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Gonzales Was Told of FBI Violations As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005. Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The acts recounted in the FBI reports included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect, the documents show. Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated. The reports also alerted Gonzales in 2005 to problems with the FBI's use of an anti-terrorism tool known as a national security letter (NSL), well before the Justice Department's inspector general brought widespread abuse of the letters in 2004 and 2005 to light in a stinging report this past March....
Congressmen praise Border Patrol 'Operation Streamline' initiative The thus-far highly effective measure for detaining, prosecuting and deporting or incarcerating captured illegal immigrants was born here in the Del Rio Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, and Chief Patrol Agent Randy Hill is unabashedly proud of its effectiveness. Streamline is aimed at “other than Mexican (OTM)” immigrants who cross into the United States illegally, expecting – hoping, really – to be apprehended and turned loose after perfunctory paperwork processing. Until Operation Streamline came along, government officials asserted that deportation to Central- and South American origins – and even to other continents – was too expensive, while Mexican immigrants were simply returned to the border they had crossed and sent packing across bridges and highways back into their homeland. Border Patrol agents detested their new roles in this period, as well as the OTM immigrants’ nose-thumbing understanding of it as a “catch-and-release” avenue to an unearned slice of the American pie. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Randy Hill focuses attention on inter-agency cooperation to reduce smuggling of drugs and other contraband, now that a tide of illegal immigration by “other than Mexicans” has been slowed by the deployment of “Operation Streamline,” now being lauded as a model for other borderland sectors. But, on December 6, 2005, that “golden door,” immortalized by Emma Lazarus in homage to the Statue of Liberty, closed just a bit as Operation Streamline got underway, and in Fiscal Year 2005-2006, OTM immigration dropped 38 percent....
Fewer illegals arrested at border The number of illegal aliens caught trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States is down 24 percent compared with the previous year, indicating that increased border security efforts are beginning to pay off, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). "We are continuing to develop and add the resources we need to gain effective control of the border. And we are beginning to see a difference," said CBP spokesman Michael Friel. "Cross-border activity has declined with the addition of agents and added technology. Combined with the deployment of 6,000 National Guard troops on the border, that deterrence effect has taken place." From Oct. 1 through June 30, U.S. Border Patrol agents made 682,468 apprehensions of illegal aliens along the nation's southern border compared with 894,496 during the same period last year....
U.S. Unable to Deport Most Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes Ezeiquiel Lopez already had a rap sheet that stretched all the way to Texas when, police said, he shot Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Deputy Sheriff Frank Fabiano in the head, killing him. Lopez, 45, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was free at the time of the May shooting, after having been jailed for two prior violent crimes. By law, he should have been deported, but federal immigration authorities didn't know he had been in custody, and state and local police didn't tell them. The case isn't an exception. Fewer than half the foreigners convicted of crimes in the U.S. -- most of whom are in the country illegally -- are deported after serving their sentences, according to the Homeland Security Department's inspector general. Cases like Lopez's point up holes in the nation's overwhelmed immigration system, said Representative David Price, a North Carolina Democrat who heads a panel overseeing Homeland Security Department funding. The Homeland Security inspector general's report estimates there are currently 302,500 deportable immigrants in American jails and prisons. Identifying candidates for deportation isn't easy, though: They're scattered among 5,033 prisons and jails, some run by the federal government, some by states and some, as in Kenosha County, by localities....
Job Vacancies At DHS Said To Hurt U.S. Preparedness The Bush administration has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a "gaping hole" in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat, according to a congressional report to be released today. As of May 1, Homeland Security had 138 vacancies among its top 575 positions, with the greatest voids reported in its policy, legal and intelligence sections, as well as in immigration agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard. The vacant slots include presidential, senior executive and other high-level appointments, according to the report by the majority staff of the House Homeland Security Committee. A DHS spokesman challenged the report's tally, saying that it is skewed by a sudden expansion this spring in the number of top management jobs. Before then, only 12 percent of positions were unfilled in a department that has always been thinly staffed at headquarters, spokesman Russ Knocke said. The findings have stoked fresh concern among some in Congress about the four-year-old department's progress in overcoming management problems, dating to its troubled 2003 creation from 22 components....