1. No opt out for Sec. Comm.
2. House hears testimony
3. BP agent in bribe scandal
4. Illegals accept flights home
5. Whitman fights accusations

1.
No opt-out for immigration enforcement
By Shankar Vedantam
The Washington Post, October 1, 2010

The Obama administration is making it virtually impossible for Arlington County, the District and other jurisdictions to refuse to participate in a controversial immigration enforcement program that uses fingerprints gathered by local law enforcement agencies to identify illegal immigrants.

Participation in the program, called Secure Communities, was widely believed to be voluntary - a perception reinforced by a Sept 7 letter sent to Congress by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. This week, Arlington joined the District, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, Calif., in voting to opt out of the program.

But the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency now says that opting out of the program is not a realistic possibility - and never was.

Secure Communities, which operates in 32 states and will soon be running nationwide, relies on the fingerprints collected by local authorities when a person is charged with anything from a traffic violation to murder. The fingerprints are sent to state police, and then to the FBI, for criminal background checks.

Under the two-year-old program, ICE is able to access the information sent to the FBI. If the fingerprint matches that of someone known to be in the country illegally, ICE orders the immigrant detained as a first step toward deportation.

Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants have been removed from the United States under the program, which the administration has made a centerpiece of its effort to focus immigration enforcement on criminals. But those deportees include many thousands who have committed minor offenses or no crimes at all, which has made the program a source of increasing concern to immigrant rights groups.

A senior ICE official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the involuntary nature of the program, said: "Secure Communities is not based on state or local cooperation in federal law enforcement. The program's foundation is information sharing between FBI and ICE. State and local law enforcement agencies are going to continue to fingerprint people and those fingerprints are forwarded to FBI for criminal checks. ICE will take immigration action appropriately."

The only way a local jurisdiction could opt out of the program is if a state refused to send fingerprints to the FBI. Since police and prosecutors need to know the criminal histories of people they arrest, it is not realistic for states to withhold fingerprints from the FBI - which means it is impossible to withhold them from ICE.

The revelation that the program is not really optional stunned Arlington County Board member J. Walter Tejada (D), who spearheaded a months-long effort to evaluate Secure Communities with residents, lawyers and county officials. "It is most frustrating," he said. "Communities were researching this. Attorneys looked at it pro bono. All of that could have been avoided. People spent all summer thinking about this."

Tejada pointed to Napolitano's recent letter to Congress, in which she wrote, "A local law enforcement agency that does not wish to participate in the Secure Communities deployment plan must formally notify the Assistant Director for the Secure Communities program, David Venturella." In a briefing paper, ICE also said that if a city or county did not want to participate, the agency was amenable to "removing the jurisdiction from the deployment plan."

The senior ICE official said local authorities could opt out of learning the specific reason why immigration authorities wanted someone detained. But they would still have to detain the individual.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR201009...

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2.
Media moguls urge Congress to reform immigration
By Suzanne Gamboa
The Associated Press, September 30, 2010

They weren't as funny as television Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert, but media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg made a similar appeal to Congress: Do something about immigration.

Murdoch, the founder of News Corp., urged lawmakers during a hearing Thursday to match attempts to secure the border with efforts to ensure that employers can't hire people illegally.

For his part, Bloomberg, the mayor of New York as well as the founder of the financial news and information service bearing his name, told lawmakers that they should show some leadership on the issue.

"We need immigrants," Bloomberg said. "That's the future of this country and whether the public understands that or not it's Congress' job to lead."

The pair made their pleas before the same House immigration subcommittee that heard tongue-in-cheek testimony on the plight of farmworkers from the "Colbert Report" star last Friday. However, Murdoch and Bloomberg did not pack the hearing room as Colbert did for his appearance.

"I'm not a fan of the government doing anything," Colbert told lawmakers, "but I've got to ask, 'Why isn't the government doing anything?'"

Murdoch and Bloomberg lead a coalition of businesses and mayors to push for immigration reform. The group supports providing a path to legal status for those in the U.S. illegally. Murdoch himself was born in Australia and, while expanding his interests in U.S. media, became an American citizen in 1985. Citizenship allowed him to own U.S. television stations.

"As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world," he said.

The illegal immigrant population has tripled in the U.S., even as the government has increased enforcement spending almost every year since 1992, Murdoch said. The wave of immigrants only started to crest when the country hit a recession, he said.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iEJS72HtRF_FVPoOscvKdN...

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3.
U.S. border officer accused of accepting bribes to allow illegal immigrants to cross border
By Richard Marosi
Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2010

An inspector for U.S. Customs and Border Protection was arrested on corruption conspiracy charges Thursday, accused of accepting bribes in exchange for allowing vehicles filled with illegal immigrants and marijuana to pass through his inspection lanes at the Otay Mesa and San Ysidro border crossings, authorities said.

Lorne "Hammer" Jones, a 17-year veteran, earned up to $20,000 for each vanload of illegal immigrants that passed through his lane without inspection, according to the criminal complaint unsealed Thursday. The number of loads was unspecified. Jones allegedly carried out the scheme from 2000 to 2009.

The investigation was built on the testimony of several witnesses who said Jones would alert smugglers of his lane assignments ahead of time so they knew where to cross. One witness allegedly made 8 to 10 payments of about $10,000 to Jones.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-border-officer,0...

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4.
Illegal immigrants deported by plane hits a high
By Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic, October 1, 2010

A record 23,384 illegal Mexican immigrants voluntarily accepted flights back to their homeland from Arizona this summer under a repatriation program created by the United States and Mexico.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that the number of volunteers in 2010 was more than double the previous year and easily surpassed every annual total since the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program started in 2004.

The program varies in duration each year, ICE spokesman Vincent Picard said.

Repatriation flights were offered for nearly four months this summer compared with 36 days last year.

A joint operation of ICE, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, the program was created to reduce the number of deaths among illegal border crossers and to combat human smuggling.

Captured immigrants in southern Arizona are returned to their homes deep in Mexico instead of being dropped at border towns where they might repeat efforts to unlawfully enter the United States.

"MIRP reflects our mutual commitment to strong and effective enforcement of both nations' immigration laws, and this program is proof that we can do so in a humanitarian way," said Katrina S. Kane, field office director for ICE removal operations in Tucson. "This program prioritizes the humane treatment of detainees throughout the removal process."
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/10/01/201010...

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5.
Meg Whitman says she'd submit to polygraph
By Seema Mehta and Phil Willon
Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2010

Meg Whitman launched a forceful effort Thursday to regain control of her campaign for governor, pledging to take a lie detector test if necessary to prove that she and her husband were unaware they had employed an illegal immigrant housekeeper for nine years until the woman confessed her status in 2009.

"If it comes to that, absolutely," she said at a hastily called news conference in Santa Monica, her husband, Griff Harsh, at her side. "Absolutely, because we were stunned."

But Whitman's lengthy defense was undercut by the second in a dramatic duel of widely broadcast news conferences as the housekeeper's attorney, Gloria Allred, produced a copy of a government letter sent six years before Nicandra Diaz Santillan was fired alerting the couple to potential problems. On the bottom of the letter was a note in what Allred said was Whitman's husband's handwriting: "Nicky, please check this. Thanks."

"Meg Whitman is exposed as a liar and a hypocrite," Allred said, pledging to present evidence that the writing was Harsh's if the couple denied it.

After Allred's news conference, Harsh declined to say whether it was his handwriting on the letter from the Social Security Administration which told the couple that Diaz Santillan's Social Security number and name did not match. He then released a statement through the campaign acknowledging that he might have written the note.

"While I honestly do not recall receiving this letter … it is possible that I would have scratched a follow-up note on a letter like this," he said, adding that "neither Meg nor I believed there was a problem with Nicky's legal status."

Before Allred announced the presence of the writing, Whitman, the former chief executive of EBay, who is making her first run for public office, said that the couple had never seen such a letter. If one had been mailed, Diaz Santillan may have been responsible for taking it, she said.

"She may have intercepted the letter, it's very possible, I have no other explanation," Whitman said. "Nicky did bring in the mail and sort the mail.... It pains me to say that because, gosh, that's not the Nicky I knew."

The second day of telenovela-style conflict between the billionaire Republican candidate and her former $23-an-hour maid roiled the campaign for governor, as Whitman sought to limit damage by blaming the contretemps on her opponent, Democrat Jerry Brown. But she acknowledged that she had no evidence of his complicity.

The focus on an illegal immigrant employee posed a potential threat to Whitman's candidacy because of timing — ballots are mailed to early voters next week — and the impact the dispute could have on key voter groups integral to Whitman's chances of success in November. Of particular concern was the effect on Latino voters and independents, both of whom have been sympathetic to immigrants, if conflicted about how to handle illegal immigration.

Brown's campaign denied that it was behind the emergence of Diaz Santillan and specifically brushed aside Whitman's contention that officials had talked about the general subject with a reporter two weeks ago.

"Our campaign has had no contact with Gloria Allred or Ms. Diaz," said Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford. "I think that the question to be answered today is, whose handwriting is on the letter and what did Meg Whitman know and when did she know it?"

The release of the letter elevated, if somewhat confusingly, a disagreement that for the previous day had been limited to Whitman's word against Diaz Santillan's, played out in comments by the sobbing housekeeper, her media-savvy attorney and a somber candidate.

Both sides agree that the woman was employed by Whitman and Harsh in 2000, after the couple engaged a Palo Alto employment firm to hire a part-time housekeeper. The firm, Town & Country Resources, confirmed Thursday that Whitman was a client and said that Diaz Santillan had provided the parties with proper documents. Whitman's campaign Wednesday released copies of a driver's license, Social Security card and a tax document confirming her legal status.

Whitman said Wednesday and Thursday that she and Harsh were unaware that their employee did not have legal papers until June 2009, when Diaz Santillan asked the couple for legal help in gaining residency. Whitman said that she consulted a lawyer and then fired the employee. She said that although Diaz Santillan was a member of Whitman's "extended family," the two have had no contact since the firing.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1001-whitman-20101001,0,5377199....