Chris Crane Testimony At Senate Immigration Hearing

Los Zetas drug cartel seizes 2 U.S. ranches in Texas

Via-Examiner

In what could be deemed an act of war against the sovereign borders of the United States, Mexican drug cartels have seized control of at least two American ranches inside the U.S. territory near Laredo, Texas.

Two sources inside the Laredo Police Department confirmed the incident is unfolding and they would continue to coordinate with U.S. Border Patrol today. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Word broke late last night that Laredo police have requested help from the federal government regarding the incursion by the Los Zetas. It appears that the ranch owners have escaped without incident but their ranches remain in the hands of the blood thirsty cartels.

Laredo Border Patrol is conducting aerial surveillance over the ranches to determine the best way to regain control of the U.S. ranches, according to the Laredo Police department.

The approximate location of the U.S. ranches are10 miles northwest of I-35 off Mines Road and Minerales Annex Road. Just off 1472 (Mines road) near Santa Isabel Creek south of the city of Laredo, Texas.

The Los Zetas drug cartel is an offshoot of the elite Mexican military trained in special ops. The mercenary organization is said to include members of corrupt Mexican Federales, politicians as well as drug traffickers. The group was once part of the Gulf cartel, but has since splintered and now directly competes with the Gulf cartel for premium drug smuggling routes in the Texas region.

The new leader of Los Zetas is Heriberto “El Lazca” Lazcano and is considered the most violent paramilitary group in Mexico by the DEA.

Recently the drug organization has kidnapped tourists, infiltrated local municipalities and continues to smuggle narcotics into a very hungry U.S. market.

The violence south of the border continues to spin out of control and has left Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on virtual lockdown with businesses refusing to open the doors. Last week a particularly violent attack by the Los Zetas included the use of grenades and resulted in a dozen deaths and 21 injuries.

The hostile takeover of the ranches has met with silence with local and national media; however sources say they could be waiting to report the stories once the ranches are back in U.S. control. This journalist questions if this was a Middle Eastern terrorist attack if the media would sit on their hands.

New Black Panthers, You're Free to Go -- Not So Fast, Arizona

Via-Townhall

Ann Coulter

So I guess all that hysteria about the Arizona immigration law was much ado about nothing. After months of telling us that the Nazis had seized Arizona, when the Obama administration finally got around to suing, its only objection was that the law was "pre-empted" by federal immigration law.

With the vast majority of Americans supporting Arizona's inoffensive little law, the fact that Obama is suing at all suggests that he consulted exclusively with the craziest people in America before filing this complaint. (Which is to say, Eric Holder's Justice Department.)

But apparently even they could find nothing discriminatory about Arizona's law. It's reassuring to know that, contrary to earlier indications, government lawyers can at least read English.

Instead, the administration argues, federal laws on immigration pre-empt Arizona's law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

State laws are pre-empted by federal law in two circumstances: When there is a conflict -- such as "sanctuary cities" for illegals or California's medical marijuana law -- or when Congress has so thoroughly regulated a field that there is no room for even congruent state laws.

If Obama thinks there's a conflict, I believe he's made a damning admission. There's a conflict only if the official policy of the federal government is to ignore its own immigration laws.

Only slightly less preposterous is the argument that although Arizona's law agrees with federal law, Congress has engaged in "field pre-emption" by occupying the entire field of immigration, thus prohibiting even harmonious state laws.

Field pre-emption may arise, for example, in the case of federal health and safety laws, so that manufacturers of cars, medical devices and drugs aren't forced to comply with the laws of 50 different states to sell their products nationally.

And yet, just over a year ago, the Supreme Court held that there was no "field pre-emption" even in the case of an FDA-approved anti-nausea drug because Congress had not explicitly stated that state regulation was pre-empted.

The drug, Phenergan, came with the warning that, if administered improperly (so that it enters an artery), catastrophe could ensue.

In April 2000, Phenergan was administered improperly to Diana Levine -- by a clinician ignoring six separate warnings on Phenergan's label. Catastrophe ensued; Levine developed gangrene and had to have her lower arm amputated.

Levine sued the health center and clinician for malpractice, and won.

But then she also sued the drug manufacturer, Wyeth Laboratories, on the grounds that it should have included more glaring warnings about proper administration of the drug -- like, I don't know, maybe a flashing neon sign on each vial.

Wyeth argued that since the Food and Drug Administration (after 54 years of study) had expressly approved the warnings as provided, state tort law was pre-empted by the federal drug regime.

But the Supreme Court held that Congress had to make pre-emption explicit, which it had not, so Levine was awarded $6.7 million from Wyeth.

If ever there were a case for "implicit pre-emption," this was it. Without federal supremacy for the FDA's comprehensive regulation of drugs, pharmaceutical companies are forever at the mercy of state and local laws -- and trial lawyers -- in all 50 states.

As much as I would like pharmaceutical companies to rot in hell for their support of ObamaCare, I might need their drugs someday. Now, drug prices will not only have to incorporate R&D costs, but also the cost of paying for trial lawyers' Ferraris. (Perhaps that should be listed as a side effect: "Caution! Improper use may cause nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, and six new houses for John Edwards.")

But the point is: According to the Supreme Court's most recent pre-emption ruling, Arizona's law is not pre-empted because Congress did not expressly prohibit state regulation of illegal aliens.

In fact, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the pre-emption argument against state laws on immigrants -- including laws somewhat at odds with federal law, which the Arizona law is not.

In the seminal case, De Canas v. Bica (1976), the court held 8-0 that a California law prohibiting employers from hiring illegal immigrants was not pre-empted by federal law.

The court -– per Justice William Brennan -- said that the federal government's supremacy over immigration is strictly limited to: (1) a "determination of who should or should not be admitted into the country," and (2) "the conditions under which a legal entrant may remain."

So a state can't start issuing or revoking visas, but that's about all it can't do.

Manifestly, a state law about illegal immigrants has nothing to do with immigrants who enter legally or the condition of their staying here. Illegal aliens have neither been "admitted into the country" nor are they "legal entrants."

Indeed, as Brennan noted in the De Canas case, there's even "a line of cases that upheld certain discriminatory state treatment of aliens lawfully within the United States." (You might want to jot some of this down, Mr. Holder.)

So there's no "field pre-emption" of state laws dealing with aliens, nor is there an explicit statement from Congress pre-empting state regulation of aliens.

On top of that, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld state laws on immigrants in the face of pre-emption challenges. Arizona's law is no more pre-empted than the rest of them.

Unless, of course, Obama is right and it's a violation of federal law to enforce federal immigration laws, which is the essence of the Department of Justice's lawsuit.

Arizona's Constitutional War Powers

Via-American Thinker

By James Carender

Given the levels of illegal migration and narco-trafficking across its southern border, the State of Arizona deserves America's commendation for the remarkable restraint it has exhibited in dealing with what has become a most serious international and domestic problem.

Arizona Senate Bill 1070, signed into law by Governor Janice K. Brewer on April 23, 2010, is a tiptoe exercise through an immigration minefield. In its essence, however, the law demands roughly no more of an individual than is required to open an account at the local video store. Indeed, the law presumes that one is not an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States if a valid Arizona driver license, non-operating identification license, tribal enrollment or identification card, or U.S. federal- or state- or local government-issued identification is presented, and if that issuing entity requires proof of legal presence in the United States before issuance of the identification card (Arizona Senate Bill 1070, Section 2). The bill appears intended to work hand in glove with federal immigration statutes and to "discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United States" (Section 1).


The route taken by the State of Arizona, enactment of Senate Bill 1070, is far less severe than it could have been if the route taken had been war, as granted to the states by the U.S. Constitution.

Article 1, Section 10, Cl. 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America provides that "[n]o state shall, without the consent of Congress ... engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay."

This section of the U.S. Constitution gives to the State of Arizona (or any other State) the right to engage in war if "actually invaded" or if there is "such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." This right is reserved to the states to be exercised without the necessity of obtaining the consent of Congress in the described exigent circumstances. Without question, the debate, should Arizona have chosen this road not heretofore taken, would have centered on the meaning of the terms "invaded" and "imminent danger." Those are, in fact, arguable issues. But if drug lords are posting sentries with AK-47s on hilltops inside the State of Arizona to protect drug transport routes, and if "coyotes" are ravaging the fragile Arizona desert with their never-ending human chains, then the debate is settled.


Enactment of Arizona Senate Bill 1070 should not have been necessary, nor should the State of Arizona ever be put into the position of having to choose war because of a "guarantee" in, again, the U.S. Constitution. Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution of the United States of America provides that

[t]he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and, on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

This section of the U.S. Constitution clearly mandates that the United States government shall protect Arizona against invasion and, on application of the Arizona legislature (or the governor when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence! President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Speaker Pelosi are not fulfilling their constitutional duty to protect Arizona from the long-enduring invasion of drug smugglers and illegal migrants.


In a well-documented article, Joe Griffith describes how progressive Democrat President Woodrow Wilson was faced with a violent border situation, in 1915, when Pancho Villa and his men conducted raids along the U.S.-Mexico border. Villa and his men launched a horrific raid against the people of Columbus, New Mexico, killing many of the residents and burning much of the town. President Wilson dispatched Brigadier General John J. Pershing and his troops to protect the border.


Our Constitution is not purely a charter of negative liberties. It places affirmative burdens of utmost importance squarely on the shoulders of the members of Congress and the president. The Constitution demands of our national leaders (and guarantees) that the United States shall protect every state in this union against invasion. There has been (and continues to be) a critical failure on the part of the president (the Commander in Chief) and the U.S. Congress when it comes to border enforcement and stopping the invasion. Pancho Villa's "invasion" and destruction were not the actions of a government, yet President Wilson exercised his authority under the Constitution to send federal troops to protect the border. The current "invasion" has not been shown to be an invasion by the government of Mexico, and the question arises why President Obama cannot do as president Wilson did and secure our southern border. The president did take an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," and that includes the Constitutional mandate that he shall protect Arizona and every other state from invasion.


The author is retired and a former felony prosecutor/assistant District Attorney in a Texas border town.

related-The DOJ’s Unsupported Suit Against the Arizona Immigration Law

Video-Hispanic Protest

Via-


MORGAN HILL (KRON) -- Racial tensions are high on the campus of Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill a day after five students were sent home for wearing clothing with American flags to school on Cinco de Mayo.

Several dozen Latino students walked out of class Thursday. Shouting "We Want Respect", the students marched to a nearby park where they held a rally.

Along the way, KRON 4's Rob Fladeboe witnessed a dispute with a group of students waving an American flag out the window of a pickup truck. One of the marchers grabbed the flag and hurled it to the ground. What followed was an angry confrontation in which both groups of students shouted obscentities at each other.

No one was arrested and there are no reports of injuries.

Thursday's activities follow word from the Morgan Hill Unified School District that the students who were sent home on Cinco De Mayo will not be disciplined.

"The Morgan Hill Unified School District does not prohibit nor do we discourage wearing patriotic clothing," Dr. Wesley Smith said in a written statement. "The incident on May 5 at Live Oak High School is extremely unfortunate. While campus safety is our primary concern and administrators made decisions yesterday in an attempt to ensure campus safety, students should not, and will not, be disciplined for wearing patriotic clothing. This matter is under investigation and appropriate action will be taken."

The five students went home Wednesday after they were told to remove the clothing or turn it inside out. School officials reportedly told them the shirts, pants, and bandanas showing the American flag could be offensive to Hispanic students and prompt campus fights.



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A Birthright? Maybe Not

Via-The Patriot Post

By George Will

WASHINGTON -- A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state." Therefore, "It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry."

Writing in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, Graglia says this irrationality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratified it in 1868? The authors and ratifiers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration.

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 begins with language from which the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause is derived: "All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." (Emphasis added.) The explicit exclusion of Indians from birthright citizenship was not repeated in the 14th Amendment because it was considered unnecessary. Although Indians were at least partially subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the United States. This reasoning -- divided allegiance -- applies equally to exclude the children of resident aliens, legal as well as illegal, from birthright citizenship. Indeed, today's regulations issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice stipulate:

"A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment."

Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois was, Graglia writes, one of two "principal authors of the citizenship clauses in 1866 act and the 14th Amendment." He said that "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" meant subject to its "complete" jurisdiction, meaning "not owing allegiance to anybody else." Hence children whose Indian parents had tribal allegiances were excluded from birthright citizenship.

Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent." Graglia says this decision "seemed to establish" that U.S. citizenship is "a consensual relation, requiring the consent of the United States." So: "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal."

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to illegal immigrant mothers. Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to persons whose presence here is "not only without the government's consent but in violation of its law."


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Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: NY Times: Anyone Who Disagrees With Us On Immigration Is A Racist Xenophobe

Just when I was feeling a little bad about how the NY Times had to take out a subprime mortgage on its headquarters and is on the brink of financial ruin, the NY Times editors reminded me why I shouldn't feel bad. In yet another use of the race card, the NY Times runs an editorial labelling those who support border security and enforcing existing immigration laws as racist xenophobes hell-bent on ethnic cleansing of Latinos.
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Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: NY Times: Anyone Who Disagrees With Us On Immigration Is A Racist Xenophobe

Is a Change in Migration Patterns at Hand?

Evidence keeps accumulating that the tide of immigration is ebbing. Tough enforcement laws passed by states like Arizona and Oklahoma and localities like Prince William County, Va., have reportedly spurred Latino immigrants to move elsewhere. Tougher enforcement of federal immigration laws may be having the same effect.

Classrooms in Orange County, Calif., are suddenly half-empty. Latino day laborers seem to be less thick on the ground at their morning gathering places. Remittances to Mexico and other Latin countries are down, and men are returning to some villages from the United States.More...

Latinos appear to account for a disproportionate share of mortgage foreclosures. The Census Bureau estimates that net immigration in 2007-08 was 14 percent lower than the average for 2000-07, and those estimates don't cover the period after June 30, when the recession really started hitting.

Demographic forecasters tend to assume that the long-term future will look a lot like the short-term past. That's why the Census Bureau estimates that there will be more than 100 million people classifying themselves as Hispanics in 2050, compared to 45 million today. But history tells us that trend lines don't go on forever. Sometimes they turn around and go downward.

We have had major Latino immigration now throughout the 25 years since the economic recovery of the early 1980s. But I think there is a possibility — not a certainty, probably not a likelihood, but a serious possibility — that we may be at an inflection point, at the beginning of a period in which Latino immigration will be substantially lower than it has been the past quarter-century.

We have seen such inflection points in migration before. When Leonard Bernstein wrote "West Side Story" in the 1950s, it seemed that the flow of Puerto Ricans to New York City would continue indefinitely. But in fact net migration from Puerto Rico dropped to just about zero in 1961, when average incomes on the island were about one-third the level of the mainland United States. The huge flow of blacks from the South to the North, which started in 1940 due to the labor demands of war industry and the invention of the mechanical cotton-picker, seemed likely in 1960 to continue on and on. But it stopped suddenly in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act passed, and today there is a small net migration of blacks from North to South.

Economics plays some role in this. The apparent downturn in immigration in the past 18 months is surely not unrelated to the recession that began, the National Bureau of Economic Research now tells us, in December 2007. The gaming industry in Las Vegas — then and for most of the preceding 20 years the nation's fastest-growing metro area — started declining in 2007, and net immigration to Nevada was down 16 percent in 2007-08 from the 2000-07 levels. And reports are coming in of Latinos leaving town as construction of giant hotels on the Strip is shut down by foreclosure.

But immigration is not just about economics. People move, I have come to think, in pursuit of dreams — or to escape nightmares. One of those dreams — home ownership in America — now seems much less attainable than it did just six months ago, with thousands of foreclosures and with subprime loans to low-income buyers presumably a thing of the past. Meanwhile, birth rates in Mexico and much of Latin America took a sharp turn downward around 1990, which means that those entering the workforce there in years hence will have less competition for jobs — fewer nightmares.

George W. Bush has said that one of his regrets is that he was not successful in getting Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration law, with legalization, guest-worker and enforcement provisions. If Barack Obama and congressional Democrats seek such legislation, they should keep in mind the possibility that the situation they are addressing may be changing. So should those who oppose such a law.

Since Congress considered and failed to pass a comprehensive law in 2006 and 2007, we have learned that tougher enforcement of existing law is possible and can reduce illegal immigration. Now we face a sharply different economic situation, which is presumably less conducive to immigration. This may make the need for a comprehensive law less pressing and at the same time make it politically more palatable.

Our history is one of great surges of migration, immigrant and internal, which begin without much in the way of warning and which end unexpectedly. It's possible — not certain, maybe not likely, but possible — that we're witnessing the beginning of one of those endpoints now.

To read more political analysis by Michael Barone, visit www.usnews.com/baroneblog. To find out more about Michael Barone, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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