Free Republic

OREGON CITY, Ore. — Twice illegally entering the United States, once deported, a man from El Salvador finds himself in a familiar spot of facing deportation. Aguirre pleaded guilty to driving under the influence in August and agreed to enter a diversion program. His blood-alcohol level was .12. He’s been living at the Augustana Lutheran Church in Northeast Portland since September after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at his house in Fairview to arrest him. Aguirre has a criminal past in Oregon dating back to 1999 when he was convicted of selling drugs to undercover police officers in...

One year after the surge began of illegal migrant children across the southern U.S. border, courts are buckling under the load of deportation cases, while immigration rights activists are sounding the alarm that many children can't get fair hearings because they are without legal representation. According to data obtained by Politico, courts convened over 800 hearings per week between July and October. More than half the 11,392 cases on the calendar during that time were given continuances because children had no legal counsel, adding to the backlog for courts in the coming months and increasing the burden on the limited...

Illegal aliens plan a showdown with President Barack Obama at the White House at high noon Nov. 7. Central American Solidarity Association of Maryland (CASA de Maryland) Executive Director Gustavo Torres is supposed to lead the revolt. This being a national security measure, the government is mum on which federal agency will take the lead on protecting the president. Either the secret service or Immigration Customs Enforcement is the likely leader. “Particularly in light of this critical juncture on the future of our country, the president must act decisively, broadly, and quickly,” Torres says in a press release Nov. 6....

Eighty percent of voters polled on Election Day say new jobs should go to Americans and legal immigrants, not to illegal immigrants, including the potential beneficiaries of President Barack Obama’s planned executive amnesty, says an election-day poll of 806 voters. “Voters overwhelmingly prefer an immigration system that protects American workers,” says a memo released with the poll by Kellyanne Conway, founder of the polling company. “Members of Congress should feel confident that voters will support actions using the power of the purse to protect American workers from Obama’s executive amnesty threat,” the memo said.

Maria Praeli stood crying at the podium as she held the hand of her mother, Chela Praeli. Maria Praeli, 21, has a special status bestowed by President Barack Obama on young adults brought here as children by their undocumented parents that allows her to go to school and work without fear of deportation. But Chela Praeli, a psychiatrist when she was living in Peru, but who now cleans houses for a living, lacks that protection. “The thought of her being taken away from me is unbearable. My mother deserves to be included in President (Barack) Obama’s administrative relief,” she told...

Few were as excited about Election Day as Moises Herrera. He did not run for office. He cannot even vote. But reaching Tuesday’s election, he hopes, will set in motion actions that will allow him to stay in the country. “It’s the great hope,” Herrera, a 36-year-old father of four, said in an interview on Election Day, days after immigration officials released him. “There are many, many people in that jail, and they are waiting for that day.” In Massachusetts, Herrera was at constant risk of deportation. In 2011, after a traffic stop in Everett, he was jailed and deported,...

Most of the people the Border Patrol stopped from sneaking into the country last year were from countries other than Mexico, according to agency statistics, a shift that might have provided fodder for politicians leading up to Tuesday’s election. But they didn’t get much of a chance. The Border Patrol’s annual statistics were posted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Web site for about five hours on Oct. 10, then taken down. Now some are questioning whether that decision was an example of the Obama administration playing politics with public information. Even before Tuesday, the administration said it was...

Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that if President Barack Obama wants to tackle immigration in his last two years in office, he can’t do it through executive actions. “We can’t have a circumstance in which we are going after a problem as meddlesome and potentially divisive as immigration by executive action only, this has to go through the people’s representatives,” the former secretary of state said in an interview with Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends.” “That’s our system, that’s the Congress.” Rice said that after Republicans dominated the midterm elections, the American people need to “watch what happens now”...

President Obama gave a post-election press conference in which he pretty much took a pass on all of that stuff about acknowledging the public’s rebuke of his party or seeking common ground with the Republicans who will now control a co-equal branch of government. Instead, he “reiterated…that he intends to use his executive authority to stem deportations of some undocumented immigrants before the end of the year.” In other words: amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, on the unilateral authority of the president. The President has always been pretty free about making petulant threats to bypass his domestic opponents. He...

Thousands of family units that recently entered the United States illegally failed to appear before immigration judges between July 18 and October 7 of this year. Documents from the Executive Office of Immigration Review provided to the House Judiciary Committee this week and exclusively obtained by Breitbart News offer a brief snapshot into the failure of certain undocumented immigrants who've been released into the United States to appear in immigration court. According to the EOIR documents, in that two-and-a-half month period from mid-July to early October, immigration judges across the country rendered 3,885 decisions on removal cases dealing with “aliens”...

Mentally Disabled To Get Legal Help In Immigration Cases By SCOTT MARTELLE Court orders mental health screenings for those detained on suspicion of being in the country illegally This is a court ruling that's sure to inflame the anti-immigration crowd. A U.S. District Court judge this week ordered the federal government to begin mental-disability screening for those detained in three states on suspicion of being in the country illegally, and to provide lawyers for those determined unable to represent themselves in removal hearings. It was the right call. [It]t ... recognizes that those who are incapable of representing themselves in...

Some Republicans claim the President has no authority to act, but they are wrong. The fact is, just as presidents before him, President Obama has broad authority to make our immigration system better meet the needs of our country and reflect our shared values. And every Administration since President Dwight D. Eisenhower has used executive authority to do just that. In addition to taking steps to make our immigration enforcement efforts more humane, there are dozens of reforms that the President can adopt. Two that could have the greatest impact involve the expanded use of his deferred action and “parole”...

“We won’t take any more excuses,” says Cristina Jimenez of the immigration-reform group United We Dream. “What we expect from the President is for him to use his legal authority to enact a program that will protect as many people from our community as possible.” At a “bare minimum,” said Pablo Alvarado, executive director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the immigration orders should include “an extension of work authorization to everyone who would qualify under the Senate bill and an end to the Secure Communities program and policies that criminalize immigrants. The President has the legal authority, the...

U.S. immigration officials said Saturday that the man accused of killing two Northern California sheriff's deputies Friday is a convicted drug dealer who was twice deported from the country. Luis Enrique Monroy Bracamonte, 34, has been booked on charges of murder, attempted murder and carjacking in connection with a rampage through Sacramento and Placer counties that left two sheriff's deputies dead, another injured and a civilian seriously wounded.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — The number of people who died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped to the lowest level in 15 years as more immigrants turned themselves in to authorities in Texas and fewer took their chances with the dangerous trek across the Arizona desert. The U.S. government recorded 307 deaths in the 2014 fiscal year that ended in September — the lowest number since 1999. In 2013, the number of deaths was 445.

The Obama Administration lied last year when they informed Congress and the public that the 2,200 people that the Administration released from incarceration to save money had only minor criminal records. USA TODAY, gaining the data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of information Act, reports that some of the illegal immigrants had been charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and homicide.

TALLAHASSEE — A coalition of Florida hospitals is challenging a state policy on emergency care for undocumented immigrants. Hospitals in states that participate in Medicaid, the joint state-federal health insurance program, are required to treat undocumented immigrants in emergency medical situations. In Florida, hospitals are reimbursed for those services by AHCA. AHCA used to pay for all emergency care for undocumented immigrants deemed "medically necessary," according to a petition filed in the Division of Administrative Hearings last week by the hospitals. But since 2010, the agency has been paying only to the point of "alleviation" or "stabilization." The hospitals argue...

Eufracia Mora and her husband run a commercial and residential painting business, and often have to drive from two to three hours for a job. The parents of two small children ride the whole way unlicensed and on edge. "I'm always nervous every time I get in the car," Mora said, "Every day I drive for work, or I drive the kids to school, I'm worried I'll see a police car." Mora is undocumented and cannot legally obtain a driver's license. She joined nearly 300 people Wednesday night for a forum on immigration issues largely focused on whether driver's licenses...

A New York school taxed by the arrival of Central American unaccompanied minors now finds itself at the center of a state investigation on its enrollment practices. The issue brought renewed negative attention to the long troubled school district of Hempstead, which has yet to accept its rapidly growing Latino population. As of last week, advocates say, at least 35 of these students who had successfully enrolled in Hempstead High School had not received instruction one single day. Other sources say as many as 70 kids are waiting to be accommodated. “There is a tough relationship between the community and...

While trying to work on initiatives to help stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs flooding our border with Mexico, Arpaio said, "I'll tell you whats sad, all the top law enforcement officials told me don't go into Mexico." "Isn't that sad law enforcement is afraid to cross that border and go inside Mexico. I just cant believe it," he added. "I did talk to four federal officers, I had to stick my arm through the fence to shake their hands."