Undocumented immigrants are more likely to be deported from the Travis County jail because of their immigration status than from any other jail in the country, according to federal data obtained by the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. Mose Buchele of KUT News reports.
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by Morgan Smith, The Texas Tribune August 20, 2010
Alberto Gonzales isn’t joining his Republican colleagues in calling for a review of the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision.
In an interview with KRLD NewsRadio in Dallas, the former U.S. Attorney General and Texas Supreme Court justice told host Scott Braddock that it would not be wise to “tinker” with birthright citizenship — and that a repeal of the amendment would not “be effective in addressing the immigration crisis.”
Mexico’s drug cartel war has killed more than 28,000 people in four years, but some of the collateral damage has not been as noticeable. A trio of famous, Prohibition-era cantinas in Mexican border cities, having survived more than 80 turbulent years, are in deep trouble.
On a recent weekday, a headline in Mexico’s El Diario newspaper screams: “Juarez is the Center of the Country’s Narco-War.” That can’t be good for business at the Kentucky Club, a venerable saloon that’s been here since 1920, three blocks from the international bridge that connects Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas.
“Actually, in these times, the wave of violence here in Juarez is tremendous,” says Raul Martinez, who has been the doorman at the Kentucky Club for 25 years. “Before, we had to turn people away, we were so full — $10 or $20 wouldn’t get you in. Now, I wish we had customers” (NPR).
Diario reports a total of 47 people over the weekend–a total of 20 people on Friday, 6 on Saturday and 21 on Sunday. Five of the dead are women. The total for the month of August has now reached 165–an average of 11 people per day. Several of the events were attacks on groups of people having parties in private homes. Note in the account of one of these attacks below, the tactics were very similar to the Villas del Salvarcar massacre that took place on January 31 and killed about 15 teenagers and young adults (Frontera).
One of the four international bridges linking this northern Mexican city and El Paso, Texas, was closed for nearly two hours Tuesday after a bomb was found and detonated on the Mexican side of the border, a police spokesman told Efe.
The bomb was spotted just after 8:00 a.m. on the Laredo Bridge, which was immediately closed to traffic (LAT).
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) outlined his support Wednesday to modify the 14th amendment. Smith joins a chorus of Republicans to eliminate the provision that gives citizenship to any person born inside the U.S.
Smith is among a growing number of Republicans who are in favor of modifying the 14th amendment of the Constitution and changing the provision that endows citizenship to any person born inside the U-S.
“That has been misinterpreted today,” Smith told small business leaders in Northeast San Antonio. “So that basically it’s allowing individuals who are in the country illegally to have a child and the child is automatically a citizen. That just doesn’t make any sense for any reason. We’re the only industrialized country in the world I think that doesn’t require at least one parent to be in the country legally before their child is automatically a citizen.”
In Mexico, what began as a government effort to wipe out drug lords four years ago has turned into a long war with the death toll now at a staggering 23,000. It’s a brutal fight involving massacres, beheadings, bodies hanging from bridges, and the killing of innocents.
Politicians are favorite targets of the cartels. In Mexico’s recent election, one candidate for governor, considered a shoo-in to win, was assassinated. And several mayors have been killed.
We’re going to hear now from two mayors – mayors who live on opposite sides of the border but who are in many respects partners, their cities separated in places by only a few hundred feet and the Rio Grande. Mayor John Cook of El Paso and Mayor Jose Reyes of Juarez are on the line from their respective offices (NPR).
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Historian David Romo calls both El Paso and Juarez home. The day after a gunfight in Juarez sent a bullet across the border — into the wall of El Paso City Hall no less — he describes how violence has changed local business in both cities, and his own life.
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Public Media Texas is based in Austin. We embrace our local presence in Austin with our hyper-local East Austin site 78702.org. We contribute to the discussion of the environment in the Southwest and the state of politics in Texas. We also seek to understand the dynamic between the U.S. and Mexico along our shared border. Along the way we search for artistic expressions that reflect and provide more perspective on the Lone Star state.
