After meeting with immigration enforcement officials, the county of Arlington, Va., is giving up on its push to remove itself from Secure Communities, a program that shares fingerprints collected for criminal background checks with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Arlington was one of three counties where officials said they More…
Via the Kansas City Star, a government report released this week found that foreign workers are at times abused and exploited under the H-2B visa program, which allows companies to hire foreign workers for temporary jobs they can’t fill with Americans. The Government Accountability Office found that some More…
Today will be the first in a series of meetings between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and officials in communities that want to opt out of the Secure Communities enforcement program. Officials from Arlington, Va., will meet with ICE and representatives from the state of Virginia today to figure out the More…
During his campaign for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama made the now-broken promise to Latino supporters that he would pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year as president. But in remarks to the press on Wednesday, after Republicans took control of the House and won back several More…
The process of opting out of the immigration enforcement program Secure Communities has been shrouded in secrecy and contradictory statements — most recently due to revelations that an opt-out process does not exist at all. In hopes of clarifying whether the program is mandatory, a coalition of immigrant More…
NPR has a story today on the ties between Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, and private prisons that stand to benefit from more illegal immigrants being locked up. The revelations aren’t new: In These Times had a great piece in June uncovering how state Sen. Russell More…
According to supporters of progressive immigration reform, not very well. A Republican-run House would put Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) in charge of the Judiciary Committee and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) atop its immigration subcommittee — meaning the two border security hawks would have a major say in all immigration-related legislation More…
Critics of the 287 (g) program, which deputizes local police for immigration enforcement in some areas, gained some ammunition Friday in the form of a report that federal immigration officials lost track of their spending on the program. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, an internal watchdog More…
Senate Republicans have long criticized the Obama administration as lax on immigration enforcement, and their argument was bolstered by news this week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is dismissing a record-high number of cases against immigrant detainees in Houston. In response, seven pro-enforcement Republican senators sent a letter More…
As Republicans push for increased border enforcement, many have sought to expand Operation Streamline, a “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement program that automatically slates all migrants caught crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution. (Immigrant deportation is generally a civil, not a criminal, matter.) But critics of the program More…
rss