1. Pres's illegal uncle 'found'
2. MA Gov. spins Sec. Comm. issue
3. GA farmers bemoan new law
4. Courts need more resources
5. Illegal had multiple arrests

1.
Obama's 'lost' Uncle Omar held in jail for being 'illegal immigrant'... after he was arrested for drink-driving
By Rob Cooper
The Mail Online, August 29, 2011

Barack Obama's 'Uncle Omar' is being held on suspicion of being in the U.S. illegally after allegedly being caught drink-driving.

Onyango Obama, 67, narrowly avoided crashing into a police car while over the limit, prosecutors claimed.

He is a long-lost relative of the President and had moved to America in the 1960s, The Times revealed.

After he appeared on the drink-drive charge, a judge ordered that Mr Obama must be remanded in custody because there is an outstanding warrant for his arrest as he is an illegal immigrant.

The whereabouts of the Kenyan was unknown - although it had been thought he was living in Massachusetts where he was arrested.

The President wrote in his book Dreams from My Father in 1995 that Onyango Obama was 'the uncle who left for America 25 years ago and had never come back'.

Police Officer Val Krishtal arrested the suspect after he nearly hit his Mitsubishi SUV patrol car on August 24, Framingham District Court, in Massachusetts, was told.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031360/Barack-Obamas-Uncle-Omar...

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2.
llegal immigration is not to blame for fatality, Patrick says
By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe, August 27, 2011

Governor Deval Patrick said yesterday that he shared the community’s outrage over the death of a 23-year-old Milford man struck last week by an alleged drunk driver who was also an illegal immigrant. But the governor urged people not to blame the death on illegal immigration.

Matthew Denice was on his motorcycle last Saturday when he was hit in Milford and dragged for a quarter-mile. Nicolas Guaman, a 34-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, has pleaded not guilty to charges that include vehicular homicide while under the influence.

“It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy,’’ Patrick said at the end of a news conference about preparations for Hurricane Irene. But, he added, “Illegal immigration didn’t kill this person. A drunk driver killed this person, and we have laws about that. And I expect the book to be thrown at this person.’’

Denice’s death reignited the state’s debate over illegal immigration and renewed calls on Patrick to have the state join the federal Secure Communities program, which would screen the fingerprints of everyone under arrest to find and deport serious criminals who are illegally in the country.

Patrick favors deporting convicted criminals but he rejected the Secure Communities program in June because it was also sweeping up illegal immigrants who did not have criminal records. He has said it is up to the federal government to address the nationwide problem of illegal immigration.

Proponents of Secure Communities, such as Senator Richard T. Moore, an Uxbridge Democrat, have said that it is unclear if the program would have caught Guaman earlier, but it could help others in the future.

“While it’s not clear that the Secure Communities program would have helped to prevent this tragedy, your agreeing to enlist Massachusetts in the program would, at least, be official recognition that we must take steps to protect the public from those who flout the law,’’ Moore wrote to the governor after Denice’s death.

Guaman had a string of traffic violations on his driving record dating to 2007, including driving without a license. Also, Milford police arrested him in early 2008 for charges that included assault and battery on a police officer and breaking and entering. That case was continued without a finding for one year.
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http://articles.boston.com/2011-08-27/news/29936146_1_illegal-immigratio...

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3.
Farmers say immigration law would harm agriculture
By David Palmer
The Cullman Times, August 28, 2011

Cullman — Cullman County is recognized as the state’s top agricultural community, a distinction that some farmers believe will be in jeopardy if the Alabama’s tough immigration law takes effect Sept. 1.

“Those guys making those laws say they are doing it to help the people. That’s bull. They’re just after the majority support,” said Keith Smith, a lifetime farmer on Gold Ridge Road.

Smith, who was a candidate last year for a county commission seat, said he has heard both sides of the immigration issue and believes a solution would be to allow visiting workers to buy a work permit. He said without the migrant workers, farms will be in deep trouble.

“They (politicians) say they are putting Alabamians back to work, but that won’t happen. Few people want to do this work. We pay minimum wage and more, depending on how much the workers accomplish. I know one thing, if I was depending on American workers I couldn’t do what I do,” Smith said.

Smith has more than 150 acres of sweet potatoes in the fields in Cullman County. He also has poultry houses, hay, and other row crops. Like many farmers, he leases additional land for crop production outside of Cullman County.

“This is all I’ve ever done,” said Smith, 54. “I grew up farming. I worked hauling hay and whatever needed to be done. But things have changed. Without the migrant workers, who are mostly Hispanic, you wouldn’t be able to make a living farming.”
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http://www.cullmantimes.com/local/x2134987830/Farmers-say-immigration-la...

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4.
Immigration cases crowd U.S. criminal courts
By Dianne Solis
The Dallas Morning News, August 28, 2011

Dallas – Osvaldo Compian-Torres is caught in the most significant dragnet in the federal criminal court system. But he isn’t a murderer, drug trafficker or money launderer.

Compian-Torres’ conviction earlier this year in Dallas was for re-entry into the United States after deportation – one of the top two leading charges in federal court prosecutions.

In the first eight months of this fiscal year, about half of new criminal charges in the nation’s courts focused on that charge or the similar entry without inspection, according to an analysis by a Syracuse University research center.

Lawyers call it crimmigration – the fusing of criminal law with immigration law. In the past, those types of immigration issues have usually been handled through civil law or administrative processes.

Some hail use of criminal statutes as an effective deterrent to illegal immigration – and it is a fact that border apprehensions have been dropping. Others say it’s a waste of resources for a nation struggling to prioritize spending and trim the federal budget.

“Have prosecutorial resources been monopolized so that serious felonies aren’t being prosecuted?” asked Don Kerwin, a vice president of the Migration Policy Institute think tank.

Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, another Washington think tank, countered that criminal prosecutions for re-entry are costly but necessary.

“This has been neglected for so long, almost looked on contemptuously by one administration after another,” Krikorian said. “So it is essential to just play catch-up.”
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http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/08/28/1799070/immigration-cases-crowd...

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5.
Arrested dozens of times and still in the US
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By Laura C. Marel
The Dallas Morning News, August 28, 2011

Dallas -- Diones Graciano-Navarro has been arrested at least 40 times in four states.

His rap sheet had humble beginnings with charges of loitering in New York City in 1975. In New Jersey, he graduated to fraud. By 1988, he was in California. He was charged with obtaining money by fraud or trickery. Later came cocaine possession.

The Dominican Republic native was deported twice. But he slipped back into the U.S., settling in North Texas, where in 2004 he started collecting DWI and marijuana possession charges.

Almost half of the nearly 393,000 immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement who were deported last fiscal year had criminal records. But Graciano-Navarro, 63, is not the best poster child for the Obama administration's recent victory laps over increased deportation of criminal aliens who shouldn't have been in the U.S. in the first place.

Instead, the Graciano-Navarro case highlights the difficulty of keeping "crimmigrants" out of the country. It took decades for the system to evolve, and Graciano-Navarro ran free in post-9/11 America for most of 10 years before the system caught up with him.

In March, he began serving a sentence at the Tarrant County jail for DWI. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security flagged him for special attention: Graciano-Navarro pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry after deportation, a federal charge sought against aliens who have re-entered the country illegally after previously being deported.

"This guy was arrested over and over and over again," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. "Those are victims who shouldn't have been victims. ... Having these different penalties is one way to make it less attractive for people to come back."
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http://www.sacbee.com/2011/08/28/3867261/arrested-dozens-of-times-and-st...