• Border security
    Fingerprints to be used at U.S.-Mexico border

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers working at the Paso Del Norte (PDN) international crossing in El Paso have initiated work on a system which uses fingerprints to expedite the pedestrian entry process; CBP says the new system will result in more efficient processing of arriving pedestrian traffic

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  • Border security
    Environmentalists worry border environment protection

    Environmentalists have taken aim at an amendment to the Senate appropriations bill for DHS that would allow border enforcement agencies ultimate authority within 100-miles of the U.S. border

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  • Border security
    Pentagon agrees to pay for National Guard deployment along border

    After months of debate, the Pentagon has agreed to pay the expenses for keeping 1,200 National Guard troops stationed along the U.S.— Mexico border; the Pentagon will pay roughly $10 million each month for the Guard’s deployment through the end of this year

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  • Mexican border agents cross into U.S. again without permission

    A national watchdog group warns that incursions along the southern border by the Mexican government could be a serious potential security threat

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  • California lawmakers approve Dream Act

    Last week California legislators approved a controversial bill that would allow undocumented workers to receive state loans for college

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  • Immigration offenses make Latinos new majority in prisons

    A new government report found that Latinos now account for more than half of all felony offenders sentenced this year as a result of immigration offenses; the report released on Tuesday by the U.S. Sentencing Commission revealed that Latinos comprised 50.3 percent of all people sentenced in the first nine months of this fiscal year

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  • HSNW conversation with Lee Maril
    Border patrol needs better training, diversity, and resources

    Homeland Security NewsWire’s executive editor Eugene Chow recently got the opportunity to catch up with Lee Maril, a professor at East Carolina University and the director of the university’s Center on Diversity and Inequality Research; Maril specializes in border security and immigration issues along the southern border and recently published The Fence: Human Smuggling, Terrorists, and Public Safety along the US Mexico Border; in his interview with HSNW, Maril discusses the government’s ongoing attempts to build a virtual border fence, improving the border patrol, and the motives behind the latest push for a fence along the border

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  • Border security
    Environmentalists challenge DHS border base expansion plan

    Environmentalist groups challenge a plan by DHS to build a new border patrol base on National park Service Land in Arizona, near the U.S.-Mexico border; the groups argue that DHS fails adequately to assess the effects of the department’s border-security and enforcement activities along the U.S.-Mexico border, including tripling the size of its base in the desert

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  • Immigration
    Tomato giant fined for hiring illegal workers

    Last week, the largest year-round grower of greenhouse tomatoes in the United States was fined $600,000 for knowingly hiring undocumented workers; Eurofresh Inc., pled guilty to the charges of employing illegal workers and now faces a five year probation

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  • Border security
    Unusual smuggling tunnel found near California-Mexico border

    Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) continued to gather evidence following the discovery of an incomplete pipeline-style smuggling tunnel last Thursday afternoon; the tunnel originated beneath the floor of a vacant Mexican supermarket

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  • Immigration
    Texas bills government $349 million for illegal immigrants

    Earlier this month in a letter to DHS secretary Janet Napolitano, Texas governor Rick Perry blamed the federal government for failing to secure the border and requested $349 million to help cover the costs of detaining illegal immigrants; when she was governor of Arizona, Napolitano would also regularly send the Department of Justice invoices seeking reimbursements for illegal immigration-related expenses by the state of Arizona

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  • Immigration
    San Jose halts gang violence, ends ICE partnership

    Two months after it began its alliance with immigration officials to crack down on gang violence, the San Jose Police Department in California announced that it was ending its partnership with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency; on 24 June, two ICE agents stepped in to help San Jose which was struggling to contain its highest murder rate in twenty years

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  • Obama administration seeks hold on tough Alabama immigration law

    The Obama administration has requested a federal judge to temporarily block a tough new immigration law set to take effect in Alabama on 1 September

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  • Union Pacific settles drug fines, invests $50M in border security

    Railroad giant Union Pacific Corp. agreed last week to invest $50 million to help protect the U.S.-Mexico border and to improve supply chain security; the announcement comes as the settlement of an ongoing dispute between the railroad company and U.S. border officials over nearly $500 million in fines

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  • Transportation
    Mexican trucks cited for 1 million violations since 2007

    Trucks transport roughly $275 billion worth of goods — or 70 percent of the total — that pass between the United States and Mexico annually; the trucks from Mexico, however, often fail to meet U.S. safety standards

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  • Hacking
    Rampant insider hacking at U.S. immigration agency

    A yearlong investigation by the DHS Inspector General has revealed multiple instances of insider hacking at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS); the inspector general found that employees had accessed management-level email and other confidential files

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  • Immigration
    ICE breaks up international artifact smuggling ring

    Immigration officials recently broke up an international gang of thieves who were using the Orlando International Airport to smuggle ancient artifacts into the country

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  • Ground transportation
    CBP, railroad settles smuggling dispute

    Smugglers use trains which go from Mexico to the United States to smuggle drugs and other contraband. In the last few years, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) has imposed fines totaling millions of dollars on Union Pacific Railroads for carrying the smuggled goods — even though UP maintained it knew nothing about the illegal shipments; CBP and UP have now settled their dispute

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  • Immigration
    DHS cracks down on sham universities

    DHS officials are cracking down on sham universities that make millions of dollars by preying on foreign students, especially those from India, with promises of student visas; in January, officials shut down Tri-Valley University in California on suspicion of visa fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering; officials believe that the university made millions of dollars by giving foreign nationals illegally obtained student visas

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  • Immigration from Mexico down to "almost nothing"

    A recent report found that the number of immigrants entering the United States from Mexico has fallen to “almost nothing”; Mexico only lost about 0.09 percent of its population due to migration between March 2010 and March 2011, 83 percent lower than in 2006

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