The Rhode Island state house passed a mandatory E-Verify bill on Tuesday, but the measure now goes to the state Senate where it's failed the last two years. The bill would require private employers to use E-Verify, which expands an executive order, which requires government contractors to use the workplace verification tool.
Senator David Vitter's amendment to prevent illegal aliens from applying for credit cards was defeated during a roll call vote on Wednesday, 28-65. The amendment would have required credit card applicants to show a valid social security card along with an identification that is compliant with REAL ID.
"Since the landmark raid, an economic squeeze has destroyed several businesses. Postville's population has shrunk by nearly half, to about 1,800 residents, and townsfolk say the resulting anxiety -- felt from the deli to the schoolyard -- has been relentless.
"It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, resigned earlier this year....
“I am disturbed that local religious leaders in Postville seem to think it is immoral to arrest people who violated federal laws,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that believes in limiting immigration.
Beck said he believed the detainees were being treated humanely despite claims from local religious leaders to the contrary.http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1191522.html
By Mike McGraw -- The Kansas City Star
The intellectual bankruptcy and juvenile morality of trendy open-borders clergy is on embarrassing public display during events marking the first anniversary of ICE raids of the Postville, Iowa kosher meatpacking plant. Many of these are the same clergy who remained silent for years as the meatpacking plant physically endangered its workers and violated child laborers. Like witnesses to clerical pedophilia, these clergy allowed the meatpacker workers to be chewed up by an immoral corporation and now blame immigration laws for the collapse of the business.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano credited the states for the growth of E-Verify. Napolitano testified before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and said that mandatory E-Verify laws in the states has contributed to the system's rapid growth in past years.
The immigration lawyers’ national bar association called on the Justice Department on Tuesday to consider dismissing the guilty pleas of nearly 300 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a meatpacking plant raid in Iowa last year, one day after the Supreme Court rejected a statute that prosecutors used to pressure them.
Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) is putting the final touches on this year's SAVE Act, which he plans to introduce in Congress within the next few weeks. Shuler first sponsored the legislation during the last Congressional session, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept it off the floor, and the attempt at a discharge petition fell 28 signatures short.
Mayor Bill White is facing increasing hostility over his decision to have the city participate in a federal program that trains local jailers to act as immigration agents.
Some activists have suggested the move toward stronger immigration enforcement could jeopardize the accuracy of the 2010 census count for people of Hispanic origin, who are estimated to make up the city’s largest ethnic group at more than 40 percent of the population.http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6403870.html
Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which views illegal Immigration as damaging to the U.S. economy, said he was hopeful there would be even more raids under the new guidelines and that the new focus would deter employers from hiring illegal immigrants.http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-immigration_01may01,0,7669259.story
By James Oliphant and Anna Gorman -- Chicago Tribune
The Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday that it is shifting the department's immigration enforcement efforts to the employers that hire undocumented workers. The announcement is a move away from the Bush Administration's policy of workplace raids.
"Forced to slash their budgets, some California counties are eliminating nonemergency health services for illegal immigrants -- a move that officials acknowledge could backfire by shifting the financial burden to emergency rooms.
Sacramento County voted in February to bar illegal immigrants from county clinics at an estimated savings of $2.4 million. Contra Costa County followed last month by cutting off undocumented adults, to save approximately $6 million. And Yolo County is voting on a similar change next month, which would reduce costs by $1.2 million."
"Voters in Fremont may get a target date for a special election this week.
Members of the Fremont City Council are expected to vote on a resolution calling for a special election on an initiative petition for a proposed ordinance that would ban “the harboring of illegal aliens and the hiring of unauthorized aliens” within the city."
The manager of the Greenville, S.C. poultry plant is facing charges for knowingly hiring undocumented workers. The plant was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials back in October and more than 300 suspected illegal aliens were arrested at the Columbia Farms poultry processing plant.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she was briefed before the release of a controversial intelligence assessment and that she stands by the report, which lists returning veterans among terrorist risks to the U.S.
The conduct of immigration agents during a raid at a meat processing plant in Minnesota did not violate the constitutional rights of 10 Latino plaintiffs who were working there legally, a federal district court ruled March 27 (Barrera v. DHS, D. Minn., No. 07-3879, 3/27/09).
By Gayle Cinquegrani -- Daily Labor Report
Many of the 28 workers arrested during February's ICE raid at Yamato Engine Specialists in Washington state have been released and granted temporary working papers. The move raises questions as to the future of worksite enforcement raids.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has delayed a series of immigration raids, and the move may signal a policy change for the department. After last month's raid of an auto parts rebuilder in Washington state drew criticism from both Napolitano and President Obama, senior DHS officials say ICE may focus on businesses instead of illegal workers.
Many of you responded to my last blog stating that we need far more signatures on a petition to have any type of impact. But are you willing to help us distribute this one to truly make an impression? As “Gary6333 of NY” commented, “Four times bigger is still not enough! EVERYONE needs to push this site EVERYWHERE they go. MAKE THIS MOVEMENT GROW!”
Cardinal Francis George on Saturday called on the Obama administration to end Immigration raids across the country and pushed for passage this year of "comprehensive Immigration reform" that is "fair and compassionate."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was invited to speak during a San Francisco pro-immigration rally organized by Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez. But during her speech, she made a few controversial statements, including calling U.S. immigration enforcement efforts "Un-American" and thanks to Californians for Population Stabilization, we have the video clip and the transcript of her comments.
Nancy Pelosi was caught on tape calling U.S. immigration enforcement efforts "Un-American." The Californians for Population Stabilization released video of the House Speaker and we have a clip with Pelosi calling illegal aliens attending a rally in San Francisco last week "very, very patriotic." Watch the video from the immigration rally and fax your Congressmen urging them to reject Speaker Pelosi's attacks.
The White House switchboard is barely holding on. Fax machines there and in congressional offices are churning out Americans' protest in peak mode. Pres. Obama and House Speaker Pelosi have started a grassroots rebellion with their new statements of prioritizing illegal foreign workers over unemployed Americans. How angry are you? Let me count the ways . . .
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) today for her remarks at a San Francisco immigration rally last weekend. Pelosi said that enforcement actions by ICE officials were "un-American."
Federal immigration officials arrested 27 people in Nebraska last week as part of an operation aimed at finding illegal aliens who disobeyed deportation orders.
Carol Swain, professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University, has noted in the Nashville Tennessean that Pres. Obama has now promised to lead the way to cure cancer, end foreign oil dependence and guarantee higher education to everyone who wants it. But when it comes to keeping illegal aliens out of U.S. jobs so that unemployed Americans (especially Blacks and Hispanics) can have them, Obama can't seem to lift a finger.
Nearly a dozen North Texas law enforcement agencies have joined the federal "Secure Communities" program, allowing them access to federal criminal records and immigration records while taking suspects' fingerprints during bookings.
PHOENIX -- A group of Arizona business and civic leaders told me last night that the strange behavior of our nation's chief security leader this week is just what they expected. They say that Janet Napolitano was a skilled master at getting media to make her look like a believer in the rule of law but that when it came to immigration she was almost always "The Anti-Enforcer."
Immigration officials arrested 28 illegal workers at Yamato Engine Specialists in Bellingham, Wa. on Tuesday. The workplace raid was the first during the Obama Administration. ICE officials said they believe most of the 28 arrested gained employment by using fake social security numbers and counterfeit documents.
The Obama administration itself seemed taken aback by the raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano vowing to Congress that she would "get to the bottom of this."
The secretary of Homeland Security has ordered of a review of an immigration raid in Bellingham in which a third of the employees of an engine manufacturing shop were arrested.
Janet Napolitano said she wants to know why Tuesday's raid took place and said immigration enforcement should be focused on employers who hire illegal immigrants.http://www.kirotv.com/news/18797142/detail.html
KIRO-TV
The Fugitive Operations Team of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up their enforcement of violators of immigration laws, and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith issued a statement on Wednesday supporting the department's efforts.
A manager of a leather goods manufacturer in New Bedford, Ma. has been sentenced to two years probation after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in 2007 revealed that she had helped the factory hire and conceal illegal workers.
The owner and operator of an Alabaster, Ala. construction company was charged on Wednesday for allegedly hiring and harboring illegal aliens. Beverly Linan who owns Rodriguez Construction Company could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if found guilty on all the counts.
A former employee of Henningsen Foods in David City, Neb. has filed a suit against the company charging that they knowingly hired undocumented workers and gave them preferential treatment. The former worker was fired from the plant in 2007 and the charges are part of a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the plant.
The Department of Homeland Security has temporarily delayed a requirement for federal contractors to use E-Verify to check the immigration status of their employees while a related lawsuit is resolved. The rule was supposed to take effect Jan. 15 but will now be implemented on Feb. 20.
The U.S. government will collect DNA samples from people arrested and detained for suspected immigration violations, despite concerns that the move violates their privacy rights.
