Groups Ask Congress To Cut Border Enforcement Funds

By Ruxandra Guidi SAN DIEGO — According to the Washington-based think tank National Immigration Forum, funding for the Border Patrol has grown by about 1,000 percent since 1993. Its operating budget is now $1.4 billion and it rises, on average, about $300 million annually. The National Immigration Forum is one of a handful of pro-immigrant groups pressuring Congress to make cuts to border enforcement as a way to save taxpayers more than $2.6 billion. "We believe that, at this juncture, ...

Alabama enacts anti-illegal-immigration law described as nation’s strictest

By Richard Fausset Reporting from Atlanta—Alabama set a new national standard for get-tough immigration policy Thursday with Gov. Robert J. Bentley's signing of a law that surpasses Arizona's SB 1070, with provisions affecting law enforcement, transportation, apartment rentals, employment and education. The new law, combined with legislation passed in May by neighboring Georgia, has arguably made this swath of the Deep South the nation's hottest immigration battleground, with the region'...

White House Sidesteps Deportation Moratorium, Favors Comprehensive Immigration Reform

By Chris Geidner Asked today to explain the difference between a 2009 moratorium on deporting certain widows and widowers of U.S. citizens and the White House's failure to take up advocates' request that a similar moratorium be issued to stop the deportation of the foreign same-sex partner of U.S. citizens, White House press secretary Jay Carney provided no direct answer -- only reiterating the president's support for comprehensive immigration reform and belief it can happen "in the future." ...

Immigration bills signed amid arrests

By Carrie Ritchie 8:55 AM -- Immigration protesters released from jail Five undocumented immigrants arrested for trespassing after slipping into the governor’s office Monday have been released from Marion County jail. Jail spokesman Julio Fernandez said the six were each released on $150 cash bond. The first was released last night and the final one this morning. Uriel and Erick Gama, 20; Ana Ruiz-Toyar, 23; Guadalupe Pimentel, 18; and Sayra Perez, 19 were scheduled to appear...

A Day on the Border – Crosses, Dreams, and Shades of Gray

By Maritza Lizeth Félix When I reached the border, I expected to trudge through hundreds of pounds of garbage that I was told immigrants leave in their wake each year as they journey north through the desert. But that wasn’t the case. Plastic water bottles littered the road, it’s true, along with lost shoes and plastic bags, but the objects that left the greatest impression were the crosses, labeled with the names of immigrants who had died of thirst in the suffocating desert. Plastic f...

Families along U.S.-Mexico border face tough school choices

By Kevin Sieff MATAMOROS, Mexico — When Princess Martinez saw her husband for the first time after he was deported, two thoughts crossed her mind: that she loved this man, and that she might have to leave him. The only other option appeared to be moving with their six daughters — who, like Martinez, are all U.S. citizens — across the border to her husband’s new home in Mexico, with its mounting violence and troubled schools. “Everyone is coming to America, to the land of opportu...