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1. Obama hosts immigration summit
2. Border zones see decreased arrests
3. Fed judge order DHS to respond
4. MA gov seeks to extend healthcare
5. AZ enforcement bills advance

1.
Texas legislators join Obama in immigration talks
By Todd J. Gillman
The Dallas Morning News, June 28, 2009

Washington, DC -- President Barack Obama has hosted high-level brainstorming sessions on health care, fiscal policy and government transparency in his first five months. Last week, after several delays, he got around to hosting a summit on immigration.

The Texas lawmakers on hand emerged with varied assessments of Obama's willingness to break a sweat in order to break an impasse on immigration.

"People tried to posture, both on the left and the right," said Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, chairman of the House intelligence committee.

"The bottom line is going to be what results we get out of it, obviously. The president is very much interested in getting this done."

Obama had disappointed many Hispanic advocates by putting immigration reform low on his domestic agenda, far below health care, energy policy and economic stimulus. Thursday's meeting, with key congressional players from both parties, was an attempt to jump-start talks.

Two Texas Republicans at the meeting, Sen. John Cornyn and San Antonio Rep. Lamar Smith, senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, weren't as sure as Reyes about Obama's commitment.

"The risk is that this just turns into just another photo op and nothing really happens," Cornyn said afterward. The administration's agenda is ambitious, he said, "but you begin to wonder if there's a lot of motion, but not a lot of accomplishment."

Progress, he said, "is only going to come if people are willing to roll up their sleeves and get into the details. So far, I don't see a lot of that going on."

Smith questioned Obama's willingness to embrace the security part of the "comprehensive" equation, citing resistance to tighter driver's license standards, for instance.

He also complained that Obama stacked the meeting with "amnesty supporters. ... It would be unwise to reward lawbreakers in any circumstances, particularly with 14 million unemployed citizens and legal immigrants."

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel conceded that consensus has been elusive: "If the votes were there, you wouldn't need to have the meeting. You'd go to a roll call."
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http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/...

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2.
Arrests along the border drop everywhere but here
By Edward Sifuentes
The North County Times (Escondido, CA), June 27, 2009

The number of illegal immigrants caught at the nation's borders with Mexico and Canada in 2008 dropped to its lowest point in more than 30 years ---- except in San Diego County.

Experts say the overall drop is because of the nation's sagging economy and increased security measures.

The tightened security, however, is driving illegal immigrant traffic from other areas to San Diego County, where the number of arrests has increased in recent years.

Since the mid-1980s, immigration authorities nationwide typically arrested more than 1 million people each year, but that number has seen a steep decline recently as border enforcement tightened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the economy began to falter in 2007.

"Potential migrants are being discouraged primarily by the lack of an assured job in the United States," said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego.

Nationwide, the U.S. Border Patrol and other agencies arrested 723,840 people in 2008, or about 466,000 fewer people than the 1,189,031 arrested in 2005, according to a report released by the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama launched a fresh effort toward a comprehensive immigration overhaul. He said that a bipartisan bill on the "sensitive and volatile political issue" will be difficult but must get under way this year.

Stricter enforcement, including more Border Patrol officers and more fencing, is also making it tougher to cross the border illegally, said Mark Endicott, a spokesman for the agency in San Diego.

However, the number of arrests in San Diego County's section of the border has jumped in recent years, from 126,904 in 2005 to 162,390 in 2008. That could be primarily because of a shift in illegal immigration routes from Arizona to California, Endicott said.
. . .
Bryan Griffith, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates stricter immigration enforcement, said he agreed that the struggling economy is partly responsible. But he also credited increased interior enforcement efforts.

Griffith said a crackdown on high-profile employers who hire illegal immigrants is one of the main reasons why fewer people may be attempting to come into the country illegally.

In November 2007, immigration officials began a crackdown at Smithfield Foods' giant slaughterhouse in North Carolina, eventually arresting 21 illegal immigrants at the plant and rousting others from their trailers in the middle of the night.
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http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/06/27/news/sandiego/z35a890c81cc1af...

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3.
Homeland Security Is Ordered to Respond to Petition on Immigration Jails
By Nina Bernstein
The New York Times, June 26, 2009

Substandard and abusive conditions in immigration detention “are of the utmost importance,” a federal judge in Manhattan said Thursday, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security’s 2 ½-year delay in responding to a petition for legally enforceable regulations was “unreasonable as a matter of law.”

The judge, Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ordered the Obama administration to grant or deny the petition asking for detention rules within 30 days. He denied the government’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit, filed last year by two former immigration detainees and two advocacy agencies, seeking to force a response.

No enforceable standards now exist for the immigration detention system, a rapidly growing conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons across the country where problems of detainee mistreatment have been persistent and widespread. The lawsuit contends that the lack of regulations puts hundreds of thousands of people a year at risk of abuse and inadequate medical care while the government decides whether to deport them.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/nyregion/27immig.html

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4.
Gov. Deval Patrick sides with dental benefits, immigrant coverage
The Boston Herald, June 28, 2009

Gov. Deval Patrick will agree to the Legislature’s plan to preserve $100 million worth of dental benefits for enrollees in MassHealth and Commonwealth Care, heavily subsidized programs that serve largely lower income residents, according to a person briefed on the governor’s plans for dealing with the $27.4 billion state budget on this desk.

Patrick plans to sign the budget on Monday afternoon.

The governor is also expected to propose a $70 million amendment to preserve health coverage for certain immigrants.

The budget bill reduces funding for this segment of the population by $130 million and the $70 million amendment is viewed as a “temporary solution” while the administration works on health design and benefit changes, perhaps with the federal government, according to the person briefed on Patrick’s plans.

The immigrants in question - termed "aliens with special status" - are those who entered the United States legally but have not completed certain residency requirements.

The cost of their coverage is paid for fully by the state budget, while insurance costs for many other comparable Medicaid enrollees is split roughly evenly between the state and federal governments

It was unclear how Patrick planned to pay for the health coverage for immigrants, whether through savings he envisions from vetoes, or one-time or new revenues.
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http://news.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20090628gov_deval_patric...

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5.
Anti-illegal-migrant bills advance
Pearce taking lead in new round of reforms
By Elisabeth Arriero
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), June 28, 2009

Two years after engineering the nation's toughest employer-sanctions law, state Sen. Russell Pearce has taken the lead in a new round of anti-immigration reforms that could have long-lasting effects on Arizona.

One would require school districts to collect data on any student who can't prove legal residency. Another would require state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws, thus making sanctuary laws illegal.

The fate of those and other anti-immigration bills will be determined by the end of Tuesday, when the Legislature is scheduled to end its 2009 session.

Pearce, R-Mesa, has said his latest measures are essential to cutting down on murders, kidnappings and other crimes committed by people in the country illegally. Too often, he believes, such people have evaded federal laws.

Opponents of the measures worry that anti-immigration bills are sailing through the Legislature without proper scrutiny. Some authorities worry that the bills will put undue stress on local police agencies by requiring that they carry out federal law.

Despite such concerns, several of Pearce's key immigration bills as well as lesser ones sponsored by other legislators have progressed steadily through the Senate and House and appear likely to pass by the time the session ends Tuesday night.

Groundbreaking law

Pearce has become the face of anti-illegal-immigration legislation in Arizona. His groundbreaking 2007 law targeted the state's market for illegal labor with what then-Gov. Janet Napolitano called "the most aggressive action in the country." The law is designed to penalize businesses that knowingly hire workers in the country illegally.

Unlike that measure, which remained in the spotlight for months, Pearce's current bills have remained in the shadows of the state budget crisis.

Pearce declined to comment for this article. But in an op-ed piece published Thursday in The Arizona Republic, he set forth what he considers to be serious flaws in the enforcement of immigration law in Arizona. Too often, he suggested, violators of U.S. immigration law have been released rather than held accountable for their actions. This has led to crimes that could be prevented: murders, stabbings, shootings and sex offenses.

House Bill 2280 (originally Senate Bill 1175) received preliminary approval from the Senate on Friday. It requires state, county and city officials to comply fully with the enforcement of federal immigration law. Under the measure, Arizona citizens can file court actions against any official who supports a policy that limits immigration enforcement. Additionally, people in the country illegally can be convicted of the crime of trespassing.

SB 1173 would require public-housing authorities to get proof of lawful residence in the country from applicants.

"We took a two-year hiatus in trying to create state crimes in illegal immigration," said Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City. "But we no longer have any faith in the national government except to create amnesty programs."
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http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2009/06/28/2...