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1. Report: Latino voting in 2008
2. Border Patrol to probe claims
3. DHS considers new detention center
4. New GOP chair maintains position
5. NY county police question status

1.
Republicans and Latino Voters: Has the GOP Shifted on Immigration Reform?
By Justin Ewers
The US News and World Report, January 30, 2009
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/politics/2009/01/30/republicans-and-...

After their dramatic losses in the fall elections, Republican leaders spent weeks publicly flogging themselves not just for losing the support of millions of Reagan Democrats and suburban moms—but for pushing away Latino voters, in particular, one of the country's fastest-growing demographic groups.

Many placed the blame for the loss on conservatives in their own party, pointing to the heated Republican opposition to a series of failed immigration reform bills in 2007. "[T]he very divisive rhetoric of the immigration debate set a very bad tone for our brand as Republicans," Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican, said after the election. "There were voices within our party, frankly, which if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric...we're going to be relegated to minority status."

From Karl Rove to Colin Powell, GOP leaders agreed: The numbers didn't lie. In November, 68 percent of Latinos, who made up nearly 1 in 10 voters overall—and whose percentage of the electorate is climbing—supported Barack Obama over John McCain. The gains made among Hispanics by George W. Bush, who won more than 40 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, had disappeared. "We have to reach out to Hispanics," said John Ensign, a Republican senator from Nevada, summing up what appeared to be the GOP's new conventional wisdom.

This week, though, some Republicans, including Ensign himself, have shown that not all conservatives have changed their tune on at least one issue important to Latinos—immigration—nor, it would seem, do they intend to. As the candidates for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee continued to try to out-conservative each other ahead of today's party officer elections, two new reports from right-wing think tanks demonstrate that the battle for the soul of the Republican Party is far from over—arguing not only that Republicans should stick to their guns on immigration, but that the Latino vote is already lost to the GOP.

Ensign, for one, found himself taking a familiarly hard line earlier this week during a vote on a government healthcare program for low-income children. Seemingly abandoning his nascent Hispanic outreach efforts, he opposed a measure that would have removed a five-year waiting period before children of legal immigrants can access the program. "It would seem to me," Ensign said, "that we are giving more incentives for folks to come to the United States, not just to participate in the American dream but to come to the United States to get on the government dole." Two other high-ranking Republicans, Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah, filed amendments that would also have eliminated the provision.

As eyebrows went up once again in the Latino community, two conservative organizations released studies with very different takes on the election than the one offered by GOP leaders in the fall.

First, the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports severe restrictions on immigration, published a report which concludes that the GOP's stance on immigration isn't actually what hurt the party with Hispanic voters. In "Latino Voting in the 2008 Election: Part of a Broader Electoral Movement," James Gimpel, a professor of government at the University of Maryland, argues that the Republican party gave up ground in the election across many demographic groups—white males, for example—and that Latinos, like all voters, were much more concerned with the economy than with immigration.

"There is little evidence that immigration policy was an influential factor in Latinos' choice between the two candidates once basic party predispositions are taken into account," the report says. Gimpel dismisses the notion that Republicans might be able to woo Latinos by offering McCain- or Bush-style immigration reform. "As long as Latinos remain in lower income brackets," he says, "an outcome virtually assured by sustained high levels of unskilled immigration, the Democrats will continue to maintain their lopsided edge."

Another D.C.-based group, The American Cause, chaired by Pat Buchanan, released a similarly defiant study this week arguing that the GOP needs to get tougher on immigration, not softer. The report, "Immigration and the 2008 Republican Defeat," which analyzes all of the Republican losses in 2008 House races, concludes that Republicans lost because they supported "amnesty" for illegal immigrations, while Democrats emphasized border security—a stance that proved popular with voters.

The Buchanan group, which describes itself as a promoter of "economic patriotism," offers a bleak prognosis for Republicans. Since the party has never won a majority of the Latino vote, it concludes, Republicans should be focusing their effort not on "reforming" immigration policy, but on stopping mass immigration altogether. "The Demographic changes made by mass immigration have been disastrous to Republicans and will be fatal if not halted," says a press release announcing the report, which urges the GOP to solidify its political base, not expand it. "Whatever gains, if any, pandering to Hispanics gives is greatly outweighed by loss of the White vote, which is more important."

Political observers on both sides of the aisle, meanwhile, were struck not just by the sudden resurgence of an issue that has spent several years off the political stage—but by its surprisingly shrill tones. Among some conservative groups, anti-immigrant sentiment is certainly alive and well. "Their whole political theory has been not to win the people in the middle but to win the hard-core Republican base," says Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigration reform advocacy group. These new studies, he says, reflect a fundamental split in the Republican Party that the election did nothing to resolve. "You have a growing number of thinkers and elders in the party saying 'We're going the wrong way,'" says Sharry. "But you have almost no one in the rank-and-file saying that."

It's no accident that the issue of immigration is flaring up again, of course. During the presidential campaign, Obama promised to tackle immigration reform in his first year as president, and political observers believe legislation could move to Capitol Hill again as soon as this fall. "The reason they're pushing back is they realize this election has been a game-changer on immigration," says Sharry. "The sleeping giant awoke."

Three million new Latino voters went to the ballot box this fall, redrawing the electoral map—and leaving many analysts wondering how Republicans can imagine a way forward, politically, that does not include Latino voters, and, by extension, immigration reform.

Many experts scoff at the argument made in the two new reports that immigration policy is somehow not important to Latinos. Though Hispanics, in the last year, have certainly rated the economy and jobs as two of their top concerns, polls show that immigration is never far from their minds. Nearly 90 percent of Latino voters in one poll conducted after the election said immigration was either "somewhat important" or "very important" to them.

There is abundant evidence, meanwhile, that Latino voters are moving away from Republicans, and toward Democrats, largely because of the GOP's association with anti-immigration hard-liners. More than 11 million Latinos voted in the election this fall, up from only 7.6 million in 2004. They proved decisive not just in heavily Latino swing states like Florida, New Mexico, and Nevada but also in previously solid red states like Indiana, where Obama won by a margin of only about 25,000 votes—largely because he dominated McCain among recent Latino immigrants.

The political calculus—for Latino groups, and for many moderate Republicans—seems clear. "There will be political consequences for our leaders who do not understand that we are sending a strong message through that turnout," Janet Murguía, president of the advocacy group National Council of La Raza, said earlier this month.

The question, now, is whether GOP leaders hear that message—and how they decide to act on it.

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2.
Border Patrol to probe alleged arrest quotas
By Amy Taxin
The Associated Press, February 3, 2009

Santa Ana, CA (AP) -- The U.S. Border Patrol on Monday ordered an investigation of allegations by agents in Southern California that they were given arrest quotas and threatened with punishment if they failed to meet them.

Jeffrey Calhoon, El Centro's chief patrol agent, said he learned the patrol agent in charge of the agency's Riverside station some 100 miles north of the Mexican border gave agents numerical goals for how many suspected illegal immigrants they should arrest in January.

Calhoon says he has ordered a probe into whether agents were told they would be punished if they failed to meet this target.

"If there is some threatening behavior, we're not going to tolerate it," Calhoon said.

The probe comes after Border Patrol agents in Riverside said they were ordered to arrest at least 150 suspected illegal immigrants in January or faced having their work shifts changed.

No one has been suspended during the probe, said Richard Velez, an agency spokesman.

Calhoon said the agency does use goals to inspire agents, for example, by driving units to compete against each other, and often the measuring stick turns out to be number of arrests. But he said setting numeric targets was not common practice — nor one he would recommend.

"It would not be the normal method of refocusing work effort," he said.

Agents said the 150-arrest mandate for the station last month was a jump from targets set at the end of last year to make 100 arrests in each November and December.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g6YLjDT9CD4GFmf5MvwRSg...

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3.
Immigration detention center considered for L.A. area
Contractors are sought as Immigration and Customs Enforcement explores the project's feasibility. A Homeland Security notice says the center would be privately owned and operated.
By Anna Gorman
The Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2009

The federal government is looking for contractors to build a possible detention center in the Los Angeles area that would hold up to 2,200 illegal immigrants and others suspected of violating immigration laws.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice said last week that the agency was "exploring the feasibility of such a project," though she said no definitive decisions had been made.

"ICE is continuing to review its options to determine how to best meet the agency's future local and national detention needs," she said.

The Department of Homeland Security posted an online notice saying that the center would be within 120 miles of downtown Los Angeles and owned and operated by a contractor, which would provide the facilities, personnel, management, equipment and services. In recent years, the government has increasingly contracted out its immigration detention services nationwide to private companies such as the Corrections Corp. of America and the GEO Group.

The move toward privatization has been criticized by immigrant rights advocates, who say that detention has become a lucrative business and that detainees are often kept in unsafe conditions without access to adequate medical care. Eighty-three detainees have died while in immigration custody since 2004, according to the immigration agency, prompting congressional inquiries about detainee medical care.

The federal government should decrease the number of people held in detention rather than adding new centers, said Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The government routinely detains people who are neither a danger nor a flight risk, he said.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-ladetain3-2009...

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4.
The message, not GOP immigration position, to blame, RNC chair says
By Juan Castillo
The Austin American Statesman, February 2, 2009

New Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is already causing a stir with his comments on the party and immigration.

Interviewed on Fox News Sunday, Steele, the party’s first black national chairman, said the GOP’s enforcement-first position on immigration wasn’t the problem in the November presidential election, in which Arizona Sen. John McCain fared poorly among Latino voters. Instead, it was the party’s message, Steele said.

“How we messaged that is where we messed up the last time,” Steele told Chris Wallace. “We were pegged as being insensitive, anti-immigrant, and nothing could be further from the truth, because you talk to those leaders in the Hispanic community, they will tell you the same thing.” Read a partial transcript.

American’s Voice, a nonprofit group that advocates reforms giving illegal immigrants opportunities to become legal residents — a position supported by McCain, President Barack Obama and former President Bush — quickly challenged Steele’s assertion. It noted that Republicans in Congress were behind a 2005 bill that would have made 12 million undocumented immigrants felons — sending millions of protesters into the streets — and that GOP leaders blocked bipartisan attempts at passing comprehensive reforms in 2006 and 2007.
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http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/somosaust...

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5.
Suffolk cops' forms ask crime victims' residency status
By Reid J. Epstein
Newsday, February 3, 2009

For almost three months, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and Police Commissioner Richard Dormer have said repeatedly that Suffolk police do not ask crime victims to disclose their immigration status.

But forms that Suffolk police have used since 1999 instruct officers to ask whether a crime victim is a temporary resident or foreign national - a question lawmakers and immigrant advocates say discourages Hispanic crime victims from calling police.

"We have been repeatedly told that it is not a policy to ask people their status if they are a victim of a crime," said Assemb. Phil Ramos (D-Central Islip), a former Suffolk detective. "Now the police officer on the street who is required to fill out this form is compelled to ask that question."

Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said it is "counterproductive" for police departments to ask for victims' citizenship or immigration status.

"You don't want crime victims and people who have information about crime to not report that to law enforcement," O'Donnell said.

The issue of police collecting information on victims' immigration status has been central to the controversy over the Nov. 8 killing of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue.

After the killing, for which seven teenagers are accused, investigators charged the Lucero defendants with a series of earlier assaults against Hispanic men, in some of which cases the victims said they had been afraid to report to police.

Dormer first said Thursday he did not know incident report form PDCS-1099b included the residency question, and said that he issued orders prohibiting officers from asking victims' immigration status.

Dormer's Oct. 20 order states: "The fact that an individual is suspected of being an undocumented alien alone shall not be the basis for contact, detention or arrest." It makes no mention of a victim's citizenship or immigration status.

"My order should supersede this, and it does," Dormer said.

The next day, he issued a statement saying the question on the incident report is meant to help police identify crime trends and does not pertain to immigration status.
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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/crime/ny-pocops036022309feb03,0,451165...