Officials still have no leads on missing Tamaulipas judge

Officials still have no leads on missing Tamaulipas judge

Web Posted: 04/29/2006 12:00 AM CDT

Jesse Bogan
Rio Grande Valley Bureau
MIGUEL ALEMAN, Mexico — Nearly three weeks since a state judge apparently disappeared during a desolate highway commute to work, officials haven't made any arrests or named any suspects.
Judge Diana Margarita Canales Cárdenas, 42, heard civil cases in the Tamaulipas state's 6th District Court in this border town across from Roma.
She lived in Nuevo Laredo but drove the 90 miles each way and was apparently last seen at a checkpoint by Mexican soldiers who recognized her from her daily passage through.
"It's already been 18 days missing," her replacement, Jorge Chavez Martinez, said Friday. "She has been searched for by helicopter (and) special trucks from here to the northern edge of Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. We still don't know what happened."
Local authorities confirmed Canales is missing, but forwarded all other questions about the case to the commandant of the state ministerial police, Hector Fernando Vallejo Garcia, in the capital city of Victoria. He did not return a call seeking comment.
Photographs of Canales, a tall woman with short hair with red tints, and the 2005 red four-door Ford Lobo pickup she was last seen in, are posted locally on the doors of various law enforcement offices.
A prosecutor here initially speculated she might have been robbed because it's such a lonely road. It passes through rugged terrain where the national oil company Pemex has several natural gas lines, and many of the supervisors drive the same type of truck.
Her husband, Jorge Rodriguez Gonzalez of Nuevo Laredo, told police his wife didn't have enemies and that he last saw her leaving for work around 8 a.m. He started retracing her route when a colleague in her office informed him around 11 a.m. that she hadn't arrived.
He told police soldiers on the outskirts of Nuevo Laredo saw her pass through around 8:15 a.m.
Family members were worried because Canales, who has three children, takes medication daily for a recent operation and a thyroid illness.
"In as many years as I can remember, I can't recall a similar case involving a state judge," said Raul Almaguen Miranda, another state judge who hears minor crimes and whose office is near Canales' office. "We hope that she will be found soon."

jbogan@express-news.net

Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/crime/stories/MYSA042906.19A.missing_judge.2f47f53.html

Border Patrol Agents Bust Illegal Immigrants

http://www.woai.com
Border Patrol Agents Bust Illegal Immigrants
LAST UPDATE: 4/20/2006 10:37:07 PM
Posted By: Lauren Jenkins


Immigration reform and protecting the US border are two topics, with recent protests across the country, and the U.S. Senate battling over how to handle the issues. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol just opened a new checkpoint in South Texas. Border agents gave News 4 WOAI exclusive access to be there on a bust and round-up on Thursday.

The day starts with a trip to Encinal, Northwest of Laredo where agents have just rounded up 16 immigrants trying to get away in a pick-up truck.

"When we arrived, the vehicle was pulled out to the side of the road and the group had split,” Senior Patrol agent Robert Perez tells News 4 WOAI.

The group took off in a brushy patch, but the trained agents use foot patterns to find the group.

“We have a track of one alien here, and you can see the outline of the track, or the sole of his shoe," says Agent Perez. "This is a tennis shoe."

Agents can tell how long the immigrants have been in waiting by the trash they leave lying around. At one lay up point, agents found extra clothes, empty water bottles and an empty backpack. Agents search from both the ground and the sky. Helicopters are brought in to make sure everyone is found.

“We'll interview them a little further to establish their nationality to make sure they're not from another country,” says Agent Perez. “[We’ll] make sure, they're from the country they say they're from."

All of the immigrants, including at 15-year-old boy, say they’re from Mexico. They’re brought to the new checkpoint to be fingerprinted and identified and held before being sent back across the border.

Agents say it’s all in a days work, and that they’ll be back out again on Friday to do it once again.

On the Texas Rio Grande Border

I'm currently on the Texas Border and will have pictures along with stories of situations that have occured here, after I return from my border trip.
~CL, LoneStar Minuteman, working with the Texas Minutemen

Mexico hit by shooting, grenade attacks

12 Apr 2006 23:42:07 GMT
Source: Reuters
MEXICO CITY, April 12 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead four men in a Mexican northern border city and a man was killed in a grenade attack at a Pacific coast restaurant as drug violence spiralled, police said on Wednesday.
Mexico has been in the grip of a drug war between rival gangs since last year and about 1,500 people have been shot, beaten or suffocated to death as brutal cartels battle for control of the lucrative cocaine, heroin and marijuana trade.
Hitmen armed with assault rifles shot dead four men and wounded three others as they drove through the streets of Nuevo Laredo, which lies over the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, late on Tuesday, police said.
More than 80 people have been killed since January in the city of 300,000 people, which is on the front line of a turf war between traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa and the local Gulf cartel.
In another indication of the thriving drugs trade, the Mexican army seized 5.5 tonnes of cocaine worth an estimated $100 million on Tuesday. The drugs had been stuffed in suitcases in an empty passenger jet from Venezuela that landed near the Caribbean town of Ciudad del Carmen.
In the western state of Guerrero, a 27-year-old man was killed and eight people were seriously injured, police said, after a man lobbed a grenade into a busy restaurant in the Pacific coast town of Petatlan, some 190 miles (300 km) southwest of Mexico City, early on Wednesday.
Witnesses saw two men arguing in the Lazaros and Goldo's bar shortly before the grenade was detonated at 1 a.m. No arrests were reported and it was not yet clear whether drugs gangs were involved, prosecutors said.
The victim died in hospital after the incident, the second grenade attack this week in Guerrero, which is a notorious transit point for drugs including South American cocaine en route to the United States.
On Monday unknown assailants tossed a grenade at a private home in the coastal resort of Acapulco, injuring five people.