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1. DHS to target convicts, delay E-verify
2. McCain presses GOP on strategy
3. Activists allege profiling
4. Refugees hit hard by economy
5. FBI probing BP altercation

1.
Database targets jailed immigrants
By Stephen Dinan and Audrey Hudson
The Washington Times, January 30, 2009

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pledged Thursday to create a database network aimed at deporting immigrant criminals after their jail time rather then releasing them onto U.S. streets, though the administration also put off implementing a Bush-era effort to crack down on illegal-immigrant workers.

An estimated 450,000 U.S. jail inmates were in the country illegally when they committed crimes, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but no communication system alerts federal officials when these criminals are released, so they can be picked up on immigration charges or housed until they can be deported. The long-term plan is to create a communication system between federal immigration officials and state and local detention centers.

"That sounds very simple, but it's historically not been done," Miss Napolitano told the Associated Press and senior ICE officials Thursday.

Miss Napolitano's intentions drew praise from the National Immigration Forum, which advocates for stronger border controls.

"Napolitano´s job is to keep America safe, which includes deporting serious criminals, and she´s right to make sure that there is a fair process for determining who should get deported. It's a tough balance and we´re glad she wants to get it right," said Douglas G. Rivlin, the forum's spokesman.

Miss Napolitano also said she will examine existing rules to ensure taxpayers are getting what they pay for in terms of immigration enforcement.

However, the Obama administration also Thursday delayed putting into effect the E-Verify program, which will require federal contractors to check their employees' legal work status against a government database - a key element in President Bush's border-security plans.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, questioned the timing of the decision, as lawmakers are grappling with a stimulus package on Capitol Hill to secure new jobs for Americans.

"It is ironic that at the same time President Obama was pushing for passage of the stimulus package to help the unemployed, his administration delayed implementation of a rule designed to protect jobs for U.S. citizens and legal workers: the requirement that federal contractors use E-Verify," Mr. Smith said.

"U.S. citizens and legal immigrant workers should not have to compete with illegal immigrants for employment," Mr. Smith said. "We should preserve these increasingly scarce jobs for them. Anything else is an affront to U.S. citizens and legal immigrant workers."
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http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/30/database-targets-jailed-immi...

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2.
McCain: GOP must rethink its Hispanic strategy
By Juan Castillo
The Austin American Statesman, January 29, 2009

Add vanquished presidential candidate Sen. John McCain to the ranks of Republican leaders who think the party needs to take a hard look at itself if it wants to reach Hispanic voters.

The Hill reports that the Arizona senator privately told colleagues this month that the GOP’s poor image among Latinos devastated his campaign. He attributed that image to intra-party squabbles over immigration reform.

“He talked about the loss of Hispanics and the loss of young people,” a GOP source says in the article.

McCain won only 31 percent of Hispanic voters in the November election. Estimates of support for Bush range from 40 to 44 percent in 2004.

Latinos are the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group; political experts say they played a key role in turning Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida from red to blue in 2008.
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http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/somosaust...

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3.
7-Eleven video said to show racial profiling
Immigrant advocates say Latinos were unfairly targeted by agents
By Scott Calvert
The Baltimore Sun (MD), January 30, 2009

Immigrant advocates released video footage yesterday that they say shows federal agents unfairly targeted Latinos in January 2007 outside a 7-Eleven in Southeast Baltimore.

The video, taken from store cameras, captured U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounding up 24 men suspected of being illegal immigrants. Most have since been deported or left the country voluntarily.

In the video, agents can be seen ignoring black store patrons while focusing on Latino men. Advocates say a white man who had hired three Latinos for day labor was allowed to drive his pickup truck away from the 7-Eleven, while the three workers were taken into custody.

In addition, the advocates say, the video shows agents detaining a number of Latinos who had been waiting at a bus stop across the street from the 7-Eleven, a common hiring spot for day laborers.

"Today, with this video, we're fighting back," said Jessica Alvarez, chairwoman of the National Capital Immigration Coalition. "Today, we are showing everyone exactly what our community has been telling us about the abuses, about the racial profiling."

Alvarez spoke at a late-morning news conference at a Fells Point church a few blocks from the 7-Eleven on South Broadway.

Richard Rocha, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said he had not seen the footage. But he denied that agents engaged in racial profiling. "These allegations were thoroughly investigated in 2007 and were deemed to be unsubstantiated," he said.

CASA de Maryland, a Silver Spring-based immigrant advocacy group with a Baltimore office, released the footage. The group announced that it had filed a federal lawsuit last month against the Department of Homeland Security seeking internal documents on the roundup.
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.immigrants30jan30,0,289066...

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4.
For Refugees, Recession Makes Hard Times Even Harder
By Erik Eckholm
The New York Times, January 30, 2009

Salt Lake City -- After escaping violence in Burma and spending 27 years in the bamboo huts of a United Nations camp in Thailand, Nyaw Paw, 33, arrived in the United States last August to face the traumatic adjustment and cultural vertigo known to every refugee.

But with high rents, lagging federal aid and now a recession that is drying up entry-level work, the transition has become harder than ever, refugee workers say. Overwhelming housing costs are its starkest symptom. Many new arrivals spend 90 percent or more of their income on rent and utilities, leaving them virtually no disposable income and creating enormous hardships.

Ms. Nyaw Paw, who was placed in Salt Lake City with her two sons, ages 6 and 13, has scraped together the $600 rent on their one-bedroom apartment from federal payments that ended in December. Now, her only income is a welfare grant of about $500 a month; a private aid agency fills the gap.

Ms. Nyaw Paw has tried for traditional starter jobs, like motel housekeeping, but no one is hiring here. Her life demands such frugality that she washes the family clothes in the bathtub rather than feeding quarters to the machine down the hall.

“I think about the rent every minute,” Ms. Nyaw Paw said through a translator, “and I don’t know what I’ll do when the aid programs run out.”

Poor refugees — like low-income Americans — can apply for rent subsidies, which require that recipients spend 30 percent of their income on rent, with the federal government picking up the rest. But in Salt Lake City, there is a two-year waiting list, and it is longer in many other cities.

Starting in February, in the first program of its kind, Utah plans to soften the huge and growing burden of housing costs by providing rent subsidies to recently arrived families for up to two years. The money is being drawn from unspent federal welfare reserves. Under the welfare reforms of 1996, states can use the federal grant flexibly for families that already qualify for welfare, mainly single-parent families like Ms. Nyaw Paw’s. For them, such help will make a world of difference.

Refugees arrive in the United States with a one-time State Department grant of about $450 a person and temporary help from a private agency to assist them toward economic self-sufficiency.

Apart from a number of Iraqis who arrive with professional degrees, most refugees these days arrive from Africa and Asia with little education or experience of Western life, and no relatives in this country to help.

Federal aid for refugee resettlement has not risen with the cost of living, state welfare programs are skimpier than before and low-income housing is ever scarcer. Meanwhile, the jobs that refugees have often ridden to success, like working in warehouses and hotels, are disappearing or being filled by people laid off from other jobs.

“People are hurting here, often spending 85 to 90 percent of their incomes or more on rent, and they can hardly do anything else,” said Gerald Brown, who was recently appointed Utah’s first director of refugee services.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/30/us/30refugees.html

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5.
FBI Investigates After Border Patrol Agent Opens Fire
The Associated Press, January 29, 2009

San Luis, AZ (AP) -- The FBI is investigating an incident in which a Border Patrol agent shot at one of several people standing on a border fence near San Luis, Ariz., and throwing rocks at him.

FBI spokesman Manuel Johnson says he couldn't confirm whether anyone was struck.

Border Patrol spokesman Ben Vik says the agent was patrolling between parallel fences Tuesday when two men dropped a ladder they were carrying and climbed back over the south fence into Mexico.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,485384,00.html