Fronteras: A Changing America

The number of homicides in Tijuana is spiking.

On Friday, the number totaled 192 homicides in Tijuana, and 61 of these deaths — or 31 percent — occurred in April.

The U-T San Diego reports these crimes are a consequence of small-scale drug dealers battling in the city’s eastern working-class neighborhoods.

SAN DIEGO — In 2008, the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego replaced a flimsy fence with a tall, thick one at Friendship Park, a spot where families separated by the border have long come to talk through the fence. They built a gate into it to allow for maintenance on both sides. But it had never been opened, so it rusted shut.

In August 2012, the Obama administration started a program that allowed young undocumented immigrants to legally live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis.

With the recent dismissal of a trio of high-profile corruption cases in Mexico, the country’s new administration appears to be distancing itself from the last vestiges of former President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs.

In Mexico, Talk Of Immigration Reform Raises Hopes For Visits Home

“I thought she was only going for three or four years at the most, and then would come back,” 82-year-old Santiago Dominguez said in Spanish.

But it’s been 18 years since Rosa Fabiana left for Phoenix. She took her two young sons and crossed into Arizona illegally.

HIDALGO, Mex. — On a recent Sunday, almost a dozen family members gather at the home of their patriarch, 82-year-old Santiago Dominguez. His home is in the town of Tepeapulco, in the Central Mexican state of Hidalgo.

A lone portrait sits on a shelf of a dark haired young woman. It is Dominguez’s daughter.

“I thought she was only going for three or four years at the most, and then would come back,” Dominguez said in Spanish.

PHOENIX — A federal district judge in Dallas suggested in a recent order that an Obama administration initiative for young immigrants may violate the law.

Judge Reed O'Connor is weighing a legal challenge brought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents against their bosses to stop the program.

Last week — amid Boston, Texas, gun control and ricin — the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill was released in the middle of the night.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Before the estimated 11 million people living in this country illegally can start down the long path to citizenship, the U.S.-Mexico border must reach a level of security that satisfies border hawks in Congress.

TIJUANA, Mexico — The U.S. Justice Department has settled an antitrust lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch InBev. That clears the way for the world's largest brewer to buy out Grupo Modelo, the Mexican company that makes Corona beer.

Brad Rzepka is a tourist from Las Vegas. He’s sipping a Corona at a bar on Tijuana’s main tourist strip.

Three years ago, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law. The bill is one of the strictest state immigration enforcement laws in the country. In that time the majority of the provisions have never been enacted, with many challenged and a few overturned.

Here’s an updated list of where the bill stands after three years:

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, could soon be patrolling the United States border with Mexico 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That's what the major immigration reform bill introduced last week by a bipartisan group of senators proposes.

The Miami Herald profiled a foreign national who recently received asylum. Policarpo Chavira, a bus driver and union leader, fled Juarez with his family after his son was held hostage for five days.

His story is part of a growing trend of Mexicans granted asylum at historical rates due to the drug war. That’s not to imply the numbers of Mexicans receiving asylum are high:

TUCSON, Ariz. — The Department of Public Safety and the Guatemala Consulate in Phoenix are still investigating the deaths of five people who died in a crash Saturday in southeastern Arizona.

Officials say the SUV was filled with 20 Guatemalan and Mexican nationals. Five people were killed.