Tag: border security

Immigration reform is a key issue in Colorado elections, where 14 percent of the voting population is Hispanic and where 70 percent of voters overall support reform. Protests in favor of immigration reform, or of at least staying deportations, have become near-weekly fixtures of the state’s tight political races.

There is a new political animal in America's age-old immigration debate: the black bear.

After soliciting funds for defending its SB 1070 immigration law in court, the State of Arizona is now asking for funds to build a border fence across its 378-mile border.

Pew Environment Group officials on Thursday said a proposed U.S. House bill aimed at increasing border security gives “unprecedented authority to a single federal agency to destroy wildlife habitat and wetlands …” The National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act (H.R. 1505), debated Thursday by the House Natural Resources Committee, would allow the Department of Homeland Security to override 36 environmental laws.

Two reports released last week state that as part of broad immigration reform, border security and enforcement spending has to be shifted to avoid the continued ineffective use of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The long-coming death of the Bush-era project to build a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border was officially announced Friday. Since 2005, taxpayers have shelled out $15 million a mile for roughly 53 miles of networked cameras, ground sensors and radar that can't tell the difference between swaying plants and border-hopping humans. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the Obama administration is scrapping the Boeing-contracted billion-dollar boondoggle in favor of "proven technologies" like chain link. Colorado anti-illegal immigration warrior and conservative politics icon Tom Tancredo last year said the Obama administration likely has mixed feelings about the end of the virtual fence project. He said the non-fence was great for Democrats because it served the dual purpose of making it seem like the country was addressing the flow of illegal immigration without actually addressing the problem.