Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 Source: Reuters Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited. BUCHANAN HAMMERS AWAY AT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION JOHNSTON, Iowa (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan Wednesday linked illegal immigration from Mexico to a serial killer, prison overcrowding and a flood of drugs in the United States. "We have now in this (Rafael) Resendez Ramirez character really, if you will, the poster boy for what is happening in illegal immigration," Buchanan said during an interview on Iowa Public Television. "Here's a character that's gone back and forth across the American border, illegally, for 23 years. He's believed to have murdered eight Americans. He's been held by the (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service) and border patrol and let go because there's no coordination," Buchanan said. The 39-year-old Ramirez, one of several aliases used by the Mexican national, is a suspect in eight murders in Texas, Illinois and Kentucky and is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. The Justice Department was investigating why immigration authorities, who arrested Ramirez in New Mexico in June, deported him to freedom in Mexico instead of holding him for other law enforcement agencies. Buchanan, making his third White House bid, said one-quarter of federal prisoners are illegal aliens and contribute to jail overcrowding. He said even in Iowa -- a state far removed from the U.S.-Mexico border -- the issue resonates because around 90 percent of the illegal drug methamphetamine is smuggled into Iowa from Mexico. Buchanan went on to claim 80 percent of domestic violence in Iowa was due to methamphetamine use. Officials who run Iowa's domestic abuse shelters conducted a survey in March which found that 15 percent of batterers used methamphetamine. Buchanan called for installing triple-layer, chain-link security fences where immigrants are flooding across the border. He named El Paso and Brownsville, Texas, and Douglas, Arizona, as likely sites, and said a fence erected near San Diego curbed the tide of illegal immigrants there. Buchanan said farmers and ranchers along the border were arming themselves against the slaughter of their cattle and other vandalism attributed to illegal immigrants. Buchanan, a fierce critic of the North American Free-Trade Agreement, hammered away at the threat of illegal immigration in his failed 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake