Republicans won't agree to immigration reform, but Democrats were willing to kow-tow to them today and pass another $600 million for border security for 2011, 10% more than 2010. $1 billion for border security with one country for two years?

The money would be used for such purposes as adding 1,500 new enforcement agents and deploying unmanned aerial drones to improve border surveillance.

Cops and drones. Just what we don't need more of. And, get this -- John McCain said the $600 million was insufficient, he wanted more. And more jail sentences: [More...]

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

-Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead vs. United States, 1928

WaPo:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation. The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval.

Matt Yglesias writes:

The ACLU reports that the city council in Fremont, NE has suspended the enactment of its anti-immmigrant resolution that would requires prospective renters to provide the Fremont Police Department with information about their citizenship or immigration status prior to renting any home.

The ACLU filed suit (documents here.) The law passed on June 21 and was scheduled to go into effect on July 29. It's a law that, like SB 1070 in Arizona, invites discrimination against those "who look or seem foreign." [More...]

Two lawsuits seeking to prevent the implementation of SB 1070, the Arizona immigration law, will be heard today. In the afternoon, the court will hear argument in the suit filed by the Justice Department. In the morning, it will hear from civil rights groups, including the ACLU. The ACLU's motion for preliminary injunction is available here.

The judge still hasn't ruled on the hearing last week in the lawsuit filed by a police officer. [More...]

The New York Times reports:

Normally on the opposite side of political issues backed by the Obama White House, [evangelical]leaders are aligning with the president to support an overhaul that would include some path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here. They are preaching from pulpits, conducting conference calls with pastors and testifying in Washington....

Could it make a difference?

Although other religious leaders have long favored immigration overhaul — including Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, Jews and Muslims — the evangelicals are crucial because they have the relationships and the pull with Republicans.

So, if all those groups are for it, who is against it? The people they are preaching to? Can they convert their choirs?[More...]

Law Enforcement is all excited about the popularlity of the iPhone. Why? It provides them with enhanced snooping abilities.

Law-enforcement experts said iPhone technology records a wealth of information that can be tapped more easily than BlackBerry and Android devices to help police learn where you've been, what you were doing there and whether you've got something to hide.

A former hacker, Jonathan Zdziarski, wrote a book on the iPhone's forensics, and cops now hire him to teach them how to retrieve hidden and deleted information. Some examples below: [More...]

Update: Via Politico, Here is a copy of the Complaint filed today.

The Department of Justice will file its legal challenge to Arizona's immigration law, SB 1070, as early as today. It will seek an injunction to prevent the law from going into effect.

The lawsuit will rely on pre-emption (through the Supremacy Clause) but it's also expected to contain a civil rights claim.

But the filing is likely to have a civil rights component as well, arguing that the Arizona law would lead to police harassment of U.S. citizens and foreigners, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the government has not announced its plans. President Obama has warned that the law could violate citizens' civil rights, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has expressed concern that it could drive a wedge between police and immigrant communities.

[More...]

The ACLU has put out a travel alert for Arizona in advance of July 4th, warning of racial profiling stops and arrests.

American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Arizona, New Mexico and 26 other states put out the warnings in advance of the Fourth of July weekend. The Arizona chapter has received reports that law enforcement officers are already targeting some people even though the law doesn't take effect until July 29, its executive director said. The alerts are designed to teach people about their rights if police stop and question them.

Check out the ACLU alert here. [More...]

ICE has decided not to deport Harvard student Eric Balderas after all. They are going to put him on deferred action status.

Balderas has lived here since the age of 4. He was detained and given a summons to show up for the beginning of removal proceedings when he was boarding a flight from San Antonio, where his mother lives, back to Boston.

These cases illustrate the need for comprehensive immigration reform. ICE is focused on smart, effective immigration enforcement that focuses first on criminal aliens who pose a threat to our communities while we continue to work with Congress to enact reform,” ICE spokeswoman Cori Bassett said. “ICE uses its discretion on a case-by-case basis, as appropriate, and has the authority to grant a deferral of a removal action based upon the merits of an individual’s case and a review of specific facts.”

None of the articles say whether his mother is a citizen. I hope ICE also leaves her alone.

It's time for Congress to get busy and pass the DREAM Act.

ICE has an image problem. The Washington Post reports the agency is making changes and hopes to fix it.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will realign its duties to promote criminal investigations over immigrant deportation, officials have announced.

By streamlining and renaming several offices, officials hope to highlight the agency's counterterrorism, money laundering and other complex criminal investigations and in the process "re-brand" ICE, turning the public -- and political -- spotlight away from its immigration work.

Here's the memo that went out to ICE employees last week.

200 U.S. Mayors, gathered at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Oklahoma today, passed a resolution opposing Arizona's recently passed anti-immigrant law. The resolution was sponsored by Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon.

Arizona shows no sigh of letting up. Republicans there now want to pass a law defying the 14th Amendment and denying birth certificates to children born in Arizona if their parents are undocumented residents. Time Magazine has more here.

The 14th Amendment states "All persons, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." [More...]

Via Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton discusses the recent uncoerced confession by George W. Bush of war crimes:

Sure, we waterboarded Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, former President George W. Bush reportedly said on Tuesday.

Horton reports on the reaction to this by former CENTCOM commander Joseph Hoar:

Waterboarding is torture. John McCain has said it’s torture. We have prosecuted foreign and American military personnel for waterboarding. We even prosecuted a sheriff in Texas for waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture and torture is a crime. [. . .] It is shocking that former President George W. Bush said he would use waterboarding ‘again [. . .]

In our names.

Speaking for me only