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1. DHS shifts focus of 287(g)
2. Secure Communities expanding
3. Schumer promises legislation
4. 287(g) shifts draw protest
5. TX online monitoring bankrupt

1.
New edict on immigration enforcement
Homeland Security tells local police agencies to focus on serious crimes, not minor ones, in its 287(g) program .
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, July 11, 2009

Local police agencies empowered by the federal government to enforce immigration law must focus their efforts on criminals who pose a threat to public safety, with less emphasis on those who commit minor crimes, Department of Homeland Security officials announced Friday.

The announcement aims to clarify a controversial program that deputizes police to turn over suspects or criminals to immigration authorities for possible deportation. Normally police do not enforce federal law.

The law, known as 287(g), took effect in 1996.

Most of the participating police agencies signed up under President George W. Bush, whose administration promoted it as a tool against dangerous criminal immigrants.

Immigrant rights groups said it led to civil rights violations and racial profiling.

Some police departments check immigration status in a wide variety of crimes. Friday's directive lays out federal priorities: violent crimes such as rape or robbery, as well as major drug offenses; followed by property crimes, such as burglary and fraud.

All 66 police departments that already participate in the program must sign a new, uniform memorandum within 90 days.

They also must agree to pursue the criminal charges that prompted an illegal immigrant's detention. In other words, police can't make an arrest just to find out if someone is in the country illegally.

"This new agreement promotes consistency across the board to make sure that all of our partner agencies are abiding by the same standards," said Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler.

The memorandum says that police agencies will be bound by civil rights laws and subject to oversight by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they arrest and detain illegal immigrants for possible deportation. Any agency that cannot prove that it is following those standards could lose its federal authority.

In addition to the changes, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that 11 new police agencies have signed agreements, none of them in California. (The sheriffs in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties already participate in the program.)

Though some law enforcement agencies, including those in California, check the status only of those in custody, others do so when arresting people on the street. Since 2006, deputized officers have identified more than 120,000 suspected illegal immigrants nationwide, officials said.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig11-2009jul11,0...

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2.
ICE program is casting a wide net
Database is helping to identify dangerous illegal immigrants in jail, but critics see a troubling trend
By Susan Carroll
The Houston Chronicle, July 13, 2009

A little after 3 a.m. Dec. 12, Carlos Garcia-Hernandez was booked into Harris County Jail on an aggravated assault charge, accused of slicing a man's nose down to the bone after a disagreement at a birthday party.

At the jail, the first in the country with full access to a Department of Homeland Security database that contains millions of immigration records, a Harris County detention officer ran Garcia-Hernandez's fingerprints.

Within minutes the system found a hit. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had deported Garcia-Hernandez in November 2007 after a string of convictions including marijuana possession and escaping from law enforcement custody, the system showed.

The DHS system also showed Garcia-Hernandez had two outstanding murder warrants in Mexico. “A year ago, we wouldn't have gotten that,” said Lt. M. Lindsay, the point man for the Harris County Sheriff's Office's efforts to identify suspected illegal immigrants in the jails.

The database is part of an ICE program dubbed “Secure Communities,” which aims to identify and deport the most dangerous illegal immigrants in U.S. jails and prisons. Since Harris County started using the database in October, participation in the program has grown to 70 sites in the U.S., including 39 in Texas.

In the program's first six months, more than 266,000 fingerprint submissions were run through the system nationally, generating more than 32,000 “matches” for suspects with both an immigration history and record of a prior conviction or charge. That includes 5,369 matches in Harris County.

But critics see a troubling trend in the data.

Nationally, only 15 percent of the 6,130 suspects that authorities filed paperwork to detain after finding a match in the system were classified as “aggravated felons” — the agency's primary target group. The percentage was even lower in Harris County, with fewer that one in 10 suspects falling into that category, according to ICE statistics from late October to the end of April, the most recent available.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6526211.html

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3.
Talk of new immigration bill gets mixed reaction
By Edward Sifuentes
The North County Times (Escondido, CA), July 12, 2009

A top Democrat last week said he would put together a new immigration reform bill by Labor Day that would get tough on illegal immigrants, requiring tough sanctions against their employers and new tamper-proof ID cards for all American workers.

The legislation proposed by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's immigration subcommittee, got mixed reaction from local congressmen and immigration advocates.

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, and an outspoken critic of illegal immigration, said he liked Schumer's tough talk.

"It was a totally different attitude than what we've heard before," Bilbray said.

Representatives for various immigrant rights groups said they are not opposed to cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, but said that any measure must take a comprehensive approach by also giving illegal immigrants a pathway to legalize their status.

"Everyone understands that the rule of law is part of the balance, but you have to deal with all the pieces," said Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration at the National Council of La Raza, a national Latino civil rights organization.

With its proximity to the U.S. border with Mexico, North County has been a battlefront in the illegal immigration debate. Thousands of illegal immigrants live and work in the region, where local governments, law enforcement, schools and employers struggle daily to cope with this shadow population.

Bilbray, who is chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, a group of predominantly Republican members of Congress who favor stricter immigration enforcement measures, said he would like employers to be required to use the government's E-Verify system.

The computer system allows employers to check an employee's information, such as Social Security number, against government databases to make sure that he or she are legally allowed to work in the U.S.
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Other critics, such as Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that lobbies for stricter immigration, said that by endorsing the E-Verify program, the administration may be trying to gain support for an immigration bill later this year that would include legalizing millions of illegal immigrants.

"Both Obama and Schumer have acknowledged that the administration needs real credibility on enforcement if it's ever going to get enough votes in Congress for amnesty and implementing the federal contractor rule could have moved them a little ways in that direction," Krikorian wrote in his blog.
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http://www.northcountytimes.com/articles/2009/07/12/news/sandiego/zafe70...

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4.
Congressional Reactions to 287(g) Revisions
By Mickey McCarter
Homeland Security Today, 13 July 2009

Members of Congress disagreed on the wisdom of revisions to a federal agreement that deputizes local law enforcement officers to arrest criminal aliens to focus those efforts on illegal immigrants who pose a threat to US communities. The revisions generally drew praise from Democrats but protests from Republicans.

The revised memorandum of understanding provides new instructions on how local law enforcement agencies should approach execution of their duties under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which empowers US Immigration and Customs Enforceement (ICE) to grant local agencies the ability to carry out the functions of federal immigration officers.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson declared that the original program had dangerously morphed "beyond its original boundaries and led to a lack of accountability."

"I am gratified that this committee's oversight led the Department to revamp the 287(g) program," Thompson said in a statement. "This $60 million initiative was intended to allow local law enforcement authorities to remove dangerous aliens. With the proper training and supervision, these local peacekeepers could have been a potent force multiplier. Unfortunately, this opportunity was squandered and the previous administration allowed popularity to become a replacement for documented performance and constitutional principles."

Revisions to the program will result in taking the program back to its original purpose, he added.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, accused the revisions to 287(g) agreements of hurting the ability of local law enforcement agencies to protect Americans.
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http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/9337/128/

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5.
Virtual border system ineffective, out of cash
By Brandi Grissom
The El Paso Times (TX), July 11, 2009

Austin -- Gov. Rick Perry's border Web camera program has run out of money, and in its first full year of operation failed to meet nearly every law enforcement goal.

Last year, Perry gave the Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition a $2 million federal grant to install cameras along the U.S.-Mexico border and broadcast the footage live over the Internet. An internal report showed that a fraction of the 200 cameras Perry wanted on the border were installed, and that Internet border patrollers produced a handful of drug busts and a scattering of arrests.

Experts on both sides of the immigration issue said the program was unsuccessful. Certain lawmakers have called it a waste.

"Instead of making Texas safer, it has made Texas the source of international ridicule," said state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso.

Still, Perry is seeking another $2 million to prop up the project that was supposed to become self-sustaining. After being shown a report that indicated the cameras fell far short of their goals, Perry's staff produced a new, revised report that put the program in a more positive light.

The grant that financed the program has expired, and the sheriffs coalition says that without more funding, the cameras will go dark.

Original goals for the program were unrealistic, said sheriffs coalition executive director Don Reay. He said the cameras have been a success.

"We're hoping there will be a new (grant) offered for next year," he said.

In its first full year, the camera Web site drew more than 39 million hits and caught the attention of national and international media.

But interviews and reports the El Paso Times obtained indicate the nearly 125,000 "virtual Texas deputies" registered on the site led law enforcement to just eight drug busts and 11 arrests.
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Another try?

Experts on both sides of the immigration issue, those who want tighter security and those who want comprehensive reform of U.S. policy, said Perry's border camera experiment was ineffective.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes immigration restrictions, said the camera program was worth a shot.

"Maybe it isn't worth spending another 2 million bucks on it, but I would have to say it certainly was worth spending the first $2 million," Krikorian said.

Texas, he said, could do more to curb illegal immigration by using that $2 million to crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers.
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http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_12819545?source=most_viewed