• Immigration courts in New Jersey try to cope with “fast-tracking” cases

    The state of New Jersey is proceeding to process the cases of eighteen families that have been apprehended in May as part of a wave of mass migration from Central America. The number of underage illegal border crosser has now reached 57,500. The pace of cases in New Jersey immigration courts has quickened, alarming and overwhelming attorneys and judicial staff involved in the action.

  • Child in immigrant detention facility discovered to be U.S. citizen

    In Tuscon, Arizona an 11-year-old boy — just one of the hundreds of children that have been detained at a detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico — was released because he was discovered by his attorney to be a U.S. citizen. The case has highlighted the hazards and potential mistakes that can befall DHS and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials when they choose to “fast-track” immigration cases.

  • Immigration judge says changes needed in “fast-tracking” immigration cases

    While the Obama administration cites evidence that the surge of migrant children from Central America is declining, a leading immigration judge is arguing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) process of “fast-tracking” the cases — often without any legal representation for the defendant — is padding the numbers and also creating other problems of its own.

  • New device sniffs out billions in U.S. currency smuggled across the border

    Criminals are smuggling an estimated $30 billion in U.S. currency into Mexico each year from the United States, but help could be on the way for border guards, researchers reported. The answer to the problem: a portable device that identifies specific vapors given off by U.S. paper money.

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  • Mexico should do more to stem tide of Central American children reaching U.S.: Experts

    While Congress and the White House struggle to pass a bipartisan solution to the influx of Central American children and families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, some immigration experts are urging the Obama administration to put more pressure on the Mexican government to secure its border with Guatemala and Belize. Illegal migration into the United States from Mexico is at its lowest levels in four decades, but the share of Central American migrants detained along the U.S. southern border is at its highest.

  • DHS IG finds problems in detention centers for undocumented immigrants

    A DHS IG report finds problems in several detention centers for Central American children and families who recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, including inadequate food supplies, temperature-control problems, and a high employee-to-detainee ratio.

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  • Immigration cases clog immigration courts across the country

    The highly publicized mass immigration of Central American children into the United States — roughly 57,000 over a little under a year — many court systems are facing a crisis as the number of judges, lawyers, and juries available cannot keep up with demand. Across the United States, that caseload reached 375,373 trials last month — an average of 1,500 per each of the country’s 243 immigration judges. Some rescheduled cases are being pushed back as late as 2017.

  • Does the border really need Perry’s 1,000 National Guard?

    Various solutions to the two and one-half year surge at the border by unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have been proposed by Congress, law enforcement, the public, and politicians with a dog in the fight. The increase in unaccompanied children seeking asylum, however, should be defined less as a border security problem, and more as a refugee problem. At the same time, this newest border dilemma reemphasizes Congress’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform that could calmly address this and other real border issues, all problems with which individual states like Texas have had to contend since 1986.

  • Border surveillance towers deployment on hold as GAO seeks reevaluation

    DHS’s plan to deploy fifty surveillance towers across southern Arizona is temporarily on hold, following a protest by Raytheonthat the agency improperly awarded the work to rival EFW. In a decisionreleased last Thursday by the Government Accountability Office(GAO), DHS has been asked to reevaluate the competitors’ proposals, saying that it is possible Raytheon was “prejudiced by the agency’s errors” during an evaluation of proposals.

  • U.S. mulls ways to handle complex child immigration issue

    The influx of unaccompanied children crossing into the United States has reached crisis proportions, with 90,000 now in the United States. The children are escaping violence and deprivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, but a George W. Bush-era law prevents their rapid repatriation. Leading Republicans want to change the law, but many Democrats condition such a change on folding it into a comprehensive immigration reform.

  • To stem flow of minors, U.S. goes after human traffickers’ finances

    Many of the 57,000 Central American minors who have crossed the Southwest border since October 2013 did so with the help of smugglers operating as part of a human trafficking network. To bring down these networks, federal agents from DHS and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network(FinCEN) are reviewing suspicious bank transactions at U.S. banks, specifically accounts that are experiencing a sudden surge in transfers to Mexico.

  • Effectiveness of Texas National Guard border troop surge questioned

    Texas governor Rick Perry’s plan to send nearly 1,000 Texas National Guardtroops to the Rio Grande Valley has been applauded by the governor’s supporters, but critics question its effectiveness. Gov. Perry’s decision to send nearly 1,000 guardsmen to the Rio Grande Valley is described as “symbolic,” and top officials in border counties agree that sending more guardsmen to the border would bring little change to the current situation.

  • Wave of illegal children immigrants shifts debate on use of executive powers

    After several immigration bills stalled in Congress, President Barack Obama, in 2012 and 2013, issued a series of executive orders to limit the number of deportations of illegal immigrants. Many who advocated a tougher stance on immigration have charged Obama with failure to consult with Congress. The Obama administration is now trying to find a way to deport Central American illegal immigrants, many of them unaccompanied children, without running afoul of a George W. Bush 2008 law which makes such deportation difficult – and some of his immigration criticswant him to take executive action on the issue, a shift from their usual criticism that he has abused his executive powers.

  • NYC forms a task force to coordinate accommodation for migrant children

    New York City officials have formed a task force to help coordinate accommodation for Central American children who have arrived in the city in recent months after weeks and months of living under the care of immigration and border officials near the Southwest border. Since October 2013, federal officials have sent more than 3,200 children to New York City and elsewhere in the state to live with relatives or guardians, and about 7,000 more are expected to arrive in the coming months, according to officials who have been briefed by federal authorities.

  • DHS IG: manual processing faster than Electronic Immigration System (ELIS)

    A new reportby DHS Office of Inspector Generalconcludes that the department’s $1.7 billion Electronic Immigration System(ELIS), used to process forms for benefits, VISAs, and refugee requests, is inefficient as it takes twice as long as processing the applications manually.Currently, workers spend roughly 125 clicks per application, a more time-consuming process than processing the forms manually.