Borders

Re "Is anyone listening?" Opinion, Jan. 2 When immigration is discussed, way too often the word "illegal" is omitted, at least at the start of the discussion. Americans do not oppose legal immigration -- just people who sneak across our borders. This is a distinction too often omitted from various diatribes, or at least not mentioned until well into an article. Jan Young Foothill Ranch

A man lay on the road, his body twisted. He was so still amid the flying rocks, rising smoke, rubber bullets, screaming women and youths waving machetes that you could walk right by him. His name was Dishon Omondi. There was a scarlet pillow of blood under his head. In Kenya's deadly postelection violence, a terrible spasm that pitted tribe against tribe, he had ambled unknowingly across an invisible border: a Luo man in Kikuyu territory.

Leaders in a small Texas border city said Wednesday that they felt blindsided after learning that a judge had ordered public land turned over temporarily to the federal government as it works on a fence along the border with Mexico. U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum ordered Eagle Pass to surrender 233 acres of city-owned land. The Justice Department had sued for access to the land Monday. Ludlum's ruling came the same day, before the city could muster a challenge.

Israel on Friday closed border crossings into the Gaza Strip, including passages for shipments of humanitarian goods, as a response to persistent rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants. Officials did not specify how long the closure would last, but are expected to review the decision early next week. The move comes amid growing tensions over the cross-border rocket barrages, which have drawn pledges of stepped-up action from Israeli leaders, who have been unable to quell the attacks.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent pursuing suspected drug smugglers along the California-Mexico border was struck and killed Saturday by one of the fleeing vehicles, agency officials said. The agent was trying to stop two vehicles that had illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico when he was hit, said agent Jeremy Schappell, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Yuma sector. He said the incident occurred about 9:30 a.m.

The off-road enthusiasts were revving their dune buggies and all-terrain vehicles Saturday morning when a brown Hummer suddenly cut into the campground. The man at the wheel, a suspected drug smuggler, was heading to Mexico, fast. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar, the only person in the way, threw a spike strip in front of the car. The Hummer sped up. "It looked like the man swerved and hit the agent intentionally," said one witness.

Masked gunmen used explosives to blow holes in the Gaza Strip's border fence early today, enabling thousands of Palestinians to pour into Egypt to buy food, fuel and other supplies that had been cut off because of an Israeli blockade, witnesses said. Egyptian and Palestinian border guards did not resist the mass crossing at the Rafah terminal.

The collapse of Egypt's border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday altered the region's political and security landscape as suddenly as it changed the fortunes of Palestinians who poured out of the enclave to stock up on goods made scarce by an Israeli blockade.

Egypt deployed hundreds of riot-equipped guards Friday to seal off the Gaza Strip, but abruptly withdrew them after defiant Palestinian militants bulldozed new breaches in a border fence. A surging Palestinian crowd that had been pushed away from Egyptian soil cheered as a yellow front-end loader, escorted by black-clad Hamas gunmen, punched through three sections of a concrete barrier topped by chain-link fencing.

The Egyptian government Saturday abandoned its sporadic efforts to seal off the Gaza Strip but tightened a cordon around this border city, restricting the availability of goods in order to dissuade Palestinians from flocking here to shop. Police used armored personnel carriers to block roads leading deeper into Egypt from Rafah and turned back hundreds of Palestinians. Authorities instructed hoteliers in El Arish, 25 miles southwest of here, not to lodge Palestinian travelers.