S. immigration debate — one that must be confronted and reconciled if it is ever going to be resolved…

Now, a Texas state representative offers more clarity. Republican Debbie Riddle has proposed a bill that creates harsh punishments for those who hire illegal immigrants. House Bill 1202 calls for up to two years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines….

But wait. There’s a loophole in Riddle’s bill: The person doing the hiring has to be acting “intentionally, knowingly or recklessly.” That’s too many adverbs for me. You’ll note that hiring an illegal immigrant is already a federal offense under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, but one of the reasons that the law’s employer sanctions are rarely enforced is because — under the statute — an employer has to act “knowingly,” and that’s hard for a prosecutor to prove…

And, in the provision of Riddle’s proposal that is causing the most outrage, there is also an odd exemption: The person hiring an illegal immigrant is in the clear if he or she is doing so “for the purpose of obtaining labor or other work to be performed exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence…”

That reminds me. Let’s have a word about illegal immigrant labor. The myth persists that the only reason Americans hire illegal immigrants is because the undocumented will work for lower wages than American workers demand to do the same jobs. It’s a popular narrative because it makes U.S. natives seem almost noble, as if they won’t let themselves be exploited.

But, in truth, it’s only half the reason that illegal immigrants are in such great demand in the United States. There is also the little-discussed fact that they’re dependable and work hard, qualities that many Americans have unfortunately long since abandoned.

I guess Ruben has been away from – or never experienced – manual labor in construction trades.

Thousands of Hispanic and Anglo New Mexicans lost their jobs and were replaced by undocumentados. And the only response of the state – was to start issuing driver’s licenses for illegals – to get to work legally, I guess.

A 32-year-old man from Palm Springs, California, was arrested Wednesday on federal charges of threatening U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, in two profane phone messages to McDermott’s Seattle office.

The messages were left, according to court records, as Congress was debating a tax and unemployment insurance bill that was eventually passed and signed into law on December 17…

Charles Turner Habermann is charged with threatening a federal official in two voicemails on December 10, according to the complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle. That charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, prosecutors said.

In the first voice message, a man authorities identified as Habermann threatens to kill McDermott, his friends and family.

“I’ll round them up, I’ll kill them, I’ll kill his friends, I’ll kill his family, I will kill everybody he (expletive) knows.” Habermann allegedly said in the voicemail message, according to an affidavit filed in federal court by FBI special agent Dean W. Giboney.

“I’d like to remind you McDermott that if you read the constitution all the money belongs to the people. None of it belongs to government,” Habermann allegedly said in the voicemail, according to the affidavit…

Habermann told agents that he never had any intention of hurting anyone because he had too much to lose, referring to a $3 million trust fund, the affidavit said.

What a wonderful guy.

In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that illegal immigrants can be eligible for the same reduced tuition at public colleges and universities as legal residents of the state.

The ruling is the latest in a series of high-profile battles about state immigration policies. In addition to Arizona’s strict new immigration law, which the United States Department of Justice has challenged in court, nine other states have laws similar to California’s, with lawsuits pending in Nebraska and Texas.

Currently, students who attend at least three years of high school in California and graduate are eligible for in-state tuition at public schools, which can save them as much as $12,000 a year compared with students who come from other states.

Illegal immigrants remain ineligible for state or federal financial aid.

The California court ruled that the 2001 state law does not conflict with a federal prohibition on education benefits for illegal immigrants based on residency, in part because United States citizens from other states who attend high school in California may also benefit…

“This law makes higher education affordable for so many students who have the added difficulty of not being eligible for federal financial aid,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “If they are both ineligible for aid and then face higher tuition rates, it becomes virtually impossible for students to go on to higher education.”

In hard times – which is where we are at – I find it hard to reconcile decisions like this with budget-cutting for schools and education programs.

Liberal largesse is great in an economy of abundance. That has nothing to do with this chunk of economy after 8 years of Bush/Cheney corruption and theft.

17th naturalization ceremony in Iraq for those serving in the U.S. Armed Forces

The US Congress is poised to vote this week on a bill that offers more than 2 million young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, a move that will re-open the toxic debate on the issue ahead of the November mid-term elections…

The bill is being introduced by the Democratic Senate leader, Harry Reid, and is facing widespread opposition from Republicans.

The Democratic party sees it as a no-lose situation. If the Republicans vote against, the Democrats hope this will cement their position as the party of the Latinos… NSS.

The bill would allow young illegal immigrants to become citizens if they have completed a university or college education or served two years in the military.

Barack Obama promised during this presidential run that he would introduce legislation to provide the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants, most of them Latinos, with a route to citizenship but has so far failed to deliver. This measure, even if the chances of passage appear at this stage to be slim, would go part way towards achieving that…

The Pentagon, struggling to maintain levels of recruitment in the face of troop demands in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, is among the backers of the bill.

In a tactical device by the Democrats, the bill has been tacked on to legislation approving defence spending for next year, making it harder for the Republicans to obstruct it. If the defence spending approval is held up the Pentagon will have to seek emergency funding elsewhere…

The proposed measure leaves the Republicans in a bind. If Republicans vote against the measure it will help the Democrats portray them as anti-immigration in the run-up to the elections in November in which a host of Senate and House seats and governorships will be at stake.

Some smart politics by the Dems. For a change. They could have been pushing the Republicans like this for months.

Fits perfectly with the bigotry of the teabaggers, too. As the assorted Tea Party factions continue to gain strength within the Republican Party, their nativist bigotry forces the opportunist Old Guard to move further to the right.

Immigration officials now have access to the fingerprints of every inmate booked into jail in all 25 U.S. counties along the Mexican border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced, touting the program as a way of identifying and deporting “criminal aliens.”

Napolitano’s announcement came as immigrant rights activists criticized the fingerprinting program, known as Secure Communities, after obtaining documents showing that more than a quarter of those deported under its auspices had no criminal records…

That charge is baseless, DHS officials said. Secure Communities gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement the ability to check the fingerprints of those arrested against a database that will show whether they have ever been deported or otherwise had contact with immigration agents…

By some estimates, as many as a million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S. have committed crimes, Morton has said. ICE often is unaware of them, even when they are in jail or prison…

Secure Communities makes such notifications automatic. ICE says the program has identified more than 262,900 illegal immigrants in jails and prisons who have been charged with or convicted of criminal offenses, including more than 39,000 charged with or convicted of violent offenses or major drug crimes says…

In the first 10 months of fiscal year 2010, 142,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records were deported, ICE says, one-third more than in the same period of the prior year. About 50,000 non-criminals were removed.

I live in a county where the best guesstimate is that 15% of the population is undocumentados.

The way Secure Communities is implemented in the largest city in New Mexico – is that the only fingerprints regularly checked by ICE are of folks under arrest, booked into jail.

Awaiting sentencing on federal fraud, money-laundering charges

Jury selection has begun in the trial of a former kosher slaughterhouse owner and four workers accused of thousands of child labor violations, such as allowing teenagers to use meat grinders and exposing children to dangerous chemicals.

The trial begins as the former manager of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Sholom Rubashkin, awaits sentencing on 86 financial fraud convictions. Prosecutors asked a federal judge at a sentencing hearing last week to give Rubashkin 25 years in prison…

The state filed the charges in September 2008, about four months after an immigration raid at the plant led to the arrest of 389 workers…

“Throughout their employment, these children were exposed to dangerous and/or poisonous chemicals including … dry ice and chlorine solutions,” Assistant Attorneys General Thomas H. Miller and Laura Roan wrote in the original complaint.

That complaint also claimed that children under 16 were allowed to use meat circular saws and power washers…

He also claimed the plant asked for workers’ driver’s licenses and birth certificates, and it wasn’t the company’s fault if people lied.

Roan, the assistant attorney general, wrote in her response that Billmeyer, Althouse and Freund “reasonably knew” that the information provided to them was false. Their guilty pleas to charges related to the hiring of illegal immigrants showed this, prosecutors said.

I’ve posted on the topic before. Meatpackers are the archetypical example of union-busting and sleazy practices – using undocumentados to cut wages and benefits.

RTFA. This is an industry where average wages were better than $18/hour twenty years ago. And, now, underage workers risk life and limb for $7.50/hour – without public complaint.

Sue and Rob Krentz celebrating 100 years of their family ranch – 2008

The murder of a prominent Arizona rancher near the Mexican border is spurring charges that Washington is doing too little to stop Mexico’s raging drug war from spilling over into the United States.

Robert Krentz was shot last Saturday while working at his remote cattle ranch some 30 miles northeast of Douglas on the Arizona-Mexico border.

Investigators tracked the footprints of the suspected gunman about 20 miles south to the border with Mexico, prompting some authorities to blame smugglers or illegal immigrants for the killing.

“The ranchers have feared for their lives for a long time and they’ve told the people from Washington, but they don’t pay attention to us,” Michael Gomez, the mayor of Douglas, told Reuters.

“This continues to be a hot area for illegal crossings and they have to do something to stop it…”

The killing comes amid ever-more brazen and brutal attacks by cartels in northern Mexico that are fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes into the United States…

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security expressed “outrage” on Thursday at Krentz’s murder and posted a $25,000 reward for “information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the individual or individuals responsible…”

The area in southern Arizona where Krentz was murdered lies on the edge of a furiously trafficked corridor for both drug and human smugglers.

Without additional security, residents in Douglas said Krentz’s murder left many angry and fearful for their own safety.

Governor Bill, here in New Mexico – not for the first time – sent National Guards down to the Mexican border to patrol.

Many snowbirds who traditionally roll south for the winter in RV’s and trailers to home-up for the cold season along the Mexican border are staying further north in New Mexico and Arizona – or going further west into California. The open spaces which always allowed for free camping – also facilitate the best routes for smuggling, the most danger for retirees trying to enjoy a warm, dry winter.

Canadian officials are investigating more than 300 people who claimed to have shared a home in Mississauga, Ontario, says the (Toronto) Globe and Mail.

Now, that’s high population density!

The newspaper said Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating the alleged cases of citizenship fraud, a crime that Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney recently deemed a rising matter of concern in Canada…

A building manager at Palestine House, which resides in the same building as the address in the fraud investigation, told the Globe and Mail that individuals also received child benefit checks at the address despite the fact they did not live at the address.

Then, in a completely unrelated report…

At least four Toronto-area drivers who had their licenses suspended in court drove away when they left, a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. report said Tuesday.

The broadcaster aired a report it compiled last week in which news crews followed the first four men whose licenses were suspended and recorded them driving away.

The charges the men faced weren’t published, although the CBC said one of the men who drove away from the courthouse has 34 driving convictions and nine license suspensions.

Those of us who have survived absolutely identical standards of policing and jurisprudence – down here in New Mexico – actually are heartened to know we haven’t an exclusive patent on bureaucratic incompetence.

Hundreds of gang members and their associates in 83 U.S. cities were arrested in a weeklong sweep dubbed “Project Big Freeze,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

ICE said last week’s operation was its largest to date targeting transnational gangs. Almost half of the 476 arrested were members of gangs with ties to Mexican, South American and Asian drug cartels.

Twenty-six of the arrests were in South Texas, including nine in San Antonio, 14 in the Rio Grande Valley and three in Laredo…

The South Texas arrests targeted members of the Mexican Mafia, Texas Syndicate, Latin Kings, Hermanos Pistoleros and Vallucos, the latter an emerging gang in the Rio Grande Valley, said ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda…

In Wednesday’s announcement, ICE pointed to the arrests of career criminals on parole or immigration violations, including the Chicago arrest of a Mexican citizen in the Latin Kings and the Philadelphia arrest of a Ukrainian member of the Warlocks motorcycle gang.

According to ICE, 517 suspects were arrested in 83 cities across the country. Forty-four of the arrests were made in the Charlotte region including Gastonia (28), Charlotte (9), Bessemer City (4), Mount Holly (2), and Stanley (1). An additional 10 arrests were made in the Winston Salem area…

ICE says street gangs are often tied to foreign-national members and they are involved in a variety of activities including human smuggling and trafficking, narcotics smuggling and distribution; identity theft and benefit fraud; money laundering and bulk cash smuggling; weapons smuggling and arms trafficking; cyber crimes; export violations and other crimes…

Of the 476 arrested, 151 were U.S. citizens and 366 were illegals who will face deportation now or once their criminal prosecution is complete, authorities said.

These are reports from newspapers in just two of the cities within the range of the drug busts. Was there any coverage in your local press, TV talking heads?

Here in New Mexico, TV stations will cover a story like this. Not my local newspaper, though. I searched the Santa Fe New Mexican for “Project Big Freeze” – and got weather reports. Too many local businesses rely on undocumentados to keep their margins up.