• Drug violence causing U.S. firms to reconsider Mexican investments

    As the Mexican government’s battle against drug cartels rages on, U.S. businesses and their employees have become increasingly caught up in the crossfire, which has led many to reconsider investing in Mexico; a recent survey of U.S. companies by the U.S.— Mexico Chamber of Commerce found that only half were planning on moving ahead with investment plans in Mexico; U.S. companies and their workers have become increasingly caught up in the war as collateral damage as well as targets for kidnapping and extortion; in 2010 one out of ten companies reported kidnappings and 60 percent said that their employee had been beaten or threatened by the cartels

  • SBInet replacement takes shape

    After spending more than $1 billion on the failed virtual fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, DHS is moving ahead with the latest incarnation of the high-tech system; rather than using a one-size fits all strategy, DHS will use readily available technology to create tailor made approaches to the geographically diverse 2,000-mile long border; under the new plan, border patrol agents will use a combination of towers, truck mounted surveillance systems, ground sensors, hand-held equipment, and a host of other technologies to secure the border; the new program, dubbed “Alternative (Southwest) Border Technology,” will begin with an initial trial in Arizona

  • Immigration bill moves ahead in South Carolina, stalls in Oklahoma and Tennessee

    In South Carolina, a tough immigration law is making its way through the House, while similar bills stalled in Oklahoma and Tennessee; South Carolina’s House Judiciary Committee voted fifteen to seven to pass a bill that requires law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of individuals they encounter; the legislative session ends in two weeks, and the bill still needs to be approved by the full House; immigration bills in Oklahoma and Tennessee were tabled until next year

  • U.S. to receive Canadian radar feeds to combat drug smugglers

    The Canadian government will soon start supplying DHS with data from its radar feeds to help border officials prevent low-flying airplanes from entering U.S. airspace to smuggle drugs along the northern border; in November the Canadian government will begin sending surveillance information collected from its twenty-two radar feeds to the U.S. Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, California; the data will be used to detect “unlawful entry into the United States”

  • Northern border "more significant threat" to U.S. security than the Mexican border

    As security along the U.S.-Mexico border tightens, drug smugglers and other criminals are shifting their activities to the U.S. northern border; Alan Bersin, head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing that the U.S. border with Canada sees far fewer detentions and arrests every year — there are about 445,000 arrests and detentions along the U.S.-Mexico border annually, while last year the U.S.-Canada border saw only 6,000 arrests and detentions — but is a “more significant threat” to American security than the Mexican border; the latest step in cross-border policing will see Canada send twenty-two radar feeds to CBP’s center in California that tracks non-commercial aircraft, with the goal of cracking down on narcotics smuggling by small planes flying low over the border to escape detection; the United States was also moving to deploy “military grade” radar along the northern U.S. border as soon as this fall

  • State Department lottery error mistakenly awards visas to 22,000 people

    More than 20,000 people around the world had their dreams of immigrating to America dashed when the U.S. State Department reported that it had erroneously informed them that they had won a lottery that would allow them to live legally in the United States; the U.S. State Department apologized and cited a computer programming error that led to faulty results that had to be invalidated; the lottery is an annual free competition that randomly awards 50,000 people with a visa without the usual employee sponsor or family sponsor; this year nearly fifteen million people applied

  • Controversial DHS immigration registration program suspended

    Last month DHS ended a controversial program that required immigrants to register with federal authorities if they came from Arab countries associated with terrorism; the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) required all males entering and exiting the United States that were above sixteen years of age to report to immigration officials for interviews and fingerprinting if they came from certain countries; NSEERS was specifically aimed at individuals hailing from twenty-five countries with ties to terrorism including Libya, Syria, and Yemen; officials say that the program did not lead to the capture of any terrorists

  • U.S. will allow more foreign graduates to work in U.S. longer

    The Optional Practical Training program allows foreign students graduating from American colleges to stay in the United States after graduating for twelve months to work in their field of study; the George W. Bush administration introduced a measure allowing some science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates to stay for additional seventeen months — for a total of twenty-nine months of practical training; the Obama administration has now expanded the STEM list to include many additional degree programs, among them soil microbiology, video graphics and special effects, dairy science, neuroscience, mathematics and computer science, business statistics, personality psychology, medical informatics, and pharmaceutics and drug design

  • New York ICE agent arrested for stealing and selling government property

    A special agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was recently arrested on Tuesday for allegedly stealing government property and then selling it on eBay; the agent, Steven Kucan, was a resident of Wood Ridge, New Jersey and will appear in a federal court in Newark, New Jersey; Kucan reportedly sold approximately $37,000 worth of ICE property using an eBay account that was opened in the name of an elderly relative; stolen items include printer cartridges, camera lenses, film, combat lights for M-4 rifles, and even a special diving suit designed to prevent hypothermia in cold water

  • New way to measure security along U.S.-Mexico border

    A new DHS approach to gauging border security will develop a numeric value to be assigned to each of the Border Patrol Sectors to measure just how secure it is; the new index will still include traditional measures such as crime data, apprehensions of suspects, and contraband seizures, but it will go beyond these measures to include hospitals reports on suspected illegal aliens they treat, traffic accidents involving illegal aliens or narcotics smugglers, rates of vehicle theft and numbers of abandoned vehicles, impacts on property values, and other measures of economic activity and environmental impacts

  • Malaysia begins fingerprinting all visitors

    Under a new trial program, next month the government of Malaysia will begin scanning the fingerprints of all travellers entering and exiting the country to help combat international crime and terrorism; the program, dubbed the Biometric Fingerprint Security System, is aimed at reducing fraud from the current screening method which involves a security official matching a traveller’s face to their passport photo; 3 percent of the 24.4 million foreigners who visited Malaysia last year were involved in crimes; biometric scanners are currently being installed at sixty-one of Malaysia’s ninety-six ports of entry, and the trial program will begin 1 June

  • Brain, not eyes, performs near-optimal visual search

    In the wild, mammals survive because they can see and evade predators lurking in the shadowy bushes; this ability translates to the human world — Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners can pick out dangerous objects in an image of our messy and stuffed suitcases

  • Arizona to solicit donation to build border fence

    Arizona lawmakers, saying they have lost patience with what they regard as federal dithering over the issue of building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, announced plans to launch a Web site which will solicit private donations for the project; donors will receive certificates declaring that the individual has “helped build the Arizona wall”

  • DHS struggles to detect billions in cash smuggled across U.S.-Mexico border

    Each year Mexican drug cartels smuggle billions of dollars of cash into and out of the United States, yet despite their best efforts, DHS officials are struggling to stem the flow of cash that is fueling the drug wars; the Department of Justice estimates that each year Mexican drug cartels smuggle as much as $39 billion in cash across the southern border; DHS officials say that it is having a difficult time detecting cash; officials are actively seeking to develop technological solutions to help detect individuals smuggling large amounts of cash across the border; but the technology to accomplish this goals may not exist yet as there are several large technical and logistical hurdles that must be overcome