Homeland Security

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Neb. city votes to restrict illegal immigration (June 22nd, 2010 @ 3:59am)

FREMONT, Neb. (AP) - This small Nebraska meatpacking town has joined Arizona at the center of a national debate about illegal immigration after voters approved a ban on hiring or renting property to illegal immigrants, but an expected court challenge could keep the measure from ever taking effect.

The American Civil Liberties Union already has promised to file a lawsuit to block enforcement of the proposal roughly 57 percent of Fremont voters supported Monday.

"In a community of 25,000, it's going to be hard to take on the whole country, and it will be costly to do so," said Fremont City Councilman Scott Getzschman, who opposed the measure but said city leaders would support the results.

Fremont's vote is the latest chapter in the tumult over illegal immigration across the country, including a recently passed Arizona law that will require police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally.

The Fremont measure will require would-be renters to apply for a license from the city. Officials must refuse to issue a license to applicants found to be in the country illegally. The ordinance also requires businesses to use the federal E-Verify database to ensure employees are allowed to work.

The city, which is about 35 miles northwest of Omaha, has watched as its Hispanic population surged in the past two decades, largely due to the jobs available at the nearby Fremont Beef and Hormel meatpacking plants.

Supporters argued the measure is needed to make up for what they see as lax federal law enforcement. Opponents said it could fuel discrimination.

Linda Nafziger said she voted for the ordinance because she doesn't think the community should be supporting illegal immigrants. But she acknowledged the measure won't end illegal immigration.

"They'll just move somewhere else and be somebody else's problem," she said.

Trevor McClurg said the measure is fair because it's aimed at people who aren't legally in the U.S.

"I don't think it's right to be able to rent to them or hire them," McClurg said. "They shouldn't be here in the first place."

Some residents worry that jobs are going to illegal immigrants who they fear could drain community resources.

Kristin Ostrom, who helped organize opposition to the measure, said she was never convinced of that. Fremont's unemployment rate matches the Nebraska rate of 4.9 percent, and both remain well below the national rate of 9.7 percent.

"It's unfortunate that the majority of voters didn't understand that we really don't have an illegal immigration problem in Fremont," she said.

The Hispanic population in Fremont, including both legal and illegal residents, surged from about 165 in 1990 to 1,085 in 2000, according to census expert David Drozd at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He said an estimated 2,060 Hispanics lived there last year.

Communities that have passed similar laws have struggled to enforce them because of legal challenges. Hazleton, Pa., passed an ordinance in 2006 to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and deny permits to businesses hiring them. The Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch also has tried for years to enforce a ban on landlords renting to illegal immigrants. Federal judges struck down both ordinances, but both are on appeal.

The ACLU of Nebraska promised to sue over the Fremont measure even before Monday's vote.

"Not only do local ordinances such as this violate federal law, they are also completely out of step with American values of fairness and equality," said Laurel Marsh, executive director of ACLU Nebraska.

Kansas City, Mo.-based attorney Kris Kobach, who helped write the Arizona law, worked on the ordinance in Fremont and has said he thinks it could withstand a court challenge. He is also running for secretary of state in Kansas.

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Groups want to get 50K new Latino voters
by Associated Press (June 22nd, 2010 @ 6:04am)

PHOENIX - Immigrant-rights groups say they're launching what they call a massive effort to register and turn out Latino voters because of a new Arizona law targeting illegal immigrants.


The groups want to turn out 50,000 Latinos who otherwise would not vote in November's election. They say they're mobilizing 2,000 volunteers to reach that goal.

The groups include Mi Familia Vota, Democracia USA, Border Action Network and the Arizona Center for Empowerment.

They say they want to help guide Arizona away from divisive policies and politicians.

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Border officers seize 108 illegal Disney pinatas
by Associated Press (June 22nd, 2010 @ 6:03am)

DOUGLAS, Ariz. - It was no fiesta on the Arizona-Mexico border for the driver of a shipment of pinatas that looked like Disney characters.


U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Rob Daniels says officers at the Douglas port of entry stopped a tractor-trailer coming from Mexico for further inspection on Friday.

Officers found the tractor-trailer was loaded with papier-mache items, including 108 pinatas in the likeness of Disney characters on their way to Thornton, Colo.

Officers seized the shipment for violation of intellectual property rights.

Assistant port Director Eli Villareal says the pinatas may seem innocent, but shipments of illegal merchandise on a national scale can undermine the U.S. economy and ``is a vital element in national security.''

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White House disputes Kyl's account by KTAR Newsroom, Associated Press (June 21st, 2010 @ 4:07pm)

WASHINGTON - The White House on Monday disputed a Republican senator's claim that President Barack Obama refuses to secure the Mexican border until Congress agrees to a wide-ranging overhaul of immigration laws.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona told a Tea Party gathering in north Phoenix on Friday (see video below) of his recent private meeting with Obama in the Oval Office. Kyl, the Senate's second-ranking GOP leader, said he pressed Obama to secure the border against illegal immigrants.

Kyl told the group: ``The problem is, he said, 'If we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.'''

``They want to get something in return for doing their duty,'' Kyl told the group.

The White House denied the account over the weekend, and Obama spokesman Bill Burton restated that position Monday when questioned by reporters.

``The president didn't say that,'' Burton said of Kyl's account. ``Sen. Kyl knows the president didn't say that.''

Asked if Kyl was lying or indulging in ``political exaggeration,'' Burton replied: ``I'll let other folks make that determination.''

Obama has taken steps to improve border security, while also saying security must be part of a broader approach to immigration. He recently pledged to spend an additional $500 million on security and to send 1,200 National Guard troops to the border.

The White House website says Obama ``believes that our broken immigration system can only be fixed by putting politics aside and offering a complete solution that secures our border, enforces our laws, and reaffirms our heritage as a nation of immigrants.''

Obama told CNN's Larry King on June 3, ``We've already put more resources into border security than we ever have.''

He added: ``But without comprehensive immigration reform that is Congress' responsibility we are not going to solve this problem, and that's what we have to do.''

Kyl spokesman Ryan Patmintra said the senator stands by his remarks. He said the White House position ``that we must have comprehensive immigration reform to secure the border only confirms Sen. Kyl's account.''

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CNN: Mexican cartels threaten AZ police
by KTAR Newsroom (June 22nd, 2010 @ 10:19am)

NOGALES, Ariz. -- Mexican drug cartels are making direct threats against U.S. law enforcement officials in Nogales, Ariz., CNN reported.

The network said it's the first time that U.S. officials on the border have confirmed long-rumored threats against them.

The threats began two weeks ago after off-duty Nogales police officers who were horseback riding on the eastern edge of town came across a drug-smuggling operation. Several hundred pounds of marijuana were seized, CNN reported.

"We are taking the threats very seriously," Nogales Police Chief Jeffrey Kirkham told CNN. "We have received information from informants who work in Mexico that the drug cartel running that operation was unhappy about our seizure. They told our informant that they understand uniformed police officers have a job to do, but anyone out of uniform who gets involved in their operation will be targeted."

An increased presence by Customs and Immigration officers has been ordered, CNN reported.

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Immigrant families leave Arizona and tough new law (June 22nd, 2010 @ 9:01pm)
By AMANDA LEE MYERS Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX (AP) - "Cuanto?" asks a young man pointing to four bottles of car polish at a recent garage sale in an east Phoenix neighborhood.

The question, Spanish for "How much?" sends Minerva Ruiz and Claudia Suriano scrambling and calling out to their friend, Silvia Arias, who's selling the polish. "Silvia!"

Arias is out of earshot, so Suriano improvises.

"Cinco dolares," she says. "Five dollars." And another sale is made.

As the women await their next customer in the rising heat of an Arizona morning, they talk quietly about food and clothes, about their children and husbands. They are best friends, all mothers who are viewed as pillars of parental support at the neighborhood elementary school.

All three are illegal immigrants from Mexico.

They're holding the garage sale to raise money to leave Arizona, like many others, and to escape the state's tough new law that cracks down on people just like them.

The law's stated intention is unambiguous: It seeks to drive illegal immigrants out of Arizona and to discourage them from coming here.

There is no official data tracking how many are leaving because of the new law. "It's something that's really tough to get a handle on numerically," said Bill Schooling, Arizona's state demographer. "It's not just the immigration bill. It's also employer sanctions and the economy. How do you separate out the motivating factors?"

But anecdotal evidence provided by schools and businesses in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods and by healthcare clinics suggest that sizable numbers are departing. Ignacio Rodriguez, associate director for the Phoenix Roman Catholic diocese's Office of Hispanic Ministries, said churches in the area are also seeing families leave.

Priests are "seeing some people approach them and ask for a blessing because they're leaving the state to go back to their country of origin or another state," he said. "Unless they approach and ask for a sending-off blessing, we wouldn't have any idea they're leaving or why."

Ruiz and Suriano and their families plan to move this month. Arias and her family are considering leaving, but are waiting to see if the law will go into effect as scheduled July 29, and, if so, how it will be enforced.

The law requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they're in the country illegally. It also makes being in Arizona illegally a misdemeanor, and it prohibits seeking day-labor work along the state's streets.

Ruiz, Suriano and Arias are representative of many families facing what they consider a cruel dilemma. To leave, they must pull their children from school, uproot their lives and look for new jobs and homes elsewhere. But to stay is to be under the scrutiny of the nation's most stringent immigration laws and the potentially greater threat of being caught, arrested and deported. They also perceive a growing hostility toward Hispanics, in general.

On the quarter-mile stretch of Phoenix's Belleview Street where both Ruiz and Suriano live, more than half the apartments and single-family homes have "for rent" signs out front.

Alan Langston, president of the Arizona Rental Property Owners & Landlords Association, said his group doesn't track vacancy rates but that his members believe they will be affected by people leaving because of the new law.

The friends say most of the vacancy signs went up after the new law was signed in late April.

"Everyone's afraid," Arias says.

The three friends are key members of a parents' support group at their children's school down the street, said Rosemarie Garcia, parent liaison for the Balsz Elementary School District.

"They are the paper and glue and the scissors of the whole thing," Garcia said. "I can run to them for anything."

With two of the women leaving and the other thinking about it, Garcia is concerned about the school's future.

"It'll be like a desert here," she said. "It's a gap we'll have all over the neighborhood, the community, our school."

Ruiz, Suriano and Arias met three years ago at cafecitos, or coffee talks, held at the school. Now their families hold barbecues together and their children have sleepovers.

Arias, 49, and her day laborer husband paid a coyote to come to Arizona 15 years ago from Tepic, Nayarit on Mexico's central-western coast. Their children, ages 9, 11 and 13, are U.S. citizens.

"I don't want to leave but we don't know what's going to happen," she says.

Ruiz, 38, and her husband, who builds furniture, came to the U.S. from Los Mochis in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa about six years ago on tourist visas, which expired long ago. Two of their kids, ages 9 and 13, are here illegally, while their 1-year-old was born here. The family is moving to Clovis, N.M., where they have family. "It's calmer there," Ruiz says.

Suriano, 28, and her husband crossed the desert six years ago with their then-toddler. The boy is now 9, and the couple has a 4-year-old who was born here. They're moving to Albuquerque, where they don't know anyone but already have lined up an apartment and a carpentry job for him.

"I don't want to go," Suriano says, wiping away tears. "We're leaving everything behind. But I'm scared the police will catch me and send me back to Mexico."

Some people in the neighborhood are not sympathetic.

"Bye-bye, see you later," says 28-year-old Sarah Williams, who lives two blocks south of Ruiz and Suriano with her 5- and 7-year-old children and her aunt. "They're taking opportunities from Americans and legal citizens."

However, Williams, says she doesn't support Arizona's new law because she believes it will lead to racial profiling.

The law still faces several pending legal challenges. The U.S. Justice Department also is reviewing the statute for possible civil rights violations, with an eye toward a possible court challenge.

The law's backers say Congress isn't doing anything meaningful about illegal immigration, and so it's the state's duty to step up. They deplore the social costs and violence they say are associated with illegal immigration.

The law's critics say it will lead to racial profiling and discrimination against Hispanics, and damage ties between police and minority communities.

As the debate plays out, dozens of healthcare clinics in central and southern Arizona say many of their Hispanic clients aren't showing up for scheduled appointments. They say they're either afraid to leave the house or they're moving away, said Tara McCollum Plese, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Association of Community Health Centers, which oversees 132 facilities.

"Some are actually calling the clinics and asking if it's safe to come, if they need papers," since the new law passed, she said.

Sick people avoiding treatment can become a public health problem, she said. "We're actually worried about communicable diseases."

If enough people stop going to the clinics, she said, some services could be cut, and some clinics, especially in rural areas, could be forced to close.

Schools may face laying off teachers and cutting programs because of fewer students, educators say.

Parents pulled 39 children out of Balsz Elementary, which has a 75 percent Hispanic student body, since April 23, the day the law was signed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer. In the small, five-school district, parents have pulled out 111 children, said district Superintendent Jeffrey Smith, who cites the new law as the leading factor.

Smith said each student represents roughly $5,000 in annual funding to the district, so a drop of 111 students would represent roughly a $555,000 funding cut.

Many schools across Arizona have seen a steady decline in Hispanic students in recent years, although some district superintendents say the current drop is more dramatic. Schools attribute the declining numbers to the recession and to the state's employer-sanctions law, which passed in 2007 and carries license suspensions and revocations for those who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Area businesses also say they're seeing the effects of people leaving the state.

Steve Salvato, manager at the family-owned World Class Car Wash, just around the corner from Belleview Street, said business is down 30 percent. Salvato said the car wash relies mostly on Hispanic customers and points to the new law for the recent decline in business.

"A lot of people have just packed up and moved," he said, adding that a strip mall across the street used to be bustling on weekends. "Now it's like a ghost town."

A nearby Food City grocery store reports a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in business.

Back at the garage sale, the three friends have a row of tables strewn with Barbie dolls, bicycle helmets, old movies and a Jane Fonda workout video. A laundry basket is overflowing with children's toys, and a shopping cart is filled with clothes.

They are selling off pieces of their lives.

Their easy banter, mostly in Spanish, quickly turns to tears when they're asked about their impending separation. Ruiz and Suriano have pleaded with Arias to follow them to New Mexico.

"They're my companions," Suriano says of the other two women. "We do everything hand-in-hand."

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Feds to discuss border with Brewer
by Bob McClay/KTAR and Associated Press (June 28th, 2010 @ 7:43am)

PHOENIX - Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer will meet Monday in Phoenix with federal officials dispatched by President Barack Obama to provide specifics for Arizona regarding his plans to tighten security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Governor Brewer's main priority is to get Arizona specifics," said spokeswoman Tosha Peterson. "How many of the 1,200 National Guard border troops is Arizona getting? How much of the $500 million is Arizona getting? She wants details on Arizona, the plan to secure the border for Arizona. That's her main priority."

The meeting in Brewer's office stems from Brewer's June 3 visit to the White House where she and Obama discussed border security and immigration. Brewer has asked for specifics on how the plans apply to Arizona.

A White House spokesman says the delegation is headed by John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism.

The meeeting comes as Arizona officials await word on a possible federal challenge to the state's controversial immigration enforcement law.

"We have certainly been, more than patient, the governor feels, on awaiting details on not only a plan, but juse a response from the federal government on what they're going to do with our problems on the border."

Prior to the meeting, the Department of Homeland Security said it will deploy additional Border Patrol and ICE agents to Arizona, along with more air surveillance. It did not, however, provide numbers.

(Copyright 2008 Bonneville International Corporation. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. AP contributed to this report.)

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Weapons, ammunition seized at border
by KTAR.com (June 28th, 2010 @ 10:41am)

NOGALES, Ariz. -- A Mexican national has been arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers for allegedly trying to smuggle weapons and ammunition into Mexico from the United States.

The 49-year-old man was run down on foot after officers signalled for his car to stop at the Mariposa Port of Entry last Wednesday, the Border Patrol said. Agents were screening travelers headed into Mexico.

The man sped past officers, then abandoned his vehicle and ran toward Mexico, but was stopped, authorities said. A search of his vehicle turned up 10 AK-47 assault rifles, 70 AK-47 assault rifle magazines, six bayonets, 5,610 rounds of high-caliber ammunition and other weapons, police said.

The man, who was in the United States without proper documents, was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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Obama meets with immigration activistsby Associated Press (June 28th, 2010 @ 1:52pm)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is meeting with activists who are pressing him for action on immigration legislation and Arizona's tough new enforcement law.

The meeting Monday at the White House includes prominent labor leaders and Hispanic activist organizations, according to participating groups. It comes as Obama faces calls to move forward on comprehensive immigration legislation, something he's pledged to act on despite long odds of success.

Activists were also expecting an update on the administration's plans to challenge Arizona's contentious new law that requires police officers to question a person's immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.

Obama is meeting Tuesday with Hispanic lawmakers.

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524 Guard soldiers headed to Arizona-Mexico border (June 28th, 2010 @ 3:22pm) By PAUL DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX (AP) - Federal officials told Arizona's attorney general and a congresswoman on Monday that 524 of the 1,200 National Guard troops headed to the U.S. Mexican border will be deployed in the state by August or September.

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and Attorney General Terry Goddard, both Democrats, met with Obama administration officials in Tucson along with dozens of law enforcement officials and community leaders. The federal officials included John Brennan, deputy national security adviser for homeland security.

Giffords spokesman C.J. Karamargin said the 524 troops are now being trained for deployment in August, and Goddard said two drone aircraft also will be used in Arizona. Goddard says the commitment is a first step.

Brennan, Goddard said, has the job of evaluating "the whole picture. He never said this is all. He said this is what we're going to do right now."

The federal officials, sent by President Barack Obama, were to meet later Monday with Gov. Jan Brewer in her office in Phoenix. The meeting resulted from Brewer's June 3 visit to the White House where she and Obama discussed border security and immigration. Brewer asked for specifics on how the plans apply to Arizona.

The president previously announced that he plans to send 1,200 troops to the border, and he asked Congress for $600 million to pay for 1,000 more Border Patrol agents, 160 new federal immigration officers and two unmanned aircraft.

Arizona in the U.S. state with the most illegal border-crossings.

Brewer had called on Obama to deploy the National Guard to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants and drug smugglers across the border, and she reacted to Obama's initial announcement by saying 1,200 Guard personnel wouldn't be enough. She also urged Obama to send National Guard helicopters and surveillance drones to the border to help tight.

The meetings follow months of heated debate over illegal immigration sparked by the passage of a new Arizona law on April 23. The law generally requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they're in the country illegally.

The meetings were taking place as Arizona officials awaited word on a widely anticipated federal legal challenge to the measure. Obama has called the law "misguided." Brewer has said its enactment was necessary because of federal inaction on border enforcement.