After another bloody weekend, the body count as of mid-day today stood at 2194. With 51 days of the year left, should the present trend continue the homicide toll will be around 2550 at the end of the year. This would place the homicide rate per 100,000, (the most common measurement) at 170. The last time I calculated (see entry on September 23), the projection was for 2374 murders by the end of the year, so the homicide rate has stepped up some since then. At that time the homicide rate was 158. An article in Foreign Policy article in September 2008 listed Caracas at that time as the highest homicide city in the world, at 130. So Juarez is clearly above that.
A Time magazine article this year puts the Baghdad homicide rate at 48, slightly higher than St. Louis in 2008 which came in at 47. Global homicide rates per city are more difficult to get hold of than you might think at first. But there are places in the U.S. that aren't too far behind the worst cities in the world, such as New Orleans, which the FBI estimated in 2008 had a murder rate per 100,000 of 64. The U.S. average in 2008 was 5.6, one thirtieth of the rate I've projected for this year in Cd. Juarez.
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Has she been to Juarez?
Napolitano Pronounces U.S. Border More Secure Now
By Suzanne Gamboa
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has met many of the border security benchmarks Congress set in 2007 as a prerequisite to immigration reform and now it's time to change the law, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday.
Napolitano, designated by President Barack Obama to lead the administration's efforts to overhaul immigration laws, said many members of Congress had said they could support an update of immigration laws, but only after border security improved, Napolitano said.
"Fast-forward to today, and many of the benchmarks these members of Congress set in 2007 have been met," she said in a speech to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
She cited construction of 600 miles of border fence and the hiring of more than 20,000 Border Patrol agents. Illegal immigration has also fallen sharply because of better enforcement and the economy.
"I've been dealing hands-on with immigration issues since 1993, so trust me: I know a major shift when I see one, and what I have seen makes reform far more attainable this time around," Napolitano said.
Congress passed tough immigration enforcement legislation in 2006 that called for building 700 miles of border fences and barriers. Immigration critics have said the fence has not been built with double layers as the law required and is not all fencing.
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