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1. USCBP nominee outlines goals
2. ICE nabbing more criminals
3. Citizenship left off Census
4. CA groups protest Arpaio
5. CO outreach center shutters

1.
Alan Bersin is at home on a daunting frontier
The nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection sees an opportunity for 'huge change' even though Mexico's drug war has dramatically heightened tensions along the border.
By Sebastian Rotella
The Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2009

On the third day of a sprint through Texas and Arizona, a law enforcement convoy zooms into Nogales. Riding in a sport utility vehicle, Bersin scans a dusty landscape that he knows well: this desert town of 20,000 with its fast-food joints and discount shops facing the pastel facades and helter-skelter skyline of Nogales, Mexico, a city of 300,000 just south of the fence.

Bersin, a compact 63-year-old with the stride of a former star football player at Harvard, arrives at the Nogales station, the U.S. Border Patrol's biggest. His entourage hurries into a roll call room crowded with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, many of them Latinos whose small talk is sprinkled with Spanish.

Bersin is the federal point man at the border for the second time in his career and the officers' likely new boss, having been nominated for commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. He gives a pep talk in crisp tones tinged with his native Brooklyn.

"We will make a huge change at this border," he says. "You are here at a moment of history being made. You will tell your grandchildren about it someday."

The border czar has come to Arizona to assess a smuggling onslaught that generates more arrests and marijuana seizures than anywhere else on the international line. Smugglers use cranes to lift drug-laden cars over the fence; unemployed Mexican miners dig tunnels; cartel pilots fly above the oxygen limit. In Sonora state this summer, police found a Chevy Suburban containing victims of Mexico's drug war: 11 corpses chopped into pieces.

The two nations must seize a rare opportunity for progress, Bersin tells the officers. Encouraging questions and trying to put the group at ease, he jokes that his wife describes him as "often wrong, but never uncertain." He paraphrases the French poet Paul Valery: "The main challenge of our times is that the future is not what it used to be."

It's classic Bersin. Cerebral, combative and politically connected, he's at ease in the trenches of law enforcement. A resident and scholar of the border, he knows its extremes of squalor and beauty, hope and despair. He thrives on the singular energy of a region that others tend to fear, ignore or misunderstand.

"There is such a difference from everywhere else," Bersin said. "It's a place where nations begin and end in a legal and jurisdictional sense. And yet border communities live without reference to that in many ways. It's the idea of 'El Tercer Pais' [the third country] that makes it enormously attractive."

The son of a pharmacist, Bersin went to Harvard, where he befriended future Vice President Al Gore. He met the Clintons while at Yale Law School and Oxford. In the 1990s, he served as U.S. attorney in San Diego and was given additional duties as the Clinton administration's border czar. Then he detoured into public education, running the San Diego school district and holding the post of California education secretary.

This year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano made him her special border representative based in Washington. In September, President Obama nominated him for the commissioner post. Customs and Border Protection, the nation's largest law enforcement agency, has about 60,000 officers guarding the nation's air, land and sea boundaries while trying to speed the flow of legal commerce.

"He has huge credibility with law enforcement, yet he gets the trade part," said U.S. Atty. Dennis Burke of Arizona. "With his experience, knowledge of the border, I don't think they've ever had anyone like this guy."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border-czar6-2009no...

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2.
Immigration agents arresting more criminals
By Cindy Carcamo
The Orange County Register (santa Ana), November 5, 2009

Immigration agents in charge of chasing down illegal immigrants who are avoiding deportation orders are increasingly focusing their efforts on arresting those with criminal records.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics reflect a shift in the new administration's focus compared to the last three years.

For instance, three years ago only 22 percent of those arrested by fugitive operations agents in the Southern California area had criminal records.

During this fiscal year, more than 50 percent of the 3,039 arrests in the same area had a criminal history.

Beefed-up manpower, stronger partnerships with local law enforcement and a stronger directive from the top to focus on those with criminal backgrounds who are in the country illegally have led to the change, said Robert Naranjo, assistant field office director. He helps lead the agency's Los Angeles Office of Detention and Removal Operations.

Naranjo, whose teams focus on finding those who are in the country illegally with standing deportation orders, said stronger ties with local law enforcement have led to good leads and arrests.

"Criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety are a public priority," he said. "We are prioritizing the criminals but we are continuing to pursue cases involving non-criminal immigration fugitives who have ignored court orders to leave the country."

While agents will continue to arrest those in the country illegally when they run across them during operations, Naranjo emphasized the agency's priority.
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http://www.ocregister.com/articles/criminal-agency-teams-2638596-orders-...

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3.
Citizenship question will not be added to 2010 census
By Daniel González
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), November 6, 2009

The 2010 census will not include a controversial question about citizenship that critics said could have led to significant undercounts in Arizona and other states with large immigrant populations.

Undercounting could result in the loss of federal money and diminished political clout for a state because congressional seats are apportioned based on population.

On Thursday, Democrats derailed a push by Republicans in the Senate to include a citizenship question on next year's census. The proposal had sparked a contentious debate over whether all people or only citizens should be used to determine how congressional representatives are allocated to states.

The proposal was co-sponsored by Republican Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana and Robert Bennett of Utah. They sought to have non-citizens excluded from the population numbers used to allocate congressional seats, saying states with large illegal immigrant populations have an unfair advantage.

"The system is broken, and areas of the country with high illegal populations should not be rewarded with greater representation in Congress," said Bennett, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

While adding a citizenship question might have benefited states with few immigrants, it would have hurt states like Arizona that have high numbers of illegal immigrants, said Andrew Reamer, a fellow at Brookings, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.

The census is aimed at counting everyone, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. Adding a citizenship question would have heightened concerns among illegal immigrants already worried that filling out the forms could give the government information to deport them, Reamer said.

Census officials don't share specific household information with other government agencies. They also are working to encourage everyone, regardless of citizenship, to be counted.

An undercount could make Arizona vulnerable to losing a congressional seat. Arizona's illegal-immigration population already is declining due to stepped-up immigration enforcement and the recession driving undocumented immigrants out of the state. In 2007, researchers estimated Arizona had as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants, or about 9 percent of the state's total population, the highest proportion of any state. A study by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the state's undocumented population has dropped by a third since then.

An undercount also could reduce Arizona's share of $500 billion in federal funding allocated annually to states to pay for a variety of programs and services, Reamer said. In 2008, Arizona received about $8.2 billion in federal funding, he said.

On Thursday, all 58 Democrats plus the two Democratic-leaning independents in the Senate voted to block the citizenship question from moving forward. Thirty-nine Republicans, including Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, voted to keep it alive. Arizona's other Republican senator, John McCain, did not vote. But he indicated beforehand that he supported the proposal to add a citizenship question to the census.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/11/06/200911...

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4.
Immigrant rights groups protest Sheriff Arpaio visit
About 50 people greeted Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who stumped for sheriff candidate Bill Hunt in Anaheim.
By Cindy Carcamo
The Orange County Register, November 5, 2009

Anaheim, CA -- They chanted, sang and even danced for "America's Toughest Sheriff."

A protest by immigrants rights groups from throughout Orange County and surrounding areas resembled more of a carnival atmosphere than a manifestation against an Arizona sheriff who thrust himself into the national spotlight for forcing inmates to live in tents and wear pink underwear.

Holding signs stating "Immigration Reform Now" and "Terrorist," about 50 people protested a visit by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a polarizing anti-illegal immigration figure who showed Thursday to the Phoenix Club in Anaheim to stump for Orange County sheriff contender Bill Hunt.

Hunt, a former lieutenant who is making his second bid for office, is known for taking on former Sheriff Mike Carona, who now faces prison time on a witness-tampering conviction. He hopes to win the seat now held by Sheriff Sandra Hutchens.

Arpaio's department is under federal investigation on suspicion of racial profiling as well as improper stops and search and seizures. In addition,Immigration and Customs Enforcement cut their partnership with Arpaio to arrest people who are in the country illegally just based on their immigration status.

Individuals representing a variety of Southern California immigrant rights groups, such as Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and various local day laborer rights groups, joined a six-person contingent who had followed Arpaio from Maricopa County with the sole purpose of protesting his presence Thursday in Anaheim and Friday in San Diego.
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http://www.ocregister.com/articles/sheriff-county-hunt-2639786-rights-ar...

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5.
Denver immigrant asylum center latest to close
The Associated Press, November 5, 2009

Denver (AP) -- A Denver center that offered counseling and legal help to immigrants who sought asylum after they were tortured in their home countries has closed after losing its federal grant.

The Rocky Mountain Survivors Center closed last month.

About 50,000 people seek asylum in the U.S. each year. Torture-survivor programs in other cities including Atlanta and Detroit are struggling to stay open after federal funding cuts. A center in Philadelphia has closed.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iX32KxAp9ghuIk2XIqLxM2...