illegal immigration

Budget cuts have hampered the U.S. Border Patrol’s work in its busiest sector on the Southwest border, agents said Friday, with the agency introducing fuel conservation measures in the Rio Grande Valley that have agents patrolling on foot and doubling up in vehicles.

The Border Patrol instituted the changes after the across-the-board government spending cuts known as sequestration. The constraints come as Congress moves deeper into the debate over comprehensive immigration reform and Republican legislators push for stronger border security components as a precursor to any path to citizenship for immigrants who have entered the country illegally.

  Read more about Fuel-saving measures hamper Border Patrol efforts

"Don't count on the House stopping this bill," retiring Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) warns about the immigration reform proposal in the Senate. "Because this is what's going to happen: The Senate is going to pass a very bad bill. The House will pass what will sound like a pretty good bill. But I’m just here to tell you, it's a Trojan horse."

"It will be a Trojan horse bill that says 'we're here to secure the borders.' So all the Republicans will vote for this bill -- for securing the border. Those bills will go to what's called a conference committee," Bachmann told World Net Daily.

"The good guts of the Trojan horse bill will be pulled out. The very bad amnesty provisions will be put in the bill. The bill will go to the House floor and it won’t be Republicans that pass it. It will be Nancy Pelosi leading all the House Democrats to vote for it. And just enough Republicans, probably committee chairs and subcommittee chairs will be voting for the bill, and you'll have amnesty and it will all be done in six weeks," she said.

Hear Bachmann explain her idea.

  Read more about Bachmann: "Ruling Class" Will Pass A "Trojan Horse" Immigration Bill In House

The Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration bill took a significant step forward Tuesday afternoon, when the Senate voted 82-15 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed on the measure. The Senate will now begin formal debate on the bill, with the goal of holding a final vote on the compromise measure by the July 4th holiday.

Despite weeks of heated debate over the bill, just 15 senators voted against moving it forward: John Barrasso (R-WY), John Boozman (R-AR), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Jim Risch (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Tim Scott (R-SC), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Richard Shelby (R-AL), and David Vitter (R-LA). All 15 are Republicans.

Despite the overwhelming support for the motion to proceed, the ultimate fate of the compromise bill is still very much in question. Many of the Republicans who voted in favor of the motion to proceed may ultimately oppose the bill after it undergoes a contentious amendment process. Specifically, Senator John Cornyn’s (R-TX) amendment to add strict border security requirements before any immigrants can obtain permanent residence — a proposal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has called a “poison pill” — and Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) amendment to add language protecting same-sex couples could divide the fragile coalition that supports the bill. Leahy has not yet announced whether he will offer the amendment, which he declined to offer in committee in the face of Republican threats that it would scuttle the deal.

As Jamelle Bouie points out in The Plum Line, Democratic senators such as Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Max Baucus (D-MT), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Joe Donnelly (D-IN) could ultimately oppose the bill as well.

Senate leaders from both parties hailed Tuesday’s vote as a critical step toward fixing the nation’s broken immigration system.

“There are 11 million reasons to pass common-sense immigration reform that mends our broken system — 11 million stories of heartbreak and suffering that should motivate Congress to act,” Senator Reid said ahead of the vote. “The bipartisan proposal before the Senate takes important steps to strengthen border security. It also makes crucial improvements to our broken legal immigration system.”

Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — who has threatened that the bill would need “major changes” to ultimately win his vote — voted to invoke cloture, arguing on the floor that the Senate “deserves a chance to debate it” and “the opportunity to amend it.”

Even if the bill does survive the Senate, there are no guarantees that it will advance through the Republican-dominated House of Representatives. House Speaker John Boehner expressed his concerns with the “Gang of Eight” compromise during a Tuesday morning interview with ABC News, telling host George Stephanopoulos that “especially in the area of border security, and internal enforcement of this system, I’m concerned that it doesn’t go far enough.”

“I would expect that a House bill will be to the right of where the Senate is,” Boehner added.

Were the House to pass the Senate bill, it would almost certainly be with a minority of the Republican House majority — in violation of the so-called “Hastert Rule.”

Earlier Tuesday, President Barack Obama had pushed the Senate to move forward with the bill. The president stressed that the compromise bill contains several elements for which Republicans have pushed — such as $6.5 billion in new border security, and harsher penalties for businesses that employ undocumented workers — and insisted that “no one is going to get everything they want. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not me.” Read more about Immigration Reform Clears First Senate Hurdle In 82-15 Vote

The 90 percent apprehension goal set by Senate and House bills seeking to rein in illegal immigration while establishing a path to citizenship for those crossing into the U.S. from Mexico is based on fuzzy math, according to critics.

The goal, which is supposed to give teeth to legislation some view as amnesty, would depend on a Department of Homeland Security formula for determining the success rate of catching illegal border crossers. That formula requires visual or physical evidence for determining someone got past the border patrol, evidence that simply isn’t left behind in most cases. The result, say critics, is a wildly exaggerated success rate for catching illegal border crossers.

“To calculate it, border patrol officers go out and look for physical evidence of crossings… you know, ‘I saw this person cross and I didn't get him.’ Or, ‘I saw footprints in the sand,’” John Whitley, an economist who analyzed such statistics while he served as the director of the DHS’s Program Analysis & Evaluation department under President Bush, told FoxNews.com.

The problem is that, no matter how hard border patrol officers try to find physical evidence of successful illegal crossings, they can’t find everything.

“We know that this method of calculation understates the number of successful crossings, because you're excluding anyone you don't have physical evidence for,” Whitley said.

Using that method, Department of Homeland Security data already indicate a border security effectiveness rate of 84 percent -- close to the 90 percent target.

Some congressmen are concerned about the numbers.

“To just look for footprints and have a guesstimate – that would be outrageous,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told FoxNews.com.

“We can't go along with a bill that says, ‘Hey, we have a 90 percent requirement for security’ – when there is no way to verify whether or not the 90 percent is accurate.”

In addition to not being accurate, the DHS methodology presents other problems, according to critics. For instance, an administration looking to artificially inflate the border effectiveness rate could simply call Border Patrol officers off from looking for signs of successful crossings and assign them to other tasks.

“There is no way we could trust this Department of Homeland Security to verify,” Gohmert said. “And there are independent sources that we could trust. We could have drones and other monitoring where we can find out exactly how many make it across without being apprehended.”

Other methods of estimating border crossings show a much lower apprehension rate.

“Survey data, recidivism data, and press reports about the Vader radar system all put it in the 50 percent range,” Whitley said, referring to the DHS’s new airborne Vader radar system which, during a test last winter in the Sonora Desert, indicated that the Border Patrol caught 1,874 people but missed 1,962 who successfully crossed.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

But groups that support more immigration said that border enforcement should not be a priority in the first place.

“Government obsession with the particulars of border enforcement metrics misses the point,” said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the CATO institute. “We know from experience that increasing legal immigration opportunities, especially for lower-skilled guest workers, is the best way to eliminate unlawful immigration. Border Patrol should operate as a funnel to channel would-be unlawful immigrants into the legal market rather than an agency that separates willing workers from willing employers.”

Policy questions aside, the formula some say is flawed makes the pending Senate bill being touted by Marco Rubio R-Fla., and others problematic, according to sources on Capitol Hill.

“It doesn’t make sense if you’re allowing the Department of Homeland Security to judge themselves,” a GOP Senate staffer told FoxNews.com. “They can game the system, game the statistics, and then end up meeting the requirements.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., announced Tuesday that he would introduce an amendment that would put Congress, not the DHS, in charge of making the determination about whether the border is 90 percent secure.

“My amendment requires Congress to vote every year on border security. If Congress votes that the border is not secure, elements of immigration reform will cease to go forward and visa programs will be slowed," Paul said in a press release.

As of now, the 90 percent goal remains only that, a goal – and the path to citizenship provisions for illegal aliens would be implemented even if the 90 percent target were not met. The only consequence of not meeting the target is the creation of a government committee that would issue a report with recommendations for meeting the target.

Gohmert says he does not want the bills to pass.

“Let's secure the border. And then we can get a deal worked out very, very quickly after that. But not until the border is secure.”

The writer of this piece can be reached at maxim.lott@foxnews.com or on twitter at @maximlott
  Read more about Border apprehensions wildly exaggerated in formula behind Senate bill, say critics

Oregon Republicans seem to have missed a key lesson of the 2012 election, and are embarking on a symbolic campaign that will succeed only in further alienating Latino voters.

When Republicans fared worse than expected at the polls last November here and nationally, some soul-searching rhetoric from within the party suggested the GOP needed to reach out more effectively to Latino voters who rejected their message. A bipartisan immigration reform effort is still working its way through Congress despite vocal opposition from some in the GOP.

A key element of that reform bill would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in this country.

Oregon Republicans, meanwhile, continue to oppose measures designed to allow those immigrants to better contribute to the state's economy. GOP lawmakers opposed two such bills that ultimately passed the Legislature and will become law.

One permits the children of parents who brought them here illegally to pay in-state tuition at public universities as long as they live in Oregon and graduated from high school here. The other will allow undocumented residents to obtain a permit to drive legally in Oregon.

After the driving permit bill passed and Gov. John Kitzhaber signed it, Republican Reps. Sal Esquivel of Medford and Kim Thatcher of Keizer launched a referendum to overturn the law — despite the fact that the state's 14 GOP senators split evenly on the bill on final passage.

If the two, aided by the group Oregonians for Immigration Reform, can gather more than 58,000 signatures from registered voters within 90 days of the Legislature's adjournment, the referendum will appear on the November 2014 ballot. The new law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, would be put on hold until after the vote.

Supporters of the new driving permit law argue it will make the state's roads safer by encouraging undocumented residents to purchase insurance and have their driving skills tested. Opponents say residents who came here illegally should not be rewarded with driving privileges.

Despite the bipartisan support for the bill in the Legislature, the Oregon Republican Party has endorsed the referendum campaign, warning of voter fraud and "subversive terrorist acts," in the words of GOP Chairwoman Suzanne Gallagher — although the driving permits may not be used to vote, board a plane or purchase a firearm.

We're not convinced the driving law will do what its backers say it will, but it's unlikely to do any real damage — except to the image of the state's Republicans among Latino voters.

  Read more about Missing the boat

DENVER (AP) — Immigrants living illegally in Colorado will be able to get driver's licenses under a bill signed Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper, adding the state to a handful of others that provide a legal way for immigrants to use the roads.

The issue has picked up momentum this year, with Oregon and Nevada passing laws in recent weeks, and Connecticut's governor expected to pass a measure that lawmakers approved last week.

Hickenlooper said he saw the proposal as a step toward changing the nation's immigration laws.

"I'm not trying to tell Congress what form that takes, any of the details, but we are moving in that direction, and this is something that's a first step," the Democratic governor said.

The bill was signed in private, before the governor signed several other bills in front of lawmakers and the media. But Hickenlooper's office said the private signing was simply because one of the lead sponsors was out of town.

"We weren't trying to downplay it," spokesman Eric Brown said.

Supporters of the bill argued that everyone on the roads should know the rules and be insured, regardless of their immigration status.

The licenses would be labeled to say they are not valid for federal identification and can't be used to vote, obtain public benefits or board a plane. Hickenlooper said immigrants should have licenses that allow them to drive to work, get insurance, and be identified in car accidents, while at the same time making clear they are not U.S. citizens.

New Mexico, Illinois and Washington state already grant driver's licenses to immigrants who are in the country illegally. Utah grants immigrants a driving permit that can't be used for identification. Nevada's bill, signed into law last week, requires immigrants to prove their identity with a passport or birth certificate, and the "driving privilege cards" must be renewed annually.

In Colorado, immigrants pass a driver's license test and prove they're paying state and federal taxes. They also must show an identification card from their country of origin. The licenses would be renewed every three years.

But opponents argued there's no way to verify the identities of immigrants with certainty, and they worried the licenses wouldn't necessarily lead to more people having insurance. Republican Sen. Kevin Lundberg said he worried the proposal would encourage more people to come to Colorado illegally.

Colorado's bill takes effect Aug. 1, 2014. Legislative analysts who worked on the bill estimate that more than 45,000 immigrants will apply for licenses the first year. Read more about Immigrant driver's licenses signed in Colorado

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have required Florida hand out driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, a sign he is taking a stand against the left in favor of conservatism.

“Florida is home to immigrants of many nationalities, who add to the cultural fabric of our great state, and whose productivity and hard work have contributed to our economic turnaround,” Scott said in his official letter to Florida Secretary of State Kenneth Detzner announcing the veto. “Still, our nation struggles with immigration issues every day, as Americans seek to reconcile the fact that at one point our families were immigrants who came, as many do today, to work and live the American dream with the fact that the federal government has failed at enforcing the nation’s laws on this topic.”

Scott went on to detail the inconsistencies of immigration policy coming out of Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security and President Barack Obama’s administration at large.

“Despite the federal government’s inability to enforce the nation’s current immigration laws or to find common ground on how to change them, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in a June 2012 memo the immediate establishment of a ‘Deferred Action Process for Childhood Arrivals,’” Scott wrote. “Through this process DHS provides that a young person illegally brought to the United States as a child will not be subject to removal if the individual meets certain criteria."

"Qualifying for deferred action status does not confer substantive rights or lawful status upon an individual; it does not create a pathway to a green card or citizenship; nor does it extend to any family members of the person granted the status either," he explained. "Deferred action status is simply a policy of the Obama Administration, absent Congressional direction, designed to dictate removal action decisions using DHS agency discretion. It was never passed by Congress, nor is it a promulgated rule.”

The institutional left and Florida Democrats are furious that Scott would make such a move. Democrat state Sen. Darren Soto called Scott’s veto an “anti-Hispanic bomb.”

“Make no mistake about it: This will be an anti-Hispanic bomb if he vetoes this bill,’’ Soto, a sponsor of the legislation, said before Scott officially vetoed the bill according to the National Journal. “The vast majority of my peers understand we need to encourage immigrants to become working members of our society. It makes no sense that the Scott administration would veto something it’s already doing.”

The Florida House Democrat who also sponsored the bill, Rep. Randolph Bracy, tried to argue Scott’s veto foils plans to move the national Republican party as a whole toward amnesty. “I thought the party was moving in that direction and was behind this bill, and then the governor just comes out of nowhere and does this,” Bracy said according to National Journal. “Republicans have been talking as a party about Hispanic outreach, and this was only a small step.” Read more about Rick Scott Vetoes Bill to Give Illegal Immigrants Driver's Licenses

The Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition supporting immigration reform, has launched a six-figure ad campaign pushing Congress to enact immigration legislation. The ads, urging evangelicals to "pray" for a path to citizenship, include the disclaimer that they were "paid for" by the Table. This is odd, because the group doesn't legally exist. It is a highly misleading claim.

Breitbart News confirmed on Monday that the actual purchase of the ads was made by the National Immigration Forum (NIF). The Table told Breitbart News on Friday that it wasn't an incorporated entity or non-profit organization and had selected NIF to "facilitate" its work. A source at a media buying firm in DC told Breitbart News that NIF did not take the traditional commission on the ad purchase, which was described as "very odd." It suggests NIF was making its own purchase of the ads, rather than simply acting as a "facilitator" of the buy.

This likely isn't illegal. Because the ads don't involve an election or candidates, there are no rules on disclosing who paid for an ad. I, for example, could pay for ads supporting tort reform and say the ads were "paid for" by Virginians for Civil Justice, even though I just made up that organization.

Legal isn't necessarily ethical, however.

The National Immigration Forum, which, again made the actual purchase of the ads, has received millions of dollars in grants from George Soros' left-wing Open Society Institute. It has also received considerable funding from the Ford Foundation, another prominent funder of leftist organizations.

Saying an ad is "paid for" by the Evangelical Immigration Table is very different than saying the ads were paid for by an organization with considerable funding from the institutional left. Viewers of the ad might be drawn to different conclusions about the legislation if they knew the actual source of funding. Read more about Evangelicals Mislead on Funding of Immigration Ads