Free Republic

Onyango Obama — the president’s illegal alien half uncle — is appearing in Framingham District Court this morning in a surprise hearing over his August arrest on suspicion of drunken driving. Obama, 67, has been waging an aggressive defense against the charges, even going after one arresting officer’s file. It is not clear yet what today’s session is about.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The suspect in last week's slayings of five people in San Francisco was ordered deported in 2006 after he served a prison term for robbery and assault, but because his native Vietnam would not issue travel documents for him, immigration officials had to let him go free, officials said Monday. Binh Thai Luc, 35, of San Francisco was released under the terms of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said undocumented immigrants must be released after six months if their country of origin won't take them back, according to officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

AMADO, Ariz. (AP) A group of volunteers will spend their Sunday cleaning up tons of trash left by illegal immigrants in the desert near Amado in southern Arizona.

If the homeland’s security were dependent on employee morale, we’d be in big trouble. Fortunately, the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are committed to the agency’s mission, even as the agency fails to inspire them. You know things are bad for workers when a bipartisan congressional hearing is called to examine a department’s drooping spirit. It ranks 31 among 33 large agencies in The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey published by the Partnership for Public Service. (The Partnership has a content-sharing relationship with The Washington Post.)

Check out what a federal appellate court just determined when striking down a Texas town’s law banning illegal aliens from renting housing; the “unconstitutional” measure has no other purpose than the exclusion of illegal aliens, which complicates immigration issues and relations with other countries, particularly Mexico. It may seem unbelievable, but read the ruling for yourself. It was issued recently by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit against the Dallas suburb of Farmers Ranch. A three-judge panel from the New Orleans-based court further clarified that the “sole purpose” of an ordinance banning illegal immigrants from renting...

Common sense about the nation's immigration policy vanishes from the room whenever someone asks, "What part of illegal don't you understand?" It's a real conversation killer, that line. People who use it aren't interested in a discussion. They think law enforcement agencies should round up the estimated 11.5 million men, women and children who aren't authorized to live in the U.S. and deport them. People fixated on the notion of illegality — the crossing of a border without papers — aren't interested in knowing why these immigrants might have come here, what hardships they experienced. They don't care if the...

At a time of high unemployment and with a struggling economy, why on earth would Obama go out of his way to push to extend the H-1B Visas of foreign workers while millions of American engineers are without jobs? That is the question being asked by Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly...

In this case of David vs. Goliath, Goliath wins. An undocumented immigrant from Mexico sues Bank of America after he's nearly deported when his bank manager turns him over to authorities. Lawyers for Luis Martinez ask: Do you want your banker acting as a de facto immigration agent?

I have a bone to pick with Hispanics. Mainly illegals. Because I am one. Hispanic, that is — not illegal. I’m actually a fourth-generation Hispanic American on my mother’s side. In fact, this shout-out also goes to all the liberals who insist on calling Hispanics a minority group in need of help. Clearly, you gringos aren’t noticing what’s happening on the Mexican/American border or the huge population numbers in places like LA and San Diego that clearly beg to differ with the term “minority.” And those numbers are only growing. I grew up no more than three hours from the...

by John HillStand With ArizonaWe have become sadly accustomed to California - America's Sanctuary State - sinking lower and lower into utter lawlessness for the sake of naked racial politics. But whatever they do in Sacramento doesn't even come close to the utter madness that is Los Angeles - which makes the rest of the state look conservative by comparison. This week saw the Los Angeles Police Department announcing that it will soon start ignoring California state law, which requires police to impound the vehicles of unlicensed drivers for 30 days - because it is "unfair" to illegal aliens!That's right....

(CNSNews.com) – At a Wednesday hearing, House Homeland Security Chairman Pete King (R.-N.Y.) said that "at a minimum" there are hundreds of "soldiers of Hezbollah" inside the United States. "Now, how many Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists are here already?" said King. "The highly-disciplined soldiers of Hezbollah are trained to lie low for years, or for decades. Those who have gone up against this enemy for our government estimate the number to be at a minimum--at a minimum--in the hundreds." At the same hearing, the former chief of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration testified that Mexican drug cartels are in...

March 22, 2012 Letter comes as pope visits Mexico, Cuba Bishops cite state laws creating local divisions U.S. bishops to file brief against Arizona law WASHINGTON—Congressional leaders should “build consensus” toward reform of the nation’s immigration laws, said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, in a March 22 letter. “Passage of immigration reform is more important now than ever, as state laws and local enforcement initiatives are filling the policy vacuum left by Congress,” the bishops wrote...

by John HillStand With Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has all but shut down its workplace enforcement activities since Obama took office. Even with the longest sustained bout of high unemployment since the Great Depression, Obama's ICE has slashed workplace enforcement against illegals by a stunning 70 percent. ICE claims they are leaving illegal workers alone to steal jobs in order to have a "sustained focus on criminal offenders". But as we pointed out on Wednesday, ICE has failed with criminals as well, highlighted by their release of a serial child rapist - with 42 counts - who remains...

A federal immigration court judge in San Francisco put a deportation proceeding on hold Friday for a gay California man who is an undocumented immigrant and married to a man who is a U.S. citizen, the couple's attorney said. Alfonso Garcia, 35, who came to the United States as a boy with his parents, and his husband, Brian Willingham, 37, are petitioning the federal immigration service for legal residency based on their marriage, said attorney Lavi Soloway. The judge put Garcia's deportation proceeding on hold while Garcia's legal residency, or green card, application is being processed, Soloway said. The next...

Leave it to Miami to shock even a reality-TV film crew. The crew was shooting footage at Miami International Airport for an upcoming episode when customs agents found a pair of human fetuses in the luggage of two women returning from Havana. The fetuses were to be delivered to someone in Miami and used in a Santeria-like religious ritual, according to two people knowledgeable about the case. “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” said Pat Diaz, who retired two years ago after 25 years on the homicide squad of the Miami-Dade Police Department. The incident, filmed by a crew...

Change is in the air. States from Arizona to Virginia have enacted laws cracking down on illegal immigration. Some target the immigrants; some target their employers. Some rely on local police to do the job; others require that employers use the federal e-Verify system to check the immigration status of employees. Many of these statutes have been challenged in court. Some have been put on hold while others — including an Alabama statute regarded as the most stringent of all — have been endorsed by federal appeals judges. These initiatives share a common goal: enforcement of federal immigration laws, something...

Police to ignore California impound law amid concern of fairness to illegal immigrants By William Lajeunesse Published March 22, 2012 | FoxNews.com The Los Angeles Police Department will soon start ignoring California state law, which requires police to impound the vehicles of unlicensed drivers for 30 days. The majority of unlicensed motorists in Los Angeles are immigrants who are in the country illegally and have low-income jobs. The LAPD says the state's impound law is unfair because it limits their ability to get to their jobs and imposes a steep fine to get their car back. As long as drivers...

A former Mexican official arrested last month in the Rio Grande Valley after being accused of failing to pay a fine has been charged with impersonating a U.S. citizen to cross the border. U.S. marshals arrested Edmundo Lozano Rendón, 55, in McAllen, saying he didn't pay a $7,500 fine assessed when he was convicted of money laundering charges in 1992. He was most recently a spokesman for the border city of Reynosa, and has worked for the Tamaulipas state Institutional Revolutionary Party and for former Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernández, who is under investigation by the Mexican government.

On a patch of Texas farmland near the Gulf of Mexico, immigration officials on Tuesday unveiled one of the most visible results of a three-year-old plan to overhaul the nation’s immigration detention system: a brand-new center intended to provide a less penal setting for detainees.

PHOENIX - Federal authorities say they won't deport six illegal immigrants arrested during a Phoenix protest over Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's (ar-PY'-ohs) immigration policies