Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who was set to host the conference last year but canceled it after the Mexican governors announced they would boycott the state due to the immigration enforcement law S.B. 1070, had originally said she would attend the conference this year but backed out at the last minute. The Christian Science Monitor reports Brewer’s absence means a potential confrontation between the governors over S.B. 1070 has been avoided:

[Brewer] was to partake in discussions over two days that center on economic development, border security, and international ports of entry.

Although SB 1070 was not on the conference agenda, the participating governors from Mexico still “personally reject it,” as do many Mexican citizens, says Martin Cota, a spokesman for Baja California Governor José Guadalupe Osuna Millán.

Gun trafficking will also be on the agenda, according to the Monitor, a salient issue in the wake of Operation Fast and Furious, a gun-surveillance sting run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that allowed hundreds of guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartel members.

The office of California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said he was unable to attend due to legislative concerns, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is attending multiple fundraisers for his presidential campaign in anticipation of tomorrow’s deadline for the candidates’ to file campaign finance reports. Perry was the only absent governor not to send representatives to the conference.

“Conversations about border issues between Texas and other states and the federal government are ongoing,” Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed told AP. ”Whether or not someone is attending border governors’ conferences.”

Martinez will host next year’s conference in Albuquerque.

Craig Halverson, national director of the Minutemen Patriots and a resident of Griswold, told reporter William Petroski of The Des Moines Register his group will picket the Texas Republican’s appearance in Council Bluffs on Friday on grounds that he is weak on immigration and not supportive enough of American workers.

During an earlier presidential debate, hosted by CNN and the Tea Party Express, Perry discussed a law in Texas that allows some children of immigrants who have entered the country illegally to attend state-run higher education facilities, pay in-state tuition and receive fee assistance. He also stated flatly that those who believe that answer to immigration woes is a border fence are wrong, drawing a chorus of disdain from the boisterous tea party attendees.

According to Texas law, students who have lived in the state for at least three years and have graduated from high school or obtained a GED certificate are qualified to pay in-state tuition at Texas universities.

“I’m proud that we are having those individuals be contributing members of our society rather than telling them, ‘You can go be on the government dole,’” Perry said, who held up the 2001 law as bipartisan and an issue of states’ rights.

“We were clearly sending a message to young people, regardless of what the sound of their last name is, that we believe in you; that if you want to live in the state of Texas and you want pursue citizenship, that we are going to allow you the opportunity to be contributing members in the state of Texas and not be a drag on our state.”

Unsurprisingly, rival 2012 candidates and their various supporting PACs have been burning shoe leather and ad dollars in an effort to show stark contrast with Perry on the issue of immigration. But the defense Perry placed on his state’s immigration stance is also causing continued stir within grassroots circles.

Jerry DeLemus, chairman of the Granite State Patriots Liberty PAC, a tea party umbrella group, described the Texas answer as “wrong-headed” and a “big negative” against Perry’s White House hopes. Katrina Pierson, a member of the Dallas Tea Party’s steering committee, said “Governor Perry has not met the standards, for me, to be the President of the United States if he can’t even address the real issues here in Texas.” Pierson contends that there can be no honest discussion about the national economy without including immigration policy.

In addition, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who will also visit Iowa this week, has acknowledged his personal affection for the Governor, but has also stated that he does not agree with Perry’s rhetoric regarding the border or immigration. Finally, tea party darling Ann Coulter has called Perry “a little bit too much like George Bush” when it comes to immigration.

In response, Perry appears to have veered away from his stump speech selections to focus more on his faith. During a speech at Liberty University Wednesday Perry delivered what supporters of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann would likely recognize as a “testimony of faith.”

“What I learned as I wrestled with God is that I didn’t have to have all the answers; that they would be revealed to me in due time — and that I needed to trust him,” Perry told attendees at the Virginia-based Christian university, which was founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell.

Perry’s remarks did not include discussion of any of the more controversial issues that surfaced during the earlier debate: immigration, “ponzi scheme” Social Security or mandatory HPV vaccinations.

It remains unclear what topics will be up for discussion when Perry greets Iowans in Jefferson on Thursday night, and in Newton, Des Moines, Atlantic and Council Bluffs on Friday. Locations and exact times are available on the Factbook calendar, which is now also accessible through The Iowa Independent’s Facebook page.

In the operation, agents watched as straw purchasers bought guns from dealers in border states; those guns were then handed to middlemen of Mexican drug gangs. Nearly 2,000 guns were allowed to “walk” across the border for 14 months. Nearly 200 have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and two guns were at the scene of the murder of Border Patrolman Brian Terry.

Three supervisors of the operation have received promotions from field offices to Washington.

Melson, who was reassigned to an advising position in the Office of Legal Policy in the Justice Department, is unlikely to be replaced with a permanent director — the agency has been without a permanent director for five years as the process has been held up by a lack of Senate confirmation.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin defended the results of an unprecedented escalation and intensification of border security that began in the 1990s and accelerated under Presidents Bush and Obama.

“The specific theory of action,” Bersin explained, “was to push people out of easy urban places to cross the border, to push them out of the situation where you could simply walk across the border, get into the transportation network and then move anywhere into the interior of the United States.”

He pointed out that in 1993 there were 3,000 border agents; today, there are over 21,000.

Bersin and his fellow panelist, Clinton-era commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Doris Meissner, explained how concentrations of border agents in San Diego, Calif., and El Paso, Texas, which in 1993 were the two primary entry points for undocumented immigrants, had pushed unauthorized border traffic towards Arizona, which is still the most active illegal crossing point into the United States. Today, however, overall apprehensions have dropped by 73 percent since they peaked in 2000, which Bersin and Meissner both claimed was sign of effective deterrence.

But Bersin also stressed the difficulty of putting an end to the organized crime outfits who now provide most of the ‘coyote’ or border smuggling of undocumented immigrants. He pointed out that coyotes used to be mom-and-pop operations, but the increased cost of crossing the border, because of the security ramp-up, had empowered the cartels. He likened the effort to combat Mexican organized crime to anti-Mafia efforts in the United States, which “took 30 years” to achieve permanent success.

Meissner, who oversaw the initial implementation of the agent concentration strategy, argued for legal pathways for immigrants as a means of further deterring illegal crossings. She also stressed the importance of making the public aware of the progress made in border security under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

The author of CAP’s new report on border security (PDF) and moderator of the event, Marshall Fitz, argued that the comments made by Bersin and Meissner, as well as his report, showed the need for policymakers in Washington to stop talking as if the border isn’t functioning. In his report, he rebuts the claims of House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (R-Texas) that border security hasn’t improved under the Obama administration and that non-border related immigration reform therefore can’t proceed: “Rep. Smith is effectively demanding an absolute seal of the border — an unattainable objective — as a precondition to discussion of broader immigration reforms.”

An image from the report shows the scale of the across-the-board decrease in border apprehensions in the past decade:

Officials wouldn’t speculate on how many firearms they did not stop from reaching the cartels. But the inspector indicated a number of problems in how the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms runs its programs to prevent firearms from the United States from entering Mexico:

The report indicated there are major holes in the system, including a lack of ATF resources to fulfill Mexican requests for help.

“For example, ATF has been unable to provide key training and support requested by the government of Mexico,” the report found.

U.S. officials stationed in Mexico told investigators there is a lack of coordination among various Mexican law enforcement agencies, and ATF has no single counterpart that it can interact with in coordinating firearms trafficking investigations.

But the inspector general also found a lack of coordination and information sharing among U.S. agencies. The ATF and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have a particularly difficult time coordinating despite a formal memorandum of understanding between the two agencies, the report said.

These problems aren’t new: U.S. agents in Mexico have reported a lack of progress in the country on prosecuting for weapons trafficking, and say too few Mexican agents know how to use software the United States government shared with Mexico to trace weapons.

The Mexican government claims that 90 percent of firearms in the country came from the United States, where they are far easier to obtain than in Mexico. United States officials dispute that number, but both governments agree that curbing the flow of weapons into Mexico could weaken powerful drug cartels that have wreaked havoc on the country.

The Justice Department report recommends that U.S. firearms officials upgrade intelligence-sharing capabilities and make various improvements to the way they chase down investigative leads. In addition, the report suggested that Mexico be integrated into Southwest Border Initiatives — the collaborative border security efforts of officials in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reportedly concurred with these recommendations.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is expected to push for heavy immigration enforcement as chairman of the House immigration subcommittee next session. (Tina Fultz/ZUMApress.com)

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 seats in the Senate, talk of immigration reform was noticeably absent.

[Immigration1] Democrats will still hold a majority in both chambers during the lame-duck session, when leaders hope to pass the DREAM Act to give some undocumented young people and military service members legal status. But after January, immigration reform efforts that include paths to legal status for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States seem next to impossible, meaning the next few years will see little progress for immigration reform advocates.

“The new leaders of the House have made it clear that they’re going to continue to push an enforcement-only strategy,” said Mary Giovagnoli, director of pro-reform Immigration Policy Center. “It’s going to be a hard couple of years.”

The Republicans ushered into power in the midterms favor tight border security, strict enforcement and policies that would allow states, along with the federal government, to police immigration. Many campaigned on hard-line immigration positions that cost them support among Latinos, but won backing from the broad segments of the population that approve of illegal immigration crackdowns like Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

In short, Republicans who won on Tuesday hold radically different views on tackling illegal immigration from the president and Senate Democrats. Prospects are bleak for anyone who hopes to see meaningful change on immigration policy: A Democratic Senate will have trouble getting immigrant-friendly measures past the House, while the House will have trouble getting enforcement-only measures past the Senate — or the president’s desk. The result will likely be more of the same on immigration policy.

There are a few areas where Republicans have brought forth proposals to reform the immigration system. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who is expected to take over as chairman of the House’s immigration subcommittee, plans use his leadership position to call in Obama administration officials and question them on immigration enforcement, claiming “they’re not enforcing the laws.”

It’s a common argument from Republicans, who have repeatedly accused the Obama administration of taking a lax approach. After reports that immigration courts were throwing out deportation cases for illegal immigrants who were deemed non-dangerous or had pending citizenship applications, the seven current Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano demanding to know how much it would cost to find and deport every illegal immigrant in the country.

“[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has cited a lack of resources as one of the reasons for its prioritization of cases and for its selective enforcement,” the Oct. 21 letter reads. “But to date, we have not seen any efforts by ICE, your Department, or the Administration to request an increase in ICE funding. … As a result, it appears that your Department is doing the very thing that we have raised concerns about in several letters – allowing illegal aliens to evade the law.”

If Republicans attempt to force increased immigration enforcement, it would require a huge increase in funding for ICE. The agency currently receives $2.6 billion from Congress each year to detain and remove illegal immigrants. ICE Chief John Morton says this budget allows the agency to deport about 400,000 people per year — a number it approaching this year. Deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, then, could cost as much as $70 billion.

Of course, most Republicans don’t advocate a deportation-only method to decreasing illegal immigration numbers in the country. GOP members also say they hope to pass legislation to eliminate possible incentives for foreigners to stay in the country by cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, eliminating the few social services illegal immigrants can receive and in some cases even eliminating citizenship for children born in the country to undocumented parents.

A GOP-led initiative to end birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants under the 14th Amendment received support from 95 House members in 2009, although the bill never made it out of committee. Instead of attempting to amend the Constitution, the bill would create a statute limiting citizenship to children with at least one parent in the country legally.

King plans to push for the bill again in the next session of Congress, where support for the measure will be even stronger. King insists the bill is both legal and necessary to stop the “anchor baby” phenomenon — the idea that illegal immigrants come to America and have children in order to gain legal status — which most immigration experts agree does not exist because citizens cannot petition for legal status for their families until they are adults.

Expanding E-Verify, a controversial program that allows employers to check the immigration status of potential employees, is another likely priority for the Republican-led House. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who is expected to head the Judiciary Committee, co-sponsored a bill to make use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers. (Federal agencies and contractors are already required to use the program.)

Of course, House Republicans cannot enact any laws without the support of Obama or the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is unlikely to risk angering Latino voters by passing enforcement-only immigration measures. But even if it means gridlock, House leaders seem committed to blocking comprehensive immigration reform.

“The best solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to enforce current laws,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune last week. “Attrition through enforcement can reduce the number of illegal immigrants already in the U.S.”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who supports comprehensive immigration reform, evoked their names last week as “a guarantee of more gridlock and chaos.” “On immigration, the question is not whether you are a Pelosi-Obama Democrat, but whether you are a Lamar Smith-John Boehner-Steve King Republican,” he wrote in an op-ed. What, then, is a Lamar-Smith-John Boehner-Steve King Republican, and why should immigration reform supporters be afraid of it?

Both congressmen have been longtime proponents of harsher anti-illegal immigration laws. Smith helped lead the charge pass the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which designated a large number of offenses as cause for deportation and created the 287 (g) program that deputizes local police to enforce immigration laws. He has also pushed for nationwide expansion of E-Verify, an employment verification system that critics say is too fraught with errors to be fully implemented.

King told Politico he has a number of other immigration-related plans if he helms he immigration subcommittee:

In an interview with POLITICO, King promised to interrogate Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton and Border Patrol Chief Michael Fisher about enforcement of immigration laws.

“We need to hear a considerable amount from [them] and start gathering the details on what is taking place on the border,” he said. “They’re not simply doing their job. They take an oath of office to see the laws are enforced. They’re not enforcing the laws.”

King rattled off a list of legislation he’d like to push to the floor: a birthright citizenship bill, legislation to reaffirm states’ right to enact Arizona-like immigration laws, a bill to take away deductions from employers who pay illegal immigrants and legislation to crack down on cities that don’t go after illegal residents.

The always-quotable King has a number of ideas for immigration that he did not mention. In 2006, he told Congress he wanted to build an electric fence along the U.S.-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration. “We do that with livestock all the time,” he said. This summer, King said he would support “amnesty,” or a path to legal status for illegal immigrants already in the country, under one condition: “Every time we give amnesty for an illegal alien, we deport a liberal.”

The whole piece is worth a read, but I’ll break it down into the concerns it raises about Operation Streamline:

Cost: It’s unclear exactly how much Operation Streamline costs, because it pulls money from various involved agencies rather than having its own budget. But studies have found the program could cost as much as $1 billion per year. Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, both Republicans, have argued for additional funding of Operation Streamline as part of their proposed 10-point border security plan.

Strategies: In part due to the high cost of prosecuting so many migrants, an Operation Streamline court in Tuscon, Ariz., only sees 70 of the 1,000 migrant apprehensions per day. The Phoenix New Times reported the group of 70 migrants is generally about 70 percent first-timers and 30 percent migrants who had been apprehended for crossing the border before — meaning they face felony illegal re-entry and misdemeanor illegal entry. The punishments for these offenses are very different: Misdemeanor illegal entrants can serve as few as three days, while felony illegal re-entry can earn a migrant up to twenty years in prison.

What happens to the approximately 930 migrants apprehended each day but not chosen for Operation Streamline hearings? They are sent back to Mexico, which means some migrants who re-entered illegally — the criminal illegal immigrants the Department of Homeland Security claims are its priority — are passed over by the supposedly “zero tolerance” program.

Operation Streamline courts also see a fair number of people who were apprehended on their way back to Mexico, which critics argue is a Border Patrol tactic to drive up enforcement data. “They’re boosting [the Border Patrol's apprehension] numbers,” Federal Public Defender Matthew Johnson told the Phoenix New Times, “by arresting the people going southbound.”

Effectiveness: The piece also points to concerns about the effectiveness of Operation Streamline as a deterrent. While proponents of the program argue it will keep migrants from crossing the border illegally, this seems to not fully be the case — at least anecdotally. The Phoenix New Times spoke to many migrants who were prosecuted under Operation Streamline who said they planned to return to the United States. While Border Patrol claims there is little recidivism, the possibility that migrants return without detection means actual data on illegal return is hard to come by. Overall, experts argue the program lacks consistent review and oversight to ensure it’s doing its job.

Justice: Operation Streamline courts usually operate through mass hearings, where a public defender represents a large number of clients and judges issue questions and decisions en masse.  Defendants sign away their right to an individual judge to enter Operation Streamline, because the process promises to be much faster: a couple of days in jail, typically, rather than months awaiting a trial. Still, critics argue the program creates criminal prosecutions without adequate defense (many defendants cannot communicate with their public defender due to language barriers) and unjust court procedures.

“The first thing that has to be done is secure the border,” Miller said Sunday. “East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could.”

Looking past the fact East Germany had more trouble keeping its residents in than keeping immigrants out, how much would it cost to implement East Germany-style border security?

First, it would require building a fence along the country’s borders, which could cost as much as $49 billion over a 25-year lifespan of the fence, according to a non-partisan Congressional Research Service report. That cost accounts for up to $70 million per mile for construction and upkeep of the fence, which would likely be damaged by would-be border crossers. Plus, there would be the cost of acquiring private land along the borders, hiring private contractors for construction and increased staffing of Border Patrol and customs agents along the borders.

Murkowski, who is challenging Miller with a write-in campaign, also supports a border fence. She voted the approve the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which allowed for a fence to be constructed along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border — still a far cry from creating a fence along the entire 1,950-mile border.

The report faulted DHS for a lack of oversight on the program, claiming “DHS has not been able to gain meaningful and proactive insight into potential cost and schedule performance shortfalls, and thus take corrective actions to avoid shortfalls in the future.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced in March a plan to overhaul SBInet, removing $50 million in stimulus funding from the project until the department could determine the most cost-effective way to move forward. All spending on SBInet — except money being spent on a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona — was frozen.

Boeing was also criticized in the report, which said the company provided information to DHS that was “replete with unexplained anomalies, thus rendering the data unfit for effective contractor management and oversight.”

The SBInet project has been expensive so far: DHS has received about $4.4 billion in appropriations for SBInet since 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office report. It also has not proven very effective. Previous Government Accountability Office reports have pointed out failures in the system, including its inability to differentiate well between animals and humans.

Delays over the project have also caused major concerns. In June, Rep. Henry Cuellar, (D-Texas), chairman of a House Homeland Security subcommittee on on border issues, said SBInet would take 323 years to deploy across the southwest border at its current pace.

The Government Accountability Office Report recommended that DHS increase its oversight over Boeing’s progress on SBInet, including by creating baseline performance measurements for major tasks and tracking spending more closely.