In El Paso, Texas, more than 100,000 residents depend on the activity across the bridges which connect the United States to Mexico. This includes $80 billion in trade a year that crosses the El Paso bridges and millions of shoppers who cross our bridges who spend more than $1.4 billion in the El Paso economy. Sequestration-related cuts, by promising longer wait times at border crossings, will hurt the local economy, and the El Paso city council is looking for ways to minimize the damage.

First responders and international officials on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border had been preparing since last fall for the Canada-U.S. Enhance Resiliency Experiment (CAUSE) — demonstrating the ability to exchange information between local, state, provincial, and national systems and software applications. With these preparations, a recent joint experiment held in Maine and New Brunswick proved that even across borders, any immediate confusion or lack of information following an incident should not greatly affect overall rescue efforts.

The Gang of 8, a bipartisan group of senators, is finalizing work on a comprehensive immigration reform bill which will be introduced shortly after Congress comes back 8 April. The bill will offer a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants, add up to 200,000 visas per year depending on the U.S. economic conditions and employment needs, increase substantially the number of visas allocated for highly skilled tech workers, and reduce some categories of family visas.

While fewer people are crossing the border between Mexico and the United States, the region saw a significant spike in immigrant deaths last year, according to a report released on Tuesday. the U.S. Border Patrol identified 477 deaths along the border, a 27 percent increase from the 375 deaths in 2012.

The Discovery Channel  on Wednesday aired a documentary on DHS, called “Under Siege: America’s Northern Border.” The show will be shown several more times in the coming weeks. The  one-hour special focuses on the northern border of the United States, which was a  crossing point for some of the terrorists behind the first World Trade Center attack.

The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has started sending furlough notices to its employees, the result of the agency’s need to cope with a 5 percent sequestration-related reduction in salaries and expenses. Border patrol agents say the cuts will hobble efforts to make the border more secure.

DHS secretary Janet Napolitano said  she was not part of the decision to release hundreds of immigrants from detention last week. The immigrants were released as the agency scrambled to prepare for sequestration-related budget cuts. She also said that the timing of the announcement was poor.

On the same day it was reported that hundreds of illegal immigrants facing deportations were released from federal detention because of upcoming sequestration-related budget cuts, the senior DHS official in charge of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants announced his retirement. The administration says the retirement of the official, Gary Mead, is unrelated to the decision to release the detainees.

A bi-costal push for federal immigration reform geared toward highly skilled foreign workers has Silicon Valley business leaders planning a “virtual march on Washington.”