Deportations

The debate over U.S. immigration policy has been rebooted. There now appears to be bipartisan support for what's generally called comprehensive reform. But a stumbling block remains: What to do about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants among us. Deportation? Complete amnesty? A "path" to citizenship? There is a way forward, and it can be best summarized by "none of the above. " It lies, instead, between these choices. It's legalization without citizenship . With as few conditions and as broadly as possible, we should offer undocumented immigrants status as "permanent noncitizen residents.

Tech pioneer John McAfee's deportation to Belize, where he is wanted for questioning in connection with a murder investigation, was delayed when he was hospitalized in Guatemala, according to the U.S. Embassy in that country. McAfee, 67, was arrested Wednesday in Guatemala City on suspicion of entering the country illegally. He had crossed the border with a 20-year-old girlfriend he calls Sam and two writers from Vice magazine in tow. He had been dodging Belize police for nearly a month after being named a person of interest in the shooting death of his neighbor Gregory Faull.

John McAfee has been denied political asylum in Guatemala and could be deported back to Belize where he is wanted for questioning in the slaying of neighbor Gregory Faull. Belize officials said they expect McAfee to be flown back to their capital city, 75 miles from the Caribbean island he had called home for several years, according to an Associated Press report. In a fresh blog post Thursday titled "Urgent from John," McAfee implored supporters to "Please email the President of Guatemala and beg him to allow the court system to proceed, to determine my status in Guatemala.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has reversed his support for a controversial deportation program, announcing Wednesday that he will not comply with federal requests to detain suspected illegal immigrants arrested in low-level crimes. The sheriff's dramatic turnaround came a day after California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris issued a legal directive advising that compliance with the requests is discretionary, not mandatory. Until then, Baca had insisted that he would honor the requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold some defendants for up to 48 hours.

SAN FRANCISCO - California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris told local law enforcement agencies Tuesday that they were not obligated to comply with a federal program whose stated goal is to deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes. It was Harris' first public assessment of Secure Communities. Under the program launched in 2008, all arrestees' fingerprints are sent to immigration officials, who may ask police and sheriff's departments to hold suspects for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release so they can be transferred to federal custody.

MEXICO CITY - A North Carolina judge has ruled that Felipe Montes - an illegal immigrant who lost custody of his three children when he was deported from the U.S. - can be reunited with the boys who had been placed in foster care after their mother was deemed unfit to raise them. The Los Angeles Times reported the case of Montes, a Mexican national, in March, as an example of the difficult decisions local child-welfare officials are increasingly forced to make when a parent is deported, a common occurrence under the Obama administration's aggressive deportation policies.

Seventy years after Norway helped send hundreds of Jews to Auschwitz, the nation's police have apologized for their role in rounding up and deporting people to Nazi concentration camps. The sober words from the Norwegian national police commissioner mark the first such apology from Norwegian police. After being invaded and occupied by Germany, Norway deported 772 Jews on ships leaving Oslo during the war. Only 32 of the people survived. The vast majority were expelled from Norway on Nov. 26, 1942, when 532 Jewish people were loaded onto the Donau.

The Lakers may not have Phil Jackson, but at least they have DirecTV. Ending a long standoff, satellite broadcaster DirecTV has reached an agreement to carry Time Warner Cable's SportsNet, which is the new television home for the Lakers. As part of the pact, DirecTV also is carrying Deportes, the Spanish-language sister channel of SportsNet. DirecTV subscribers began receiving the channels Thursday afternoon. Lakers fans who have DirecTV won't be the only ones cheering the decision.

LONDON -- A radical Muslim preacher who praised the 9/11 bombings and preached terrorist violence against Christians and Jews won his latest appeal against a British government deportation order on Monday. The judgment was a blow to Home Secretary Theresa May, who has long sought Abu Qatada's deportation to face trial in Jordan, where he is wanted on terror charges.  The government's loss was compounded by the decision of Judge John Mitting, head of the Immigration Appeals Court where Qatada's final appeal was heard, that the cleric be released on bail Tuesday -- albeit under severe restrictions on his contacts with the outside world and a 16-hour-a-day curfew.

In March 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a defendant's 6th Amendment right to counsel - and its implied right to effective counsel - is violated when defense lawyers fail to warn their noncitizen clients that a guilty plea to certain offenses carries a risk of deportation. Now the court must decide whether that ruling should be applied retroactively to people convicted before it was issued. Justice and the court's own precedents suggest that it should. The case before the court involves Roselva Chaidez, a Mexican immigrant who had been living legally in Chicago with her children and grandchildren.