Twelve restaurant workers were detained in an immigration raid off Brevard Road Tuesday, according to a local immigrants rights group. . .

Volker said agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained eight people from Latin American countries and four Asian immigrants ranging in age from 23 to around 40. Volkmer said some of the immigrants were from Mexico and El Salvador.

 

Federal agents arrested a manager at a cardboard box company in southwest Detroit this morning on charges he hired undocumented workers.

Edward Schlacht, 48, a supervisor at Grigg Box Company, was taken into custody this morning by agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

To the Editor:

“No Exit From a Bad Program” (editorial, Feb. 28) claims that the Secure Communities program is problematic because it results in the arrest and deportation of illegal immigrants with little or no criminal record. Such a view is misguided and dangerous.

Secure Communities is the Department of Homeland Security’s comprehensive strategy to improve the identification and removal of criminal aliens from the United States.

While not perfect, this sensible program allows for an automated immigration-history check to be run at the same time as the routine criminal-history check done on every person booked into a local jail. It flags criminals who are foreign nationals and sends a notification to D.H.S., which can choose to remove the offender.

Day laborers, mostly illegal immigrants from Mexico, also had proliferated in other areas of metropolitan Phoenix, including Guadalupe, west Phoenix and Fountain Hills.

But drive by any of those locations now, and only a handful of day laborers are left. And no longer do they rush up to vehicles en masse, waving their hands in a desperate bid to get hired. Now, they are more likely to keep a lower profile, leaning against a tree or sitting on a milk crate.

There are several reasons for the change. Arizona's slumping economy has dried up the demand for day laborers, who typically are hired for yard cleaning, moving, tree cutting, construction and other jobs. Many have left Arizona to look for work in other states, or they have given up and returned to Mexico.

Missouri sheriffs are giving their support to law officers in states along the Mexican border seeking to enforce immigration laws.

The Missouri Sheriffs' Association this week approved a resolution backing states that have approved their own legislation on immigration enforcement. The resolution specifically mentions Arizona, where part of a new law on the subject has been blocked by a federal judge.

The Missouri sheriffs group said Wednesday the resolution was approved by more than 100 members at its annual meeting, with no votes in opposition.

Law enforcement agencies in five Northern Virginia jurisdictions have joined a nationwide federal immigration records sharing program that's designed to take the most violent illegal immigrants off the street.

Under the program, known as Secure Communities, Arlington, Loudoun, Fauquier and Rappahannock counties, along with the city of Alexandria, will now run the fingerprints of every jail inmate through biometrics immigration records held by the Department of Homeland Security and FBI criminal records. Fairfax and Prince William counties are already a part of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement program.

HOUSTON — The Obama administration is vastly expanding a federal effort begun under President George W. Bush to identify and deport illegal immigrants held in local jails. But here in the city where the effort got a trial start eight months ago, people on each side of the immigration debate have found fault with it.

Under the effort, known as Secure Communities, local officials check every set of fingerprints taken at jails against those of people who have had a brush with federal immigration authorities; in the past, they could check only for a criminal history in the F.B.I. database. If a person turns out to be an illegal immigrant, the case is turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible deportation proceedings in addition to the criminal charges.

A series of Senate floor votes this week seeking to toughen immigration enforcement is giving the Obama administration its first real taste of the chilly climate for overhauling immigration laws.

On Thursday, the Senate approved a measure that would effectively overturn an immigration-enforcement decision announced one day earlier by the Obama administration. The Department of Homeland Security had said Wednesday that it would rescind a Bush administration program aimed at forcing employers to fire workers who are unable to resolve discrepancies in their Social Security records.

Two years after engineering the nation's toughest employer-sanctions law, state Sen. Russell Pearce has taken the lead in a new round of anti-immigration reforms that could have long-lasting effects on Arizona.

One would require school districts to collect data on any student who can't prove legal residency. Another would require state and local officials to enforce federal immigration laws, thus making sanctuary laws illegal.

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to restore $400 million in funding for state and local jails to incarcerate criminal illegal immigrants, a program which would reimburse Fairfax and Prince William counties a total of $1.5 million.

A Gallup poll released on August 5, 2009 shows that 50% of all Americans believe that immigration should be reduced.  This number is 11 points higher than the figure from an identical poll conducted last year.  Only 14% of Americans say immigration should be increased (down from 18%) and 32% say immigration levels should remain the same (down from 39%).

Fifty-one percent of Arizona voters say it is more important for Congress to pass immigration reform than health care reform.

By a 65% to 20% margin, Arizona voters believe enforcing the borders is more important than legalizing the status of those already living here. Half of the state’s voters (50%) think it is possible to put an end to illegal immigration, while 34% do not.

A new Rasmussen poll shows that 66% of likely voters believe that the government should improve border enforcement and reduce illegal immigration.  However, only 32% of America's "Political Class" agree.

The poll also shows that 77% of likely voters believe that illegal aliens should not be able to receive driver's licenses and 73% of Americans believe that police officers should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when that person is pulled over for a traffic violation. 

Seventy-three percent (73%) of U.S. voters believe that a police officer should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when the officer pulls that person over for a traffic violation. Only 21% disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters also say that if law enforcement officers know of places where immigrants gather to find work, they should sometimes conduct surprise raids to identify and deport illegal immigrants. Twenty-four percent (24%) oppose surprise raids.

In a Washington Post/ABC Poll released just before Barack Obama's inaguration, respondents ranked immigration No. 10 on a list of priorities for the administration. The economy, Iraq War, foreign policy and education were all ranked ahead of immigration. Twenty-one percent said that it was the highest priority, 48 percent said it was high priority, while 29 percent said it was low priority.

When asked about what governments should do to address illegal immigration, 83% of respondents supported stronger border controls, 74% supported cracking down on employers, and 68% supported deportation.

Only 32% of Obama voters considered his support for amnesty as a factor in their decisions to vote for him. 67% said it was either not a factor at all, or they voted for Obama in spite of his stance on amnesty.

60% of voters said reducing illegal immigration and cracking down on employers who hire them is important to them, while only 21% supported "legalizing or creating a pathway to citizenship" for illegal aliens.

57% of voters stated that amnesty would harm American workers and further strain public resources, while only 26% believe amnesty would aid economic recovery and ease public burdens.

Twenty-six of respondents are angry over immigration policy in the United States.

Sixty-two percent say gaining control of the borders is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers.

Sixty-five percent of adults nationwide would like to see the the number of illegal aliens currently in this country reduced.

"The poll, conducted Feb. 22 to 26 with 1,000 respondents, shows that by a 68-25 margin, Americans support the ordinances proposed by Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta and adopted by City Council..."