Illegal Entry From Mexico to U.S. Rises

SASABE, Mexico - After a four-year decline, illegal immigration from Mexico is spiking as several thousand migrants a day rush across the border in hopes of getting work visas under a program President Bush (news - web sites) proposed. Many also are trying to beat tighter security to come in June.

Mexican migrants walk toward the United States near the town of Sasabe on Thursday, April 1, 2004, in Sasabe, northern Mexico. After a four-year decline, illegal immigration from Mexico is spiking as several thousand migrants a day rush across the border in hopes of getting work visas under a program President Bush (news - web sites) proposed. Many also are trying to beat tighter security to come in June. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)

The U.S. border patrol told The Associated Press that detentions — which it uses to judge illegal migration rates — jumped 25 percent to 535,000 in the six months ending March 31 compared to a year ago.


Near Sasabe, a town bordering the Arizona desert that's the busiest illegal border crossing area, an average 2,000 people arrive daily.


On a recent day, at a break in a barbed-wire fence outside Sasabe, about 300 migrants scrambled out of 10 trucks and four vans within 30 minutes with their smugglers, who led crowds along a worn trail. As the sun set, they disappeared into rolling hills that hide the treacherous desert.


Raudel Sanchez, a 22-year-old farm worker, said he wanted to get back to his job at a Minnesota ranch.


Sanchez crossed into the United States through Sasabe three years ago, but says the journey is getting more difficult. He walked three days in the desert and was out of water when he was caught in Arizona and deported.


Undeterred, he said he planned to take a bus to Altar, a northern city about 70 miles from the border where migrants hire smugglers. From there, he planned to head back to Sasabe and cross again.


"It's already very hard to cross, but it's going to be even harder," he said in Nogales. "I need to try again, at least one more time, and if I fail, I'll go back home."


Many migrants are betting on the approval of Bush's migration proposal, which faces an uphill battle in Congress. About 75 percent of those arrested are Mexican, while the rest are from Central America and other places, U.S. customs officials said.


In January, Bush proposed a guest-worker plan that would give legal status to undocumented migrants already working in the United States and to those outside the country who can prove they have been offered a job.


Because it's hard to get a job offer while in Mexico, many are heading north now, hoping to get settled before a program is in place.


Mexicans living in the United States have criticized Bush's proposal. Many say they wouldn't apply, fearing it could be a trap to deport them.


But in Mexico, the program has given many migrants hope that they might be able to seek something better north of the border, and that is enough to convince some to cross now rather than later.


"I want to try and make it to the United States to find out more about the permits because I've heard that with a job it will be easier to get" a visa, said Jaime Ulloa, speaking in Nogales after being deported for a third time. He is trying to get to Florida, where a U.S. farmer has promised him a job picking vegetables.


Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors stricter immigration policies, said the rise in illegal migration also shot up in 1986 when an amnesty was announced.


"Illegal aliens will respond to the messages the government sends," Krikorian said. "When we send the message that we are thinking about amnesty, they decide it may be worth it to try to cross."


Illegal migration had been declining along the U.S.-Mexico border since 2000. U.S. border patrol figures show detentions dropped from 1.6 million in 2000 to 905,000 in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30.

There is no exact data on the number of people crossing illegally. But in an indication of increased traffic, 535,000 illegal migrants were arrested along the U.S.-Mexico border from Oct. 1 to March 31, said Gloria Chavez of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bureau.

In the same period, the border patrol's Tucson sector detained 70,000 more people, an increase of 49 percent.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner attributes part of the jump to increased security. "The main reason we're seeing an increase in apprehensions is because the border patrol is more effective, particularly in the Tucson sector," he said.

But Mexican officials are also seeing an increase. Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored group that tries to discourage migrants from crossing and aids those stranded in the desert, said 56,000 migrants went through Sasabe in March compared to 41,000 in March 2003.

In Altar, a farming town that has become the gathering point for those heading to Arizona, street vendors sell backpacks, water jugs and salt pills by the thousands.

The modest homes around the plaza, crowded with triple-decker bunk beds, serve as makeshift motels for migrants. They're almost always at capacity, said Francisco Garcia, a former mayor who now volunteers at the town's only migrant shelter.

"We're a town with a population of 6,000, and there have been weeks when we have twice as many people," Garcia said.

Under new security measures, about 300 more U.S. border agents will be deployed by June 1 along the Mexico-Arizona border. The number of border agents assigned to the Tucson sector will eventually increase from 1,800 to 2,500, Bonner said.

Many of the additional agents already have been sent to the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation, an area west of Sasabe where illegal migrant traffic has ballooned, said border patrol spokesman Charles Griffin.

The heightened border security is driving more migrants to more treacherous desert routes between Sonoyta and San Luis Rio Colorado in western Arizona, said Enrique Enriquez, an agent with Mexico's Grupo Beta.

Grupo Beta plans to assign rescuers to Sonoyta in May, Enriquez said. Every year, hundreds of migrants die in the desert, where temperatures soar above 100 degrees in summer.


OMG.. ida luna... is diego ..er...er..er..er..... better check his i.d. before letting him come to your house. before.. he swaps a mexican hat for a knife.

Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials

People in black trench coats might soon be chasing blogs.


Blogs, short for Web logs, are personal online journals. Individuals post them on Web sites to report or comment on news especially, but also on their personal lives or most any subject.


Some blogs are whimsical and deal with "soft" subjects. Others, though, are cutting edge in delivering information and opinion.


As a result, some analysts say U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials might be starting to track blogs for important bits of information. This interest is a sign of how far Web media such as blogs have come in reshaping the data-collection habits of intelligence professionals and others, even with the knowledge that the accuracy of what's reported in some blogs is questionable.


Still, a panel of folks who work in the U.S. intelligence field - some of them spies or former spies - discussed this month at a conference in Washington the idea of tracking blogs.


"News and intelligence is about listening with a critical ear, and blogs are just another conversation to listen to and evaluate. They also are closer to (some situations) and may serve as early alerts," said Jock Gill, a former adviser on Internet media to President Clinton (news - web sites), in a later phone interview, after he spoke on the panel.


Some panel and conference participants, because of their profession, could not be identified. But another who could is Robert Steele, another blog booster. The former U.S. intelligence officer said "absolutely" that blogs are valid sources of intelligence and news, though he said authenticating the information in blogs "leaves a lot to be desired."


Steele is founder and CEO of consulting firm OSS.Net, which organized the conference. The OSS '04 conference focused on public sources of intelligence. (OSS stands for open source solutions. In this case, open source is an intelligence term, not a reference to Linux (news - web sites) and open source software.)


China Wants To Block Blogs


The CIA (news - web sites) and FBI (news - web sites) haven't publicly commented about use of blogs in their work, but many D.C. observers believe both agencies monitor certain blogs.


At least one nation, China, is actively tracking blogs. It's also reportedly trying to block blogs. Several press reports earlier this year said the government shut two blogging services and banned access to all Web logs by Chinese citizens.


Many journalists write blogs and use other blogs to help find sources or verify facts and rumors. Blogs hail from just about any spot on the globe. They can provide first-hand insights into local events and thinking, even in parts of the world where there's little official information.


One example is the "Baghdad Blogger."


In March 2003, as U.S. forces stormed Iraq (news - web sites), one of the few sources on the Iraqi viewpoint was a blog written by a person who turned out to be 29-year-old Iraqi architect Salam Pax, though it's not certain that is his real name.


Some reporters followed his blog daily, which gave gritty insights into how the war was shaking the lives of Iraqis.


The U.S. military never publicly acknowledged Pax, but people at the conference say they believe U.S. military officers read the blog.


Some news organizations valued the blog. Britain's Guardian newspaper was so impressed that it hired Pax in May 2003 to write a biweekly column on life in Baghdad. He's still writing it.





Blogs last year also provided information during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome. In China, where the SARS (news - web sites) outbreak began, the government at first said little. But health officials and reporters were able to get a sense of what was happening through blogs, as well as from e-mail and cell phone text messages sent to people outside China. This might have spurred China's blog crackdown.

Gill says blogs are a good way to uncover news that regular media aren't covering or can't cover. "Blogs may be the best and only channel for such news stories," Gill said.

NGOs Already Get Attention

Various U.S. agencies already scan the Web sites of so-called nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, for information on political, economic and environmental issues. So tracking blogs isn't a big step. And there are software products and online services for this task.

While blog postings are voluntary and available to anyone to read, some observers say blog monitoring by governments or the media raises civil liberties and privacy issues. One such critic is James Love, director of the Ralph Nader (news - web sites)-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology.

"When you're conducting surveillance where you have no expectation of illegal activity, there has to be some threshold to justify such surveillance," Love said.

Some point to other dangers in using blogs for intelligence or news. Blogs can be used to spread lies or disinformation.

It's hard to fact check a blog account of an event in a remote area like Mongolia. Plus, many bloggers don't use their real names. Confirming identities can be hard.

In Baghdad last September, guerillas fired two surface-to-air missiles at a U.S. military transport, but missed. A blogger in Baghdad who goes by the name "Riverbend" wrote that the plane carried Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was then in Iraq.

The report proved false, but it confused the media.

Determining blog accuracy is the crucial first step to taking it further, warned Tim Witcher, who spoke at the conference. He's the former Seoul, Korea, bureau chief for Agence France-Presse, a news service. "A blog only becomes news when we can be 100% sure that it's true," he said.