THE BORDER REPORT

The old rival to the Sinaloans, wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges for nearly three decades, is apparently setting up shop in Agua Prieta these days. Local chisme has him working for the Sinaloans which opens up a whole new dynamic in Sonoran/Arizona drug trade politics. Freddy, I understand, is still working Navojoa.

THE BORDER REPORT

I'm sitting in a conference right now but holy hell. All charges? Really? And Tigre Espinosa turned snitch?

THE BORDER REPORT

This story first appeared on KJZZ's Fronteras Desk. Visit our website for stories from all across the border.

Immigration judges are letting more illegal migrants stay in the country. Government records show that the Obama Administration is focusing its deportation efforts on those who have been convicted of crimes.

Most people who show up in front of an immigration judge still face deportation, but the Department of Homeland Security, and judges in Arizona, have doubled the number of cases where deportation orders are dropped compared to five years ago.

Read the full post

THE BORDER REPORT

This is a story I produced for the Fronteras Project that aired this morning on Arizona Public Media.

Please bookmark and visit our web site, FronterasDesk.org, for stories from all along the border region, from San Diego to San Antonio.

I interviewed Linda Thomas, a former program manager working within Dept. of Homeland Security's Strategic Border Initiative, or SBInet. It's the first time someone with an insider's understanding of the project has emerged to discuss their experiences. TUCSON, ARIZ. – The federal government’s electronic border fence has been plagued with problems from the beginning. Now, the program is nearly in tatters, and some security experts believe last week’s short renewal of the fence contract is the government buying itself time before backing out of the ambitious project. KJZZ’s Michel Marizco reports. The Homeland Security Department has renewed the Boeing Corporation’s contract to build a virtual border fence for another month. The agency has been tentatively extending the nearly one billion dollar contract one month at a time. It’s a hesitation that is widely expected to be the agency’s last act before either dumping the project altogether or keeping the technology but getting rid of the project. The project is called the Strategic Border Initiative or SBInet. And for more than four years, Boeing’s been unable to complete it. Linda Thomas was a high level manager working for a subcontractor Boeing hired to help build the project’s towers and ground sensors. She walked away from the project in disgust after seven months and says now that the federal government wasn’t keeping track of Boeing’s failures. She describes a field test she conducted in Playas, New Mexico. “We went out there and did a test of the microwave system and a colleague and I drove around in circles – for hours – so that the microwave could try and lock in on us and it just wasn’t successful,” Thomas said. She says she felt that Homeland Security has invested so much money into this program that it can’t back away now, or it stands to lose the last four years of work. “Then I attended various meetings with Boeing and – I guess – straw that broke the camel’s back was pretty much a meeting at the end that I went to with very high level people and everybody was, at least in the Boeing family, to me, was just sitting around joking about how we weren’t making progress and I just couldn’t handle it anymore and that’s when I resigned,” Thomas said. The system, once predicted to cover the entire Mexican border, now is only set up in two small stretches of southern Arizona. The idea of a border-to-border electronic wall appears to be over. Jim Carafano is a homeland security analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “What they’re trying to do is keep the technology without keeping SBInet because the word SBInet says, ‘Oh, that’s that wasteful evil program that Bush had,’ right? They don’t want that,” Carafano said. “So they want to figure out how they can fund this thing, at a lower level, more modest, and they’re trying to square that circle.” Homeland Security officials declined to be interviewed on the air for this story. In an email, they said that they are currently reviewing the: “independent, quantitative, science-based reassessment of the SBInet program.” In the meantime, Homeland is investing in other technologies, both new and old. Next year, its bringing in three more Predator B unmanned aircraft to fly the borders, creating a fleet of ten UAVs. Last month, the agency began another recruitment drive to hire 2,000 more agents for the southern border. Homeland Security has until December 18 to decide what it’s going to do with the program.

THE BORDER REPORT

The Mexican press is eagerly awaiting news from Wikileaks dissemination of U.S. government dispatches about the drug war. Speaking candidly about his expectations, Javier Moreno, publisher of Spain's El País newspaper, said 2,285 dispatches about Mexico will be included in the Wikileaks file dump, a number that gives me some hope. From the Wikileaks site, their appear to be 2,836 cables to be published. But my expectations are not high; El Imparcial in Hermosillo notes this morning that those 2,285 of the messages (e-mails, presumably), originated in Mexico City, 159 out of Monterrey, 78 from Nogales, 32 from Guadalajara, 27 from Tijuana, 19 from Hermosillo, 19 from Ciudad Juárez, 7 from Matamoros, 5 from Nuevo Laredo and three out of Mérida. State Department messages are notoriously classified; in fact, of all the federal agencies, I consider State to be the most top-heavy when it comes to over-classifying messages. It's why I'll occasionally receive "Law Enforcement Sensitive" memos from DEA, FBI, Border Patrol or ICE, but  almost never from State. Much of the time, State dispatches aren't even obtainable under the Freedom of Information Act. The irony here of course is that while criminal organizations targeted by law enforcement may gain access to information from those LE Sensitive documents, a State Dept. leak may spark an international incident or an outrage by some slighted foreign diplomat and that appears to be a deeper concern for the U.S. government. Then, too, there is the question of quality of information. Some time ago, an old friend used to pass me the State Department's Morning Report. It's one of the most frightening concepts I've ever read. Basically, foreign attachés working in different countries re-write a consortium of newspaper articles into English. I'm talking: "Balacera en Monterrey Deja 3 Muertos" becomes "3 Dead after a Shootout in Monterrey." It was disconcerting to read specifically because it was such a basic, out-dated system with which to gather information. The Morning Report might have made sense in the days pre-Internet, but it's been irrelevant for at least five years. And guess what? Those are classified. Then, too, there is the matter of what's being written. Any agent, case worker or diplomat I've ever met who has something good to share simply doesn't write it down. They know as well as I do that putting details in writing creates a paper trail accessible – some day – by FOIA. I could be wrong, of course. The Wikileaks file dump could have a 1997 memo written by the U.S. Consul General in Hermosillo detailing Amado Carrillo's faked death and details about his becoming a snitch for the Feds. One could hope.