Last year, the Judiciary Committee approved two important pieces of legislation to stem the flow of illegal immigration and protect America’s communities from dangerous criminal immigrants. Despite promises of bipartisanship, the president has not expressed support for either one of these proposals.

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).

WASHINGTON – The U.S. deported nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants last year, and an increasing number of them were convicted criminals, according to figures set for release Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security.

Deportations have been on the rise for the past decade, and the 396,906 illegal immigrants deported in fiscal year 2011 is the highest number yet, according to the figures.

The illegal immigration debate hit home last week as the owners of the Cancun Mexican restaurants and the Fajita Grill were arrested on charges of conspiring to harbor illegal aliens and employing illegal aliens.

The soft, slow response of the federal authorities to the violations allegedly perpetrated by these Mexican restaurants is a perfect example of why we have an illegal immigrant problem in this country. The investigation into the Fajita Grill began in 2008, before the Cancun restaurant ever opened in Biddeford. Does it really take three years to check a few people’s citizenship status?

A Falfurrias woman is dead after police say a vehicle full of illegal immigrants drove through her house. Family members identify that woman as 70-year-old Bertha Gonzalez.

Police say Gonzalez was asleep when a Chevy Suburban crashed through her bedroom around 2:00 Saturday morning. They say the driver of that car and his seven passengers are all illegal immigrants.

Some pundits and political operatives — mostly Democrats — have already announced the demise of the Republican Party. They point to the growth of the Hispanic community and assert that the GOP needs to embrace amnesty for illegal immigrants to attract Hispanic voters.

But in the 1986 election, after a Republican president signed into law the largest amnesty for illegal immigrants in American history, only 23 percent of Hispanics voted for Republican candidates.

More recently, a November 2009 Zogby poll found that 82 percent of likely Hispanic voters strongly or somewhat support reducing the illegal immigrant population over time by enforcing existing immigration laws, such as requiring employers to verify the legal status of workers and increasing border enforcement.

The White House is urging lawmakers to back away from a campaign led by Hispanic Democrats to block deportations involving U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, a move that risks antagonizing Latino voters crucial to President Barack Obama’s re-election.

Several members of Congress who were scheduled to attend a March 31 news conference on the issue said administration officials contacted them to voice concern about their participation. Until U.S. immigration law is overhauled, the lawmakers say, Obama should use his executive power to protect families facing deportation or separation because at least one parent is an illegal immigrant.

The 2010 census found 43.2 percent of Arizonans under 18 were Hispanic and that whites were for the first time in a minority in that age group, at 41.6 percent. The ethnic and generational changes set the stage for Arizona to become a “test case” for responding to demographic trends as the U.S. becomes more diverse and increasingly Hispanic, said Jeff Milem, an education professor University of Arizona in Tucson.

“Arizona seems to be in the forefront,” he said. “We’ve got to lay the groundwork now for people to come together.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say they have broken up local ties to a brutal nationwide network of Hispanics who they believe produce false documents for illegal immigrants on the South Carolina Grand Strand and elsewhere in the region.

Some of the false documents were distributed in the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area by Victor Hugo Roa-Alzua, who will be arraigned in federal court Tuesday on five felony charges that he conspired to produce and transfer false identification documents.

Roa-Alzua is part of a national network headed by Israel Cruz Millan _ also known as El Muerto, which is Spanish for "the dead one" - that has been under investigation for the past year, according to court documents. The network has sent 1,500 wire transfers totaling about $1 million from its activities to a home base in Mexico, ICE officials said.

The top problems survey participants named as the most important facing the country were the economy; unemployment/jobs; healthcare-related issues; federal government/politics; immigration/illegal aliens; federal budget deficit/debt; lack of money; terrorism, moral/ethics issues, national security, environment and the war in Iraq.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose sanctuary cities and 50% believe that the policies lead to an increase in crime.

Sixty-five percent of the respondents say they follow news stories that involve sanctuary cities; 28% say they follow them very closely. When asked about the creation of sanctuary cities, only 13% of respondents favor their creation.

Forty-nine percent of Americans support cutting off federal funding to sanctuary cities, while 33% oppose a cutoff.

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. 

Sixty-two percent of state residents oppose granting illegal immigrants some type of limited driver's license, according to a Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey poll.

Only 32 percent said children of illegal immigrants deserved in-state tuition rates, while 20 percent favored the lower rates for illegal immigrants themselves.

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.