Undocumented. Unafraid. Queer. Unashamed.

Last weekend, I had the honor of being recognized with the Leadership on Immigration Award at the National Creating Change Conference hosted by the National LGBTQ Task Force. Living at the intersection of two socially and systemically oppressed identities holds its own particular set of obstacles that are individually unique.
I am queer and I am undocumented. For 20 years, I lived in fear of family separation, whether it be from deportation or family rejection. Now, I help lead United We Dream, the first and largest immigrant youth-led network, as the National Coordinator for the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP). I help their efforts to bring justice to the more than 267,000 undocumented LGBTQ people living in the United States. I am helping build the foundation of the liberation movement that we are creating with our intersectional efforts.

Growing up in Los Angeles, the unique experience of being undocumented was something I was reminded of every day when my mother would spend the entire day working at a sweatshop, and when, during her morning routine, she would prep my siblings and I to say that we were born at the city's Children's Hospital, to avoid having our family torn apart.
Many of these experiences are also particularly poignant when it comes to my queer identity. I remember valuing the little time I had with my mother during Sunday mass, and feeling conflicted as the priest, again, decided to condemn homosexuality as a sin. I remember growing up in a Latino neighborhood and hearing the word "joto," or queer, thrown around as a word meaning weakness or shame, and I did not want to show weakness or bring shame to my mother, because I knew how tired she was from providing for my siblings and I.

This kept me in the shadows for a long time, but I wouldn't remain there much longer.

In 2008, my mother returned to Mexico with no idea if she would see us again. Her brother had passed away. Undocumented families always have to make the difficult decision of going back to spend time with loved ones at the risk of leaving life in the U.S. behind.
This moment was the catalyst that led me to come out as undocumented. The pain of losing her was too big, and I knew I had to do more for our community.
As young immigrants, we are determined to change the world. We fight against family separation, deportations and unjust detention, just some of the harsh realities undocumented immigrants face everyday.

Once in the movement, I saw women and queer youth leading efforts that empowered both my undocumented and queer identities, and gave me the strength to come out to my mother -- having to hear her process of acceptance in tears over a phone.

It was the undocumented youth movement that helped me organize Operation Butterfly, where I reunited with my mother in Nogales, Arizona and was able to hug her for the first time through a 12-foot-high border fence after five painful years without her. It was at this moment when she finally was able to fully understand and embrace my queer identity.

On November 20, 2014, the immigrant youth movement encouraged President Obama to take executive action and protect nearly five million people from deportation. I put myself in the line and was arrested; I galvanized our communities to make this our victory.

But that same executive action left so many out, particularly many of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters, leaving them vulnerable to the detention and deportation machine.

It's in these moments when the LGBTQ and immigrant movement must become one to protect our communities. Currently, many of the 34,000 people found daily in immigration detention continue to face abuse and trauma. The most vulnerable amongst these people are LGBTQ individuals, pregnant women and HIV-positive individuals.

These detention centers, many of which are privatized, often operate in isolation and a lack of oversight. They are for-profit institutions that have proven time and again that they are incapable of keeping LGBTQ detainees safe from sexual assault, and against other human rights violations. They put transgender women with the male population, and fail to provide consistent access to life-saving medications. Currently the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has launched an investigation on these particular claims.
Immigration detention centers have proven themselves to be rogue agencies that operate with little accountability. Their arbitrary demand to deport 400,000 people per year has systematized deportations that purposely criminalize our LGBTQ communities.

The release of one or two detainees out of detention is not enough. We must challenge the system itself. We need solidarity for those in our community, as well as for those who are not undocumented or LGBTQ.
With the Leadership on Immigration Reform Award, the organizers of Creating Change embrace that we are not single-issue people, and that our strength is rooted in the complexity of our identities.

We hope for a day when a border fence or law will no longer separate any of us from our loved ones. I hope for a day when our LGBTQ community is no longer exposed to the tortures of immigration detention. I am undocumented and unafraid, queer and unashamed, and this is our liberation journey.

Latino Views on the 2016 GOP Field: Who Can Actually Win the Latino Vote?

By Matt Barreto
As the field of possible GOP contenders for the White House start to take shape, it is important to assess what Latino voters think about the potential presidential candidates, if they even know who they are, and how they can possibly position themselves to court the Latino vote. There is no question that Republicans will lose the White House again in 2016 if they repeat the mistakes of Mitt "I would veto the Dream Act" Romney and lose three-quarters of the Latino vote. GOP Chairman Reince Preibus has said future Republican candidates "must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform," while former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the Washington Post: "It was such a clear two-by-four to the head in the 2012 election," referring to Mitt Romney's low share of the Hispanic vote and poor positioning on immigration, concluding that "Republicans could never win again if that's the status."
Have Republican presidential hopefuls changed and embraced a kinder, gentler approach to immigration reform and Latino outreach? Latino Decisions has been asking voters how much they know, and what they think about the possible candidates in 2016. Here we review the findings of recent polling on Latino attitudes towards the Republican field:
Let's start with an older look, from back in July 2013 before too much jostling had started. Latino Decisions asked favorability ratings on seven GOP contenders and the biggest take away was back then, Latino voters had very low levels of information about the GOP hopefuls. Among those who did give an informed answer, Chris Christie led the pack with a 38% favorable rating versus a 12% unfavorable rating. Christie likely benefited from being in the news in 2013 during his gubernatorial re-election contest in which he ran virtually unopposed. Still a whopping 50% of Latino registered voters nationwide said they had never heard of, or had no opinion of Chris Christie. Likewise, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez score a net positive approval with 25% favorable against 12% unfavorable, however she was the least known of all the names we tested with 63% giving no answer when prompted about Governor Martinez. Looking at Latino views towards the GOP field back in July 2013, none appeared to be runaway favorites to back inroads with the Latino vote in 2016. Jeb Bush 27% favorable, Rand Paul just 17% favorable. Even Marco Rubio stood at just 31% favorable.

What's Changed in Arizona Politics Since the Giffords Shooting

TUCSON, Arizona -- United in grief a year ago, this city on Sunday marked the anniversary of the day when six people who wanted to talk politics with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at a local Safeway were killed and 13 others, including the congresswoman, were wounded. Though a bullet pierced her brain that day, Giffords sat smiling and swaying to the music Sunday as the crowd marveled to see her and hear the first words she's spoken -- the Pledge of Allegiance -- at a public event.
Both the candlelight vigil that Giffords and husband Mark Kelly attended and other weekend events sought to celebrate the lives that were lost and the community's determination to move past the tragedy, rather than relive the horrific events of Jan. 8, 2011. Bells rang throughout the city and pleas for civility and kindness echoed across the campus of the University of Arizona.
When Jared Loughner emptied a semiautomatic pistol into the crowd at Giffords' meet-and-greet, Arizona was already in the throes of fevered political incivility, fed by contentious campaigns and the state's battle over illegal immigration. A year later, the tenor of politics in the Grand Canyon state has changed somewhat, but the composition of Arizona's institutional leadership has largely remained the same: leaning to the right, with a Republican governor leading a Republican-controlled legislature.
As she left the vigil Sunday, nurse Anna Berube told me she felt a renewed sense of purpose. "This pulls us together, it gives us a spirit again to go on, work cohesively together." Then she paused. "For a while, anyway, then I think it goes back to the old stuff, unfortunately."
A year later, here's what changed in Arizona -- and what hasn't:
1. Former state Senate President Russell Pearce, one of the most powerful and polarizing figures in Arizona politics, was ousted from his seat in a vicious recall election in November. But the legacy of Pearce -- the godfather of the state's strident anti-illegal immigration law and a strong advocate of gun rights -- continues. His political allies are set to again push a controversial bill that would allow guns on college campuses. Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a similar bill last session. Meanwhile, the state's crackdown on illegal immigration is on pause as the Supreme Court prepares to hear Arizona's appeal. And the most controversial portions of Senate Bill 1070 -- the 2010 law that gives local and state authorities the power to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally -- are on hold.
2. A Department of Justice civil-rights investigation has severely curtailed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's enforcement of immigration laws, accusing him of systematic discrimination against Latinos. He also faces questions about possible mismanagement of county funds and a failure to investigate hundreds of sex crimes, including some against children. A defiant Arpaio, who like Pearce rose to national prominence because of his tough stance on illegal immigration, recently announced he is running for re-election.
3. Given Giffords' serious injuries, potential candidates for her seat have mostly stayed quiet as they wait to hear whether she is well enough to seek re-election this fall. But as the May deadline to file papers for public office approaches without a Giffords decision, some are now criticizing her and positioning themselves to run for her seat. Her public appearance Sunday intensified speculation about her political future.
Image credit: REUTERS/Laura Segall

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How Mexicans Became Americans

SOUTH GATE, Calif. — A FEW weeks ago, the City Council in this suburb southeast of Los Angeles appointed a Mexican immigrant to its advisory council. Jesus Miranda is from Michoacán and owns a taco restaurant here. He’ll advise the council on housing development and other issues.

Mr. Miranda’s appointment is hardly national news. But small moments like these are signs of a historic change of heart toward America and civic engagement among Mexican immigrants, many of whom, like Mr. Miranda, have been here for decades. No place offers a clearer view of this change than the suburbs southeast of Los Angeles.

South Gate (pop. 96,000) and its neighbors were mostly farmland until the 1930s, when migrants from the Midwest and later World War II veterans moved to work in the factories of Chrysler, G.M., Firestone and Bethlehem Steel. Subdivisions sprouted. Towns emerged with bucolic names: Maywood, Huntington Park, Bell Gardens. Union jobs sustained a civic ecosystem of local newspapers, Rotary Clubs and Fourth of July parades.

Then, in the late 1970s, the factories started leaving, and so did the white people. Their civic institutions atrophied. By 1990, towns like South Gate that had been 90 percent white were more than 90 percent Latino.

The new residents, crucially, were not from East Los Angeles, where Mexican-Americans had developed an activist political tradition since the 1960s. Instead, they were Mexican, straight from the ranchos — small villages on Mexico’s frontiers, far from the center and from government. Most came here to work in jobs they believed, even after decades, would be temporary. They focused their lives on returning home someday. They packed into cheap housing and spent their savings on building homes back in Mexico.

Mexican rancho culture valued self-reliance and hard work. But rancheros also shunned politics, and, in particular, the paternalistic embrace of the PRI, the party that ran Mexico like Tammany Hall for 71 years. Immigrants brought that history with them, and in the dense southeast enclaves, their attitudes didn’t change.

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This tradition of non-engagement, combined with Mexico’s proximity to California, meant that this wave of immigrants was fundamentally different from previous groups in other parts of the country.

Arriving in the United States, the Irish in Chicago, Italians in New York and Cubans in Miami came for good. They wedged their way into big cities using politics as the crowbar to more economic opportunity, and jobs in government. They had to compete with, and learn from, established groups and elites.

This was not the case for Mexicans in the California suburbs. As the region morphed into a service economy, they easily found work. In 1986, Congress passed legislation granting amnesty to around 800,000 immigrants in Los Angeles County, many of whom eventually acquired citizenship. Suddenly many residents were voters, yet without any tradition of informed franchise or accountability. What’s more, those who lived out in these Los Angeles suburbs had no one to show them a way to civic engagement. Not many had the education, or English, necessary to run a California municipality. Caring little for politics, they avoided city hall and rarely participated in civic institutions. Beginning in the mid-1990s, an astonishing cast of scoundrels was voted into office by immigrants casting the first votes of their lives.

In South Gate, an unhinged brand of politics mutated, based on anonymous fliers. In 1999, one council candidate was accused, in a fake newspaper article reprinted in an anonymous flier, of molesting two boys. In 2001, anonymous fliers mailed to voters falsely claimed that two councilmen had fathered children they later abandoned. Tapping immigrants’ deep connection to Mexico, fliers, in Spanish and English, accused candidates of being related to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the disgraced ex-president of Mexico, and of belonging to the PRI.

These fliers seem clownish, but immigrant voters believed them.

The council majority that won power paid voters back with classic PRI-style giveaways: free hot dogs and sodas at first, and then toys one Christmas. Once in power, it was police badges to cronies and millions of dollars to law firms.

Eventually, enough voters woke up. Ashamed they’d been duped, they recalled the treasurer and his cronies in 2003. The treasurer was later prosecuted and sent to federal prison. South Gate, however, was on the brink of bankruptcy.

Most southeast towns, stripped of their civic girdings, have gone through similarly toxic municipal episodes.

María Chacón, an immigrant from Chihuahua who ran Bell Gardens (pop. 42,000) like a Mexican cacique, or political boss, was convicted of conflict of interest for engineering her appointment as city manager.

The town of Cudahy hired a former janitor as city manager, and an opposing candidate had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his house.

In Bell (pop. 36,000), the city manager voted himself and others annual salaries well above that earned by the president of the United States. He and his former assistant are now in prison. Five southeast suburbs, in fact, had at least one elected official go to prison in the last dozen years.

But each boil of corruption, once lanced, left its respective town a little cleaner, more chastened.

Today, a virtually secured border has significantly slowed the flow of new immigrants who kept ranchero political culture alive. Mexico’s recent medieval violence has also terrified many of those who are already here into staying put.

As a result, many Mexican immigrants no longer cling to the dream of returning home one day. This change is happening across the United States — from Idaho to North Carolina — but it is most palpable in these Mexican immigrant enclaves of Los Angeles County.

“I get the sense that folks now see this as home,” said Jorge Morales, a South Gate city councilman and son of Mexican immigrants. “My parents always talked about going back to Mexico. Now it’s a place they’ll visit, but this is home.”

Last summer, a shopping center opened in South Gate. It was to be called El Portal (The Gateway), but a market survey found that people in an area that is more than 90 percent Latino wanted no Latino theme to the center. “What people wanted was something like they saw on the West Side” of Los Angeles, which is predominately white, said Councilman Morales.

The Azalea Regional Shopping Center, as it was named instead, held a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony last month, at which members of South Gate’s Girl Scout Troop 16325, Latinas all, sang “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

No Girl Scout troop had existed in South Gate for some three decades. But two years ago, a local mother got fed up with driving her daughter two towns over and formed her own troop. “People are getting involved, coming out of their shells,” Daisy Prieto, the volunteer troop leader, and daughter of Mexican immigrants, told me.

St. Helen Catholic Church for years held toy drives for orphanages in Tijuana. This year, the drive benefited needy kids in South Gate.

MEANWHILE, immigrants like Mr. Miranda have learned to use city hall, and local government has become significantly more professional since the days of rancid fliers and giveaways. At a recent meeting, the City Council took up mundane but essential municipal issues: purchasing a diesel flatbed truck, zoning for emergency homeless shelters and appointments to its advisory council. The town’s advisory councils are populated by a healthy mix of white and black, as well as Latino.

South Gate’s experience stands as a template for hundreds of small towns in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Kansas and elsewhere — towns that have been rejuvenated by new Mexican workers, who now form their essential working classes, yet remain civically absent.

When I started reporting on the southeast suburbs in the 1990s, they felt to me like one enormous Mexican rancho — the way the Lower East Side of Manhattan must have once seemed a big shtetl. Today, they feel like an iceberg finally separating and floating away from mother Mexico. People are more focused on how things run where they raise children than in villages they’ll never return to.

It’s taken a long time. But it is a good thing for Mexican immigrants and for the small American towns where so many have landed.

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Members of Mexican Mennonite sect are tied to marijuana trafficking ring

–In what prosecutors called a drug smuggling conspiracy involving Mennonites and a Mexican drug cartel, a Mennonite man was sentenced Monday, Dec. 1, 2014 to 15 months in prison for aiding the movement of tons of marijuana to the U.S. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

It was an unlikely alliance that authorities said involved a group of pacifist Mexican Mennonites accused of growing tons of marijuana and working with a notoriously vicious Mexican cartel to ship it across the U.S. border.
Abraham Friesen-Remple was one of six members of the Mennonite farming community in Ciudad Cuauhtémoc who were indicted and accused of smuggling pot in the gas tanks of cars and inside farm equipment.
SEE ALSO: Bob Marley heirs officially in the marijuana business
Friesen-Remple was sentenced Monday in federal court in Denver to 15 months in prison after pleading guilty to using a telephone to facilitate the distribution of marijuana. A judge said he would likely be released later in the day because of time already served.
Law enforcement officials said the trafficking partnership is nothing new. But the case of Friesen-Remple illustrates how the Mennonites worked with the Juarez cartel in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

“You had ready access to the border, and you had a skilled labor pool in terms of their ability to work with machinery and welding and anything that you would find in an agricultural community,” said Glenn Gaasche, a supervisor in the Grand Junction, Colorado, office of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He said the Mennonites, skilled as welders, would fill a secret space inside farming machinery with pot before trucking it across the border.
The exact role of the cartel isn’t clear. But Gaasche said such crime organizations control the Mexico side of the border and likely aren’t going to let tons of weed cross without getting a cut of the proceeds.
“There’s going to be some coordination and some money changing hands,” he said.
The investigation involved wiretaps in which 32,200 calls were recorded in Spanish and a German dialect used by Mennonites.

In the Friesen-Remple case, Mennonite drivers took the pot to Colorado then to North Carolina after the arrest of a person who ran a Colorado Springs auto body shop involved in the case.

Marijuana had been off-loaded at the shop, and drivers such as Friesen-Remple took it to other places across the country, authorities said.

Marijuana makes the trek cross-country

Court records show he once delivered a shipment of marijuana — hidden in a farm bulldozer — to a home in Shelby, North Carolina. DEA agents tapped his phone and learned he was getting directions from someone in Mexico.
The next month, a fellow member of the drug ring, who became a cooperating witness, told agents Friesen-Remple delivered 1,575 pounds of pot that agents found during a search of his home, according to court records.

“In our case, I’m quite sure that some of those transporters were told to go to a certain stash house, some were told to meet a certain distributor, and some of those people may be operating their own little business stashing stuff for the cartel or moving money,” Gaasche said.

Friesen-Remple was arrested on Aug. 20, 2013, in the Santa Teresa Point of Entry in New Mexico.
During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer noted his lack of criminal history and limited role in drug distribution.
The Mennonite community in Chihuahua dates to the 1920s, when thousands of Mennonites moved from Canada to northern Mexico to preserve a way of life rooted in farming and objection to military service. They continue to farm and ranch in isolated communities.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people are honest hardworking people, you just have that 1 percent that have gone sideways,” Gaasche said.

Law enforcement has been aware for years of small, separate groups of Mennonites running cocaine rings and dealing other drugs, said Aurora, Colorado, Police Sgt. Dale Quigley, intelligence manager for the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
DEA agents last year also seized cocaine they said was headed for Mennonites in Canada.
SEE ALSO: Mexican drug cartels are expanding their reach in Peru
The involvement of some Mennonites, though not representative of the entire community, is a simple case of economics, Quigley said.

“This is just a case where I have a commodity that I can move from one place to another and make a financial gain on it,” he said.

FILE–In what prosecutors called a drug smuggling conspiracy involving Mennonites and a Mexican drug cartel, a Mennonite man was sentenced Monday, Dec. 1, 2014 to 15 months in prison for aiding the movement of tons of marijuana to the U.S. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

It was an unlikely alliance that authorities said involved a group of pacifist Mexican Mennonites accused of growing tons of marijuana and working with a notoriously vicious Mexican cartel to ship it across the U.S. border.
Abraham Friesen-Remple was one of six members of the Mennonite farming community in Ciudad Cuauhtémoc who were indicted and accused of smuggling pot in the gas tanks of cars and inside farm equipment.
SEE ALSO: Bob Marley heirs officially in the marijuana business
Friesen-Remple was sentenced Monday in federal court in Denver to 15 months in prison after pleading guilty to using a telephone to facilitate the distribution of marijuana. A judge said he would likely be released later in the day because of time already served.
Law enforcement officials said the trafficking partnership is nothing new. But the case of Friesen-Remple illustrates how the Mennonites worked with the Juarez cartel in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

“You had ready access to the border, and you had a skilled labor pool in terms of their ability to work with machinery and welding and anything that you would find in an agricultural community,” said Glenn Gaasche, a supervisor in the Grand Junction, Colorado, office of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He said the Mennonites, skilled as welders, would fill a secret space inside farming machinery with pot before trucking it across the border.
The exact role of the cartel isn’t clear. But Gaasche said such crime organizations control the Mexico side of the border and likely aren’t going to let tons of weed cross without getting a cut of the proceeds.
“There’s going to be some coordination and some money changing hands,” he said.
The investigation involved wiretaps in which 32,200 calls were recorded in Spanish and a German dialect used by Mennonites.

In the Friesen-Remple case, Mennonite drivers took the pot to Colorado then to North Carolina after the arrest of a person who ran a Colorado Springs auto body shop involved in the case.

Marijuana had been off-loaded at the shop, and drivers such as Friesen-Remple took it to other places across the country, authorities said.

Marijuana makes the trek cross-country

Court records show he once delivered a shipment of marijuana — hidden in a farm bulldozer — to a home in Shelby, North Carolina. DEA agents tapped his phone and learned he was getting directions from someone in Mexico.
The next month, a fellow member of the drug ring, who became a cooperating witness, told agents Friesen-Remple delivered 1,575 pounds of pot that agents found during a search of his home, according to court records.

“In our case, I’m quite sure that some of those transporters were told to go to a certain stash house, some were told to meet a certain distributor, and some of those people may be operating their own little business stashing stuff for the cartel or moving money,” Gaasche said.

Friesen-Remple was arrested on Aug. 20, 2013, in the Santa Teresa Point of Entry in New Mexico.
During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer noted his lack of criminal history and limited role in drug distribution.
The Mennonite community in Chihuahua dates to the 1920s, when thousands of Mennonites moved from Canada to northern Mexico to preserve a way of life rooted in farming and objection to military service. They continue to farm and ranch in isolated communities.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people are honest hardworking people, you just have that 1 percent that have gone sideways,” Gaasche said.

Law enforcement has been aware for years of small, separate groups of Mennonites running cocaine rings and dealing other drugs, said Aurora, Colorado, Police Sgt. Dale Quigley, intelligence manager for the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
DEA agents last year also seized cocaine they said was headed for Mennonites in Canada.
SEE ALSO: Mexican drug cartels are expanding their reach in Peru
The involvement of some Mennonites, though not representative of the entire community, is a simple case of economics, Quigley said.

“This is just a case where I have a commodity that I can move from one place to another and make a financial gain on it,” he said.

FILE–In what prosecutors called a drug smuggling conspiracy involving Mennonites and a Mexican drug cartel, a Mennonite man was sentenced Monday, Dec. 1, 2014 to 15 months in prison for aiding the movement of tons of marijuana to the U.S. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

It was an unlikely alliance that authorities said involved a group of pacifist Mexican Mennonites accused of growing tons of marijuana and working with a notoriously vicious Mexican cartel to ship it across the U.S. border.
Abraham Friesen-Remple was one of six members of the Mennonite farming community in Ciudad Cuauhtémoc who were indicted and accused of smuggling pot in the gas tanks of cars and inside farm equipment.
SEE ALSO: Bob Marley heirs officially in the marijuana business
Friesen-Remple was sentenced Monday in federal court in Denver to 15 months in prison after pleading guilty to using a telephone to facilitate the distribution of marijuana. A judge said he would likely be released later in the day because of time already served.
Law enforcement officials said the trafficking partnership is nothing new. But the case of Friesen-Remple illustrates how the Mennonites worked with the Juarez cartel in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

“You had ready access to the border, and you had a skilled labor pool in terms of their ability to work with machinery and welding and anything that you would find in an agricultural community,” said Glenn Gaasche, a supervisor in the Grand Junction, Colorado, office of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He said the Mennonites, skilled as welders, would fill a secret space inside farming machinery with pot before trucking it across the border.
The exact role of the cartel isn’t clear. But Gaasche said such crime organizations control the Mexico side of the border and likely aren’t going to let tons of weed cross without getting a cut of the proceeds.
“There’s going to be some coordination and some money changing hands,” he said.
The investigation involved wiretaps in which 32,200 calls were recorded in Spanish and a German dialect used by Mennonites.

In the Friesen-Remple case, Mennonite drivers took the pot to Colorado then to North Carolina after the arrest of a person who ran a Colorado Springs auto body shop involved in the case.

Marijuana had been off-loaded at the shop, and drivers such as Friesen-Remple took it to other places across the country, authorities said.

Marijuana makes the trek cross-country

Court records show he once delivered a shipment of marijuana — hidden in a farm bulldozer — to a home in Shelby, North Carolina. DEA agents tapped his phone and learned he was getting directions from someone in Mexico.
The next month, a fellow member of the drug ring, who became a cooperating witness, told agents Friesen-Remple delivered 1,575 pounds of pot that agents found during a search of his home, according to court records.

“In our case, I’m quite sure that some of those transporters were told to go to a certain stash house, some were told to meet a certain distributor, and some of those people may be operating their own little business stashing stuff for the cartel or moving money,” Gaasche said.

Friesen-Remple was arrested on Aug. 20, 2013, in the Santa Teresa Point of Entry in New Mexico.
During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer noted his lack of criminal history and limited role in drug distribution.
The Mennonite community in Chihuahua dates to the 1920s, when thousands of Mennonites moved from Canada to northern Mexico to preserve a way of life rooted in farming and objection to military service. They continue to farm and ranch in isolated communities.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people are honest hardworking people, you just have that 1 percent that have gone sideways,” Gaasche said.

Law enforcement has been aware for years of small, separate groups of Mennonites running cocaine rings and dealing other drugs, said Aurora, Colorado, Police Sgt. Dale Quigley, intelligence manager for the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.
DEA agents last year also seized cocaine they said was headed for Mennonites in Canada.
SEE ALSO: Mexican drug cartels are expanding their reach in Peru
The involvement of some Mennonites, though not representative of the entire community, is a simple case of economics, Quigley said.

“This is just a case where I have a commodity that I can move from one place to another and make a financial gain on it,” he said.

The most legally aggressive part of Obama's immigration plan is one nobody is talking about

The most politically charged aspect of the immigration debate concerns the fate of the millions of mostly Latino, mostly working-class unauthorized immigrants living in the United States.

But the most aggressive move he's making concerns something else entirely — foreign technology entrepreneurs.

A memo released today by the Department of Homeland Security clarifies that Obama is planning to increase the number of foreign entrepreneurs allowed in.

A memo from the Council on Economics Advisors suggests the scale of this program will involve around 33,000-53,000 new migrants.

The legal basis for this action involves a break with precedent that is much more dramatic than the more-controversial deportation protection being given to unauthorized immigrants who are already here.

What Obama is doing for foreign entrepreneurs

The DHS memo states that the president is directing the US Customs and Immigration Service to devise a program that would, on a case-by-case basis, let foreign entrepreneurs move to the United States. There are two broad limits laid down for the sort of entrepreneurs who would qualify. One is a guideline that the entrepreneurs in question be "awarded substantial US investor financing" or otherwise be involved in "the development of new technologies or the pursuit of cutting-edge research." The other is a stipulation that anybody allowed in under this initiative be prosperous enough to be ineligible for federal benefits programs, including Obamacare subsidies.
In other words, this means an Israeli technologist with backing from American venture capitalists should be allowed in but an Indian cook looking to open a restaurant should not.

Why does the President have the authority to do this?

The DHS memo cites section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act which grants the executive branch authority to "parole" people into the United States when there is a "significant public benefit" to doing so. The text of the statute places very little limitation on the scope of Significant Public Benefit Parole, so the administration appears free to argue that the entry of foreign technology entrepreneurs would be beneficial.
This is not, however, the traditional use of SPG authority.
Historically, most paroles have been humanitarian paroles. SPG parole, as the Department of Homeland Security itself says "is generally used for aliens who enter to take part in legal proceedings." In other words, if a foreign witness is needed for an important case a law enforcement agency can submit a request for parole. The Congressional Research Service notes, however, that SPG parole has been used at least once for economic reasons when 2,468 Hong Kong Chinese were paroled into Guam to "support defense projects" following a typhoon.
In other words, this is a much larger break with precedent than the more-debated deferred action program for already-resident immigrants where the White House can point to the broadly similar George H.W. Bush action.

Why is nobody talking about this?

The administration appears to have structured this particular initiative to be narrowly drawn to minimize political backlash.
Silicon Valley is hungry for more skilled migrants, and Republicans have been eager to appear sensitive to those concerns even while remaining hostile to any form of "amnesty" for current unauthorized residents. The specific prohibition on allowing parole for anyone who would be eligible for public benefits should firewall this initiative from one major source of controversy. And the implied focus on entrepreneurs who are already backed by US-based venture capitalists means the individual beneficiaries of this program will, by definition, have powerful political advocates inside the United States.

Triste ver que nuestra democracia no funciona

Es patético observar la actuación, más bien la no actuación, de la oposición frente al caso de la Casa Blanca de Angélica Rivera, esposa del presidente Peña. Su silencio denota el nivel de complicidad que han alcanzado los partidos en México. Parecería que aquí ya no hay oposición sino un pacto de “tapaos los unos a los otros”, como genialmente ha descrito nuestra colega editorialista de Excélsior, María Amparo Casar. Es una vergüenza que genera tristeza para aquellos que creíamos en la existencia de una democracia funcional en el país.
Un régimen democrático presidencialista de división de poderes descansa en la idea de pesos y contrapesos de tal suerte que los políticos se vigilen los unos a los otros. Bien decía James Madison, uno de los padres fundadores de la exitosa República estadunidense, que “si los hombres fueran ángeles, no sería necesario ningún gobierno. Si los ángeles gobernaran a los hombres, ni los controles externos ni los internos en el gobierno serían necesarios. En el diseño de un gobierno que va a ser administrado por hombres sobre hombres, la gran dificultad estriba en esto: en primer lugar debe permitirse al gobierno controlar a los gobernados; y en segundo lugar hay que obligarlo a controlarse a sí mismo”.
¿Cómo evitar el abuso de hombres que no son ángeles? ¿Cómo lograr que haya un autocontrol gubernamental? Madison lo tenía muy claro: “para contrarrestar la ambición hay que crear ambición”. Frase memorable que sustenta el régimen de división de poderes. Al diseñar un sistema democrático el objetivo es “dividir y organizar las varias instituciones de una manera en la que cada una pueda checar a la otra –que el interés privado de cada individuo pueda ser el centinela de los derechos públicos”.
Si existe la sospecha de que el Ejecutivo abusó de su poder, el Legislativo debe intervenir. Para ello cuenta con facultades de investigación, fiscalización y sanción. El sistema funciona precisamente por la ambición que tienen los políticos del Congreso de desbancar a los políticos de la administración.
En esta lógica resulta fundamental la presencia de verdaderos partidos opositores en el Legislativo. Recordemos que en las épocas autoritarias de México sí había división de poderes en el papel. No así en la realidad. El Legislativo ni vigilaba ni castigaba al Ejecutivo y viceversa. ¿Por qué? Muy sencillo: porque el PRI controlaba todo: no había oposición. La democratización comenzó con una mayor presencia opositora en el Congreso que eventualmente derivó en la alternancia en el Ejecutivo.
En 2012, el PRI recuperó la Presidencia. La oposición, no obstante, mantuvo una fuerte presencia en el Congreso. Tiene, de hecho, la mayoría en el Senado. Uno esperaría que la fuerza opositora en el Legislativo vigilara y sancionara los posibles abusos del Ejecutivo. O por lo menos que los investigara para demostrar que la democracia está funcionando. Desgraciadamente, no ha sido el caso: ni el PAN ni el PRD, los dos principales partidos opositores, han reaccionado frente al caso de las propiedades de Angélica Rivera.
Menuda diferencia a lo ocurrido en 2005 cuando apareció información de que los hijos de la entonces Primera Dama, Marta Sahagún, habían ejercido influencia para otorgar contratos gubernamentales a ciertos empresarios. La Cámara de Diputados formó una comisión especial para investigar el tema. Ciertamente no produjeron muchos resultados que digamos pero por lo menos se armó cierto revuelo. Lo increíble es que ahora, con el posible conflicto de interés de una residencia comprada y financiada por uno de los contratistas favoritos del gobierno de Peña, el Congreso no diga ni pío.
Carlos Puig especula que el estruendoso silencio podría deberse a la larga cola que tienen los opositores y que el gobierno del PRI podría pisar. No lo dudo: la democracia mexicana ha tenido como consecuencia la ampliación de la corrupción a todos los partidos. Y como nadie se salva, ya no existen contrapesos. De esta manera, la democracia ha dejado de funcionar. Qué tristeza.
                Twitter: @leozuckermann