Free Republic

One of the nation's biggest labor unions, a major backer of President Obama, is condemning his Department of Homeland Security's immigration enforcement practices, protesting the use of deportation quotas for agents and expanded workplace audits. Eliseo Medina, international executive vice president of Service Employees International Union, said SEIU members want DHS "to stop these crazy, irrational policies," while seeking to turn up pressure on Congress to take up overhaul legislation. SEIU is holding vigils and demonstrations Thursday in Oakland and Sacramento, Calif., and then in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, New York City and Minneapolis Friday. Combined with...

After the health-care fight, we can expect the Obama administration to use the same template to pass “comprehensive immigration reform.” That is a euphemism for permanently ceasing construction of the still-incomplete border fence; institutionalizing a large guest-worker program; treating illegal residents as de facto citizens in terms of receiving earned-income credits, health care, and general entitlements; and providing virtual amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens. And what exactly is that model for passage of something that promises to be so unpopular? We know the boilerplate well after a year of health-care acrimony. First, immigration policy — like health care, and...

John McCain: Call in National Guard for borders By KASIE HUNT | 3/30/10 2:25 PM EDT Sen. John McCain wants to call in the cavalry to defend Arizona from illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico—and to shore up his own right flank. McCain asked the Obama administration Monday to send National Guard troops to the border after a prominent Arizona rancher was found shot to death on his own property. "I am asking you and the administration to immediately reconsider your position and send National Guard troops to our southern border region," McCain wrote in a letter to Homeland...

A former member of Congress says last weekend's shooting death of an Arizona rancher on his own land is what will happen more and more unless America takes back its own borders ... "I believe this, Every single person who has worked so hard to keep those borders open, the president, in Congress and at every level of government – these people have blood on their hands." "We will suffer, and people will die," he said. Vision America said amnesty is critical to the Obama administration, because the "left is desperately in need of new voters who will march in...

(snip) VAN SUSTEREN: Governor Palin, if you were vice president today, what would you be telling a President McCain about what to do about immigration, if anything? PALIN: I support his position on immigration. It all comes down to securing the border. And he who has actually proposed some solutions, the Obama administration does not want to listen to Senator McCain or any other Republican, and that, of course, leads to a greater problem that we have in Washington, D.C. And it's that lack of the new administration's ability and enthusiasm for listening to those on the other side of...

FORT HANCOCK, Texas (AP) - When black SUVs trail school buses around here, no one dismisses it as routine traffic. And when three tough-looking Mexican men pace around the high school gym during a basketball game, no one assumes they're just fans. Fear has settled over this border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican families fleeing the violence have moved here or just sent their children, and authorities and residents say gangsters have followed them across the Rio Grande to apply terrifying, though so far subtle, intimidation....