Border Patrol

MARYLAND Perjury prompts case reviews With the news that police gun expert Joseph Kopera lied about his qualifications on witness stands across the state, prosecutors, police departments and defense attorneys are taking steps to identify and review cases that he worked on during a career that spanned nearly 40 years. pg 1a Low-cost housing bill debated A bill headed to Baltimore's City Council requires low-cost homes to be mixed into some market-rate projects. But after the bill has been amended by compromise attempts and restricted by a lack of money, it remains unclear how many homes it will create and where they will be. pg 1b WORLD Marine Corps found negligent A U.S. military investigation has found that the Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq engaged in willful negligence in failing to investigate a November 2005 attack by Marines that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, including several women and children, lawyers involved in the case said.

The biggest - and least talked about - loser in the immigration "grand bargain" announced last week is the planet. The deal amounts to an environmental double-whammy: If enacted, it would cause damage through those provisions meant to increase the number of immigrants in this country and through those designed to keep immigrants out. The legislation requires the construction of 370 miles of border fencing before any liberalizing of immigration is...

Martin Bramson, the Columbia resident who masterminded one of the nation's largest insurance fraud schemes, was sentenced by a New Jersey judge to more than eight years in federal prison yesterday.Bramson, 52, who faces additional prison time when he is sentenced Feb. 11 in Maryland, ran a giant con game with two of his relatives that swindled thousands of doctors and others in 48 states. The scheme bilked victims of more than $12 million and laundered the money in 588 banks around the world.

REDFORD, Texas -- A Marine will be the subject of a grand jury inquiry into the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old who was tending a herd of goats on his family's farm near the Mexican border.District Attorney Albert Valadez said he would proceed with the investigation of the Marine, whom he did not identify, based on reports from Texas Rangers who are investigating the shooting of the youth, Ezequiel Hernandez Jr.Hernandez died May 20 after he was shot by a member of a Marine team from Camp Pendleton, Calif.

CHURUBUSCO, N.Y. - Holsteins grazed in fields and grasshoppers sprang from the roadside as Reyad, a 27-year-old man from Bangladesh, made his move.His new hiking boots, tied with bright yellow laces, helped propel him across a field, over the border and toward a road. With $42 stuffed in his new blue jeans and a bag filled with clothes slung over his shoulder, Reyad might have thought he was home free.Not quite. Reyad had company. A U.S. Customs agent was sprinting across the field. And within minutes, Reyad was handcuffed, facing a one-way trip back to Bangladesh.

WHAT KIND OF COUNTRY is America and what kind of country will we become? Nothing that comes before Congress and the presidency is more pertinent to these questions than the subject of immigration. Throughout U.S. history, the nation has groped to find the line between control of its borders and demographics and its tradition as a haven for immigrants.After much soul-searching, Congress appears to be on the path to a consensus in which there will be a crackdown on aliens illegally entering this country but relatively little will be done to discourage legal immigration.

A right-wing talk show host was on TV the other day defending the journalistic standards of shows such as his.He denied that bizarre and untrue statements are frequently spewed on the airwaves and said his show and others are just as factual as newspapers and other traditional news outlets.There is no difference, he indicated, between trained reporters double-checking facts and some anonymous person calling a radio show and blurting an opinion.If he's right, then I've found an easy way to get my column done.

KHORGOS, Kazakhstan -- He, too, had heard that life offered a better chance in Kazakhstan, so he crossed over from China on a desolate, sandy stretch where the lights of the border towns were only a faint and distant glow.He had moved under cover of a thick, moonless night. He had yanked apart the wires on the border fence and climbed through in a place where no one could have heard him because of the rushing spring waters of the Khorgos River nearby.But the dogs got his scent and in minutes the Kazakh border patrol swept in and had their intruder.

Here is how members of Maryland's delegation on Capitol Hill were recorded on important roll-call votes last week:YES N: NO X: NOT VOTINGHOUSE: BORDER PATROLThe House voted 265 for and 164 against to increase the U.S. Border Patrol budget by $60 million, to about $419 million, for hiring 600 additional agents to be deployed along the California-Mexico border. The amendment was attached to a fiscal 1994 appropriations bill (HR 2519) for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and other agencies.

TIJUANA, Mexico -- A few weeks ago, Juan and 16 other illegal immigrants were crammed on top of each other in a van that had just crossed the U.S.-Mexican border and was heading toward Los Angeles.The driver and his companion had promised the immigrants safe passage into the United States. The cost for the journey was $300 per person.Following orders, Juan lay still in the van and tried to take his mind off the danger of the journey by thinking about his wife, who was waiting for him in Los Angeles.

Senior Patrol Agent Frank Quinones spent most of his 12 years in the U.S. Border Patrol trying to shut people out. He's tracked illegal immigrants through Texas scrubland, busted drug traffickers trying to enter from Mexico, and patrolled the beaches of Florida searching for people trying to sneak into the United States on handmade boats called "rusticas." "Most of my days were spent looking for people trying to make entry into the U.S.," Quinones said. In his latest assignment, however, he's far more welcoming.

ZURBATIYA, Iraq -- About 300 trucks cross the border here every day, ferrying fruit, rugs and building supplies from Iran - and, if U.S. authorities are to be believed, illegal weapons. Intercepting the smuggled arms should be simple enough, because shipments have to be unloaded from Iranian trucks and transferred to Iraqi trucks at the border. The trouble is, the reloading is done on the Iranian side, behind a wall. So the U.S. is planning to build a 100-foot watchtower for Iraqi border agents.

The biggest - and least talked about - loser in the immigration "grand bargain" announced last week is the planet. The deal amounts to an environmental double-whammy: If enacted, it would cause damage through those provisions meant to increase the number of immigrants in this country and through those designed to keep immigrants out. The legislation requires the construction of 370 miles of border fencing before any liberalizing of immigration is...

MARYLAND Perjury prompts case reviews With the news that police gun expert Joseph Kopera lied about his qualifications on witness stands across the state, prosecutors, police departments and defense attorneys are taking steps to identify and review cases that he worked on during a career that spanned nearly 40 years. pg 1a Low-cost housing bill debated A bill headed to Baltimore's City Council requires low-cost homes to be mixed into some market-rate projects. But after the bill has been amended by compromise attempts and restricted by a lack of money, it remains unclear how many homes it will create and where they will be. pg 1b WORLD Marine Corps found negligent A U.S. military investigation has found that the Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq engaged in willful negligence in failing to investigate a November 2005 attack by Marines that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, including several women and children, lawyers involved in the case said.

IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT, Ariz. -- Jeannine Pallotto often rides her horse on desert trails through stands of saguaro cactus and ironwood trees crisscrossed by immigrant smuggling corridors. Mindful of escalating violence tied to a crackdown on the border, though, she knows when to retreat from strangers. "You never know which ones will pull a gun on you," said Pallotto, 45, who has lived next to this mountainous terrain northwest of Tucson, Ariz., for four years. Illegal border crossings are declining because of tougher enforcement, posting an overall 27 percent drop in the four months ending Jan. 31, the U.S. Border Patrol says.

Sells, Ariz.-- --Even from this height, almost 100 feet above the cactus-covered desert floor and armed with high-powered binoculars, Spc. Donald Neuer struggles to identify the small black dots scurrying down the Baboquivari Mountains near the Mexican border. Cattle? Horses? People? The 21-year-old Maryland National Guard soldier immediately radios in a report to the U.S. Border Patrol. His confidence grows quickly: There are more than 30, he concludes, and they're human. He quickly tags them as UDAs -- undocumented aliens.

McALLEN, Texas -- Carlos Gonzalez gunned the throttle. The roar of the outboard motor warned everyone within a mile that the U.S. Border Patrol was rounding the serpentine bend of the Rio Grande known as the cola del diablo, or devil's tail. Turtles scurried off logs and into the green, murky water as the Border Patrol boat raced by at 35 mph, flanked by a second boat with a hard-faced agent in dark sunglasses holding an M-4 carbine assault rifle. On the Mexican side, men with fishing poles by their feet rested in the tropical sun. Their eyes followed every move the boats made.

The Maryland National Guard will send 120 of its soldiers to Arizona next month to aid President Bush's effort to shore up the nation's border with Mexico, officials confirmed yesterday. The first 60 soldiers are scheduled to fly to Arizona on Aug. 1, said Maj. Charles Kohler, a spokesman for the Maryland National Guard. The others will follow about four days later. The mission, expected to last about two months, marks the first time that Maryland has sent its part-time soldiers - all volunteers - to participate in Operation Jump Start.

SAN DIEGO -- In two different hearing rooms on two distant coasts, the two chambers of Congress staged competing summer shows yesterday to promote their dueling visions of illegal immigration in the United States and the best way to overhaul immigration laws. At a hearing organized by House Republicans who back tougher enforcement, witnesses in San Diego painted a grim picture of the U.S.-Mexico border as a war zone that fuels crime and is "ripe" for becoming a "terrorist pipeline." "National security is synonymous with border security," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, who traded barbs with his Democratic counterparts at the often testy hearing.

SAN LUIS, Ariz. -- The first National Guard troops ordered to the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President Bush's plan to improve security have arrived in the four border states and are expected to begin work by today. "The Jump Start operation has begun," Mario Martinez, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, said Friday, using the Guard's name for the border mission. "They are being issued orders and are being processed and trained." Most of the troops arrived by Thursday to prepare for their assignments, which will include monitoring surveillance cameras and sensors, building roads, putting fencing along the border and other tasks that will free up regular Border Patrol agents to police the 2,000-mile divide between Mexico and California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico.