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Immigration
Local law enforcement officials and state lawmakers are increasingly working to circumvent Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s decision to opt out of the controversial Secure Communities immigration program; last Wednesday U.S Senator Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) called on DHS secretary Janet Napolitano to allow the state to join Secure Communities without Governor Patrick’s approval; Under Secure Communities, a detained individual’s fingerprints are automatically scanned and checked against DHS and FBI databases to determine their immigration status
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Immigration
On Wednesday, federal immigration authorities announced they had detained nearly 3,000 illegal aliens in the largest nation-wide raid of its kind; of the 3,000 aliens arrested, more than 1,600 were felons convicted of crimes like manslaughter, attempted murder, armed robbery, sex crimes against minors, and drug trafficking
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Border security
A recently released report concludes that violence from the Mexican government’s war against the drug cartels is increasingly spreading into the United States; the report found that as the Mexican military cracks down further on drug cartels, these organizations have pushed further north into Texas to create a “sanitary zone”
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Immigration
As federal immigration officials implement President Obama’s latest immigration guidelines, many undocumented immigrants face an uncertain future with authorities still reviewing existing procedures; an undocumented junior at New York’s Stony Brook University is fighting to stay in the United States following notice by immigration authorities that she and her mother will be sent back to Bangladesh
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Business
On Monday InfoZen announced that it had won a $90 million five-year contract with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide IT services
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Two new papers say that if the United States is serious about border security, then instead of building bigger walls or throwing more resources at empty enforcement efforts, the United States should adopt strategies that address real threats to U.S. border security — drug cartels
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A new GAO report says that that fact that there is no comprehensive security strategy for the U.S.-Mexico border makes it difficult for the Pentagon effectively to use the National Guard units assigned to help the Border Patrol guard the border
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A new report by a Canadian think tank provides a critique of the recently announced Shared Vision Declaration between Canada and the United States; the report emphasizes what it calls the threat to the privacy of Canadians’ personal information posed by this new initiative
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Border security
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 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
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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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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Last week California legislators approved a controversial bill that would allow undocumented workers to receive state loans for college
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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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The long view
4 Key Facts About Climate Change and Human Migration
How does climate change affect human migration and what does it mean for border policies? Learn about the complex relationship between weather and cross-border migration across different demographic groups, and the role for future policies.