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1. DHS chief addresses issue
2. Feds reject call for rules
3. Suspected murderer an illegal
4. Gov't revokes Honduran visas
5. Congress mulls REAL ID

1.
In Seattle, Napolitano discusses immigration
By Manuel Valdes
The Associated Press, July 28, 2009

Seattle (AP) -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano held a closed-door session with representatives of various industries and advocacy groups impacted by immigration - a first of its kind meeting for the secretary.

Monday's "listening session" included immigrant advocates, labor unions, state officials, law enforcement officers, business leaders and farm working representatives among others. The meeting was closed to the media and public. The secretary is expected to hold similar meetings later on around the country.

Some of the people who attended left optimistic.

"First time in almost 20 years working with farm workers that immigration has ever asked our opinion on this issue," said Erik Nicholson, regional director for the United Farmworkers of America. "That's very encouraging."

Napolitano has been appointed by President Barack Obama as the lead official in his efforts to overhaul the immigration system. Moreover, Washington is a state that has attracted significant immigrant work force, from the agricultural fields of eastern Washington to the high-tech campus at Microsoft.

A work site raid in Bellingham, Wash., in February became a national flash point in the immigration issue after Napolitano ordered a review of the operation. It was the first raid under the Obama administration, which had signaled that it wanted to move away from raids to focus on scrutinizing employers who hire illegal workers.

Earlier this month, Homeland Security released a list of 652 businesses nationwide that will receive audits of their work force - 26 are in the Pacific Northwest.
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http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_napolitano_immigration.html

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2.
U.S. Rejects Call for Immigration Detention Rules
By Nina Bernstein
The New York Times, July 29, 2009

The Obama administration has refused to make legally enforceable rules for immigration detention, rejecting a federal court petition by former detainees and their advocates and embracing a Bush-era inspection system that relies in part on private contractors.

The decision, contained in a six-page letter received by the plaintiffs this week, disappointed and angered immigration advocacy organizations around the country. They pointed to a stream of newly available documents that underscore the government’s failure to enforce minimum standards it set in 2000, including those concerning detainees’ access to basic health care, telephones and lawyers, even as the number of people detained has soared to more than 400,000 a year.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration detention system, a conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons, concluded “that rule-making would be laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than the review process now in place, Jane Holl Lute, the agency’s deputy secretary, said in the letter.

The department maintained that current inspections by the government, and a shift in 2008 to “performance-based standards” monitored by private contractors, “provide adequately for both quality control and accountability.”

The administration’s letter met a 30-day deadline set by Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan. Judge Chin ruled last month that the agency’s failure to respond to the plaintiffs’ petition for two and a half years was unreasonable.

The government’s decision “disregards the plight of the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs, which contends that the lack of enforceable rules is at the heart of persistent problems of mistreatment and medical neglect. “The department has demonstrated a disturbing commitment to policies that have cost dozens of lives.”

The plaintiffs had expected better from the Obama administration, said Dan Kesselbrenner, the project’s director.

But Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security who served in the Obama campaign, put a different face on the rejection of rule-making.

“The rule-making process can take months, if not years,” he said in an e-mailed statement, “and the administration believes that reforming our immigration detention system needs to happen much faster than that.” A special adviser on detention to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, “is engaged in a top-to-bottom review” of the detention system, he said, and will release her recommendations soon.

In a telephone interview, the adviser, Dora Schriro, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement had made changes in recent years “in an effort toward continuous improvement.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/nyregion/29detain.html

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3.
Man arrested in San Jose after Border Patrol agent death appears in federal court
By Mark Gomez
The San Jose Mercury News (CA), July 28, 2009

The man arrested at O'Connor Hospital in San Jose as part of the investigation into the shooting death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in San Diego County has been charged with unlawfully entering the country, according to court documents.

Salvador Picaso-Ambriz, 39, was arraigned Monday in San Jose federal court and is being held without bail, according to court documents. The three-page criminal complaint filed Monday made no mention of the investigation into the Border Patrol agent's shooting death.

A San Jose police spokesman confirmed that Picaso-Ambriz was arrested Friday at O'Connor Hospital but could provide no further details. Bay Area law enforcement sources said Picaso-Ambriz was arrested by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. San Jose police assisted in the arrest.

Federal authorities remain tight-lipped about the investigation into the brutal attack Thursday night on agent Robert Rosas, 30, who was killed in a spray of bullets at a suspected illegal border crossing near Campo, a small town east of San Diego.

FBI agent Darrell Foxworth of the San Diego office said it would be "inappropriate to comment" on the investigation into Picaso-Ambriz because the case is currently before the courts.

Mexican federal police have named Ernesto Parra Valenzuela, 36, as the main suspect in the killing and one of five men detained since the shooting. Parra Valenzuela was taken into custody Friday and was reportedly carrying a Border Patrol-issued pistol at the time of his arrest, according to Tecate police.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/nationworld/ci_12930535

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4.
US revokes visas for Honduran officials
The Associated Press, July 28, 2009

Washington, DC (AP) -- The State Department says it has revoked the diplomatic visas for four Honduran officials working in its interim government.

The announcement comes as the United States has been pressing for Honduras to allow the return of exiled President Manuel Zelaya.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly did not specify Tuesday the names of the four officials, who he said are not in the United States. Kelly said that the department is reviewing the visas of all members of the interim government.
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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99NJ8R80&show_article=1

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5.
Congress May Revamp Secure I.D. Program
By Audie Cornish
The NPR News, July 28, 2009

Remember Real ID? Maybe not, because it never actually became real. It was supposed to set national security standards for state driver's licenses, to make sure you were you — and not someone else.

States face a deadline for compliance at the end of the year. But the states have rebelled against Real ID. Now Congress is looking to modify the law Wednesday in a key Senate committee.

Origin Of Real ID

The idea of making driver's licenses more secure came from the 9/11 Commission. When Congress found out that many of the Sept. 11 hijackers held multiple driver's licenses and aliases, lawmakers decided that states needed to do a better job of preventing fraud and abuse.

But the Real ID Act of 2005 hasn't worked out the way people thought it would.

"Real ID, in a way, is DOA [dead on arrival]," said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at a recent hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

She added, "The states agree that Real ID is too rigid and needlessly expensive in mandating how states meet their security goals."

State-Level Opposition

The Real ID program says that for every person applying for a driver's license, states are supposed to authenticate that person's birth certificate, Social Security number and citizenship status. Then states are supposed to make electronic copies of that information and link up their databases to prevent people from getting licenses from different states. National Governors Association President Jim Douglas, a Republican from Vermont, says compliance would cost states billions of dollars.

"While the objectives of Real ID are laudable, the law represents an unworkable and an unfunded mandate that fails to make us more secure," Douglas says. "I really believe we need a better mousetrap."

At least 13 states agree. They have passed laws refusing to participate — even when it could mean their state's driver's licenses wouldn't be accepted as identification at airports.

So lawmakers really have no choice but to take a second look, says Sen. George Voinovich, a Republican from Ohio.

"What everyone ought to understand is that Real ID, five years later, did not get implemented," Voinovich says. "OK? It's not implemented. And why didn't it get implemented? It's because Congress did not sit down with the people impacted by the legislation and get their thoughts on how you could go about making this possible."

A Cheaper Option

Voinovich is backing new legislation by Alaska Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, called Pass ID, which would cost less. The Homeland Security Committee plans to consider it Wednesday. It's already raised red flags for some.

"They do not need to undo all of Real ID just to redo most of it under another name," says Janice Kephart of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports strict limits on immigration.

Kephart says she's against the Pass ID bill because it eases up on some expensive verification requirements for some background documents. The legislation also drops a key provision that would make the new licenses required for air travel. That was supposed to be a major incentive to get states onboard.

"It would infuse a tremendous amount of confusion" into the process, she says. "What needs to happen is that Real ID needs to be properly funded and moved forward. If they want to change the name of it to 'Pass ID' — fine, but we do not need a new law."
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111177446