Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Private landowners may play a key role in the battle to crack down on human and drug smugglers along the Mexican border, Reuters reports. Texas officials announced an initiative Thursday to allow landowners to equip their property with hundreds of small, motion-activated cameras. Many landowners already have an incentive. “Our farmers and…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A woman trying to reach the U.S. by swimming across a canal bordering Arizona and Mexico was rescued by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, the Yuma Sun reports. The woman and two others who said they were Mexican nationals were trying to swim across the Sanchez Canal late Friday. But as the…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Persistent budget cuts haven’t stopped the flow of money spent on technology and manpower to try and stop the flow of drug smugglers and illegal immigrants, NPR reports. Over the past 25 years, the government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars building fences and detention centers and pursuing suspects with Blackhawk…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com It was the end of the line Friday for two former U.S. Border Patrol agents who fled to Mexico while under investigation for smuggling hundreds of illegal immigrants. The Los Angeles Times reports that two, who are brothers, were convicted in federal court in San Diego of multiple counts of conspiracy,…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Federal budget cuts have manifested themselves in a multitude of ways already. Now, dramatically, the Obama administration plans next year to cut the number of National Guard troops patrolling the US-Mexico border by at least half, reports the Washington Times. Though the White House is not announcing the plans yet, Republican…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A crackdown on drug smugglers has resulted in a dramatic jump in the use of sophisticated tunnels under the Mexico-U.S. border, Reuters reports. Reuters reports that authorities discovered more than 100 tunnels during President Felipe Calderon’s five years in office. That number is double the ones found over the previous 15…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com It is a fundamentally American right to criticize one’s government, to speak out against wrongful policies–a patriotic act, some would say. But how much dissent is possible if one’s job is to enforce existing laws, whether one agrees with them or not? Legislative change is reserved for political channels, after all–not…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The latest in a series of secret passages used to smuggle drugs from Mexico to the US was found on Tuesday, linking warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana, reports the Associated Press. “It is clearly the most sophisticated tunnel we have ever found,” Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and…
