The Mexican government has drafted a resolution for the U.N. Human Rights Council, condemning the U.S. for their plans to build hundreds of miles of fencing on the border between the two nations.  Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, president of the 47-member council, said the resolution aims to denounce the fence as a violation of human rights, as well as encouragement for undocumented migrants to cross the border in more dangerous areas.  

The U.S. is an observer but not a member of the council, which replaced the U.N. Human Rights Commission earlier this year, according to the Associated Press.  

In October, the U.S. Senate approved the bill to build 700 miles of border fencing and President Bush plans to sign it into law.  This has met with disagreement from the Mexican government, as well as with Mexican President Vicente Fox, who called the plans "shameful" and likened the fence to the Berlin Wall.  

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The Los Angeles Times reports that the bodies of four men and a woman were pulled from the Rio Grande last week.  All five are believed to be undocumented immigrants who drowned in the river while trying to enter the United States .   

The bodies were recovered Monday after a Mexican fisherman spotted them and notified authorities.  U.S. authorities said it was unclear whether the victims tried to wade across the Rio Grande or were using a raft.  Either approach would be very difficult due to recent rains.  

The latest Border Patrol statistics show 38 drownings in the Texas region of the river between October 2005 and September 2006.  

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The Southern Poverty Law center is suing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), claiming the government organization harassed five U.S. citizens of Mexican descent during raids targeted at apprehending undocumented immigrants in southeast Georgia .  According to The Houston Chronicle, the non-profit civil rights organization claimed the agents used a "Gestapo-like" tactics.  The ICE agents allegedly entered houses without warrants, stopped cars on the street, and vandalized property of Latinos.  

ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi referred to the accusations as "patently false."

The complaint, filed in federal court, is in reference to a sweep over labor day weekend.  During the sweep, agents raided the Reidsville house where 14-year-old Marie Justeen Mancha was alone getting ready for school, the Texas-born teenager said. She said she had unlocked the door thinking her mother was returning home and found instead several agents in her house, one of whom had his hand on a holstered gun.

"It scares me," Mancha said at a news conference. "I thought me being born in the U.S. , they couldn't do this."