Aliens who have been caught in the serious fraud of falsely claiming to be U.S. citizens are no longer prevented from obtaining immigrant visas or other immigration benefits if they made the false claim before they were 18 years old — despite what the law says — thanks to a new directive from the Department of Homeland Security. Read more...

Amnesty proponents will bravely spin the new Pew Hispanic Center report showing increasing illegal immigration as evidence that enforcement doesn’t work, as if the Obama administration has actually made an effort to enforce immigration laws. Unfortunately, internal ICE statistics show otherwise. The upward trend in the size of the illegal population is more likely at least partially the result of a significant decline in enforcement, especially in the interior, where we notice it the most. Internal ICE statistics show that the number of aliens expelled from the interior of the country declined by 20 percent from 2010 to 2012. Removals and returns are on track to decline another 20 percent in 2013. Read more...

One of the first acts of the Obama administration's new ICE Director, John Sandweg, was to expand the president's amnesty-by-executive fiat beyond the so-called DREAMers to cover also illegal aliens who are parents or caretakers of children — anybody's children, anywhere, of any immigration status. Like the other decreed amnesties, this directive issued on August 23, is so broadly written that it could cover potentially millions of illegal aliens. It is the next step in the gradual dismantling of enforcement, and perhaps signals a White House understanding that it probably cannot get the mass legalization it seeks the old-fashioned constitutional way, through Congress, and that instead it must resort to the more familiar method of executive action. Read more...

For the first time since 2006, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is reporting a decline in the number of immigration cases in federal court, echoing other indications of a significant decline in immigration enforcement, despite continued high levels of illegal immigration. Read more...

A new report tracking the number of ICE detainers issued confirms that interior immigration enforcement has declined significantly in recent months. This report corroborates my previous analysis of another set of ICE statistics that revealed a considerable deterioration in interior enforcement since 2011. Read more...

The case of Cesar Benitez, an illegal alien serial rapist with numerous prior offenses, including repeated immigration violations, illustrates the pressing need for the SAFE Act, now under consideration in the U.S. House as a welcome alternative to the Schumer-Rubio bill.

Benitez was arrested in April 2012 for hiding in a women's bathroom at a Target store in Allen, Texas, and peeping at a 13-year old girl in the next stall. They caught him in nearby Plano, where police also sought him for similar offenses, charged him with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and set bond at $1,500. Read more...

Among the faux enforcement improvements being hyped by supporters of the deceptive Schumer-Corker-Hoeven substitute amendment to the Gang of Eight bill is a new section titled "Removal of Nonimmigrants Who Overstay Their Visas". Not exactly.

The new provision (Section 1201) says that no later than six months after the enactment of the bill, the DHS Secretary shall begin dealing with those foreign visitors who arrived after the bill's enactment and who overstayed their temporary visa by at least six months. The Secretary is required to deal with at least 90 percent of the overstayers. Read more...

Sen. Lindsay Graham's (R-S.C.) absurd notion that Latino voters will flock to Republican candidates if they embrace amnesty and "comprehensive immigration reform" has been once more refuted, this time a Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat. On Friday, El Planeta, the state's largest Spanish-language newspaper, endorsed Democrat Ed Markey, a long-serving member of the House who only occasionally actually sets foot in his district, over Republican newcomer and fellow Latino Gabriel Gomez, son of Colombian immigrants, who often gives his campaign speeches in Spanish followed by an English translation and who is an enthusiastic supporter of the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill.

From Friday's Boston Globe: Read more...

One of the most alarming effects of the Schumer-Rubio amnesty, if enacted in anything close to its current form, would be the legalization of tens of thousands of illegal aliens who have already been a public safety threat in their community. The eligibility criteria established for the amnesty and most of the new guestworker provisions excuse a wide variety of criminal behavior, including gang membership, drunk driving, vehicular manslaughter, identity theft, and immigration fraud (see this analysis). In addition, the bill offers amnesty to those who have repeatedly and flagrantly violated immigration laws. Read more...

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to adopt 22 amendments to the Schumer-Rubio bill, none of which fundamentally improves the bill, and a few that make it worse. Read more...

In addition to the instant amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens and their families and huge new guestworker programs, the Schumer-Rubio bill will change the rules to allow more than 1.4 million family visa applicants to bypass the current waiting list and be admitted immediately and begin working, even before they are approved for a green card. This little-noticed re-write of the V visa rules will also admit another 2.9 million immigrant visa hopefuls to enter the country as temporary visitors. Read more...

A thorough analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of S.744 finds that the enforcement and compliance provisions of the Gang of Eight bill are designed to reward and protect lawbreakers while undermining many effective and common-sense provisions in our immigration law. A number of the provisions mask their true intent under innocuous or downright misleading titles.

The enforcement-related measures in this bill have profound implications for public safety and will greatly hamper federal and local law enforcement programs designed to prevent criminals and terrorists from settling and operating here. Because the bill essentially excuses nearly all forms of immigration and identity fraud, the integrity of our immigration system is greatly compromised by this bill. Read more...

Statistics from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) indicate that the agency is rubber-stamping the applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. They report that 99.5 percent of applicants have been approved, which is well above approval rates for other legal programs, which have fraud and rejection rates in the double digits. Read more...

Last week, during a budget hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) asked DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano about my recent testimony in the ICE officers' lawsuit pointing out that total removals and removals of criminals have declined by 40 percent since the implementation of the administration's lenient "prosecutorial discretion" policies. Read more...

An excellent column by former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey for the Wall Street Journal notes that "Tamerlan Tsarnaev [one of the brothers accused in the Boston Marathon attack] is the fifth person since 9/11 who has participated in terror attacks after questioning by the FBI."

This sentence is loaded in several ways, but is directly relevant to the debate over the Schumer-Rubio amnesty proposal now being debated in the Senate. Read more...

On April 8, a federal judge in Dallas heard arguments in Crane v Napolitano, the lawsuit brought by 10 ICE officers challenging the Obama administration's Deferred Action program (DACA) and "prosecutorial discretion" policies. Read more...

Last year, nearly 700,000 people were issued temporary visas to work in the United States, either for several years or indefinitely. About two-thirds are in categories requiring skills and/or education and one-third were given visas to work in unskilled jobs. Over the weekend, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that the AFL-CIO and Chamber of Commerce had agreed on a proposal to increase the number of unskilled guestworker visas above and beyond the number already being issued, and despite lingering high unemployment rates for U.S. workers affected by these visa programs.

The table below summarizes temporary visa issuances for 2012. Read more...

Congressional inquiries prompted by ICE's recent release of immigration detainees, many of whom have criminal convictions or charges, reveal that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has billions of dollars in unexpended revenues, including resources for detention space. Read more...

Contrary to the claims of illegal alien advocacy groups, many of the detainees being released by ICE under the bogus pretext of sequestration-mandated budget cuts are in fact criminals, and hardly harmless, according to a variety of sources.

Here are some categories of detainees who were released from ICE detention over the last week: Read more...

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has announced that ICE detention capacity and Border Patrol salaries will be slashed in order to meet the requirements of the sequestration exercise. This move suggests that she views the nation's fiscal crisis as an opportunity and cover to accomplish the administration's immigration enforcement reduction agenda. Read more...

In a surprising and refreshing reversal, last year ICE leadership, when confronted with data showing a decline in criminal alien deportations in the wake of the Obama administration's "prosecutorial discretion" policies, decided to allow ICE agents in the field to use conventional, tried-and-true law enforcement techniques to identify and remove more illegal alien criminals, according to memos obtained and released by USA Today — to a point. Read more...

The stories plastered all over the front pages of newspapers in the Boston area reveal that the nanny accused of delivering what the police report called "abusive head trauma" to a one-year-old child, who later died, is an illegal alien. This case is further illustration of the serious deficiencies in our immigration enforcement system, and the tragedy that can result. Read more...

Last week ICE arrested Roberto Galo, the unlicensed Honduran who killed a young man named Drew Rosenberg in a traffic crash in November 2010, and is detaining him without bond. Galo's arrest is appropriate but, incredibly, despite the fact that Galo repeatedly violated California driving laws and killed someone, ICE had to make an exception to its policies in order to take him into custody and seek his removal. Read more...

In the latest installment of the Obama administration's "amnesty by executive decree" scheme, DHS has announced the creation of a new waiver that will enable an unknown number of illegal aliens who have married U.S. citizens or who have moved here illegally to join naturalized family members to avoid penalties enacted by Congress in the mid-1990s. Read more...

Last week, ICE quietly announced that it was terminating 32 local enforcement task force partnerships, known as 287(g) agreements, some of which have been operating successfully for as long as ten years. This follows the revocation earlier this year of seven other task force agreements in Arizona. ICE has offered no specific reasons for the cancellation of these agreements, other than that it thinks it can do a better job without its local partners. Read more...

Last month I reported the alarming news that ICE intended to take a pass on deporting Roberto Galo, a Honduran who was convicted of killing Drew Rosenberg in a 2010 traffic crash in San Francisco. Adding insult to the Rosenberg family's horrific injury, the ICE Public Advocate, whose office was created and funded to assist the public with their concerns about immigration law enforcement, has ignored repeated attempts by the victim’s father to contact him and discuss the case. Read more...

It's a good thing North Carolina (and Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia) saw fit to enact stronger E-Verify laws that go into effect in 2013, because the Obama administration is making no effort to address the rampant identity fraud that enables illegal aliens to get jobs and wreak havoc in the lives of unsuspecting Americans. Read more...

Once again, the current Congress is under pressure to change fundamental parts of our immigration system in order to fix the problems created by previous Congresses that were too generous. Special interest groups are pushing to eliminate provisions in immigration law that now help prevent green card allocations from being monopolized by immigrants from just a few countries. If the proposed changes are approved this month by the U.S. Read more...

Defenders of the visa lottery, which is slated for elimination in a bill that just passed the U.S. House on Friday, have tried to portray this program as an essential category that invigorates our immigration flow. Others, including Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), have said ending the program would be "racist, if not in its intent, than certainly in its effect." Some media descriptions of the visa lottery have also given this false impression, that the visa lottery program benefits mainly black immigrants from Africa, who they say have no other legal channels to enter. Neither portrayal of the visa lottery is accurate. Read more...

The Obama administration has quietly abandoned the pretense that it will try to deter local sanctuary policies that actively obstruct immigration law enforcement, such as an ordinance in Cook County, Ill., that orders the sheriff's officers to ignore holds placed by ICE on criminal aliens. Read more...