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Immigration
With the growing number of deportations of illegal aliens from the United States, federal officials expect demand for space to rise within coming years; Newark county officials are awaiting approval by federal authorities to upgrade and expand the Essex County Correctional Facility, significantly increasing its detainee capacity. The county’s proposal would provide a less punitive setting for detainees along with improved medical care, amenities, and federal oversight
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Gun running
An American man successfully smuggled more than eighty handguns aboard passenger flights to the United Kingdom; the man was only apprehended after British investigators tipped off American officials; the suspect transported as many as twenty handguns by breaking them up and placing them in his checked baggage; at one point TSA officials discovered multiple firearms in his bags, confronted him, and allowed him to board the plane with the weapons; U.S. authorities arrested him as he tried to smuggle sixteen handguns on another flight; it is estimated that he took more than a dozen flights in this manner
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Border security
Mexican drug smugglers have tried different methods to smuggle drugs into the United States — double-walled cargo containers, light planes, semi-submersibles, human mules, tunnels, and more; now, there is a new method: U.S. National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station in Arizona observed several people preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence last Friday evening; Mexican troops dispatched to the scene found a 3-yard tall catapult stationed about twenty yards from the U.S. border on a flatbed towed by a sports utility vehicle; the catapult was capable of launching 4.4 pounds of marijuana at a time
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Mexico: descent into chaos
The United States has delivered three UH-60M BLACK HAWK helicopters to the government of Mexico’s Federal Police; the aircraft are the first of six advanced helicopters designed to support Mexico’s law enforcement operations as part of the Merida Initiative, a security cooperation agreement between the two countries
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Immigration
Mississippi estimates it has 90,000 illegal aliens in the state, and that it spends $24 million in education and $35 million a year in health care on them; An Arizona-style bill has passed through the Mississippi state senate and now heads to the state house
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Immigration
The Obama administration creates new unit to target major companies hiring undocumented workers; the new unit, composed of fifteen auditors, will work under the supervision of ICE; in 2010, ICE conducted nearly 3,000 audits that led to a record $7 million in fines on companies; critics say large companies mostly avoided prosecution; this new unit will work specifically to audit large companies
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Border security
DHS has begun the process of contracting to replace the SBInet system it scrapped last week by issuing a request for information (RFI) on interconnected surveillance towers; the department’s plan calls for acquiring proven, ready-made technology tailored to the terrain of each border region, as opposed to the now-defunct $1 billion SBInet; DHS is looking for tools that will offer automatic, continuous wide-area surveillance that are largely open, or not tied to any one brand’s proprietary technology
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Obama administration creates new unit to target major companies hiring undocumented workers; the new unit, composed of fifteen auditors, will work under the supervision of ICE; in 2010, ICE conducted nearly 3,000 audits that led to a record $7 million in fines on companies; critics say large companies mostly avoided prosecution; this new unit will work specifically to audit large companies
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New iPhone app allows users to share their experiences at airport security checkpoints; the app, released by Elguji Software, is called TSAzr — Share Your TSA Experience; users can rate, review, and comment on every U.S TSA-staffed airport
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Delvonte Tisdale, 16, snuck into the wheel well of a U.S. Airways flight from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Boston; when the plane landed at Logan, his mutilated body fell onto the tarmac; law enforcement officials say they do not know how Tisdale was able to evade airport security; Tisdale’s family is moving to sue the TSA for negligence
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Border security
The United States has spent millions of dollars — the barrier costs taxpayers on average about $4 million per mile — to build a fence along portions of the U.S.-Mexico border; a new video shows two women climbing the fence’s concrete-filled steel pipes in less than eighteen seconds
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Trend
Kentucky and Nebraska have introduced tough Arizona-style immigration laws; critics hold that these laws violate civil liberties and encourage racial profiling; more states will likely pass similar immigration enforcement bills; a federal court has already struck down the most controversial portion of the Arizona immigration law and the Department of Justice is challenging it; paradoxically a majority of Americans support stricter enforcement and a path to citizenship
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Border security
DHS has cancelled the ambitious SBInet border security project; the project aimed to erect a virtual fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, consisting of a system of cameras and sensors which would allow officers to monitor crossings and dispatch Border Patrol agents to catch anyone entering the United States illegally; Boeing, the primary contractor, was hobbled by technical problems involving the effectiveness of video cameras and other elements, resulting in the project falling far off schedule; a year ago, after DHS had spent $672 million on the project and Boeing had little to show for the money, the project was put on hold; DHS will now look at an alternative system which is likely to rely more on UAVs and thermal imaging
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Mexico: descent into chaos
A total of 34,612 people have died in drug-related killings in Mexico since December 2006; the four-year figure included 30,913 execution-style killings, 3,153 deaths in shootouts between gangs, and 546 deaths involving attacks on authorities; the killings reached their highest level in 2010, jumping by almost 60 percent to 15,273 deaths from 9,616 the previous year
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Immigration
Home Office joins Eurodac fingerprint database, which collects the fingerprints of asylum seekers and some illegal entrants to the European Union; Eurodac consists of a Central Unit within the European Commission, equipped with a computerized central database for comparing fingerprints, and a system for electronic data transmission between EU countries and the database
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Border security
A U.S.-Mexico border crossing in Texas’ Big Bend National Park that was once popular among U.S. tourists and Mexican shoppers will re-open in April 2012; the unmanned port of entry will be monitored by immigration officials hundreds of miles away. U.S. citizens will scan their passports and the identity of Mexican nationals will be biometrically confirmed
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Immigration
Four Republican lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday that would end automatic granting of American citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal immigrants, arguing “birthright citizenship” is an incentive for illegals to race for the U.S. border; automatic citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution; the provision, ratified in 1868, was drafted with freed slaves in mind; the four congressmen said the current practice of extending U.S. citizenship to so-called “anchor babies” is a “misapplication” of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment
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Mexico: descent into chaos
Mexico’s drug violence in 2010 was striking not only for its scale but also for its brutality; more than 13,000 people were killed across the country in drug violence, up from an estimated 9,600 a year earlier; the number of people killed since the government launched its war on the drug cartels in December 2006 has reached 31,000; analysts say that the violence is the result of the collapse of the old political structure — the 80-year one-party system ran by the PRI, which came to an end in 2000, when Vicente Fox came to power; the old system, with its unwritten rules and tacit understandings, is yet to be replaced by a new, consensual system; what has exacerbated the anarchical situation are two new elements: the rise of drug trafficking through Mexico, and the free flow of arms into the country, mostly from the United States
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Now a single tip about a terror link will be enough for inclusion in the watch list for U.S. security officials, who have also evolved a quicker system to share the database of potential terrorists among screening agencies; a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said that officials have now “effectively in a broad stroke lowered the bar for inclusion” in the list; the new criteria have led to only modest growth in the list, which stands at 440,000 people, about 5 percent more than last year; also, instead of sending data once a night to the Terrorist Screening Center’s watch list, which can take hours, the new system should be able to update the watch list almost instantly as names are entered
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Border security
Mexico, reeling under the weight of the escalating armed conflict between the government and the drug cartels, is on the verge of becoming a failed, ungovernable state on the U.S. door-step; U.S. and Mexican experts say that 90 percent of the tens of thousands of the semi-automatic rifles in the arsenals of the cartels are smuggled from the United State; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has announced a new measure, requiring U.S. gun dealers to report multiple sales of rifles to authorities; Texas law enforcement authorities say that since the reporting requirements will only include the southwest border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California — guns will continue to flow into Mexico from other parts of the United States — and from other countries
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The long view
Social Acceptance of Immigrants Working as Politicians or Judges Is Low
Often, the dominant society develops negative attitudes towards immigrants and their descendants because their integration is too successful – and not because they are unwilling to integrate. A possible explanation for negative attitudes towards successful immigrants could be the dominant society’s fear of immigrants occupying influential and value-based occupations. This applies, for example, for immigrants working in local politics or law.