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1. DHS chief presses REAL ID repeal
2. Feds may grant asylum to victims
3. Fed judge rules against TX city
4. ACLU demands 287(g) information
5. Locals angered by checkpoints

1.
Napolitano warns airport security jams ahead
By Stewart M. Powell
The Houston Chronicle, July 15, 2009

Washington, Dc -- Unless Congress drops a requirement by year's end for new super-secure state-issued driver's licenses to be presented at airport checkpoints, travelers will encounter massive delays and extra diligent security screenings, national security officials warned Wednesday.

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano raised the specter of unpopular checkpoint backups to bolster the Obama administration's appeal for “urgent” congressional revision of parts of the 4-year-old Real ID Act adopted during the Bush administration.

That's because few, if any, of the states are on track to satisfy the 18 enhanced security requirements for issuance of state driver's licenses mandated by a Dec. 31 deadline, Napolitano told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

That will leave millions of travelers without one of the most important documents the Transportation Security Administration screeners will require next year under the terms of the Real ID Act.

Passengers without enhanced security driver's licenses will face “additional screening by TSA — and one can only contemplate the inconvenience in airline travel that could occur if everyone has to undergo additional screening because they don't have a Real ID-compliant drivers license,” Napolitano testified.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/breaking/6531353.html

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2.
New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, July 15, 2009

The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.

In addition to meeting other strict conditions for asylum, abused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.

The administration laid out its position in an immigration appeals court filing in the case of a woman from Mexico who requested asylum, saying she feared she would be murdered by her common-law husband there. According to court documents filed in San Francisco, the man repeatedly raped her at gunpoint, held her captive, stole from her and at one point tried to burn her alive when he learned she was pregnant.

The government submitted its legal brief in April, but the woman only recently gave her consent for the confidential case documents to be disclosed to The New York Times. The government has marked a clear, although narrow, pathway for battered women seeking asylum, lawyers said, after 13 years of tangled court arguments, including resistance from the Bush administration to recognize any of those claims.

Moving cautiously, the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately recommend asylum for the Mexican woman, who is identified in the court papers only by her initials as L.R. But the department, in the unusual submission written by senior government lawyers, concluded in plain terms that “it is possible” that the Mexican woman “and other applicants who have experienced domestic violence could qualify for asylum.”

As recently as last year, Bush administration lawyers had argued in the same case that in spite of her husband’s brutality, L.R. and other battered women could not meet the standards of American asylum law.

“This really opens the door to the protection of women who have suffered these kinds of violations,” said Karen Musalo, a professor who is director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Professor Musalo has represented other abused women seeking asylum and recently took up the case of L.R.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/us/16asylum.html

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3.
Judge: Texas city quelled Latino voting power
By Anabelle Garay
The Associated Press, July 15, 2009

Dallas (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a Dallas suburb illegally diminished the voting power of its growing number of Latino residents because of flaws in its current election system and ordered city officials to modify how they run municipal elections.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Jorge A. Solis prevents the city of Irving from using an at-large system that allows political candidates to receive votes from across a broad geographic area rather than a specific district or precinct.

The ruling came in a voting rights lawsuit against Irving that alleged the at-large election system kept Hispanics from being elected to local government positions because they were outpaced by a majority of white voters voting for other candidates. The suit was filed in November 2007 on behalf of Manuel Benavidez, an Irving resident who has twice run unsuccessfully for the school board.

"My hope is that this case brings progress and hope to our community and to communities all across the country," Benavidez said after leaning of the judge's decision. "This case is particularly important right now, because of the growing Latino population in the city of Irving."

The City Council plans to review the judge's order and discuss it during next week's meeting, said Irving spokeswoman Laurie Kunke. In a statement, Irving officials said they will attempt to develop and agree on an election and redistricting plan and a schedule to implement it.

The Dallas suburb had more than 191,000 residents — 31 percent of them Hispanic — during the 2000 Census. By 2006, the Census Bureau estimated nearly 42 percent of the city's population was Latino and a majority lived in the suburb's southern half.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6531405.html

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4.
ACLU wants details on federal immigration changes
By Mike Sunnucks
The Phoenix Business Journal, July 15, 2009

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a public records request asking the Obama administration to make public changes it is making to a federal immigration enforcement program that allows local police to arrest and process illegal immigrants.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently announced the plans that would require new agreements for local police, which could impact the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which has had a processing agreement in place with the federal government since 2007.
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http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/07/13/daily51.html

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5.
I-19 checkpoint near Tubac angers locals
Border Patrol post increases danger in area, residents say
By Dennis Wagner
The Arizona Republic (Phoenix), July 16, 2009

Tubac -- U.S. Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona face surging criticism from Santa Cruz Valley residents who say a checkpoint on Interstate 19 wrecks business and endangers their neighborhoods.

Arizona's top border officials say the I-19 checkpoint and 34 permanent roadblocks away from entry ports throughout the Southwest provide a vital second chance to catch illegal immigrants and drugs.

On Wednesday, about 130 people showed up for a public forum at the Tubac Community Center, where they took turns assailing the I-19 inspection stop and denouncing U.S. immigration policies. They said federal agents should stop illegal immigration at the international line rather than create a southern Arizona danger zone by operating a checkpoint 26 miles from the border.

"If we were attacked by Mexico, the Marines wouldn't fall back to Green Valley and hold the line there," said Nan Walden of the Coalition for a Safe and Secure Border. "Our government has not dealt with the hard issues of immigration."

But John Fitzpatrick, division chief of operations for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said the I-19 checkpoint proved its effectiveness just in the past week, with agents arresting 300 suspects and seizing 1,500 pounds of drugs.

Fitzpatrick conceded that the U.S.-Mexican border is not secure, blaming a lack of resources. Because of that, he added, a secondary line of defense is not only critical but efficient: Interior checkpoints account for only 4 percent of the agency's budget but 35 percent of its drug seizures.

All this controversy swirls around a traffic stop that has been in place for much of the past decade adjacent to the historic community of Tubac, 26 miles north of the border at Nogales.

Each day, agents and drug-sniffing dogs check thousands of vehicles for undocumented immigrants, narcotics and other contraband.

For a decade, Border Patrol officials campaigned to make the "tactical roadblock" a full-scale inspection station. They were thwarted by then-Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who opposed permanent roadblocks because smugglers simply move around them. Kolbe inserted language in Border Patrol funding bills requiring checkpoints to change locations at least once every two weeks. As a result, the southern Arizona roadblock shifted up or down I-19 a short distance several times each month.

The restrictive language expired after Kolbe left office in 2007, however, and the I-19 checkpoint has remained stationary since then.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., now serving in the 8th Congressional District, has pushed for improvements to the I-19 checkpoint. She said that enhancements were promised months ago and that delays in upgrading the facility are "unacceptable."

She said she is awaiting an analysis of checkpoint effectiveness due this fall from the Government Accountability Office.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/07/16/200907...