• San Francisco sheriff defies federal immigration authorities

    In defiance of federal immigration officials, San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey announced that as of 1 June he would no longer hand over illegal immigrants arrested for low-level crimes to immigration authorities; Hennessey’s actions come in support of San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy which prohibits local officials from cooperating with federal authorities unless immigrants are suspected felons; illegal immigrants arrested for minor crimes like public intoxication or shoplifting will not be held in jail; the new policy does not bar individual sheriff’s deputies from cooperating with federal immigration officials

  • Heightened border security helps fuel billion dollar smuggling business

    As the United States makes it more difficult to cross its borders illegally, business for human traffickers has been booming with smugglers making billions of dollars a year; traffickers make an estimated $6.6 billion each year by bringing immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border; in May, x-ray machines at checkpoints in southern Mexico found 513 people crammed into two trailers, leading to the largest bust yet; the United States has inadvertently generated a boom in the smuggling business by making the border harder to cross; drug cartels are believed to have entered the lucrative market

  • One ton of marijuana, rescued hikers, arrest sex offenders seized on border

    Border patrol agents in Arizona and California had a busy Memorial Day weekend intercepting large quantities of drugs, rescuing stranded hikers, and arresting two sex offenders; border patrol agents in the Tucson section of the U.S.-Mexico border interdicted more than a ton of marijuana along with four firearms; a total of 2,140 pounds of marijuana was intercepted with an estimated value of $1.7 million in Arizona alone;

  • Study: U.S. immigration policy perpetuates poverty

    A new study says that the U.S. current immigration system — that is, the legal immigration system — is dysfunctional in that it is not responsive to the socioeconomic conditions of the United States; the main flaw in the current system — a flaw, the report argues, which will be exacerbated by allowing millions of undocumented immigrants to become citizens — is that only a small share of legally admitted immigrants is sponsored by employers while the bulk are admitted because of family ties to earlier immigrants who may be living in poverty or near poverty

  • New business: guided border tours

    The increased attention to the security of the U.S.-Mexico border has caused many Americans to want to see for themselves what is going on along the border; this gave Tucson, Arizona-based Gray Line an idea, and the “Border Crisis: Fact and Fiction” tour is the result; the guided tour takes passengers to various points along the Arizona part of the U.S.-Mexico border; the trips will be offered twice a month, or upon request for large groups; the all day tours, which include lunch, cost $75 per person

  • CBP Announces New Small Vessel Reporting System

    U.S. Customs and Border Protection the other day announced the availability of the Small Vessel Reporting System along the northern border and in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands; the system is voluntary, and — as is the case with the air travel’s Trusted Traveler program — it aims to provides expedited entry procedures to trusted boaters; the system is open to all U.S. citizens and permanent residents, as well as Canadian citizens

  • Study urges DHS to stop seizing laptops at border

    A recent report called on DHS to stop its border agents from searching electronic devices like laptops and smartphones of individuals entering the United States without reasonable suspicion of wrong doing; the study, released last week by the bipartisan legal think tank The Constitution Project, argued that computers and cell phones contain far too much personal information and searching these devices without probable cause violates privacy considerations; border patrol agents have routinely conducted searches of individuals and their belongings entering the country, it is only recently become a potential legal issue due to the vast amount of personal data that electronic devices can now hold

  • Mexican town revolts, waging own battle against drug cartels

    As Mexico’s drug-related violence continues to grow, one remote Mexican town has decided to take matters into its own hands; the indigenous people of Purepecha have essentially established martial law in their small mountain town of Cheran, Mexico erecting checkpoints, shutting down schools, and running patrols; people have driven out the local police force and armed themselves with stolen police weapons to defend against the drug cartels and their cohorts; their actions come after illegal loggers, who residents say are backed by the drug cartels and the local police, killed two people and injured several others

  • Drug violence causing U.S. firms to reconsider Mexican investments

    As the Mexican government’s battle against drug cartels rages on, U.S. businesses and their employees have become increasingly caught up in the crossfire, which has led many to reconsider investing in Mexico; a recent survey of U.S. companies by the U.S.— Mexico Chamber of Commerce found that only half were planning on moving ahead with investment plans in Mexico; U.S. companies and their workers have become increasingly caught up in the war as collateral damage as well as targets for kidnapping and extortion; in 2010 one out of ten companies reported kidnappings and 60 percent said that their employee had been beaten or threatened by the cartels

  • SBInet replacement takes shape

    After spending more than $1 billion on the failed virtual fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, DHS is moving ahead with the latest incarnation of the high-tech system; rather than using a one-size fits all strategy, DHS will use readily available technology to create tailor made approaches to the geographically diverse 2,000-mile long border; under the new plan, border patrol agents will use a combination of towers, truck mounted surveillance systems, ground sensors, hand-held equipment, and a host of other technologies to secure the border; the new program, dubbed “Alternative (Southwest) Border Technology,” will begin with an initial trial in Arizona

  • Immigration bill moves ahead in South Carolina, stalls in Oklahoma and Tennessee

    In South Carolina, a tough immigration law is making its way through the House, while similar bills stalled in Oklahoma and Tennessee; South Carolina’s House Judiciary Committee voted fifteen to seven to pass a bill that requires law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of individuals they encounter; the legislative session ends in two weeks, and the bill still needs to be approved by the full House; immigration bills in Oklahoma and Tennessee were tabled until next year

  • U.S. to receive Canadian radar feeds to combat drug smugglers

    The Canadian government will soon start supplying DHS with data from its radar feeds to help border officials prevent low-flying airplanes from entering U.S. airspace to smuggle drugs along the northern border; in November the Canadian government will begin sending surveillance information collected from its twenty-two radar feeds to the U.S. Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, California; the data will be used to detect “unlawful entry into the United States”

  • Northern border "more significant threat" to U.S. security than the Mexican border

    As security along the U.S.-Mexico border tightens, drug smugglers and other criminals are shifting their activities to the U.S. northern border; Alan Bersin, head of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing that the U.S. border with Canada sees far fewer detentions and arrests every year — there are about 445,000 arrests and detentions along the U.S.-Mexico border annually, while last year the U.S.-Canada border saw only 6,000 arrests and detentions — but is a “more significant threat” to American security than the Mexican border; the latest step in cross-border policing will see Canada send twenty-two radar feeds to CBP’s center in California that tracks non-commercial aircraft, with the goal of cracking down on narcotics smuggling by small planes flying low over the border to escape detection; the United States was also moving to deploy “military grade” radar along the northern U.S. border as soon as this fall

  • State Department lottery error mistakenly awards visas to 22,000 people

    More than 20,000 people around the world had their dreams of immigrating to America dashed when the U.S. State Department reported that it had erroneously informed them that they had won a lottery that would allow them to live legally in the United States; the U.S. State Department apologized and cited a computer programming error that led to faulty results that had to be invalidated; the lottery is an annual free competition that randomly awards 50,000 people with a visa without the usual employee sponsor or family sponsor; this year nearly fifteen million people applied