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Terrorist Loophole: Senate Bill Disarms Law Enforcement In the wake of the attacks, the Department of Justice announced the conclusion of a new Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion: state and local police officers do have the legal authority to arrest any deportable illegal alien. This announcement did not create any new authority—the police had possessed it all along. Rather, the announcement reminded local law enforcement agencies of the crucial role that they could, and should, play in the war against terrorism by making immigration arrests. The OLC opinion affirmed the conclusion of numerous U.S. Courts of Appeals that states have the inherent authority to assist the federal government by making immigration arrests. Moreover, Congress has never acted to displace, or “preempt,” this inherent authority. As the Tenth Circuit concluded in United States v. Santana-Garcia (2001), federal law “evinces a clear invitation from Congress for state and local agencies to participate in the process of enforcing federal immigration laws.” Police departments across the country responded to the lessons of 9/11 and the OLC opinion by exercising their inherent arrest authority with renewed determination. The number of calls to LESC by local police officers who had arrested illegal aliens nearly doubled, reaching 504,678 in FY 2005—or 1,383 calls per day, on average. Local police have become a crucial participant in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. The Senate’s immigration reform proposal would change all of that. Section 240D would restrict local police to arresting aliens for criminal violations of immigration law only, not civil violations. The results would be disastrous. All of the hijackers who committed immigration violations committed civil violations. Under the bill, police officers would have no power to arrest such terrorists. Moreover, as a practical matter, CIRA would discourage police departments from playing any role in immigration enforcement....
National Guard slow to fill president's order at border The Bush administration said yesterday that 2,834 National Guard troops are on assignment to the U.S.-Mexico border, though most of them are still in transit or training and not actively helping support the U.S. Border Patrol. About 300 are part of the Joint Task Force headquarters, and another 912 are "forward deployed," meaning they are active in supporting the U.S. Border Patrol, the Guard said. The more than 1,600 remaining troops are still in training or transit. Although only one-third of the forces are forward-deployed, the administration said, that ratio will build gradually as other troops complete training. President Bush in May called for 6,000 National Guard troops to work on the border in a support role, conducting surveillance and helping build infrastructure such as vehicle barriers. The administration promised 2,500 troops by the end of June and 6,000 by August, to be stationed until more Border Patrol agents can be hired....
Corrupting Instead Of Protecting Our Borders The umbrella agency created by the Department of Homeland Security to protect the nation against terrorism has been plagued by serious corruption that includes numerous agents accepting bribes to smuggle drugs and illegal aliens into the country. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was established as the unified border agency by combining the inspectional and border forces of U.S. Customs, U.S. Immigration, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and the U.S. Border Patrol. The idea was to create a powerful force that would protect America’s borders. Instead the agency has had a spate of corruption cases involving Border Protection agents and customs inspectors. In the latest incident, two former Border Patrol agents actually pleaded guilty in federal court to accepting bribes for helping smugglers transport illegal immigrants into the U.S. The veteran agents—Mario Alvarez and Samuel McLaren—worked at the El Centro station in California, just across the border from Mexicali. They admitted taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to smuggle Mexicans into the country, leaving federal prosecutors to say that “it doesn’t get much worse than that.” Ironically, the agents were assigned to a special program, created between the governments of Mexico and the U.S., in which smugglers are deported to Mexico and prosecuted. Instead, the U.S. agents busted the smugglers, often drove them in government vehicles to a store parking lot and demanded bribes in exchange for freeing them. Last month four other agents—two from the Border Patrol and two customs inspectors—were caught committing similar fraudulent acts. The two longtime customs inspectors were arrested and charged with bribery, conspiracy and other crimes for smuggling undocumented immigrants into the U.S....
Trashing the border Every time I go down to the Mexican border, I'm struck by a down and dirty realization: This beautiful land looks like a dump. Recently I was at a waist-high border vehicle barrier in a valley northeast of Tecate, Baja California. As far as the eye could see, strewn past barbed wire or collecting knee-deep in culverts, were water bottles, food wrappers, used paper products such as toilet paper and maxi pads, even felt shoe covers designed to obscure tracks. From California to Texas, illegal immigrants and drug runners leave such calling cards on their trek north. "This was a beautiful refuge 10 years ago," Mitch Ellis, manager of Arizona's Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, says. "Just stunning." Now, he says, it looks like a "war zone." The refuge shares just 5½ miles with the Mexican border but is a staging point near the Sasabe border crossing and is crisscrossed by highways that serve as pick-up routes. The sheer amount of foot and vehicle traffic — at least 200,000 to 300,000 crossers a year on the 118,000-acre refuge — makes endangered species conservation a losing battle. As National Guard troops have been dispatched to the border and lawmakers grapple with the specifics of immigration reform, a proposed southern wall has ignited contentious debate. But while the primary intention of a fence would be homeland security and immigration control, a welcome byproduct of such a wall might be softening the blow on the environment. Last year, 500 tons of trash was strewn across the Buenos Aires refuge, as well as human waste and about 100 abandoned vehicles. Wild animals are choking on plastic or getting tangled in trash, and crossers' campfires have sparked wildfires. Aerial photos, Ellis says, reveal a shocking web of 1,300 miles of illegal trails cut through the refuge....
Funding, agents urged for border With the Rio Grande as a backdrop, members of Congress heard disturbing testimony Friday about the dangers that federal and local law enforcement agencies face trying to control a seemingly endless flow of illegal immigrants and contraband across the river into the United States. The area's top U.S. Border Patrol agent and others testified they're still outmanned and outgunned by sophisticated smugglers, but increased personnel, advances in surveillance technology and stepped-up removal proceedings are leveling the battlefield. Still, officials pleaded for more federal funds to provide additional agents and equipment along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, 1,200 miles of which are in Texas. In the meantime, they acknowledged terrorists could cross the river laden with weapons, and a federal auditor testified he's proven how porous the northern and southern borders are by using bogus documents to import nuclear bomb-making materials. "The Customs and Border Protection inspectors never questioned the authenticity of the investigator's counterfeit bill of lading or the counterfeit NRC document authorizing them to receive, acquire, possess and transfer radioactive sources," the audit report said....
Restoring some order at border From Tommy Vick's back yard, the Rio Grande is a picture postcard of serenity as it cuts through steep limestone bluffs, sunlight catching on dark water. Until recently, it was more a battleground. For more years than anyone remembers, thieves regularly crossed from neighboring Mexico at will, ransacking Mr. Vick's Vega Verde Estates neighborhood, stealing whatever couldn't be tied down and darting back across the river before police could respond. Last November, thieves even made off with Mr. Vick's lawn tractor. "They tied it to a homemade raft and floated it across on inner tubes," he said. "A tractor! That was nearly the last straw." But officials say such crime in Texas' border counties is down dramatically this year because of initiatives that increased police presence fivefold in some areas. The lesson, they say, is simple. "It shows we can take back control of the border if we can saturate the area with law enforcement officers and create high visibility," said Val Verde County Sheriff D'Wayne Jernigan. "But for it to work, it's going to have to be permanent. We have to take on the whole border." Since December, when Gov. Rick Perry provided $10 million in state and federal grants to the 16 border sheriffs for a border security effort called Operation Linebacker, Sheriff Jernigan was able to increase patrols through overtime pay and newly hired deputies. Crime in the Vega Verde area began to tumble....
Judge Upholds F.B.I. Search of Lawmaker's Office While acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the F.B.I. search of Representative William J. Jefferson’s legislative offices, a federal judge ruled Monday that the seizure of records there was legal and did not violate the constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the executive branch. The search, the first of a Congressional office, touched off a firestorm on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers joined in bipartisan protests to the Bush administration over the Justice Department’s decision to seek evidence of bribery on legislative ground. President Bush personally intervened and ordered the seized documents temporarily sealed. The constitutional battle will not end with the decision Monday by Judge Thomas F. Hogan of Federal District Court. Mr. Jefferson’s lawyer, Robert F. Trout, quickly announced that he would appeal. And while Judge Hogan said the documents seized in an overnight raid May 20 and 21, including computer hard drives and boxes of records, could now be turned over to investigators, the defense is likely to seek a stay of that release. In a statement announcing the appeal, Mr. Trout said: “A bipartisan group of House leaders joined us in court to argue that these procedures were in direct violation of the speech or debate clause of the Constitution, which the framers specifically designed to protect legislators from intimidation” by other branches of government. The Justice Department and the House leadership have been negotiating over new procedures in case other search warrants for Congressional offices are sought by investigators. Mr. Jefferson is a Democrat, but wide-ranging corruption investigations have ensnared aides to several Republican congressmen this year. Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the discussions “about harmonizing policies and procedures for possible future searches” would continue....