The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged department of justice

Judge in Arizona Immigration Law Appeal Once Faced Deportation

By | 10.26.10 | 4:21 pm

Leading up the the first appeal hearings next week on Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law, the East Valley Tribune has a piece breaking down some of the possible biases of the three judges who will hear the case brought by the Justice Department. As with most More…

Arpaio Gives Palin Pink Underwear as an Allusion to His Treatment of Immigrant Detainees

By | 10.25.10 | 6:04 pm

Today in news too bizarre to skip: Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff who makes illegal immigrant detainees wear pink underwear as a humiliation tactic, gave Sarah Palin a pair of pink underwear last week to welcome her to Phoenix.

Arpaio became famous for his purposefully harsh treatment of More…

Immigration Courts Tossing Out Record-High Number of Cases

By | 10.18.10 | 8:57 am

Houston immigration judges are throwing out an unprecedented number of cases after an internal review of the city’s immigration court docket, the Houston Chronicle reported yesterday. That means many non-criminal illegal immigrants are more likely to be released: About 200 immigration cases have been dismissed per month since More…

Conservative Group Sues DOJ for Info on Its Decision to Sue Arizona

By | 10.08.10 | 2:03 pm

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, announced today that is has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice to try to get at the government’s reason for suing Arizona over its SB 1070 immigration law. The law’s most controversial provisions, including instructing local law enforcement More…

Napolitano Confirms There Is No Opt-Out Option for Secure Communities

By | 10.06.10 | 5:18 pm

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed today that Secure Communities, a program that provides federal immigration officials with fingerprint data from local police, is mandatory for local jurisdictions. “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt in/opt out program,” Napolitano said, according to an Immigration and Customs More…

Brewer Tries to Keep Foreign Governments Out of Immigration Lawsuit

By | 10.06.10 | 3:32 pm

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is protesting a federal court’s decision to allow foreign governments to file “friend-of-the-court” briefs in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case in November, ruled Monday that Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, More…

Fox News Touts Another Incident of Possible Voter Fraud

By | 10.04.10 | 2:45 pm

Fox News continues its drumbeat on the “rampant, largely ignored and troubling issue” of voter fraud with a story about Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry, whose computer was allegedly “used to obtain dozens of absentee ballots prior to the city’s Aug. 24 elections, in which he was re-elected.”

An More…

DOJ: Pace of Oil Spill Compensation ‘Unacceptable’

By | 09.27.10 | 12:30 pm

The Department of Justice said earlier this month the Gulf Coast Claims Facility’s pace in compensating victims of the Gulf oil spill is “unacceptable.”

In a Sept. 17 letter to Kenneth Feinberg, who the Obama administration put in charge of the massive claims process that has resulted from the More…

‘Pledge to America’ Plans for Immigration

By | 09.23.10 | 2:17 pm

The GOP’s “Pledge to America” is pretty brief when it comes to immigration issues: It advocates control of the border, enforcement of immigration laws and strengthening visa security. (Notably absent? Any paths to legalization for illegal immigrants already in the country.) The document does not go so far More…

Making Sense of the Arizona SB 1070 Lawsuits

By | 09.03.10 | 11:12 am

Arizona faces seven legal challenges to its SB immigration law — which is part of why the state needs the $3.6 million in donations it has pulled in to defend the law.