According to a press release by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in April 2009, Secretary Napolitano issued guidance outlining that ICE will focus its resources in the worksite enforcement program on the criminal prosecution of employers who knowingly hire illegal workers in order to target the root cause of illegal immigration.

The leads that spark a worksite investigation come from an array of sources - tips from the public, reports from a company’s current or former employees, even referrals from other law enforcement agencies. Once a lead is received, ICE agents employ a variety of techniques to investigate the allegations, including the use of undercover agents, confidential informants, cooperating defendants, and surveillance.

ICE made more than 1,100 criminal arrests tied to worksite enforcement investigations. Of the individuals criminally arrested, 135 were owners, managers, supervisors or human resources employees facing charges including harboring or knowingly hiring illegal aliens.  The remaining workers criminally arrested are facing charges including aggravated identity theft and Social Security fraud.

The law is clear – employers have an affirmative obligation to verify that their employees are legally able to work in the United States.

If you want to know your rights or if you need help complying with immigration laws, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A. to schedule a consultation.  Board Certified Expert David Vedder has helped clients from all over the U.S. for 30 years.

The number of immigrants held in U.S. detention each day has tripled from 10,000 in 1996 to more than 30,000 in 2008, Amnesty International said Wednesday.

The detainees, who include some U.S. citizens, are being held without receiving hearings to determine whether their detentions are warranted and most of them experience extreme difficulty in retaining lawyers or getting help to navigate the U.S. legal process, the human rights group said in a release.

Undocumented immigrants are among the detainees but the group also contains lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers and survivors of torture and human trafficking, Amnesty International said. For some of them, an immigration official is the sole decision-maker they have access to, making the act of detention itself a virtual guarantor of an immigrant’s fate, said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

America should be outraged by the scale of human rights abuses occurring within its own borders, Cox said. Officials are locking up thousands of human beings without due process and holding them in a system that is impossible to navigate without the legal equivalent of GPS.

“We cannot strengthen families when people live in fear from day to day,” George told a crowd of hundreds who gathered at an Albany Park church on Saturday. “Such reform would be a clear sign this administration is truly about change.”

Amid growing frustration for comprehensive immigration reform, Cardinal Francis George is calling on President Obama to end raids on illegal immigrants and pass new legislation this year. The Chicago Archbishop framed the debate in a moral context, saying the issue was a “matter of conscience” and inherent to building a peaceful society.

Thus far President Obama has expressed concern but has refused to commit to stopping the raids.

Concerns about the economy have taken precedence in Congress lately and some members say they are not looking forward to a renewed, heated immigration debate. About 30 members of the Chicago Minutemen Project, an immigration-reduction group, protested outside the church yesterday, arguing illegal immigration takes potential jobs away from U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

United States Border Patrol Agent Mike Scioli said, “With all the violence heading on the southside, in Mexico, in case it spills over–the Border Patrol has a plan.”  “It’s similar to the vehicles used by the military to protect soldiers against IEDs and ambushes.”

Armored vehicles like this are important because it’s never been so violent along the U.S.-Mexico border. Last year, there were 261 assaults against agents in the Tucson Sector (93 so far this fiscal year). Even today, an agent in Nogales was beaten over the head with a cinder block.

Of the 316 thousands arrests agents made in the Tucson sector last year, 17 percent of the arrestees had criminal records.  That’s more than 53 thousand convicted criminals, 50 of them gang members, connected to some of the most dangerous drug cartels in the world today.

“Obviously they’re not coming over for a job–they’re coming to cause chaos,” Agent Scioli says. “They’re coming to cause some kind of mishaps in the communities we live in.” 

“It’s not about illegal aliens and narcotics,” Agent Scioli says.  “It’s also about any threat that comes over so we need to be prepared and this is our way of doing it.”

Under a new program that began Feb. 23, asylees, refugees, individuals with temporary Protected Status (TPS) and nonimmigrants such as temporary workers and international students might be able to join the U.S. Army.

If you join the Army under the new MAVNI program, you are immediately elligible for U.S. citizenship under wartime naturalization rules.

you must be in the United Statesin E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, TC, TD, TN, U or V status, or be here as a refugee or asylee or in TPS status. You must have been in one of these statuses for at least two years (having changed between them is OK, too). If you are qualifying under a nonimmigrant category, you cannot have been outside the U.S. for a continuous period of more than 90 days.

You must speak one of many needed languages or be a medical professional. You can find a list of languages at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/mavni-fact-sheet.pdf.

Doctors, dentists, nurses and many other  Health care workers qualify also.  http://www.goarmy.com/info/mavni/healthcare

Nonimmigrants can inquire at http://www.goarmy.com/info/mavni . If you send an e-mail inquiry, a recruiter will contact you to discuss your eligibility. Note that if you have a criminal record, you can’t enlist under MAVNI.

You must pass an English test and score 50 or higher on the Armed Forces Qualification test.

 If you want to know your rights or if you need immigration help, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A. to schedule a consultation.  Board Certified Expert David Vedder has helped clients from all over the U.S. for 30 years.

Sheriff Arpaio has garnered national attention as a result of his department’s aggressive policy of seeking out and arresting illegal immigrants, even if they have committed no crime except being in the country.

Arpaio’s department is the largest participant in a federal program granting local law enforcement arrest authority for illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes.  But even without the federal agreement, Maricopa County has an avenue to pursue illegal immigrants because of a state anti-smuggling law.

Arpaio said he will continue arresting illegal immigrants under the human smuggling law and Arizona’s employer sanctions laws.

He said he also would turn over any suspected illegal immigrants his deputies encounter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement even if they haven’t committed any offense other than being in the country illegally.

The Department of Homeland Security has not commented about Arpaio’s statements so far.

If you want to know your rights or if you need immigration help, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A. to schedule a consultation.  Board Certified Expert David Vedder has helped clients from all over the U.S. for 30 years.

The number of detainees who agreed to be deported without seeing a judge jumped fivefold between 2004 and 2007, from 5,481 to nearly 31,554.  The program, which is voluntary, reduces court backlogs and detention facilities populations.

Attorneys and immigration judges are objecting to the practice, saying many detainees are being deported without knowing their rights. ”That is everyone’s underlying concern - is there due process here?” said Gilbert T. Gembacz, a retired immigration judge in Los Angeles.

Jayashri Srikantiah, director of the Stanford clinic, which has sued the federal government to obtain more information, said some detainees are pressured to sign the deportation forms even though they might have defenses against deportation or be eligible for asylum or green cards. About 95 percent of the people who agreed to the speedy deportations since 1999 are not represented by attorneys, she said.

If you want to know your rights or if you need immigration help, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A. to schedule a consultation.  Board Certified Expert David Vedder has helped clients from all over the U.S. for 30 years.

Believing presidential candidate Barack Obama, immigrant rights groups threw their support behind his election effort.  They expected him, when elected to live up to his “personal committment” to change Bush led mass immigration raids.

So far, however, ICE has continued unabated with workplace raids.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has vowed to Congress that she would “get to the bottom of this.”  “The secretary is not happy and this is not her policy,” a Homeland Security official said Wednesday evening, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the secretary’s review is ongoing.

“Secretary Napolitano is conducting a thorough review of ICE, including enforcement,” Whitehouse spokesman Nick Shapiro said. “The president believes we must respect due process and our best values as we enforce the law. The real answer to our broken immigration system is to fix it. The president has said that we will start the immigration reform debate this year, and this continues to be the plan.”

 If you have an immigration problem, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A., The Immigration Firm to schedule a consultation.  Board Certified Expert David Vedder has helped clients from all over the U.S. for 30 years.

Watch LA Times video  - http://www.latimes.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=3472385

Ruling that Mr. Cruz’s rights were violated when ICE agents raided a Van Nuys, California work site, Los Angeles immigration judge A. Ashley Tabaddor halted Cruz’s deportation order.

The judge also determined that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents failed to advise Perez Cruz of his rights and interrogated him in an “intimidating and coercive environment,” where he was deprived of food and water for 18 hours and forced to sleep on a concrete floor.

“We’re very pleased that the rights of the Van Nuys workers were vindicated,” said Arulanantham, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “The decision sends a message to ICE that it cannot disregard the rights of the people that it targets.”

If you have an immigration problem, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A., The Immigration Firm to schedule a consultation.  Board Certified Expert David Vedder has helped clients from all over the U.S. for 30 years.

The dramatic surge in violence in Mexico has resulted in a large increase in the requests by Mexican citizens seeking asylum in the United States.   The murder rate as a result of drug gangs in Mexico has soared to record levels.  Many Mexican citizens are finding themselves caught up in the chaos and fearing death.

Asylum approval in the U.S. is very difficult and usually requires the help from a highly experienced immigration attorney.  “Fleeing violence in a particular region of Mexico doesn’t provide me a basis to claim asylum under our immigration laws,” says Kathleen Walker, immigration attorney and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association in El Paso Texas.

If you are seeking asylum in the U.S. and need the help of a Board Certified Expert immigration attorney with 30 years experience, contact  David F. Vedder, P.A., The Immigration Firm to schedule an interview.