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August 2008
Nearly 600 arrested at latest ICE raid
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement updated the tally of people arrested at a large immigration raid in Laurel, Miss.
According to various press reports, most of the 106 were parents of small children and were given ankle bracelets and told to appear in court at a later date.
The “enforcement action is part of ICE’s ongoing nationwide effort to shut down the employment magnet fueling illegal immigration,” said Michael A. Holt, ICE Special Agent in Charge of the Office of Investigations in New Orleans.
The illegal immigrants were from various countries including Germany, Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Honduras and Brazil.
The raid is the latest in a string of enforcement efforts that have sparked criticism from Hispanic groups, immigrant advocates and civil liberties organizations.
Douglas Rivilin, a spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, said that the Laurel raid was “a man-made disaster on another small town’s workers and families.”
“Churches, legal services groups, and humanitarian organizations have already sprung into action to address the human costs in terms of children left without a parent, breadwinners plucked from their jobs, limited access to lawyers and truncated due process for detainees,” he said, in a statement.
Meanwhile, supporters of stronger immigration controls applauded the raid.
“The driving force behind illegal immigration is illegal employment. Anyone that knowingly violates our immigration laws is subject to the consequences of our enforcement actions,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.
Read more here.
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Hit men crossing the border?
Security is being heightened along the Southern border because of a threat that warring Mexican cartels may send hit men into the United States, the Associated Press reported this week.
According to AP, law enforcement officials would not discuss specific security measures being taken at the ports of entry, along the border or in the city of El Paso.
Chris Mears, spokesman for the El Paso police, told the AP: “We received credible information that drug cartels in Mexico have given permission to hit targets on the U.S. side of the border.”
Read more here.
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McCain and “Daddy Yankee” — strange bedfellows
In one of the more unusual press conferences of the election season, Sen. John McCain was endorsed Monday by Latin music star “Daddy Yankee.”
Ayala became a megastar in the world of Reggaeton with his 2004 hit “Gasolina.” Reggaeton is a mix of hip hop and Latin dance music such as salsa and merengue.
McCain mentioned the song at the presser. He may not have realized that it uses gasoline as a metaphor for sex. For example, the song says, “a ella le gusta la gasolina” or “she likes the gasoline” and “dame mas gasolina” or “give me more gasoline.”
The music video leaves little doubt to the meaning behind the song. It features scantily clad women gyrating, fast cars, police in riot gear, and “Daddy Yankee” carrying a night stick.
Here it is:
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Feds end “self-deport” program after few takers
A controversial pilot program that allowed illegal immigrants to turn themselves in for deportation will be discontinued after only eight people volunteered, federal officials said Friday.
The three-week program by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had targeted about 30,000 illegal immigrants in five cities — Santa Ana, Calif., San Diego, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Chicago.
“We are not considering at this time expanding or extending the program,” said James Hayes, acting director of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations. “We believed we learned a lot.”
Hayes said the program — which cost $41,000 — was not a failure because it provided valuable information. He added that it saved money because it would have cost $54,000 to detain and deport the eight volunteers.
Immigrant advocates assailed the program from the beginning and Hayes accused such groups of discouraging participation.
The eight immigrants who volunteered for the program include two from Guatemala, two from India, one from Estonia, one from Lebanon, one from Mexico and one from El Salvador, Hayes said.
Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, said that most undocumented immigrants and their children are entrenched in American society and do not want to leave.
It would be unrealistic to expect them to take 90 days to find foster parents for their children or prepare them to go to a school system in a country they’ve never been to or in a language they don’t speak, not to mention deal with their mortgages and other affairs, he said.
“We’re simply not going to deport ourselves out of a situation where we have 12 million people living here,” Rivlin added.
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Police group: leave immigration enforcement to feds
Local and state authorities should leave immigration policing up to federal agencies, according to preliminary findings of a study conducted by the Police Foundation, a nonprofit group.
Through a series of focus groups that brought together academics, sheriffs, police chiefs and human-rights advocates, the foundation found the majority prefer having federal authorities enforce immigration policies instead of extending the responsibility to the nation’s local police and sheriff’s departments.
The findings, which will be included in a full report in the coming months, were presented at a two-day conference in Washington that ended Friday.
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Obama picks Latino advisors
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, which is spending $20 million to reach Latino voters, announced this week the creation of a National Latino Advisory Council.
Another member of the council is Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who authored an immigration bill that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
Gutierrez is known as a champion of immigrant rights.
The council also includes some high profile members of labor unions including Geoconda Arguello-Kline, president of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union and Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union.
In a press release, the Obama campaign said that the council is “made up of key labor, faith, community leaders, and elected officials from across the country and will serve as an advisory council for the campaign on issues important to the Latino community.”
The Obama campaign is targeting Hispanic voters in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida with advertising, online organizing, voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote efforts and the training of some 500 grass-roots organizers.
Political analysts say that Latinos could be a crucial voting bloc in several contested states.
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Illegal immigrants arrested at military parachute factory
Fifty-seven illegal immigrants were arrested Tuesday at a worksite in Asheville, N.C., that manufactures parachutes for the U.S. military, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.
The arrests were based on an investigation that revealed that the illegal immigrants had used fraudulent Social Security numbers to obtain employment, ICE said in a press release.
The company “has been fully cooperative” and is not a target of the investigation, ICE said.
The illegal immigrants were from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and Honduras.
“Protecting the integrity of our nation’s critical infrastructure is among ICE’s highest priorities,” said Delburt Richburg, assistant special agent-in-charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Charlotte. “When individuals use fraudulent social security numbers to get jobs, they hide their true identity and history. We need to know who is working on our critical infrastructure sites.”
The press release also said: “Illegal aliens employed at sensitive facilities — such as military bases, nuclear plants, chemical plants, airports and Department of Defense contractors — pose a homeland security threat.”
(Photo by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
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Only three illegal immigrants accept voluntary deportation
Only three illegal immigrants have accepted an offer from the U.S. government to turn themselves in without threat of arrest, the Washington Post reported this week.
The offer was part of a pilot program which targeted 457,000 illegal immigrants.
“The cold reception given to the rollout of the three-week pilot self-deportation program, called Scheduled Departure, presents an apt metaphor for the state of relations between U.S. enforcement officials and immigrant advocates in the year since Congress killed President Bush’s proposed overhaul,” the Post said.
Read the story here.
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Citizenship delays down to 10-12 months
Processing times for citizenship applications will be 10 to 12 months by the end of September, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Monday.
The agency — known as USCIS — has been under heavy criticism for delays in processing times after an unprecedented number of applications last year, especially in July.
The delays could cause thousands of immigrants to miss the deadline for voting in the November election.
USCIS said it is making “steady progress in reducing the number of citizenship applications.” The delay was previously as high as 16 to 18 months.
“We are working steadily toward achieving our goal of processing all naturalization applications within five months by this time next year,” said Jonathan Scharfen, the acting director of USCIS.
Last year, more than 1.4 million immigrants applied for citizenship, setting a new record.
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House approves extension of E-Verify
The House late Thursday approved a measure to extend a controversial federal program that allows businesses to check if their workers are in the United States legally.
The system — known as E-Verify — is set to expire in November.
The House bill - which passed 407 to 2, extends it for five years. E-Verify is currently voluntary in most states. Several proposals in Congress would make it mandatory.
Immigrant advocates, business groups and experts say that E-Verify relies on faulty databases and could lead to thousands of citizens being initially rejected for work.
But advocates of tougher enforcement praise E-Verify as a valuable tool to stop illegal immigration.
Rep. Brian Bilbray, a California Republican who heads the Immigration Reform Caucus, said Thursday that E-Verify “has proven to be incredibly effective in deterring illegal immigrants from finding jobs.”
He also said he is hopeful that E-Verify will soon be a requirement for all U.S. businesses.
“Making E-Verify mandatory will protect American workers and law-abiding businesses from the unfair competition created by a massive illegal workforce,” he said.
Read more here.
