• Sharp drop in illegal crossers notwithstanding, “border industrial complex” keeps growing

    Since 1986, U.S. immigration enforcement has cost the U.S. government $219 billion dollars; almost 80,000 workers now depend on immigration enforcement for their employment; illegal immigration has dropped sharply over the last four years, and is now at a 1971 level — but the what some call the “border industrial complex” keeps growing and growing

  • DHS submersible Pluto mimics the real narco-subs

    In the early 1990s, South American drug cartels came up with a new tactic to transport narcotics destined for the United States: small, radar-dodging, self-propelled, semi-submersibles (SPSSs); better to address the submersible problem, DHS Science and Technology Directorate created its own submersible and called it Pluto, after the planet which is difficult to spot

  • Janet Napolitano named in two lawsuits

    DHS secretary Janet Napolitano is under fire for two very different reasons as she is named in two separate lawsuits; the first lawsuit charges that two women executives Napolitano brought to DHS have mistreated male employees at the department; the second suit, brought by several ICE agents, charges that the administration’s deferred deportation executive order, which went into effect 15 August, force the agents face difficult choices while performing their tasks

  • U.S. testing blimps, surveillance towers on Mexican border

    Last year, the U.S. government ended SBInet, a major and unsuccessful attempt to build a virtual fence along the border that cost nearly $1 billion before it was killed; DHS is now testing aerostats, and an 80-foot tower with similar surveillance capabilities, for border security as part of an effort to exploit technologies that have been used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

  • DHS seeks better ways to detect ultra light aircrafts used by smugglers

    As the war on drugs continues with every sunrise and sunset, DHS has awarded a contract just short of $100 million for a specialized system which will be able to detect ultralight aircrafts which are used to smuggle drugs across the border

  • Underground spies to secure Indo-Pakistan border

    With the discovery of a 400-foot long tunnel at the India-Pakistan Border, the IndianHome Ministry has decided to acquire Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) that could be installed along the international border with Pakistan as an important line of defense

  • Manned planes beating drones as the more capable tool in war on drugs

    In the never-ending war on drugs, U.S. Navy planes are showing that technology does not necessarily mean improvement, as manned planes are outmaneuvering unmanned drones in catching cocaine smugglers traveling by sea; in 2011 the manned planes caught an average of $30 million of cocaine per day, and during the last five years they have detected more than 853,000 pounds of cocaine

  • Obama’s sweeping immigration initiative goes into effect next week

    On 15 August 2012 a sweeping new immigration initiative, the most significant easing of immigration policy since President Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to an estimated three million people in 1986, goes into effect; it would defer deportation action against, and grant a work permit to, illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria

  • Critics charge Obama initiative is amnesty by executive order

    Critics of the Obama administration’s immigration order charge that the administration is”legislating by executive edict”; they say that the Obama administration is set, in effect, to begin implementing the DREAM Act amnesty on 15 August, even though the legislation was defeated by Congress as recently as December 2010

  • Deportation deferment executive order to cost between $467 million and $585 million

    On 15 June the administration issues an executive order deferring deportation against illegal immigrants who were brought into the United States as kids by their parents, and who now go to school or have graduated from school; illegal aliens eligible to apply can begin to do so in August, and DHS estimates that in the first year of the program, about a million or so would do so; the processing cost would be as high as $585 million; each applicant will be expected to pay $465 in paperwork processing fee, but even if all do, there will be a shortfall

  • Critics: Obama administration advancing amnesty by executive order

    A new study by an anti-illegal group provides a detailed, 3-year timeline of what the groups describes as the Obama administration’s strategy of carrying out a policy of de facto amnesty for millions of illegal aliens through executive policy decisions

     

  • Illegal and prescription drugs: “Impossible Situations”

    It is now thirty years since President Ronald Reagan, on 14 October 1982, declared the U.S. War on Drugs; this effort to deal with drugs’ “supply side” has led to an ever increasing global policing in the name of curtailing international criminal drug cartels, a policy which may in fact create more national security risks than it allegedly stifles; our ability to face up to and resolve our massive drug consumption at home, the “demand side” for both prescription and illegal drugs, may be drowned by the rhetoric of the political season, but we should note that lost in this political chatter are proven remedies, therapies, and other solutions and alternatives for drug-shattered families torn apart by abundant and cheap drugs, both those which are being smuggled from Mexico and those produced here at home

  • Federal apprehensions for immigration violations declined, while arrests tripled, in 2000-10

    Apprehensions for immigration violations peaked at 1.8 million in 2000 but dropped to 516,992 in 2010 — the lowest level since 1972, according to a report released last week by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS); between 2000 and 2010, arrests booked by the U.S. Marshals Service for federal immigration offenses tripled, from 25,205 to 82,438 arrests; immigration apprehensions resulted in about 16 arrests per 100 apprehensions in 2010, up from 2 arrests per 100 in 2002

  • ICE agents say Obama’s 15 June executive order makes their job more difficult

    Association of ICE agents complains that the 15 June executive order which deferred deportation action against certain classes of illegal immigrants makes it difficult for ICE to enforce immigration laws

  • Obama and Romney stopped talking about immigration until the Democrats dropped the Dream Bomb

    The 15 June announcement by DHS secretary Janet Napolitano of an executive order which, in effect, implements the Dream Act, gives the 2008 presidential election the appearance of offering a discussion of immigration issues; the fact remains, though, that since  the Immigration and Reform Act (IRCA) of 1986, both parties studiously avoided a serious debate of the issue during presidential campaigns; democracy is a messy form of government, and few other topics are as messy and convoluted as U.S. immigration policy, but both political parties are wrong to avoid a broad public discussion of this vital national issue