DHS

The Justice Department is stepping up its crackdown on illegal immigrants, with the latest data available showing an almost 20 percent increase in criminal prosecutions.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an independent project of Sycracuse University that analyzes government data, reports today that during May 2009, DOJ reported 2,147 new prosecutions referred by Immigration and [...]

After filing a Freedom of Information Act request, the Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government obtained documents from the Department of Homeland Security detailing how its controversial report on the rise of “rightwing extremism” was put together. Among the sources (pdf): The New York Times, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and this Washington Independent story on [...]

Since 2003, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been sending teams of agents around the country to arrest and deport immigrants they could find with outstanding deportation orders or criminal records. But in 2006, ICE stopped requiring that two-thirds of those people be criminals. At the same time, it created a quota for the teams, saying [...]

Responding to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Department of Homeland Security today acknowledged 11 deaths of immigrants in U.S. detention facilities that the agency had previously failed to disclose.
In April, DHS responded to the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit with a “comprehensive” list of all deaths in detention, which totaled [...]

Here’s your chance to tell the Department of Homeland Security what you think a sound immigration policy is, or whether you should be allowed to take your toothpaste on a plane or when to get rid of the weird color-coded terrorist threat advisory system. This morning, DHS launched a new Website, Homeland Security Dialogue, for [...]

Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) on Thursday responded to a growing number of reports about the poor conditions of immigration detention centers that violate the Department of Homeland Security’s own rules. On Thursday they introduced the the “Protect Citizens from Unlawful Detention Act” and “Prevent Detainee Deaths and Abuse [...]

A new report released today by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and the law firm of Holland & Knight concludes that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit has been systematically violating its own standards governing the detention of undocumented immigrants.
Analyzing [...]

That’s the question being asked by 43 House Democrats, who wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week urging the administration to consider the environmental and cultural consequences of throwing up a 20-foot-tall concrete barrier at the Mexican border.
The Bush administration, empowered by Congress, waived dozens of environmental and cultural [...]

More areas will begin allowing local law enforcement to enforce immigration law.

A new study by the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University finds that the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been consistently violating constitutional rights in raiding private residences without a warrant to search for undocumented immigrants.
Although home raids are supposed to be used to [...]