Thirty Cubans fleeing Cuba landed near the off-limits cooling canals for the Turkey Point nuclear power plant; the migrants stayed — undetected — in the high-security area for about six hours; Florida Power & Light learned the Cubans had landed on its property only when a member of the group phoned the plant’s control room hours after the group’s arrival

The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or C-TPAT, program was supposed to list trusted shippers with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, so that these shippers’ trucks would have to spend less time at border checkpoints; trouble is, drug traffickers know this, and they use the system to smuggle their shipments into the United States

Government figures show a 23 percent drop in the number of illegal immigrants caught trying to enter the United States in the past year, and a 67 percent decline since 2000; debate over immigration reform re-opens on the Hill, but the main problem remains what to do with the twelve million illegal immigrants already in the United States

There are many facets to the debate about the best way to handle illegal immigration into the United States, but for the 210 U.S. border counties, where the economy and immigration are tied closely together, tighter immigration control means slowdown in business activity

DHS proposes to spend billions of dollars collecting fingerprints and eye scans from all foreign travelers at U.S. airports as they leave the country; already, the United States demands biometric data, typically fingerprints and digital photos, from arriving air and sea travelers with visas; the aim is to try to ensure the person matches the individual who was given the visa overseas. Canadians and Mexicans are currently exempt

OSI’s Security division, Rapiscan Systems, has received approximately $29 million in orders from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to provide multiple units of its cargo and vehicle inspection solutions

Africans who want to immigrate to the U.K. found a relatively easy way to do so: they seek political asylum, saying they come from war-ravaged countries; the U.K. Border Agency wanted to make sure, by checking their DNA, that they come from the war-ravaged countries they claim to come from; scientists criticized the scheme as “naive” and “scientifically flawed,” so the UKBA suspended it — only to reinstate it the next day, partially

Customs agents can now instruct you to log on to your laptop so they can read your e-mails and personal files and examine which Web sites you have visited; they can make a copy of your hard drive, and of any other storage device, so the government can comb through the contents more leisurely; this contents, without your knowledge, may be shared with any other government agency; it can be kept in perpetuity; the same applies to your BlackBerry, iPhone, and other digital devices; customs agents can do all that, according to DHS policy, “absent individualized suspicion”; a law professor says the government’s substitution of “search at will” for “reasonable suspicion” is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment

The U.K. Post Office has volunteered seventeen offices to collect dabs on a trial basis, with tests to start next week; so far the Identity and Passport Service has issued 90,000 cards mostly to students and people renewing marriage visas. This beats its previous target of 75,000 cards by November 2009