The often brutal mistreatment suffered by Central American migrants passing through Mexico on their way to the United States is receiving increased attention in that country following the discovery last week of the bodies of 72 migrants who had been gunned down. The victims were reportedly murdered by one of the criminal gangs involved in the trafficking of both drugs and human beings. Read more...

A Jesuit priest who has long denounced the Mexican government for failing to protect Central American migrants from abuses on their way northward has rejected official statements of outrage at the massacre of 72 migrants in the northern border state of Tamaulipas. Read more...

Near the end of her beautifully written new book, Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona's Immigration War Zone, Terry Greene Sterling makes a case for the Dream Act. That is the colloquial name of the legislative proposal that would provide legal status to many young people who were brought illegally to the U.S. by their parents and have shown a commitment to education. Read more...

The call came from a college student. He wanted to know if we at CIS were aware of any studies about women who have been abandoned by husbands who have emigrated to the United States.

I encountered such women when I traveled in Mexico as a reporter. They were often struggling, not only to raise their children, but to come to grips with the crushing reality of abandonment.

There doesn't seem to be a great deal of journalistic work or academic study of the problem. But a 2006 Spanish-language article from the Mexican state of Veracruz, takes account of it quite powerfully. Read more...

There's good news from John Ladd, the central figure in the "Gaming the Border" video we posted this week. Illegal traffic through his ranch on the Arizona-Mexico border is way down, Ladd said today by telephone. "Come Sunday, it'll be two weeks since I saw any groups on the ranch," he said. "It has been dramatically slow."

A range of possible explanations for the slowdown seems plausible. Read more...

Mexican President Felipe Calderon's declaration last week that it is "fundamental" to discuss the pros and cons of legalizing drugs has sparked a spirited debate in Mexico. But Calderon has since made it clear that he is not calling for legalization, and yesterday he pointed to the United States as a key factor in the discussion. Read more...

A response from Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief John Morton to a young caller from Tustin, Calif., on the Sunday edition of C-SPAN's Washington Journal encapsulated the difficulty of his job, and the conflicts that bedevil federal enforcement. Read more...

The Spanish language press coverage of Arizona's controversial SB 1070 has been remarkable for the narrowness of its perspective. The pervasive message is this: Those who oppose it are noble defenders of human rights, while those who support it are anti-immigrant racists. This attitude is reflected in public opinion in Mexico where, as political columnist Sergio Sarmiento writes, "Many Mexicans have begun to shred their garments because of the law." Read more...

A call into C-Span's Washington Journal today from a former construction worker encapsulated much of the frustration and anger percolating around the immigration debate. The caller told his story to Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose response illustrated his belief that the blame lies not with illegal immigrants, but with the employers who exploit them by paying poor wages. Here are parts of the comments of both men: Read more...

The effects of immigration on African-Americans were raised several times during this morning's Washington Journal program on C-Span. Here are some of the the comments. Note the repeated expressions of disappointment with politicians. Read more...

A 1994 story in the Arizona Republic helps explain the frustration with federal immigration authorities that drove passage of Arizona's controversial new law against illegal immigration. The story also includes a statement from a federal official that foreshadows the Justice Department's current insistence that agents are so busy pursuing criminal illegal immigrants that they must not be diverted by reports of people who are merely illegal immigrants. Read more...

William Finnegan is an accomplished journalist for the New Yorker. In the past year he has written penetratingly about Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and about a crime syndicate in the Mexican state of Michoacan. But his essay in the current New Yorker, under the headline "Borderlines," accomplishes little to inform public concerns about illegal immigration, especially in Arizona. Read more...

Like Mexican government officials, Mexican journalists do not hesitate to express anger and demand corrective action when they believe their countrymen have been abused by the Border Patrol. But for years they have paid scant attention to the abuses suffered on a much greater scale by the Central Americans who pass through their country on their way to the U.S. border. Read more...

The bloody confrontation Thursday between rival Mexican smuggling gangs just south of the Arizona border is a jolt to the entire region. It has particular resonance for people like U.S. Rep Raul Grijalva of Arizona, whose father emigrated from the area of the shootout, which left 21 dead. Read more...

Related Content: Arizona Law SB 1070 Topic Page

When millions of Americans signed on to Yahoo this morning, they had a chance to see a pair of starkly contrasting Associated Press stories on immigration. Read more...

Telemundo, a Spanish-language TV network, had a big day on Sunday. Not only did it introduce a new Sunday public-affairs program with a spirited discussion of immigration, but the program's anchor was also a participant in the roundtable discussion of NBC's Meet the Press. Both Telemundo and NBC are owned by General Electric. Read more...

The "Judy Miller problem" heaved its lazy, destructive head in Saturday's New York Times.

This time it won't set the predicate for an invasion of a Middle Eastern country. This time it lends legitimacy to a reckless campaign to smear groups that oppose illegal immigration. Read more...

I'm a fan of Terry Gross, host of the NPR interview program "Fresh Air," normally one of the most interesting and thought-provoking shows on the air. That is why I felt sick about her interview yesterday with Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. As I told two journalist friends, I haven't come so close to losing my cookies since I got food poisoning in 2005. Read more...

Tom Barry is the director of the TransBorder Project at the liberal Center for International Policy in Washington. He works from New Mexico, where for more than 30 years he has done valuable research and writing on public policy issues. I first began learning from his work in the late 1970s, when I was working on a book about a bitter land dispute between the Navajos and Hopis in northeastern Arizona. Read more...

Charles H. Kuck (pronounced "cook"), the immediate past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, clearly knows a lot about immigration law. But if the comments he made recently on his radio program, Immigration Hour, are any indication, he has a few gaps in his knowledge of immigration lobbying in Washington. Here are some excerpts: Read more...

Media Matters, the liberal watchdog group, sent a video camera to yesterday's CIS press conference, where we introduced our new report: "Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and Duped its Donors." Read more...

The evening newscast on Univision last night included an advertisement calling on Latinos to come to immigration march in Washington this Sunday.

In the 30-second spot a young man says he will march because "I don't want them to separate me from my family." A middle-aged man says he'll march "so that Obama and the Congress fulfill their promise." A middle-aged woman says she'll march "because without immigration reform the suffering will continue." Read more...

There was an interesting exchange yesterday between White House senior adviser David Axelrod and reporter Candy Crowley on CNN's program, "State of the Union." (See it here, starting at 1:55.) It begins with a question from Crowley about a statement from Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Illinois: Read more...

President Obama is due to meet today with the two senators who have been trying to plot a legislative course to an immigration reform bill, and the National Council of La Raza is impatient for clear signs of movement.

"If the meeting is just to 'hear more,' it's not going to cut it," Clarissa Martinez of La Raza said in Huffington Post. Martinez wants a clear sign of movement from Obama's meeting with Sens. Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham. Read more...

Last month, as Mexican President Felipe Calderon hosted a meeting where Latin American and Caribbean leaders agreed to form a new regional organization that will include Cuba while excluding the United States and Canada, the initiative received little attention in the U.S. Read more...

Last month this blog criticized Univision for profiteering from commercials for narcocorridos, which have been described as "stories of bandits and outlaws updated to the age of drug cartels and AK-47s, and known to some, because of their grim authenticity and bad reputation, as 'the rap of modern Mexico.'"

So now it's good to send kudos to Univision for its commitment to a new campaign that aims to reduce the dropout rate among Latino students. A principal focus will be to encourage parents to appreciate the long-term value of an education and to insist that their children stay in school. Too often, organizers say parents encourage their children to drop out in order to help with short-term financial problems. Read more...

California Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra on Sunday spoke of the connection between President Obama’s efforts to reform medical care and Obama's commitment to reforming immigration law. Becerra sees the two as complementary. Read more...

Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's Foreign Minister from 2000 to 2003, indicated that he's not likely to be a candidate in the 2012 presidential election. But he certainly is sounding like a candidate as he crisscrosses Mexico, promoting a new book and outlining a made-for-campaigning program for change. Read more...

Jorge Ramos grilled the mayor of Juarez today on his Spanish-language television program, Al Punto. The Univision newsman expressed indignation at the unrelenting violence that drug traffickers have inflicted upon that border city across from El Paso. He asked why the mayor hadn’t resigned. Noting the five thousand killings in Juarez during the last two years, Ramos asked Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, "Isn't that a terrible sign of failure?" Read more...

Janet Muguia, the National Council of La Raza's President and CEO, appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal yesterday, making a sales pitch for "comprehensive" immigration reform that would legalize illegal immigrants and provide channels for future flows of low-wage workers into the U.S. job market. She said her organization is "disappointed and frustrated" that President Obama skipped past immigration in his State of the Union Address. Read more...