It Gets Even Worse

If you thought the do-it-yourself anti-immigrant schemes couldn’t get any more repellent, you were wrong. New laws in Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina are following — and in some ways outdoing — Arizona’s attempt to engineer the mass expulsion of the undocumented, no matter the damage to the Constitution, public safety, local economies and immigrant families.

The laws vary in their details but share a common strategy: to make it impossible for people without papers to live without fear.

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Plunge in border crossings leaves agents fighting boredom

Reporting from San Luis, Ariz. — The border fence ran right in front of Jeff Byerly’s post, a straight line of steel that stretched beyond town and deep into the desert. As a U.S. Border Patrol agent on America’s front line, Byerly’s job was to stop anyone from scaling the barrier. Hours into his midnight shift, his stare was still fixed, but all was quiet.

He pounded energy drinks. He walked around his government vehicle. On the other side of the fence, the bars in the Mexican town of San Luis Rio Colorado closed, and only the sound of a passing car broke the silence. Byerly, 31, switched on his DVD player. Minutes later, a supervisor knocked on the window: The slapstick comedy “Johnny English” was on; Byerly was fast asleep.

Wild foot chases and dust-swirling car pursuits may be the adrenaline-pumping stuff of recruitment efforts, but agents on the U.S.-Mexico border these days have to deal with a more mundane occupational reality: the boredom of guarding a frontier where illegal crossings have dipped to record low levels.

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‘Sanctuary’ bill has big drawback

Cops: TX ‘sanctuary’ bills have big drawbacks
“The police chiefs and sheriffs argue that being required to act as immigration cops would hurt their ability to fight other crimes, since people here illegally would be afraid to come forward as victims or as witnesses.”

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Immigrants’ Pilot Lessons Spur Inquiry by the U.S.

Immigrants’ Pilot Lessons Spur Inquiry by the U.S.

BOSTON — Federal officials could not explain Friday how more than 30 immigrants charged with being here illegally got clearance to take flying lessons at an airstrip outside Boston.

Federal law prohibits illegal immigrants from taking flight lessons under rules revamped after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. But the 33 Brazilians, arrested over the last few months and awaiting deportation hearings, somehow managed to get instruction at TJ Aviation Flight Academy at Minute Man Air Field in Stow, a rural town about 30 miles northwest of Boston.

Their instructor, also Brazilian, has also been charged with being here illegally, according to a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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Business owners indicted for providing jobs, transportation for illegal aliens across eastern U.S.

ATLANTA, GA – Five individuals have been indicted by a federal grand jury in three separate indictments on charges of conspiring to induce undocumented aliens to enter and remain in the United States by providing them with employment, predominantly at Chinese restaurants, all for commercial gain, in a case being investigated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Investigations in Atlanta and the FBI.

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Border Patrol Agent Pleads Guilty to Civil Rights Violation

WASHINGTON, June 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Moreno pleaded guilty today in federal court in Tucson, Ariz., to a federal criminal civil rights charge for assaulting a Mexican national who was in his custody, the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona announced today. Sentencing has been scheduled for Aug. 12, 2010.

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Arizona governor and President Obama still far apart on immigration

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and President Barack Obama sat down for half an hour to discuss immigration on Thursday, but there were few signs that the two had bridged their sharp differences on the issue.

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Re-Living Our Immigrant Past: From Hazleton to Arizona and Back Again

Arizona’s immigration law (SB 1070) has garnered the lion’s share of media attention in recent weeks—from boycotts to demonstrations and legal challenges. While the spotlight has been on Arizona, however, copycat legislation has been brewing in at least 16 (at last count) other states. What supporters of similar state “attrition through enforcement” immigration legislation might not realize, however, is that we’ve been here more than once before.

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Born To Be Barred

At the border, U.S. citizens are being refused re-entry because they were delivered by midwives.

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Locked Out

Until June 2009, U.S. citizens crossing the border from Mexico could present a driver’s license or certified copy of their birth certificate for entry. With the implementation of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, citizens must now carry a passport or passport card—if they can obtain one, that is.

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