Category: Uncategorized

Is the following report connecting Operation Jump Start with the global war on terrorism? 15 Arkansas Guard will be scheduled for “duration” duty up to two years.–gm

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Ashley County Ledger
July 6, 2006
Nine Crossett Guard Members to Help Patrol Border

CAMP JOSEPH T. ROBINSON, Ark.–The 39th Brigade Combat Team of the Arkansas Army National Guard has accepted the initial call to provide approximately 200 soldiers to support Operation Jump Start on the nation’s southwest border. Included in the list are nine members of the National Guard unit based in Crossett.

Operation Jump Start is a support mission to the Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Protection Service (CBP). Particular support activities will include: surveillance and reconnaissance, transportation (both air and ground), engineering and logistics.

Understanding the 39th has answered several calls since the global war on terror began, the guard was extremely compassionate in the selection of individuals to build the task force. Evaluating individual conflicts on a case by case basis led to the development of a task force of soldiers from units based in over 20 different communities in Arkansas. In total the 39th Brigade has units located in 42 communities in the southern two-thirds of the state.

The decision to draw the troops from the 39th Brigade was mainly derived from the fact that it was best suited for the mission. The troops are anticipated to be on the ground at the New Mexico border by mid July for a six month rotation.

“We will be activating specific units of the 39th Brigade Combat Team in order to select the talent needed for the mission,” said Colonel Don Cronkhite director of military support for the Arkansas National Guard. He added that a small group of airmen from the Air National Guard will be tapped for their specific skills as well.

The Arkansas soldiers and airmen will be broken into two groups, the first will be part of a six month deployment to the border area in New Mexico and Texas. The second group of only about 15 individuals will be part of a “duration force” that will stay in New Mexico for up to two years. The duration force personnel are more aligned with command and control positions for the overall force such as career fields like personnel, medical and finance.

By the end of July, the Arkansas Guard will have 1700 troops mobilized for overseas missions in support of the global war on terror, with up to 300 anticipated stateside in support of Operation Jump Start on our nation’s southwest border.

The chief of the National Guard, Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, announced that the National Guard currently has 2,500 Army and Air Guard members in the four southwest border states supporting Operation Jump Start.

General Blum said, “The National Guard Bureau is committed to this mission and appreciates the strong support of the states’ leaders in allowing the Guard to accomplish the 2,500 goal. Progress to date is real and the Guard’s efforts are making a positive difference in this national effort.”

Over 800 soldiers and airmen with the Arkansas National Guard are currently mobilized in the global war on terrorism. These, however, are the first mobilizations from the state for Operation Jump Start.

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Texarkana Gazette

De Queen Guard unit heading for the border

Thursday, July 6, 2006 9:49 AM CDT

27 soldiers will be gone six months

By JIM WILLIAMSON
Texarkana Gazette

DE QUEEN, Ark.—About 27 soldiers from Charlie Company of the Arkansas Army National Guard will deploy to the Mexico-New Mexico border as part of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Operation Jump Start.

The unit is stationed in De Queen.

About 200 soldiers from 24 Arkansas communities will deploy to New Mexico. Mena’s unit will supply the most soldiers with 37, and De Queen will send the second most.

The soldiers will report this weekend for processing in De Queen and will arrive in New Mexico July 10-15 to support Customs and Border Protection with surveillance and reconnaissance.

The De Queen soldiers will be stationed in New Mexico for six months; they should return in mid-January.

The soldiers will be a part of 6,000 National Guardsmen deployed to the southern border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas as part of Jump Start.

The Customs and Border Protection’s mission is to secure borders and the Border Patrol’s security strategy.

Guardsmen will have no direct law-enforcement role in arresting or securing anyone making illegal border crossings. They will provide surveillance and logistical support, freeing Border Patrol agents to concentrate on border security.

Guard personnel will also operate detection systems, provide mobile communications and assist border-related intelligence analysis.

They will build and install border security systems and provide transportation and training.

Guard not yet sure they’ll need all 2,300 authorized by Texas Gov, says spokesperson–gm

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Article Launched: 07/06/2006 12:00:00 AM MDT

About 500 troops help in El Paso border area
By Brandi Grissom / Austin Bureau

AUSTIN — Nearly 1,000 National Guard troops are helping out on the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and New Mexico, and about half of those are in the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, officials said Wednesday. “We have no complaints in the El Paso sector,” said Doug Mosier, spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol El Paso sector.

National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Milord said the agency is meeting the goal set by Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum last month to have 2,500 troops in place in all four border states by July 1. Milord could not say, however, how many of those troops were still in training and how many were stationed in border communities.

President Bush in May called for the deployment of up to 6,000 National Guard troops by August. The mission is expected to last up to two years.

The aim of Operation Jump Start is to free up more Border Patrol agents to work in the field, interdicting illegal activity, while more agents are trained, officials have said.

About 500 troops are already at work in the El Paso Border Patrol sector, which includes El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Texas and all of New Mexico.

Mosier could not say how many of the 1,650 Border Patrol agents in the El Paso sector are now patrolling instead of monitoring surveillance cameras or repairing vehicles.

New Mexico National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Kimberly Lalley said 447 National Guard troops are at work in that state. Another 230 troops from West Virginia and Georgia are in training for border work there.

And officials in New Jersey, Arkansas and Minnesota have pledged to send about 1,000 more National Guard troops to New Mexico, Lalley said.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson authorized using 500 troops in that state, but Lalley said officials expect to surpass that number.

“We’re not going to turn people down if Border Patrol can use them,” she said.

About 30 Texas National Guard troops are training in El Paso, Mosier said, and they will start to work soon. He said more Texas troops are expected this summer.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has said 500 troops would be on the Texas border by July 1 and 1,500 by Aug. 1.

Texas National Guard spokeswoman Chief Master Sgt. Gonda Moncada said 500 troops are working in Texas border communities. Another 250 are in training for the mission. She said enough troops have volunteered to meet Perry’s goal to have 1,500 troops deployed by Aug. 1.

Perry has authorized the deployment of up to 2,300 troops in Texas, but Moncada said state, National Guard and Border Patrol officials would reassess how many troops are needed next month.

“We don’t know at this point yet as to whether we will send” that many, she said.

The first polling place we went to after lunch was in the downtown area. We learned that there were problems around the block at Miguel F. Martinez at a special election station for voters who were not voting in their home precinct. Sure enough we came upon a line that stretched out for several blocks. A man near the front of the line told us that he’d been waiting for 5 hours. There was no shade from the oppressive midday sun.

We learned from an IFE observer that there were only 250 ballots left. He counted down to the middle of the block and informed those remaining that they would not be able to vote. He gave them the locations of other special polling places. We learned from him that this is not new. In 2000 there was a similar problem in polling places such as this one where voters wouldn’t be likely to vote for the “correct” candidate. They are simply shortchanged ballots. With five hours remaining, the polling place was out of business.

We decided to go to one of the other locations where out-of-towners can vote that the IFE observer had suggested to the people he turned away. At the Agua Caliente Tower at Fundadores Blvd. the line of people circled the entire park. A Telemondo news crew was interviewing people and we were told that this location had also run out of ballots. No new voters were being permitted to join the line, so those coming from the previous location would be out of luck here too. It was 3:00 PM – three hours remaining for election day.

People in the line noticed the badges Barbara and I were wearing and were eager to tell us how long they had been waiting in the hot sun. A woman holding a baby, standing about midway in the line looked at her watch and held out her hand with all five fingers extended. I looked around for anyone offering water to the people in the line – there was no one. Then a woman came up to me obviously distraught and hoping I could help. Oscar translated that she’d been told at her local polling place that her name wasn’t on the list. So she’s been directed to go to this special voting place. She’s waited for six hours to vote, only to be told when she got to the end of the line that she couldn’t vote here because her voter card showed that she could vote in her local place.

Gabriella showed me her voting card. The photo was clearly her, the address was Tijuana. The right to have a voice in her government was so important to this poor woman that she’d given up her day off to stand in the hot sun for six hours to cast her vote, and for her persistence she was rewarded with rejection.

Id’ read that the same company that had been used to scrub Florida’s voting lists in 2000 had been used to do the same in Mexico. Perhaps Gabriella was one of those names removed from Tijuana’s voter roll. The long lines and shortage of ballots reminded me of Ohio. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement – is this how America spreads democracy? I’d been so impressed with the transparency of the Mexican election system, but somehow corruption prevailed.

After observing the vote tally at the polling station where Silvia had been working we went back to their home to watch the results. We’d been hearing rumors all afternoon that Obrador was ahead by a huge margin. The television showed something else. First, Mr. Ugalde, president of IFE explained in an almost monotone voice that the election was too close to call. Then President Vincente Fox appeared, again repeating that the election was too close to call. The four anchor persons on the channel seemed confused and troubled. Things were not going as planned. Suddenly Lopez Obrador was making an announcement. It seemed that he was about to concede. Oscar was translating for us as he said that he would respect the outcome of the vote, even if he lost by one vote. BUT he had not lost. In fact he had over 500,000 more votes than Calderon. He was declaring victory!

Do You Know Where You’re Going To?, by JeeniCriscenzo, Wed Jul 05, 2006 at 09:38:00 AM PDT, Daily Kos

Jackson and a group of black leaders are heading a boycott against BP, and this time racial disparity is only part of the overall complaint. “We are going to engage in direct action against BP to change their behavior,” Jackson was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “They need to stop energy exploitation, stop manipulating prices and undercutting the American people.”

His comments came during a march in front of BP’s Texas City Refinery, where 15 workers were killed and more than 170 were injured in an explosion last year. Jackson told 100 other marchers that price gouging, discriminatory hiring practices and unsafe working conditions were all characteristics of the British oil giant.

Apart from calling for safer working conditions and more diversity, the march was also part of Jackson lobbying of the government to put a cap on the price of gas. “We’re going to be marching in 50 cities until we drive the price of gas down,” he said. Forbes, Faces In The News, Jesse Jackson Leads Boycott Against BP, Parmy Olson, 07.05.06, 12:13 PM ET, dateline LONDON!

“Never have I experienced a project that has been on such a fast track,” says a South Texas attorney explaining why a company has started work on a detention center before a contract has been signed. In this example, we find one more example of the neo-con model driving down democratic process in the name of homeland security. The timetable serves as a stand-alone excuse.–gm

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Detention site for migrants moving ahead

Web Posted: 07/06/2006 12:00 AM CDT

Jeorge Zarazua
Express-News Staff Writer

RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County officials haven’t formally decided who will get to build the state’s largest immigration detention facility — but that hasn’t stopped a Houston company from beginning work on the massive project.
Hale-Mills Construction has had crews at the site of the planned $50 million jail for the past two weeks, leveling land and pouring concrete for the foundation.

The company began working on the 2,000-bed facility after county officials signed an agreement June 19 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house detainees.

Without a county decision on how to pay for it or, more importantly, who would be hired to build it, Hale-Mills began clearing a cotton field in Raymondville the next day.

The company has been working on the project every day since, Sheriff Larry G. Spence said.

Executives at Hale-Mills didn’t return phone calls seeking comment this week and last week. A contract to hire the company has been drafted and will be presented to a public facilities corporation created by the county when it holds its first meeting today.

Ramon Vela, a Weslaco attorney representing the county in the venture, said that because of deadlines established in the agreement, the company knew work needed to begin immediately.

“That’s when Hale-Mills said, ‘We got to get started now,’ and that’s when they decided to move dirt,” Vela said.

He said the county was given 30 days from the time the agreement was signed to have 500 beds available for federal authorities. He said the remaining 1,500 beds are to be completed 60 days after that.

“Never have I experienced a project that has been on such a fast track,” Vela said.

The architecture, designed for speed of construction, is the first of its kind for ICE. The project will include 10 pod-like domes, each housing 200 detainees. The domes are to be made of steel beams covered with a tough synthetic-type fabric, said Sheriff Spence.

It is being built to help end the “catch and release” policy for non-Mexican undocumented immigrants, said Nina Pruneda, a San Antonio spokeswoman for ICE.

Unlike immigrants from Mexico who are routinely sent back across the border, immigrants from other countries are often released with a notice to appear before a U.S. immigration judge. More than 80 percent fail to do so.

President Bush, in a televised address May 15 on immigration reform, called the practice unacceptable and vowed to end it. He said more detention centers would be built to house such immigrants until their court hearings.

In Raymondville, the jail pod complex will also have a permanent building with four immigration courtrooms and an infirmary, Vela said. It is being built near a cluster of existing county and state jails and a privately-run federal detention center.

County officials are working out other details, such as how the county will pay for the facility’s construction and if Hale-Mills will build it, Vela said.

County Judge Simon Salinas said the company is working at its own risk and has no guarantees it will be chosen to finish the job.

The county formed the public facilities corporation to issue $50 million in lease revenue bonds to investors to fund construction.

Although no bonds have been issued and the county hasn’t identified the corporation’s governing board, that board is set to meet today to pick officers, consider hiring Vela as its lawyer and consider approving a contract with Hale-Mills.

It will also consider hiring a private jail company to operate the facility after it is completed.

“The project is going to happen,” Vela said.