The new law requires businesses to verify employees’ work status using E-verify, a South Carolina driver’s license, or a driver’s license from one of 26 approved states. The system went into effect in July for businesses that have more than 100 employees and in this coming July will be in place with businesses that have fewer than 100 employees.

(Atlanta) Mexican national Miguel Rugerio pleaded guilty to sex trafficking charges today in federal court in Atlanta.

Rugerio, 28, was charged with conspiring to illegally transport young women from Mexico to the U.S. for purposes of prostitution.

Then there's this earlier article from a different source.

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. -- It's something we're beginning to hear a lot more of: human sex trafficking of illegal immigrants. And, many times, the traffickers are illegal themselves.

In the latest case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and FBI agents raided homes in three different Gwinnett County apartment complexes.

According to a federal criminal complaint, a confidential source contacted the FBI "about a group of Hispanic pimps operating in and around Atlanta". The pimps are alleged to use drivers to transport girls to various locations for prostitution. One of the drivers was actually the informant in this particular case; that driver disclosed the information upon learning one of the prostitutes was a relative.

At the Lakeview Estates apartments in Norcross, one of the ringleaders of the trafficking ring, Miguel Angel Rugerio, was arrested. Three young girls who had been forced into prostitution were removed from the home.

Anyway:

Dear Mexican Drug Cartels,

We have all the drug dealers we need. If anything, some are probably out of work because of the economy. So, stop putting our criminals out of work by replacing them with your criminals.

Thank you. (you jerks)

Lawrenceville

According to Gwinnett County investigators, a Hispanic grocery store east Grogan Street near downtown Lawrenceville was just a cover for a drug operation.

Inside the Carniceria y Fruteria el Parral, police found what essentially amounts to a drug shop.

On Friday, Gwinnett County police raided the store and two homes simultaneously, arresting eight people and confiscating six guns, 17 pounds of cocaine, three pounds of meth, two and a half pounds of marijuana and $130,000 cash.

Authorities said Thursday the house was a meth lab -- one of the largest federal agents have ever seen -- used by the violent Mexican drug cartel La Familia.

"I'm shocked because this neighborhood is full of kids," said Brooke Payne, 30, who lives next door with her husband and son. "My son is 6, he runs around, across this yard to the kids who live over in the next house...It's just unreal."

Wednesday, she watched as authorities seized 174 pounds of crystal methamphetamine from the house on La Maison Drive and took La Familia members out in handcuffs.

It was part of a nationwide sweep officials called the largest single strike at Mexican drug operations in the U.S. In all, 303 people were arrested in 38 cities from Boston to Seattle.

In metro Atlanta, authorities arrested 31 people  in Gwinnett County, three in Cobb and one in Clayton while recovering a total of 188 pounds of crystal meth, 17 kilos of cocaine, 13 guns and $50,000.

Honestly, I'm surprised there wasn't a bunch of pot seized along with everything else.

HOUSTON — A landscape business owner pleaded guilty Monday to harboring an illegal immigrant convicted of fatally shooting a Houston police officer in 2006.

Robert Lane Camp's plea came a day before he was set to go to trial on the harboring charge. He also faced a charge of encouraging Juan Leonardo Quintero-Perez, the convicted killer of Officer Rodney Johnson, to unlawfully enter and live in the United States.

Quintero-Perez was working for Camp, 47, and driving one of his company's trucks when Johnson pulled him over during a routine traffic stop in September 2006.

After Quintero-Perez couldn't provide a driver's license, Johnson arrested him.

Police said Johnson, 40, was shot four times in the head after Quintero-Perez pulled a gun from his waistband as he sat handcuffed in the back of the officer's patrol car. Johnson apparently missed the gun when he patted down Quintero-Perez, authorities said.

Quintero-Perez was convicted of capital murder and sentenced in 2008 to life in prison for Johnson's slaying.

Camp faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced Feb. 1.

But in a plea agreement in the case, prosecutors say they will recommend a sentence of three months' imprisonment, three months' home confinement and five years' probation. WHAT??? Three months in jail and 3 months home confinement and 5 years probation? Are you shittin' me?

Quintero-Perez was charged with the state felony offense of indecency with a child in 1998, according to the criminal complaint in Camp's case.

Authorities say Camp, who owned a landscaping business in the Houston suburb of Deer Park, posted his $10,000 bond and hired a defense attorney for him.

Quintero-Perez was deported in 1999 after being convicted. But later that year, he returned to the country illegally, with Camp accused of buying him a plane ticket from Phoenix to Houston.

Authorities say Camp harbored Quintero-Perez by renting him a home and employing him without asking for any citizenship or work authorization documents.

After Johnson's shooting, Camp told police at first that Quintero-Perez was an employee but later denied that.

I'm sorry, Officer Johnson, for people like this. People that don't give a damn if it's a gate-crashing, child abusing piece of puke, as long as they can get cheap labor.

She later plotted with (co-defendant) Achou, the indictment alleges, to issue licenses to people who didn't qualify, charging them $2,000 per license, court authorities said.

The indictment later alleges co-defendants Nambaladja Souleymane Fofana and Mohamed Cellou Bamba helped Achou find customers  and in return receive a share of the money.

Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz says street level drug dealers are responsible for most recent violence there.

Turf battles between rival drug cartels, and between authorities and cartels, have made Juarez one of the world's most dangerous cities. There were 305 drug-related killings in August, making it the deadliest month yet, according to the mayor's office.

Most of the recent violence has been committed by young street-level drug dealers who work for the Sinaloa or Juarez cartels, Reyes Ferriz said.

Adding deportees from the United States, some with criminal records, worsens the situation, the mayor said.

In the past 45 days, 10 percent of those killed in Juarez had been deported from the United States in the past two years, Reyes Ferriz said.

"We don't have the statistics to know if they were criminals from the United States or not," he told CNN's Rick Sanchez this week. "We know they were deported from the U.S. Most of them come from U.S. jails. They end up in the city of Juarez, and that's a problem generated for us, but also for the United States."

The 2009 death toll in Juarez was 1,421 as of Monday, the mayor's office said, on pace to beat last year's 1,600 killings.

According to a report released last week by a Mexican watchdog group, Juarez, population 1.5 million, was the homicide capital of the world. It had an estimated rate of 130 killings per 100,000 people.

A statement issued by his office said that "the repatriation of ex-convicts should be orderly and in full agreement with the Mexican government, in order to avoid a rise in crime, mainly in the border states."

"Border cities like Tijuana and Mexicali have enough problems as it with migration, so they can't suffer unilateral repatriations of people who have served a sentence in the United States," the statement said.

Guillermo Diaz Orozco, the leader of the business association of downtown Tijuana, voiced similar worries.

"The three levels of government have to plan what we are going to do with all these criminals they are going to 'export,'" Diaz Orozco said. "Many of them are going to be deported to Mexico, just because they declare themselves to be Mexicans." Who would lie about that? It'd be like claiming to be French. (tee-hee)