The Wall Street Journal's Louise Radnofsky and Miriam Jordan report that E-verify, the Dept. of Homeland Security program to catch illegal immigrant workers, isn't catching illegal immigrant workers. E-verify's social security check was only able to catch 1 in 2 illegal workers. E-verify is now required for all businesses ...

By Marci Greenstein After a four year stalemate, it took the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals only weeks to decide that the federal government was responsible for rebuilding Charity Hospital in New Orleans, which was virtually destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, according to a report by Kevin Sack in the New York Times.  The contract appeals board was established as part of the Defense Department’s budget for Fiscal Year 2006 to decide disputes between government contractors and government agencies.  It is specifically charged with resolving disputes between FEMA and applicants for FEMA assistance for damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

The Washington Post's Amy Goldstein and Peter Whoriskey have a clear summary on the debate over U.S. immigration policy after the disastrous earthquake in Haiti: The tension between U.S. policy and the desperation to leave is spawning a debate in Washington over whether the government should let more Haitians in. ...

The New York Times has an editorial today that builds off its reporting about unreported deaths in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention system. The Times advocates for legally binding standards for the treatment of immigrant detainees and going forward with "top-to-bottom reform" the Obama administration promised of ...

[caption id="attachment_6370" align="alignleft" width="138" caption="Jim DeMint"][/caption] The New York Times' Brian Knowlton reports that Errol Southers has withdrawn as Barack Obama's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration. There are a few possible reasons why, but the biggest is South ...

Rallies in Chicago put the local spotlight on an issue that has struggled to maintain relevance in Washington By Matthew Blake Stephen N. Smith does not lack for enthusiasm. A 30 year-old community organizer who has already written a book about his political activism, Smith was hired ten days ago by the Illinois Coalition of Immigration and Refugee Rights to campaign for immigration reform – the ambitious legislative goal to preserve national security while bringing an estimated 11 million illegal aliens out of the shadows of American society. There Smith was – on a dark, windy and freezing Wednesday afternoon in Chicago relaying the fun he was having talking to Congressional staffers about immigration rights. “The next step is for America to pivot from health care reform to immigration reform,” Smith told a small group of post-adolescent activists huddled in front of downtown Federal Plaza. “We are raising a ruckus to make sure that this is the number one next issue on the national agenda.” The pitch came during a week of immigration demonstrations that culminated with a rally Saturday afternoon at Chicago’s elegant First Baptist Church, fifteen blocks west of downtown. Nationally, other cities with high Latino populations – like Los Angeles and Phoenix – also staged demonstrations. In Washington, though, reform of an increasingly punitive immigration policy vies for attention with job creation, financial regulatory reform, and climate legislation – issues that also received scant attention during 2009 (or “The Year of Health Care").

Looking at the human rights abuses that plague the treatment of incarcerated immigrants, Matt Blake usefully points out the structural problems that have made abuses more likely.  I'll focus on a basic humanitarian point:  government treatment of immigrants, whether they are documented or undocumented, must be ruled by simple principles of human decency.  This has clearly been forgotten by many in law enforcement and corrections, as Nina Bernstein's alarming investigation in the New York Times makes clear. Bernstein reports on several instances of Homeland Security representatives hiding the truth, or actively lying to the media about immigrants, many of them legal immigrants incarcerated for minor crimes but nonetheless subject to deportation.  In one case, a DHS spokesman said he had no way of finding out about a detained person who was suffering from serious health problems, while at the same time exchanging memos about how to deal with the potential fallout from the man's death.

The New York Times' Nina Bernstein had a shocking report this weekend that Immigrations and Customs and Enforcement misled the public about the deaths of a number of detained illegal immigrants. The moral outrage that Bernstein evokes makes it more difficult to figure out what is to be done about immigration detainee centers. The officials Bernstein describes -- many who still work at ICE -- can't be trusted even if the Dept. of Homeland Security devised a flawless detention system. Zooming out, though, I think that correctable flaws -- not just rogue bureaucrats -- contributed to these deaths.

[caption id="attachment_6117" align="alignleft" width="136" caption="Jim DeMint"][/caption] Today's newspapers are saturated with coverage about aviation security -- yet the U.S. Senate is not likely anytime soon to hold a confirmation vote for Errol Southers, Barack Obama's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration. The ...

Spencer S. Hsu and Robert O'Harrow provide an uncharacteristically confident intro paragraph for a Washington Post story in their piece about airport security: Aviation security could be improved with the use of databases containing passengers' personal information, technology such as body scans and better information-sharing. But the changes would require greater tolerance of intrusions and far more effective government oversight, security specialists say. So the assertion is that our airports and airplanes could be safer -- it's just a question of whether it's worth the money and curtailment of privacy.