• Republican leaders to pursue immigration priorities different than Obama's

    Incoming Republican congressional leaders have plans of their own for border and workplace enforcement; Obama says he still has hope for a path to citizenship for at least some illegal residents; incoming chairmen Peter King (House Homeland Security Committee) and Lamar Smith (House Judiciary Committee) say they have different priorities on immigration than the Obama administration

  • Millions allowed into U.S. without proper border documents

    The inspector general for DHS estimated this week that about 3.6 million people a year were still passing through customs without the required documents — passports or other hard-to-forge identification cards — and that about half of those were coming through the border crossings in Texas

  • State-federal tensions on immigration issues continue

    Governor David Patterson of New York has pardoned six immigrants facing deportation because, he says, deportation is unjustified in their cases; “[immigration officials] may take no account of the New York State criminal justice decisions, but I do,” he said; the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the first of two controversial Arizona immigration law; this law was signed by then governor Janet Napolitano, now DHS secretary in the administration which is challenging the law in court

  • Carjackings, violence to increase in wake of Mexico prison break

    Close to 200 drug dealers, murderers, and human traffickers broke out of a Nuevo Laredo prison — probably with the help of guards who were bribed or threatened; members of the Zetas were behind the prison break, and they are expanding their influence in cities close to the U.S. border; intelligence analysts say that the breakout means that we should expect more violence in cities within the Zetas-dominated areas

  • Adding biometrics to E-Verify would reduce illegal immigration

    A new white paper argues that adding biometric technology to E-Verify would bolster DHS’s legal employment verification system; the paper author, former senior FBI official, says that better verification of employment credentials would significantly reduce the flow of illegal immigrants because it will make that much harder for illegals to find a job

  • Critics: Trusted Traveler will allow Mexican cartels to bypass airport security

    Two weeks ago DHS announced plans the roll out of Trusted Traveler program with Mexico; under the program, Mexicans who have undergone background checks and are deemed low security risks will be able to fly into major U.S. cities and breeze through customs without being questioned by U.S. Customs agents; critics say Mexico’s drug cartels will quickly learn how to exploit loopholes in the plan by recruiting Mexicans with clean backgrounds to attain trusted traveler status, and then use them to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the United States; Mexican citizens are already eligible for expedited land border crossings through another trusted traveler program, Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI); last week, two SENTRI trusted travelers were caught trying to bring contraband across the border into the U.S. through the SENTRI-only express border passage

  • Mexico cannot control border: WikiLeaks documents

    The Mexican government has no control of its 577-mile border with Guatemala, where arms, drugs, and immigrant smugglers appear to have free rein, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable disclosed recently by WikiLeaks; the document says that Mexico does not have enough resources to patrol the border; in another recent document, U.S. diplomats voiced concerns that Mexican drug dealers could end up buying certain high-tech weapons that Russia had sold to Venezuela; such weapons are capable of shooting down U.S. combat helicopters

  • Rep. John Mica urges airports to privatize security screening

    Representative John Mica (R-Florida), the incoming chairman of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is urging U.S. commercial airports to consider private screening companies/contractors as an alternative to the TSA; he has labeled TSA a “bloated bureaucracy” in need of revamping and has emphasized that airports, according to federal law, still have other security options available to them

  • Underground security tech to revolutionize border security

    The University of Arizona College of Engineering is testing an invisible border monitoring system that could revolutionize the way the U.S. conducts homeland security; the border-monitoring system, known as Helios, consists of laser pulses transmitted through fiber-optic cables buried in the ground that respond to movements on the surface above; a detector at one or both ends of the cable analyzes these responses; Helios is sensitive enough to detect a dog and can discriminate between people, horses, and trucks

  • Grim milestone: Mexican border city hits 3,000 dead in 2010

    The Mexican drug war among the drug cartels — and between the cartels and the government —- continues to escalate as more and more weapons pour into the country; Ciudad Juarez, the homicide capital of the world, saw 1,623 people killed in drug-related violence in 2008; the toll increased to 2,763 deaths in 2009; on Tuesday the tolls reached 3,000 for 2010; also Tuesday: the Mexican navy reported it seized nine go-fast boats and a total of 15 metric tons (16.5 tons) of marijuana during two days of searches in the Gulf of California.; on 13 December; and the lower house of Mexico’s Congress voted 384-2, with 21 abstentions, to rescind the congressional immunity from prosecution of a fellow legislator accused of links to La Familia; La Familia leader Nazario Moreno, nicknamed “The Craziest One,” was killed in battles that lasted two days and spread to key parts of Michoacan state

  • Mexicans march in support of killed drug kingpin

    Hundreds of people turned out for the march in Apatzingan, the birth place of La Familia cartel leader Nazario Moreno, who was known as “the Craziest One” and reputedly indoctrinated his gang members in pseudo-Christian ideology; the government says Moreno was killed in Apatzingan on Thursday in a shootout with federal police

  • GAO: gaps in northern border security

    A recent government report says the Border Patrol has limited capabilities to detect illegal activities along the U.S. northern border from Washington to Montana; the Government Accountability Office report says that among other things, the area is considered an entry point for low-flying aircraft that carry high-potency marijuana from Canada

  • Accused 14-year old Mexico hit boy an American

    The 14-year old hit-man, who confessed to beheading four people on behalf of the Cartel of the South Pacific, a branch of the splintered Beltran Leyva gang, is an American citizen; the boy was born in San Diego but grew up in the city of Cuernavaca; a Mexican federal judge said the boy would be tried as a juvenile, meaning that, if convicted, he cannot be sentenced for more than three years in prison; the U.S. State Department says the United States has not yet decided what do in the matter

  • Jeb Bush says Arizona's new immigration law is "the wrong approach"

    Former Florida governor Jeb Bush criticizes Arizona’s controversial immigration law; Bush, whose wife is Mexican, said that his own children might look suspicious if seen walking on the streets of Phoenix; “It’s the wrong approach” he told the National League of Cities convention in Denver this past weekend

  • Mexico violence destroys border cities' ties, tourism

    Narco-gang violence is killing tourism and cooperation along the U.S.-Mexico border; the violence — and a dramatic tightening of border security by the United States over fears of terrorism — have also strangled cooperative relationships among officials of many “sister cities”; in many cases, professional friendships and cross-border ties among city leaders, and police and fire departments, have fallen by the wayside