• A coalition of 90 Tucson, Arizona businesses launches a “We Mean Business” campaign to show their resistance to SB 1070 — the harsh immigration law set to take effect 29 July; many of the owners agree there is a need for immigration reform; however they do not think the new law is the most effective approach

  • Border security

    Colombia’s drug cartels frequently use semi-submersible vessels to smuggle large amounts of cocaine past American and Colombian patrol boats to Central America en route to the United States; law enforcement discovers and seizes second submersible in as many weeks: the first was seized in Ecuador, the second in Guatemala

  • Immigration

    The Obama administration has replaced noisy, media-covered immigration raids at factories and farms with a quieter enforcement strategy: sending federal agents to scour companies’ records for illegal immigrant workers; one expert says: “Instead of hundreds of agents going after one company, now one agent can go after hundreds of companies”; employers say the Obama administration is leaving them short of labor for some low-wage work, conducting silent raids but offering no new legal immigrant laborers in occupations, like farm work; federal labor officials estimate that more than 60 percent of farm workers in the United States are illegal immigrants

  • Border security

    Secure Communities uses biometrics to prioritize immigration enforcement actions against convicted criminal aliens; with the addition of ten new Texas counties, all eighteen westernmost counties of Texas are currently using Secure Communities

  • Immigration

    A Forbes’ columnist says that immigrants — legal and illegal — are an economic bellwether, and that recent rends in immigration show that both the low-skilled and high-skilled immigrants have doubts about the U.S. economy right now; a DHS study shows that overall population of unauthorized aliens in the United States dropped from 11.8 million in 2007 to 10.8 million in 2009, in parallel with the economic slow-down; the risk to U.S. national security and economic welfare are these: low-skilled immigrants will likely return when the U.S. economy picks up again, but to bring back high-skilled immigrants, America’s economy will have to do more than make a comeback — it will have to make a strong comeback

  • Border security

    Immigration control at some of Wales’s ports is “limited” and jeopardizing the U.K.’s border security, says a watchdog; Holyhead seaport, for example, has no permanent immigration controls

  • Border security

    There are about 500,000 illegal immigrants living in Arizona; Governor Jan Brewer’s recently said that the majority of them are “drug mules” and linked them to beheadings; exploring any link between illegal immigration and other crimes is difficult, however, and there is little in the way of reliable data that indicate what crimes immigrants may commit after crossing the border illegally

  • Climate conundrum

    Conflict brought on by droughts, famine, and unwelcome migration are as old as history itself. Yet, a growing number of military analysts think that climate change will exacerbate these problems worldwide and are encouraging countries to prepare to maintain order even as shrinking resources make their citizens more desperate; Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti: “We see climate change as a threat multiplier, as a catalyst for conflict”

  • Border security

    The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in federal court in Arizona, asking for an injunction to prevent the state’s strict new immigration law from taking effect on 29 July; the administration argued the Arizona law, which requires state and local police to investigate the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant, is unconstitutional and would sap law enforcement resources; the lawsuit is part of a broader approach by President Barack Obama to deal with the 10.8 million illegal immigrants believed to be in the country, arguing that immigration is the responsibility of the federal government not each state; “Seeking to address the issue through a patchwork of state laws will only create more problems than it solves,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, said in a statement

  • Border security

    With SBInet likely to be cancelled (one lawmaker notes that at the current pace of deployment, SBInet would take 323 years to deploy across the 2,000-mile Southwest border — to say nothing of the effectiveness of the project’s technology), the search is on for new border security technologies; DHS is ramping up a program that will explore new public and private sector technologies that could be deployed along the border ; there are plans to develop a system that will link information systems of state, local, and tribal law enforcement entities along the border with those at DHS and the Justice Department; enhance analytic capabilities of fusion centers; and establish a suspicious activities reporting program

  • Border security

    Reporter writes that there were audible murmurs of disbelief from the audience when Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Jane Holl Lute noted that her boss, DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, has said “many, many times, the southern border has never been more secure than it is today”

  • Border security

    The trend of criminal activity in Mexico spilling into the United States is steadily increasing — but this is new: seven bullets struck the ninth-floor office of Assistant City Manager Pat Adauto on the west side of the El Paso City Hall building; the gunfire may have been stray shots from Juarez, Mexico, on the other side of the border, police said; one of the bullets came through the wall and knocked over a picture frame; one city official: “Now that something like this has happened we’ll put in place more formal procedures so that if something like this occurs again we can have a major notification quickly throughout the building so people can move away from the windows”

  • Border security

    In his first major speech on immigration since taking office, Obama hopes to rally new momentum behind the push for an immigration overhaul by explaining why he thinks a comprehensive approach is the only way to fix what he and others say is a system badly in need of repair

  • Border security

    The tough Arizona immigration law will take effect on 29 July; Arizona officials will today release a training program designed to teach police officers to enforce the crackdown on illegal immigration without racially profiling; an hour-long video and supporting paperwork will be sent to all 170 Arizona police agencies and publicly released

  • Nuclear matters

    In 2006 the George W. Bush administration announced a $1.2 billion project to deploy thousands of scanners for screening vehicles and cargo at U.S. ports to block the importation of radioactive materials that could be used to make a bomb to protect the United States; the scanners — known as the advanced spectroscopic portal (ASP) machines — proved a failure, and in February, following one setback after another, officials abandoned full-scale deployment of the machines; GAO says that the attention and resources invested in the ill-fated ASPs delayed the creation of a “global nuclear detection architecture” to protect the United States

  • Identity theft

    More than 40 percent of all passport fraud cases in the United States start with a stolen Puerto Rican birth certificate; identity thieves have targeted Puerto Ricans because Puerto Rican names provide the perfect cover for Hispanic illegal immigrants entering the United States and are worth as much as $6,000 on the black market; the documents are so valuable that drug addicts trade them for a fix; the Puerto Rican government has decided to change all that: current Puerto Rican birth certificates will no longer be valid after 30 September; between now and then, all Puerto Ricans will have to apply for more secure birth documents

  • Immigration

    Undocumented workers begin to flee Arizona ahead of Governor Jan Brewer’s immigration law going into effect; businesses suffer — and experts say the exodus could really hurt the state’s economy

  • Border security

    The Obama administration bolsters U.S.-Mexico border protection; the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved UAV flights over the Texas border from the Big Bend to the Rio Grande Valley; after Republicans in the Senate threatened to seek funds for 6,000 National Guardsmen to stop human and drug smuggling, Obama decided to deploy 1,200 Guard members in Southwest states until more Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers could be hired and trained; the president sent his $600 million funding request to Congress earlier this week to hire 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, 160 ICE agents, 20 CBP officers, and 20 new CBP canine teams

  • Border security

    Mexican drug cartels now maintain permanent lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials; the scouts are supplied by drivers who bring them food, water, batteries for radios — all the items they need to stay in the wilderness for a long time; “To say that this area is out of control is an understatement,” says a border patrol agent

  • UAV update

    The future of SBINet, the ambitious, $2.5 billion virtual fence project which was supposed to employ sophisticated surveillance technology to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, is uncertain, so CBP wants to use UAVs for surveillance missions along the U.S.-Mexico border; the Federal Aviation Administration is uneasy about these robotic planes, and a recent incident in which a CBP UAV lost communications with its remote cockpit is not going to make the agency any more comfortable with them