• Number of undocumented immigrants deported for minor offenses quadrupled

    The Obama administration has dramatically increased the number undocumented immigrants being deported for minor offenses. Figures obtained by the New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act show a four-fold increase in deportations. Two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases the NYT studied involved people who had committed minor infractions or had no criminal record. The number of cases relating to people whose most serious offence was a traffic violation has quadrupled, rising from 43,000 over the last five years of George W Bush’s presidency to 193,000 since Obama took office.

  • CBP takes another stab at high-tech border security

    The George W. Bush administration’s effort to build a high-tech border security system – the Boeing-led SBINet – was a failure, and the Obama administration shut it down in 2011. CBP is now trying again, this time with Elbit Systems as the lead contractor. The hope is that the lessons of the doomed SBINet, and Elbit’s experience in building high-tech defensive systems along Israel’s borders, would yield better result this time around.

  • Anti-immigrants backlash in Europe intensifies

    Anti-immigration groups and parties are enjoying a surge in many European countries, including Britain, France, and Austria, as many European economies face high unemployment and declining wages. The open-border policies of the European Union (EU), which allow citizens of EU member states to work and receive social welfare anywhere within the EU, have led many citizens to call for immigration limits and quotas.

  • Critics: administration does not deport deportation-eligible undocumented immigrants

    A recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies(CIS), a Washington, D.C. nonprofit calling for more restrictive immigration policies, says that in 2013, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported fewer than 195,000 illegal immigrants despite receiving more than 720,000 notices on immigrants who could be eligible for deportation. Moreover, 68,000 immigrants released from pending deportation cases had criminal convictions on their records, the report stated. Pro-immigration advocates say the figures are misleading. “CIS is essentially asserting that a legal-permanent resident or a recently naturalized citizen with a broken tail light should be charged by ICE and removed from the country although there is no basis in law for such action,” said Benjamin Johnson of the American Immigration Council.

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  • DHS hits reset button on the Electronic Immigration System (ELIS)

    DHS has awarded InfoZen 3-year, $11.9 million contract — the first of multiple contracts — for the Electronic Immigration System (ELIS), designed to process immigration forms. This is the latest attempt to digitize the processing system after spending roughly $1 billion and five and a half years under a contract led by IBM. IBM’s “design is poorly thought through and inconsistently applied by the developers. The result is duplication of efforts, time spent on rework, slowness in debugging problems, poor quality code, etc.,” said CIS chief information officer Mark Schwartz.

  • Judge rebukes Sheriff Arpaio, his deputy for mocking, defying court orders

    Grant Murray Snow, District Judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, earlier this week rebuked Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County and chief deputy Jerry Sheridan for defying and mocking Snow’s order, issued last year, to stop targeting Latinos during routine patrols, traffics stops and work raids. “Whether or not the sheriff likes it, there is a distinction in immigration law that was not understood by the population and, with all due respect to you, it is not understood by the sheriff, which is that it is not a criminal violation to be in this country without authorization,” Judge Snow said pointedly.

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  • Debate intensifies over Obama deportation instruction to ICE

    President Barack Obama’s recent instruction to DHS to find “more humane” ways to deport illegal immigrants has sparked yet another debate between immigration supporters and critics as to what exactly Obama’s directive meant. Supporters of undocumented immigrants hope DHS will cease all deportations deemed unnecessary, while opponents of Obama’s immigration policies urge DHS to carry out the country’s immigration laws as written by Congress.

  • White House to reassess deportation policy internally

    President Barack Obama, after his meeting with key Latino leaders last Friday to discuss further implementation of reform under current law, has announced that the administration will take another look into current deportation policies.

  • Passports of millions of travelers to U.K. not thoroughly checked

    The use of false passports by two passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which disappeared a couple of days ago have highlighted the fact that in the United Kingdom, the passport details of more than twenty million people entering and leaving the United Kingdom every year are not being properly checked. The Home Office’s most recent figures show that data is still not being collected and examined for about 10 percent of the 200 million people flying in and out of the United Kingdom every year.

  • High level of “brain waste” among highly educated immigrants

    Many highly educated immigrants coming to the United States without a job lined up have been unable to find work at their level of education, leading to considerable “brain waste,” researchers have found. The prevalence of such “brain waste” exceeded 40 percent for immigrants with a bachelor’s degree, 50 percent for those with a doctoral or professional degree, and 75 percent for those with a master’s degree.

  • CBP awards $145 million border towers contract to Elbit

    DHS’s Customs and Border Protection(CBP) has awarded Elbit Systems of America, a subsidiary of Israeli based Elbit Systems, a $145 million contract for the Integrated Fixed Tower (IFT) project along the Mexico-Arizona border. The first phase of the project includes a number of observation towers along the Nogales, Arizona border with Mexico. Additional options could include towers at over five other border sections in Arizona.

  • Two politicians insisting on more congressional oversight of DHS

    The lawmakers who support the proposed DHS Acquisition Accountability and Efficiency Act, authored by Representative Jeff Duncan (R-South Carolina), are doing exactly what they were sent to Washington to do: they are attempting to provide fiscal oversight over one of our largest federal agencies. Hopefully, politicians on both sides of the aisle will join Representatives Duncan and Michael McCaul (R-Texas) in passing legislation forcing DHS to use tax payer money in the most efficient ways possible, including demanding contractors meet the terms of their contracts, not rewarding contractors who have a record of poor performance, and completing their security-related projects in a timely manner.

  • Robots help Border Patrol navigate smugglers’ tunnels

    The U.S. Border Patrol is using remote- controlled robots to navigate tunnels used by drug cartels and smugglers to import drugs, weapons, and people from Mexico into the United States.The robots are used as the first eyes on places deemed too dangerous for humans to explore.

  • Washington State offers college financial aid to children of undocumented immigrants

    Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State yesterday signed legislation which will offer college financial aid to students brought into the United States illegally by their parents. California, Illinois, Texas, and New Mexico have passed similar legislations. The measure represents a shift in the position of State Senate Republicans: last year, the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a similar measure,called the Dream Act of Washington State, but earlier this month the Senate passed its own version of the bill, which the the governor, a Democrat, signed.

  • Secure Communities triggers deportation of undocumented immigrants with no criminal records

    The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Secure Communitiesprogram sends fingerprint data from local law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigationto immigration officers to identify and deport illegal immigrants who commit major crimes. The program has expanded from fourteen jurisdictions in 2008 to more than 3,000 today. Immigration advocates say that the program’s emphasis on identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States notwithstanding, it has also triggered the deportation of 5,964 undocumented immigrants with no criminal records.