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1. GAO report criticizes enforcement
2. Figures reveal rise in border deaths
3. Mexican violence yields refugees
4. CO tuition bill changed by author
5. ACLU critical of detention death

1.
Report Cites Problems In ICE Training Program
GAO Says Key Controls Are Missing
By N.C. Aizenman
The Washington Post, March 4, 2009; A02

Immigration officials have failed to develop "key internal controls" over a controversial program that trains state and local police to identify illegal immigrants involved in crime, so some departments are focusing on minor violations rather than on serious offenses, according to federal investigators.

A Government Accountability Office report released last night was requested by congressional oversight panels in advance of hearings on the program to be held today by the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Known as 287(g) after the legal provision authorizing it, the identification program has expanded rapidly in recent years, receiving $60 million between 2006 and 2008, training 951 state and local law enforcement officers in 67 agencies -- including the police forces of counties including Prince William -- and resulting in the arrests of at least 43,000 immigrants, almost 28,000 of whom ultimately were ordered out of the country.

The report said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had told GAO investigators that the program was intended to address "serious crime . . . committed by removable aliens."

But the report said that, of 29 partner agencies reviewed, four said they used their 287(g) authority to process for removal immigrants stopped for minor violations such as speeding, carrying an open container of alcohol and urinating in public, "contrary to the objective of the program."

In Prince William County and elsewhere, 287(g) has proved a lightning rod for critics who charge that communities are using it to intimidate and that it can lead to a form of profiling in which officers stop individuals who appear Latino or foreign on the pretext of minor violations in order to check their immigration status.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano recently ordered a review of the 287(g) program. But to the dismay of immigrant advocates, who have been lobbying the Obama administration to curtail the program, Napolitano's questions included an effort to find how to expedite more agreements with state and local police forces.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR200903...

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2.
Deaths of immigrants skyrocket in Valley
By Lynn Brezosky
The San Antonio Express-News (TX), March 4, 2009

Brownsville, TX -- Although the number of unauthorized immigrants who died trying to cross the border declined everywhere else last year, it soared in the Rio Grande Valley.

The statistics have led Mexican officials to conclude that increased Border Patrol presence has channeled migrants to the Valley's most dangerous river and brush routes.

While notoriously rugged U.S. Border Patrol sectors such as El Paso and Tucson and Yuma, Ariz., saw a marked decline, the number of deaths in the Valley grew by 72 percent last year.

Statistics kept by Mexican consulates show 67 deaths in Hidalgo, Starr and Brooks counties and 22 deaths in Cameron and Willacy counties, compared to 39 deaths and 18 deaths respectively in 2007.

The tallies count bodies recovered on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande that aren't recorded by U.S. officials and do not include bodies with identification from Central America or other places.

The Tucson consulate, which covers a part of the border that's now about 80 percent fenced, recorded 116 deaths in 2008 compared to 166 in 2007 — a 30 percent decrease.

The Yuma sector, now almost entirely fenced, had one death in 2008 as opposed to 13 in 2007 — a 92 percent decrease.

The numbers fluctuate widely over the years and differ slightly by consulate. By far, the Tucson consulate has recorded the most deaths — about 1,020 over an eight-year period.

The McAllen consulate saw the death toll top 40 in 2001, 2003, and 2006 for Hidalgo, Starr and Brooks counties. But 2008 was the deadliest in recent memory, spokeswoman Miriam Medel García said.

“What we're thinking is that people decided to cross from this part of the border because they think others are more dangerous,” she said. “Then they come to this side, they see more deployment; they go to riskier places, more isolated places. They cross from ranches that are more apart from the highways.”
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http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/state/Deaths_of_immigrants_skyrocket_in...

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3.
Mexico's drug war creates new class of refugees
Business owners, law enforcement officers, journalists and other professionals are among those seeking asylum in the U.S. -- even when it means sitting in jail.
By Andrew Becker and Patrick J. McDonnell
The Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2009

El Paso, TX -- The Juarez police lieutenant was recovering from three gunshot wounds, the result of an assault by hit men for a drug cartel. His name was on a death list brazenly posted at a monument for fallen peace officers. Lt. Salvador Hernandez Arvizu didn't like his odds of surviving in Mexico. So he fled his hospital bed, hoping to take refuge in the U.S.

At a border post in El Paso, he filled out immigration paperwork, made a formal request for political asylum -- and was taken directly to jail.

The Juarez policeman is part of a new breed of would-be refugees -- business owners, law enforcement officers, journalists and other professionals -- on the run from Mexico's vicious drug wars. Increasingly, they are seeking safe haven in the U.S. by filing for asylum.

The number of asylum requests filed at U.S. border entries by Mexican nationals nearly doubled to almost 200 in the last fiscal year, and the pace has increased this year. Seventy Mexican asylum-seekers filed petitions in the first quarter, most of them in El Paso and San Diego. The figures are small compared with the vast scale of illegal immigration, but many fear explosive growth if the bloodshed worsens.

Drug violence in Mexico has claimed at least 7,000 lives in little more than a year, most of them along the border and many carried out to maximize their gruesome effect. Mass killings and beheadings have had a terrorizing effect on border towns from Texas to Tijuana.

It is unclear whether any asylum requests have been granted in cases based on fear of drug violence. Most of the recent cases are still working their way through the system. Some refugees from the narco-wars are hiding on the U.S. side of the border, uncertain whether to apply for asylum -- and risk being deported if their petitions are denied.

"We're at the beginning of the problem," said Bruce J. Einhorn, a retired immigration judge. "It's indicative of a new and emerging class of persecuted people from Mexico."

The surge in applications has heightened debate about how broadly to interpret asylum rules and whether to detain applicants while they wait for their cases to be decided.

Asylum-seekers are among the most desperate people confronting immigration officials. Deporting them to their homeland can be a death sentence. But under U.S. law, fear of criminal violence is not recognized as grounds for asylum.

Applicants must show that they are members of a social, political or other group targeted for persecution -- a difficult standard to meet. Asylum requests are usually associated with people fleeing civil wars or dictatorships.

Mexican applicants generally do not claim to be victims of government persecution. Rather, many argue that Mexican authorities have failed to protect them from the drug cartels -- a hard-to-prove variation on the established criteria for asylum.

The applicants are not immigrants in search of economic opportunities. They are typically middle-class, employed and frightened.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-asylum4-2009mar04,0...

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4.
In-state tuition proposal takes on caveats
To receive the in-state rate, illegal immigrants would agree to seek citizenship.
By Tim Hoover
The Denver Post, March 4, 2009

The lawmaker behind a bill that would allow illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition now says the measure will require them to seek citizenship.

Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, said he is adding the citizenship requirement to his own bill as well as another provision that would prohibit illegal immigrants from getting College Opportunity Fund scholarships.

The vouchers provide a public college or university more than $2,000 a year for a typical, full-time student. Romer said that by making the students ineligible for the voucher funding, it would be clear there is no cost to taxpayers.

The new bill requires undocumented students who get the in-state rate to sign an affidavit stating they will try to become U.S. citizens.

Romer said he's adding both provisions to SB 170 to make it more palatable. The bill faces its first hearing Thursday in the Senate Education Committee.

"I knew that there were going to be some concessions," he said of the amendments.

Romer's bill would allow students who have attended a Colorado high school for at least three years and who have graduated to receive in-state tuition at a public college or university.
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http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_11829605

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5.
ACLU says Wyatt detainee's death an alarm bell
By Karen Ziner
The Providence Journal, March 3, 2009

The death last year of Hiu Lui Ng while he was in the custody of the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, should push Congress to prioritize the need for better health services for immigration detainees, said the American Civil Liberties Union, in Washington, and its Rhode Island affiliate.

Ng, a 34-year-old Chinese national, died several days after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and a broken spine. His family has filed a civil suit.

The national ACLU and the RI ACLU cited that case in a statement praising the hearing held earlier today by the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, on health services for immigration detainees.
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http://newsblog.projo.com/2009/03/congressional-h.html