Janet Napolitano

The people behind Arizona's new anti-immigrant statute have at least one thing right: This mean-spirited law was enacted because the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to address the immigration system's moral and functional failures. On Sunday, the state's largest newspaper, the Arizona Republic, took the unprecedented step of giving its entire front page over to an editorial making exactly that point. "The federal government is abdicating its duty on the border.

Faced with the international outbreak of swine flu and mounting concern about the threat to Americans, the Obama administration is relying on a member of the president's Cabinet with almost no background in medicine: Janet Napolitano, the secretary of Homeland Security. Over the last two days, Napolitano has been a constant presence on television and in news reports, urging calm and offering reassurance while laying out the facts and the government's response to the outbreak.

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.

The budget battle in Washington that is forcing cuts to federal budgets has already resulted in delays and long lines at some of the nation's largest airports, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday. At a breakfast meeting with the news organization Politico, Napolitano said her agency is cutting overtime pay and sending out furlough notices to customs officers and airport security screeners. As a result, she said lines have already increased 150% to 200% at airports, including Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will not seek the open U.S. Senate seat in her home state of Arizona, preferring to remain in the Obama Cabinet, a spokesman confirmed Friday. The former Arizona governor informed Democratic leaders of her decision this week, coming to a quick decision following incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Kyl's announcement he would retire when his term expires in 2013. "She cares deeply about Arizona, but the Secretary intends to continue doing the job that the President asked her to do -- protecting the American people from terrorism and other threats to our country," Sean Smith, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement.

Battling the widespread perception that U.S. border cities have become more dangerous, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday called on public officials to stop exaggerating the violence on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico and "be honest with the people we serve. " In a speech in El Paso, Napolitano cited FBI statistics showing that violent crime rates in Southwest border counties are down 30% over the last two decades and are "among the lowest in the nation.

WASHINGTON - On the third day of hearings on a bill to overhaul the immigration system, senators took a break from partisan sniping and grilled Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on whether the Boston bombings had exposed shortcomings in the nation's immigration security apparatus. Conservative Republicans have tried to slow the Senate bill since two brothers, ethnic Chechens granted political asylum from Russia as minors with their family, were identified as the suspects in last week's bombings.

Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona, a vocal critic at times of the federal government's response to illegal immigration, faced little questioning Thursday on the topic as senators considered her nomination to be secretary of the huge Department of Homeland Security. The department, created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, employs more than 200,000 people responsible for border and port security, airline passenger screening, natural disaster response and many other functions.

Nonviolent immigrant detainees could be held in converted hotels, nursing homes or placed on electronic ankle bracelets for monitoring as part of a series of reforms planned for the nation's detention system, Department of Homeland Security officials said Tuesday. The moves would help overhaul a system that houses an average of 32,000 detainees every day across the country and has been criticized as having unsafe and inhumane conditions. Some of the detainees include women and children.

Senior Homeland Security Department officials warned Wednesday that the threat to the United States is the highest it has been since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, citing the emergence of more foreign terrorist groups, a sharp increase in extremists in this country and the "lone wolf" operator whom authorities worry they may not be able to stop. "The terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "In some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened state since those attacks.