Universities Starting Immigration Degrees, Local Police Enforcing Immigration Hurt County Budgets, and 57 Teens Worked at Postville
âºEl Paso School New Home for Immigration Degree
The National Center for Border Security and Immigration will be at the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP). The center according to a report by the Houston Chronicle will support research and a degree program “focused on producing border, homeland security and immigration experts, in a partnership with the University of Arizona.” The school will receive a million dollars per year for their efforts from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
KFOX-TV, a local Fox affiliate in El Paso reported that, “the center will focus on developing long-term solutions to border security and immigration through extensive research, and it will develop technologies that could make the jobs of Border Patrol agents safer.”
Jay Cohen, Under Secretary for Science and Technology, for the Department of Homeland Security told KFOX-TV, “They have many challenges to keep the border secure, and we’re looking forward to work force development with the students here at UTEP.”
âºLocal Cops Enforcing Immigration Killing Budgets
According to a report by the Immigration Policy Center (IPC), “when local cops enforce federal immigration laws, the police department may not only incur significant costs, but may also fail to attend to more serious crimes and delay response times to most emergency calls.”
New American Media, a coalition of ethnic media organizations used the example of Maricopa County in Arizona and its famous sheriff who said local police have to enforce immigration law. “In April 2007, police officers worked more than 9,000 overtime hours and cost the county’s taxpayers $373,757.” the IPC report said.
Prince Valley, Virginia raised its costs to $6.9 million because jails were overcrowded. The two-page IPC report, based mainly on the findings of a series of investigative stories published in Phoenix-based East Valley Tribune, also revealed that since Maricopa County cops started looking for undocumented immigrants, the county’s arrest rate for serious crimes – including robberies, aggravated assaults and sex crimes – decreased dramatically – and these crimes received little or no investigation.
âº57 Teens Alleged to be Hired in Postville
The Iowa Labor Commission has urged the state’s attorney general to go after Agriprocessors, the plant where the largest raid in history occurred over criminal violations related to hiring underage workers. According to the Des Moines Register, the plant could face a million dollar fine for hiring 57 minors from 14 to 17 years old. Twenty of the 389 arrested, were juveniles. The company defends itself by saying supervisors didn’t know their ages because the children used faked documents to get those jobs.
In the Des Moines Register report, Elizandro Gomez, 16 said he started working at the age of 15. His documents said he was 21 and joked that he didn’t even look 18. Gomez said he didn’t get any extra scrutiny about his age, nor did the two other minors in his part of the plant. “They never asked.”
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