Former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar said the US VISIT program, designed to track the arrival and departure of foreign visitors to the country, would have little impact on national security.

"If the idea is that this is going to stop terrorists from coming into the country, it's not going to accomplish that - although it may have some beneficial deterrent effect," Ziglar said.

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Government raids such as the recent one at Champion Safe are not a high priority of the Department of Homeland Security, according to Steve Branch, Utah's top BICE officer. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement held an outreach meeting last week to explain the agency’s priorities to the community. Branch said if an employer is found to have workers with fraudulent documents, a raid is not necessarily imminent. Fighting terrorism and promoting national security are BICE's highest priorities, Branch said, but employers will be expected to comply with federal laws by releasing workers when violations are discovered.

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The bodies of three Mexican nationals were found this week inside a rail car in Texas' Harris County. Officials said the dead were among a group of five or six who jumped into the empty rail car, a "hopper" that loads from the top, and were too weak to escape. The others fashioned a rope out of clothing and climbed out. The discovery brought the total of immigrants' bodies found this year along the Southwest border to 120. Border officials said the government will dispatch 150 additional Border Patrol agents and a new surveillance aircraft in order to help prevent such tragedies and perform rescue operations when necessary.

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Norman Manroe, a Jamaican native and associate of DC-area sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad, was sentenced to 15 months in prison on immigration and passport violations. Manroe pleaded guilty to passport fraud and illegal re-entry, and officials say they believe he may have provided Muhammad with information on illegally obtaining passports.

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Mexican Interior Minister Santiago Creel said police would continue to crack down on smuggling rings and work together with US agents to stop human trafficking. This week Mexican police at the Arizona border arrested 27 "coyote" suspects and 581 migrants attempting to cross into the United States.

"We will not, of course, let our guard down at any time or in any part of our national territory," Creel said. "We cannot forget we are talking about organized crime."

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State Department officials who oversee the refugee program say more than 20,000 refugees approved for resettlement in the US remain stranded in holding camps overseas as they wait on a backlogged security clearance process. Officials say they are working to speed things up for the refugees and say, although admission numbers are up over last year, they are still far below normal. In the last fiscal year, only 27,000 of the 70,000 expected refugees actually arrived.

"It's proving to be an immensely slow process and it is taking a tremendous toll in human terms," said Kathleen Newland, a director of the Migration Policy Institute advocacy group. "There are literally tens of thousands of people who have been accepted to the United States who are living in limbo in very harsh conditions."

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Two illegal immigrants pleaded guilty last week to using fake documents to obtain jobs at a Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. subcontractor. Yaddy Agudelo and Omaira Hincapie are among 20 people who were named in a federal investigation of the company's workforce. Another man, Rafael Nava, was sentenced to five years probation for using fake alien registration cards.