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BORDER NEWS
INS authorities have arrested dozens of undocumented workers on fishing boats off the coast of Alaska this year.  Of the 30 boats investigated, undocumented workers were found on at least ten.  Jobs in the fishing industry pay well, often require minimal skills, and almost always demand strenuous physical labor, making them attractive to unskilled migrant laborers.  A crackdown at processing plants on shore is expected to follow shortly.  
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Federal authorities believe they have broken a smuggling ring that may have brought as many as 100 Korean nationals into the US across the Canadian border.  So far seven people have pled guilty to a number of misdemeanor charges, some of whom have been deported as a result.  Two more people are currently in jail pending their plea to the smuggling charges.  The whereabouts of two others, while they have not been apprehended, are known.  The ring was discovered about nine months ago when Border Patrol agents noticed people walking across the border and get into waiting vehicles.  
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An Arizona rancher is well on his way to becoming a renegade Border Patrol agent, and may be on the way to finding himself in a lawsuit.  Roger Barnett, who lives in the southeastern portion of the state, near the Mexican border, was involved in three incidents involving undocumented migrants in one weekend.  Each time it seems that Barnett noticed a van or trailer that seemed to be overloaded, stopped it, and told the driver to go to the INS office in Douglas.  None of the migrants said they were threatened or felt endangered, and authorities have not commented on whether there is an investigation.  However, as one local attorney pointed out, if the Border Patrol persists in allowing Barnett to do this sort of thing, the Border Patrol can be held responsible for any error he makes.  
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Last month three Chinese nationals were found dead in the cargo container in which they had been smuggled across the Pacific Ocean.  The medical examiner’s office in Seattle, where the ship docked on January 10, has issued a statement ruling the deaths accidental.  According to the medical examiner, one of the men died on January 1, eight days after the ship left Hong Kong.  One died on January 7, and the other on January 9, the day before the ship finally docked.  The fifteen men who survived the journey have filed asylum applications with the INS.