Photos by Cory Garcia.

Tuesday morning 25 organizations from around the city converged on downtown Houston to speak in one voice about the need for immigration reform here in the United States.

Carrying banners and homemade signs, they marched down Smith Street, passionately chanting and spreading a simple message: Now is the time for streamlined immigration reform so that aspiring Americans can earn reasonable wages and stop living in fear.

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via Wikipedia

Trust me, there is nothing else in the back! I swear!

When using a U-Haul sized truck, most of the time you're transporting big and heavy things, like luggage, furniture, plants or people.

Wait, people?

For one dude, yes, people. On Thursday night, a truck was found on the Sam Houston Parkway in southwest Houston. Naturally, Harris County Toll Road Authority Roadside Assistance came to the rescue, but once they got there, they noticed there was something fishy about this truck.

"When [the roadside assistance worker] got into that [truck] to put it into neutral, he said he could feel the heat coming from the back of the box section of the [truck]," Harris County Precinct 5 Capt. Terry Allbritton told Hair Balls. "He looked back and there was some kind of makeshift board between the cab and the box and he could just see a crowd of people stuffed back in there."

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We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them.

So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning or afternoon from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even.

This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involving wit, clarity and whatever else we feel like at the moment.

We looked at who would be allowed to stay in the country under President Obama's new rules, a mini-DREAM Act -- and wondered what exactly was wrong with allowing people to stay here, people who had nothing to do with the decision to cross the border, people who were in school, or served in the Armed Forces, people with clean criminal records.

One reader put us straight, and because she used all-caps for important phrases, she must be right.

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Supporters are happy today.

President Obama has thrown Republicans into a tizzy by having the Department of Homeland Security issue new guidelines, effective immediately, that put much of the defeated DREAM act into law.

Obama announced that the following persons would be granted deportation waivers: People who came to the U.S. under the age of 16, have been here five years and are here now, "are currently in school, have graduated from high school, have obtained a general education development certificate, or are honorably discharged veterans of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States"; oh, and they also must not have a criminal record, unless it's a single "insignificant" misdemeanor.

WHAT A THREAT TO THE COUNTRY THESE PEOPLE ARE!!!

Why, they're getting educations, they've served in the military, they've stayed out of trouble, they had nothing to do with their parents' attempt to cross the border without documents!! We're doomed.

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Apparently counts as the U.S.

Jose Ramirez-Lopez, 30, has been arrested at least twice for being in the U.S. illegally and sent back to Mexico

He "did not have consent of the Secretary of Homeland Security for permission to re-enter the United States," prosecutors say, but was arrested after being found sitting in front of the Brady's Duty Free Store at the Los Indios Port of Entry.

But he had an explanation, the U.S. Attorney's Office says: "The defense claimed Ramirez-Lopez's mere presence at the Los Indios Port of Entry was insufficient to be found in the United States."

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Cesar Avila faces life in prison.

A jury has convicted an immigrant smuggler of imprisoning his customers until their families coughed up $5,000 each.

Cesar Avila, 35, was found guilty on one count of hostage-taking conspiracy, four counts of hostage taking, one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence and four counts of aiding and abetting the harboring of illegal aliens.

The U.S. Attorney's Office says the undocumented immigrants were brought into the country for a fee of $5,000, and then held at gunpoint in a windowless Houston house until their families wired another $5,000 each.

One of those imprisoned managed to call 911 last August and tell police Avila "was armed with a handgun and had threatened them with death and they were in fear of their lives," prosecutors said.

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America's peculiar war on Mexicans has gone too far, says this week's cover package from Village Voice Media.

A hostile Supreme Court and a feckless Obama administration have resulted in abominations like Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, which gives cops all but carte blanche to question the immigration status of anyone whose looks they don't like, argues VVM's Michael Lacey.

The stated purpose of SB 1070 is "attrition through enforcement," a chillingly efficient phrase.

How does the cop on the beat tell a Mexican from a Mexican-American?

And so, the 74 percent of all Latinos in America who are, in reality, U.S. citizens must be harassed about their origins. Unlike everyone else, they must carry papers.

Why?

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A cold business

The U.S. Attorney's Office has charged two people with conspiring to transport and harbor illegal aliens, but their case is more serious than that.

Prosecutors say Demi Mishel Muniz, 33, and Luis Aceituno, 26, were tranporting illegal immigrants in a van from Houston to Los Angeles when one of the illegals began getting sick.

Muniz called the man's wife -- at first, to make sure she had deposited $650 in Muniz's account, and later, to say he was getting sick.

The woman said he was diabetic and needed insulin. Muniz instead told her they were dropping him off near Amarillo.

"Muniz allegedly stated that she could not help him because she had other people in the van and needed to keep moving," prosecutors say.

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photos by Marco Torres

(L-R) Octagóncito and Lizmark Jr. will showcase their lucha skills this Friday at the Bayou Music Center.

According to my research -- which I guess began 25 years ago on the streets of the Mexican border town of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, when I was playing with "Santos" toys that my mom bought me -- Lucha Libre is awesome. What is essentially a telenovela with more punching, flying, muscles and masks rolls into town this Friday as the Lucha Libre USA Masked Warriors Tour makes a stop at the Bayou Music Center. I spoke to two of these Masked Warriors at the only place in Houston that I deemed worthy of their presence: El Gran Malo (2307 Ella Boulevard).

Hair Balls: Señores, Bienvenidos a Houston!

Masked Warriors: Gracias, mucho gusto.

HB: Is this your first time here in the Space City?

Lizmark: We both visited Houston back in 1998, or 1999, while we fought with the WCW (World Championship Wrestling). We fought in the Astrodome, which was really cool.

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We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them.

So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even.

This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involving wit, clarity and whatever else we feel like at the moment.

We wrote about an awful car crash that killed nine illegal immigrants being smuggled into the U.S.

One reader complained about taxpayers having to pay for the emergency services that responded to the accident, leading to an efficient smackdown by another reader.

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