Michael Chertoff

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has asked the federal government to review its immigration enforcement priorities, warning that work-site raids on "non-exploitative" businesses could have "severe and lasting effects" on the local economy.

Michael Chertoff was in the driver's seat of a white Chevrolet Tahoe, under the glare of high-powered lights ringing Border Patrol headquarters. It was 10 p.m., 15 hours into the Homeland Security secretary's workday. An agent sitting beside him tapped a glowing computer screen. A map expanded. Drawing on an arsenal of radar, sensors and cameras, it displayed a spray of red dots -- suspected border crossers.

As recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast slowly expanded Wednesday, local leaders and federal officials resolved their spat over logistical tie-ups that kept thousands of residents from getting food and supplies from government aid stations. But in hard-hit Galveston Island, Hurricane Ike's widespread devastation left frazzled city officials sniping at one another about the crush of residents who wanted to return to a place that medical experts said is a health hazard.

Every few weeks for nearly four years, the Secret Service screened the IDs of employees of a Maryland cleaning company before they entered the house of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation's top immigration official. The company's owner says the workers sailed through the checks -- although some of them were actually illegal immigrants. Now, owner James Reid finds himself in a predicament that he considers especially confounding.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived environmental regulations and laws restricting immediate construction of border fencing along southwestern Arizona's Barry M. Goldwater Range. The action was taken to circumvent laws including the Endangered Species Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

For weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has waged a clandestine charm offensive on behalf of an immigration overhaul. He consulted with supportive lawmakers, listened to adversarial congressmen and slipped into the private offices of wary senators, the only sign of his presence the beefy security men waiting outside. Last week, Chertoff took skeptical members of Congress on a helicopter tour of the southern U.S.

Fearing complacency among the American people over possible terrorist threats, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday that the nation faced a heightened chance of an attack this summer. "I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune's editorial board in an unusually blunt assessment of America's terrorist threat level. "Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of Al Qaeda.

Flanked by lawmakers and law enforcement authorities at a fire station at the Port of Los Angeles, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Friday unveiled a new strategy for the rapid resumption of trade after a terrorist attack at a major U.S. port. As the U.S. Coast Guard gunboat Halibut idled a few yards offshore, Chertoff said the plan was "about making sure we spend as little time as possible paralyzed by an attack."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff predicted painful economic fallout from the array of immigration enforcement measures the administration unveiled Friday in an attempt to choke off the jobs "magnet" that draws illegal immigrants. The changes, which would stiffen work-site enforcement, add border agents and increase penalties for rogue employers, could cause havoc in immigrant-dependent industries like agriculture, hospitality and healthcare, Chertoff acknowledged.

Shortly after President Bush took office in 2001, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department's criminal division, met with the conservative group Judicial Watch. It wanted criminal charges brought against Hillary Rodham Clinton in connection with a lavish fundraising event in Los Angeles the year before. "Chertoff personally assured us he would pursue it," the group's president, Tom Fitton, said recently, recalling the meeting with several top Justice officials.