Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief Michael Fisher told a Senate committee last week that arrests of illegal border crossers have gone up 13 percent this year. The increase in arrests last year breaks a 7-year trend of decreasing arrests along the border.

Senator Marco Rubio(R-Florida) wasted little time attacking a report by the Heritage Foundation which estimated that new immigration overhaul legislation, of which Rubio is one of the authors, would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion over fifty years. “The Heritage Foundation is] the only group that’s looked at [immigration reform] and reached the conclusion they’ve reached. Everybody else who has analyzed immigration reform understands that if you do it, and we do it right, it will be a net positive for our economy. Their argument is based on a single premise, which I think is flawed,” Rubio added. “That is these people are disproportionately poor because they have no education and they will be poor for the rest of their lives in the U.S. Quite frankly, that’s not the immigration experience in the U.S. That’s certainly not my family’s experience in the U.S.”

The immigration reform bill contains $4 billion for border security. The problem is that no one is quite sure how to measure border security, how do we decide that the border is secure, and who would make that decision.

Republicans opposed to the bi-partisan Senate immigration bill are getting set to launch a campaign to defeat the bill, as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins a review on the bill Thursday. The committee is expected to spend at least three weeks on the bill, with GOP lawmakers opposing the bill ready to offer hundreds of amendments — some in an effort to make the bill more acceptable to them, others in an effort to kill it.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) draft plan regarding the final sections of the border fence that separates the United States from Mexico could impact about 100 people, most reside in a nursing home, according to federal documents.

President Barack Obama announced at a news conference in Costa Rica on Friday that he backs a proposal which would allow Americans to seek legal immigration for their same-sex partners. Obama said that it was “the right thing to do,” but he acknowledged that the provision has little chance of making it into the final immigration package.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) said on a talk radio show on Tuesday that the bipartisan immigration reform legislation unveiled last week, will likely not pass the Republican-led House. “[The bill] will have to be adjusted, because people are very suspicious about the willingness of the government to enforce the laws now,” Rubio said.

Between 2006 and 2011, CBP spent $55.3 million on drone use and maintenance operations, according to a DHS Inspector General (IG) report. The IG recommended that the agency stop buying drones because the aircrafts are costly to maintain and have flown significantly less than their predicted flight times. The bipartisan immigration proposal drafted by the bipartisan Gang of Eight includes a provision which would create a 24/7 border surveillance system heavily dependent on the use of drones.

Lawmakers and attorneys in Minnesota believe that the E-Verify system, a government database for employers to verify that their new hires are eligible to work in the United States, may not be ready just yet.. Lawmakers have raised concerns about a clause in the Senate immigration legislation which would make the E-Verify system mandatory for all businesses within five years.