"Should I stay or should I go." To quote the band "The Clash," illegal immigrants to Avon Park and its environs must be asking just that question. If they stay here, they risk arrest, deportation, exploitation or worse. If they go back to Mexico, they risk greater poverty, starvation, exploitation even murder by corrupt thugs, drug dealers and cops. Nice choice, eh? I recently witnessed a demonstration against illegal immigration at the intersection of US 27 and SR 64 in Avon Park. Truck drivers were honking their air horns presumably in support of the demonstrators who proudly waved American flags next to a pickup truck with a sign against illegal immigration and for drilling domestic oil. In attendance was the former mayor of Avon Park, a huge enemy of illegal immigration. I don't know him, never met him, but I've heard him speak. Nice to know paranoia is alive and well in America. ...more

September 8, 2008

When three Mexican nationals were arrested for a series of rapes in the Tampa Bay area, public officials battled over how law enforcement handles illegal aliens and some residents complained that the immigrant crime problem had gotten out of hand. ...more

September 7, 2008

It's been said many times in letters to the editor and radio call-in shows: The U.S. government should round up all illegal immigrants and send them home. ...more

September 6, 2008

Despite efforts to add Border Patrol agents to areas where immigrant traffic is high and drug violence is flaring, officers assigned to the 2,000-mile boundary with Mexico are bunched up near the California coast. And some critics see politics at play. ...more

August 31, 2008

A series of rapes in the Tampa Bay area that has been blamed on three Mexican nationals set off a battle over the way law enforcement handles illegal immigrants, with a congresswoman and the Hillsborough County sheriff trading barbs and some local residents arguing that the immigrant crime problem had gotten out of hand. ...more

August 29, 2008

Two illegal immigrants from Mexico have pleaded guilty to hostage-taking after demanding pay and refusing to release immigrants they had driven from Arizona to Florida. ...more

August 29, 2008

Union bosses in this region of rural Mississippi long have grumbled that the largest factories here hire illegal immigrants, and the immigrants have been starting to get more overtime and supervisory positions. ...more

August 28, 2008

Though she bungled the delivery, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite was right Monday to call for a federal investigation of how two illegal immigrants with arrest records were free to allegedly carry out a string of violent robberies and rapes. ...more

August 26, 2008

Politically motivated and naive is how Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee described a congresswoman's call for a federal investigation after last week's arrest of a Mexican national in rape cases. ...more

August 25, 2008

Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors. ...more

August 22, 2008