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From the Los Angeles Times

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Mexico's drug war disappearances leave families in anguish

Thousands of people have vanished without a trace – some caught up in violence, others for no reason anyone can fathom. Relatives remain in agonized limbo.

by Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

March 7, 2011

Reporting from Mexico City

They had scraped together money for a vacation in the port city of Veracruz. Four couples, owners of small fruit and taco shops, from the quiet state of Guanajuato.

After checking in to their hotel and spending the day by the pool with their children, the husbands wandered off, still in their shorts, to buy ice at a nearby 7-Eleven. Maybe they decided to pop into a bar, one the hotel guard recommended.

At first, the wives weren't too worried when the men didn't come back. Even the next morning, the women figured they had tied one on and slept it off somewhere. They took their children on a tour of the city. But by nightfall, the wives became nervous, and as cellphone calls went unanswered, they became terrified.

Where were their husbands?

That was nearly a year ago. The four men have not been seen since. Their families have received no ransom demand, no information, no clues whatsoever. Their bodies have not turned up.

"It was as if the earth swallowed them," one of the wives said in an interview.

In a chilling byproduct of the drug war raging in Mexico, thousands of people have disappeared. Not killed, as far as is known; not taken for ransom. Simply vanished, leaving families desperate and broken, and a society confused and frightened.

Some are low-level drug gangsters "lifted," to use the local vernacular, by rivals, then killed and dumped in secret mass graves. Some are last seen in the hands of the military or police, picked up for questioning, fates unknown. Thousands of others are immigrants who can't pay their smugglers.

And some, in the most unsettling instances, disappear for reasons no one can fathom.

Families tell themselves their loved ones were taken by traffickers and forced into slave labor in marijuana fields and methamphetamine labs. It may be true in some cases, but more often it is a form of self-deluding comfort.

The disappearances are a disturbing echo of a tactic employed by dictatorships in the so-called dirty wars that plagued parts of Latin America in the last half of the 20th century.

Whether practiced by governments or by criminals, it is a form of control and intimidation that in some ways has an even more profound effect on society because it is an "ambiguous loss," said psychologist Carlos Beristain, a Spaniard who has counseled families of the missing throughout the region.

Few cases are ever resolved, with authorities overwhelmed by record-high killings. Senseless brutality engulfs families in uncertainty, leaving them unable to mourn, unable to move on. It is a wound, as many put it, that does not stop bleeding.

A state of limbo

The couples who traveled to Veracruz were on a long-anticipated vacation last May, with 10 children among them, staying at the Howard Johnson hotel in the lively port city and popular tourist destination. The men were in their late 30s, early 40s. They were wearing shorts, sandals and the red wristbands that showed they were hotel guests when they ventured out that last night.

"We never imagined it would be dangerous," one of the wives said. She asked her name not be published out of reluctance to antagonize authorities who initially showed interest in the case but have since moved on to other crimes, including more than 300 other disappearances in Veracruz.

Their wives frantically searched for them in the days that followed, driving all over the city, reporting to every police station, the Red Cross, hospitals, the military and the local television station. They dialed their husbands' cellphones, but there were no answers. Weeks turned to months. Nothing.

The only clue came when one of the men's ATM cards was used two days after the disappearance. And someone told them the bar that the men might have gone to, New Fantasy, was a den of danger, full of "narcos."

Reyna Estrada's husband vanished with 11 others two years ago when they were on a trip to the northern border state of Coahuila to sell paint.

She says the families have been left in a state of limbo.

"You aren't a widow. You aren't a wife. My husband simply is not here," she said. "You cannot mourn."

Estrada's husband, Jaime Ramirez, traveled with the 11 other men from their homes in the state of Mexico, a couple of hours outside Mexico City, to a small Coahuila town called Piedras Negras. Vendors of house paint and other construction supplies, they were on a sales trip, traveling in two vans. Ramirez was 48; the eldest was 50 and the youngest 16, helping out his uncle.

They were last seen late one night at a gasoline station, not far from a military checkpoint. Coahuila has been quietly seething with drug violence for some time, especially as the paramilitary drug gang known as the Zetas takes over part of the state.

Relatives have repeatedly traveled to the area in an attempt to find out more, but to no avail. No witnesses have come forward, and one human rights activist warned they risked being killed if they pried too far.

"How can 12 people go missing, get rounded up, whatever happened, and no one notices?" Estrada said. "At least when your loved one dies, you know where they are, what happened, you can eventually get used to it. We do not know what monster we are fighting."

Little help from police

Authorities frequently try to stigmatize the victim, said Blanca Martinez, a human rights activist who has helped organize families of more than 100 missing people in Coahuila. They suggest the victim ran off with a girlfriend, went to work illegally in the United States or hooked up with the lucrative drug business.

Some Mexicans may have "disappeared" as matters of mistaken identity. A group of 10 hunters from the Guanajuato city of Leon went on a seasonal hunting trip Dec. 4 in Zacatecas, in search of rabbits, deer and wild boar. They had a few rifles and a red SUV and one wore camouflage. According to the testimony of one member of the hunting party who managed to escape, the group was intercepted by local police who handed them over to about 15 masked gunmen dressed in black.

With the exception of the man who escaped, the hunters remain missing.

Two months earlier, 20 young men from Michoacan went on what their families described as a vacation to Acapulco. They were seized by gunmen and remained missing for weeks. Their bodies were eventually discovered in a mass grave, and their purported killers confessed that the men had been mistaken for a rival gang from Michoacan.

Several drug-gang gunmen captured by authorities have recounted how they disposed of bodies en masse in remote, hidden graves. And in one particularly grisly case, a henchman for the Sinaloa cartel in Tijuana said he dissolved about 300 bodies using acid. Police searching his property found traces of human remains last month.

More than 11,000 migrants, primarily from Central America, went missing last year crossing Mexico on their way to the United States, according to the Mexican National Human Rights Commission. Most were captured by drug gangs demanding payoffs. Many remain missing. In the single largest massacre in Mexico's four-year conflict, 73 immigrants who refused to work for their captors were slain last summer.

In early 2009, Pablo Esparza was dragged from his mother's home in the Durango city of Cuencame. A few weeks later, his brother and sister were seized by gunmen armed with cattle prods. Then the police commander investigating the disappearances vanished. They were among about 60 people who went missing in 2009 just in Cuencame, a town of fewer than 10,000 people along a Zeta infiltration route.

Another Esparza brother, Jose de Jesus, is a U.S. citizen from Texas. He has pressed both U.S. and Mexican governments to investigate the case. But, nearly two years later, there is no trace of his absent family. One theory is they may have fallen prey to drug traffickers avenging actions by other, distant relatives.

"I live for the day they will reappear," Jose de Jesus Esparza said in a telephone interview from San Francisco, where he works for an airline. The uncertainty has taken its toll: What remains of his family is falling apart. Their mother has attempted suicide, the children fall ill, family members have sunk into deep depression, and Jose de Jesus is going bankrupt in his attempts to find his missing relatives.

"A lot of time has passed, but I haven't stopped looking a single day," he said. Hope, he says, is the last thing that dies.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-disappeared-20110307,0,3152675.story

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White House seeks to reassure Muslims

Ahead of congressional hearings into homegrown Islamic terrorism, an Obama national security advisor tells one group: 'Muslim Americans are not part of the problem. You're part of the solution.'

by Peter Nicholas, Washington Bureau

March 7, 2011

Reporting from Sterling, Va.

The White House took a preemptive step to defuse an emerging controversy Sunday, sending out a top aide to reassure American Muslims that the U.S. government doesn't see them as a collective threat.

Denis McDonough, deputy national security advisor to President Obama, addressed a largely Muslim audience days before congressional hearings into homegrown Islamic terrorism. The hearings, which sparked protests in New York on Sunday, will be led by Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

In his speech to members of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, McDonough said, "The bottom line is this: When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem; you're part of the solution."

Earlier Sunday, King told CNN's "State of the Union" that Al Qaeda terrorists were "attempting to recruit within the United States. People in this country are being self-radicalized."

The Obama administration is clearly worried that the hearings, which begin Thursday, could open a rift with Muslim leaders, whose cooperation is needed to foil terrorist recruitment. A message from McDonough's speech was that the Muslim community is vital to a larger strategy of preventing the radicalization of American youths.

"Our challenge, and the goal that President Obama has insisted that we also focus on, is on the front end: preventing Al Qaeda from recruiting and radicalizing people in America in the first place," McDonough said. "And we know this isn't the job of government alone. It has to be a partnership with you — the communities being targeted most directly by Al Qaeda."

Terrorist recruiters, McDonough said, look for people who feel disconnected from their community and are "perhaps struggling with their identity."

They suggest to prospective recruits that "their identities as an American and as a Muslim are somehow incompatible and that they must choose between their faith and their country," he said.

Afterward, reporters asked McDonough whether his speech was connected to King's hearings. "We welcome congressional involvement in this very important issue," he said.

King told the Associated Press that he agreed with what McDonough said and had spoken with him Friday. "I think it's a validation of everything I've been trying to do," King said. "There is a real threat. It's a serious threat."

Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society said in an interview that Congress should not "single out" any one community and that Muslim leaders were partners in defeating Islamic extremism.

"We're doing our best," he said. "We're fighting this and we're in it together."

Rizwan Jaka, a member of the society's board of trustees, said King's hearings carried the potential to marginalize Muslims.

A better approach, he said, would be one that treats Muslims as "partners, not suspects."

King, on CNN, urged the nation to watch the hearings before casting judgment.

"I think the hearing is going to be very productive. It's going to go forward, and it's going to talk about something which is not being talked about publicly, which I think should be," he said.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim, also appeared on CNN.

"To say we're going to investigate a religious minority, and a particular one, I think is the wrong course of action to take," Ellison said. "I don't want them to be able to stand up and claim, you know, 'See, we told you, America is at war with Islam.' That's one of their main recruiting arguments."

Also Sunday, about 300 people turned out in Times Square to protest the hearings. Participants objected that the focus should be not on Muslims but extremists of any sort.

A smaller protest supported the hearings.

Those who opposed the hearings waved U.S. flags and held signs that read: "Today I am a Muslim too" and "Who would Jesus persecute? Islam is not my enemy."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-white-house-muslims-20110307,0,3562033,print.story

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The loyalty dance

The U.S. has a history of forcing minorities to try to prove their patriotism, something almost impossible to do. Yet, Rep. Peter T. King is about to begin such a dog-and-pony show with American Muslims.

by Gregory Rodriguez

March 7, 2011

Dance, monkey, dance.

That's what the United States has long shouted at immigrants and ethnic groups suspected of being disloyal. The nation asks its newcomers to perform in meaningless ways to "prove" they belong here.

The dancers change, but not the dance. Because the U.S. is continually incorporating immigrants, the perceived threat of betrayal is constant. This week, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) will call the tune on Capitol Hill, with hearings meant to test the loyalty of American Muslims.

But proving loyalty in the affirmative is not so easy. The primary proof is in what people don't do: The loyal ones are those who don't stab you in the back, don't sell you out.

And loyalty — an abstract attachment to a person, institution, cause or nation — like any abstraction is hard to measure. Proving it — especially by pronouncement in front of a Senate committee — is a little like proving that you're sorry. You can apologize all you want, but at some point the offended party is just going to have to trust you mean it.

But that doesn't keep self-appointed arbiters of national loyalty such as King from popping up from time to time to make minorities dance.

As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, King is ostensibly investigating the radicalization of American Muslims. From all accounts, what the gruff Long Islander seeks is a show trial in which American Muslims will have the opportunity to make, in his words, "full throated, intense" denunciations of all terrorist activities. In other words, he wants them to prove their loyalty to the United States.

To be clear, King doesn't think all Muslims are a threat to the U.S. He says he has "no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are good people." But he wants Muslim "leaders" to condemn any potential bad apples.

Spotlighting ethnic or racial "leaders" has long been a preoccupation of Anglo journalists, academics and politicians. Call it the "Take Me to Your Leader" game. It is predicated on the false assumption that ethnic, racial or religious groups — the usual "minority" categories — function as organized entities whose members take their moral and political cues from group leaders. It reduces the diversity of the groups to the opinions of their putative leader or leaders. You want to know how Asian Americans think about an issue? Call up the Chinese American on the city council or the head of an Asian American civil rights group. It's easy. It's also mostly symbolic, empty and ineffectual. The city council member represents a district, not an ethnic group; the civil rights activist speaks only for one organization.

It's particularly problematic with American Muslims, the majority of whom are Sunnis, a sect famous for being non-hierarchical. "The most organized Muslim movements in America are not necessarily the most important (or numerous)," says Sherman A. Jackson, an Islamic law and theology specialist at the University of Michigan. That suggests that whichever religious leaders King calls to testify at his hearings are not likely to speak for, let alone influence, as many "followers."

What King will get, if he gets any cooperation at all, will be little more than a dog-and-pony show. It will explain nothing and reveal less about the sources of homegrown terrorism. No matter how much King's witnesses condemn violence or exhort U.S. patriotism, they're not likely to stop a Pakistani or Somali immigrant who decides to strap on a bomb.

Homegrown terrorism is a serious threat. But rather than grandstanding and making symbolic demands of Muslim spokespersons, King should simply read the report on the Ft. Hood shootings issued last month by his counterparts across the way in the Capitol, the leaders of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Rather than focusing on old-school minority politics and empty proofs of loyalty, the report called for improved coordination and cooperation among law enforcement agencies in dealing with a specific situation. Staying clear of minority admonishment, it advocated continued outreach to American Muslims.

The grown-up approach might not be as entertaining as a command performance of dancing Muslims, but it's a whole lot more likely to produce real-life results.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rodriguez-king-20110307,0,4765875,print.column

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From the New York Times

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No Crime, but an Arrest and Two Strip-Searches

WASHINGTON

Albert W. Florence believes that black men who drive nice cars in New Jersey run a risk of being questioned by the police. For that reason, he kept handy a 2003 document showing he had paid a court-imposed fine stemming from a traffic offense, just in case.

It did not seem to help.

In March 2005, Mr. Florence was in the passenger seat of his BMW when a state trooper pulled it over for speeding. His wife, April, was driving. His 4-year-old son, Shamar, was in the back.

The trooper ran a records search, and he found an outstanding warrant based on the supposedly unpaid fine. Mr. Florence showed the trooper the document, but he was arrested anyway.

A failure to pay a fine is not a crime. It is, rather, what New Jersey law calls a nonindictable offense. Mr. Florence was nonetheless held for eight days in two counties on a charge of civil contempt before matters were sorted out.

In the process, he was strip-searched twice.

“Turn around,” he remembered being told while he stood naked before several guards and prisoners. “Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.”

The treatment stung. “I consider myself a man's man,” said Mr. Florence, a finance executive for a car dealership. “Six-three. Big guy. It was humiliating. It made me feel less than a man. It made me feel not better than an animal.”

The Supreme Court is likely to decide this month whether to hear Mr. Florence's case against officials in New Jersey over the searches, and there is reason to think it will.

The federal courts of appeal are divided over whether blanket policies requiring jailhouse strip-searches of people arrested for minor offenses violate the Fourth Amendment. Eight courts have ruled that such searches are proper only if there is a reasonable suspicion that the arrested person has weapons or contraband.

The more recent trend, from appeals courts in Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia, is to allow searches no matter how minor the charge. Some potential examples cited by dissenting judges in those cases: violating a leash law, driving without a license, failing to pay child support.

Although the judges in the majority in Mr. Florence's case, the one heard in Philadelphia, said they had been presented with no evidence that the searches were needed, they nonetheless ruled that they would not second-guess corrections officials who said they feared that people like Mr. Florence would smuggle contraband into their jails.

The most pertinent Supreme Court decision, Bell v. Wolfish, was decided by a 5-to-4 vote in 1979. It allowed strip-searches of people held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York after “contact visits” with outsiders.

On the one hand, such visits are planned and may provide opportunities for smuggling contraband in a way that unanticipated arrests do not. On the other, as Judge Marvin E. Frankel of Federal District Court in Manhattan wrote in the case in 1977, contact visits take place in front of guards. “The secreting of objects in rectal or genital areas becomes in this situation an imposing challenge to nerves and agility,” Judge Frankel wrote.

The recent decisions allowing strip-searches of all arrestees have said they were authorized by the Supreme Court's Bell decision. In the Atlanta case, Judge Ed Carnes said that new inmates enter facilities there after “one big and prolonged contact visit with the outside world.”

In Mr. Florence's case, the majority used interesting reasoning to justify routine strip-searches.

“It is plausible,” Judge Thomas M. Hardiman wrote, “that incarcerated persons will induce or recruit others to subject themselves to arrest on nonindictable offenses to smuggle weapons or other contraband into the facility.”

Mr. Florence's lawyer, Susan Chana Lask, said that would make sense if her client were “Houdini in reverse” — a master of becoming incarcerated though blameless, in the hope of passing along contraband to confederates waiting for him inside.

In his dissent in Mr. Florence's case, Judge Louis H. Pollak, a former dean of Yale Law School, was also skeptical of the majority's theory. “One might doubt,” he wrote, “that individuals would deliberately commit minor offenses such as civil contempt — the offense for which Florence was arrested — and then secrete contraband on their persons, all in the hope that they will, at some future moment, be arrested and taken to jail to make their illicit deliveries.”

In urging the Supreme Court not to hear Mr. Florence's case, officials from Burlington County, N.J., allowed that “perhaps petitioner's frustration is understandable.”

But jails are dangerous places, the brief said. “It might even be argued that those arrested on nonindictable or other ‘minor' offenses would be particularly anxious,” the brief reasoned, to make sure that everyone around them was thoroughly searched.

Mr. Florence's son has drawn a lesson from what he saw from the back seat in 2005. “If he sees a cop and we're together,” Mr. Florence testified in 2006, “he still asks, ‘Daddy, are you going to jail?' ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/us/08bar.html?_r=1&hp

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Obama Considers Tapping Oil Reserve

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to rapidly rising gasoline prices brought on by turmoil in the Middle East, the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, said on Sunday.

“It's something that only has been done on very rare occasions,” Mr. Daley said on “Meet the Press” on NBC, adding, “It's something we're considering.”

Administration officials have sent mixed signals about the possibility of opening the reserve, which would add supply to the domestic oil market and tend to push down prices.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Friday that the administration was monitoring prices, but he has been reluctant to endorse more aggressive steps.

“We don't want to be totally reactive so that when the price goes up, everybody panics, and when it goes back down, everybody goes back to sleep,” he said.

A few days earlier, Mr. Chu said the administration was watching the situation closely, but it expected oil production that had been lost in Libya would be made up by production elsewhere.

Administration officials continue to emphasize the critical need for long-term steps to reduce oil use, like improving the fuel economy of cars and promoting battery-powered vehicles.

But recently, five Senate Democrats have called for opening the reserve, which is stored in four salt domes in Texas and Louisiana. And on Feb. 24, three House Democrats from New England, where oil is used to heat homes, wrote to Mr. Obama saying that while exporters could increase production, “they also profit from oil price spikes and therefore have little incentive to quickly respond with the increased supply needed to calm markets.”

In recent days, prices for the American benchmark crude, West Texas Intermediate, have exceeded $100 a barrel. Oil for April delivery settled at $104.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday.

The average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline was $3.50 on Sunday, AAA reported, up from $3.12 a month earlier. Gasoline prices routinely rise as the weather turns warmer and people drive more, leading some experts to predict gasoline at $4 a gallon this summer.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was established in response to the Arab oil embargo of 1973-4. It was tapped most recently in September 2008 in response to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. At that time, the Energy Department arranged “exchanges” with oil companies whose normal supplies had been interrupted; the oil companies later made restitution in oil. The last time the government sold oil from the reserve to address supply interruptions was in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina.

Sales were also made in January 1991 to calm global markets as the United States invaded Kuwait, which had been occupied the previous year by Iraq.

The government suspended oil purchases when prices were approaching a peak in 2008, before the recession began. In that case, members of Congress argued that acquisitions for the reserve were contributing to higher prices, harming consumers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/energy-environment/07oil.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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From Google News

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Texas legislature introduces pro-undocumented worker law

March 7, 2011 · By HUMA KHAN

Associated Press

Undocumented nannies, housekeepers or lawn caretakers in the state of Texas can perhaps breathe easier about deportation. While new legislation in the Texas House of Representatives would make it a state crime to hire undocumented workers, it excludes those employed in single-family households — in other words, them.

The bill, introduced by state GOP Rep. Debbie Riddle, is the first of its kind in the country. It's unique in that while it appeases those who want more stringent immigration laws, it doesn't subject Texas households to the rule that would mainly apply to businesses and large employers.

Critics of the bill say it's hypocritical. Supporters charge it's needed in a state where the Hispanic population continues to climb swiftly.

Though it remains stuck in political limbo, the bill reflects a wider push toward implementing tougher anti-immigration laws at the state level. More than 100 immigration-related bills are pending in the Texas legislature alone, including those that would give state and local police officers the authority to enforce federal immigration laws, make English the official language and prevent undocumented students from getting in-state tuition and scholarships.

States across the country, including Georgia and Oklahoma, where the legislatures debated immigration bills this week, have been mulling controversial Arizona-style immigration laws.Thirty-seven states are considering tougher immigration bills, with multiple bills pending in some states.

“The mere fact that Arizona law has sprung up in over 24 other states within a few months of passage, I believe, is historic,” said William Gheen, president and spokesman of Americans for Legal Immigration, a group that supports stricter immigration laws.

“We are going to pass more immigration enforcement legislation in the states in 2011 than any year prior. And what we don't get done in 2011 we will get done in 2012,” he vowed.

States enacted a record number of bills and resolutions on immigration issues during the 2010 sessions, and every state that met in regular session in 2010 considered laws related to immigrants, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures report. Forty-six state legislatures and the District of Columbia passed 208 laws and adopted 138 resolutions for a total of 346.

The momentum, in part, is being driven by the ascent of Republicans in state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. Many GOP leaders, especially in Southern and Midwestern states, made immigration a flagship issue of their campaigns.

Critics of tougher laws say these newly minted legislators are unfairly targeting immigrants when they should instead be focused on the economy, the No. 1 priority for most Americans.

“I think that you have extremists who have taken over statehouses and governors' officers across the country,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of National Immigration Forum. “Rather than fixing the economy and reducing budget deficits, they have chosen to scapegoat immigrants. It's the classic bait and switch, and this time, the immigrant community is the bait.”

Immigration Heats Up at State Level

Republicans say they are taking on this issue because of inaction on the federal government's part.

“States are responding to their citizens, and it's resulting in unnecessary expenditure; it's resulting in some social conflict,” said Texas state Rep. Aaron Pena, who represents a district that's 90 percent Hispanic. “It's very frustrating that we have to be wasting our energy on this when it's not our job.”

Efforts to enact a comprehensive immigration reform package failed in the previous Congress, and with the economy and jobs at the forefront, this Congress is unlikely to take up the issue.

A Pew Research Center priorities survey in January found that dealing with illegal immigration is a middle-tier public concern. About half, 46 percent of Americans, said it was a top policy priority, placing it far behind the economy, jobs and a number of other issues.

In a joint press conference with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, President Obama said Thursday that he remained “deeply committed to fixing our broken immigration system,” and that he was “eager” to work with Republicans and Democrats “to get this reform done.” But the president did not provide a timeline.

The federal government is embroiled in a bitter legal battle with the state of Arizona over its contentious law. But nonpartisan polls show that a majority of Americans support it. Roughly six in 10 Americans, or 61 percent, approve of the law, according to the latest national survey conducted by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in early February.

Of those polled, 42 percent said the priority should be to tighten border security and more strictly enforce immigration laws, but at the same time also create a way for undocumented residents to become citizens if they meet certain conditions.

While economy may be at the top of Americans' minds, that's not stopping states from moving ahead with vigorous immigration laws.

The Utah House passed a bill that would require law enforcement to detain anyone for a misdemeanor or felony if he or she cannot prove citizenship or legal status.

In Alabama, legislators are set to vote on a bill that would make undocumented residents guilty of trespassing, a crime punishable by up to a year in prison.

South Carolina is considering an Arizona-style measure that would give law enforcement the authority to check people's immigration status.

Nebraska, Kansas and North Carolina are looking into similar bills.

http://hispanicohio.northcoastnow.com/2011/03/07/texas-legislature-introduces-pro-undocumented-worker-law/

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It took 2 decades for Mo. woman to find her sister is dead. Now she wants killer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It took two decades for Stephanie Clack to find out that her big sister who disappeared in 1987 is dead. Now she wants to know who killed her.

"This just eats at me, you know," Clack said. "It's been a year in October since we found her, and DNA came back to prove it's her. ... and nobody wants to get up and investigate this."

The body of Clack's sister, Paula Beverly Davis, was found on an Interstate U.S. 70 entrance ramp on Aug. 10, 1987, in Montgomery County, Ohio, about two days after Clack last saw her at the family's home outside Kansas City. Investigators couldn't identify the body then, but determined the 21-year-old woman had been strangled.

The case remained a Jane Doe homicide investigation in Ohio until last year.

That was when Clack learned about NamUS, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a Department of Justice repository that tracks missing people and unidentified remains. Clack entered some of Davis' identifying characteristics, and eventually got a match on the remains in Ohio. DNA tests then proved the remains there were Davis'.

Last summer, the family interred the remains at a cemetery near their home outside Kansas City.

Since then, Clack has been calling detectives in Ohio and Jackson County, Mo., and has been frustrated by what she considers a lack of enthusiasm for the case.

"We've been dealing with this for more than a year," Clack said. "I feel they don't want to mess with it because it's an old case."

Vicki Kelly, executive director of the Tommy Foundation, a nonprofit that provides support to families of missing children, said victims' families face several challenges.

"The nightmare doesn't end just because an ID has been made," Kelly said.

Victims' families face stark odds, however. In the U.S., there are about 200,000 homicide cold cases, and about 6,000 murders go unsolved each year, said Mike Huff, co-founder of the International Association of Cold Case Investigators.

"It's a universally frustrating situation," Huff said.

Huff advises families to have realistic expectations about the chances of solving a cold case, and said it's important to establish good relationships with investigators.

"It's real easy to get off on a dysfunctional relationship that gets in the way of progress," Huff said.

Authorities in Ohio and Missouri said they have been working on the Davis case, but that it has been hampered by a lack of witnesses and evidence.

"Looking for the person who was responsible for this is the highest priority," said Montgomery County, Ohio, Sgt. Mike Lang. "Because for 20 plus years Paula was Jane Doe to us. ... We would love to know who was responsible for this horrible act."

He said his department has logged hundreds of hours on the case, but so far, nothing has moved the case forward.

"There is no hot lead," he said. "Cold cases can be solved, but we're talking ... a lack of direct physical evidence and a long passage of time."

In Missouri, where Davis lived and was last seen, Jackson County Sheriff's Capt. Mike Rogers said he has referred the case to the FBI, but had not heard whether they were investigating.

"We want to do everything we can to solve this," Rogers said.

The FBI said it could not comment on whether Davis's death was under federal investigation.

Clack, 37, said she will continue to hope for — and seek — assurance that someone is working to find her sister's killer.

"All we want is justice," she said.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/97e8744fadda439a8e11bfc18fc2a8d8/MO--Sister_Found-Investigation/

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