1. TX Gov. gets tepid response
2. MI legislature to vote on bills
3. Philly seeks to end Sec. Comm.
4. ACLU criticizes AZ co. lockup
5. Hackers target AZ Dept.

1.
Texas Gov. Perry gets tepid response at Latino event; joke about Hispanic’s name falls flat
The Associated Press, June 23, 2011

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has received a tepid response from a Latino group after touting his record of appointing Hispanics and joking about the pronunciation of a Hispanic appointee’s last name.

The Republican said during an address that opened the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’ convention in San Antonio on Thursday that he took pride in appointing the first Hispanic women as secretary of state and to both of the state’s highest courts.

He also joked about appointing Jose Cuevas to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission because his name sounds like Jose Cuervo — a brand of tequila.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/texas-gov-perry-gets-tepid-respon...

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2.
State House to vote on immigration reform bills
By Todd A. Heywood
Michigan Messenger, June 24, 2011

A pair of bills which would require public employers and contractors and subcontractors of public employers to register with and use the E-Verify system to ferret out undocumented workers are on their way to action on the House floor.

The bills, HB 4024 and HB 4026, were approved by the House Commerce Committee on Tuesday.

While the bills’ sponsor, Rep. Dave Agema (R-Grandville), says the bills will stop undocumented workers from getting paid with taxpayer dollars, opponents of the measures say the bills will have an undue burden on businesses because of the costs associated with running the program, and could eliminate or gum up the hiring of employees because of consistent reporting errors in the system.

Ryan Bates, executive director for the Alliance of Immigrant Rights and Reform of Michigan, says the bills are nothing more than a political stunt.

In a Facebook posting on June 16, Agema went to great lengths to assuage those involved in the agricultural industry, which is a huge employer in his suburban/rural Kent county district, that the industry would be exempt from the legislation if it becomes law.

“It shows that this is a political stunt — that even the bills’ sponsor doesn’t believe that E-Verify is a worthwhile exercise for the whole economy, otherwise they wouldn’t be proposing such a narrow, limited bill,” Bates said. “But they do believe in scoring cheap political points on the backs of working immigrant families.”

Bates also contends that in pushing the Commerce Committee to support his legislation, Agema was deliberately misleading in his testimony.

“The most powerful thing here is that Agema lied repeatedly during the committee hearing,” said Ryan Bates. “One of the things Agema said is that no U.S. citizen or legal worker has lost their job as a result of e-verify.”

Bates sent Messenger a fact sheet from the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles which outlined a series of issues discovered with E-Verify programs across the country. The document, dated February 2011, cites numerous examples of citizens being caught up in errors in the system, leading to them losing jobs.

Here are just two examples from the fact sheet:

A U.S. citizen and former captain in the U.S. Navy with 34 years of service and a history of having maintained high security clearance was flagged by E-Verify as not eligible for employment. It took him and his wife, an attorney, two months to resolve the discrepancy.

A U.S. citizen was hired for a job at a poultry company in Georgia but received a TNC [tentative non-confirmation] notice. The employee wanted to contest the TNC, but the company did not grant her time off to do so. As a result, the employee had no time to contest the TNC and was fired.
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http://michiganmessenger.com/50116/state-house-to-vote-on-immigration-re...

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3.
Philadelphia Council seeks to end pact with U.S. immigration agency
Phildelphia Inquirer, June 24, 2011

City Council wants to end a three-year-old information-sharing agreement with federal immigration authorities, saying cooperation meant to root out criminals is creating fear of police among undocumented but otherwise law-abiding immigrants.

On Thursday, Council voted, 17-0, for a nonbinding resolution calling for an end to an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the main investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

That agreement, signed in 2008, gives ICE agents access to city arrest data. The city amended the agreement last year to exclude witness and victim information.

Mayor Nutter, District Attorney Seth Williams, and the First Judicial District must sign off on the agreement, which expires Aug. 31.

Council members James F. Kenney and Maria Quiñones Sánchez oppose all aspects of ICE's "Secure Communities" program, in which fingerprints of arrestees in Philadelphia are matched against ICE's immigration databases. The program's stated targets are dangerous criminals.

Governors in Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York have stopped participating in Secure Communities, voicing similar objections.
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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/124476138.html

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4.
Pinal County migrant lockups criticized by ACLU
By Caitlin McGlade
The Arizona Rrepublic, June 24, 2011

The American Civil Liberties Union has released a report decrying living conditions and policies for immigrants held at detention centers in Pinal County.

The ACLU is urging U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to end its contract with the Pinal County Adult Detention Center, citing excessive detention time, inhumane conditions and sparse legal protection for detainees.

The 36-page report documents more than 100 interviews with immigrants behind bars, many of whom have claimed they were held for years without any contact with family and have subsequently developed psychological illnesses.

While awaiting trial proceedings, detainees in Pinal County also complained of no outdoor recreation.

ICE officials said that the report publishes "unverified allegations" and that the ACLU did not offer officials the opportunity to respond to the claims, according to a written statement provided by Vincent Picard, spokesman for the Phoenix ICE office.

"The significant acts of abuse alleged in this report have yet to be formally reported to ICE, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General or any other law-enforcement agency," the ICE statement said.

Officials will investigate the claims, the statement said.

The Adult Detention Center has had a contract with ICE since 2006. Its conditions are considered the worst of the five centers investigated for the report, said Victoria Lopez, an ACLU attorney who authored the report. All five immigrant-detention centers are in Pinal County, but the other four are not funded by the county.

James Kimble, chief deputy of detention services for the Pinal County Sheriff's Office said the facility averages 1,150 inmates and there were 391 illegal immigrants currently being housed who had been sent from ICE. He said the average detention for an illegal immigrant at the facility is 28 days.

He disputed the report's claim that there was no outdoor recreation facility at the detention center. Kimble said an outdoor facility measuring 100 feet long, 30 feet wide with 11-foot-high walls surrounded by a 12-foot-high chain link fence was built in 2006.

The ACLU report took two years to compile and collected hundreds of grievances.
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http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/06/24/201106...

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5.
Group says it hacked Arizona public safety files
By Walter Berry
The Associated Press, June 24, 2011

A group that boasts of successfully hacking Sony and the CIA web page in recent months claimed Thursday to have hacked into the computer files of an Arizona law enforcement agency.

The Lulz Security hacking collective said on its web site that it was releasing “hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement.”

The cyber attackers said they were specifically targeting the Arizona Department of Public Safety because of the state’s tough immigration enforcement law known as SB1070 “and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.”

Several DPS officers contacted by The Associated Press said they were inundated with calls Thursday evening and most were trying to get their phone number immediately changed.

The LulzSec group also said it planned to release “more classified documents and embarrassing personal details of military and law enforcement” every week but it was unclear whether other Arizona agencies were targeted.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office was taking unspecified countermeasures to protect its computer system, officials said Thursday night.

Manuel Johnson, a spokesman for the FBI’s Phoenix division, said the agency was aware of the DPS‘ situation but couldn’t comment on whether the FBI was investigating it.

DPS spokesman Steve Harrison confirmed that the agency’s computer system had been breached and was taking additional security safeguards that he wouldn’t disclose. The Arizona Republic reported that experts worked Thursday evening to close external access to DPS‘ system.

However, that didn’t help several DPS officers who said either their home phone or cellphone were constantly ringing Thursday with many of the calls from strangers.

“Well, they got my cellphone. It’s not a good thing,” said officer Steven Loya, whose email and home address also were posted on the LulzSec site.

Loya said he was inundated with calls and emails and was in the process of getting his phone number changed.

DPS officer Daniel Scott also seemed poised to get a new number.

“I’ve never had it happen before. It’s getting real annoying,” Scott said. “I let the department know and hopefully they can figure it out. I might have to change my phone number. It’s all over the world.”
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Scott said none of the phone calls have been threatening _ “as of yet.”
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/24/group-says-it-hacked-ari...