Illegal Immigrants

Stepping into the political minefield of immigration reform, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano soon will direct federal agents to focus more on arresting and prosecuting American employers than the illegal laborers who sneak into the country to work for them, department officials said Monday.

Federal authorities are increasingly deporting illegal immigrants through a fast-track program that bypasses court hearings, an effort by the federal government to save money, reduce backlogs and clear detention beds. The number of detainees in California and across the nation who agreed to be deported without first seeing a judge jumped fivefold between 2004 and 2007, from 5,481 to nearly 31,554. In the first half of 2008, 17,445 speedy deportation orders were signed.

There are just two weeks left in his presidency, but down in San Diego County the heavy machinery is grinding away at one last grand project from the administration of George W. Bush. As The Times reported Sunday, your tax dollars are paying for contractors to move mountains of earth and make canyons disappear at the U.S.-Mexico border. New fences are rising and a no-man's land is being carved into the Earth.

Anti-illegal-immigration groups launched a campaign late last year to ensure that any jobs created by the economic stimulus package go to Americans and not to illegal immigrants. So when the House bill passed this week with a provision designed to do just that, they declared victory. "What sense does it make to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in borrowed money to create jobs if those jobs aren't going toward American workers?"

The U.S. Border Patrol vowed Monday to investigate allegations of a quota system at its Riverside office, which allegedly required agents to arrest a set number of illegal immigrants each month or face punishment. "The Border Patrol has never had a quota system and is not expected to operate on quotas," said Agent Richard Velez, an agency spokesman. "Right now these allegations are under investigation. We will soon find out what happened."

A Mexican fishing vessel loaded with 23 suspected illegal immigrants was intercepted off Torrey Pines State Beach on Monday morning, the latest in a rash of maritime smuggling attempts, federal authorities said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents were on a routine patrol four miles off the coast about 4 a.m. when their floodlights illuminated a 26-foot vessel loaded with 19 men and four women, all Mexican nationals. Another smuggling attempt on Monday apparently succeeded.

A former Border Patrol officer said Thursday that constant demands to meet monthly arrest quotas led agents in the Inland Empire to cruise streets, bus stops and even medical clinics looking for illegal immigrants.

A federal jury this week found that an Arizona rancher who has complained about illegal immigrants trespassing and trashing his border property has to pay four women $73,000 after he detained them and other migrants at gunpoint. In a verdict Tuesday afternoon, the jury in Tucson found that Roger Barnett did not violate the women's civil rights but was liable for four claims of assault and infliction of emotional distress.

A longtime elevator mechanic at Los Angeles International Airport was sentenced this week to three years in federal prison for smuggling illegal immigrants into the United States. Roberto Amaya Canchola, 54, pleaded guilty to one count of bringing in an illegal immigrant for financial gain. The North Hills resident admitted smuggling in five foreign nationals Aug. 9 after they had arrived from Mexico. He admitted receiving $1,800 for each passenger.