The "Mexican border town" in Los Angeles: Cudahy

Somewhat surprisingly, the L.A. Weekly offers the seven-screener "The Town the Law Forgot", all about the 1.2-square-mile city of Cudahy, California, located in southeast Los Angeles County near such tourist destinations as Maywood and South Gate. The story shows the dangers of allowing Mexican-style politics to be imported to the U.S.

Cudahy is a strange little city; some say a scary one. In 2003, city leaders fired the L.A. County Sheriff's Department — which had policed Cudahy for 14 years, focusing on gang and drug crime — in favor of a nearby municipal police force that recently erupted over public allegations of police brutality and kickbacks to police and city officials from a towing company.

In Cudahy, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has seized almost 20 times more cocaine over the past five years than in Bell, a bordering city of similar size...

...Cudahy resembles a Mexican border town more than it does a Los Angeles suburb. Entrenched gangs and Mexican drug trafficking have trapped working-class legal and illegal immigrants in a cycle of violence and fear, in a city where less than a quarter of the 28,000 residents are eligible to vote...

Related:
Anne Taylor Fleming not on immigration
"Corruption hits cities in L.A.'s shadows"

UPDATE: Those living in other parts of the country should pay attention to this quote from Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:

take a snapshot of Los Angeles and in 25 or 30 years so will go Topeka, Kansas and Des Moines, Iowa.

Immigration2007a · Mon, 02/26/2007 - 21:38 · Importance: 1