"Agriculture likes immigration bill," reads the May 21 headline in the Columbus Dispatch and other McClatchy newspapers. The new bill would expand and streamline the guest worker program which has been in place since the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Some 30,000 workers annually come in through the current H-2A program. The streamlined program, dubbed AgJOBS (for Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act of 2007) could be passed as a stand-alone bill or part of the larger immigration legislation. Some of the same politicians who shaped the 1986 act are instrumental in the guest worker provisions of the currrent bill, such as Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA). California's Tri-Valley Herald notes that the state's agbiz interests are lobbying heavily for it. But a timely May 24 story in the New York Times notes how an attempt by farm labor organizers to eliminate the system of graft which greases the H-2A program recently resulted in a grisly assassination in northern Mexico. Further details on the case are provided by the advocacy website LabourStart:

Two months after the detention of a group of young people protesting the visit of President George Bush to the southern Mexican city of Merida, Yucatan state, five remain behind bars, unable to pay bail which has been set at 30,000 pesos ($3,000). The only woman detained, Victoria Texeira, has been denied bail because she is accused of violently attacking a reporter. (La Jornada, May 18)

Fourteen assassinations attributed to narco gangs were carried out May 20 in Mexico City, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Guerrero, Sinaloa and Oaxaca. Additionally, federal army troops exchanged fire with 20 gunmen with AR-15 automatic rifles, bullet-proof vests and uniforms of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) at a checkpoint on the Apatzingán-El Alcalde road in Michoacán.

Mexico May 15 called upon the US to prevent weapons from landing in the hands of drug gangs that increasingly use them to kill soldiers and police. "The firepower we are seeing here has to do with a lack of control on that side of the border," Assistant Secretary of Public Safety Patricio Patiño told the Associated Press. Patiño said that earlier that day, federal agents arrested two gunmen carrying assault rifles and half a dozen hand grenades in the city of Morelia, Michoacán—apparently on their way to carry out a hit. The escalating attacks on security forces come in response to a "radical change" in Mexico's law enforcement strategy, Patiño said, noting that Mexico is now going after the cartels' entire structures rather than just leaders. (Press TV, Iran; AP, May 16)

Sonora state police killed 15 in a fierce gunbattle just south of the Arizona border May 16 after tracking into the hills a group of heavily-armed gunmen who earlier that day killed five municipal police in Cananea. Three Cananea residents who had been aducted were freed. Police seized 15 assault rifles following the hours-long shoot-out near the village of Arizpe. Meanwhile in Coahuila, four men in the black unforms and insignia of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) kidnapped the state‘s chief anti-kidnapping investigator, Ruiz Arevalo, in Torreon. (El Universal, El Tiempo, AP, May 16)

The First Summit of Latin Americans Migrant Communities concluded May 14 with a "Declaration of Morelia," named for the city where the meeting was held in Michoacan, Mexico. The declaration called for modifying national and international laws on immigration, calling them obsolete and unjust. (Agencia Causar via MiMorelia, May 14) Representatives of NGOs from throughout Latin America, as well as the US, Europe and Africa attended. Michoacan Gov. Lázaro Cárdenas Batel and US Rep. José Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois were also in attendance. (Quadratín via MiMorelia, May 14)

Gunmen fatally shot a high-ranking Mexican intelligence official as he drove to work at the federal Prosecutor General's office in Mexico City May 14. Jose Nemesio Lugo, who investigated drug trafficking and illegal migration, was shot several times. The assailants fled and no arrests were made. US Ambassador Tony Garza expressed his condolences and praised Lugo as "a principled and tireless crime fighter." Lugo last month was named general coordinator of the Prosecutor General's National Center of Planning, Analysis and Information for the Combat of Delinquency. Under former President Vicente Fox, Lugo was director of border operations for the federal Public Security Department. He also served as director of a Federal Preventative Police unit investigating trafficking of drugs, contraband, migrants and minors. (Notimex, AP, May 14)

Gamaliel López Candanosa and Gerardo Paredes Pérez, two journalists with Mexico's national network TV Azteca in Nuevo León, have been "disapeared" for the last four days, the network says in a May 14 statement. "The atmosphere of violence generated in recent months in the metropolitan area of Monterrey has provoked various speculations about their whereabouts, but nothing is confirmed," said TV Azteca's regional director Luis Padua at a press conference. "The only thing which is certain is that the reporters have not arrived at their houses or shown up at work." Gamaliel López generally covered urban development issues, but in July 2006 he was assigned to cover the finding in Monterrey of a severed human head with a threatening note from a narco gang. (Milenio, May 14)