1. CA federal court is burdened by caseload
2. Employers feel pressure of enforcement
3. 14 illegal aliens hiding in churches
4. 32 foreign born athletes in olympics
5. SC county uses private auditors for checks
6. TN 287(g) policy questioned after incident
7. CA city policy gave sanctuary to murderer
8. Enforcement named mayor of the year
9. Group buys air time to head off AZ recall
10. Wealthy NY area divided by enforcement
11. Groups explain visas to PA buisnesses
12. ICE nabs 49 gang members

1.
L.A. Immigration Court caseload soars
And wait times are growing because the number of judges has not kept pace.
By Anna Gorman
Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2008

The number of foreigners landing in Los Angeles Immigration Court has surged in recent years, while the number of judges has remained about the same, causing crushing caseloads and lengthy delays.

Expanded immigration enforcement, including the ongoing search for illegal immigrants in county jails, is causing much of the rise, according to judges, attorneys and experts.

"I don't think it's possible for a court to implode from weight, but we may see," said former L.A. Immigration Judge Gilbert T. Gembacz, who retired last month after more than a decade on the bench.

Los Angeles immigration judges heard 27,200 cases last fiscal year, up from about 17,800 in 2000. In the last fiscal year alone, the number of immigration cases rose nearly 40%.

Today, 23 judges are assigned to Immigration Court, just two more than in 2000.

Immigration courts nationwide mirror the trend. Last fiscal year, judges heard 334,600 cases, up from 254,500 in 2000. During the same period, the number of judges increased to 220 from 207.

"Because of the high volume of the immigration docket, there is a great concern that respondents appearing before us do not believe they are given adequate opportunity to present their cases," said San Francisco Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks, head of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, the judges' union.

Cases are also becoming more difficult as laws change and new regulations are written, making it harder for judges to complete cases quickly.

"You are asking us to do death penalty cases in a traffic court setting with traffic court resources," Marks said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said the courts are critical to the government's crackdown on illegal immigration.

"We can go out there and make arrests," she said, "but the efficiency of the legal process is going to have a tremendous impact on the outcome."
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immigct21-2008jul21,0,3848190.story

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2.
In Immigration Cases, Employers Feel the Pressure
But Critics Fault Laws as Ineffective
By Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post, July 21, 2008; A01

A three-year-old enforcement campaign against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants is increasingly resulting in arrests and criminal convictions, using evidence gathered by phone taps, undercover agents and prisoners who agree to serve as government witnesses.

But the crackdown's relatively high costs and limited results are also fueling criticism. In an economy with more than 6 million companies and 8 million unauthorized workers, the corporate enforcement effort is still dwarfed by the high-profile raids that have sentenced thousands of illegal immigrants to prison time and deportation.

Stewart A. Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department, recently told immigration experts the disparity can be traced to ineffective policies that need to be addressed by Congress.

"Companies tell me, 'We have an immigration system that allows us to hire illegal workers, legally,' " Baker said. Asked to defend President Bush's track record, he said, "Why are employers not punished more often? Because the laws we have don't really authorize that."

In the first nine months of this fiscal year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made 937 criminal arrests at U.S. workplaces, more than 10 times as many as the 72 it arrested five years ago. Of those arrested this year, 99 were company supervisors, compared with 93 in 2007.

The arrests have led to several convictions, including a union official at a Swift meatpacking plant; three executives of a Florida janitorial services company; a temporary-staffing agency manager for a Del Monte Fresh Produce plant in Oregon; two supervisors of a Cargill pork plant cleaning contractor in Illinois; and seven managers of IFCO Systems North America, a pallet services company, among others.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/20/AR200807...

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3.
Immigration authorities for most part steer clear of sanctuary controversy
By Sophia Tareen
The Associated Press, July 21, 2008

Chicago -- Everyone knows where Flor Crisostomo lives, even the federal immigration officials who have ordered her deported to Mexico. The reason they haven't detained her is her address -- Adalberto United Methodist Church.

Another woman famously took refuge in that church as she championed immigration reform, and at least 13 other illegal immigrants are doing the same at churches around the country. So far, they have little to fear.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officials have arrested illegal immigrants by the hundreds in raids at factories, restaurants, malls, farms and meat packing plants, but they have handled cases involving churches delicately.

"Our agency takes enforcement actions when we deem it appropriate," said Julie Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for ICE.

"I am personally not aware of an instance when ICE has gone into a church. That being said, if there was a particular, extremely egregious, ax murderer or something else, that's not to say we would not enforce the law at that time."

Avoiding churches is unofficial policy for federal immigration officials, according to Doris Meissner, a former commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the agency that oversaw immigration until the Department of Homeland Security was formed in 2003.
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http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080721/NEWS/807210316

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4.
Foreign-born athletes are set to take the stage for U.S.
The Associated Press, July 21, 2008

New York -- As the U.S. struggles with immigration policy, Americans will get a chance next month to see their melting-pot nation through the prism of foreign-born athletes competing in USA uniforms at the Beijing Olympics.

There are at least 32 of them, compared to 27 at the 2004 Summer Games, according to the U.S. Olympic Committee, which didn't track the statistic before then.

They include four Chinese-born table tennis players, a kayaker from Britain, Russian-born world champion gymnast Nastia Liukin and seven members of the track-and-field team.

For those seeking symbolism, it's hard to top the men's 1,500-metre squad - Kenya native Bernard Lagat; Lopez Lomong, one of the "lost boys" of Sudan's civil war who spent a decade in a refugee camp; and Leo Manzano, a Mexican labourer's son who moved to the U.S. when he was four but didn't gain citizenship until 2004.

"It's a magical time," said U.S. men's track coach, Bubba Thornton. "I'm glad that these young men found their way here.

"It may just remind us all of where we came from, and how hard the struggle may have been, and how big the dream was to be here."
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http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080721.wolymfor21/GSSto...

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5.
Immigration business auditors sharing document info with county deputies
By Michael Welles Shapiro
The Island Packet (Hilton Head, SC), July 20, 2008

Auditors checking Beaufort County businesses to ensure they're complying with a new immigration law are notifying the sheriff's office when they find documents that appear to be counterfeit or stolen, according to officials.

County administrator Gary Kubic said he decided about five weeks ago to have private auditors who are working for the county alert the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office when they come across suspicious immigration documents or forms.

The auditors from Hilton Head Island-based Advance Point Global, who include a former U.S Secret Service agent and a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, have been randomly auditing businesses since April.

Under the county ordinance, auditors are checking whether federal immigration documents called I-9s, which typically include a worker's name and Social Security number, are on file for each employee and filled out properly.

The law went into effect Jan. 1, 2008, and affects business in unincorporatedparts of the county. It penalizes employers who knowingly hire workers who are in the country illegally, which would also be a violation of federal law. The maximum penalty under the county ordinance is revocation of an employer's county business license.

The ordinance doesn't penalize employers who have unwittingly accepted fake or stolen IDs from employees.

So far auditors have checked more than 300 businesses and none has lost its license. In some cases, however, business have had to take steps to make their records comply with the ordinance. The auditors wouldn't say how many businesses have had to take corrective steps.
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http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/554708.html

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6.
Immigrant, Pregnant, Is Jailed Under Pact
By Julia Preston
The New York Times, July 20, 2008

It started when Juana Villegas, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who was nine months pregnant, was pulled over by a police officer in a Nashville suburb for a routine traffic violation.

Juana Villegas and 2-week-old son in her lawyer’s office Thursday in Nashville. Mother and son had been separated for two days.

By the time Mrs. Villegas was released from the county jail six days later, she had gone through labor with a sheriff’s officer standing guard in her hospital room, where one of her feet was cuffed to the bed most of the time. County officers barred her from seeing or speaking with her husband.

After she was discharged from the hospital, Mrs. Villegas was separated from her nursing infant for two days and barred from taking a breast pump into the jail, her lawyer and a doctor familiar with the case said. Her breasts became infected, and the newborn boy developed jaundice, they said.

Mrs. Villegas’s arrest has focused new attention on a cooperation agreement signed in April 2007 between federal immigration authorities and Davidson County, which shares a consolidated government with Nashville, that gave immigration enforcement powers to county officers. It is one of 57 agreements, known formally as 287G, that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has signed in the last two years with county and local police departments across the country under a rapidly expanding program.

Nashville officials have praised the agreement as a successful partnership between local and federal government.

“We are able to identify and report individuals who are here illegally and have been charged with a criminal offense, while at the same time remaining a friendly and open city to our new legal residents,” Karl Dean, the mayor of Nashville, said in a statement on Friday.

Lawyers and immigrant advocates say Mrs. Villegas’s case shows how local police can exceed their authority when they seek to act on immigration laws they are not fully trained to enforce.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/us/20immig.html

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7.
Slaying suspect once found sanctuary in S.F.
By Jaxon Van Derbeken
The San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 2008

The man charged with killing a father and two sons on a San Francisco street last month was one of the youths who benefited from the city's long-standing practice of shielding illegal immigrant juveniles who committed felonies from possible deportation, The Chronicle has learned.

Edwin Ramos, now 21, is being held on three counts of murder in the June 22 deaths of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. They were shot near their home in the Excelsior district when Tony Bologna, driving home from a family picnic, briefly blocked the gunman's car from completing a left turn down a narrow street, police say.

Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors say is a member of a violent street gang, was found guilty of two felonies as a juvenile - a gang-related assault on a Muni passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman - according to authorities familiar with his background.

In neither instance did officials with the city's Juvenile Probation Department alert federal immigration authorities, because it was the city agency's policy not to consider immigration status when deciding how to deal with an offender. Had city officials investigated, they would have found that Ramos lacked legal status to remain in the United States.

Federal authorities, however, also missed an opportunity to take Ramos into custody just this past March - after they had learned of his immigration status and started deportation proceedings, and after Ramos was arrested in San Francisco on a gun charge. For reasons the federal agents cannot explain, they did not put an immigration hold on Ramos.

Raised in El Salvador

Juvenile justice authorities locally had a policy for at least a decade of not turning over illegal immigrant felons to the federal government, interpreting San Francisco's self-proclaimed sanctuary-city status and state law as barring local officials from surrendering them for deportation.

Mayor Gavin Newsom rescinded that policy earlier this month after The Chronicle reported that the city had flown a number of youths out of the country on its own, in possible violation of federal law, and then housed some in unlocked group homes from which they quickly escaped.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/20/MNK011MAFR.DTL

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8.
Hazleton mayor named Pa.'s Mayor of the Year
The Associated Press, July 21, 2008

Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who is best known for a local crackdown on illegal immigration, has been named Mayor of the Year by the Pennsylvania State Mayors Association.

Barletta is a hands-on mayor who has been on location at crime scenes, said Lititz Mayor Russell Pettyjohn, the chairman of the association's six-member Mayor of the Year award committee. The immigration crackdown was another reason for Barletta's unanimous selection, Pettyjohn said.

"He's gone one step further to take on immigration," Pettyjohn said.
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http://www.timesleader.com/news/ap?articleID=614299

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9.
Allies of Phoenix mayor battle recall effort
The Associated Press, July 20, 2008

It's a political oddity: A TV commercial extolling the public safety record of a sitting mayor, except the spot isn't explicitly soliciting votes and the politician isn't scheduled to appear on this year's ballot.

The commercial in question promotes Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, and it appears to be an attempt to head off a recall effort against him by advocates for tougher immigration enforcement.

Gordon, who has faced criticism for the immigration policies of the police department, said he wasn't responsible for the commercial and that a political committee had the ad produced.

"I am just grateful that there are good messages going out, especially at a time when you have some extremists trying to stop the city progress, trying to stop myself from continuing to go forward as a mayor," said Gordon, who won a second term to lead the nation's fifth-largest city last year with 77 percent of the vote.

Anna Gaines, a retired teacher who is leading the recall effort, said her group officially launched its recall effort because illegal immigrants are committing crimes in Phoenix and Gordon isn't doing enough to fix the problem.

"We have to remove him before he causes any more damage to this city," said Gaines, a native Mexican who came to the United States legally and became a U.S. citizen.

Her group needs to collect petition signatures from nearly 24,000 of Phoenix's 521,000 registered voters by Aug. 28. If enough valid signatures are gathered, Gordon could either resign or let voters decide whether to oust him.

Efforts to force recall elections against local politicians often fail.

Gaines, whose group is aiming to collect 75,000 signatures, declined to say how many voters her volunteers have signed up thus far.
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http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/07/20/20080720mayor-ON.html

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10.
Immigration row divides haven for US super-rich
The deportation of illegal workers is dividing Long Island, one of America's wealthiest regions
By Ed Helmore
The Observer (U.K.), July 20, 2008

Long Island, where rich residents are facing a labour shortage after a spate of deportations. Photograph: Kate Maxwell

It is high season in the Hamptons, the holiday home for America's superstars and merely super-rich. But behind the perfectly tended lawns and clipped hedgerows at the far end of Long Island all is not well.

Tiger Woods recently paid $65 million (£32m) for a beachfront home here. Christie Brinkley, whose recent divorce has been the talk of Long Island, is a regular visitor. But as a result of a locally enforced purge of the undocumented immigrants who provide much of the menial workforce, barmen are disappearing from beach bars, waiters from the lobster-and-champagne benefit parties and cleaners from the holiday mansions. Long Island is divided as never before between the haves and the have-nots.

'The Latino community are living in uncertainty and fear,' said Sister Margaret Smyth, the head of a church group in Riverhead, one of the poorest areas of Long Island. 'As a result of the crackdown, we've created a new underclass of women and children. Their men have been deported but they want to stay because they want their children educated. Before, people were poor; now they are extremely poor.'

Up to now summering bankers and celebrities have been more concerned with the social dramas of the season, such as the Brinkley divorce and an entertaining scuffle at an art opening in East Hampton, when white wine was served in contravention of a new teetotal town ordinance. But tensions as a result of the crackdown on cheap labour have spilled embarrassingly into view.

Hotels, restaurants and gardening contractors are predicting an imminent shortage of able workers. And every day in the car park of the 7-11 convenience shop on the main road in Southampton, a daily drama of the poor is played out in one of the most prosperous regions of America. More than a hundred Mexican, Honduran and Guatemalan day labourers gather hoping to be picked up for work. Now opposing them are a group of protesters - Long Island's 'minutemen' - clutching 'No Amnesty' placards, shouting insults and clearly identifying who should be the next deportees.

'The protesters have a lot of support,' said Brian Smith, leaning outside his store, PH Pool. Reports that cross-border immigration may be slowing was not evident in the Hamptons, he said. 'If anything there are more immigrants coming than ever before; and I don't see why they should come here and have their healthcare and babies for free.'
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/20/usa

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11.
Visas Bring Investors From Abroad To Philly Development Projects
By Bradley Vasoli
The Bulletin (Philadelphia, PA), July 18, 2008

Philadelphia -- Hundreds of foreign nationals have come to Pa. to invest in major corporate development projects, advocates of an investor visa program said Thursday during a Philadelphia business forum.

The Philadelphia chapters of the Irish-American Chamber of Commerce, the French-American Chamber of Commerce and the German-American Chamber of Commerce set up the event to educate their members about various business visas. H. Ronald Klasko, an immigration lawyer and former national president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Philadelphia and Seattle have brought in the most investors from overseas under the EB-5 program.

EB-5 visas were created in 1990 to permit investors to come to the United States, to provide low-interest loans for business projects and thereby place them on a path to receiving green cards. Participants must usually provide $500,000, sometimes $1 million, depending on the location of the project. Five years after an investor makes a loan, he or she has the option of cashing out.
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Mark Krikorian, executive director of the D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies and author of the recently released The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal, says that if the EB-5 program must continue, it should be restructured to require investments of at least $50 million to maximize the number of jobs it could create. He would also trim down the employment-based visa system to bring in immigrants who are among the best in their career fields.

"The employment- or skills-based visas should be limited to a handful of Einsteins," he said, adding that the EB-1 visa program already provides a channel for extraordinary talents. Other visas, particularly H1-Bs, that admit foreign workers only through their associations with a specified employer, should be viewed as "indentured servitude" and abolished, he said.
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http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19859340&BRD=2737&PAG=46...

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12.
ICE nabs 49 immigrants in gang sweep
Arrests made in Chicago's north, northwest suburbs
By Antonio Olivo
The Chicago Tribune, July 18, 2008

During a four-day sweep, federal Immigration agents have arrested 49 immigrants in the Chicago area, part of an ongoing effort to crack down on foreign-born gang members, officials announced Friday.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ice-raid-web-jul19,0,197192...