SHERMAN, Tex.  - Police in Sherman seized $180,000 worth of meth in what they call one of the biggest meth houses they have ever seen.

The Sherman Police Department held a press conference this morning describing what they are calling one of the biggest meth busts in the past 10 years.

A number of state legislators argue the Department of Public Safety Commission overstepped its authority Aug. 25 by issuing new rules requiring applicants to prove they are here legally before they can obtain or renew a Texas driver's license. Their suspicions deepened when, two weeks later, the commission's chairman asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott if it was legal for the commission to set up driver's license checkpoints.

AUSTIN — In a clampdown on illegal immigrants, the Texas Department of Public Safety has adopted a new policy requiring noncitizens to prove they are in this country legally before they can obtain or renew a driver's license.

Gov. Rick Perry applauded the change, which went into effect Oct. 1, as a way to strengthen the state's security.

FALFURRIAS - The trip north on U.S. Highway 281 toward Falfurrias steers drivers alongside some of the state's and country's biggest and most beautiful ranches.
But the torn fences - ripped tauntingly less than a mile from an inland U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint - frame a much uglier, deadlier truth.

Falfurrias is a city under siege, and most of the drugs, weapons, humans and cash smuggled through this town flow straight through Victoria.

Outmanned U.S. Border Patrol agents stand guard near a laughable sign posted by the federal government just south of the three-lane checkpoint: "Smuggling illegal aliens is a federal crime."

OREGON CITY -- An illegal immigrant pleaded guilty today to murdering 15-year-old Dani Countryman in a case that drew national attention and exposed flaws in the process for deporting criminal offenders.

Alejandro Emeterio Rivera Gamboa admitted in Clackamas County Circuit Court that he stepped on Countryman's throat to help subdue her while his cousin, also a Mexican national from the Guadalajara area, allegedly raped the girl.

State Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview, will likely not be sanctioned for hiring an illegal immigrant.

In the wake of a violent slaying on Flores' ranch property north of Mission, local and Mexican law enforcement agencies are tracking a 24-year-old Honduran man who had been living and working there. But federal law enforcement agencies have expressed little interest in pursuing Flores for hiring Froilan Caseres, who authorities said was in the country illegally when he allegedly beat another man to death.

Flores denied any knowledge of Caseres' immigration status. His cell phone was turned off Tuesday and a message left at his home was not returned.

On Monday, he told The Monitor that Caseres had only been doing a few days' worth of work on the ranch, and that because of Caseres' appearance and family connections in the area, Flores did not check his immigration papers.

Signaling a revival of the illegal immigration debate in the 2009 legislative session, two Republican state lawmakers have asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to weigh in on a thorny subject: "sanctuary cities."

The term has been used to describe Austin, Houston and dozens of other cities across the United States that don't require police or other municipal employees to report to federal authorities people who may be in the country illegally.

DEL RIO, Texas -- This city on the Rio Grande stands virtually alone, and not just because it's in vast, desolate West Texas.

Unlike other Texas cities along the Mexican border, Del Rio actually welcomes the 15-foot-high steel wall the U.S. government wants to build against illegal immigrants.

The widow of slain Houston police officer Rodney Johnson filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the landscaper who employed Johnson's killer, as jurors continued deliberating Juan Leonardo Quintero's fate.

Quintero was convicted earlier this month of shooting Johnson seven times after he was arrested during a traffic stop.

Johnson's widow, Joslyn, said Robert Lane Camp was negligent in hiring Quintero, an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

"He needs to pay for his actions," Johnson said.

McALLEN - U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar told the Texas Legislature to stay away from enacting immigration reform. "This is a federal matter," said Cuellar, D-Laredo. "If the state gets involved you're liable to have a patchwork of laws."

Some landowners and political leaders intensified their opposition to a border fence Wednesday after the Justice Department forced the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, to temporarily relinquish 233 acres in a prelude to building the barrier.

U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum ordered Eagle Pass to "surrender" the 233 acres. The Justice Department sued for access to the land Monday.

Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster assailed the Bush administration's actions as "sneaky underhanded measures" as he responded to the District Court order forcing the city to turn over the land. The Justice Department sought the property to allow government surveyors to begin assessing sites for construction of the fence.

...And it was one of our own senators, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who included some words in a voice vote that pretty much killed the fence. She said, "Nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."

Thanks to Hutchinson, the SFA has been effectively neutralized and made impotent.

Congress last night passed a giant new spending bill that undermines current plans for a U.S.-Mexico border fence, allowing the Homeland Security Department to build a single-tier barrier rather than the two-tier version that has worked in California.

.... The 2006 Secure Fence Act specifically called for "two layers of reinforced fencing" and listed five specific sections of border where it should be installed. The new spending bill removes the two-tier requirement and the list of locations.
...Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas Republican who has led the charge to change the 2006 law, said she wants to give Homeland Security more flexibility and wants local officials and landowners to be consulted.
...But Rep. Peter T. King, who sponsored the Secure Fence Act, said if the goal was to give DHS flexibility, the senators have failed.

"This is either a blatant oversight or a deliberate attempt to disregard the border security of our country," the New York Republican said. "As it's currently written, the omnibus language guts the Secure Fence Act almost entirely. Quite simply, it is unacceptable."

Steve Elliott, the president of Grassfire, says he still wants to know, "Where's the fence?"

Elliott, in a telephone interview, told WND an amendment submitted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, for the Department of Homeland Security 2008 budget would gut the already-approved Secure Fence Act, which was adopted with the promise hundreds of miles of physical fencing would help secure the U.S. border with Mexico.

But the budget bill now in a conference committee contains the Hutchinson amendment, and Elliott says it simply would drop the requirement for the security project.

...."Now, if the Hutchison amendment gets signed into law that fence is never going to be built," he said.

Elliott said the language of the amendment from Hutchison (S. Amdt. 2466) specifically would exempt the Department of Homeland Security from having to build any fence at all.

The Hutchison amendment reads, in part, " … nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."

The Department of Transportation recently revealed an increase in the number of NAFTA trucks permitted to all U.S. highways – now 10 carriers, sending as many as 55 trucks throughout the country.

The last time the Bush administration made a public announcement about the number of Mexico-based carriers allowed to participate in the NAFTA trucks pilot program, there were only three carriers.

Recently Mexican President Calderon has been very outspoken, critical on U.S. Immigration law enforcement efforts and supports Amnesty for all illegal aliens from Mexico residing, working in this nation.

Contrary to popular belief, Mexico has very strict immigration laws which are enforced by every police agency in the country. The Bureau of Immigration can call upon any law enforcement officer to assist in their mission. Citizens from the United States traveling in Mexico without proper documents, work permits or non immigrant visas are subject to arrest as illegal aliens.

The laws regarding foreign national visitors, immigrants, non-citizens are as clear and concise in Mexico as are our own U.S. laws which are considered unenforceable by many politicians in Washington, D.C.

We need to ask ourselves whether Austin should continue to be a city that offers sanctuary, given recent events in Newark, N.J. At the very least, city leaders — including Police Chief Art Acevedo — should reexamine procedures so that we aren't harboring criminals who should be deported.

Austin police don't check the immigration status of people they stop, question or arrest. They don't ask people who report crimes whether they are in the country legally.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon Sunday demanded the United States surrender its sovereignty, abandon the rule of law and accede to Mexico's inherent supremacy.

In his state of the union address to the Mexican nation, Calderon established his imperialistic imperatives: "I have said that Mexico does not stop at its border, that wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico. And, for this reason, the government action on behalf of our countrymen is guided by principles, for the defense and protection of their rights."

Now that the game plan is laid out, we can connect the dots: NAFTA, the admission of Mexican trucks onto our highways, the contract to build the TransTexas Corridor and the plans to extend it into a NAFTA Super Highway, making Kansas City an international "port," the "totalization" of illegal aliens into our Social Security system, and the recently defeated Senate amnesty bill. That bill would have integrated 20 million illegal aliens into our labor force, locked us (by Section 413) into the SPP, and spent massive foreign aid to "improve the standard of living in Mexico."