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"The number of illegal immigrants who have died trying to get into the United States is higher than ever this summer, calling into question assertions that tougher border enforcement has cut the flow of people, say immigration groups."
WILLIAM M. WELCH in USA Today.
"On the same day that congressional cowards voted down the latest stab at immigration reform in Washington, Christopher Lewis got some bizarre advice from a staffer at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto. She told the businessman from Fort Collins [Colorado] that the best way to get his British wife into the U.S. was to smuggle her across the border."
DIANE CARMAN in the Denver Post.
BANGOR, Maine: "All Tiffany Nelson wants is to have her husband and the father of her two young daughters back at home. Since a judge ruled that can’t happen, the 38-year-old mother is preparing to sell nearly everything her family owns and move to a country she has never seen so her family can be together."
AIMEE DOLLOFF in the Bangor Daily News.
"A federal judge on Thursday struck down a tough ordinance against illegal immigration in Hazleton, Pa., that has been copied around the nation, including in Farmers Branch. The emphatic ruling, which mirrored language used by U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in Dallas in granting a temporary injunction against the Farmers Branch ordinance, may not be a good sign for such laws, some legal experts said."
"A federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday struck down ordinances adopted by the City of Hazleton to bar illegal immigrants from working or renting homes there, the most resounding legal blow so far to local efforts across the country to crack down on illegal immigration."
JULIA PRESTON in the New York Times.
"Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday launched a hotline for Valley residents to report information about undocumented immigrants. ... 'It makes every citizen, by proxy, an immigration cop,' said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's Office at New York University School of Law. 'This hard-line (plan) is a direct line on vigilantism,' he said."
JUDI VILLA and YVONNE WINGETT in the Arizona Republic.
"It has been weeks since Carbajal began walking the streets of Tijuana looking for her son, yet there is no readable outrage or sadness in her voice. No anger in knowing that Pedro Guzman would not be missing in Tijuana were it not for what officials are calling a “highly unusual” encounter with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and its notoriously overstretched jail system. After serving about 20 days of a 120-day jail sentence for vandalism and car theft, Guzman was transferred to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Santa Ana, where he signed a “voluntary deportation order,” claiming Mexican citizenship. But Guzman is an American citizen, born in L.A. The circumstances surrounding his accidental deportation have his family and authorities still scratching their heads."
DANIEL HERNANDEZ in LA Weekly.
"The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors approved a resolution yesterday that would limit illegal immigrants' access to county services and penalize employers who hire them, becoming the second county in the region to adopt a hard-line position in the wake of Congress's failure to enact immigration reform."
SANDHYA SOMASHEKHAR in the Washington Post.
"At the far end of the Terrace Park Cemetery, between the grassy field of flower-dotted gravestones and a makeshift dump, lie rows of numbered bricks in the dirt, some with names and some that read "John Doe." Among those buried here, mostly illegal immigrants, are at least 40 who drowned in the nearby All American Canal.
The 82-mile canal that carries water west from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley has claimed the lives of more than 500 people since 1942, including almost 180 in the last 10 years. It's about to get more treacherous.
About 23 miles of the canal are being lined with concrete to conserve water by preventing it from seeping into the ground. When the lining is complete, water will flow faster and the canal sides will be steeper, slicker and harder to scale. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation began work in June."
ALISON WILLIAMS in the Los Angeles Times.
In the parking lot of a drive-thru daiquiri bar that sells frozen White Russians in plastic to-go cups, Fidel Sanchez is running an illegal enterprise that's too unwholesome to be tolerated, according to politicians here in suburban Jefferson Parish.
Sanchez is selling tacos out of a truck — and judging from the lunch-hour line outside Taqueria Sanchez el Sabrosito, many Louisianans have become fast fans of his flavorful carne al pastor and spicy pork chicharrones.
But not everyone is enamored of the newest cheap eats to captivate the Crescent City. Jefferson Parish politicians, who have long turned a blind eye to whites and blacks peddling shrimp out of pickup trucks and snow cones on the street, recently outlawed rolling Mexican-food kitchens, calling them an unwelcome reminder of what Hurricane Katrina brought. Soon, Sanchez will be run out of business.
"What they're doing is just mean," the Texas native, 49, said in Spanish, noting that he'd secured all needed permits before officials changed the rules last month. "I do think they want the Mexicans out. I don't see any other explanation."
MIGUEL BUSTILLO in the Los Angeles Times.
"After the state of Texas decided it would no longer pay to educate undocumented children, the Tyler Independent School District started charging $1,000 a year in tuition for students like Laura. The children of Humberto Alvarez, who worked at a local meatpacking plant, could no longer go to school. Along with three other families, Humberto and Jackeline filed suit in federal court against Superintendent James Plyler and the local school board. On that September morning, U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice held a hearing on their case. He would ultimately rule that the Texas statute and local policy were unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed his decision, and the case, along with a similar one from Houston, eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 15, 1982, the court ruled 5-4 that the Texas law effectively barred undocumented children from attending public schools, a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment."
IJJ Racial Justice Fellow BARBARA BELEJACK provides this much-needed backgrounder on Plyler v. Doe.
"Tougher security along the U.S.-Mexico border is forcing migrants to take more dangerous, remote routes to cross into the United States and pushing up the number of deaths in the desert. This year could see a record of well over 500 such deaths.
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Ecuadorean computer technician Agustina Herrera paid people smugglers $14,000 to slip into the United States illegally two years ago, swimming the Rio Grande, tramping through swamps and nearly dying from snake bites. Now, after being deported last week from Kentucky, she is preparing to tackle the tough crossing all over again."
Two pieces filed by ROBIN EMMOTT for Reuters.
"In deepest South Texas, a geographic quirk causes desert, coastal and subtropical influences to converge in an ecologically spectacular riverfront landscape found nowhere else on the continent.
Endangered wildcats — ocelots and jaguarundi — lurk secretively, roaming across the Rio Grande through a dense canopy of rare sabal palms, mesquites, thorny Texas ebonies and Montezuma baldcypress. The tangled haven of woodlands, marsh and desert entices rare birds and butterflies that beckon tourists from all over the world.
"These are the habitats that make the Rio Grande Valley one of the most magical places in all of North America," said Carter Smith, Texas director for the Nature Conservancy.
The diverse habitats form a loosely connected "string of pearls" in a skinny, 100,000-acre wildlife corridor stretching along the Rio Grande from the Gulf Coast to near Roma.
But the string is in danger of being broken by a controversial fence due to be erected by the end of 2008 as part of the federal government's plan to secure the border with Mexico.
Many Valley residents don't want the fence, don't think it will work and instead want more agents and surveillance technology. Among their worst fears is that a barrier will wreak havoc on the sensitive corridor, unraveling decades of work to protect it and endangering an eco-tourism industry generating at least $125 million a year."
JUAN CASTILLO in the Austin American-Statesman.
"Karla Morales-Solis sees her parents in anguish, but does not understand why. Just 5 years old, Karla, who was smuggled into the country illegally last fall, may be deported to her native El Salvador.
Her parents are struggling to decide what to do if a judge rules against her after Karla's final hearing on Oct. 23, four days after her sixth birthday."
JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ in the Boston Globe.
"Until this summer, the cooks, waiters and housekeepers of Las Vegas usually didn't see many contenders for the White House until well into an election season.
These days, though, members of the Culinary Workers Union are entertaining repeat visits from Democratic candidates. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) lyrically praised the role of service workers at the group's recent rally. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) promised to walk a picket line with them.
The scrupulous attention is testament to the rising influence of Latino voters, who make up almost half of the union's membership of 60,000, as well as almost 9 percent of Nevada's electorate.
That means the local's members could help choose the party's nominee in Nevada in its new role as an early-caucus state, and activists are trying to make the most of the opportunity."
CHRISTI PARSONS at the Washington Bureau of the Chicago Tribune.
"When the subject of illegal immigration comes up, the states you think about first are Texas and California. Maybe Arizona. But, as of July 1, it is Georgia, a full thousand miles from the Mexican border, that is at the center of the immigration debate in the United States."
JOSH GOODMAN in Governing.
"A Border Patrol agent shot and wounded a migrant who was crossing illegally into the U.S. through a drainage tunnel early Tuesday, the U.S. Border Patrol said. ... Tuesday's shooting was the second of an illegal immigrant in less than a week by the El Paso Border Patrol. On June 27, an unnamed agent fired at least one shot at a man believed to be a human smuggler after the agent was hit in the head with a rock."
ALICIA A. CALDWELL for the Associated Press.
"[U]ndocumented immigrants spent the day contemplating their fate in Arizona after the governor signed a bill that could put companies out of businesses for hiring them. News of the law, believed to be the toughest of its kind in the country, sent a shock wave through the immigrant community."
Daniel González in the Arizona Republic."Gov. Janet Napolitano today signed sweeping legislation against employers of undocumented workers, and asked for cooperation from legislative leaders to call a special session to address what she called critical flaws in the bill. With the governor's approval of House Bill 2779, Arizona takes the lead among states in dealing with the underground market in illegal labor. Napolitano termed the bill “the most aggressive action in the country.”"
MATTHEW BENSON in the Arizona Republic.