Please visit our YouTube and Facebook pages.

1. U.S. resumes repatriation program
2. Obama mends fences with activists
3. Analysis: GOP losing support
4. Mexico worried about deportations
5. Study: judges 'stressed out'

1.
US resumes voluntary repatriation program to fly illegal migrants from Arizona to Mexico City
The Associated Press, August 23, 2009

Mexico City (AP) -- The U.S. government has begun flying illegal migrants caught in the Arizona desert back to Mexico under a voluntary repatriation program.

Mexico's Foreign Relations Department says the twice-daily Tucson-to-Mexico City flights began Friday. It said Sunday that the annual summer program will run through Sept. 28.

The U.S. federal government launched the program in summer 2004 after years of record-setting migrant deaths along the state's border with Mexico.
. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-lt-mexico-repatriati...

********
********

2.
Obama makes gains with immigrant rights groups
By Peter Marcus
The Denver Daily News, August 24, 2009

Despite President Obama putting immigration reform on the back burner, local immigrant rights advocates still have love for the chief executive.

The president made gains with immigrant rights groups when he unexpectedly dropped by a White House meeting last week attended by more than 100 immigration reform advocates. The session was led by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — Obama was not expected to attend.

Obama’s appearance was carefully calculated considering just one week earlier in Mexico he said immigration reform would have to take a back seat to health care and energy reform efforts.

The strategy meeting was closed to the press, but attendees said both Obama and Napolitano expressed their commitment to immigration reform.

“President Obama and Secretary Napolitano remain committed to comprehensive immigration reform, know that enforcement of our outdated laws alone is no solution, and understood when we told them that pro-reform constituencies are growing impatient,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a statement.

The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition called Obama’s appearance a “welcome surprise.” The group agreed that the Obama administration is committed to comprehensive immigration reform.

But the group is holding their applause until they see actual action.

“While the president continues with his commitment to immigration reform, we’re looking for public advocacy from Secretary Napolitano and a concrete proposal from Congress,” said Julien Ross, director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “In the meantime, we’re asking for more accountability on enforcement measures, especially in detention centers and 287(g) programs.”
. . .
http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=5437

********
********

3.
AP Analysis: Mel Martinez's Senate exit signals crossroads for GOP efforts to woo Hispanics
By Laura Wides-Munoz
The Associated Press, August 23, 2009

Miami (AP) -- Florida Sen. Mel Martinez's resignation closes the latest chapter in the Republican Party's tumultuous, decade-long effort to woo the nation's Hispanic voters.

The Cuban-American's impending departure could leave no Hispanic Republicans in the Senate and three in the House — compared to 21 Democrats in Congress — and a sense that the national GOP is at a major crossroads with the nation's fastest-growing demographic group.

Although most Hispanics outside of Florida have long leaned Democratic, the Republican Party earned the trust of many at the beginning of the decade by tapping into socially conservative, religious and pro-business sentiment. Martinez both rode and propelled that wave.

"He symbolized trying to reach out to Latinos and being more moderate," said Marisa A. Abrajano, a University of California, San Diego professor and co-author of an upcoming book on Hispanic political behavior in the U.S.

But the heated rhetoric over illegal immigration in 2006, followed by the loss of many Republican moderates, and most recently the GOP's failed opposition to Justice Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination have helped drive away many Hispanic voters. Martinez, as senator and briefly as head of the party, tried to temper the anti-immigrant language, and he bucked his party by voting for Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent. Yet, in the end, few in Washington followed his lead.

"In the vast majority of their values, this party resonates with who I am — except they don't want me," lamented the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which represents more than 25,000 Hispanic evangelical churches across the country.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said Hispanics have a natural affinity with the Republican Party's principles but acknowledged the GOP has a lot of work to do.

"Republicans have to be able to get the Hispanic community to focus on issues where Republicans have the right solutions — and these are critical issues: the economy being number one," he said.

Of course political fortunes rise and fall quickly. A Democratic failure to achieve meaningful health care or immigration reform or an economic recovery that doesn't help average Hispanics could encourage them to give Republicans another chance.
. . .
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-mel-martin...

********
********

4.
Mexican officials worry about California's plan to free thousands of inmates in budget crunch
The Associated Press, August 21, 2009

Mexicali, Mexico (AP) -- Mexican authorities have been sending more alleged criminals north to the U.S. for trial since President Felipe Calderon took office. Now a Mexican official is worried about a flow in the other direction.

Rommel Moreno, attorney general of Baja California state, expressed concern Friday about a plan in California to release thousands of inmates from that U.S. state's overcrowded prisons as a way to help relieve a budget crunch.

Although details of the proposal are still being debated in the California legislature, Moreno noted many inmates in the California prison system are undocumented migrants, and some could be deported once released.

"We have to take care of this issue. We know that there are plans to carry out these procedures in the United States, and one of the most affected states would be Baja California," he said.

A statement issued by his office said that "the repatriation of ex-convicts should be orderly and in full agreement with the Mexican government, in order to avoid a rise in crime, mainly in the border states."

"Border cities like Tijuana and Mexicali have enough problems as it with migration, so they can't suffer unilateral repatriations of people who have served a sentence in the United States," the statement said.
. . .]
http://www.startribune.com/world/54038782.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP...

********
********

5.
Study: Immigration judge as stressed out as emergency room doctors, prison wardens
By Howard Mintz
The San Jose Mercury News, August 22, 2009

On any given day, Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks can find herself listening to a wrenching tale of an immigrant seeking asylum, fearing everything from torture to death if returned to his or her homeland. Or she could be deciding the fate of one of thousands of immigrants who find themselves facing deportation each year, some of whom have been in the United States foryears, going to school, working and raising families.

In a cramped corner office in San Francisco's financial district, the case files stacked on Marks' desk show the sheer volume of her task. The roughly 215 immigration judges in the country last year decided an average of more than 1,600 cases, dwarfing the workload of a full-time federal judge, who may have about 350 cases on their docket at a time.

For Marks and other immigration judges around the country, it appears all those stories and case files are starting to take their toll. In a study released this summer by University of California-San Francisco researchers, immigration judges, it turns out, are as stressed out and burned out as emergency room doctors and prison wardens. And the study found female immigration judges far more stressed than their male counterparts.

As U.S. Department of Justice employees, immigration judges ordinarily do not speak publicly. But they didn't hold back with UCSF researchers. One judge told researchers they have to "grovel like mangy street dogs" to convince top immigration officials they need more time to deal with the crushing caseloads. Another reported a "knot in my stomach" deciding asylum cases. And another told researchers: "I can't take this place anymore. What a dismal job this is!"

The study does not entirely surprise Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. She's now using the findings to push for long-sought reforms to the system, including a proposal for the immigration courts to break from Justice Department oversight.

"The depth and the severity is what was surprising,'' Marks said of the study. "It's gotten a lot worse a lot faster."

Immigration courts have come under closer scrutiny in recent years as caseloads exploded across the country. The number of immigration cases jumped from more than 282,000 in 1998 to a projected 385,000 this year, with only a modest increase in the number of immigration judges. Northern California's immigration judges are based in San Francisco.

Federal appeals courts, which often review the work of the immigration courts, have grown increasingly frustrated with some of the justice dispensed. A Mercury News review three years ago found a San Francisco-based federal appeals court was regularly overturning the immigration courts in the most important immigration matters it decided.

A spokeswoman of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs the immigration court system for the Justice Department, said officials are aware of the recent study and working to address its findings, which included recommendations to provide far more resources to immigration judges.

Elaine Komis, the EOIR spokeswoman, said 19 new judges are being hired this year, and the department is asking for 28 more judges in 2010. And during a weeklong training session for all the judges earlier this month in Washington, D.C., one segment included stress management.

But the findings of widespread stress and burnout in the study are cause for concern among immigration rights advocates, who worry that frustrated, overworked immigration judges are too often giving short shrift to immigrants in their courtrooms.
. . .
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13187076?source=most_emailed&nclick_check=1