Lancaster, California – Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents executed a search warrant overnight at a home here where a Salvadoran and Ecuadoran national were rescued by ICE Tuesday night after reportedly being held hostage by human smugglers in the residence, one for at least three weeks.

Following their rescue Tuesday night, one of the hostages told ICE investigators his captors had beaten him repeatedly and forced him to go nearly two weeks without food. Agents said that one of the other smuggled aliens at the residence shared portions of his daily meal with him, possibly helping him to survive. A hostage also told investigators his captors often assaulted him with stun guns. The men are now in protective custody.

The two were freed after ICE agents received a tip late last week that smugglers were holding a hostage and abusing him in an effort to collect a $5,000 smuggling fee. Based upon that information, investigators determined the smugglers were operating somewhere in the Lancaster area. After working virtually around-the-clock over the weekend, ICE agents traced the activity to a home at 646 Martha Court.

When agents knocked on the door Tuesday evening, they heard one of the victims crying out for help inside. As investigators entered the residence, they saw windows boarded up from the inside, and one of the suspected smugglers straddled atop a man beating him. The victim was soaked in sweat and clad only in underwear.

“Tragically, this case shows yet again the ruthlessness and brutality of the human smuggling trade,” said Robert Schoch, special agent in charge for the ICE Office of Investigations in Los Angeles. “To the smugglers, these people are nothing more than a payday and they have no qualms about using threats and violence in an effort to collect their smuggling fees. ICE is working aggressively to disrupt this kind of activity and dismantle the criminal organizations involved.”

The two suspected smugglers, both of whom are in the country illegally, made their initial appearance in federal court yesterday. Roberto Jose-Tomas, 23, of Mexico, and Diego Francisco-Pascual, 32, of Guatemala, have been charged in a criminal complaint with harboring illegal aliens, an offense that carries a maximum statutory penalty of 10 years in federal prison. At yesterday’s hearing, a United States Magistrate judge ordered the men held without bond pending an arraignment on February 2.

During last night’s search of the Lancaster residence, ICE agents recovered additional evidence related to the investigation. Authorities say the investigation is ongoing.

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That underwear-clad hostage being beaten could just as easily be you. The world is not a safe place.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Corrupt officials inside Mexico’s security forces have leaked U.S. anti-drugs intelligence directly to drug traffickers to help them escape raids, a senior U.S. law enforcement agent said.

A recent anti-corruption sweep showed the infiltration of Mexican police forces had reached alarming levels, with several high-ranking investigators and a presidential guardsman arrested for selling information to drug cartels.

The U.S. agent said the arrests were an encouraging sign that Mexico’s government is serious about stopping drug gangs from getting their hands on intelligence, some of which comes from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA.

“There have been occurrences where we have shared information and then found that the information we shared was compromised, given, provided, leaked to the very targets that were being investigated,” the official told Reuters late on Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

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In August 2008, Reuters reported on an American businesswoman identified only as “Veronica,” who had been kidnapped a few months earlier. As she was exiting her car in California, two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, then shoved her teenage daughter into the back seat and took the pair to Mexico.

The kidnappers drove through the border checkpoint in San Diego, bringing the mother and daughter to Tijuana. The two were held captive for a month until their family paid the ransom of $100,000.

Veronica said of her experience: “We got an automatic green light to go through Mexican customs and then we were blindfolded and taken to a house in Tijuana. They held a pistol to my stomach all the time we were in the car.”

Mexican intelligence officials claim that Veronica is only one of about 30 Americans abducted in southern California and taken to Tijuana since last November.

But that’s just a few kidnappings, right? Read on:

In 2002, members of Mexico´s Arellano Felix crime organization set up shop in the San Diego area, and began a kidnapping and extortion operation. Fearing reprisals, their victims failed to report the incidents to police, and went undetected for years. During that time, the gang used their profits to purchase weapons, police uniforms, badges, even police lights for their vehicles.

In 2007, Los Palillos were finally busted by local and federal law enforcement.

Police claim that the group, known as Los Palillos (the Toothpicks), murdered at least a dozen people, committed 20 kidnappings and transported huge amounts of methamphetamine to Kansas City, Mo., to help finance their organization´s ongoing war with the Tijuana Cartel in Tijuana, all of course, from San Diego County.

In August 2008, the FBI´s San Diego field office admitted that they were currently investigating the kidnapping of 16 U.S. residents who were held in Tijuana between October 2007 and May 2008, including many of whom were abducted in San Diego.

According to the Phoenix Police Department, as of mid November, there had been 266 kidnappings and 300 home invasions during 2008. However, police estimate the actual numbers to be closer to three times as high as the reported figures. Many victims fail to report such crimes, out of fear from further retribution from the notoriously violent cartels.

Phoenix Police Lt. Lori Burgett told CBS News: “It wasn´t uncommon to have a new kidnapping case coming into our offices on a daily basis.”

“But this is still an isolated problem,” you say. Is it really?

On April 11, 2008, the U.S. Justice Department´s National Drug Intelligence Center released a situation report, illustrating just how widespread the activities of Mexican drug cartels have become throughout the U.S.

The sobering assessment read: “Mexican DTO´s (Drug Trafficking Organizations) are the most pervasive organizational threat to the United States. They are active in every region of the country and dominate the illicit drug trade in every area except the Northeast. Mexican DTO´s are expanding their operations in the Northeast and have developed cooperative relationships with DTO´s in that area in order to gain a larger share of the Northeastern drug market.”

According to the report, Mexican drug traffickers are now operating in 195 U.S. cities. In 129 of those cities, law enforcement has determined that those traffickers are directly affiliated with one or more of the four major Mexican drug cartels.

The Justice Department has identified 82 U.S. cities with trafficking operations directed by the Federation Cartel; 43 cities with operations being directed by the Gulf Coast Cartel; 44 cities with operations being directed by the Juarez Cartel; and finally, operations in 20 cities under the control of the Tijuana Cartel.

Check out the list of affected cities in the article. Coming soon to a city near you…

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BLUFF CALLED | Felon with huge sense of entitlement mocked law, gave immigrants stigma

The faceoff has ended. The lady in the church snuck out, made it as far as L.A., got nabbed by the feds and is finally back in Mexico.

Most people couldn’t pronounce her name and didn’t know she slipped into the country not once but a second time after border officials made it clear she was not to return. After being welcomed with open arms by whoever hires the cleaning ladies at O’Hare Airport, she was snagged in a post-9/11 raid and, a newly convicted felon, was ordered out of the country in 2004.

She refused to go, saying it was unfair for the government to separate her from her son Saul, who she said needed to be here to get treatment for “severe attention deficit disorder and severe separation anxiety.”

Saul, who on the Fourth of July 2006, after a long day of handing out pro-immigrant fliers in the hot sun, cried openly asking his “mami” why he hadn’t played in sprinklers and watched fireworks like other kids.

Saul, who despite his supposed medical disorders, was trotted out in front of every TV camera and microphone that appeared at the church’s door, then flown all over North America with a handler du jour to plead his mom’s case.

Saul, who in those first weeks of sanctuary was said to have been in contact with his unnamed father — who didn’t want to be smeared in the press — and months later would tell me, coldly, “I don’t have a father.”

Saul, whom I watched spend a long, miserable year holed up in a tiny apartment watching Spanish-language TV while trying to avoid the parade of people who stopped by to visit. Saul who had no mom or dad to take him to school everyday.

Saul who had to again watch his mother get arrested because she refused to go willingly.

Then there’s Elvira who, after being convicted of stealing someone’s identity, was given a pass on jail time in exchange for her departure. She proceeded to thumb her nose at the laws of the country she so desperately wants her son to grow up in.

Her entitlement complex turned off people who might have had a modicum of sympathy for the plight of illegal immigrants. Added bonus? It fueled the hatred from those who already wanted to see them all rounded up and shipped off.

In the process she made life more difficult for legal immigrants and U.S.-born Hispanics who will continue to endure the wrath of a country that’s disgusted that there seem to be one set of laws for “us,” and a more lenient set for the 12 million “them” who toil here for next to nothing at the cordial invitation of businesses and bargain-shoppers everywhere.

Though she only learned a rudimentary amount of English while in sanctuary — enough to deliver a brilliantly written speech I’d bet my life she didn’t compose — her message was crystal clear. Maybe not with her words, but with her actions Arellano did in fact say, “Catch me if you dare.”

Now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement called her bluff I can be clear, too: Adios and good riddance.

Elvira wasn’t “the face” of the 12 million illegal immigrants she claims to represent — they’ve been out working every day, unsheltered by the fear of the publicity disaster a church raid would have rained on ICE.

Those 12 million aren’t out flaunting their illegality in people’s faces or getting free food, shelter, child care, toys and cash donations delivered to their door daily while they spend their time doing radio interviews and posting protest songs to their MySpace pages.

Game over, Elvira.

Newly deported immigration activist Elvira Arellano, joined Monday evening by her 8-year-old son, vowed to continue her fight for immigration reform but acknowledged that she has little chance of ever returning to the United States.

Sitting in a Chinese restaurant in this bustling border town less than a day after her deportation by U.S. authorities, Arellano expressed no regrets at leaving her sanctuary at a Chicago church, saying she would rather have been arrested fighting for immigrants’ rights than remain in refuge.

“If my deportation has united the people, for me it’s good,” she said. “That price had to be paid. If that’s the way it happened, I’m satisfied.”

Immigrant activists in Los Angeles, where Arellano was seized Sunday afternoon, said a march is planned for this weekend to protest her deportation. Pro-enforcement advocates, meanwhile, praised the arrest.

Arellano, however, was focused Monday evening on the agonizing question of whether her son, Saul, would stay with her in Mexico or return to Chicago, where he has lived most of his life. Family friend Rev. Walter “Slim” Coleman said late Monday he expects the boy will return to Chicago for school. Earlier, Arellano had said she hoped he would stay with her, but would take Saul’s wishes into account.

“I will continue to tell him about the beauties of my country,” she said. “He will know that he will have a marvelous future here.”

A 32-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, Arellano said she left Chicago because she feared authorities were preparing to arrest her at Adalberto United Methodist Church in Humboldt Park, where she had taken refuge last August to avoid deportation.

“Their messages about me were getting stronger and stronger. I couldn’t just stay there quiet,” she said. “I did what I had to do: fight. They arrested me but they arrested me fighting, not quiet, not hiding in fear.”

But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Monday it was her decision to leave the church that prompted the arrest. They chose to detain her on a Los Angeles street rather than in the Chicago church, a spokesman said, because they believed it would be safer for the arresting officers, as well as Arellano, her companions and the public.

“We had reason to believe that there was going to be a lot of people in there, in the church, there to protect her or do whatever,” said Glenn Triveline, the Chicago field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at a news conference Monday.

Coleman, pastor at the Adalberto United Methodist Church, said U.S. authorities were less concerned about safety than avoiding the potential embarrassment of raiding a church.

“Nobody would do anything to them,” said Coleman. “I think they obviously didn’t want the embarrassment of breaking into a church and separating a mother from her son in front of the cross.”

Arellano was taken into custody Sunday afternoon as she, Saul, and several supporters were leaving a downtown L.A. church on their way San Jose, Calif., where she was to continue giving speeches about the need for immigration reform and visiting sanctuary congregations.

Arellano recounted how she tried to plead her case with U.S. immigration officials one more time after her arrest, pointing out that private bills had been introduced by U.S. Reps. Bobby Rush and Luis Gutierrez, both Chicago Democrats, aimed at keeping her in the United States.

The officials refused to discuss the matter, she said.

“They were angry with me for everything I have done,” she said. “They were in rush to deport me.”

Arellano was detained for nearly nine hours and questioned by U.S. and Mexican officials before she was taken across the border to Tijuana near midnight.

Arellano’s case reverberated in Mexico, where she spent much of Monday doing interviews with local television, radio and newspaper reporters. Two major Mexico City newspapers, Reforma and El Universal, played the news of her arrest as a top international story. Reforma described Arellano as “a mother who was the symbol of immigrants.”

In a sign of the political overtones surrounding her case and the sensitivity of immigration issues in Mexico, the Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry released a statement criticizing the “swiftness” of her deportation.

Michael Keegan, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Enforcement in Washington, said U.S. law prohibits an immigrant from entering the U.S. legally for 10 years if they have previously been deported. Still, a U.S. consular official could override the law and allow Arellano legal entry into the U.S. if she can present mitigating circumstances. The final decision rests with the U.S. State Department, Keegan said.

As a U.S. citizen, Arellano’s son also could petition to have his mother re-admitted to the U.S., but only after he turns 18.

But Arellano said Monday that she has no intention of trying to return either legally or illegally to the United States. She has already received a job offer in Mexico.

“I am in my country. I can walk through the streets free, without fear,” she said.

Good for you. Walk through the streets without fear. Just don’t come here illegally again.

And hey, I.C.E. – good going!

Immigration officials sharpened their message a day after being coy about whether they would agree to halt enforcement raids during the 2010 census.

“We won’t entertain any request to scale back our efforts,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Kelly Nantel said Friday.

Census officials had planned to speak with immigration agents about curbing enforcement during the population count, the Census Bureau’s second-ranking official said in an interview earlier this week.

Raids during the population count would make an already distrustful group even less likely to cooperate with government workers who are supposed to include them in the headcount, Deputy Director Preston Jay Waite had said.

When asked Thursday if the immigration enforcement agency would consider suspending raids during the census, spokeswoman Pat Reilly said, “If we were, we wouldn’t talk about it.”

“We’re an investigative agency,” she added. “We don’t talk about how we target our enforcement activities.”

The Constitution requires the Census Bureau to count everyone, including illegal immigrants, in the census.

Immigration agents informally agreed to cooperate with the Census Bureau during the 2000 census by not conducting any large-scale raids, said Waite and Kenneth Prewitt, who directed the Census Bureau during the 2000 count.

Public discussion about possibly repeating the policy in 2010 knocked the Bush administration off message a week after two members of the president’s Cabinet announced stepped-up efforts to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

Nantel said she wanted to clarify the enforcement agency’s position.

“I don’t want there to be any question in the American people’s mind as to whether or not ICE would suspend enforcement efforts,” Nantel said. “The answer to that is emphatically no.”

The Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department continues to seek a 27-year-old man who is suspected of causing a traffic accident that resulted in the death of 17-year-old Port Washington boy.

An arrest warrant has been issued for the man, identified as Eddie Carbajal-Lile. Sheriff’s Capt. David Adams said Carbajal-Lile is an undocumented immigrant who might be en route to Mexico. The U.S. Border Patrol has been alerted, Adams said.

Carbajal-Lile reportedly uses a number of aliases, including: Eddie Carbajal; Eddie Lile; Eddie Carbajal-Farvies; Negro Carbajal; Negro Carbajal-Lile; and Negro Lile.

The Sheboygan County district attorney’s office Thursday charged Carbahal-Lile with three felonies: hit and run, fatality; and two counts of hit and run, injury.

Paul Watry of Port Washington died Thursday afternoon as a result of injuries suffered in the accident Tuesday night in the Town Lima.

Another passenger in the car in which Watry was riding, Jillian Fitzmaurice, 18, of Oostburg was treated at Froedtert Hospital and released.

The driver, Scot Mueller, 18, of Port Washington was treated at St. Nicholas Hospital in Sheboygan and released.

The three were passengers in a Chevrolet Cavalier that was struck by a Nissan Sentra on Highway 32 at Highway V in Sheboygan County. Witnesses told investigators that the Sentra failed to stop for a stop sign.

After the collision, the Nissan driver – believed to be Carbajal-Lile – fled on foot, witnesses said.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call their local law enforcement agency or the Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Department at (920) 459-3112.

Alejandro Xuya-Sian did more than shred the skin on his victim’s body – he shredded his victim’s dignity, making him feel “too embarrassed” by his appearance to face the drunken driver who nearly dragged him to his death, a judge said as he sentenced Xuya-Sian to 3 1/3 to 10 years in prison.

“You didn’t just injure him physically. You shattered his life,” Suffolk County Judge James Hudson told Xuya-Sian before he imposed his sentence. Hudson said Xuya-Sian treated his victim with less regard than he should “an injured animal.”

Xuya-Sian, 27, pleaded guilty last month to vehicular assault, driving while intoxicated, leaving the scene of an accident and other charges.

Suffolk prosecutors said Xuya-Sian struck Anselmo Chin-Sabam, 21, with his 2002 GMC Envoy in the parking lot of a Riverhead bar in April. Chin-Sabam became lodged in the front left wheel of the SUV, and had his skin shredded as Xuya-Sian drove three-quarters of a mile before realizing he was there.

Assistant District Attorney Thalia Stavrides said Xuya-Sian “stopped the car, got out and undoubtedly dislodged him from the car,” then kept driving, crashing into a tree about two miles away. Stavrides said Xuya-Sian was arrested with a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent, right at the legal limit.

Chin-Sabam suffered first-degree burns on more than 40 percent of his body, multiple fractures and had some parts of his body torn to the muscle, Stavrides said. He is still recovering and was in no condition to be in court yesterday, she said.

Given the opportunity to make a statement before receiving his sentence, Xuya-Sian began speaking when his Legal Aid attorney, Bryan Browns, interrupted him. Browns took him to the side, and then said his client would remain silent.

Browns said Xuya-Sian, an illegal immigrant, had two children and a wife in his native Guatemala and had been working a $450-a week job to help support them.

“He regrets and he takes full responsibility for what happened,” Browns said in court. “I think his time in prison is going to allow him to reflect and get on with his life.”

Hudson said he would recommend that Xuya-Sian be deported after completing his sentence – a sentence that Hudson said was “too lenient” because of limitations of law.

“[The sentence] is not enough to give consolation to your victim that this is how such a violation of his body was punished,” Hudson said.

I’ve always thought that the punishment should fit the crime, and wondered what it would be like to subject the criminal to the same treatment that he gave to his victim. It’s a horrible, barbaric idea, fit only to mete out to horrible barbarians like this guy.

In yet another tragic example of the government’s failure to protect Americans from violent illegal immigrants, a drunken Mexican man with a criminal record killed an entire family when he crashed his car into theirs on Houston freeway.

The illegal alien, Juan Felix Salinas, suffered minor injuries and was out on bond for a previous assault charge. His blood alcohol level was three times the Texas legal limit when his speeding vehicle rammed into another occupied by a 26-year-old woman, her husband and 2-year-old son.

The Williams family, which was returning from a movie, died immediately in the burning wreckage. Their small car was instantly demolished by the powerful impact of the illegal alien’s much larger speeding van.

Not only was Salinas free on bond in a criminal case, he had been previously deported to his native Nuevo Leon Mexico two years ago yet entered the U.S. again illegally and was allowed to remain in the country after his recent arrest for assault.

It took the horrific murders of three innocent Americans for federal authorities to finally take action. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have finally placed a so-called “immigration hold” on Salinas, who has been charged with three counts of intoxication manslaughter. The Williams family would still be alive had their government acted sooner to rid the country of this multiple offender.

Making matters worse, Salinas didn’t even have a valid driver’s license and never should have been operating a vehicle on a U.S. highway. The Lone Star Times verifies that Salinas only had a Texas identification card frequently obtained by illegal immigrants.

BURTONSVILLE, Md. — The man arrested and charged in the hit-and-run accident that killed two members of a road crew has told authorities he is in the U.S. illegally.

Manuel De Jesus Gonzalez-Geronimo, 31, is a Guatemalan living in Hyattsville. He surrendered to police early Tuesday morning to face charges in the Monday accident on Route 29 in Burtonsville.

The construction workers were taking a break and sitting on a guardrail when they were hit by a van that also hit a construction truck.

The van driver ran from the scene.

Martin Ruffin, of Baltimore, and James Cronin, of Glen Burnie, died, and three co-workers were injured.

Police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said Gonzalez-Geronimo revealed during his bail hearing that he is an undocumented worker. He is being held without bond.

At least they didn’t just cut him loose on bail to escape to Guatemala, or drive again and kill another American. Maybe our court system learns from its mistakes.