1. Dems press Feds to deport criminals
2. Tancredo nails McCain on imm. stance
3. Citizens sue over wrongful detention
4. Skilled Iraqi refugees languish

1.
Pursue criminal aliens, not workers, Congress urges administration
By Barbara Barrett
The McClatchy Newspapers, June 24, 2008

Washington, DC -- While the nation's immigration cops have raided job
sites and picked up illegal aliens across the country in the past year,
hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants sit in jails, already
convicted of crimes. Yet they often are released back into the community
instead of being deported.

This week in Congress, Democrats — with almost no resistance from
Republicans — are trying to force the Bush administration to focus more
on the criminals and less on the working folk, directing $800 million to
Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make criminal alien deportations
its top priority.

That means more money to ferret out criminals in jails, for the
federal-local 287(g) partnerships that deputize local law enforcement
officers as federal immigration cops, and for the fugitive alien teams
that pick up wanted suspects.

But some of those programs, while focused on criminals, round up
non-criminals, as well.

Homeland Security records show, for example, that fugitive alien teams
last year captured nearly six times as many non-criminals as they did
convicted criminals.

Many immigrant advocates also fear that local-federal partnerships such
as the 287(g) program are leading to racial profiling in Latino
communities.

Rep. David Price, D-N.C., the chairman of the House of Representatives
Appropriations Committee's homeland security subcommittee, pushed the
effort this week. Price is shepherding next year's spending package for
the Department of Homeland Security. It passed a key House committee
Tuesday and now goes to the House floor.

Capturing criminal illegal aliens is "one thing everybody agrees on that
has to be at the top of the list, and yet they haven't done it," Price
said in an interview Tuesday.

Not everyone agrees.

"What he's saying is he doesn't want to enforce our immigration laws
except on a narrow group of people," said Steven Camarota, research
director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank
that advocates for immigration restrictions. "He's saying he doesn't
really want the law enforced."

To ferret out illegal immigrants, Camarota said, the federal government
must focus on workers and the employers who hire them.

That happened last year.
. . .
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/42085.html

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2.
Tancredo Questions McCain
By Jonathan Weisman
The Washington Post, June 24, 2008

He may be the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, but John
McCain has yet to heal all the wounds on his right flank.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a failed presidential rival of McCain's and
an anti-illegal immigration gadfly, launched into the senator from
Arizona for meeting in secret with Latino leaders last week in Chicago.
One participant in the meeting emerged to criticize McCain for taking a
tougher stand on illegal immigration on the campaign trail than the line
he allegedly used behind closed doors. Now, Tancredo is taking up the
cudgel in an open letter to his party's presumptive nominee.

"Recently in Chicago, you had a closed door meeting with a group of
Hispanic leaders," he wrote. "Strangely, the closed door meeting was not
on your official events calendar, no press was invited and no press
release appears to have been issued. Yet, according to several news
reports, you promised the group that you plan to pursue 'comprehensive
immigration reform.' Senator, given your past sponsorship of amnesty
legislation, such statements raise troubling questions. Are you planning
to break a promise you made in February to postpone all other
immigration reform legislation until we have first secured our borders?"
. . .
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/06/24/tancredo_questions_m...

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3.
Citizens sue after detentions, immigration raids
By Emily Bazar
USA Today, June 24, 2008

Los Angeles -- Nitin Dhopade, the chief financial officer for Micro
Solutions Enterprises, was headed toward the accounting department on
the afternoon of Feb. 7 to deliver checks he had just signed. Suddenly,
he says, he encountered armed men and women wearing bulletproof vests
and uniforms branded with "ICE," which stands for U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.

Dhopade, 47, says he and 30 other administrative workers for the Van
Nuys, Calif., company, which recycles used toner and ink cartridges,
were marched down a stairwell lined by officers. The workers were
ordered against a wall and told not to touch anything or use their
cellphones. "There was no way you could leave. You were definitely
detained," he says. "None of us were in handcuffs, but there was no way
you could say 'I'm leaving.' "

That marked the beginning of a surprise raid that would result in the
arrests of 138 suspected illegal immigrants, about one-fifth of MSE's
workforce. Also swept up in the same raid were more than 100 U.S.
citizens and legal residents, including Dhopade, a naturalized U.S.
citizen from India. They say they were illegally detained at the factory
for an hour when ICE agents blocked the doors and interrogated them,
forbidding them to leave or go to the bathroom without an escort.

Whether their brief detention was a mere inconvenience or a flagrant
violation of their constitutional rights is the subject of a growing
debate that seems likely to be resolved in federal court. Immigration
officials, charged with enforcing the law against the estimated 12
million undocumented foreigners in the USA, are mounting more raids at
slaughterhouses, restaurants and factories.
. . .
Barbara Coe, chairwoman of the California Coalition for Immigration
Reform, says raids "are providing the incentive for at least some of
these illegal aliens to get out of here before they are deported. I
don't think there are enough raids. There should be more." She says
she's sorry legal residents are sometimes questioned during raids but
believes ICE needs time to determine who is here legally.

So does Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in
Washington. "It's not the end of the world," he says of citizens who are
detained. "These people were briefly inconvenienced. Too bad."
. . .
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-06-24-Immigration-raids_N.htm

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4.
Driving Cabs Instead of Building Bridges, Iraqis Languish in U.S.;
Skilled Refugees Struggle After Fleeing Retaliation for Aiding America
By Pamela Constable
The Washington Post, June 25, 2008

Two years ago, Firas Safar was a successful Baghdad printer, winning
contracts with U.S. authorities to produce brochures for aid missions,
posters for army units, and several million copies of the new Iraqi
constitution.

Today Safar, 31, is a jobless refugee in Takoma Park, part of a new wave
of professional Iraqis who have received special immigration privileges
because, in many cases, their work for U.S. authorities or organizations
resulted in threats or violence back home. For many such as Safar, it
has meant trading economic security in Iraq for personal security here.
. . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR200806
2401661.html