Continued Tragedies on US Border with Mexico

davidk14
davidk14: .


Regarding the violence on the US southern border...it’s getting much, much worse....



Wife, Mom Calling on Obama to Intervene in Search for Body of 'Victim' in Alleged Mexican Pirate Attack
October 6th, 2010


The wife and mother of an American allegedly shot to death by Mexican pirates on a border lake in Texas are angrily demanding that Mexican authorities allow U.S. investigators to join the search for a body -- and stop questioning whether the attack ever happened.

Tiffany Hartley, 29, accused Mexican authorities Tuesday of "not looking" for her husband's body and called on President Obama to pressure the Mexican government into allowing U.S. authorities to search the Mexican side of the lake.

Hartley told a dispatcher in her 911 call that she was forced to leave her husband behind because pirates in three boats were firing shots and chasing her.

Hartley was then helped on shore by an unidentified man who reportedly witnessed the boats chasing her as she made her way back into U.S. waters.

Officials at the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) told FoxNews.com that Hartley's alleged death marked the fifth incident since April 30 in which U.S. residents ventured into Mexican waters and encountered pirates on the 60-miles-long Falcon Lake.

Prior to last week, the most recent occurred on Aug. 31, when authorities say pirates aboard a small boat with "Game Wardin" written on its side, in duct-tape lettering, tried to intercept a Texas fisherman. The fisherman, aware of warnings about pirates on the lake and recognizing the misspelling of the word "warden," managed to outrun the Mexican vessel to safety, officials said.

On May 16, five armed men boarded a boat on the U.S. side of Falcon Lake. Investigators have no additional information in that incident. Only 10 days earlier, two armed men approached a boat on the lake's northern side and demanded money, which the fisherman handed over, DPS officials say.


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taxilon
taxilon: A vallum is the only solution
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davidk14
davidk14: No kidding. I live just north of Mexico in Arizona. I see at least a dozen minimum....Border Patrol Vehicles every day roaming around the roads and we are 30 miles from the border. Son in law is a cop and says the local police are prepared if anything happens until federalized troups arrive....it could get real ugly.
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EduardoMejia
EduardoMejia: What about the teenager killed by border patrol agents in Juarez, Mexico.

Any progress on that case?
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Malobear
Malobear: According to The ElPaso Times:
The U.S. Border Patrol agent who allegedly shot across the Rio Grande into Mexico, killing a 15-year-old Mexican boy, has been on regular duty for the past two months, officials said this week.
The 31-year-old agent, whose name was withheld by the government, has been with the border patrol for seven years.

Michael Przybyl, assistant chief patrol agent for the U.S. Border Patrol, El Paso Sector, said the agent was placed on administrative duty for a couple days after the June 7 shooting before returning to patrol.

Killed in the shooting was Mexican citizen Sergio Adrían Hernández Güereca. The border patrol said the agent fired after coming under attack by people throwing rocks.

Hernández died on the Mexican side of the river from a bullet wound to the head.

Przybyl said his agency is not investigating the shooting, but the U.S. Justice Department in June said a civil rights investigation would be conducted.
This was Posted: 08/24/2010 and nothing else so far.
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chronology
chronology: Boarders are dangerous places anywhere on Earth. Follow these threads; 'Three Chinese shot dead on North Korean Boarder' 'Six Eritreans shot dead on Egyptian Boarder' 'Albanian shot dead on Yugoslav Boarder' 'Armenian shot dead Azerbaijani Boarder' 'Kurdish boy shot dead on Iranian Boarder', all these cases were recent incidents. U.S. Boarder Guards are the most professional in the world, and less likely to shoot people than anyone else.
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EduardoMejia
EduardoMejia: Thanks for the information. I'll check those threads.
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Malobear
Malobear: Here is some numbers from the HOUSTON CHRONICLE.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/7239012.html
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franklin1950
franklin1950: mexico is pondering putting up a wall on its southern border to keep those pesky illigal allians
mexico condems arizona for trying to control its border thus denying mexican their basic constutional and human rights as illigal allians in the us of a .
there is something seriously amiss in the united states when the government does not protect / control its borders
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Wampum6
Wampum6: Amen, Franklin!
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EduardoMejia
EduardoMejia: Funny, there is no mention in any site in english of the statement made by the Secretary of Development of the Southern Border and Link for International Cooperation Andrea Hernández Fitzner that is a flood wall.

Like here: http://www.oem.com.mx/elheraldodechiapas/notas/n1766050.htm

Or that many people in Chiapas is against it because they see it as unnecessary waste of money and don't want to be relocated.
Like here:
http://www.oem.com.mx/elsoldetampico/notas/n33573.htm

Spanish: 'Dijo que el río Suchiate, se llevó parte de un espigón que todavía no estaba concluido. "Estas ventanas que abrió afectaron cuatro colonias que se ubican en la ribera del río Suchiate, que se hallan afuera del bordo de contención, son comerciantes y familias que viven en zona de alto riesgo. Lo triste es que todas estas personas comerciantes en su mayoría, se resisten a ser reubicados y a que se construya el muro de contención.'

English: 'He said that the Suchiate river, took pat of a breakwater which wasn't finished yet. These leaks affected four neighborhoods located near the Suchiate river, they are traders and their families live in a high-risk zone. the sad part is that most of these traders, reject to be relocated or that the goverment builds the flood wall.'

Now, why can't I find these information in english?
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Malobear
Malobear: In responce to DavidK14 first post:
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- A Mexican police commander investigating the reported shooting of an American tourist on a border lake plagued by pirates has been decapitated and his head was found in a suitcase, a Texas sheriff says.

The death of Rolando Flores, commander of state investigators in Ciudad Miguel Aleman, was a message from gangsters for investigators to "stay out of their territory," Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. Flores was part of a group investigating the reported shooting of David Hartley on Falcon Lake.

"I think their attempt is to intimidate law enforcement, no matter who they are or where they are," Perry told The Associated Press.

Flores' decapitated head was found Tuesday in a suitcase outside a Mexican Army base, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez told the AP.

Cartels have used beheadings in the past to terrorize the public and send messages to Mexican law enforcement. U.S. officials have said threats from drug gangs who control the area around Falcon Lake have hampered the search for Hartley, though divers have been in the lake searching this week. Hartley was reportedly shot Sept. 30 while touring the lake with his wife on Jet Skis.

That part of Tamaulipas state is overrun by violence from a turf battle between the Gulf Cartel and the Zeta drug gang, made up of former Mexican special forces soldiers, and both are battling the Mexican military.

The search for Hartley's body is expected to continue, although Gonzalez said it's becoming increasingly unlikely the body will be found.

Perry said investigators shouldn't back off because of threats such as Flores' slaying.

"The worst thing we can do is let the terrorists dictate the terms of how we're going to live."

Instead, he said, the threat should be handled by increasing "the numbers of law enforcement and military."
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Malobear
Malobear: Ruben Rios, a spokesman for the Tamaulipas state prosecutor's office, said authorities "don't know how or why he was killed. We don't have any details on how he died."

But Gonzalez said later Tuesday that "reliable sources within the law enforcement community of Mexico" told him Flores' head was found Tuesday morning in a suitcase outside of an Army base.

Hartley's wife, Tiffany, said she and her husband were returning to the U.S. from photographing a half-submerged church in Mexico when they were attacked by pirates on speedboats. Hartley was shot and presumably fell into the lake. Tiffany Hartley said she tried to retrieve her husband's body and his Jet Ski but the pirates continued firing and she fled. Gonzalez has said he has an eyewitness who corroborates her account.

U.S. officials, particularly Perry, and Hartley's family have been pressuring Mexico to step up the search for Hartley and determine what happened.

Falcon Lake is a dammed section of the Rio Grande, 25 miles long and 3 miles across. Pirates have robbed boaters and fisherman on the Mexican side, prompting warnings to Americans by Texas state officials, but Hartley's death would mark the first violent fatality on the lake.

Dennis Hartley, David Hartley's father, expressed shock and regret at Flores' killing.

"I just, I'm in shock about this right now," he said from his Colorado home. "I really don't have any hope that David will be found. I really hate other people putting their lives at stake. We don't need more sons lost."

The Mexican Foreign Ministry says it has been using federal, state and local resources, including the military and helicopters, to search for Hartley's body and opened an investigation. Over the weekend, authorities named two possible suspects.

However, Rios on Tuesday said no suspects have been identified and wouldn't comment on why a state investigator had already named two suspects.

On Sunday, state investigator Juan Carlos Ballesteros, who is assigned to Ciudad Miguel Aleman, said police believe brothers Juan Pedro and Jose Manuel Zaldivar Farias may have killed Hartley. Ballesteros didn't answer calls seeking comment Tuesday.
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Malobear
Malobear: From the Washington Times:
Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have sent well-armed assassins, or "sicarios," into Arizona to locate and kill bandits who are ambushing and stealing loads of c#xz%$w, marijuana and h&%$x% headed to buyers in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security has warned Arizona law enforcement authorities.

In a memo sent in May and widely circulated since, the department said: "We just received information from a proven credible confidential source who reported that a meeting was held in Puerto Penasco in which every smuggling organization who utilizes the Vekol Valley was told to attend. This included rival groups within the Guzman cartel."

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzman Loera heads what formally is known as the Sinaloa Cartel, which smuggles multi-ton loads of cz&*@#^ from Colombia through Mexico to the United States. One of the most powerful and dangerous drug gangs in Mexico, it also is known as the Guzman cartel, which has been tied to the production, smuggling and distribution of Mexican marijuana and hwz%#* and has established transshipment outlets in the United States.

The Vekol Valley is a widely-traveled drug smuggling corridor running across Interstate 8 between the Arizona towns of Casa Grande and Gila Bend, continuing north towards Phoenix. It gives drug smugglers the option of shipping their goods to California or to major cities both north and east.

The Homeland Security memo said a group of "15, very well equipped and armed sicarios complete with bullet proof vests" had been sent into the valley. It said the assassins would be disguised as "groups of 'simulated backpackers' carrying empty boxes covered with burlap into the Vekol Valley to draw out the bandits." Once identified, the memo said, "the sicarios will take out the bandits."

The federal government has posted signs along Interstate 8 in the Vekol Valley warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and the local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego. They warn travelers they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed."
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Malobear
Malobear: Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, told The Washington Times earlier this month that Mexican drug cartels have posted scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and "they literally control movement.

"They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has," he said. "This is going on here in Arizona. This is 70 to 80 miles from the border -- 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

The sheriff said he had asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but instead got 15 signs. He also has confirmed that he got the Homeland Security memo warning of the assassins.

Rising violence along the border has coincided with a crackdown in Mexico on warring drug gangs, who are seeking control of smuggling routes into the United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has waged a bloody campaign against powerful cartels, and more than 28,000 people have died since he launched his crackdown in late 2006.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has called the signs "an insult to the citizens of border states."

"American citizens should not have to be fearful for their lives on U.S. soil," he said. "If the federal government would do its job of enforcing immigration laws, we could better secure the border and better protect the citizens of border states."

Two years ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of Homeland Security, said in a report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless and had begun targeting not only rivals, but federal, state and local police. ICE said the violence had risen dramatically as part of "an unprecedented surge."

The Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center, in its 2010 drug threat assessment report, called the cartels "the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States." It said Mexican gangs had established operations in every area of the United States and were expanding into rural and suburban areas.

It said assaults against U.S. law enforcement officers along the southwestern border were on the increase, up 46 percent against Border Patrol agents alone.
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davidk14
davidk14: .

I live in Arizona City...south of Casa Grande...even closer to the border. I see a few US Border Patrol vehicles everyday patrolling the streets and freeways, not so much looking for illegal aliens walking on the streets, but forced into citizen protection functions supporting the local police and Sheriff's departments. They fuel up their vehicles here in town and they never are alone by themselves. National Guard troops? Nowhere to be seen even though they should be.

Washington, specifically Homeland Security has stated as "fact" that the border is secure. A blatant and outrageous lie.



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Malobear
Malobear: David,years ago I used to run produce from the west coast to east coast. Areas in the southwest were so lawless the "old west" laws seemed to be the only law of the land. In my truck David, I use to have a 44 I kept right beside were my 10 speed roadranger shifter was. Gangs riding in pickup trucks and cars were known for highjacking trucks,killing the driver and stealing their loads. Hell, it almost happened to me. Its been over 20 years since I drove those roads and I can only imagine just how bad things are now. My uncle has a ranch in centrel Texas. I do remember him and some ranchers talking about the problem of drug smuggling,illegals and highjackings and the possible cures. Its interesting that these bandits as there called are ripping off the cartels of their product. Could it be the wealth in this part of the country is so tired of Washingtons no action that they are taking things into their own hands. If you want to hit the cartels where it hurts,the wallet is the best place. Interesting stuff.
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Malobear
Malobear: From the HOUSTON CHRONICLE:

Immigration cases being tossed by the hundreds
Docket review pulls curtain back on procedure by Homeland Security

In the month after Homeland Security officials started a review of Houston's immigration court docket, immigration judges dismissed more than 200 cases, an increase of more than 700 percent from the prior month, new data shows.

The number of dismissals in Houston courts reached 217 in August — up from just 27 in July, according to data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the nation's immigration court system.

In September, judges dismissed 174 pending cases — the vast majority involving immigrants who already were out on bond and had cases pending on Houston's crowded downtown court docket, where hearings are now being scheduled into 2012.

Roughly 45 percent of the 350 cases decided in that court in September resulted in dismissals, the records show.

The EOIR data offer the first glimpse into Homeland Security's largely secretive review of pending cases on the local immigration court docket.

In early August, federal attorneys in Houston started filing unsolicited motions to dismiss cases involving suspected illegal immigrants who have lived in the country for years without committing serious crimes.

News of the dismissals, first reported in the Houston Chronicle in late August, caused a national controversy amid allegations that the Obama administration was implementing a kind of "backdoor amnesty" — a charge officials strongly denied.

In recent weeks, some immigration attorneys reported the dismissals have slowed somewhat, while others reported they now have to ask ICE trial attorneys to exercise prosecutorial discretion in order to have their cases dismissed. Others, however, said they are still being approached by government attorneys seeking to file joint motions for case dismissal.

"They're still doing it," said immigration attorney Steve Villarreal. "They're just doing it quietly."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined this week to discuss specifics of the docket reviews and dismissals, which are also going on in several other cities, including Dallas and Miami.
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Malobear
Malobear: In response to the Houston EOIR data, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Brigham noted that immigration judges can terminate cases for other than prosecutorial discretion, such as when ICE does not meet its burden of proof. The Houston immigration courts averaged about 38 case terminations each month in the 10 months prior to the DHS review.

Broad set of criteria
ICE has tried to downplay the docket reviews, suggesting in some media accounts that they were limited to cases involving illegal immigrants with pending petitions filed by U.S. citizen relatives.

However, EOIR's liaison with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Raed Gonzalez, said he was briefed on the guidelines in August directly by DHS' deputy chief counsel in Houston and described a broader set of internal criteria.

Government attorneys in Houston were instructed to exercise prosecutorial discretion on a case-by-case basis for illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least two years and have no serious criminal history, Gonzalez said.

To qualify for dismissal, defendants also must have no felony record or any misdemeanor convictions involving DWI, sxw crimes or domestic violence, he said.

Several dismissed cases examined by the Chronicle involved defendants without U.S. citizen relatives but with arguments for dismissal on humanitarian grounds, such as illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who have stayed out of trouble and are enrolled in college.

Supporters of the review called it a necessary, common-sense step to reduce the system's staggering backlog, which hit an all-time high this year. In June, the number of pending immigration cases nationally reached 247,922, including 7,444 in Houston.

By moving to dismiss cases for people who have stayed out of trouble, the agency will be better able to use its limited resources to more rapidly deport those with serious criminal records, supporters said.

"It makes all of the sense in the world," John Nechman, a Houston immigration attorney, said of the review, which has led the dismissals of cases for several of his clients.

Dismissed, but still illegal
The dismissals essentially mean that officials are no longer actively trying to remove defendants through the immigration court system, though they can refile such charges at a later date.

The dismissals do not convey any kind of legal status, so recipients remain illegal immigrants and cannot work legally in the U.S.

But critics still charge that the dismissals show the government is not enforcing the law.

"When you have this kind of mass dismissal, it sends a very clear message to illegal immigrants, and to society at large, that the government is not serious about enforcing the laws," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates for stricter border controls.

"This type of action muddles the message so both the public at large as well as illegal immigrants don't know what to think."
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Malobear
Malobear: MEXICO CITY — In the first attack of its kind in more than three years of gangland terror, gunmen in the border city of Ciudad Juarez opened fire early Thursday on two buses carrying employees of a U.S.-owned factory, killing four people and wounding 14 others.

The employees were heading home following their evening shift at about 1 a.m. when the killers struck near the small village of Caseta, near the Rio Grande southeast of Juarez. The assailants forced a man off one of the buses and then opened fire on the other occupants, investigators said.

The dead included three women and a man, all employees of Eagle Ottawa Leather, a firm headquartered in a Detroit suburb that makes upholstery for automobiles.

State investigators and the trade group representing Juarez's 324 foreign-owned factories - called maquiladoras - said the attack appeared targeted at the man who was kidnapped rather than at Eagle Ottawa or its employees in general.

"We understand it's a situation related to drugs," said Carlos Miranda, executive director of the Maquiladora Association in Juarez, which shares the Rio Grande with El Paso.

Weighing risks
Still, the attack marks the first time the wave of gangland violence has directly hit one of the foreign-owned firms anywhere in Mexico. And executives on both sides of the border were re-evaluating the risks Thursday.

"If in fact this is a new trend, it's not good for industry," said Nelson Balido, president of the San Antonio-based Border Trade Alliance, to which many of the companies with border factories belong. "Maquiladoras have not been directly attacked like this."

Eagle Ottawa managers did not respond to requests for comment at the company's headquarters or its offices in El Paso or Juarez.

State officials announced Thursday afternoon that they will increase police escorts and other security measures for the factories and their employees, especially those leaving night shifts.

All but two of those wounded in the attacks were released from the hospital by early afternoon, the state attorney general's office said.

Mexican officials claim that most of the more than 6,500 people killed in Juarez since fighting erupted in early 2008 have been gangsters or somehow related to the underworld.

But a rising number of innocents also have died, including 13 adolescents massacred at a Juarez house party last Friday and 15 others gunned down at a similar celebration in January. The parents of many of those victims, and likely of their killers, work in the foreign-owned factories.

"The criminals, in their murderous and irrational barbarity … kill without mercy or scruples," President Felipe Calderon said in a speech Wednesday, responding to a series of massacres nationwide in the past week that have killed more than 50 civilians. "Nothing justifies their actions."

Goods headed to U.S.
Juarez's assembly plants churn out car parts, electronics and other consumer goods, almost entirely for the U.S. market. The factories' more than 190,000 employees make up 60 percent of Ciudad Juarez's private sector payroll. Many assembly-line workers earn $100 or less for a full week's work.

Foreign-owned firms so far have been largely immune from Mexico's rising extortion plague, trade association officials and security consultants say. But they add that some Mexican employees, especially those with knowledge of merchandise shipments, occasionally have been targeted by gangsters.

"There has been a perceived immunity for North Americans operating in Mexico," said Daniel Johnson, an executive with Houston-based Medex Global Solutions, which provides security training and advice for companies operating internationally. "But in the past year we've seen that immunity fade away rather quickly.
This will effect trade across the border,no doubt.
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chronology
chronology: A well researched Post Malo.
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oldtimeracer
oldtimeracer: If you cross the N. Korean border illegally, you get 12 years hard labor.
If you cross the Iranian border illegally, you get detained indefinitely.
If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you get shot.
If you cross the Saudi border illegally, you will be jailed.
If you cross the Chinese border illegally, you will never be heard from again.
If you cross the Venezuelan border illegally, you will be branded a spy and your fate sealed.
If you cross the Cuban border illegally, you will be thrown into a prison to rot.
However, if you cross the US border illegally, you will get a job, a drivers license, a social security card, welfare benefits, food stamps, credit cards, subsidized rent or a loan to buy a new home, free education, free health care and the right to vote, all without speaking a word of English.

Oh and by the way, Santa Ana College in California now offers (as of June, 2010) scholarships for illegal immigrants.
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Malobear
Malobear: FoxNews-After suffering a major legal setback in the summer, Arizona regained its footing in court Friday when a federal judge dismissed parts of the U.S. Justice Department's challenge to the state's new immigration law and rejected several claims made by Hispanic activists and Phoenix police officers.
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton's ruling on Friday struck down the federal government's challenge to the portion of the law that prohibits the transport of illegal immigrants.
It also rejected a challenge from Phoenix police officers and an advocacy group called Chicanos Por La Causa who argued that the cops could be sued for racial profiling if they enforced the law or lose their jobs if they didn't.
Bolton agreed with Arizona that they had no valid claim of immediate harm.
Bolton also dismissed a lawsuit from the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders who were seeking an injunction preventing authorities from enforcing the law because the group argued federal law pre-empts state regulation of national borders.

"I am pleased with today's decision," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said in a statement Friday. "I strongly believe that the citizens of Arizona will ultimately prevail in all of these legal challenges. My defense of the rule of law will continue as vigorously as ever."
Arizona's law has been at the center of an impassioned national debate on illegal immigration ever since it was passed in April. The federal government filed a lawsuit soon after to block the measure -- a battle that is ongoing and is likely to wind up in the Supreme Court.
The law makes illegal immigration a state crime and requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop if they suspect they are in the state unlawfully.
Bolton's ruling didn't have any effect on the portions of the law that she previously prevented from taking effect, including a requirement that immigrants get or carry immigration registration papers.
In that ruling in July, Bolton let other portions take effect, including a ban on obstructing traffic while seeking or offering day-labor services on public streets.
Bolton on Friday denied Brewer's request to dismiss challenges to the law's most controversial sections.
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