Highway Clean up and Border Watch 11/10/2007 9 - noon

The Campo Minutemen's Adopt a Highway Program under the direction of unsung American Hero, Gadget Dan, have picked up over $10,000 pounds of trash.

*********Join the Campo Minutemen for Highway Clean up and Border Watch***********

Date: Saturday, November 10, 2007
Time: 9 am to 12:00 Noon
Phone: 904-687-7867
Location: Corner of Oak and Buckman Springs Road
Tongs, Bags and Reflector Vests Provided.
Gloves Recommended

Lunch at Noon
Campo Dinner
Courtesy of the Campo Minutemen

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Directions:
I-5 or I 15 South toward SAN DIEGO.
Keep LEFT to take I-805 S.
Merge onto I-8 E toward EL CENTRO.
Take the BUCKMAN SPRINGS RD exit- EXIT 51.
Turn RIGHT onto BUCKMAN SPRINGS RD / CR-S1
End at Oak Dr & Buckman Springs Rd

Campo Minutemen Showing Law Enforcement The Border

Campo Minutemen have been escorting off duty members of Law Enforcement around the Border the last few days. The members of Law Enforcement had been reassigned to fire areas and were very interested to see the border for themselves. Campo Minutemen were honored to show them around.

Illegal Immigrants Surrender to Escape Fires

Fearing for their safety, about 50 suspected illegal immigrants have surrendered to the Border Patrol since Sunday to escape one of Southern California's largest wildfires.

The Border Patrol says no illegal immigrants have been reported injured, but agents are scouting a hilly, heavily wooded area east of San Diego for anyone in trouble. The so-called Harris Fire has burned 22,000 acres near the Mexican border. One civilian has been killed, while 16 people and five firefighters are injured.

Good map of the area with satellite photos
<http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=32.963847&lon=-117.160177&z=15&l=0&m=m&v=2>

Fire at the Border

Campo Minutemen urged to leave border area. Contact Kingfish if you need a place to stay.


http://www.fox6.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=b3ba9cf6-da74-4b6a-b723-780b3283d6b7

Cal Fire officials report that at least four people have been seriously injured in the Harris Fire. Four air ambulances have responded to take people to UCSD Burn Center. Unconfirmed reports indicate that at least some of the injured are firefighters.

The Harris Fire is one of two wildfires are burning in the East County, whipped by Santa Ana winds. The newest one, according to the California Highway Patrol, started in the Witch Creek area, between Ramona and Santa Ysabel, somewhere along Highway 78. This fire is more than 100 acres. Authorities report buildings are threatened and the Sheriff is preparing to evacuate areas around Witch Creek.

A bigger fire is near the border where at least one home was destroyed and another was seriously damaged today in a fast-moving brush fire in a rural area near the Tecate border that was being fueled by gusty Santa Ana winds, authorities said.

"There's nothing we can really do until the wind dies down to slow it down," Cal Fire Capt. Matt Streck said at midday.

The blaze started about 9:30 a.m. near Harris Ranch Road and Potrero Valley Road and had scorched both sides of Highway 94 and was heading west as

of the noon hour, but no injuries were reported, Streck said.

Highway 94 was closed between Forest Gate Road and Highway 188. The fire has jumped Highway 188.

About 50 to 100 homes were in potential harm's way as of midday. At that point, at least one home had been lost and another was seriously damaged, Streck said.

The Sheriff is issuing mandatory evacuations for Barrett Junction and Dulzura. Evacuations are also in effect from Potrero Park Road to the south; north of Highway 94; west of Harris Ranch Road and east of Potrero Valley Road.

Fire officials say people should use common sense and not wait to be told to evacuate. They advise to plan ahead if you are near the fire's path and evacuate if you see fire. They also advise that people with animals will need to plan for additional time.

Residents in and around the Julian area were told to head to Ramona High School to the west or the Borrego area to the east if Ramona was too far, according to San Diego County sheriff's officials.

About 300 firefighters were battling the flames, with help from five airtankers, three helicopters and two bulldozers.

The County Emergency Management Center has been activated. An estimated 700 homes were notified of the danger by reverse 911 calls.

County Animal Services is setting up at a shelter that has been opened for displaced residents at the Steele Canyon High School. The San Diego Humane Society is helping take care of large animals near the Jamul Fire Station.

People with non-emergency calls about the fire as asked to call 2-1-1. The non-emergency number from a cell phone is 858-300-1211.

Smoke from the fire is drifting east into more heavily populated areas. Ash is falling in some neighborhoods and residents report smelling smoke.

Watch for more updates here on FOX6.COM and see full coverage of the fire and today's Santa Ana winds tonight at 10:00 on FOX6 News.

Border Patrol agent shoots man who attacked him with rock

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20071012-0651-bn12agent.html

Border Patrol agent shoots man who attacked him with rock

SAN DIEGO – A Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a suspected illegal immigrant Thursday after the man assaulted him with a rock, authorities said.

The agent had gone to check on a seismic detection device in a rugged canyon off Barrett Smith Road near State 94 between the communities of Barrett Junction and Tecate about 6 p.m., sheriff's Lt. Dennis Brugos said.

He came upon two men and tried to take them into custody but they resisted and pelted the agent with rocks and sticks, Brugos said.

The agent fired once, hitting the 30-year-old man.

Border Patrol officials notified the Sheriff's Department and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection about the shooting at 7 p.m.

A CalFire dispatcher said the wounded man was stuck in a 500-foot ravine. It took firefighters using a winch at the top of the ravine about two hours to hoist up the man. He was flown to hospital with injuries authorities say are not life-threatening.

He was arrested and will face charges that include assault on a federal officer.

The agent was treated for minor injuries. The other man got away.

The sheriff's department is investigating the shooting, which is routine with officer-involved shootings in unincorporated areas.

---

Debbi Baker: (619) 293-1710; debbi.baker@uniontrib.com

Army-Drug Gang Shootout Leaves 15 Dead in Mexico (NO US Media on This)

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Army_Drug_Gang_Shootout_Leaves_15_Dead_in_Mexico_09363.html

Army-Drug Gang Shootout Leaves 15 Dead in Mexico

by Diane Smith 23:35, October 5th 2007

A shootout between armed forces and drug smugglers in the Mexican city of Tampico on Friday left 15 people dead and 10 wounded in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, local media reported. The Army raided the area inhabited by the criminals and seized 20 tons of cocaine, radio and online press reported. Tampico city is the home to the Gulf Cartel, one of the two most powerful Mexican drug gangs. The clash between the soldiers and traffickers wasn’t immediately confirmed by the National Defense Ministry or the public prosecutor's office. The only official who mentioned the operation was none other than the Mexican President Felipe Calderon who talked about it in a speech in Ciudad Victoria. He was set to visit the town just a few hours after the raid took place. "We have doubled the efforts to make the law prevail in Mexico with ... actions and interventions like those that happened recently, I can say today (Friday), in the state of Tamaulipas," Calderon said. The drug-related violence has reached very high levels in the north-eastern Mexican state. At least 2,000 people have been killed this year alone in quarrels between the rival gangs. Ninety percent of cocaine entering the US comes through Mexico so John Walters, the top White House official in charge of anti-drug efforts, was very pleased with the Mexican authorities and praised them for their efforts to fight the cartels that supply the white powder. Since he began his term as Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon sent about 30,000 troops and federal police across the country to deal with the drug gangs. Although this method was seen with skepticism at first, it seems to be the right path to follow. The price of the white powder in 37 US cities rose since March and the purity of it has dropped by 11% over the same period showing that the traffickers are diluting their dwindling stocks to stretch it further and meet demand. "After 25 years of cocaine coming into the United States, there has never been the kind of disruption of this magnitude for this long," Mr Walters, who also released the figures above mentioned, said.

Fugitive arrested at border crossing

Fugitive arrested at border crossing

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/06/news/sandiego/19_06_3110_5_07.txt

By: North County Times Wire Service

SAN DIEGO -- Federal agents at the San Ysidro Port of Entry today arrested a fugitive wanted on three counts of second-degree murder and a kidnapping charge in Florida, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials reported.

Loubert Jules, 19, was a passenger in a Jeep Cherokee that entered the port facility this morning, CBP information officer Angelica De Cima said.

Record and fingerprint checks determined that Jules was the subject of a felony warrant in Lees County, Fla., De Cima said.

Customs officers took Jules into custody and transported him to county jail to be held pending extradition back to the East Coast.

Details about the charges against him were not released

Border agents to be issued stronger air guns

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20071006-9999-1m6guns.html

Weapon fires balls of pepper or ink

By Leslie Berestein

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 6, 2007

Border Patrol agents in the agency's San Diego, Yuma and Tucson sectors will soon begin using a more powerful compressed-air gun to fire pepper or ink balls at illegal border crossers during violent confrontations.

The device, called an FN 303, can shoot the filled plastic projectiles 225 feet, said Andrea Zortman, a spokeswoman for the agency in Washington, D.C. The pepper-ball launchers currently used by agents have a range of about 60 feet.

Training in how to use the FN 303 has been going on for some time, and the devices will be used in the field within a few months, Zortman said this week. They will be used first in San Diego and Arizona because that is where the most violence against agents has occurred, she said. Eventually the air guns will be distributed for use nationwide.

Zortman said there were 893 assaults on Border Patrol agents nationwide between Oct. 1, 2006, and Aug. 31, versus 752 for all of the previous year.

In San Diego, there were 238 attacks on agents between Oct. 1, 2006, and the beginning of this month.

“We are definitely seeing an increase in assaults on our Border Patrol agents, a lot coming from a greater distance,” Zortman said. “There are rocks thrown, bottles thrown, vehicle assaults, shootings. We want to be able to have our agents address the situation, and potentially defuse it, at a lower level of lethality than using his or her firearm.”

Agents are armed with .40-caliber handguns and collapsible batons, and can check out a pepper-ball launcher at the beginning of a shift if they anticipate needing one, Zortman said. The ink component, which is new, is to mark smuggling suspects or attackers for potential arrest by authorities on either side of the border.

The agency refers to the FN 303 as “less lethal,” rather than nonlethal. Fatalities have occurred: In October 2004, a 21-year-old female college student died in Boston after being struck in the eye by a pepper ball fired from an FN 303 used by officers to control crowds celebrating the Red Sox's pennant win that year.

The Mexican Consulate is critical of the use of pepper-ball launchers for the same reason. In Imperial County this year, two Mexican teenagers were hit by pepper balls fired by agents, and one boy now stands an 80 percent chance of losing an eye, said Pablo Arnaud, the Mexican consul in Calexico.

A 20-year-old Mexican man died there in March after an agent-involved shooting with a firearm.

Zortman said part of the idea is to cut down on agent-involved gun shootings. Agent Matthew Johnson in the San Diego sector said 14 such shootings have taken place locally since Oct. 1, 2006.

A fatal agent-involved shooting took place in Escondido in May, when an agent shot and killed a smuggling suspect who, it was later discovered, was a legal resident.

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Leslie Berestein: (619) 542-4579; leslie.berestein@uniontrib.com

Latino Congreso & Kucinich Approve Anti Minutemen Resolution

Kucinich-Sponsored Resolution Approved at National Latino Congreso.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 6

PRNewswire-USNewswire

The National Latino
Congreso, meeting in Los Angeles this weekend, has unanimously passed one of two resolutions presented by representatives of the Kucinich for
President campaign and will consider a second one today.

The Congreso, expected to draw upwards of 2,000 Latino elected
officials, community leaders, and activists from across the country, is
developing a political and social action agenda for the coming year, and
hopes to have a major impact on the 2008 Presidential election campaign.
The campaign of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich is the only Presidential
campaign that is officially sponsoring the Congreso.

Kucinich will be the keynote speaker Sunday morning at a breakfast
sponsored by the Latino Vote Caucus. Today (Saturday), Rep. Kucinich's
wife, Elizabeth, will address a luncheon meeting on "America & the World in
the 21st Century."

The resolution approved Friday night calls for the Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff's Department to shut down a telephone hotline set up to encourage people to report the whereabouts and activities of persons the callers suspect of being in the country illegally. The Congreso resolution
says the hotline encourages "racial profiling and promotes discrimination
of the Latino community of Maricopa County."

The second resolution deals with the "Minuteman Project," a group of
individuals who patrol the U.S. border with Mexico to discourage crossings.
The group is all volunteer, raises its funds from private sources, and,
while heavily armed is undocumented as being a bona fide law enforcement
agency.

The Congreso resolution finds that the Minuteman Project "promotes
violence, hatred, racism and discrimination which are not representative
traits of the honorable and just American society that has a rich legacy of
immigration and inclusiveness."

On Saturday, a group supporting the Minuteman Project will picket
outside of the Sheraton Los Angeles Hotel where the Congreso is being held. The protestors claim they will be peaceful, although one pro-Minuteman Internet blog on Friday discussing the Congreso included the comment "Target rich environment...I suggest we treat the event like a M.O.V.E. house in Philadelphia..."

The blog referred to an incident in Philadelphia on May 13, 1985, when
police dropped an incendiary device on a row house after being fired upon
when attempting to serve arrest warrants on four of the occupants. The
resulting fire from the device burned down 50 houses, killing six people
and leaving another 200 neighborhood residents homeless.

Kucinich staffers from California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona are
participating in the Congreso.

SOURCE Kucinich for President 2008

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4677101&EDATE=

__________________

Campo Minutemen Joined in Protesting This Event. For Pictures:


http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=85820

Feds scout spots to build border fencing - Exclusive Pics

The pictures show the fence under construction at Calexico, (restricted access) and Campo and Smuggler's Gulch - where this no construction at this time.

Feds scout spots to build border fencing

Two areas in the county are named as possibilities

By Leslie Berestein

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 2, 2007

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20071002-9999-1m2newfence.html

The pictures show the fence under construction at Calexico, (restricted access) and Campo and Smuggler's Gulch - where this no construction at this time.

In its quest to have 370 total miles of border fence in place by the end of next year, the federal government is scouting places to build new fencing, including two spots in San Diego County.

Last week, a notice was published in the Federal Register that an environmental impact statement would be prepared for two proposed spots. The plan is to build 3.4 miles of fence, with roads, lights and other infrastructure, along the Pack Truck Trail adjacent to the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area.

A stretch of more than a half a mile would be built to connect with existing fence west of Tecate Peak.

Also, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said Friday that the agency recently awarded a contract to redesign a controversial and long-delayed stretch of proposed triple fence across a deep canyon, known as Smuggler's Gulch, near the coast. Construction could be put out to bid by December.

The agency had been scrambling in recent months to complete 70 miles of fencing in different spots along the southern border by last Sunday, the end of the 2007 fiscal year. Brad Benson, an agency spokesman, said Friday that this goal has been met and includes 7 new miles near Calexico, plus two small stretches completed in Campo and Otay Mesa.

Before this year, there were 75 miles of fence along the border, Benson said. An additional 225 miles is hoped for by December 2008. The question remains whether there will be enough money to build it all.

Last October, President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, which calls for 700 miles of new double-reinforced fencing along the border. The Customs and Border Protection agency estimates that it will cost $3 million per mile to build a primary fence alone.

But this is a best-case estimate. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, updated last May, building the Smuggler's Gulch fence could drive up the cost of completing 4.5 miles of long-planned triple fencing in San Diego to about $96 million, or roughly $21 million per mile. The steep cost is partly because of the terrain, which requires filling the canyon with more than 2 million cubic yards of dirt.

This would bring the ultimate cost of San Diego's 14 miles of fence – the total length stretching inland from the ocean once the gulch section is completed – to $127 million, according to the report. That's more than $9 million per mile, three times the amount being estimated for the planned fencing along the nation's southern border.

“Three million dollars a mile is kind of an overall estimate,” Benson said. “It does not mean that every individual contract is going to be $3 million a mile. When all is said and done . . . you will see wild spikes. Smuggler's Gulch is a perfect example.”

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Leslie Berestein: (619) 542-4579; leslie.berestein@uniontrib.com


New Fence at Smith Canyon:



New Fence at Campo (lower Fence is New, upper fence is old)


Construction at Calexico (area restricted)


Vehicle Barrier:



Construction Area:






End of the fence:



Smugger's Gulch:





Suitcase Nuke??

Steve Gregory of KFI News - At The Border

http://www.kfiam640.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=153218&article=2725214