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Phoenix – A mother and daughter, both wanted in Florida on charges of racketeering, were apprehended by alert U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport Wednesday night. While screening passengers arriving from Mexico City, CBP officers examined documents belonging to 24-year-old Silvana Theurell-Portillo. While asking routine questions of Theurell-Portillo, the officers queried her name in their systems and discovered that she was a fugitive, wanted in St. Lucie County, Fla. on gambling and racketeering charges. During questioning of her mother, 65-year-old Marina Portillo, CBP officers discovered that she also was wanted on similar charges in...

Jay Gillilland, a former U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, has been sentenced to 6,242 years in jail for sexually exploiting his young daughter over the course of two years. Gillilland was arrested on drug charges in 2004 when police officers discovered child pornography on his home computer while executing a search warrant. During a subsequent search of a storage locker Gillilland had rented in Nogales, Arizona, officers discovered more than two hours of videotape depicting him sexually abusing his daughter, who was between six and eight years old at the time. Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement...

WASHINGTON — While he touts his leadership in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as a key component of his 2008 presidential bid, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is facing bitter opposition from the union representing the 343 firefighters who died that day. FOX News has obtained a scathing letter prepared by the influential and politically active International Association of Fire Fighters union, written late last month but never released.

Minutemen finish border fence on a Palominas ranch By Jonathan Clark/Wick News Service BISBEE - Eight months after breaking ground on a 10-mile stretch of border fencing at the Palominas ranch of John and Jack Ladd, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps says it has completed the project. Officials with the civilian border watch group report that a team of volunteers finished the final 7 1/2-mile length of five-strand barbed wire fencing on Sunday after working 20 consecutive days on the effort. Volunteers and a hired contractor completed the first 2 1/2 miles of fencing in July after beginning work in...

Gerlinde Foltin had a pained look in her eyes last week as she opened a passport from her native Austria. Scrawled across the last page was a note from a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent that reads “Subject required B2 visa for further entries.” It means the 52-year-old Austrian woman will have to leave her immaculate Queen Creek home and her husband by Sunday, or become one of millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States. When Gerlinde goes back to Austria, she won’t have a job waiting and she’ll have to stay with family members who have...

U.S. Constitution Day 2006 Training materials presented by the CBP Office of Training and Development Leadership and Workforce Development Division. A core CBP value, Service to the Country, includes defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States. The American people have entrusted CBP to protect the homeland and defend liberty. The Constitution is the framework of our organization’s mission. Under Public Law 08-447, enacted December 8, 2004, Government agencies are required to provide orientation materials for new employees and to conduct annual training on the United States Constitution. To address the annual training requirement, CBP is providing the following...

A custodian at Saguaro High School accused of raping a 14-yearold girl on the Scottsdale campus is an illegal immigrant from Mexico and shouldn’t have been eligible to work in the United States, an immigration official said Wednesday. Russell Ahr, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the paperwork that Roberto Lemus-Retana provided to ABM Janitorial Services, the company that contracts with the Scottsdale Unified School District, is counterfeit. Or, there is a possibility Lemus-Retana was using someone else’s name and Social Security number, Ahr said. The school district wasn’t aware Lemus-Retana was an illegal immigrant until speaking...

John Manetta Once Told Me “Xenophobic (zen-uh-foh-bic): adjective, suffering from xenophobia; having abnormal fear or hatred of that which is strange or foreign.” (Dictionary.com) Usage: The Mexican government’s immigration policy can be characterized as xenophobic. Xenophobic is a word that you will hear tossed around as carelessly as a beach ball at a Grateful Dead concert. The term xenophobic, as it is used in political dialogue, is meant to incite feelings of guilt. And it just so happens that guilt trip lobbying has become a favored tool among liberal activists when debating illegal immigration. This political philosophy would have you...

On June 19, 41 conservative intellectuals and civic leaders released an open letter on immigration calling for “enforcement first” by declaring that “border and interior enforcement must be funded, operational, implemented, and proven successful — and only then can we debate the status of current illegal immigrants, or the need for new guest worker programs.” The signers included Newt Gingrich, William Bennett, Thomas Sowell, Robert Bork, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Ward Connerly, NR’s William F Buckley, Rich Lowry, and John O’Sullivan, and NRO’s Kathryn Lopez and Jonah Goldberg, among others. An implicit challenge to the “enforcement first” letter came on...

WASHINGTON — A compromise immigration plan unveiled by two conservative lawmakers Tuesday received a tepid response from House and Senate colleagues who remain deadlocked over guest worker and citizenship proposals. The newest proposals offered by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., were meant to resolve differences divide among fellow Republicans over how to reform the nation’s broken immigration system. "We've brought the best part of the House and Senate bills together," Hutchison said. "I think we owe it to our country to solve the problem." But the proposals, which would create a guest worker program after...

Should employees of the Customs and Border Protection have their primary residence in the United States? With the hundreds of thousands of people trying to get into this country to take advantage of the opportunities here, most readers would probably think it was always a requirement--or that most people in federal jobs would automatically take up residence here instead of living in a country where so many people want to leave. In reality, living in the United States has not been a requirement and some agents have preferred to live in Mexico or Canada. That, presumably, could cause concerns about...

SAN DIEGO -- Federal law enforcement officials are investigating a series of bribery and smuggling cases in what they fear is a sign of increased corruption among officers who patrol the Mexican border.

PHOENIX – Don Goldwater today called upon Arizona Governor to immediately implement a plan that will actually protect Arizonans from the illegal invasion of our state. The people of Arizona have been told for weeks by our governor that we should not implement initiatives to protect Arizonans from the illegal invasion across our southern border. Arizonans have been told that this is a federal government responsibility. The general tone of the media blitz has been, “Hi, I am from the government and I am here to help you.” This has been a point of humor for decades, however, Arizonans are...

WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department is studying whether legal immigrants seeking citizenship and other benefits should pay higher application fees. The fees now charged don't reflect the full cost of doing business, Emilio Gonzalez, director of the department's Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Wednesday. Applying for citizenship now costs $330. Applying for a green card conveying legal residency costs $325. Applicants also now pay a $70 fingerprinting fee in each case. "American citizenship is priceless," said Gonzalez, a naturalized citizen. "I think people will pay."

  Readers: Criminal Activity Increasing Among Federal EmployeesApril 26, 2006By Ralph Smith URL: http://www.fedsmith.com/articles/articles.showarticle.db.php?intArticleID=896 Has there been a change in criminal activity among federal employees in recent years? No doubt, there are more cases reported about problems with criminal activity involving federal employees. Numerous news reports come out during the year about some activity that inevitably results in enriching the person or people involved in the activity. But is this because there is more news available or is it because more federal employees are involved in criminal activity? FedSmith asked the question because, as some of us are former federal...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents arrested a British couple arriving in Phoenix on a flight from London after discovering more than $130,000 in cash secreted in their luggage, officials said. David Robinson, 41, and Tracy Jane Robinson, 33, were arrested Saturday after customs officials found the cash during a screening at Sky Harbor International Airport, said Brian Levin, a Customs spokesman. The Robinsons are from Portsmouth. The couple were charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on Monday with evading currency reporting laws which require those entering the country to declare cash in excess...

PHOENIX — Public-safety officials from across the Southwest gathered here Tuesday to learn about new strategies needed to control the borders from both illegal immigrants and potential terrorists intent on making their way into the country. But they heard mostly shocking statistics and dire predictions on the cost and complexity of controlling the 2,000-mile border with Mexico, with tales of understaffed law-enforcement agencies, overwhelmed fire departments and increasing violence on the border. The story wasn't unexpected — law-enforcement officials in Arizona and elsewhere on the border have been complaining bitterly about the numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border for...

The growth in the number of agents patrolling US borders has slowed in the 4½ years since the September 11 terrorist attacks and concerns over illegal immigration override fears of terrorist infiltration in the allocation of border resources, according to a new analysis

WASHINGTON — Acknowledging widespread security lapses within the nation's immigration system, the Bush administration announced Wednesday it is opening anti-fraud task forces in 10 cities, including Atlanta, to crack down on fake driver's licenses, passports and other methods used to obtain immigration benefits. "Millions have used fraudulent documents" to obtain work permits or to provide cover for criminal or terrorist activities, said Julie Myers, assistant Homeland Security secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who cited "an epidemic" of bogus identification documents generated by highly sophisticated crime networks. The enforcement initiative, which combines Homeland Security immigration agencies, the U.S. Department of...

WASHINGTON - A former homeland security official will tell Congress Thursday morning that his one-time superiors are turning a blind eye towards deep-rooted corruption and the involvement of foreign agents in the nation's immigration system. Michael Maxwell, who until early this year was the director of the Office of Security and Investigations at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, said in an interview Wednesday that his bosses "buried their heads in the sand" and refused to act on "major national-security vulnerabilities" that his team brought to their attention. "These breaches comprise virtually every part of the immigration system, leaving vulnerabilities...