NATIONAL
May 13, 2012 | By Richard A. Serrano
COLUMBUS, N.M. - From a small hill at a state park here, the border town of Palomas, Mexico, can be made out through the desert haze. It lies four miles to the south, but the corruption that roils Palomas and the rest of Northern Mexico may as well be a block away. Last year, black sedans and hatchbacks loaded with federal agents poured into Columbus, a town of 2,000 people, arresting the mayor, the police chief, a city trustee and nine others. They have all pleaded guilty in a gun-smuggling operation that sold about 100 firearms, mostly assault rifles, to Mexican drug cartels.
WORLD
May 6, 2012 | By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
TULTITLAN, Mexico - The travelers, with bloodshot eyes and sleep-wrinkled clothes, press around a man with a map of Mexico taped to the wall. He speaks, and his finger traces various routes north to the border. All roads lead to trouble. Up here, kidnappers and drug killers. Over there, Mexican army checkpoints. Farther along, a giant desert, with poisonous snakes and deadly heat. Listeners rise on tiptoes to see better. A woman asks for a piece of paper; she wants to remember the name of the Mexican state bordering Arizona.
NATIONAL
May 3, 2012 | By Dalina Castellanos, Los Angeles Times
Five people were shot to death, including a toddler, at a house in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert on Wednesday, and a white supremacist border militiaman apparently was among them. Authorities have not released the victims' identities, but the private militia group U.S. Border Guard reported that one of the dead was Jason "J.T. " Ready, its founder. Members of the organization say they arm themselves and patrol the border with Mexico to try to combat "narco-terrorists. " Ready also advocated putting a minefield on the border.
OPINION
May 1, 2012
The number of immigrants coming illegally to the United States has been declining for several years. Demographers have repeatedly said as much, and now a report by the Pew Hispanic Center confirms it - illegal migration from Mexico is virtually at a standstill. Last year, about 6.1 million Mexicans were illegally in the country, down from a high of 7 million in 2007. What accounts for the change after decades of steady increases? A declining birth rate and solid economic growth in Mexico have led fewer people to leave home.
NATIONAL
April 28, 2012 | By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The drug runners call it " el mosco ," the mosquito, and one recent evening on the southern tip of Texas, a Predator B drone armed with cameras buzzed softly over the beach on South Padre Island and headed inland. "We're going to get some bad guys tonight, I've got a feeling," said Scott Peterson, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection supervisory air interdiction agent. He watched the drone's live video feed in the Predator Ops room at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, about 50 miles away.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
April 24, 2012 | By Paloma Esquivel and Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times
Net migration from Mexico to the United States has come to a statistical standstill, stalling one of the most significant demographic trends of the last four decades. Amid an economic downturn and increased enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border, the number of Mexicans coming to the United States dropped significantly, while the number of those returning home increased sharply over the last several years, according to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center. "The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill," the report says.