The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego. They warn travelers they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed."

Rising violence along the border has coincided with a crackdown in Mexico on warring drug gangs, who are seeking control of smuggling routes into the United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a bloody campaign against powerful cartels, and more than 28,000 people have died since he launched his crackdown in late 2006.

1. Access to immigration files can provide investigative leads when a criminal alien is being sought as a fugitive or a suspect of a crime.

2. Access to immigration files can also provide vital information to a judge when a criminal alien is arrested and the judge is attempting to set the appropriate bail. The immigration file can provide documented evidence of risk of flight based on numerous identities the defendant may have previously used, occasions when the defendant jumped bail in an immigration matter and filed to appear for an immigration hearing. The file can also provide evidence of prior deportations. This could help to prevent those tragedies in which a criminal alien is arrested and then released on bail, only to commit another heinous crime while out on bail.

3. If a plea bargain is being arranged, local and state prosecutors should work in close cooperation with federal immigration counsels to make certain that in the process of working out a plea-bargain agreement that they don't inadvertently eliminate a conviction for a crime that would render the alien deportable.

4. Working cooperatively with ICE, it would be easier to cultivate informants. Informants are often essential to the successful investigation and prosecution of criminals and criminal organizations as well as terrorists and their associates. The immigration laws provide a huge “carrot” as well as a huge “stick” to this end.

5. There are a number of laws that can be used to hammer criminal aliens under the federal code. For example, the penalty for an illegal alien found to be in possession of a firearm carries a ten year penalty. There are other such laws to be found in the federal code that deals with the possession and use of false identity documents and for the crime of unlawful reentry after deportation. A criminal alien who is deported from the United States and then reenters the United States with the authority of the government faces a maximum of 20 years in jail. (I am proud to have played a role in convincing the then Senior Senator from the State of New York, Alphonse D'Amato to create the legislation that distinguished criminal aliens who are deported and reenter the United States illegally for illegal aliens who had no previous criminal convictions.)

6. When an alien is convicted of a felony and when state and local law enforcement authorities work in close coordination with federal immigration authorities, a detainer can be lodged to make certain that upon release from custody when the criminal alien's sentence is completed, the criminal alien will face deportation (removal) from the United States.

7. There are instances when it is advantageous to the investigation to arrest a key individual(s) without alerting other members of the criminal or terrorist organization he is a part of, that the entire organization is being investigated. In such instances, it is often easy to find of violation of the immigration laws to enable law enforcement to arrest these individuals for administrative or criminal violation of the immigration laws, thus not alerting their cohorts to the larger, on-going investigation.  

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/15/mexican-assassins-headed-arizona/

2:54 p.m.,
Friday, October 15, 2010

Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have sent well-armed assassins, or
"sicarios," into Arizona to locate and kill bandits who are ambushing
and stealing loads of cocaine, marijuana and heroin headed to buyers in
the United States, the Department of Homeland Security has warned
Arizona law enforcement authorities.

In a memo sent in May and
widely circulated since, the department said: "We just received
information from a proven credible confidential source who reported that
a meeting was held in Puerto Penasco in which every smuggling
organization who utilizes the Vekol Valley was told to attend. This
included rival groups within the Guzman cartel."

Joaquín
Archivaldo Guzman Loera heads what formally is known as the Sinaloa
Cartel, which smuggles multi-ton loads of cocaine from Colombia through
Mexico to the United States. One of the most powerful and dangerous drug
gangs in Mexico, it also is known as the Guzman cartel, which has been
tied to the production, smuggling and distribution of Mexican marijuana
and heroin and has established transshipment outlets in the United
States.

The Vekol Valley is a widely-traveled drug smuggling
corridor running across Interstate 8 between the Arizona towns of Casa
Grande and Gila Bend, continuing north towards Phoenix. It gives drug
smugglers the option of shipping their goods to California or to major
cities both north and east.

The Homeland Security memo said a
group of "15, very well equipped and armed sicarios complete with bullet
proof vests" had been sent into the valley. It said the assassins would
be disguised as "groups of 'simulated backpackers' carrying empty boxes
covered with burlap into the Vekol Valley to draw out the bandits."
Once identified, the memo said, "the sicarios will take out the
bandits."

The federal government has posted signs along
Interstate 8 in the Vekol Valley warning travelers the area is unsafe
because of drug and alien smugglers, and the local sheriff says Mexican
drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were
posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of
Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west
corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego. They warn travelers
they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and may
encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high
rates of speed."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county
lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix
and cities east and west, told The Washington Times earlier this month
that Mexican drug cartels have posted scouts on the high points in the
mountains and in the hills and "they literally control movement.

"They
have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good
as anything law enforcement has," he said. "This is going on here in
Arizona. This is 70 to 80 miles from the border — 30 miles from the
fifth-largest city in the United States."

The sheriff said he had
asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to
patrol the border, but instead got 15 signs. He also has confirmed that
he got the Homeland Security memo warning of the assassins.

Rising
violence along the border has coincided with a crackdown in Mexico on
warring drug gangs, who are seeking control of smuggling routes into the
United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a bloody
campaign against powerful cartels, and more than 28,000 people have died
since he launched his crackdown in late 2006.

Rep. Lamar Smith
of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and a
member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has called the signs
"an insult to the citizens of border states."

"American citizens
should not have to be fearful for their lives on U.S. soil," he said.
"If the federal government would do its job of enforcing immigration
laws, we could better secure the border and better protect the citizens
of border states."

Two years ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of Homeland Security, said in a
report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless and had
begun targeting not only rivals, but federal, state and local police.
ICE said the violence had risen dramatically as part of "an
unprecedented surge."

The Justice Department's National Drug
Intelligence Center, in its 2010 drug threat assessment report, called
the cartels "the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United
States." It said Mexican gangs had established operations in every area
of the United States and were expanding into rural and suburban areas.

It
said assaults against U.S. law enforcement officers along the
southwestern border were on the increase, up 46 percent against Border
Patrol agents alone.

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