An alleged Mexican drug cartel member was arraigned in U.S. federal court Wednesday on murder charges from the roadside ambush of two U.S. immigration agents working south of the border.

A spokesman for the U.S. District Court in Washington says Julian Zapata Espinoza entered a not guilty plea and is being held in jail.

The charges included murder and attempted murder for the Feb. 15 mid-day attack along a four-lane highway that killed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata and wounded colleague Victor Avila as they were driving to Mexico City after a meeting with other U.S. personnel. The shooting in the northern state of San Luis Potosi was a rare attack on American officials in the country fighting violent drug cartels.

Zapata Espinoza is known by the nickname "El Piolin," or Tweety Bird, apparently because of his short stature. He was captured along with five other suspected members of the Zeta cartel during an army raid a week after the shooting and recently was extradited to the United States.

The Mexican army said Zapata Espinoza admitted killing Zapata in what he claimed was a case of mistaken identity, with the Zetas mistaking the ICE agents' Chevrolet Suburban for one used by a rival gang.

The Supreme Court has agreed to rule on Arizona’s controversial law targeting illegal immigrants.

The justices said Monday they will review a federal appeals court ruling that blocked several tough provisions in the Arizona law. One of those requires that police, while enforcing other laws, question a person’s immigration status if officers suspect he is in the country illegally.


The Obama administration challenged the Arizona law by arguing that regulating immigration is the job of the federal government, not states. Similar laws in Alabama, South Carolina and Utah also are facing administration lawsuits.


The court now has three politically charged cases on its election-year calendar. The other two are President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and new electoral maps for Texas’ legislature and congressional delegation.

The Justice Department on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to stay out of a lawsuit involving Arizona's immigration law, saying lower courts properly blocked tough provisions targeting illegal immigrants.

The state law is a challenge to federal policy and is designed to establish Arizona's own immigration policy, the department's solicitor general said in a filing with the justices. Arizona says the law is an effort to cooperate with the federal government.

One provision requires that police, while enforcing other laws, question a person's immigration status if officers suspect they are in the country illegally. In April, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's ruling halting enforcement of that and other key provisions in the Arizona law.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is seeking to overturn the judge's decision and wants Supreme Court review of the case, arguing that the issues are of compelling, nationwide importance.

The epicenter of the fight over the patchwork of immigration laws in the United States is not Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico and became a common site for boycotts. Nor was it any of the four states that were next to pass their own crackdowns.

No, the case that's likely to be the first sorted out by the U.S. Supreme Court comes from the Deep South state of Alabama, where the nation's strictest immigration law has resurrected ugly images from the state's days as the nation's battleground for civil rights a half-century ago.

And Alabama's jump to the forefront says as much about the country's evolving demographics as it does the nation's collective memory of the state's sometimes violent path to desegregation.

With the failure of Congress in recent years to pass comprehensive federal immigration legislation, Arizona, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina and Indiana have passed their own. But supporters and opponents alike agree none contained provisions as strict as those passed in Alabama, among them one that required schools to check students' immigration status. That provision, which has been temporarily blocked, would allow the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that said a kindergarten to high school education must be provided to illegal immigrants.

Federal authorities say an indictment charges 12 people with operating a massive immigration fraud mill through a New York City law practice.

They say the defendants and their co-conspirators applied for legal status for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants based on bogus claims that U.S. employers had sponsored them.

They say the scheme took in millions of dollars in illicit proceeds.

It's part of an ongoing investigation. So far, 27 people have been charged.

The accused ringleader, Earl Seth David, was arrested Tuesday in Canada. He was suspended from practicing law in March 2004 and fled to Canada in 2006 after learning his firm was under investigation. Authorities say profits from the scheme continued to be funneled to him in Canada.

Prosecutors say David's law practice was based in Manhattan and operated several shell companies.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Obama administration's appeal of lower court rulings in favor of immigrants who were seeking to avoid being deported.

The justices said Tuesday they would review two rulings by the federal appeals court in San Francisco that allowed immigrants accused of crimes to try to stop their deportations.

Both cases hinge on a provision of immigration law that allows people who have been in the United States legally for more than five years or illegally for more than seven years to seek leniency. The appeals court said immigrants who came as children could count their parents' years in the United States.

The Obama administration opposes that rule, saying it conflicts with its "high-priority efforts to remove criminal aliens."

Four state legislators and a Silver City woman asked a judge Wednesday to stop Gov. Susana Martinez's administration from trying to verify whether immigrants who received a driver's license in New Mexico still live in the state.

An Albuquerque law firm and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a lawsuit in state District Court in Santa Fe on behalf of the Democratic lawmakers and the Hispanic woman.

The suit seeks to block a state agency from checking a random sample of 10,000 license holders who are foreign nationals to determine their residency.

New Mexico is one of only three states — the others are Washington and Utah — where an illegal immigrant can get a driver's license because no proof of citizenship is required. However, Utah's permits cannot be used as government ID cards.

Martinez wants the Legislature to end New Mexico's policy of granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. She and other critics contend it jeopardizes public safety and attracts illegal immigrants who fraudulently claim to live in the state only to get ID cards that make it easier to stay in the country.