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1. DHS boss orders review of raid
2. SCOTUS hears arguments on ID theft
3. 1m illegals may access benefits
4. Report critical of feds
5. TX agencies to work with feds

1.
Napolitano orders review of Wash. immigration raid
By Manuel Valdes
The Associated Press, February 25, 2009

Seattle (AP) -- Immigration agents this week conducted their first work-site raid since President Barack Obama took office, but it was news to their boss, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who on Wednesday ordered a review of the action.

Workplace raids involving the arrests of hundreds of illegal immigrants at a time became almost routine in the last years of the Bush administration, but Napolitano's response to Tuesday's raid at a Bellingham, Wash., manufacturing plant highlighted the Obama administration's much different approach to a hot-button issue.

Napolitano told lawmakers during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday that she did not know about the raid before it happened and was briefed on it early Wednesday morning. She has asked U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which arrested 28 illegal immigrants in the raid, for answers.

"I want to get to the bottom of this as well," she said. She said work-site enforcement needs to be focused on the employers.

The raid at the Yamato Engine Specialists was the first work-site action ICE has taken since Obama took office, said Sean Smith, a spokesman at Homeland Security in Washington, D.C.

In a statement, an ICE official said the agency conducted the raid after information from two "gang members" led agents to start an investigation at the company.

"Follow-up investigation uncovered a potentially large number of illegally employed workers. ICE conducted the operation in order to identify and, if appropriate, apprehend any unauthorized workers and to further determine potential criminal activity," ICE spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said in an e-mail from Washington, D.C.

Obama, who appointed Napolitano, has signaled a shift in immigration policy that would rely less on work-site enforcement, focusing instead on employers who hire illegal immigrants and overall immigration reform.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gm0PBzLQKD0eS9x9Lib3Sv...

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2.
Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Identity-Theft Law in Immigration Cases
By Adam Liptak and Julia Preston
The New York Times, February 26, 2009

Washington, DC -- A federal identity-theft law that has become a favorite tool of the government in immigration prosecutions appeared imperiled on Wednesday after the Supreme Court heard arguments about it.

Prosecutors have relied on the law to seek or threaten two-year sentence extensions in immigration cases against people who used fake Social Security numbers that turned out to belong to real people.

“There’s a basic problem here,” said Justice John Paul Stevens. “You get an extra two years if it just so happens that the number you picked out of the air belonged to somebody else.”

Other justices also expressed skepticism about the government’s interpretation of the law.

The argument on Wednesday mostly concerned the meaning of the law, which applies to anyone who, in connection to other crimes, “knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.”

The question in the case, one the advocates and justices examined from many angles, was how far down that sentence the “knowingly” requirement travels. The government took the position that it stopped somewhere short of the crucial final three words — “of another person.”

Kevin K. Russell, a lawyer for the defendant, said that ordinary usage requires the government to prove that people accused of identity theft under the law knew the numbers they used belonged to someone else.

“If I say that John knowingly used a pair of scissors of his mother,” Mr. Russell said by way of example, “I am saying not simply that John knew he was using something that turned out to be his mother’s scissors or even that John knew he was using scissors which turned out to be his mother’s. I am saying that John knew that the scissors he was using belonged to his mother.”

Mr. Russell’s client, Ignacio Flores-Figueroa, was a Mexican citizen working illegally for a steel plant in Illinois. At first, Mr. Flores-Figueroa used a false name and fake Social Security number, one that did not happen to match that of a real person. Six years later, he told his employer that he wanted to be known by his real name, and he presented forged Social Security and alien registration cards that bore numbers assigned to real people.

When all of this was discovered, Mr. Flores-Figueroa pleaded guilty to several immigration offenses, resulting in a 51-month sentence, but he went to trial to contest charges under the identity-theft law. Although the government presented no evidence that Mr. Flores-Figueroa knew he was using numbers assigned to other people, he was convicted and sentenced to the additional two years mandated by the law.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, affirmed Mr. Flores-Figueroa’s conviction, saying that the government needed to prove only a knowing use of false information, and not that the defendant knew the fake number belonged to a real person.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/us/26identity.html

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3.
Report: Illegals Can Apply for U.S. Mortgage Relief
Newsroomamerica.com, February 25, 2009

As many as 1 million illegal immigrant households in the United States can apply for home mortgage relief under President Obama's $275 billion relief plan, according to a watchdog group.

"There is no legal prohibition against illegal immigrants owning homes," Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., told Internet news Web site WorldNetDaily.com.

"...In most cases mortgage lenders will accept a taxpayer ID or a Matricula Consular card issued by a Mexican Consulate office as identification to illegal immigrants from Mexico," he said.

Camarota said about 1 million illegal immigrant households acquired U.S. mortgages through the beginning of 2007, before the housing bubble burst.
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http://www.newsroomamerica.com/usa/story.php?id=446474

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4.
Police not focusing on dangerous illegal immigrants, study says
Police officers empowered by a federal program to enforce immigration laws are instead arresting day laborers and street vendors, the report finds.
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, February 26, 2009

A federal program that empowers local police to enforce U.S. immigration laws has failed in its promise to target illegal immigrants who pose a threat to public safety or national security, according to a study released today.

Instead of focusing on serious criminals, local law enforcement officers are arresting "day laborers, street vendors, people who are driving around with broken taillights," said Judith Greene, coauthor of the study by Justice Strategies, a New York-based nonprofit research organization focusing on humane and cost- effective approaches to criminal justice and immigration law enforcement.

At the same time, the costly enforcement program is diverting resources from local police and sheriff departments, the authors wrote. Many of the agreements are in cities where the crime rates are lower than the national average but had Latino population growth higher than the national average, they said.

There were more than 65 agreements between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement agencies across the nation and more than 950 officers had been trained by federal authorities as of late 2008, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immigpolice26-2009feb26,0,139357...

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5.
More Texas agencies using immigration database
By Anabelle Garay
The Associated Press, February 25, 2009

Dallas -- Nearly a dozen more North Texas law enforcement agencies will have the ability to access federal criminal and immigration records simultaneously when taking suspects' fingerprints during booking, federal officials announced Wednesday.

The Kaufman County Jail and Irving police joined the federal "Secure Communities" program this week, bringing the number of participants to 20 policing agencies in Texas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

Latino advocates have previously accused Irving police officers of racial profiling and overzealously arresting suspected illegal immigrants so they can be deported. The Mexican Consulate took the claim so seriously that it advised people to avoid driving through the Dallas suburb.

Police in Farmers Branch, a Dallas suburb where officials have tried to push out illegal immigrants with a rental ban, began participating in the program last week.

"It is another program offered by ICE that helps us make our city safer," Farmers Branch Police Chief Sidney R. Fuller said in a statement.

Secure Communities was developed by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to identify immigrants with criminal records that make them deportable. Priority is given to suspects with convictions for drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping.

When officers or jailers take suspects' fingerprints during the booking process, the fingerprints will be checked against the FBI's criminal history records and any existing immigration records maintained by DHS. If the system detects a person's fingerprints match those of someone in the DHS fingerprint system, it notifies ICE. Agents from ICE then determine the person's immigration status and whether they are deportable.
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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6281118.html