News Bytes

In a recent 2-0 vote, Canyon County, Idaho commissioners passed a resolution to declare the county a disaster area because of illegal immigration. According to the Idaho Press-Tribune, Commissioner Robert Vasquez authored the resolution because he said an influx of illegal immigrants poses a serious enough threat to its residents to be considered an emergency due to money spent on indigent medical care and incarceration of illegal immigrants. Vasquez also referenced county detention officers being exposed to tuberculoses and an outbreak of syphilis in Canyon County this year, and linked the spread of these diseases to illegal immigration. He also said that undocumented immigrants are responsible for the most crime in the county, and cited a 20 percent increase over 5 years of undocumented immigrants making applications for county welfare. Immigration advocates are adamantly expressing their opinion against Vasquez and his resolution.

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A flood of senior managers are preparing to leaver the Homeland Security Department, and some outside observers are worried that this could affect several efforts of the department. The resignations include Secretary Tom Ridge, Deputy Secretary James Loy, Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson, Undersecretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Frank Libutti, Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection Robert Liscouski, and Executive Director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness C. Suzanne Mencer.

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In Washington, D.C. last week attorneys filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of the hundreds of unrepresented people who remain detained by the United States Government at Guantánamo Bay. These nameless detainees join more than 70 whose cases challenging their continued imprisonment are already being addressed in federal court.

The suit, spearheaded by lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), is captioned "John Does Nos. 1-570 v. Bush" because the names of the detainees kept in indefinite detention have been withheld. Until now, without the names of the detainees and without physical access to them, lawyers have been unable to help those who wish to seek their day in court under the Supreme Court's decision last June in Rasul v. Bush. In that case the Supreme Court held that each detainee has the right to challenge his detention in federal court.

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According to a media note from the State Department, Over 6.3 million entries for the 2006 Diversity Visa Lottery were received during the two-month electronic registration period, from noon on November 5, 2004, through noon January 7, 2005. Anti-fraud technology in use for the 2006 Diversity Visa Lottery detected 31,334 exact duplicates, which were then eliminated from the eligible entry pool. An additional 5,221 entries were eliminated through the utilization of facial recognition and knowledge discovery software.

Persons submitting entries to the 2006 lottery received a notice of receipt containing the name, date of birth and country of chargeability for the registrant, as well as a time/date stamp when entries had been successfully registered. The number of winning entries by country of chargeability will be available later this year after the random lottery process is complete.

There have been several instances of groups or individuals attempting to defraud Diversity Visa Lottery entrants. Lottery entrants selected as winners in the Diversity Visa random drawing are notified by the Department of State’s Kentucky Consular Center. No other organization or company is authorized by the Department of State to notify Diversity Visa Lottery entrants of their winning entry. Notification of winning entries will be sent to the winning entrants by mail only between May and July 2005 and will provide further instructions, including information on fees connected with immigration to the United States.

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