1. IA Rep. ready to lead
2. Congress considering DREAM Act
3. Unmanned drones help on border
4. CA petition for enforcement
5. CO to discuss enforcement

1.
King: Draw the line on immigration
By Joseph Morton
Omaha World Herald, November 24, 2010

U.S. Rep. Steve King has been called a lot of unflattering names by those who take issue with his hard-line stances on illegal immigration and often-controversial rhetoric.

Soon they will call him something else — chairman.

The GOP takeover of the House means that the western Iowa Republican is in line to run the congressional subcommittee that oversees immigration.

King tells The World-Herald that he intends to take advantage of that new platform to press for tougher policies toward those in the country illegally, compared with those favored by Democrats when they controlled the House.

The committee has tried “an open-borders approach to this and trying to find a way to justify eroding the rule of law and erasing our borders,” he said, “so now we need to re-establish our borders and re-establish the rule of law.”

The Obama administration announced last month that a record 392,000 illegal immigrants were deported during the 2010 fiscal year. Part of the reason for the increase was a greater administration emphasis on deporting illegal immigrants convicted of felonies.

Nearly half of the 392,000 were criminals.

Advocates of tighter immigration policies say the administration also needs to get tougher on workplace enforcement.

King said his focus will be turning up the heat on so-called “sanctuary cities” by proposing to cut their federal funds unless they provide better help with enforcing federal immigration law.

He defines sanctuary cities as those with “either a written or a de facto policy that prohibits their law enforcement officers from ... cooperating with immigration enforcement personnel or gathering information that's helpful to immigration enforcement personnel.”

“There are some cities that have a written policy,” King said. “Some have an unspoken policy. Some, it's in the culture.”

King cited Los Angeles, Denver and Seattle as sanctuary cities — and called San Francisco a “notorious” example.

He suspects that there are cities in Nebraska and Iowa that would qualify, but he couldn't name any.

“I'd be surprised if there were not,” King said.

He said some Des Moines police officers have told him that Iowa's capital city is practicing sanctuary policies, but the city's police chief tells a different story.

The exact legal definition of a sanctuary city will have to be ironed out, King said.

Leaders in San Francisco and Denver have rejected their cities being labeled sanctuary cities.

Tony Winnicker, spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, said that his city's approach is shared by many — and that King doesn't seem to understand the city's policy.

“What our policy does say is that when people send their kids to school or cooperate with police as a witness to a crime or they visit a clinic when they're sick, that they don't have to fear harassment and intimidation,” Winnicker said.

San Francisco's police officers report to federal authorities when they arrest criminals who are suspected of being in the country illegally, he said. However, he rejected King's suggestion that local police should report illegal immigrants who are not suspected of other crimes.

“We don't waste our local law enforcement resources on ferreting out undocumenteds who are not committing crimes at the expense of local public safety,” Winnicker said.

King faces plenty of obstacles to enacting any sweeping legislation — Democrats still control the Senate, and President Barack Obama still wields the veto pen.

But Latino leaders and groups that favor a different approach say the changes in congressional power generally and King's new position specifically mean that progress is unlikely on addressing the real problems with immigration.

“His approach tends to be more about scapegoating people than about getting to real solutions. ... I would like to see a different kind of leadership on this issue,” said Darcy Tromanhauser of the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest.

Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, said King's new position would bring with it greater news media attention and influence.

“From the standpoint of those who oppose him, he's in a position to do quite a bit of mischief,” Goldford said. “From the standpoint of the people who support him, he's in the position to exercise quite a bit of leverage.”

Officially, the subcommittee that King is expected to lead is the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. But among the first items on King's to-do list is changing its name to the Subcommittee on Immigration.

Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a national group that favors stricter immigration policies, welcomed the change in power. Kirkorian said the GOP takeover and King's new position mean that any form of amnesty is dead for the foreseeable future.

That is true even for piecemeal measures such as the DREAM Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for young people who attend college or serve in the military here but were brought into the United States illegally by their parents, he said.

King has a list of specific items he wants to tackle, including ending automatic birthright citizenship, which he maintains can be done without changing the Constitution. Others say that such a move would require a constitutional amendment and that King's idea is little more than a pipe dream.

But King might have more success at ramping up the enforcement of current laws at the local level.

He said federal law already prohibits cities from instructing their police officers not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. A number of cities violate at least the spirit, if not the letter, of that law, he said.

King suggested that Congress start cutting back federal funds to offending cities over time, giving them a chance to begin to comply. He has not yet specified which funds he might target.

He said the issue of sanctuary cities is crucial because the municipalities are establishing a precedent that local law enforcement can ignore federal laws.

“That's a concept that cannot be conceded,” King said. “If we allow them to establish a parameter that local jurisdictions don't overlap with federal jurisdictions, then there are many, many federal laws that would not be enforced, they'd be so difficult to enforce, and we would have a dysfunctional law enforcement.
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http://www.omaha.com/article/20101124/NEWS01/711249898/0

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2.
Congress eyes DREAM Act: Fair to illegal immigrants or back-door amnesty?
By Gail Russell Chaddock
The Christian Science Monitor, November 23, 2010

If compelling human stories counted as votes, the DREAM Act would breeze through the lame-duck session of Congress, which resumes on Monday.

Take Pedro Ramirez, the student body president at California State University, Fresno, whose illegal status recently was leaked by an anonymous tipper. In response, hundreds of Fresno State students rallied to support him last week.

“It’s time to pass the DREAM Act,” said university President John Welty, who urged students to call members of Congress.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, first introduced in August 2001, creates a path to citizenship for children under the age of 16 brought to the US illegally and who attend college or have joined the military. It’s a top priority of Senate Democrats in the waning days of the 111th Congress. Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada says he will take the measure to the floor as early as next week.

It’s also a flash point in an ongoing partisan fight over whether and how to reform the nation’s immigration laws. Republicans have pressed for stronger enforcement of existing law – including beefed up border security and more reliable identify documents to help employers screen applicants – as a confidence-building measure.

In anticipation of a floor fight over this bill, Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are circulating a position paper that describes the DREAM Act as a gateway to a broad amnesty for millions of people and their extended families now in the US illegally.
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Anti-illegal immigration groups caution that a vote for the DREAM Act could also threaten Republican senators who face voters in 2012.

“The pro-DREAM people are trying to gin up this sense of inevitability,” says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. “Even the Republicans who cosponsored it – Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Orrin Hatch of Nevada – they’re up in two years and they are facing [possible] conservative primary challengers,” he adds. “Do they want to open up this huge new target on their backs? I don’t see it.”
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/1123/Congress-eyes-DREAM-Act-...

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3.
Unmanned craft aid border effort
By Brady McCombs
Arizona Daily Star, November 23, 2010

Sitting in a pilot seat, David Gasho types a set of GPS coordinates into a computer in front of him.

A black-and-white image of desert terrain comes into focus as an infrared camera mounted to the Predator B unmanned aircraft scans the slice of the border Gasho wants to see and sends live video via satellite.

It's been nearly 30 minutes since radar operators in California alerted this crew of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine air interdiction agents to a suspicious ultralight plane, and they still haven't spotted it. Time is ticking - radar operators tell agent Dan Robbins the ultralight is getting close to the border. If they don't spot it soon, it could drop a load of drugs and get back to Mexico without agents seeing where it went.

Robbins, Gasho and pilot Kevin Krogh aren't in a cockpit, but instead are inside a 32-foot trailer at the Libby Army Airfield in Sierra Vista, directing the Predator B and controlling its cameras and radar. The small craft they're flying high above the U.S.-Mexico border is hundreds of miles from where they sit.

Finally, the aircraft's synthetic aperture radar spots movement that may be the ultralight.

"See that hit out in the middle of nowhere?" asks Brad Van Cleave, the crew's radar operator.

Gasho uses the control stick to move over the green dot on the map, and clicks. The camera pans over and Gasho zooms in a bit. He's using the infrared mode, and a hot spot - a star-shaped white object - appears on the screen.

"I got him!" Gasho says, standing up to touch the spot on the screen. "Nice job, guys."

The $2.5 million Raytheon camera mounted to the Predator B captures a clear picture of the ultralight plane flying about 10 miles south of where the unmanned aircraft is loitering.

Gasho keeps the camera on the ultralight as it crosses the border into the U.S, drops a load of marijuana and men load it into a vehicle. The team's job is done, and federal agents on the ground take over the case.

"It doesn't get any better than that," says Gasho, director of the the Air and Marine unmanned aerial systems program in Sierra Vista.

Growing program

The Predator B flying on this recent night is one of three based in Arizona and seven nationwide in the burgeoning unmanned aerial system program run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine.

Three more Predator B's are to come aboard by the end of 2011. That would bring the fleet to 10, up from one when the program was launched in 2005. The agency's Predator B fleet is now the world's second largest, next to the Air Force's.

The aircraft once used only by the military in overseas conflicts have found a home in the Department of Homeland Security because they can do what most manned aircraft cannot. The Predator B can fly for 20 hours at a time. Its cameras can determine from as far as 10 miles away if a ground sensor was set off by armed drug smugglers or cows. And it can collect intelligence on a suspicious house without anybody below knowing because it flies so high, so quietly and can get video while it loiters and watches.

"This a technology whose time has come," says Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine.

Over the last three fiscal years, the Sierra Vista-based Predator B has flown about 1,000 operational hours a year, or about 20 hours a week, along the Southwest border.

But the program has its detractors, who question if this is the best use of taxpayer money and whether the unmanned aircraft might crash into other planes in the sky or people on the ground.

The Federal Aviation Administration hasn't fully accepted unmanned aircraft into the national airspace because of safety concerns, limiting the hours and places they can fly.

The first Predator B operated by the DHS crashed and was destroyed in 2006 north of Nogales.

"Unmanned aircraft systems are a promising new technology but one that was originally and primarily designed for military purposes," Henry Krakowski, head of the FAA's Air Traffic Organization, said in testimony before Congress in September. "Although the technology incorporated into (unmanned aerial systems) has advanced, their safety record warrants caution."

Plus, an inanimate object can't do the job of a human, says T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents.

"This is just a boondoggle for the contractors that are selling the predator drones," Bonner says. "The UAVs do lazy circles up in the sky, but they can't go down and assist in apprehending people, which helicopters can."
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http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_20da1f89-5af2-5ee0-b959-2...

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4.
California petition drive cleared for Arizona-style immigration law
The Sacremento Bee, November 23, 2010

The California Secretary of State's office today authorized a signature drive to place an Arizona-style immigration law before California voters.

Called the "Support Federal Immigration Law Act," the proposal was submitted to state authorities in September by Michael Erickson, a Tea Party activist in in the Bay Area city of Belmont and former chair of the Sonoma County Republican Party.

Erickson, speaking at a videotaped rally on his initiative's website, said he worked with a legal team to draft a version of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, which requires that police investigate a person's legal status if an office has reasonable suspicion of that status.

"Since we're never going to get something like this passed through the Democrat-controlled Legislature, it's going to be we the people who are going to make it happen," Erickson said at the rally.

Erickson told the Bee Tuesday that he's tried to draft his proposal -- which also makes it a state crime to hire illegal immigrants -- to avoid constitutional pitfalls. The Arizona law now faces challenges that it is unconstitutional and an overreaching of state law into federal responsibility for immigration enforcement.

Initiative supporters must gather at least 433,971 signatures of registered voters by April 21, 2011, to qualify for an election. Erickson said he'd aim to put the measure before voters during the 2012 election cycle.

The effort will rely largely on volunteers from California's Tea Party network, Erickson said.

The California proposal would make it a state crime for undocumented persons to seek work while hiding their immigration status, and a state crime for employers to "intentionally or negligently" hire an illegal immigrant.
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http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/11/calif-petition-drive-...

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5.
Colo. lawmakers to discuss illegal immigration
By Russ Jones
OneNewsNow (CO), November 24, 2010

Colorado legislators are scheduled to hold a public hearing next week that will be conducted by the caucus of House Republicans and will feature immigration experts from across the country who will discuss the issue.

On Monday (November 29) at the "Illegal Immigration Summit," Colorado state legislators will interact with speakers and hear testimonies about how illegal immigration imposes an economic hardship on the state.
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Broad topics to be discussed will include historical information on immigration in the U.S., a review of Colorado's legislation associated with illegal immigration, and the impact of illegal immigration on local gang activity and public safety. Speakers will include representatives from the Center for Immigration Studies, the Federation of American Immigration Reform, the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform, representatives for Colorado law enforcement, and state-elected officials.
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http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=1239064