Mexican Drug Cartels Hang Bodies Off Bridge as Warning to Social Media Users

At CNN: "Bodies hanging from bridge in Mexico are warning to social media users."

Santa Ana Enclave Tops Orange County In Proportion of Single-Parent Households

I visited Census Tract 750.03 in Santa Ana last week. The Los Angeles Times reported that the area's Willard neighborhood has the highest proportion of single-parent households in Orange County. See: "A community of single parents."

I grew up in Orange, the city next door, and spent a lot of time in this part of Santa Ana as a kid. There's a street graphic at the Times' article. Here's the intersection at Main and 17th Street. My buddies and I used to skateboard at that building across the street, where that blue "for lease" sign is located. The flowerbeds are banked (or they were banked, until the property owners installed a brick perimeter around the flowers to thwart the skaters):

Here's a shot looking back at the corner where I was standing in the picture above. That's an illegal immigration law office. The fruit vendor, with the ice cooler, was selling cantalopes and mango slices to customers in their cars:

More pictures. At the top of the stairs a sign is printed in both English and Spanish:

Climbing back in the van to cruise around the neighborhood, I see a man walking north on Main Street with a sleeping back and personal belongings:

Turning right, I head South on Main Street. A couple of blocks up a see throngs of people congregating, near a bus stop and in front of an insurance office. Traffic slowed and I rolled down the window to snap a photo. A Latino man was working as a sign-spinner. He ducked down when I raised my camera. Probably an illegal alien making some money under the table:

Driving West now, across Broadway, an accountant's office:

The neighborhood is a migrant enclave, which helps explain the large number of single-parent households:

Although Orange County has the lowest proportion of single-parent households in Southern California, Santa Ana stands as the highest in that category, with 12,023, or 16%. Laguna Woods, a small city in South County, has the fewest, 21, or 0.2%.

The roots of this anomaly can be found in Santa Ana's decades-long history as a magnet for immigrants.

This part of the county was converted from orange groves to single-family housing to apartments, said G.U. Krueger, a housing expert in the area. Now, Santa Ana is one of the most densely populated cities in the country.

Michael Ruane, director of the OC Community Indicators Project, which studies trends in the county, said Santa Ana has always stood out statistically because of residential overcrowding, high school dropout rates and the educational level of adults.

But it's also one of the least expensive areas in the county.

"That's why you would live there, or have to, or be unable to move from there," he said.

There's a lot of poverty here as well. At the corner of Durant and Washington, a local Head Start center:

Heading East, Willard Intermediate School (discussed at the Times) and across the street a Mexican civil rights history mural:

Back over at the Los Angeles Times:

Laura Arreola, 43, may be one of those people. She's lived in various apartments off Parton Street for 14 years. All of her four children have attended schools in the area, where empty strollers sit on overgrown lawns and dusty toys spill onto the sidewalk.

Merchants hawk fried pork bellies and produce from white trucks that serve as gathering points for children. In this tract, more than three-quarters of the households include children.

But the only open space in the neighborhood is the local school, Willard Intermediate, which serves as the de facto park. Children also play in alleyways and the church's patio [nearby St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church].

Another mural, on Washington across from the school. This one records the promise of education to lift kids out of what looks like is some kind of desolation:

A couple of kids and either their grandmother or another older caregiver. It was about 4:00pm. School's out for summer and a lot of parents were still out working. The woman was speaking Spanish:

Food trucks on just about every corner. The second one was covered with graffiti, which was unusual. The food vendors were clean and organized, a part of the neighborhood. Reminds me of Mexico:

Despite the glum statistics at the Times, I didn't see a lot of social disorganization. There was very little graffiti on the walls. This batch below was few and far between:

Frankly, I found people to be enterprising. The food trucks are totally cool. And the food's tasty:

It's a Spanish-speaking enclave, however. People spoke Spanish in their interactions with each other and the woman spoke Spanish when she served me.

Santa Ana is the county seat and prides itself as an all-American city. It's a mostly Latino/Mexican-American city, and for whatever reasons --- language, low educational attainment, poverty and family breakup --- many in the community remain economically and socially distant from the larger economic mainstream of the society. That's not to say it's not a nice place. Just a lot different from what more demographically stable communities would exhibit.

Gunrunner Money in Obama's Stimulus Package

Instapundit has been all over this story.

And check this editorial at IBD, "The Stimulation of Murder."

RELATED: "Obama’s Watergate."

Humberto Leal, Mexican Citizen, Executed in Texas

At New York Times, "Mexican Citizen Is Executed as Justices Refuse to Step In."

More at Memeorandum.

'José, Can You See?' U.S. Soccer Team Booed at Gold Cup Final, Rose Bowl, Pasadena

You get used to it. You're a foreigner in your own country sometimes. You get the feeling in many parts of Southern California. And in some of the small agricultural towns in the Central Valley you might as well be in Mexico. Democrats and progressives don't care, except to the extent that it keeps them in power, but we've long ago basically undergone a foreign invasion of people whose primary loyalty remains to the countries of their origin. The Los Angeles Times has the report, from Bill Plaschke, "In Gold Cup final, it's red, white and boo again." The U.S team was booed. Here's a quote from the piece (via Memeorandum):

Most of these hostile visitors didn't live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere.

Welcome to another unveiling of that social portrait known as a U.S.-Mexico soccer match, streaked as always in deep colors of red, white, blue, green … and gray.

"I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I'm proud to be part of it," said Victor Sanchez, a 37-year-old Monrovia resident wearing a Mexico jersey. "But yet, I didn't have a choice to come here, I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be."

Right.

This is an old debate, largely taboo for discussion in polite company, like academic departments. But it's not a new thing, at all. Recall Samuel Huntington's seminal essay in 2004, "The Hispanic Challenge"

Massive Hispanic immigration affects the United States in two significant ways: Important portions of the country become predominantly Hispanic in language and culture, and the nation as a whole becomes bilingual and bicultural. The most important area where Hispanization is proceeding rapidly is, of course, the Southwest. As historian Kennedy argues, Mexican Americans in the Southwest will soon have “sufficient coherence and critical mass in a defined region so that, if they choose, they can preserve their distinctive culture indefinitely. They could also eventually undertake to do what no previous immigrant group could have dreamed of doing: challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and educational systems to change fundamentally not only the language but also the very institutions in which they do business.”

Anecdotal evidence of such challenges abounds. In 1994, Mexican Americans vigorously demonstrated against California's Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits to children of illegal immigrants—by marching through the streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexican flags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998, at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Angeles, Mexican Americans booed the U.S. national anthem and assaulted U.S. players. Such dramatic rejections of the United States and assertions of Mexican identity are not limited to an extremist minority in the Mexican-American community. Many Mexican immigrants and their offspring simply do not appear to identify primarily with the United States.

Déjà vu.

RELATED: At Pamela's, "US SOCCER TEAM VICIOUSLY BOOED IN L.A. -- MEXICO WAS "HOME TEAM" - ENEMEDIA CALLS IT "UNIQUELY AMERICAN'."

WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Unease Over Mexican Drug War

At LAT:

In contrast to their upbeat public assessments, U.S. officials expressed frustration with a "risk averse" Mexican army and rivalries among security agencies that have hampered the Mexican government's war against drug cartels, according to secret U.S. diplomatic cables disclosed Thursday.

The cables quoted Mexican officials expressing fear that the government was losing control of parts of its national territory and that time was "running out" to rein in drug violence.

The cables gave a much starker view of the pitfalls and obstacles facing Mexican President Felipe Calderon, a departure from the public statements of unwavering support that have come out of Washington for most of the 4-year-old war, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

Two cables from U.S. Embassy officials in Mexico, one dated January of this year and the other October 2009, praise Calderon for persisting in his campaign to tackle "head on" the powerful cartels that traffic most of the cocaine, heroin and marijuana that reaches the U.S.

But the Mexican president's struggles with "an unwieldy and uncoordinated interagency" law enforcement effort have created the perception that he is failing, the cable dated Jan. 29 said. His inability to halt the violence or contain the rising death toll has become a principal political liability as his public ratings have declined, it said.

The U.S. assessment said Calderon's tools are limited: "Mexican security institutions are often locked in a zero-sum competition in which one agency's success is viewed as another's failure, information is closely guarded, and joint operations are all but unheard of," said the January cable, which is signed by the No. 2 official in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, John D. Feeley, a veteran diplomat with extensive experience in Latin America.

"Official corruption is widespread, leading to a compartmentalized siege mentality among 'clean' law enforcement leaders and their lieutenants," he said. "Prosecution rates for organized crime-related offenses are dismal; 2% of those detained are brought" to trial.

Legalization in Mexico Won't Work

Fausta has the latest from left-leaning Brookings:

The Brookings Institution has just published this report:

"Why Legalization in Mexico is Not a Panacea for Reducing Violence and Suppressing Organized Crime" (emphasis added)

Proponents of legalization in Mexico make at least two arguments: The DTOs are believed to make 60% of their income from marijuana, so taking this income away from them via legalization will severely weaken them. Second, legalization of marijuana (and perhaps other drugs) would free Mexico’s law enforcement to concentrate on murders, kidnappings, and extortion.

A country may have good reasons to want to legalize the use and even production of some addictive substances (many, such as, nicotin and alcohol, are legal) and ride out the consequences of greater use. (It is difficult to estimate how much additional use would result from legalization since elasticity price-consumption relations and other factors, such as social stigmas and attitude changes, are not fully known.) Such reasons could include providing better health care to users, reducing the number of users in prison, changing the priority and resource allocation of law enforcement, and perhaps even generating greater revenues for state and giving jobs to the poor.

But, even if legalization did displace the DTOs from the marijuana production and distribution market in Mexico, they can hardly be expected to take such a change lying down. Rather, they may intensify the violent power struggle over remaining hard-drug smuggling and distribution. (Notably, the shrinkage of the U.S. cocaine market is one of the factors that precipitated the current DTO wars.) Worse yet, the DTOs could intensify their effort to take over other illegal economies in Mexico, such as the smuggling of migrants and other illegal commodities, prostitution, extortion, and kidnapping, and also over Mexico’s informal economy – trying to franchise who sells tortillas, jewelry, clothes on the zócalo — to mitigate their financial losses. They are already doing so. If they succeed in franchising the informal economy and organizing public spaces and street life in the informal sector (40% of Mexico’s economy), their political power over society will be greater than ever.

Nor would law enforcement necessarily become liberated to focus on other issues or turn less corrupt: The state would have to devote some resources to regulating the legal economy and enforcing the regulatory system. Corruption could well persist in a legal or decriminalized economy. In Brazil, after drug possession for personal use was decriminalized, the deeply corrupt police did not clean up. Instead, they often continue to extort users and franchise pushers by threatening to book users for greater amounts than personal limits unless they pay a bribe or buy from their pushers.

Additionally, a gray marijuana market would likely emerge. If marijuana became legal, the state would want to tax it – to generate revenues and to discourage greater use. The higher the tax, the greater the opportunity for the DTOs to undercut the state by charging less. The narcos could set up their own fields with smaller taxation, snatch the market and the profits, and the state would be back to combating them and eradicating their fields. Such gray markets exist alongside a host of legal economies, from cigarettes, to stolen cars, to logging. Often, as in the case of illegal logging alongside legal concessions, such gray markets are highly violent, dominated by organized crime, generating corruption, and exploitative of society.

Moreover, if the state does not physically control the territory where marijuana is cultivated – which in Mexico it often does not – the DTOs could continue to dominate the newly legal marijuana fields, still charge taxes, still structure the life of the growers, and even find it easier to integrate into the formal political system. Many oil and rubber barons started with shady practices and eventually became influential (and sometimes responsible) members of the legal political space. But there are good reasons not to want the very bloody Mexican capos to become legitimized.

Face it: the cartels are after power and money. Legalizing marijuana won’t change that at all.

No doubt drunkard JBW's got some brilliant riposte up his sleeve: "Victims, Victims ... you're all just whiny little victims!!"

Arizona's Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals

The main story's at Time.

Also, at Say Anything, "Arizona Governor: Illegal Immigrants Can Take Their Kids With Them When They Leave."

As I've said before, Arizona's doing the jobs the feds won't do. And Governor Jan Brewer is AZ's real maverick:

Bonus Freakout: Zandar the Stupid. (Arizona's crackdown doesn't seem to be having the political effect lefitists were hoping for.)

'We're Going to Bring Your Racism Down' – Stand With Arizona, May 29th!

I will be in Arizona this weekend to report on the major anti-illegal immigration protest in Phoenix. Organizers are turning this into a nationwide movement to "bring your racism down," according to Arizona Daily Sun:

Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network, said there is a need to focus attention on Arizona.

"Arizona has become the testing ground for the most draconian antiimmigrant legislation in our country," he said.

"It is in Arizona and other similar states where the immigration debate has been polluted with hate and poisoned by bigotry," Alvarado continued. "It is in Arizona where politicians and law enforcement agents have become the folk heroes of white supremacist organizations and individuals."

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox said those who are not in the state cannot imagine the fear the new law has created.

"You have to come to Arizona, come to the march, talk to the people," she said. "You can feel the fear once you get off the airplane."

But the protest goes beyond the march and beyond the calls for individuals and groups to boycott Arizona. It now is targeting specific companies.

One is the Arizona Diamondbacks based on what he said is the "extraordinary hypocrisy" of owner Ken Kendrick who Gutierrez said has been involved with those opposed to immigrants. Kendrick has been a supporter of Republican candidates and recently help raise money for GOP congressional candidate Jonathan Paton.

Others being targeted include ...

RTWT at the link.

But also on Saturday is the big Stand With Arizona event in Tempe. Try to make it out to show your solidarity. Our good friends in Arizona are not just dealing with this:

But the open-borders fifth column as well, "We're Going to Bring Your Racism Down":

Bashing Arizona: House Democrats' Standing Ovation for President Felipe Calderon's Open-Borders Lawlessness!

What an ass. Blaming Mexico's problems on the U.S. See, "Calderon Urges Congress to Ban Assault Weapons." And, "Calderón Again Assails Arizona Law on Detention."

Plus, at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "What a disgrace! House Democrats stand and cheer on Mexican President Felipe Calderon as he bashes Arizona’s law":

Plus, Juanell Garrett, "My nominee for 'Hypocrite of the Week' - President Calderon":

RELATED: "Unions to spend $100M in 2010 campaign to save Dem majorities." Figures. The open-borders lobby opens the union-thug checkbook.

Griff Jenkins Interviews Social Justice Teacher Ron Gochez: 'I Am Against Capitalism'

Robert Stacy McCain loves his Google bombs, but I'm telling you, I'm getting some of teh awesome search engine exposure with my reporting on Los Angeles revolutionary teacher Ron Gochez. I mean, seriously. Search for "Ron Gochez" and my entries top the list. I'm even beating Gochez on Facebook! Sweet. And lots of folks have been linking my stuff all around the web, on blogs, message boards, even BreitbartTV!

And listen to the interview. Gochez confirms he's socialist, declaring "I am against capitalism," and he attacks tea party patriots as "violent racists."

What's especially noteworthy here is the statement from L.A. Unified defending Gochez's rights to freedom of speech:

The teacher in question was participating on his personal time and the views he expressed during the gathering were his own and do not represent the views or opinions of the district. There appears to be no direct violation of district policy.

Some folks might cringe at this, for example, Todd Starnes: "‘Mexican Revolution’ Teacher Won’t Be Disciplined." But the issue is not so much Gochez's First Amendment rights (which should be protected), but the double standards. Radical left-wing hate speech is rampant in America's public schools, colleges, and universities. Diversity training, "institutional racism" indoctrination, and political correctness are poisoning kids' minds from Los Angeles to Denver to Boston and all points between. Just this week, in Hallsville, Missouri, a high school sophomore was disciplined for displaying a painting from his art class that depicted "President Barack Obama with a hammer and sickle symbolizing communism." And of course, also this week we had David Horowitz's confrontation at UCSD, where a Muslim student admitted support for a second Holocaust. Robert Spencer updates on that, "Muslim Students Association issues deceptive non-condemnation of UCSD student’s endorsement of genocide of Jews." And see my piece as well, "Mark Levine, Radical Pro-Islamist History Professor at UC Irvine, Calls David Horowitz a 'Liar' on Sean Hannity's."

With Arizona's big recent pushback on immigration and ethnic studies, we're really turning a tide in the political debate. For 2010, It's not just small government issues anymore. It's the whole neo-socialist reconquista agenda being pushed by today's Democratic Party establishment. And it's long pased time to give these creeps the boot.

Ron Gochez, Santee High School Social Justice Teacher, Sets MySpace Profile to 'Private'

Hey, American Power gets results!

Ron Gochez, coming under scrutiny across the web, has "privatized" his MySpace page:

But while keeping his underage "tribe" under wraps, he's got some additional mamacitas over at the DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION! MySpace page. It turns out the commie reconquista types there are pushing to Make California a Sanctuary State!:

A society whose state resources are expended to break up families and tear mothers and fathers out of the hands of their children must be saved from its own moral depravity.

Millions of immigrants work, live and go to school under a cloud of fear every day in California - fear that federal immigration officers will drag off one of the people they love. The rank inhumanity of that policy is becoming clear to more people. The mainstream media has begun to tell the real story of families being split up and torn apart by the raids. Churches across the country have joined the sanctuary movement.

More and more municipalities throughout California have recognized officially what is increasingly obvious to millions of people: immigrants, irrespective of official status, play an integral, indispensable and overwhelmingly positive part in our state, and in our nation economically and socially. The cities across California and across the country that have officially declared themselves as sanctuary cities are simply recognizing a practical reality of modern economic life. The new civil rights movement stands at the front of the effort to achieve sanctuary status for cities and states all over. Our movement and organization stands at the front of the effort to stop the anti-immigrant raids.

People who are a contributing part of the society are citizens, regardless of where they come from, what forms they have filled out, or what government office they have waited in. The attack on Mexican and other Latin American immigrants is just bigotry and racism. The corrosive effect of having a section of people in a society with separate, unequal and inferior legal rights is unacceptable. The new immigrant rights and civil rights movement will fight and defeat any attempt to impose an inferior double standard of rights on immigrants.

We demand full and equal rights for all immigrants. We demand an end to the raids. We demand that California become a sanctuary state.

And sheesh! These radical protest organizations just sprout like weeds. See, "The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)."

PREVIOUSLY: "Ron Gochez, Anti-Semitic Social Justice Teacher and Reconquista Activist, Connects With Underage Student Hotties on MySpace," and "Ron Gochez, LA RAZA, and National Day of Action Against SB 1070, May 29."

Ron Gochez, Anti-Semitic Social Justice Teacher and Reconquista Activist, Connects With Underage Student Hotties on MySpace

There's a little buzz tonight surrounding a three year-old protest video featuring Los Angeles revolutionary/reconquista activist Ron Gochez -- who's listed as a Social Studies Teacher in the School of Public Service and Social Justice at Los Angeles' Santee High School.

Here's this from Gochez's speech at UCLA in 2007:

We are revolutionary Mexican organization here. We understand that this is not just about Mexico. It’s about a global struggle against imperialism and capitalism… At the forefront of this revolutionary movement is La Raza. We will no longer fall for these lies called borders. We see America as a northern front of a revolutionary movement… Our enemy is capitalism and imperialism.

Well, we find more on Ron Gochez with a little digging. For one thing the guy's a rabid anti-Semite. In 2002, he published a Letter to the Editor, at SDSU's Daily Aztec, entitled "The Jewish-owned media continue to blind the masses with propaganda to keep them in fear." The letter's been taken down, but not the responses to it. For example, here's Tevia Schriebman, Jewish Student Union President:

I am writing in response to Ron Gochez's letter to the editor. His empty words are filled with racist remarks and lies. As the President of the Jewish Student Union at SDSU, I take personal offense at his comments and beliefs that "Jewish-owned media continues to blind the masses with propaganda to keep them in fear." This lie is the language of hate speech perpetuated by anti-Semitic groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

And check the link. Schriebman's not alone in denouncing Gochez's racist bigotry.

And it's not as if Ron Gochez's anti-Jewish diatribes were a matter of youthful indiscretion. He's cited as the lead organizer and contact person for an event in January 2009, "Raza in Solidarity with Palestine - Saturday, January 17th, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM - At Centro Cultural Francisco Villa - 2100 Maple Ave. LA - END the OCCUPATION NOW!":

Plus, Gochez is cited at the Workers World Party website, "ONE MILLION ON MAY DAY DEMAND: Stop Arizona Apartheid Law":

The Southern California Immigration Coalition contingent, wearing red shirts and carrying red, Mexican and Honduran flags and flags from other Latin American countries, represented one of the largest groups in the united protest. SCIC includes over 40 organizations; some of the major ones are Union del Barrio, BAYAN-USA, Service Employees Local 721 Latino Caucus, Latino Congresso and the International Action Center/Bail Out the People Movement.

Two of the rally emcees were Ron Gochez of Union del Barrio and Celina Benitez of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. Both are steering committee members of SCIC. They made comments and led chants that made it clear that any legislation calling for criminalization was not acceptable.

The Southern California Immigration Coalition webpage is here, and Unión del Barrio is here.

And that's far from all the bad news about Ron Gochez. It turns out that "Mr. Gochez" is an unmarried 28 year-old Don Juan who keeps a spicy-hot MySpace page boasting a pictorial spread featuring some busty underage Latinas. According to "Mr. Gochez's" profile:

Mr. Gochez AKA Little Crow (Santee Tribe Leader!)'s Blurbs

About me:

I'm a teacher at South Central LA High! I LOVE MY JOB! Teaching our young people is a beautiful thing! I wouldn't do anything else! I want to give the youth of South Central the best education that people like my parents NEVER had the opportunity to receive. I graduated from San Diego State and then I got my masters at UCLA. I love to travel, read, work out, watch movies, watch RAIDER FOOTBALL!! VIVA LA RAZA!!

Who I'd like to meet:

And who would he like to meet? Well, check out these bursting screencaps below, featuring some provocative pics from some of his tribe's underage hotties:

The page is dated Oct 19 2009 1:51 PM, and features this Mexican flag and rallying cry: "Mexican Pride!"

This guy's all over the web.

Turns out he made a conference presentation at "“THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE IN EDUCATION” - 2nd Annual Assoc. of Raza Educators Conference." Gochez's presentation? No surprise here: "How to be a teacher AND an Organizer: Putting Revolutionary Theory into Practice!":

Ron Góchez, M.Ed., LAUSD, Association of Raza Educators, Los Angeles

Come and learn how to organize! Ever feel like you wanted to organize something but didn’t know how? Come learn some basic/practical tactics that you can use to advance Social Justice both inside and outside of your classroom! As A.R.E we believe that being a Social Justice educator means being able to organize students, parents and fellow teachers! Come learn how from teachers who have led successful struggles in South Central LA.

Of course, barely half of the Hispanic student population at Santee High School is proficient in English and math, and it's no wonder when you've got extremist social justice educators doing everything except actually teaching kids the basics.

And that, in a nutshell, is the crisis of American education!

Chicks on the Right have the contact information for the L.A. Unified School District and Board of Education. If anyone deserves to be fired, this guy is it.

Added: From Doug Ross, "Your Tax Dollars At Work: 'Professor' Rallies Students for an Armed Revolt Against 'Occupied Mexico', eh, I mean the United States of America":

Majority Supports Arizona Immigration Law, Poll Finds

Notice Pancho Villa playing make my day with Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, from POWIP:

And check the new poll at NYT, "Poll Shows Most in U.S. Want Overhaul of Immigration Law" (via Memeorandum):

The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country’s immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled. And despite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.

These are the findings of the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

With the signing of the Arizona law on April 23 and reports of renewed efforts in Washington to rethink immigration, there has been an uptick in the number of Americans who describe illegal immigration as a serious problem.

But the poll — conducted April 28 through May 2 with 1,079 adults, and with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points — suggests that Americans remain deeply divided about what to do.

The public broadly agrees, across party lines, that the United States could be doing more along its border to keep illegal immigrants out. The view was shared by 78 percent of the respondents.

That unity, however, fractures on the question of what to do with illegal immigrants who are already here and the role of states in enforcing immigration law, normally a federal responsibility.

Well, shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Just say, "Sí, se puede!":

RELATED: Michelle Malkin, "The May Day angry mob you won’t see."

Illegal Alien Superhighway

Via Theo Spark, "Arizona Border Clean Up":

RELATED: Rich Lowry, "Hysterics Against Arizona," (via Memeorandum).

In Phoenix, Smugglers Prey on Immigrants

From the Wall Street Journal, "Immigrants Become Hostages as Gangs Prey on Mexicans":

A whispered 911 call from a cellphone early one January morning brought police to a home on West Columbine Drive in this Phoenix suburb. Inside, they found more than 30 half-naked and shivering men -- prisoners, police say, of a gang that had smuggled them in from Mexico.

Beaten and threatened with a 9-mm Beretta pistol, a local detective's report said, the men were being shaken down for as much as $5,000 apiece, a ransom above the $1,000 that each had agreed to pay before being spirited across the border.

Such cases are increasingly common in Phoenix, which is gaining notoriety as the kidnapping capital of America. Authorities blame forces ranging from Mexico's rising drug violence to a gang takeover of the immigrant-smuggling business.

Another factor: the volatile housing market in the city, which has left it strewn with thousands of rental houses on sometimes sparsely populated suburban blocks, handy places for smugglers to store either drugs or people. The police call these "drop houses." They say federal, state and local authorities discovered 194 such houses in 2007, then 169 last year and dozens more so far in 2009.

While most of Phoenix's abduction cases relate to the drug trade, as dealers snatch rivals to demand ransom or settle debts, increasing numbers involve undocumented migrants. "Of 368 kidnap cases last year, 78 were drop-house cases involving illegal aliens," says Sgt. Tommy Thompson of the Phoenix Police Department. Officials say that in 68 alleged drop houses identified in the first five months of 2009, authorities found 1,069 illegal immigrants.

What's happening here marks a shift in the people-smuggling business. A couple of decades ago, workers commonly traveled back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, going to the same American farm or construction job each year. To make the passages they often would use the same smuggler, called a "coyote," each time.

Now, organized gangs own the people-smuggling trade. According to U.S. and Mexican police, this is partly an unintended consequence of a border crackdown. Making crossings more difficult drove up their cost, attracting brutal Mexican crime rings that forced the small operators out of business. The Phoenix area also was affected because tougher enforcement at the border focused on traditional routes in Texas and California -- funneling more traffic through Arizona along desert corridors controlled by Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel.

Read the entire article, here.

Mexico's Insurgency

I'm not exactly sure why, but I haven't written much about the political instablity in Mexico. Maybe it's the familiarity of it, actually. I've traveled extensively in Mexico, and the Mexican case is a staple of my comparative government course at my college. But this morning's story on Mexico's drug gangs at the Los Angeles Times overlaps with Sam Quinones' recent piece at Foreign Policy, "State of War." So, I thought I'd share all of this with readers.

Here's this from Quinones' essay:

When I lived in Mexico, its cartels were content with assault rifles and large-caliber pistols, mostly bought at American gun shops. Now, Mexican authorities are finding arsenals that would have been incomprehensible in the Mexico I knew. The former U.S. drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was in Mexico not long ago, and this is what he found:

The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG’s, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 [caliber] sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns.

These are the weapons the drug gangs are now turning against the Mexican government as Calderón escalates the war against the cartels.

Mexico’s surge in gang violence has been accompanied by a similar spike in kidnapping. This old problem, once confined to certain unstable regions, is now a nationwide crisis. While I was in Monterrey, the supervisor of the city’s office of the AFI—Mexico’s FBI—was charged with running a kidnapping ring. The son of a Mexico City sporting-goods magnate was recently kidnapped and killed. Newspapers reported that women in San Pedro, once one of Mexico’s safest cities, now take classes in surviving abductions.

All of this is taking a toll on Mexicans who had been insulated from the country’s drug violence. Elites are retreating to bunkered lives behind video cameras and security gates. Others are fleeing for places like San Antonio and McAllen, Texas. Among them is the president of Mexico’s prominent Grupo Reforma chain of newspapers. My week in Mexico last August ended with countrywide marches of people dressed in white, holding candles and demanding an end to the violence.

Be sure to check out the article at the Times as well, "Drug Cartels' New Weaponry Means War," and especially the stunning graphic illustrations, "Asymmentical Arms" and "Traffickers' Advantage in Arms."