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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to stay out of a lawsuit involving Arizona's immigration law, saying lower courts properly blocked tough provisions targeting illegal immigrants. The state law is a challenge to federal policy and is designed to establish Arizona's own immigration policy, the department's solicitor general said in a filing with the justices. Arizona says the law is an effort to cooperate with the federal government. *** Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is seeking to overturn the judge's decision and wants Supreme Court review of the case, arguing that the issues are of...

Rick Perry caught a lot of heat from the other GOP presidential contenders for allowing illegal immigrants in Texas to receive in-state tuition. But he’s got a friend in former president Bill Clinton. “It makes my skin crawl when they attack Rick Perry for one of the best things he did,” Clinton told USA Today. “What would they like? Would they like the kid to stand on a corner and sell dope or something?”

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department on Friday told Alabama's attorney general that it has the "express authority" to investigate potential federal civil rights violations in Alabama's public schools authorized by the state's controversial new immigration law. Assistant US Attorney General Thomas Perez informed Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange of the federal government's powers two days after Strange requested that the Justice Department cite what legal authority it had to collect enrollment data on Hispanic students in his state's public schools. "The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is tasked with investigating potential violations of civil rights laws that protect...

LAS VEGAS -- Three men plead guilty this week to stealing the identities of undocumented immigrants in order to fraudulently receive $4.4 million in Nevada unemployment benefits, according to a report released by United States Attorney Daniel G. Bogden. The immigrants, who entered the United States illegally, were not entitled to unemployment benefits. However, 41-year-old Francisco Garcia said as part of a plea deal Monday that he and three other defendants obtained personal identifying information and work history from the immigrants, and submitted the claims for unemployment benefits through Nevada's unemployment benefit telephone hotline and website. Garcia said that from...

....PERRY: Well, let me just put it this way. The federal government's complete and absolute failure to secure our border put a lot of pressure on governors no matter where they might be to have to deal with issues. You are required to give health care, you are required to give education. And Texans made a decision -- are we going to kick these people to the side of the road and they are going to become tax wasters? Or are we going to require that they become citizens of the United States and become taxpayers? We chose the latter....

MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) - The State Department of Education is advising school superintendents to hold off on providing enrollment data to the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ had requested Alabama school superintendents provide a list of all students who had withdrawn from schools since the beginning of the school year. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez sent a letter to Alabama school systems wanting to know how many Hispanic students are enrolled in schools and how many have withdrawn since the beginning of the school year. Educators reported the new law caused many Hispanic students to stay home in the...

State lawmakers are working to pass a group of bills against illegal immigrants known as, the National Security Begins at Home Legislation. Stolen jobs, and a burden on tax paying Pennsylvanians are just two of the reasons State Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R) 12th District, is trying to pass a package of Illegal Immigration bills in Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON -- A group of Mexican senators announced Tuesday they are preparing to meet with state legislators in Georgia and four other states next month, hoping to head off more stringent immigration laws like the one Georgia enacted this year.The senators plan to share information with state lawmakers that shows illegal immigrants generally stay out of trouble and contribute to the economy while they are here. Sen. Carlos Jimenez Macias, a member of the Mexican Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, confirmed those plans Tuesday at a workshop on immigration reform in D.C. at the German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan public policy...

House Republicans are moving to subpoena a list of all immigrants whom the Obama administration has flagged under its secure communities program but failed to arrest for deportation, after the Homeland Security Department missed a congressionally imposed deadline to produce the information this week. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said he wants the data so he can see who is among the 300,000 people the administration has deemed too low a priority to detain under new deportation guidelines. He has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday for the immigration subcommittee to vote to authorize the subpoena. “Why would DHS...

Bachmann blunder? What do you think about Bachmann's remarks about the children of illegal immigrants? I agree with them. Bachman for 2012! I diasgree. This is an awful thing to say. I don't know.

[embedded LINKS at source] Have you heard? “The government is subsidizing illegal immigration! The Texas DREAM Act grants amnesty! Illegal immigrants are going to college for FREE!” Hold your horses, folks. These statements, which are hurled at Gov. Rick Perry from both sides of the political spectrum, are simply not true. In-state tuition for illegal immigrants is a hard policy to argue because it rests on such a thin line between supporting education and rewarding law-breaking. Admittedly, the governor didn’t argue the case well when he said opponents of this policy “don’t have a heart.” (He’s since recanted that statement.)...

On Oct. 14, a federal judge blocked key portions of Alabama’s new immigration law after several groups, including the Obama Justice Department and the ACLU, asked for an injunction. The Justice Department claims that states that assist in enforcing federal immigration laws are violating the Constitutional separation of powers. Really? If that’s so, I wonder if state police in Alabama are barred from arresting someone trying to pass counterfeit $100 bills, since it’s federal currency. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United...

America has a 9% unemployment rate, but the Department of Homeland Security, instead of hiring US citizens to assist in rounding up undocumented aliens and shipping them home, has chosen to authorize employing people who shouldn't be here in the first place. The Department of Homeland Security, headed up Janet Napolitano and in cooperation with the White House, has chosen to reward illegals with paychecks that could otherwise be going to Americans who are unemployed. According to Napolitano, DHS apparently sanctions and authorizes hiring foreigners who flout the law, citing "prosecutorial discretion" as the excuse.

This isn’t good...Just last week Governor Mitt Romney lectured Governor Rick Perry on his immigration record: “You put in place a magnet to draw illegals into the state, which was giving $100,000 of tuition credit to illegals that come into this country, and then you have states — the big states of illegal immigrants are California and Florida.” Here’s the video: Now we find out that Romneycare funded healthcare for illegal immigrants...Just like Obamacare does. It was a magnate to draw illegals into the state. The National Review reported: Mitt Romney, who has called government-funded programs that offer assistance to...

Mitt Romney, who has called government-funded programs that offer assistance to illegal immigrants “magnets” that draw more illegal immigrants to the country, allowed a health-care program that helps illegal immigrations to be included in the final version of his health-care program that he signed. From the Los Angeles Times: The Massachusetts healthcare law that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed in 2006 includes a program known as the Health Safety Net, which allows undocumented immigrants to get needed medical care along with others who lack insurance. Uninsured, poor immigrants can walk into a health clinic or hospital in the state and get publicly subsidized...

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge Friday dismissed Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's lawsuit that accused the Obama administration of failing to enforce immigration laws or maintain control of her state's border with Mexico. The dismissal by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton comes in a counter-lawsuit filed by Brewer as part of the Justice Department's challenge to Arizona's controversial immigration enforcement law. The Republican governor was seeking a court order that would require the federal government to take extra steps, such as more border fencing, to protect Arizona until the border is controlled. Bolton said Brewer's claim that Washington has failed...

Perry's opponents have unfairly painted the governor as relaxed on border security, and all too willing to give illegal immigrants a free ride. Presidential politics can be harsh sometimes, and some candidates are all too quick to foster erroneous lies about other candidates in the hope to plant seeds of doubt about how serious Perry is about border security. The ide Perry is soft on border security is just wrong. Ramshaw reports In 2005, Perry announced a $10 million state program to boost border patrols and upgrade radio systems along the border, installed hundreds of video cameras, and requested 1,000...

At two campaign rallies in Tennessee on Saturday night, the Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said that part of his immigration policy would be to build an electrified fence on the country’s border with Mexico that could kill people trying to enter the country illegally. But by Sunday morning, in a dramatic change of tone, Mr. Cain, a former restaurant executive, said he was only kidding. “That’s a joke,” Mr. Cain told the journalist David Gregory during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he was asked about the electrified fence. “That’s not a serious plan. I’ve also said...

By all accounts, Jaime Villicana-Campos is a wonderful husband and a beloved father to his children. He held two physically demanding jobs and worked seven days a week to support his large family. He somehow still made time to spend with his little girls, especially 6-year-old Angelica who suffers from epilepsy. She is particularly close to her doting father and is known in the family as “Daddy’s girl.” But because of the nation’s sometimes vexing immigration laws, Villicana-Campos is sitting in a Tacoma federal detention facility. He was nabbed by immigration officials in June, a month before his fifth daughter...

Aerial surveillance missions such as this one are part of Gov. Rick Perry's multifaceted law enforcement effort, which has operated along Texas' portion of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border for five years. Unique to Texas, and put in place because of what Perry said was inadequate enforcement by the federal government, the operation is designed to marshal the forces of dozens of state, federal and local entities in a cooperative "boots-on-the ground" offensive in border counties. The Republican governor has repeatedly cited the law enforcement effort as a display piece in his presidential campaign, while warning that drug violence from Mexico...