United States Strengthens Security on California-Mexico Border

SAN DIEGO – The U.S. Border Patrol has created a special unit to supplement its agents on the eastern area of the border between San Diego and Mexico, where the presence of criminal organizations engaged in the trafficking, kidnapping and extortion of undocumented immigrants has been detected.

“Multiple smuggling organizations are responsible for threatening our Nation’s security through persistent human smuggling on Otay Mountain,” Chief Patrol Agent Richard A. Barlow said in a statement. “We will flex our enforcement posture toward these exploited areas to weaken and ultimately eliminate these criminal enterprises.”

The special unit’s Commander Matthew Dreyer, with more than 20 years in the Border Patrol, told EFE that the area is the most difficult terrain to cover in the San Diego area because of the cliffs, steep peaks, canyons, scrub and other conditions that make it hard to get around.

Traffickers use this route because they think they won’t be seen on their hike north and often don’t tell their victims about the risks of the terrain – and when the Border Patrol is about to catch up with them, the guides tend to flee, leaving their victims somewhere they’ll be unlikely to escape. That way they use the terrain to their own advantage, Dreyer said.

In the same area but south of the border, cases of extortion, kidnapping and rape of migrants have been reported.

For that reason, U.S. authorities work closely with the Federal Police of Mexico in order to wipe out those crimes.

For agent Daniel Parks, this collaboration is an example of the solid relations maintained by security agencies across the border.

They often meet to share information that will allow them to pounce on the people traffickers and combine their strategies for use in their respective jurisdictions.

By patrolling the border together, moving together toward the east, each on his own side of the border, there’s nowhere the criminals can go to get away, Parks told EFE.

Now it becomes clear that the fight for border security does not begin and end with the border wall, Parks said, adding that the only way to fight and defeat this problem at its point of origin, on the traffickers’ route to the border, on the border itself or farther into the United States, is by working closely with the Mexican government.

Thousands of Wild Buffalo Appear Out of Nowhere at Standing Rock (VIDEO)

Raw: Over 100 ND Pipeline Protesters Arrested

Syria - School air strike (Sick video)

How Syrian parents pick up their children from school.
Mutilated by #Putin_Assad air strikes#Hass #Idleb #Syria 26-10-2016 pic.twitter.com/ApdricgxAK

— شبكة الثورة السورية (@RevolutionSyria) October 27, 2016

Wildlife ranger accused over decapitated bison ( Cover-up)

Published: 27 Oct 2016 16:12 GMT+02:00

   

When two headless bison were discovered at a nature reserve in eastern Spain wildlife police launched a search for trophy hunters who they believed had poisoned the animals to death before removing their heads.

The bizarre crime against the protected animals caused outrage in Spain but now the case has taken a surreal twist with the arrest of the head of the wildlife park.

Carlos Álamo, the director of Valdeserrillas Nature park, had taken to social media to decry the death of two males in his beloved herd, animals that were brought to Spain last year as part of a bison reintroduction programme funded by the European Union.

But he appeared in court this week after being charged for negligence following a post mortem on the animals that appeared to suggest they had been starved to death.

The headless corpse of Sauron, the 660-kilo (1,455-pound) alpha male of the herd had been found in the park in mid-September followed a week later by the discovery of a second headless animal.

Initially investigators had followed the theory that the animals had been poisoned before their heads were cut off with an axe by trophy hunters, after poison pellets were discovered.

But the park director now stands accused of having behead the animals himself to cover up the fact that they had died of malnutrition.

The European bison, the continent's largest wild land mammal, once roamed across most of the continent but it was severely hunted until it finally became extinct in the wild in 1927, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

National Geographic's Afghan Girl Arrested in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD - The Afghan girl, who became famous for her striking green eyes on a National Geographic cover in 1985, was arrested Wednesday for possessing a fake identity card of Pakistan, where she lives in a refugee camp.

Sharbat Gula allegedly obtained Pakistani identity documents for herself and her two children after bribing three officials, a representative of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency told EFE, on grounds of anonymity.

The 46-year-old Afghan refugee, who does not have Pakistan citizenship, will be moved to a prison for women, where she will be held until a court reviews her case, for which she could be sentenced to up to seven years in jail.

She could also be expelled from the country, according to the FIA official.

The police are also trying to track down Gula's two children to take them into custody.

The federal agency began investigating the case in February 2015 when several cases of Afghan refugees trying to obtain Pakistani documents to avoid deportation came to light.

Pakistan hosts 1.4 million registered and 900,000 illegal Afghan refugees.

Afghans began arriving in Pakistan following the 1979 Soviet invasion and are one of the largest and oldest displaced communities in the world.

Around 456,000 Afghan refugees have returned back home from Pakistan so far this year, mostly in the last three months, following a Pakistani government ultimatum.

Gula was immortalized by American photographer Steve McCurry in a refugee camp in Peshawar in 1985.

Her face, wrapped in a red shawl and her striking green eyes transformed her into an icon of contemporary photography.

McCurry photographed Gula again 17 years later in Afghanistan and said the woman, then aged 30 years, was ignorant of her fame.

Gunmen Kill 5 Vigilantes in Southern Mexico

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – Five members of the UPOEG community self-defense group were ambushed and killed in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero by “heavily armed persons,” state police said.

The ambush occurred in the city of Juan R. Escudero as the vigilantes were returning from an operation, said the state police’s precinct chief in the town of Xalpatlahuac, Edith Baltazar.

The vigilantes left on Sunday for “the municipalities of Ayutla and Tecoanapa to conduct operations in the villages of Ocotito and Tierra Colorada, municipality of Juan R. Escudero,” Baltazar said in a statement.

The vigilantes’ convoy was traveling through the community of Villa Guerrero, located outside the city of Juan R. Escudero, when “they were ambushed by heavily armed persons, with the result that five community self-defense group members belonging to UPOEG, who were from different communities outside the cities of Tecoanapa and Ayutla, were killed,” Baltazar said.

“Meanwhile, communication was established with the community police command in Tecoanapa, who provided the same version to the precinct chief,” the Guerrero state police said.

Community police commanders in Tecoanapa said that “five dead bodies belonging to (members of) our organization (UPOEG) were brought in” on Monday afternoon.

“A group of six community police officers is missing,” Baltazar said.

UPOEG, whose members are armed, was created in January 2013 in the cities of Ayutla de los Libres, Teconoapa and San Marcos to protect residents.

The self-defense group controls access to the communities and polices them to fight drug traffickers and other criminals.