Feds bust 61 undocumented immigrants in L.A.

More than 60 illegal immigrants, including three toddlers, were discovered at a house in South Los Angeles early this morning by federal immigration agents serving a search warrant as part of an investigation into a human smuggling ring, authorities said.

According to our story, by Anna Gorman, immigrants were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Ecuador. There were six minors -- three teenagers and three toddlers -- among the group. Immigration and Customs were working with the consulates of those countries in an attempt to keep the young children with their mothers, according to agency spokewoman Virginia Kice.

Related La Plaza post: Iowa immigration raid is among largest of its kind

-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City

               

Violence in Mexico spills across U.S. border

Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Department of Homeland Security official told the Associated Press.

In the last few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, deputy commissioner at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

"It's almost like a military fight," Ahern said Tuesday. "I don't think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border."

Read the story above here, and the latest post from La Plaza on the ongoing drug violence in Mexico against the police here.

-- Deborah Bonello in

Mexico City

Congress battles over funds to fight border drug violence

House Republicans tried today to stop millions of dollars from going to Mexico to fight drug-related violence along its border with the U.S.

The move came during committee work on a bill to fund the Merida Initiative, a plan President Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon forged to fight drug violence in Latin America.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), would authorize $1.6 billion in spending over three years. The administration had asked that Mexico get $500 million.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) tried to block the aid to Mexico until Bush could certify that no Mexican army or police personnel were involved in drug trafficking and that the border was secure. Tancredo's amendment failed 23 to 10, but the fight's not over.

Republicans led by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) are appealing directly to Bush to withdraw his funding request.

"Mexico remains the chief foreign supplier of marijuana to the United States and continues to supply the majority of methamphetamines, heroin and cocaine that enters our country," they wrote in a May 8 letter to the president.

Posted by Nicole Gaouette in Washington

Record-setting investment in Latin America

As if one were needed, another sign of Latin America's economic ascendancy came last week when the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean announced that foreign investment in the region reached $106 billion in 2007,  up a staggering 41% from the previous year and 20% more than the previous record $89 billion set back in 1999.

Mafia leader said to escape police dragnet in Mexico

There's a very dramatic story in today's El Universal that describes how one of the most-wanted men in Mexico escaped arrest last week.

On May 7, federal police had one of the heads of the so-called Sinaloa cartel cornered on a highway outside Cuernavaca, El Universal reports. But Arturo Beltran Leyva, alias El Barbas, was being protected by a team of bodyguards that included at least four former military men.

Two federal policemen were killed in the shootout that followed. Beltran Leyva's bodyguards employed 11 assault rifles and a grenade launcher, according to El Universal.

Nine of the cartel gunmen were detained. They later admitted that they had been guarding Beltran Leyva, El Universal says.

The operation was directed by Edgar Millan Gomez, the coordinator of anti-drug efforts for Mexico's federal police. Just hours later, Millan Gomez was assassinated in his home by gunmen who had been contracted by Beltran Leyva some days earlier, police said. Millan Gomez was likely killed in revenge for several operations against the Sinaloa cartel, according to police.

Posted by Héctor Tobar in Mexico City

Iowa immigration raid is one of biggest of its kind

Nearly 400 people were arrested Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a raid on a meat-packing plant in Iowa. The raid was apparently one of the biggest of its kind and came after months of planning, according to this release from Immigration and Customs enforcement.

Of the 390 detainees, 290 were Guatemalans and 93 were Mexicans, as well as a handful of Israelis and Ukrainians, officials said in this report.

Associated Press reports below that more than 40 of the detainees were later released, mostly because they have children to look after.

In the second video, from DesMoinesRegister.com, you can watch the families of the detainees in Iowa protesting for their release.

Updates here from the Des Moines Register.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Victims and human rights groups protest extraditions of Colombian ex-paramilitaries

Victim and human rights groups in Colombia say that the surprise extradition of 14 imprisoned paramilitary leaders to the United States on Tuesday will deny them justice for the crimes the warlords committed against their loved ones. Could it also be an attempt to distract attention from the president's cousin, who is under arrest on suspicion of dealing under the table with right-wing paramilitary groups?

Immigrants are adapting faster to U.S., but Mexicans lag economically, study says

Modern-day immigrants are assimilating faster than past generations, even though they tend to arrive with fewer English skills, says a study issued today by the Manhattan Institute. The study was written by Jacob Vigdor, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke University.

"This is something unprecedented in U.S. history," Vigdor said. "It shows that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong."

A possible explanation, Vigdor said, was that the economic expansion of the 1990s created more job opportunities at all levels, speeding the economic integration of immigrants. It could also be that because today's immigrants begin at such a low starting point, "it's easier to make progress to the next level up" of integration than it would be if the immigrant had to improve on an already high level of integration.  (Washington Post).

Doug Tompkins, the road and Chile's Chaiten volcano

Douglas Tompkins just can't stay out of Chile's headlines. A volcanic eruption in his backyard is the latest controversy to enmesh Tompkins, the ex-fashion tycoon (coiner of the North Face label; co-founder of the Esprit line) turned South American eco-warrior.

The spectacular eruption of the long-silent Chaiten volcano in southern Chile has refocused national attention on an uncomfortable fact : Tompkins' signature conservation project, Pumalin Park, divides the country in half. The erupting volcano happens to skirt  the limits of the Yosemite-sized park, much of it a mossy, primeval, temperate rain forest untouched by civilization. Tompkins spent millions of his own savings to keep it that way.

Alleged corrupt cop, 4 others linked to Mexican police chief killing

A police officer and four other people with suspected ties to a powerful drug cartel have been arrested in the assassination of Mexico's acting federal police chief, authorities said Monday. Read the Associated Press report here.

Photo: Edgar Millan Gomez, 42, slain Thursday at his Mexico City home, was the third-ranking member of Mexico's Public Safety Secretariat, which oversees law enforcement. (Omar Torres AFP/Getty Images)

Roots of Haiti's food crisis run deep

As the price of U.S. rice soars, experts urge a return to corn and other homegrown staples, writes Carol J. Williams in the Los Angeles Times. But farmers say there are too many obstacles.

"Today, more than 70% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, and the U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in little more than a year. Hungry hordes rioted in the capital last month, leaving at least six dead by the time President Rene Preval restored calm by announcing that foreign aid and subsidies would lower the price of a 110-pound bag of rice to $43 from $51."

As The Times has reported, Haiti isn't the only country in the Western Hemisphere experiencing serious food shortages. Marla Dickerson reported from Nicaragua earlier this month on how high food prices are hitting that impoverished Central American nation.

Photo: Destitute residents of the Cite Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, line up for hours each day to get a food handout: a cup of rice and a splash of vegetable stew for each family member. The U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in little more than a year. Carol J. Williams / Los Angeles Times

Date set for Bolivian recall vote: disruption expected

In a rare instance of political accord, President Evo Morales and his critics have agreed to support a recall election for Morales and all eight sitting state governors, report Oscar Ordoñez and Patrick J. McDonnell from La Paz.

Nerviosismo in Caracas and Quito

There are signs of nervousness in Venezuela and Ecuador in advance of Interpol Director Ron Noble's announcement, scheduled for Thursday in Bogota, Colombia, on whether his agency believes the electronic files recovered from the laptop computer of the late FARC commander Raul Reyes were tampered with or not. If Interpol anoints the files as legitimate, serious political discomfort will ensue for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's Rafael Correa because of their countries' alleged dealings with the FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, as indicated by laptop files.  The FARC is viewed officially by the U.S. and other nations as a terrorist group, and so the files could lead the U.S. to brand both countries as state terrorism sponsors. According to the Colombian government's strategic leaks of dozens of the electronic files so far, Chavez has helped the FARC with arms and cash, while requesting that the FARC train Venezuelan forces. According to the computers, Ecuador took a casual approach to the FARC's presence in its territory. Nervousness might explain why Chavez reacted Monday to a fairly innocuous remark by German Chancellor Angela Merkel by comparing her to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Correa meanwhile launched a European tour, possibly for purposes of damage control in advance, portraying his country as a victim of Colombia's military aggression. Also on Thursday, Colombian police are expected to unveil a full inventory of the estimated 10,000 files in the laptops and two Zip drives recovered by its commandos after the March 1 raid inside Ecuadorean territory that killed Reyes and 24 others.

By Chris Kraul, Bogotá Bureau

Photo of Hugo Chavez by Associated Press

Argentina's Tevez celebrates English soccer cup

He came out of one of Buenos Aires' toughest neighborhoods, a villa called Fort Apache. Short of stature but long in determination, Carlos Tevez has become one of Europe's top soccer stars. The forward is not especially flashy, but he always shows a lot of grit.

On Sunday, his team, the legendary Manchester United, won England's coveted Premier League championship. Tevez had previously won an Argentine championship with Boca Juniors and a Brazilian cup with Corinthians. During Sunday's victory celebrations, Tevez draped himself in a blue-and-white Argentine flag, a photo that made the newspapers at home. Asked by the sports daily Ole about his popularity with British fans, Tevez replied: "They see me on the field every Sunday and they know I give my all."

-- Patrick J. McDonnell and Andres D'Alessandro in Buenos Aires.

Photo: Manchester United players Carlos Tevez, left, draped in the Argentine flag, and Gary Neville, right, celebrate with the Premier League championship trophy after 2-0 victory Sunday against Wigan.  Credit: Rich Eaton / EPA

For L.A.'s best TV news, better switch to Español

If you're an Angeleno looking for "splashy," "soft," celebrity-driven television news, just tune in to one of the local English-language network affiliates. But if you're looking for serious, well-reported television journalism -- albeit with a sometimes partisan, pro-undocumented-immigrant edge -- you'd be better off clicking on to L.A.'s Spanish-language TV newscasts on Univision's flagship KMEX or Telemundo affiliate KVEA.

That's what former L.A. Times reporter Joe Mathews, now an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, argues in this provocative reported commentary in Sunday's Washington Post.

California Assemblyman Fabian Nuñez leaving the speaker's post

Termed-out Assemblyman Fabian Nuñez leaves a legacy as an effective leader whose public image was tarnished by extravagant spending of political donations.

Guatemalan president says illegal immigrants in U.S deserve legal protection

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom said that "his country's discredited police and justice systems need to be 'reordered and disciplined' and that Guatemalan immigrants who are in the United States illegally deserve the same temporary legal protections that have been granted other Central Americans." (From the Washington Post report here).

Speaking in a meeting with Washington Post staff during his first visit to the city since his election, Colom said that more than 7,500 Guatemalans were deported from the United States last year.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Protests and pain on the Mexican border

It was a grim weekend along the Mexican border. Families did their best to celebrate Mexican Mother's Day, while protesters walked for the dead and the country reeled from a week of escalating drug-related violence.

U.S. drug war outpost in Ecuador could be closed

To many Ecuadoreans, Manta military outpost in South America is a flash point in a regional debate over the limits of American power in Latin America.

But, writes the New York Times:

To the Bush administration, the American air station here is a critical component in the war on drugs in the Andes. The 180 service members based here conduct about 100 flights a month over the Pacific looking for drug boats from Colombia, the source of about 90% of the cocaine used in the United States. NYT

President Rafael Correa (pictured), who is still smarting after Colombia's military incursion into Ecuadorean territory in pursuit of the FARC in March, opposes renewing the agreement allowing the American base at Manta, arguing that the base compromises Ecuador’s sovereignty.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Dolores Ochoa / Associated Press

Seaweed shows Chilean village is among oldest in the Americas

Seaweed found at an inland settlement in Chile confirms that the village is one of the oldest inhabited sites in the Americas and demonstrates that residents had extensive contact with the coastline, 50 miles away, researchers said Friday.

The inland settlement, about 14,000 years old, predates the Southwestern Clovis sites by about a millennium and coincides with findings at Paisley Cave in Oregon, writes The Times' Thomas H. Maugh II.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City