The following is a special update from our Forrest Gump Department, which is always diligently tracking and bringing to you the latest insanities and inanities on the subject of immigration in these here United States. Read more...

This past December, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report entitled "Border Security: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen CBP Efforts to Mitigate Risk of Employee Corruption and Misconduct". Read more...

On January 7, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) — which bills itself as "an independent, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide" — held a symposium entitled "Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery".

Alright, I admit it was rude, but I laughed out loud when I read the MPI lead-in announcing the event. "Formidable"? Hardly. This administration has done more to dismantle the effective enforcement of immigration laws — and to use presidential orders to circumvent the proper role of Congress in establishing immigration policy — than any other administration in recent history, perhaps in all of American history. It is the executive branch equivalent of "judicial activism" and, sadly, our legislative leaders appear unable or unwilling to push back and stop the assault on their constitutionally mandated role. Read more...

Those bright, sunny days immediately following reelection of the president seem to be facing the possibility of scattered showers, possibly thunderstorms, where "comprehensive immigration reform" (CIR) is concerned – so, at least, hints the Los Angeles Times in an article published last weekend. Read more...

Last week, The Wall Street Journal broke the story of two brothers, 30-year-old Sheheryar Alam Qazi and 20-year-old Raees Alam Qazi, naturalized United States citizens of Pakistani origin, arrested In Fort Lauderdale by the FBI for plotting to commit terrorist acts involving weapons of mass destruction in the United States. Read more...

Well, the election's over and the drumbeat has begun: "Comprehensive immigration reform now!" "¡Sí, se puede!" Most assuredly by now, virtually everyone understands that "CIR", to use the acronym, is code for amnesty for most of the millions of aliens illegally in the United States. Read more...

The Morning Call, an eastern Pennsylvania newspaper covering the Allentown / Lehigh County vicinity, reported on November 12, 2012, that a federal district court judge had dismissed a tort suit filed by a U.S. Read more...

In July of this year, the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics published an interesting paper entitled "Immigration Offenders in the Federal Justice System, 2010" by Mark Motivans, PhD.

Despite the reference to "2010" in the title, the paper actually documents federal immigration enforcement statistics for 2000-2010. Although, as might be expected, it is written in the somewhat dry style favored by bureaucracies and academia, the report makes for very interesting reading. Read more...

On October 16, the Cuban government made good on an old, until-now unrealized promise to its own citizens: Effective January 14, 2013, they will scrap the requirement that Cuban citizens obtain exit permits before they are allowed to travel outside the country. Read more...

An interesting item was published in the September 27 edition of Capital (a New York-based online publication), which in my view deserves a great deal more attention that it appears to be getting.

According to the article, "While nearly two-thirds of deportation cases nationwide end in the target's removal from the country, the results in New York City have been starkly different. Here, 74 percent of deportation proceedings this year have ended with the immigrant being allowed to stay in the United States." Read more...

The U.S. Treasury Department has announced the designation of the gang Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13) as a transnational criminal organization (TCO). This move shows just how far MS-13 has come over the years, from its start as a group of violent illegal alien thugs from El Salvador making extra money selling weapons to other gangs in Los Angeles, to its status as a significant criminal enterprise with international partners and a diversified portfolio of criminal activity, including bulk cash smuggling and sex-, drug-, and weapons-trafficking. Going after the gang's money and other assets makes perfect sense. But we were a little puzzled that the feds have not also moved to more effectively target the other obvious vulnerability for MS-13 and all TCOs — immigration status and the need to move across borders. Read more...

Controlled fusion — as opposed to fission — of atoms has long been the holy grail of nuclear energy proponents, to date with no success, although physicists have lately made amazing breakthroughs in, for instance, bringing forward evidence of the existence of the elusive Higgs boson.

It would seem that efforts to successfully achieve fusion at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are equally elusive. Read more...

This just in from those sharp-eyed folks in our News of the Weird Department:

Headline News (HLN), a subsidiary of CNN, citing the British Daily Mail newspaper, says that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has contracted with an information technology company to initiate use of a virtual reality Border Patrol Agent named "Elvis" to determine when individuals taken into custody may be lying. Let's call him VBPA Elvis. After all, every government employee has to have some kind of catchy acronym for a job title, right? Read more...

The New York Times, among other news organizations, published a remarkable story over the weekend: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has purportedly sent to Congress a classified letter indicating her intent to remove the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq organization (MEK or MKO) from the list of designated terrorist organizations. Read more...

Since taking office, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano has been extolling the virtues of a risk management strategy. For instance, risk management formed a part of her very first testimony before the House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security in February 2009. Read more...

Author's Note: Following is the second of two blogs examining the report entitled "The Cost of Responding to Immigration Detainers in California — Preliminary Findings", issued on August 22, 2012, by the Justice Strategies organization. The first blog examined the hype and reaction surrounding release of the report to the media. This blog takes a look at the report itself and critically examines the analysis. Read more...

Author's Note: Following is the first of two blogs examining the report "The Cost of Responding to Immigration Detainers in California — Preliminary Findings", issued last month. This blog examines the hype and reaction surrounding release of the report to the media. The second will take a look at the report itself. Read more...

If you spend any time at all browsing the website of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or reading any of the shiny, parti-colored pamphlets that they seem to produce like confetti these days at taxpayer expense, you'll see multiple references to their endeavors with "state and local partners".

For instance, on the "ICE Detainers: Frequently Asked Questions" portion of the website, there is this Q-and-A exchange (emphasis added): Read more...

Kind of a funny, ironic headline, no? A bit less funny when you begin to realize that it's basically true. Read more...

There's an interesting article by James Surowiecki in the August 27 edition of The New Yorker magazine titled "The Track-Star Economy". Although I disagree with the premises of the article in fundamental ways, it's thought-provoking and well worth a read. Read more...

CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian and others affiliated with the Center (Jessica Vaughan and David North, for instance) have written extensively about President Obama's amnesty-by-fiat. Read more...

The Reuters news agency, among other media outlets, reported last week on a decision of the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Zavala et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

The circuit court decision, favorable to Wal-Mart, declined to certify a proposed class action lawsuit against the corporation. The lawsuit alleged unfair labor conditions approaching peonage used against janitors, many if not most of them illegal aliens working for subcontractors to Wal-Mart, cleaning stores after hours throughout the nation. The would-be plaintiffs were the janitors themselves. Read more...

About a month ago, Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian appeared as one of the guest panelists on the PBS show "Need to Know", hosted by Ray Suarez.The episode focused on America's immigration policies. Read more...

Eleven years after the horrific attacks of 9/11, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just issued a dismaying report, "Weaknesses Exist in TSA's Process for Ensuring Foreign Flight Students Do Not Pose a Security Threat". Read more...

After the city of Chicago announced a "welcoming" ordinance that is a thinly veiled sanctuary law closely mirroring the one in Cook County, Ill., (in which the city sits, but is politically independent from), I wrote a blog expressing my dismay at such political theater, describing it as "agitprop". Read more...

In the 1930s, Soviet apparatchiks in Stalinist Russia coined the phrase, "agitprop". The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines agitprop as political propaganda promulgated chiefly in literature, drama, music, or art and goes on to provide us the Russian etymology of the word — a truncated combination of agitatsiya (agitation) and propaganda. Read more...

The California legislature is inching toward an "anti-Arizona" measure that would permit law enforcement agencies to ignore detainers filed by federal immigration authorities and prohibit police from questioning individuals pulled over during traffic stops, for instance, about their immigration status.

Two slightly different bills have passed each house of the legislative branch; they will have to be reconciled before a final vote. But no matter how you slice it, the bills are misguided and will do nothing but impede public safety, and quite possibly national security. Read more...

A few days after the Obama administration announced its decision to suspend deportation of young illegal aliens, the Center published a blog I had written expressing concern that the policy might, as an unintended consequence, put additional youths at risk by encouraging parents to send them on the Read more...

The first-term president begins to put a wrap on his four years in office and shifts into campaign mode with all the benefits and advantages of incumbency, the trappings of office: travel on Air Force One to ostensibly official events that can be used to amplify his accomplishments; the power of the bully pulpit to command a substantial portion of media attention and send his messages to the American people. Read more...

The Pew Research Center has just released a very interesting report indicating that the Asian population has surpassed the Hispanic population as the most rapidly growing demographic segment in the United States. Read more...