BOSTON -- Gov. Deval Patrick says a new report calling for more English classes for Massachusetts immigrants and allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition will help the state integrate its immigrant population. Patrick released the report Tuesday as he held a luncheon for immigrants' advocates. He calls the report a "values statement" and says the general public should not focus attention solely its "electric" proposals, such as allowing immigrants to get state drivers licenses. Patrick also announced Tuesday that an inter-agency task force will develop an action plan for the report within 90 days.
ATLANTA -- Law enforcement agencies in three Georgia counties are set to receive new technology to identify and deport illegal immigrants who are considered dangerous criminals. Law enforcement agencies in Gwinnett, Clayton and DeKalb counties will participate in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's Secure Communities program. The program allows arrestee fingerprint information to be checked against FBI criminal history records and biometrics-based immigration records kept by the Department of Homeland Security. Previously fingerprints were just checked against the Department of Justice biometric system kept by the FBI.
Following a series of News 8 reports, Dallas County has implemented an emergency stop-gap action to keep accused felons from being deported before going to trial. Hundreds of accused murders, rapists and child molesters have avoided prosecution in Dallas over the past two decades. "Sylvia" is an American citizen who lives in constant fear that her husband, Jose Salvador Tinajero, will find her. "He had always told me before that if I ever left him that before I walked out my door, I was only going to go out in a body bag," she said. "He made my babies suffer for a long time. I wanted him to feel the same pain that we did." But that's not going to happen.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office has arrested 32 people during its two-day "crime suppression" crackdown, officials said Tuesday. Three people were arrested Tuesday at Airport Enterprises, a Phoenix auto-body repair shop near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, on suspicion of identity theft and forgery, said Lt. Brian Lee, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office. ... In one instance, 18 people in one vehicle were arrested on allegations that they violated the state human-smuggling law, which allows recent illegal immigrants to be charged as co-conspirators in their own smuggling, officials said.
AUSTIN (November 17, 2009)--Schools and communities across the state are becoming recruiting grounds for Mexican drug cartels and gangs that lure young people with cars and cash and promising they'll face minimal sentences if caught, the Texas Department of Public Safety warned Tuesday. The cartels are looking for new ways to smuggle drugs and humans into the state using Texas-based gangs and young people to support operations on both sides of the border, the DPS said. The DPS cites the case of Laredo natives Gabriel Cardona and Rosalio Reta who were in their teenagers when they were recruited to be hit men for the Zetas, a group composed primarily of former Mexican military commandos, which originally served as the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, but which now is a cartel itself.
You might have noticed a number of maritime smuggling arrests in recent weeks. On Friday, I met with Lauren Mack, spokesperson for the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, to get an update on the situation. Maritime smuggling pales in comparison to smuggling activities by land, but it's still a growing trend. Mack said there were 230 arrests in the 2008 fiscal year and 430 in fiscal year 2009, which ended June 30. Mack said the region has seen an increased number of incidents in October and November due to more fog cover. Most of the arrests happened at docks and beaches in the northern half of the county. Mack said the smugglers are landing further north these days, but that pattern could shift with more attention by law enforcement.
In 1996 I did a piece about immigration and I wanted to compare the exam they gave then to the new one they're giving to anyone who applies for now. You only have to answer six out of 10 questions. Here are some examples from the old test: What are the colors of the American flag? Hmmm. I don't think there's any green in it. Where is the White House? Well, I know there are several white ones in the town I live in. What are the two major political parties in The United States? Let me see. I don't think the answer is the Communist or Fascist Party.
DANVERS -- A man who held off an entire shift of Danvers police officers with a running chain saw after trying to saw his way into his wife's home will serve no more than six months in jail, a Salem District Court judge decided yesterday. Angel Castaneda, 35, had offered to plead guilty just days after the Oct. 11 incident on Putnam Lane but changed his mind when Judge Richard Mori said he'd impose at least two years in jail. Yesterday, however, Judge Robert Cornetta saw the case a bit differently, offering a six-month jail term followed by probation -- though it's likely that Castaneda will be deported to El Salvador immediately after he's released.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A Channel 4 I-Team investigation has found 1,231 illegal immigrants on the run after they had already been found by the government or arrested by police. The 1,231 illegal immigrants, found in the mid-south between April 2007 and August 2009, were initially identified as being in the country illegally, were released and then vanished, the I-Team discovered. Records obtained by the I-Team from the Executive Office for Immigration Review show between April 16, 2007, to Aug. 26, 2009, 1,231 illegal immigrants failed to show up for court to appear before an immigration judge and could not be found. Davidson County Sheriff Darron Hall believes many of the 1,231 were released due to an mandate by the Department of Homeland Security to local sheriff's departments. That order states illegal immigrants charged with minor offenses and without criminal history should be released on recognizance.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced Monday he plans to conduct a countywide crime-suppression and illegal-immigration sweep beginning this evening. It would be the second such operation since the federal government stripped Arpaio of street-level immigration patrols under the direction of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Arpaio contends he still can seek to identify illegal immigrants during street patrols using state laws against human smuggling and sanctions for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
PHOENIX - Within the last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 17 illegal aliens at three suspected drop houses in the Phoenix area. On Sunday ICE agents busted a drop house near South Hobson and Broadway roads in Mesa. They took five adult males, three adult females and one juvenile male, all Mexican nationals, into custody. The Mesa arrests follow two other recent drop house investigations. On November 13, ICE agents arrested five male Mexican nationals and seized two handguns at a home near 79th Avenue and Indian School Road in Phoenix. Sacramento Correa-Blancas, 29, was arrested for being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and is facing charges in federal court.
WASHINGTON -- Immigration, after 10 months on the president's back burner, got its very own trial balloon the other day. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano went before a friendly crowd at a liberal think tank Friday and proclaimed that the time has come for comprehensive reform -- a goal that has eluded Congress so many times, it has become a third rail of American politics. It's different now, she argued: Border security is tighter than ever. Inflows of illegal immigrants have dropped by half. Benchmarks for fencing much of the border and roughly doubling the Border Patrol have been met. Lawmakers have hashed out the arguments so many times, the next debate can be streamlined.
As James Carville told CNN, President Obama only has 57 votes. Reuters James Pethokoukis is reporting that Senators Liberman, Landrieu and Nelson are at NO, and Bayh maybe too. Pethokoukis is reporting the same thing Hammond said in his memo, that reconciliation is a no-go. (Politico is reporting, correctly, that reconciliation rules would strip the Stupak amendment.) As we all know, no 60 votes, no laundry. (Senator Reid needs 60 votes to break the filibuster on the motion to proceed to consider the bill. If he does not get 60 votes, ObamaCare never comes up on the Senate floor.) There are whispers in Washington watering holes that some Dem Senators are quietly hoping Senator Nelson will vote against cloture on the motion to proceed. This will let the Senators who are up in 2010 off the hook from the nightmare of proceeding to this politically toxic bill.
YAKIMA, Wash. -- Wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan "Stop the Invasion" and applauding exhortations to "take back our country," opponents of amnesty for illegal immigrants gathered at a Grange hall in Yakima. About 65 people attended Saturday's event, dubbed "Tea Party Against Amnesty and Illegal Immigration," at the Gardner Grange to hear a former U.S. Border Patrol agent speak and write quick letters to government officials. "We can deal with it (illegal immigration)," Kent Lundgren, founder and past chairman of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, told the audience. "We have lost the will to deal with it."
WASHINGTON -- Latino advocacy groups are ramping up pressure on Congress to expand health coverage for immigrants as the lawmakers grapple with historic health-reform legislation. Activists and health-policy experts who support greater immigrant coverage are concentrating their efforts on the Senate, which is expected to bar illegal immigrants from participating in health insurance exchanges, as stipulated in the Senate Finance Committee's bill, even if they pay with their own funds and no federal subsidies. The House voted last weekend to deny federal subsidies to help illegal immigrants buy insurance but allow them to buy health insurance from government-created insurance exchanges.
