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Immigration agency mired in inefficiency Last June, U.S. immigration officials were presented a plan that supporters said could help slash waiting times for green cards from nearly three years to three months and save 1 million applicants more than a third of the 45 hours they could expect to spend in government lines. It would also save about $350 million. The response? No thanks. Leaders of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected key changes because ending huge immigration backlogs nationwide would rob the agency of application and renewal fees that cover 20 percent of its $1.8 billion budget, according to the plan's author, agency ombudsman Prakash Khatri. Current and former immigration officials dispute that, saying Khatri's plan, based on a successful pilot program in Dallas, would be unmanageable if expanded nationwide. Still, they acknowledge financial problems and say that modernization efforts have been delayed since 1999 by money shortages, inertia, increased security demands after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the disruptive launch of the Homeland Security Department. As the nation debates whether, and how, to legalize as many as 12 million illegal immigrants living here, the agency that would spearhead the effort is confronting its reputation as a broken bureaucracy whose inefficiency encourages more illegal immigration and paradoxical disincentives to change....
Napolitano voices frustration over border agent policy to U.S. Secretary of State Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson have written U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice voicing their upset with a Bush administration program that has U.S. Border Patrol agents helping train Iraqi security forces. Some of those agents could come from the U.S. border with Mexico. The Southwestern governors say sending some border agents to Iraq and other foreign countries could take away from local security efforts. In their May 25 letter to Rice, Napolitano and Richardson, a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, reference a federal contract with DynCorp International that allows the company to recruit Border Patrol officers for temporary foreign training assignments. "The administration needs to decide whose security is more important, America's or Iraq's. We believe America's come first," said the governors in their letter. Virginia-based DynCorp is a private government contractor that trains police and security forces in foreign markets including Afghanistan and Iraq. The program offers some incentives to Border Patrol agents going into dangerous overseas areas. Unlike many other Democrats, Napolitano has supported the Iraq War....
Immigration Reform Must Include Protection for U.S. Border Agents While Congress debates Immigration Reform, Don Swarthout, President of Christians Reviving America's Values (CRAVE) is calling for the protection of U.S. border patrol agents. Swarthout said, "If we are going to give 12 million Illegal Aliens amnesty after they have illegally broken into our country, we should also make sure our U.S. border agents are protected as well. Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos are absolutely perfect examples." Compean got 12 years and Ramos 11 years after being charged with attempted murder when they shot a drug smuggler who was trying to escape back into Mexico. An over zealous prosecutor unjustly convicted Compean and Ramos who were just trying to do their jobs. This is just one of several recent unjust prosecutions of our border patrol agents. CRAVE is calling upon our Congress to include urgently needed language in the Immigration Reform Bill to protect our border patrol agents from over zealous prosecutors and to immediately free Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos....
Group: Terrorism not focus of Homeland Security Claims of terrorism represented less than 0.01 percent of charges filed in recent years in immigration courts by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to a report issued Sunday by an independent research group. This comes despite the fact the Bush administration has repeatedly asserted that fighting terrorism is the central mission of DHS. The Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse said it analyzed millions of previously undisclosed records obtained from the immigration courts under the Freedom of Information Act. Of the 814,073 people charged by DHS in immigration courts during the past three years, 12 faced charges of terrorism, TRAC said. Those 12 cases represent 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed....
Private guards weak link in homeland security Private security guards paid little more than janitors and restaurant cooks are guarding many of the critical security sites in the United States, usually with minimal or no anti-terrorist training, an Associated Press investigation found. The nation's security industry found itself involuntarily transformed after Sept. 11, 2001, from an army of "rent-a-cops" to protectors of the homeland. But cutthroat competition by security firms trying to win contracts with low bids has kept wages low and high-level training non-existent. Security consultant Hallcrest Systems, in a January 2005 report for the Department of Homeland Security, said its experts believe that 15-20% of the country's private security officers protect sites designated by the government as "critical infrastructure." Major cities have a ratio of three or four security officers to each police officer, the study said. And the industry is governed by a maze of conflicting state rules, according to a nationwide survey by the AP. Wide chasms exist among states in requirements for training and background checks. Tens of thousands of guard applicants were found to have criminal backgrounds....