(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)

Police say a girl was lured to a storage shed at an apartment complex where she was sexually assaulted.

"This is a deeply disturbing case that has gripped our community," said Maricopa County attorney Andrew Thomas.

According to Phoenix police, the girl was lured to a storage shed at an apartment complex on July 16. The four boys, who had offered the girl chewing gum, allegedly restrained and sexually assaulted her. At a news conference about the case Wednesday, police did not release any information on the girl's condition, but officers called the case one of the worst they have investigated in many years.

The victim and the boys charged are all from refugee families that have come to the United States from the war-torn West African nation of Liberia, police said.

Detectives said the girl was placed in the custody of Phoenix child protective services after the attack because of her parents' attitude toward her.

"The parents felt that they had been shamed or embarrassed by their child," Phoenix police Sgt. Andy Hill said.

CNN affiliate KTVK said it interviewed the girl's 23-year-old sister, who said she was baby-sitting the girl at the time of the alleged attack.

The sister, who was not identified by name by the station, expressed mixed feelings about her sister's attack. "I came to her and said it's not good for you to be following guys because you are still little," the sister told KTVK. She also said that she wanted the suspects to be released from jail because "we are the same people."

"When she comes back I'm going to tell her don't ever do that again because all of us, we are the same family, we are from the same place. Now she is just bringing confusion among us. Now the other people, they don't want to see her," the sister told KTVK.

Tony Weedor, a Liberian who fled civil war with his family and now lives in the Denver, Colorado, area, told CNN that cultural aspects are deep in the case. In Liberia rape was not against the law until 2006, he said.

"The family [believes they] have been shamed by her, not a crime, but the name of the family has been degraded and news will get back to Liberia. And they're more concerned about that than the crime," said Weedor, who is co-founder of the CenterPoint International Foundation, which aids Liberian refugees in the United States and provides aid for those still in Liberia.

Look at how they spin the belief that they should be attuned to American culture.

As a part of the refugee orientation program, he said, his group touches upon the laws in the United States, but the most immediate goal for refugees and organizations that help them is finding employment and places to live. Yeah, that's really putting their priorities in the right place.

The Department of Homeland Security has opened the door to the possibility that immigrants who have been victims of domestic violence could qualify for asylum.

The move, a change from the Bush administration, came to light when the government asked that the case of a Mexican woman who claims she was severely beaten by her common-law husband be sent back to an immigration court for further review.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said Wednesday the agency "continues to view domestic violence as a possible basis for asylum in the United States."

The woman's bid for asylum was turned down by an immigration judge in San Francisco a few years ago, and she appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Arlington, Va. The department urged that the case get further review, saying that in some cases, but not all, foreign domestic violence victims could be granted asylum.

Chandler said asylum claims based on domestic violence claims are "highly complex, and we are interested in developing regulations that will address these cases."

"State sovereignty must be a cornerstone of international order," said Mr Obama.

"Just as all states should have the right to choose their leaders, states must have the right to borders that are secure, and to their own foreign policies.

"Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy. That is why this principle must apply to all nations - including Georgia and Ukraine."

HOW in the hell can a pro-amnesty appeaser, who supports ceding the borders, have the nerve to say that he supports secure borders and says that ceding that right will lead to anarchy? For those of you that don't have a clue, the fence is a good step but only if we have boots on the ground to enforce and support it. Neither he nor any other pro-amnesty appeaser has said jack about the FACT that about 40% or more of our illegals are visa overstays. When a government rewards those that have shown a contempt for our borders, our laws, and this nation then that government has ceded its sovereignty. And I defy anyone to show that the ONE TIME amnesty of 1986 solved anything. Yet, the appeasers want to repeat that mistake. We are NOT a sovereign nation as long as we reward the millions of invaders that ignore our borders.

The drunken driver responsible for a collision that killed Phoenix police Officer Shane Figueroa received a 16-year sentence Friday.

It's the maximum sentence for manslaughter.

Vivas-Diaz, who lived with his daughter in a neighborhood near South Mountain Park, was arrested twice before in the Valley on DUI-related charges but never convicted. He was deported to Mexico, and officials said he returned to live illegally in the U.S.

When police arrested him, he presented fraudulent identifications and refused to admit his real name, according to investigators. He also stopped to urinate on the side of the road before officers arrived, never rushing to help Figueroa.

Vivas-Diaz wept and his voice quaked as he addressed the court, asking for leniency in his sentencing for the sake of his three adult children.

The gunman who fatally shot a Houston police officer in the back before being gunned down by another officer during an undercover sting late Tuesday is believed to have been an illegal immigrant from Mexico, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Robert Rutt, agent in charge of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement office of criminal investigations in Houston, confirmed that Houston police had asked for assistance in determining the immigration status of the gunman shot to death in a drug store parking lot after officer Henry Canales, 42, was fatally wounded.

Preliminary autopsy results show Canales was shot in the back, prosecutors said today.

“Based purely on name and date of birth checks we ran, we find no records of him in our databases, and him being born in Mexico it appears he was here illegally,” Rutt said. “However, until we run his fingerprints through our system we cannot make a final determination.”

Rutt said a fingerprint check on three companions of the gunman — arrested shortly after Canales was slain — showed they are in the country illegally.

The Harris County District Attorney’s office identified the dead gunman as Roberto Pedroza-Carrillo, 37.

The district attorney’s office identified the two adults as Andres Nava-Maldonado, 41, and Xiomara Mendez-Rosales, 36. Both have been charged with capital murder and remain in the Harris County jail.

A magistrate judge denied bond to Nava-Maldonado and immigration officials placed a hold on him as well. His first district court appearance was set for Friday morning.