No matter who gets elected, the prospects for enforcing the laws against illegal immigration are dim.

But this is pretty eye-opening.

Here’s Obama addressing “La Raza”:

The system isn’t working when 12 million people live in hiding, and hundreds of thousands cross our borders illegally each year; when companies hire undocumented immigrants instead of legal citizens to avoid paying overtime or to avoid a union; when communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids — when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel.

Sounds to me like he’s not interested in enforcing the law in the slightest.

Whose fault is it if a parent breaks the law and is consequently taken from his children? Why, the fault lies with the terrorists — “terrorists” meaning “those who terrorize” — by which I mean, of course, the immigration authorities.

[posted by Justin Levine]

From the San Francisco Chronicle -

San Francisco will shift course and start turning over juvenile illegal immigrants convicted of felonies to federal authorities for possible deportation, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Wednesday as he took the blame for what he conceded was a costly and misguided effort to shield the youths.

Newsom said he hadn’t known until recently that the city was keeping the juvenile offenders from being deported as part of its sanctuary-city policy, but he added that “ignorance is no defense.”

…

Newsom had said Tuesday that he had no direct authority to order the change, but that did little to dispel a controversy that overshadowed his announcement this week that he was exploring a 2010 run for governor. National media coverage of the mayor in recent days focused not on his political ambitions but on Chronicle revelations that his city was harboring illegal immigrant youths who had been convicted of dealing crack on the streets.

…

The mayor also revealed some of the costs to San Francisco taxpayers of protecting the offenders from the federal government, something his Juvenile Probation Department had declined to do.

The city has spent $2.3 million just to house illegal immigrants in juvenile hall rather than turning them over to federal authorities since 2005, the year Newsom appointed his juvenile probation director, William Siffermann.

Oh, there’s much more. Read it all.  This is the man who wants to be Governor of California….

Meanwhile, I’d simply recommend a retaliation policy. Upon their release from jail or prison, all cities should promptly dump their violent offenders, drug dealers and homeless in San Francisco until that city becomes unlivable. Maybe that will drive the point home. It might be harsh, but this is war, and San Francisco clearly started it.

[posted by Justin Levine]

The San Francisco Chronicle continues to do a stellar job in keeping on top of this important story.

The latest -

San Francisco — With his handpicked juvenile probation chief at his side, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said today that he is powerless to order that the city turn over underage illegal immigrant criminals to federal officials for deportation.

Instead, Newsom said at a City Hall news conference, the question of what to do with illegal immigrant minors who deal drugs and commit other crimes is one for juvenile court judges, the district attorney and public defender to sort out.

“I don’t have the authority here,” Newsom said as he stood beside Juvenile Probation Director William Siffermann. “I have a bully pulpit. The courts have the authority here.”

Keep in mind that this is the same mayor who somehow determined on his own that he did have the authority to wed same-sex partners without previous court authority. Very rich indeed….

Read the whole thing from the Chronicle here.

 [posted by Justin Levine]

Here is a startling update to the already outrageous story that was posted about earlier this morning -

SAN FRANCISCO — An effort by San Francisco to shield eight young Honduran crack dealers from federal immigration officials backfired when the youths escaped from Southern California group homes within days of their arrival, officials said Monday.

The walkaways are the latest in a string of embarrassments for city officials, who are protecting illegal alien drug dealers from federal authorities and possible deportation because of San Francisco’s 1989 declaration that the city is a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.

I have to take issue with the wording of the first sentence in the story. San Francisco’s efforts to shield illegal alien crack dealers from federal immigration officials most obviously did not “backfire” as the report states…The city’s efforts worked only too well.   After all, you don’t see them in federal custody, do ya?

‘After all, if we did that, it might end up interfering with this nation’s higher priority to completely ignore its immigration laws.’

Ok. That wasn’t an exact quote. But that is what was said, in essence.

Unbelievable -

San Francisco juvenile probation officials - citing the city’s immigrant sanctuary status - are protecting Honduran youths caught dealing crack cocaine from possible federal deportation and have given some offenders a city-paid flight home with carte blanche to return.

The city’s practices recently prompted a federal criminal investigation into whether San Francisco has been systematically circumventing U.S. immigration law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

[posted by Justin Levine]

Radley Balko:

I’m seeing a lot from the comments section about how people who defend illegal immigrants “don’t actually have to live with them.”

I’ll go ahead and call bullshit, here. Ryan Sager wrote a nice piece back in 2006 pointing out that, in fact, the regions of the country most hostile to immigrants (legal or otherwise) tend to be the areas with the fewest immigrants. And American citizens who actually live among higher concentrations of immigrants tend to have much higher opinions of them. There are exceptions, like Prince William County, Virginia. But in general, exposure to immigrants tends to demystify them.

Hey, I have a high opinion of a lot of illegal immigrants. They tend to have a great work ethic, for one thing. And they’re plenty demystified to me. But I still consider illegal immigration to be a problem.

But then, I live in L.A. I don’t live on the front lines of the immigration problem like Radley Balko:

I happen to live in the Chirilagua area of Alexandria, Virginia, home to the largest Salvadoran population in the U.S. The only time I‘ve ever felt unsafe in my neighborhood was after an unfortunate altercation with a U.S. citizen, not an immigrant. In fact, regular exposure to immigrants (and yes, most of the immigrants in my neighborhood are illegal) has only made me more fond of them. They work hard. They’re exceedingly polite. They want a better life for their kids. They sell delicious pupusas. What’s not to like?

I dunno. Overwhelming the freeways, the jails and prisons, the school systems, and the emergency rooms? How about that?

But of course, Balko doesn’t see these issues as problems, because he doesn’t experience them:

If there’s been some massive drain on Alexandria’s public health system, I haven’t felt it.

Right. Because you’re in Alexandria, Virginia.

An L.A. Times article pretends to tell you why traffic sucks in Southern California:

Many factors conspire to produce Southern California’s traffic. The most consequential is the collective impact of millions of individual choices. In Reliford’s case, her loathing of the commute is outweighed by her love for her home in Rialto, with its big backyard where her two young boys can play safely.

Those choices play out in a region that sprawled long before the freeways were built. The pattern of development in Southern California as far back as the era of the Pacific Electric Railway’s Red Cars created a horizontal city, one in which people frequently settled far from where they worked.

But individual decision-making alone does not account for Southern California’s massive traffic congestion. Actions by government at the state and local level also bear a big share of the blame.

OK, let’s hear about the actions by government.

Two decisions stand out:

* State and local officials have not expanded the region’s highways and mass transit systems enough to keep up with population growth.

The population of the five-county Southern California region grew 22% from 1990 to 2006, and the total miles driven by motorists has increased about 42%. But the number of miles of highway in the region has increased by only 7.5%.

OK, never mind the second decision. It’s not relevant anyway.

Here’s what is relevant:

Gee. Why did Southern California’s population grow 22% by 1990 to 2006?

Huh?

And did any level of government have anything to do with it?

These questions, dear readers, I leave to you to answer.

They sure as hell aren’t answered by this article.

P.S. Here’s a hint.

This image, currently on the main L.A. Times web page, is far from subtle:

It’s not an easy issue. I feel terrible for this poor little girl in the photo. And if her dad isn’t otherwise a criminal, I think the government is misplacing its resources by tossing him out, while claiming a lack of resources to deport every illegal immigrant who has committed a crime.

But a rank appeal to sympathy like this is misplaced, when it is not counterbalanced by providing the whole picture.

I have documented countless examples of people killed by illegal immigrants who should have been deported, but were not. Here is a collection of the first ten in one post.

It would be child’s play to write an article about these victims’ families.

You might even be able to snap a picture of one of them crying.

You’ll never see that in the L.A. Times.

Who’d a thunk it:

Many in Congress are counting on border walls to discourage illegal immigration and dope smuggling from Mexico. Here in Del Rio, authorities are using jail cells instead.

The ever-expanding Val Verde County jail is filled with would-be yardmen and maids, immigrants awaiting deportation. They’ve been caught in a law enforcement dragnet known as “Operation Streamline,” a zero-tolerance program that began here and has since spread both east and west along the Mexican border.

There’s plenty of grumbling in the story about the cost, but it does appear to work:

[S]upporters say the approach is reducing crime and discouraging immigrants from trying to cross into the United States. The number of illegal immigrants caught in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector is at its lowest level since the early 1970s.

“Enforcement works,” said Val Verde County Sheriff D’Wayne Jernigan. “We’re definitely seeing a reduction in crime throughout the border area and a reduction in the number of aliens running loose in our community.”

I love this part:

The new approach is aimed at ending the controversial “catch and release” practice. For years, thousands of undocumented foreigners apprehended along the border were released for lack of jail space and given a notice to appear in court. Most simply vanished into the underground economy.

Instead, the buzz phrase is “catch and detain,” meaning virtually everybody who gets caught is sent to federal court or returned home immediately.

Catch and detain. What a concept!

DRJ wrote about this back in January. Glad to see it’s still being done somewhere.

[Guest post by DRJ]

A 10-year-old Idaho girl has given birth after being raped, allegedly by a 37-year-old illegal immigrant.

The accused is in the Fremont County, Idaho, Jail on other rape charges.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Last year, President Bush ordered the deployment of 3,000 National Guard troops to aid the Border Patrol on the southern border. The deployment ends this summer and while most of the troops are going home, some are applying to become Border Patrol agents:

“The National Guard soldiers posted on the border may be getting ready to leave this summer, but some of them have decided to stay.

Texas Army and Air National Guard officials said that at least 51 guardsmen who participated in Operation Jumpstart have applied to become Border Patrol agents, including about 15 who had been working alongside the Border Patrol in El Paso.”

The National Guard troops and increased Border Patrol staffing is credited for the drop in illegal crossings in El Paso, including a 70 percent drop in March 2008 compared with March 2007.

– DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

The US is scrapping plans for a virtual fence on the Southern border because it doesn’t work:

“The government is scrapping a $20 million prototype of its highly touted “virtual fence” on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system is failing to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings, officials said.

The move comes just two months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced his approval of the fence built by The Boeing Co. The fence consists of nine electronic surveillance towers along a 28-mile section of border southwest of Tucson.

Boeing is to replace the so-called Project 28 prototype with a series of towers equipped with communications systems, new cameras and new radar capability, officials said.

Less than a week after Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it “did not fully meet user needs and the project’s design will not be used as the basis for future” developments.

A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.”

Here’s a thought: Build a real fence. Low tech fences work.

– DRJ