U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Bloody Tide: How Puerto Rico Affects the U.S.

As Puerto Rico is battered by a wave of drugs and brazen murders, Houston and other continental U.S. cities feel the blowback.

Jose Cabrera-Pastor: Swims Across Ship Channel With 98 Pounds of Pot Strapped to His Back

Maybe Jose Guadalupe Cabrera-Pastor of Matamoros, Mexico misinterpreted the meaning of "wet marijuana," which stoners sometimes call straight off the plant/not dried pot. At approximately 10 p.m. Saturday night, the 47-year-old man was detained by the United States Border Patrol for possessing 98 ... More >>

Crossing The Line: Days of Rage

The U.S. Supreme Court and President Obama leave the undocumented and their allies no choice but to escalate civil disobedience.

Friends Like These

Woman sexes hospitalized pal's teen.

Bootleg Clacker Balls!! The Feds Make Huge Seizure In Houston

The eagle-eyed inspectors at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection have prevented Houston from suffering a scourge of unimaginable proportions: clacker balls. You may be too young to remember, but an entire generation of baby boomers was almost wiped out by playing with clacker balls. two balls on ... More >>

Nationwide ICE Crackdown Nets 91 Illegal-Immigrant Arrests In Houston

ICE nets some bad guys​The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announced today that more than 2,400 criminal illegal aliens or fugitives had been arrested in a nationwide crackdown last month, and 91 of them were in Houston. "All of the criminal aliens taken into custody had pr ... More >>

An Even Crazier 4Loko Coming Soon from the Mexican Drug Cartels

When 4Loko just isn't enough, try meth-laced Corona.​Caffeinated beer is for amateurs. The really powerful stuff appears to be just starting to seep across the Mexican border right now. Saturday night U.S. Customs and Border Protection working the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridg ... More >>

Mexican Pop Singer Fights Rape Allegations, Racism

​The latest chapter in Mexican pop singer Kalimba's life saddens us for a number of reasons, but the possibility of never hearing his music again is not one of them. If you haven't heard, while recording his latest album in El Paso, Kalimba was held by the U.S. Border Patrol on suspicion of ... More >>

Weed In Texas: The Top Seven Stories Of The Year

Merry Christmas: our Top Weed Stories. ​It's been a decent year for potheads. So what if Prop 19 didn't pass in California, because medical marijuana laws, even in places outside that dirty hippy state, expanded. This year ends with two more states, Arizona and New Jersey, along with Washington, D ... More >>

Cloaked Brutality

The feds bury border patrol abuses of immigrants, but what’s been unearthed reveals a culture of cruelty.

Willie Nelson's "Green Friday" Leads To Teapot Party

​If you are a cop in Texas - OK, a cop anywhere in the world - when you pull over a tour bus and out pops a gnomish man with grayish-red hair and you smell pot smoke, you smile and nod, get an autograph and go on your way. It's 2010, and we live in a world where Willie Nelson can still get a ... More >>

Grinding Justice

Operation Streamline costs millions, tramples the Constitution, treats migrants like cattle and doesn't work.

Asylum Denied

Unlike refugees from other troubled countries, only a fraction of Mexicans seeking U.S. asylum are accepted – no matter how horrible their wounds or their stories.

Seized

Inside the brutal world of America's kidnapping capital

Sergio Guereca: Watch Out, America -- Parents Of Kid Shot On Mexican Side Of Border Have Hired A Houston Personal-Injury Attorney

What? A lawsuit coming from a controversial, well-publicized event?​The June 7 shooting of 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca near El Paso became an internet sensation and has provoked demonstations against the U.S. Border Patrol.But the feds have no idea what's hit them yet: The parents ... More >>

Badlands

From Ground Zero of the immigration crisis along the Mexican border

The Crucifixion of Juarez

On the front line of the U.S. war on drugs, a Mexican city bleeds to death.

Silence Of The Hams

Photos by Katharine ShilcuttThis was a pig at one time.​Sad to report that I'm not clever enough to have come up with that little pun on my own (or even, "It puts the BBQ sauce on its skin, or else it gets the hose again!" - a friend came up with that gem shortly afterwards). No, the credit fo ... More >>

PETA Be Buggin' About Blinged-Out Border Beetle

Photo courtesy CBP​Contraband along the Texas-Mexico border flows both ways. Drugs tend to come north. Desperados on the lam tend to flow south. But every now and then there's a novelty like this woman and her strange pet. The Brownsville Herald picks up the tale: It wasn't marijuana, co ... More >>

Weed Takes Root

Marijuana's steady creep toward legalization nationwide.

The Sheriff Of Crosby, N.D Protects His Citizens From Terror Better Than Adrian Garcia

​Harris County Republican chair Jared Woodfill is steamed, according to a letter we first found on Isiah Carey's Insite.He is totally pissed and outraged because Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia has "opened the doors" of his office to Al-Jazeera. A, umm, media outlet.Maybe not a media outlet wi ... More >>

A Quicker Way Through Customs At Bush Intercontinental

Photo by Paul KnightHair Balls was escorted by a customs agent out of the Bush airport today, and we left through a door with a big red sign that said, "Do Not Exit, Alarm Will Sound." When we exited and the alarm didn't sound, the agent chuckled a bit and said, "That's government."We were at the a ... More >>

Nasty, Destructive Little Bug Discovered On A Ship In Houston

Courtesy US Customs & Border ProtectionThe dead skin of a Khapra beetle, found in HoustonCustoms officials in Houston made a pretty startling discovery while inspecting a furniture shipment last week. They found some cast-off skins from Khapra beetles among the straw brooms and burlap sacks in t ... More >>

The Honorable Gentleman From Tyler, Fighting The Illegal Hordes

Atencion! Things will get tougher for pesky border-crossers in Texas if any of Rep. Leo Berman’s (R-Tyler) nine illegal alien bills filed Monday pass. And if they don’t, then he might just have to run for governor – or at least that’s what he told the Austin American-Statesman. Among th ... More >>

Border Patrol Amps It Up This Weekend

No Honest Players Among Human Smugglers

Illegal immigrants are subject to pain and death at the hands of their "rescuers" if they don't pay up in full

The Ron Paul Revolution, Sayonara Starbucks, Ivory No No

Its true belivers trash Hair Balls

Ivory Smugglers Get Nabbed

Immigration: Cubans Enter U.S. at Texas-Mexico Border

M.I.A.

Kala

Telemarketing Offers

MGR promises help with federal grants and racks up hundreds of consumer complaints

Border Fence May Destroy Wildlife Habitat

U.S. Fish and Wildlife services spent $80 million to reclaim wildlife habitat in South Texas. Now Homeland Security is ready to wipe that out.

U.S. informants take part in murder and drug running in Mexico

At the Ready

The Minutemen have come to Texas

Pretty Please, Tilman

Houston's Donald Trump can't be bothered with paperwork

Pepper-Spraying José

A "Bubba Mexican" polices the border in Buford Gomez

Soldiers of Misfortune

Ranch Rescue finds its welcome mat withdrawn

Camera Ready

Chronicle staffers tout their stories on Channel 11

End of the Bend?

Jetports and elite resorts may do what border bandits, blistering heat and harsh desert life couldn't: rob Big Bend of its rugged beauty.

The Bored Patrol

Border Patrol agents in South Texas contend they are getting paid to stay put as illegal immigrants go around them. Is this how the much-hyped crackdown along the Rio Grande is supposed to work?

Lean & Mean

Those who drink codeine syrup call it lean because of its most obvious effect: a loss of coordination. Those who study the drug call it liquid crack. Those who abuse it can wind up dead.

Tresspassers Will Be Prosecuted

Ranch Rescue's Jack Foote swears he just wants to mend fences. Is pseudomilitary secrecy, right-wing rhetoric and an armed vigilante militia the best way?

Livin' Large

Carlos Sosa promised to sell seized goods from the Port of Houston on the cheap. Many believed him. Until they learned he was a Customs Service snitch, and perhaps a con man on the side.

Trading Places

Fueling justice

Night & Day

January 14 - 20, 1999

Trading with the Enemy

Houston oil companies maintain their profitable ties to Libya, in roundabout ways

Tales From the IRS

Three stories of taxman terror

Wild Things

With a stiff dose of vatobilly, the Flamin' Hellcats aim to cure rock and roll of what ails it

The Cheap Secrets of Harwin

Beyond the Galleria, beyond Target - and sometimes beyond the law - lies Houston's last untamed wilderness of shopping

Trashing Houston

To a world worried about waste, Houston may offer an answer -- or at least a place for the garbage to go