Immigration

Before Samuel Cifuentes walked out the door, his younger brother warned him about the storm bearing down on Oklahoma City. " Tené cuidado. Ya viene un tornado ," Byron Cifuentes said. (Be careful. A tornado is coming.) Samuel dismissed his brother's worry. " Ha bueno. Al que le toca, le toca . " (Well, if it's your time to go, it's your time to go.) A few hours later, Samuel Cifuentes was gone. At least 20 Oklahomans died in a tornado outbreak 10 days ago. Almost half of the storm's victims - four adults, including Cifuentes, and five young children - were Guatemalan.

PARK CITY, Utah - After women, young voters and Latinos fled from the Republican Party in droves in 2012, some GOP leaders thought they had a chance to turn things around. They embarked on a "listening tour" and put out a report acknowledging that many voters viewed the party as intransigent and suffused with old white men. But change has come slowly. While some Republican senators are working in Washington on a bipartisan immigration package that they hope will improve the party's image, the debate over social issues and gay marriage continues to dominate, and relations between conservative tea party factions and more moderate party elements seem as fractious as ever.

WASHINGTON - The partisan divide over immigration was exposed Thursday as House Republicans voted to stop funding the Obama administration program that has halted deportation of young immigrants who are in high school or college or have served in the military. The party-line vote in the Republican-led House comes as a bipartisan immigration overhaul is moving forward in the Senate. A vote to proceed to debate on the bill is set for next week. House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio)

WASHINGTON - The Senate immigration bill is poised to undergo a decidedly rightward shift in an attempt to attract more Republican votes, but that threatens to erode bipartisan consensus. Democratic and Republican authors of the bill have expressed a willingness to make changes and toughen the border security provisions as the sweeping immigration overhaul heads to the floor next week. But a debate has emerged over how much is too much. Leading the effort to engage Republicans is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

Kang Nam Lee sometimes hobnobs with California politicians, even though she isn't fluent in English. Through an interpreter, the 80-year-old Korean immigrant has also spoken to large audiences about her pet issues: school funding and better healthcare for senior citizens. Lee is a member of a club at Los Angeles' Korean Resource Center that encourages political activism among elderly immigrants. When she first came to the United States in 2005 to join her daughter, she felt isolated.

WASHINGTON - More than 1,300 minors - including several dozen 14 or younger - were held for days in immigration detention facilities for adults over a four-year period when the Obama administration ramped up deportations, according to a new report by an advocacy group. The proposed immigration overhaul in the Senate aims to improve detention conditions for immigrants without legal status, but critics say the stiffer enforcement of border security will create additional backlogs for already overcrowded facilities.

WATSONVILLE, Calif. - She introduced herself as Sarani Hernandez and said in Spanish that she needed help. She took a seat in the lobby of the police station. Officer Elizabeth Sousa was asked to talk to her. It was a quiet morning a few days after Thanksgiving. She listened as the woman began telling the story of an abduction. Her two boys were being held in Juarez, Mexico, she said; they were U.S. citizens. Hernandez opened her cellphone to a picture of Edwin and Angel, sent as evidence they were still alive.

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a key author of the bipartisan Senate immigration overhaul, is working on a proposal that would give Congress, not the Obama administration, the authority to devise a plan to bolster border security. The Florida senator has long insisted that the bill's border security provisions are not strong enough to win significant Republican support. He plans to introduce his proposal as the legislation moves to the Senate floor late this week or next.

MADERA, Calif. - While kids his age were reading Shakespeare and dissecting frogs, Benito Vasquez was picking grapes and almonds in the Central Valley. He was 14 when he crossed the border from Mexico and has worked in the fields ever since. He has never gone to school and cannot read or write in any language. Vasquez, now 28, is one of thousands potentially shut out of a landmark federal program that grants work permits and a two-year reprieve from deportation to people who came to this country illegally as children.

WASHINGTON - It's not as if Republican Rep. Steve King missed the message from party leaders about how supporting an immigration overhaul could help boost the GOP's standing among Latino voters. He just isn't buying it. "I'm incredulous with the conclusion they drew when the sun came up on the morning of Nov. 7," the firebrand Iowa congressman said the other day, standing outside the Capitol. "They just said that Mitt Romney would be president-elect on that morning if he just hadn't said two words: self-deport.