quote:

Originally posted by mike_2007:

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according to court documents: Federal prosecutors have been arguing that they should be able to track the locations of Americans through their cell phones without showing any evidence of criminal activity

i guess they have nothing important to do , this is bull****

Hoover has been re-incarnated.

Action Will Help Applicants Lacking Final FBI Clearance By Spencer S. Hsu | Washington Post, Feb 12

Facing a rapidly growing backlog of immigration cases, the Bush administration will grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of legal U.S. immigrants without first completing required background checks against the FBI's investigative files.

The change affects a large but unknown number of about 47,000 permanent residency, or green-card, applicants whose cases are otherwise complete but whose FBI checks have been pending for more than six months, U.S. officials said. Overall, about 44 percent of the 320,000 pending immigration name checks before the FBI -- including citizenship as well as green-card requests -- have waited more than six months.

The delays have been called "the most pervasive" processing problem in the U.S. immigration system, according to Prakash Khatri, the ombudsman of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The change, announced in an internal agency memorandum Feb. 4, follows years of criticism by Khatri, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, lawmakers and federal judges, who say that lengthy delays in FBI name checks serve neither national security nor immigrants, who in any case have been living in the United States for years while awaiting a decision.

Critics blame poor management and coordination at the FBI and USCIS, and the inefficient system by which the FBI keeps more than 86 million investigative files. About 90 percent of name checks are completed electronically within three months, but the rest can take years to finish through paper-based searches for any mention of an applicant's name in records stored in 265 locations nationwide.

Applicants already must clear automated checks against FBI and DHS fingerprint databases and consolidated federal law enforcement databases.

"This is a . . . step in the right direction for the government to see this name check has really been holding up thousands or tens of thousands of people unnecessarily," said Cecilia D. ****, senior staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union's immigrants' rights project, which has tracked nine class-action and thousands of individual lawsuits filed by immigrants seeking faster processing.

Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which calls for stricter limits on immigration, said the shift reflects the government's ongoing efforts to run its immigration system "on the cheap."

"You end up with people waiting longer than they should, and getting approved when they shouldn't," Camarota said. "It's bad for crime prevention, national security and customer service."

Immigration officials expect the backlog to balloon within weeks. Last summer, before a well-publicized hike in application fees, the Department of Homeland Security saw a surge of 3 million applications for naturalization and other immigration benefits -- 60 percent more than it received for all of 2006. Those cases have just started to enter the FBI pipeline.

Under the new rules, USCIS will approve otherwise completed cases when the FBI has failed to perform its checks within 180 days. In the unlikely instances when negative information is found -- less than 1 percent of the time, according to the bureau -- green-card holders will be deported.

USCIS spokesman Christopher S. Bentley said the agency has long wrestled with how to streamline the effort. He said the change aligns its practices more closely with those of its sister agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which admits asylum applicants into the United States before FBI name checks are completed.

The decision "just seems like a very logical way to get people who deserve benefits in a very fair and timely manner without compromising national security or the integrity of the immigration system," Bentley said.

The change does not apply to citizenship applicants because green-card holders are more easily deported, whereas "revoking naturalization is a much more difficult thing to do," he said.

Representatives of the American Immigration Law Foundation, the ACLU and other immigrant advocates hailed the change, but questioned why it excludes citizenship applicants, when they must have lived in the United States at least three years after becoming permanent residents.

"If they really believe people pose some risk to the United States, why would they want folks inside, waiting years and years to complete the same name check?" asked Karen Tumlin of the National Immigration Law Center.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairman of a House immigration subcommittee, said beneficiaries of the change are already living in the United States and often are married to Americans. "The card has no impact at all on security, but it may have some impact in a positive way on their lives," Lofgren said. "It's not very hard to take away the green-card status if there's an error."

Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-Calif.), who seeks tighter U.S. immigration controls, objected. "Do they revoke them if they blow up something?" he asked. "There is a reason why the system was put in to do these checks, and it's national security. It's scary that we've reached a point where we're waiving that national security requirement because the bureaucracy is not responding."

Congress has approved more money to speed the FBI name checks. Gregory Smith, head of the USCIS office that coordinates name checks with the FBI, said in an e-mail to his FBI counterpart that his agency will prioritize "a significant percentage" of $20 million in new funding to expedite naturalization cases -- such as hiring 221 FBI contractors -- but "existing resources should not be diverted" from green-card checks.

The USCIS memo and Smith's e-mail were filed by the government Feb. 6 in a pending case brought by immigrants before U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The memo was first reported Sunday by McClatchy Newspapers.

Immigration Moves Eyed
By Steven T. Dennis, Roll Call Staff

House Democrats are crafting scaled-down immigration reform legislation despite the political minefields that surround the issue, with Hispanic Members seeking five-year visas for illegal immigrants who pay fines and pass criminal background checks.

Immigration reform had been left for dead after last year's Senate train wreck, but pressures for at least stopgap immigration legislation have bubbled up within the Democratic Caucus.

It's unclear if the behind-the-scenes discussions will actually result in a bill coming to the floor, but Democrats say drafts of legislation already have been written and are being vetted behind the scenes.

"There is the formation of a consensus," said Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who said he's seen a draft bill. "We're looking at some kind of a compromise. It's still comprehensive in nature but not to the extent we would like."

Baca said the prospects for a compromise package were discussed in high-level meetings Wednesday that included Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law. Baca said the emerging legislation did not have the broader reforms included in last year's failed Senate immigration overhaul or in earlier measures backed by Hispanics, such as the DREAM Act.

But Baca said the key piece for Hispanics is a five-year visa for illegal immigrants who can prove they have a job. The visa is well short of past bills that would grant permanent legal status, which critics decried as "amnesty."

"There is no path towards citizenship," Baca said. "There are still fines and criminal background checks and you have to pay back taxes. This is what the taxpayers want."

Baca said Democrats still are trying to work out exactly how the new visas would work or be enforced.

Baca said there also would be an expansion of visas for technical, temporary and agricultural workers -- measures strongly backed by businesses and many Republicans.

But whether House leaders will actually put immigration on the floor with such a controversial provision as visas for illegal immigrants in an election year remains an open question.

Just last month at a Jan. 25 press conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) predicted nothing would happen this year on immigration, blaming the president for failing to get enough Republican support last year.

"I don't think we'll get anything done this year," Reid said at a National Press Club event with Pelosi. "We have the presidential election, we have a number of very important House and Senate races, and our time is really squeezed."

Pelosi also sounded a pessimistic note at the press conference. "If it isn't going to happen in the Senate, it's not going to happen. But it doesn't mean that it doesn't need to happen, and we have to continue to work together because there are too many aspects of our economy, if we're just talking pragmatically, that depend on a comprehensive immigration reform."

Emanuel said Thursday at a press conference that House Democrats are looking to address both the issues of legal and illegal immigration without waiting on the Senate, although he did not discuss specifics.

"There are things that are happening in our respective communities and districts around the country and businesses that we have to address and we can't wait for the Senate," he said.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) said Republican support will be key. "We think there's a bipartisan desire to do something on immigration that deals with our sovereign right to regulate our borders, to deal with the workplace, and to deal with the 10 million to 12 million people who are here, many of whom don't deserve to stay, many of whom have earned a chance, if we require them to learn English and abide by all of our laws. But we have to have some bipartisan support."

Lofgren confirmed Thursday that she is in negotiations over new legislation, but she declined to discuss the details of the new bill, other than to say, "It's not comprehensive immigration reform." Lofgren added that she is reaching out to Republicans on the issue and hopes to reach a compromise.

Hispanics have resisted expanding visas sought by businesses unless broader immigration issues are addressed.

The immigration issue also could be affected by the emergence of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) as the Republican frontrunner for president, given his support for last year's failed immigration deal. That appeared to offer just a sliver of daylight to the issue.

A re-emergence of immigration in the coming months would put McCain in a politically awkward position, as he has been seeking to repair ties to conservatives who despise his past support for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and yet he will be looking ahead to a general election in which the Hispanic vote could prove critical.

"It depends on which John McCain steps forward," Becerra said of whether McCain's emergence will help move the issue.

Pelosi's office also highlighted the bipartisan angle.

"The Democratic Caucus is continuing to discuss a wide variety of immigration issues, but long-term immigration reform must be comprehensive and bipartisan," said Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami.

But even Republicans who have backed past bipartisan reform efforts are not optimistic anything will happen this election year. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), the co-author of comprehensive legislation backed by Hispanics last year, said he doesn't see anything happening beyond some tweaking of the level of work visas until the next Congress.

A House GOP leadership aide also dismissed the idea that such legislation would move.

Even if Democratic leaders wanted to ignore the issue wholesale until after the elections, they may not be able to, given the pressure bubbling up within the party. In addition to Hispanics, leaders face pressure from more conservative Democrats who back a package of enforcement measures sponsored by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.).

"A lot of Members in more conservative districts want to be able to cast a vote they can run on," said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who supports the Shuler legislation. But, Davis asserted, action on that measure should not preclude other legislation from moving ahead.

Democratic leaders could conceivably face a discharge petition on the issue, although any enforcement-only measure would be sure to invite a revolt by Hispanics.

Baca said the legislation under consideration could have some enforcement measures, adding that too much could bog it down.

Jennifer Yachnin contributed to this report.

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A new points- based system to enable the UK to control migration more effectively, tackle abuse and identify the most talented workers was launched by the Home Secretary.

The Government's Command Paper on the points-based system for managed migration was published today. The Home Secretary called on industry and education sectors to play their role in making migration work for Britain, and reminded them that they had a responsibility to help make the new scheme a success.

The points based system is a central part of the Government’s five year strategy for asylum and immigration, which was published in February 2005, and is committed to a wide-ranging plan:
<LI minmax_bound="true">to ensure that only those who benefit Britain can come here to work or study <LI minmax_bound="true">to strengthen the UK’s borders; to crack down on abuse and illegal immigration
and increase removals. Its implementation is a key Government priority
The scheme will be complemented with a tougher approach from our own British embassies abroad to weed out false applications and will place increased obligations on UK businesses and universities who will now be required to sponsor migrants and help to ensure that those they sponsor adhere to the terms of their visa.


Some of the key elements of the system include:
<LI minmax_bound="true">consolidating more than 80 existing work and study routes into five tiers:
tier 1 - highly skilled, e.g. scientists or entrepreneurs
tier 2 - skilled workers with a job offer, e.g. nurses, teachers, engineers
tier 3 - low skilled workers filling specific temporary labour shortages, e.g. construction workers for a particular project
tier 4 - students
tier 5 - youth mobility and temporary workers, e.g. working holiday makers or musicians coming to play a concert <LI minmax_bound="true">points to be awarded to reflect aptitude, experience, age and also the level of need in any given sector, to allow the UK to respond flexibly to changes in the labour market
financial securities for specific categories where there has been evidence of abuse to ensure that migrants return home at the end of their stay.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke said:
'Managed migration is in the interest of the UK. Today’s announcement sets out the Government’s policy to deliver a firm but fair, simpler, more transparent and more rigorous system, which will benefit our economy and protect our borders.
'Crucially, it will allow us to ensure that only those people with the skills the UK needs come to this country while preventing those without these skills applying. Foreign workers or students will also in future need a UK sponsor to vouch for them, ensuring that businesses and colleges take responsibility for making sure foreign workers and students comply with visa rules.'

Actor Kal Penn supports Obama and cites H1B/Greencard issue

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He may not be a major actor but seems like he cares about H1B/legal immigrant issues. Look into the explanation on why he is volunteering for Obama campaign (I am not sure which H1b reforms he is talking about - but it seems he is aware of H1B/legal immigrants hassles). May be we can approach him to attend a future rally of IV !!?!!

News: http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/04obama.htm

Excerpt: When the opportunity came four years later, Penn said he researched Obama's stand on various issues � his co-sponsorship of the End Racial Profiling Act, support to reforming the H1B programme so that legal immigrants aren't dependent on shady employers just to stay in the country, and support to family reunification

Wyo. Rejects Illegal Immigration Bill

Feb. 13, 2008, 11:03AM

By BEN NEARY Associated Press Writer
© 2008 The Associated Press


CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A bill that sought to make it a felony to harbor or transport illegal immigrants in Wyoming died Tuesday when it failed to receive the required two-thirds vote for introduction in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Pete Illoway, R-Cheyenne, had sponsored the measure. Although Hispanic groups have criticized similar legislation in other states, he said the bill wasn't aimed at any particular ethnic group here.

"There's been a lot of comment on this particular proposal, and I felt that if the federal government won't do it, then the states at least need to take a look at what's termed illegal immigration," Illoway said.

Illoway's legislation was modeled after an Oklahoma law that took effect late last year.

In addition to making it a felony to harbor and transport illegal immigrants, the Oklahoma law places restrictions on employment and bars illegal immigrants from receiving non-emergency government aid.

Opponents of the Oklahoma law have said it has terrorized Hispanics there and driven thousands of people _ documented and undocumented workers alike _ from the state.

Rep. Keith Gingery, R-Jackson, said he agreed with Illoway about the issue, but opposed the bill as inappropriate for state government action. Gingery said that if Illoway wanted to run for Congress and pursue the issue there, he would support him.

Rep. Pete Jorgensen, D-Jackson, said he agreed illegal immigration is an important issue, but said that there wasn't time to address it in the budget session.

Rep. Floyd Esquibel, D-Cheyenne, said that while there was no doubt the country needs an immigration policy based on common decency, he said Illoway's proposal would put fear into innocent people, such as landlords and bus drivers.

Rep. Mary Gilmore, D-Casper, said it would be bad policy for the state to act on the immigration matter without hearing first from the federal government.

"Whether we want to admit it or not, these illegal immigrants provide services in the agricultural industry, in the food industry, and in construction," Gilmore said, adding that she doesn't perceive any problem with illegal immigrants in the state.

"Some of these illegal immigrant people are taking jobs that we deem undesirable," Gilmore said.

Illoway responded that there are existing procedures in law that allow immigration from other countries. He said he understood from Gilmore's comments, "that it's OK to be illegal and take jobs."

Mike you are doing a super job in this thread!!

keep up the great work.

and a special good job to you too Proudusc!

thnx 4now and yes i'll try and actually everybody r helping me too

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD | NYT, Feb 13

LOS ANGELES — The number of businesses taking part in a voluntary program that allows them to verify electronically their newly hired employees’ legal authorization to work in the United States is soaring, the federal government said Tuesday.

About 52,000 employers are now using a Web-based system, known as E-Verify, compared with 14,265 a year ago. The system has been growing in the past year by 1,000 employers a week, said the United States Citizenship and Immigrations Services, which runs the program with the Social Security Administration.

Although the tally is a small fraction of the 5.7 million employers nationwide, program officials said it proved the system was catching on.

“This program is proving to be a key component in promoting the integrity of the employment verification process of our workforce,” Emilio Gonza***, the director of citizenship and immigration services, said in a statement.

The system, which is free, verifies documentation like Social Security cards and immigration papers that people need to work in the United States.

About a third of the employers, 18,000, are in Arizona, where a new state law requires businesses to use the program to verify the right to work for new employees.

Business and immigrant rights groups in Arizona have sued to block the law, saying in part that E-Verify prompts employers to dismiss workers who may be authorized to work but do not have their paperwork in order. A federal judge upheld the law, but the groups have appealed.

In a separate case, a federal judge in December issued a stay in a lawsuit filed by the federal government against Illinois, which had passed a law prohibiting employers from using the system over questions about its accuracy.

About 93 percent of the employees checked in the program receive authorization in a manner of seconds.

By JILL LAWLESS | Associated Press, Feb 13

LONDON -- Forget fish and chips _ curry is Britain's national dish.

But restaurant owners and immigrants' advocates say government policies restricting the flow of workers from Bangladesh are causing a staffing crisis at Britain's thousands of curry houses.

A majority of the "Indian" restaurants found in every British town are Bangladeshi-owned, and many of the kitchen workers have traditionally been recruited from Bangladesh.

Immigration rules introduced since 2005 have made it hard for unskilled workers from outside the European Union to work in Britain.

The Bangladesh Caterers' Association, which represents 12,000 curry house owners, says there are vacancies for 27,500 workers in Bangladeshi-owned restaurants, out of a total work force of some 90,000.

"That's a pretty hefty chunk," said Keith Best, head of the Immigration Advisory Service, a charity lobbying the government to change its rules. "This is an industry that contributes 3.5 billion pounds ($7 billion) a year to the British economy."

Best said the government seemed to think vacancies would be filled by Eastern Europeans, who have come to Britain by the hundreds of thousands since Poland, the Czech Republic and other ex-communist countries joined the EU.

However, he said these workers had "no cultural sensitivity toward or understanding of the curry industry."

"It is a sad comment on government policy that it favors Eastern Europeans over citizens of Commonwealth countries such as Bangladesh whose preceding generations have contributed so much to the British economy and continue to do so," Best said.

The Border and Immigration Agency said the points-based immigration system was designed to ensure "that those with the right skills to benefit Britain can come here to contribute."

The agency said it has set up a committee to advise on skills shortages in specific areas, including "the ethnic cuisine sector."

Mercury News Editorial, 02/13

For years, America has offered a beacon of hope and freedom for people from all over the world. That's one big reason the United States has more than 1 million immigrants from Vietnam, many of whom fled war and oppression in their homeland.

So it's disturbing that U.S. immigration officials, under a new Washington-Hanoi repatriation pact, soon will begin deporting undocumented Vietnamese back to the authoritarian country they left. This reversal of longstanding practice is troubling on political and humanitarian grounds. Officials should hold off on the deportations until Congress can review the situation more closely, as Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, and 12 other lawmakers have suggested.

To be sure, many of the illegal immigrants who could be sent back have criminal convictions in the United States. Those who have committed serious felonies, such as murder, kidnapping or child sexual abuse should not be given refuge here. But those convicted of lesser crimes, have already completed jail time or simply overstayed their visas are another matter. It makes sense to take a closer look at these individual cases.

The pact signed in late January affects about 1,500 Vietnamese nationals who arrived here on or after July 12, 1995, and are in deportation proceedings or have received a final deportation order. The pact doesn't affect those who arrived earlier, since the United States did not have diplomatic relations with Vietnam then.

Overall, there are about 8,000 Vietnamese nationals facing deportation; about 7,000 of them have criminal convictions.

The United States has repatriation agreements with many countries, but most of them are not authoritarian. Vietnam is unique because of its legacy of war and persecution, the U.S. role in Vietnam's history and the poor human rights record of the communist government in Hanoi. Its unsatisfactory record has been recently documented by the U.S. State Department, among others.

Returnees would likely face abuse or discrimination from a government that doesn't look kindly on their leaving in the first place. Lofgren, who chairs a House subcommittee on immigration, notes that the United States doesn't send illegal Cuban immigrants back to Fidel Castro's regime.

The United States has long been respected for welcoming foreigners, who enrich and strengthen American society. And the United States has served as a model for freedom and democracy. Immigration officials should tread carefully in order to uphold those ideals.

BANGALORE: A student from Bangalore was found dead under mysterious circumstances at his apartment in Kentucky, US, raising questions about the safety of Indian students in America.

In the earlier incidents, 29-year-old Abhijeet Mahato of Jharkhand, a PhD student at North Carolina's Dukes Pratt School of Engineering, was shot dead at an off-campus apartment complex on January 18; on Dec. 13, 2007, two Louisiana State University research students from Andhra Pradesh, Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, were shot dead in a flat near their campus.

On Thursday, 20-year-old Mahesh Subramannian's body was received by his family at the Bangalore airport 18 days after his death. He was the only son of P Subramannian and Sharavathi, who reside near Jakkur Aerodrome on Bellary Road. He was cremated at Hebbal crematorium on Thursday noon.

Student of Northern Kentucky University, Mahesh was pursuing his Bachelor in Science with electronics, electrical science and computer science as the major subjects. He was in his final semester and was staying at the Hidden Valley Apartment complex in Campbell County in Kentucky with Sunny, an American student, who was studying MS in the same university.

The death of Mahesh was conveyed to his parents in Bangalore only on January 21. Mahesh's uncle who stays in US was the first one to be informed about the death by the university authorities. The preliminary post-mortem reports of Mahesh say the reason for the death is ‘unknown'. The family members have been asked to wait for six weeks for the final autopsy report.

"The autospy results are pending in relation to the cause of death," stated a letter submitted by Bryan Avance of Avance funeral home and crematory in Ohio.

"We are kept in the dark. There has never been a proper communication from the US authorities regarding my son's death. Moreover, the contradictory statements from university, hospital and relatives are puzzling us, and we suspect that Mahesh could have been murdered," mother Sharavathi told The Times of India .

The family has gone through a lot of anxiety, ever since they learnt about the incident. "We are waiting for the post-mortem report, after which we will register a case with the police," she added.

Feds admit mistakenly jailing citizens as illegal immigrants

Feb. 14, 2008, 12:35AM

By MARISA TAYLOR
McClatchy-Tribune


Pedro Guzman minutes after being reunited with his family outside an Antelope Valley courthouse on August 7, 2007.

WASHINGTON — A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official acknowledged Wednesday that his agency has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but he denied that his agency has widespread problems with deporting the wrong people.

Gary Mead, ICE's deputy director of detention and removal operations, testified during a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing that U.S. citizens have been detained on "extremely" rare occasions, but he blamed the mix-ups on conflicting information from the detainees.

Nonetheless, Mead said his agency is reviewing its handling of people who claim to be U.S. citizens "to determine if even greater safeguards can be put in place."

The testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law came after immigration advocates told McClatchy that they'd seen a small but growing number of cases of U.S. citizens who've been mistakenly detained and sometimes deported by ICE. They accuse agents of ignoring valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to deport more illegal immigrants.

Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves.

Last month, Thomas Warziniack, a U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, was mistakenly detained for weeks in an Arizona immigration facility and told that he was going to be deported to Russia.

Warziniack, 40, was released after his family, who learned about his predicament from a McClatchy Newspapers reporter, produced his birth certificate.

In another high-profile example, ICE agents in California mistakenly deported Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen, to Mexico. Guzman was found months later when he tried to return to the United States.

Mead contended that both Warziniack and Guzman said they were illegal immigrants, and he said ICE agents have to be careful not to release the wrong people. Guzman and Warziniack had been serving time for minor offenses when their jailers turned them over to immigration authorities.

Although Mead said that Guzman is the only U.S. citizen he knows who's been deported erroneously, immigration lawyers have said they've found at least seven others. In the past four years, ICE agents have detained more than 1 million people.

House committee members also heard stories of ICE agents interrogating or detaining U.S. citizens in their homes, at their workplaces and on the street.

Marie Justeen Mancha, a 17-year-old born in Texas, said ICE agents raided her family's home in Georgia in 2006 while her mother was running an errand. Her mother is also a U.S. citizen.

"I started to hear the words, 'Police! Illegals!'" she recalled. "I walked around the corner from the hallway and saw a tall man reach toward his gun and look straight at me."

Mancha said the agents left after grilling her about her citizenship.

"I carry that fear with me every day, wondering when they'll come back," she said.

Mancha is one of five U.S. citizens named in a pending lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that alleges wrongful interrogations or detentions by ICE in Southeast Georgia.

Rep. Steven King, R-Iowa, the ranking minority member of the committee, described the cases as isolated and urged the agency not to be distracted from detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

"ICE does not aim to harass and detain U.S. citizens," he said.

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the committee, said that after hearing such stories, she feared an "overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens."

Nancy Morawetz, who runs an immigration rights clinic at New York University, said getting proof of citizenship is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for detainees, especially when they're shipped to a facility far from home.

In 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, identified 125 people in immigration detention centers who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

"As a country we do not have a national identity card," Morawetz said in an interview. "People don't walk around with a 'C' on their forehead that says they're a U.S. citizen."

US judge throws out immigration lawsuit filed against Tyson Foods

The Associated Press Published: February 14, 2008

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee: A federal judge threw out a long-running lawsuit that accused Tyson Foods, Inc., the world's largest meat producer, of hiring illegal immigrants to depress wages.

U.S. District Judge Curtis L. Collier in an order late Wednesday granted the Springdale, Arkansas-based company's motion for a summary judgment in the 2002 damage suit.

An attorney for Tyson, Roger ****son of Chattanooga, said in a telephone interview that the company was happy with the ruling. He declined comment about any possible implications for other businesses that might face similar claims.

The attorney for four employees who sued, Howard Foster of Chicago, said when contacted by phone Wednesday that he did not have time to comment.

The lawsuit by Birda Trollinger, Robert Martinez, Tabetha Edding and Doris Jewell sought compensation, contending the company violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by knowingly hiring illegal immigrants who were willing to work for wages below those acceptable to Americans.

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The judge's order said "plaintiffs failed to demonstrate Tyson was harboring or concealing illegal aliens" at its plants in Shelbyville, Tennessee; Ashland, Gadsden and Heflin in Alabama; Center, Texas; Glen Allen, Virginia; and Sedalia, Missouri.

The order said plaintiffs provided evidence that could have been presented to a jury to show Tyson was concealing unauthorized employees at its Corydon, Indiana, facility but failed to show that Tyson's violations "caused their injuries."

In May 2002, Tyson filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, contending that because its workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement, the union and not individual workers would have to pursue claims of damage. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, but an appeals court disagreed and said it could proceed.