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").

[caption id="attachment_5224" align="alignleft" width="192" caption="The U.S.-Mexico border: notice the lack of arrests in the picture"][/caption] The Wall Street Journal's Cam Simpson reports that arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border were down 23 ...

Charlie Peters called this one in following problems at the Department of Homeland Security reported on by the New York Times (and following a post from our own Matthew Blake which should be nominated for best 2009 immigration-related-blog-post headline).  Charlie says that "eight years after 9/11 they still ...

The New York Times' James McKinley and Julia Preston report on a flaw in post-9/11 national security: the threat posed by people who overstay their tourist visas, which typically last for six months. Of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., 40 percent are here ...

The Washington Post's Spencer Hsu had an interesting article over the weekend on a clash between the Pentagon and Dept. of Homeland Security over who should be patrolling the U.S.-Mexican border to stop Mexican drug violence from spilling over. Basically, DHS ...

Barack Obama will unveil his fiscal-year 2010 budget proposal tomorrow and the Los Angeles Times' Anna Gorman and Peter Nicholas report that it will increase border and transportation security funding 8 percent to $27 billion. Gorman and Nicholas see Obama moving Mexican immigration policy ...

Steve Vogel of the Washington Post reports:

The Army Reserve and U.S. Customs and Border Protection will sign an agreement today to create a partnership aimed at filling some of the growing federal agency's 11,000 job openings with Army reservists.

Army reservists ...

Barack Obama laid out a plan yesterday to confront escalating drug violence in Mexico, which could spill over into the U.S. But Spencer S. Hsu and Joby Warrick of the Washington Post report that it's really more of a first step: "President Obama ...

The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima reports that the Dept. of Homeland Security has expanded the information it collects from people crossing the border-- without Congressional approval. Customs and Border Protection officers have been copying information off laptops and seizing documents from people legally ...

If the construction of a virtual fence stops, does anyone notice? That's more than a pseudo-philosophical question for the Dept. of Homeland Security -- and the taxpayers who've given the Boeing Corp. $993 million so far to construct a virtual and physical fence along the Mexican border. But as the ...