According to various press reports, most of the 106 were parents of small children and were given ankle bracelets and told to appear in court at a later date.

The “enforcement action is part of ICE’s ongoing nationwide effort to shut down the employment magnet fueling illegal immigration,” said Michael A. Holt, ICE Special Agent in Charge of the Office of Investigations in New Orleans.

The illegal immigrants were from various countries including Germany, Peru, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Honduras and Brazil.

The raid is the latest in a string of enforcement efforts that have sparked criticism from Hispanic groups, immigrant advocates and civil liberties organizations.

Douglas Rivilin, a spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, said that the Laurel raid was “a man-made disaster on another small town’s workers and families.”

“Churches, legal services groups, and humanitarian organizations have already sprung into action to address the human costs in terms of children left without a parent, breadwinners plucked from their jobs, limited access to lawyers and truncated due process for detainees,” he said, in a statement.

Meanwhile, supporters of stronger immigration controls applauded the raid.

“The driving force behind illegal immigration is illegal employment. Anyone that knowingly violates our immigration laws is subject to the consequences of our enforcement actions,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus.

Read more here.

According to AP, law enforcement officials would not discuss specific security measures being taken at the ports of entry, along the border or in the city of El Paso.

Chris Mears, spokesman for the El Paso police, told the AP: “We received credible information that drug cartels in Mexico have given permission to hit targets on the U.S. side of the border.”

Read more here.

Ayala became a megastar in the world of Reggaeton with his 2004 hit “Gasolina.” Reggaeton is a mix of hip hop and Latin dance music such as salsa and merengue.

McCain mentioned the song at the presser. He may not have realized that it uses gasoline as a metaphor for sex. For example, the song says, “a ella le gusta la gasolina” or “she likes the gasoline” and “dame mas gasolina” or “give me more gasoline.”

The music video leaves little doubt to the meaning behind the song. It features scantily clad women gyrating, fast cars, police in riot gear, and “Daddy Yankee” carrying a night stick.

Here it is:

The three-week program by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had targeted about 30,000 illegal immigrants in five cities — Santa Ana, Calif., San Diego, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Chicago.

“We are not considering at this time expanding or extending the program,” said James Hayes, acting director of ICE’s Office of Detention and Removal Operations. “We believed we learned a lot.”

Hayes said the program — which cost $41,000 — was not a failure because it provided valuable information. He added that it saved money because it would have cost $54,000 to detain and deport the eight volunteers.

Immigrant advocates assailed the program from the beginning and Hayes accused such groups of discouraging participation.

The eight immigrants who volunteered for the program include two from Guatemala, two from India, one from Estonia, one from Lebanon, one from Mexico and one from El Salvador, Hayes said.

Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, said that most undocumented immigrants and their children are entrenched in American society and do not want to leave.

It would be unrealistic to expect them to take 90 days to find foster parents for their children or prepare them to go to a school system in a country they’ve never been to or in a language they don’t speak, not to mention deal with their mortgages and other affairs, he said.

“We’re simply not going to deport ourselves out of a situation where we have 12 million people living here,” Rivlin added.

Through a series of focus groups that brought together academics, sheriffs, police chiefs and human-rights advocates, the foundation found the majority prefer having federal authorities enforce immigration policies instead of extending the responsibility to the nation’s local police and sheriff’s departments.

The findings, which will be included in a full report in the coming months, were presented at a two-day conference in Washington that ended Friday.

Another member of the council is Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who authored an immigration bill that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

Gutierrez is known as a champion of immigrant rights.

The council also includes some high profile members of labor unions including Geoconda Arguello-Kline, president of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union and Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union.

In a press release, the Obama campaign said that the council is “made up of key labor, faith, community leaders, and elected officials from across the country and will serve as an advisory council for the campaign on issues important to the Latino community.”

The Obama campaign is targeting Hispanic voters in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida with advertising, online organizing, voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote efforts and the training of some 500 grass-roots organizers.

Political analysts say that Latinos could be a crucial voting bloc in several contested states.

The arrests were based on an investigation that revealed that the illegal immigrants had used fraudulent Social Security numbers to obtain employment, ICE said in a press release.

The company “has been fully cooperative” and is not a target of the investigation, ICE said.

The illegal immigrants were from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and Honduras.

“Protecting the integrity of our nation’s critical infrastructure is among ICE’s highest priorities,” said Delburt Richburg, assistant special agent-in-charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Charlotte. “When individuals use fraudulent social security numbers to get jobs, they hide their true identity and history. We need to know who is working on our critical infrastructure sites.”

The press release also said: “Illegal aliens employed at sensitive facilities — such as military bases, nuclear plants, chemical plants, airports and Department of Defense contractors — pose a homeland security threat.”

(Photo by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The offer was part of a pilot program which targeted 457,000 illegal immigrants.

“The cold reception given to the rollout of the three-week pilot self-deportation program, called Scheduled Departure, presents an apt metaphor for the state of relations between U.S. enforcement officials and immigrant advocates in the year since Congress killed President Bush’s proposed overhaul,” the Post said.

Read the story here.

The agency — known as USCIS — has been under heavy criticism for delays in processing times after an unprecedented number of applications last year, especially in July.

The delays could cause thousands of immigrants to miss the deadline for voting in the November election.

USCIS said it is making “steady progress in reducing the number of citizenship applications.” The delay was previously as high as 16 to 18 months.

“We are working steadily toward achieving our goal of processing all naturalization applications within five months by this time next year,” said Jonathan Scharfen, the acting director of USCIS.

Last year, more than 1.4 million immigrants applied for citizenship, setting a new record.

The system — known as E-Verify — is set to expire in November.

The House bill - which passed 407 to 2, extends it for five years. E-Verify is currently voluntary in most states. Several proposals in Congress would make it mandatory.

Immigrant advocates, business groups and experts say that E-Verify relies on faulty databases and could lead to thousands of citizens being initially rejected for work.

But advocates of tougher enforcement praise E-Verify as a valuable tool to stop illegal immigration.

Rep. Brian Bilbray, a California Republican who heads the Immigration Reform Caucus, said Thursday that E-Verify “has proven to be incredibly effective in deterring illegal immigrants from finding jobs.”

He also said he is hopeful that E-Verify will soon be a requirement for all U.S. businesses.

“Making E-Verify mandatory will protect American workers and law-abiding businesses from the unfair competition created by a massive illegal workforce,” he said.

Read more here.

Under the pilot program, people who have ignored deportation orders can report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and arrange to leave the United States.

Those who volunteer will have 90 days to take care of personal affairs before leaving and could be required to wear an electronic monitoring device on an ankle during that time, the AP reported.

The program is available to illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes and will be offered in five cities — Santa Ana, Calif., San Diego, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Chicago.

Read more here.

That is the conclusion of a new study which says that stepped-up enforcement efforts are working, causing thousands of illegal immigrants to self-deport.

The population has declined 11 percent since last summer — from 12.5 million to 11.2 million, according to the report by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that advocates lower levels of immigration.

“The evidence is powerful and consistent that enforcement is having the desired effect,” said Steven Camarota, the report’s main author and director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.

The study also said that the nation’s economic slowdown is partly responsible for the decline.

Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that the report proves that enforcement works.

“Opponents of immigration enforcement claim that there are only two ways to address illegal immigration: amnesty or mass deportation. But there is another and better option and that is to simply enforce current laws,” he said, in a statement.

But Angela Kelley, director of the Immigrant Policy Center, said the study lacks hard data and has “faulty logic.”

She criticized the authors for determining “likely” illegal immigrants by using a certain percentage of less educated, foreign-born Hispanic adults who are 18 to 40 years old.

“The authors report confidently about a population that is nearly impossible to accurately measure,” she said.

The Obama campaign will target Hispanic voters in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Florida, according to Temo Figueroa, the Latino voter director for the Obama campaign, and will involve not only advertising and online organizing but also voter registration drives, get-out-the-vote efforts and the training of some 500 grass-roots organizers.

The Republican National Committee, in response to the Obama announcement, issued a statement saying Obama’s policies “are not in line with Latino economic interests.” And it provided reporters with background material of media accounts in which the comments of Hispanic business leaders clashed with tax and trade policies proposed by Obama.

The agents — Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos — are serving 12 and 11 years in prison, respectively for shooting a Mexican drug dealer and trying to cover it up.

The case has become a cause celebre on talk radio shows and among groups that advocate tougher border controls. Supporters say that the former agents were wrongly convicted for protecting the United States against a criminal intruder who was in the United States illegally.

The prosecutor in the case — U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the Western District of Texas — said he was “pleased” with the federal ruling.

“By affirming the convictions of the most serious charges against Mr. Compean and Mr. Ramos, the court has validated what this office has said all along - this prosecution was about the rule of law, plain and simple,” Sutton said, in a statement.

He also had some words for lawmakers and others rallying for Compean and Ramos.

He asked them to “re-evaluate their positions in light of the court record.”

“Those who understand the record and the evidence introduced at trial will realize that the actions of Compean and Ramos in shooting an unarmed and fleeing suspect were serious crimes which had to be prosecuted in order to maintain the rule of law,” Sutton said.

The agents’ case has become a cause celebre on talk radio shows and among groups that advocate tougher border controls. Supporters say that they were wrongly convicted for protecting the United States against a criminal intruder who was also in the United States illegally.

Cornyn on Monday said the case was a “miscarriage of justice” and urged President Bush to act.

“It is incomprehensible to me that an illegal alien drug smuggler was allowed to violate his immunity agreement, perjure himself and be granted a series of unlimited visas to roam free in our country while two Border Patrol agents were given excessive prison sentences,” he said in a statement.

At a Senate hearing last year, U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of the Western District of Texas, staunchly defended his prosecution in the case.

“Some in the media and on the Internet have tried to portray agents Compean and Ramos as heroes, but that narrative is false,” Sutton said. “The actions of Compean and Ramos in shooting an unarmed, fleeing suspect, destroying evidence, and engaging in a cover-up, are serious crimes.”

According to the Associated Press, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld most of the convictions against the agents.

The appeals court vacated their convictions for tampering with an official proceeding, but the three-judge panel refused to reverse the convictions that resulted in their lengthy sentences, the AP said.

Ramos is shown in this picture when he surrendered to federal authorities in 2007.

Read more here.