Frederick County officials are lobbying Maryland lawmakers for tighter illegal immigration laws, including a proposal that would require county schools to report a head count of undocumented students.

The county's board of commissioners is forwarding the proposals to Frederick's state delegation for consideration in the upcoming legislative session.

After facing separation from his family prior to Christmas, Guatemalan-born Ramon Gonzalez-Solares, an illegal resident of the United States who has been ordered to leave the country, will celebrate the holiday with his family after all.

Jose Perez-Gonzalez, 31, broke in through the rear door of the victim's upscale Daly City home in January 2008, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. Perez-Gonzales believed the woman, who was 77 at the time, was not home -- and when she surprised him, he beat her severely enough to blind her, Wagstaffe said.

"This guy took her life," Wagstaffe said, adding that the woman must now live in a residential facility. "The evilness of it is dramatic."

Police arrested a man they say had a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old girl for more than a year.

23-year-old Juan Lopez Rios was charged with rape for the crime. Police also say he bit the 11-year-old victim on her chest.

A Denver judge sentenced an illegal immigrant with a history of alcohol abuse to 12 years in prison on Wednesday for driving drunk and slamming into a car driven by a 45-year-old single mother.

When detectives searched Nelson Garcia Flores's apartment to investigate a rash of burglaries, they found jewelry, cash, electronics, clothing and toys, according to court records.

The judge also pointed out a number of past charges against Suarez, from Caroline County and even Maryland. Those charges were all centered around driving.

An illegal immigrant from Sonora was sentenced to prison this week for assaulting two Border Patrol agents during a foot chase near Nogales in which he was shot.

An Iowa citizens group opposed to illegal immigration is launching a statewide petition drive aimed at urging Gov.-elect Terry Branstad and lawmakers to approve a tough, Arizona-style immigration enforcement statute in Iowa.

The measure would require state and local law enforcement officers to investigate the immigration status of anyone they lawfully stop and "reasonably" suspect may be in the country illegally. It would also make it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek work while concealing their legal status and for employers to "intentionally or negligently" hire them.

An illegal immigrant who has been on the run for 10 years will soon receive his sentencing for allegedly sexually assaulting a five-year old girl.

But he said he felt the tower was an appropriate response response to the increasing dangers associated with the state's illegal immigration problems, specifically Mexican gang activity.

"My dogs would bark their head off at 2-3 in the morning and I didn't know what they were barking at," he said. "And if I were to go and get my gun and my flashlight to go and find out, I'd be putting myself at a lot of risk."

The crimes are serious; the punishments non-existent.

A News 8 investigation found the Dallas Police Department has dropped charges in more than 40 family violence cases this year where the suspect was an illegal immigrant.

Instead of going on trial, the suspects were released from jail and deported.

An illegal immigrant admitted to killing a Nashville man last Christmas when driving drunk. But the question now is what kind of consequences will he face. Immigration officials want him deported; a local judge wants him punished.

Clayton County police said an illegal immigrant is responsible for two homicides and a string of armed robberies across three metro Atlanta counties.

Artemio Hernandez, 31, is charged with murder in the death of 17-year old Monica Ambriz. Ambriz vanished during a lunch break from work on Oct. 10. Police discovered her body behind a Jonesboro office building 10 days later.

BREWSTER — An undocumented immigrant who used aliases to avoid arrest on a 10-year-old warrant for a rape on Long Island faces forgery and impersonation charges, state police said today.

An illegal immigrant accused of felony theft will not stand trial. Instead, he was given the chance to go home to Mexico.

Damacio Torres-Ochoa was scheduled in court Monday afternoon in Jefferson County to face charges of theft from an at-risk adult. But Torres-Ochoa never showed up in court. He was in Mexico.

What would a day without illegal immigrants in Fresno County look like?

Before anyone can answer that question, we must figure out how many people are living here illegally.

"Just the nature of the fact that folks are here in an undocumented status, it makes it very difficult to track and to count," Fresno County Supervisor Henry Perea said.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 10% of California's population lives here illegally.

He first lost his job as a code enforcement officer. He then lost his identity to an illegal teenage immigrant living in another state.

The victim, Jon, does not want his last name used. He found out he was victimized when he applied for unemployment earlier this year. The office informed him that his social security number was being used by someone working in Bloomington, Indiana.

(Kansas City) -- Local authorities will only say there was a police presence, but DHS confirms an immigration compliance check at a Kansas City nightclub.

Early this morning, federal agents walked into the Club Oasis, at 28th and Southwest Blvd in Kansas City.

COLLIER COUNTY — An illegal immigrant charged with killing a 34-year-old pedestrian during a hit and run in Immokalee in December got lucky when an eyewitness disappeared and another was deported before trial.

The incident occurred about 11:58 p.m. Sunday at 6609 Valero Lane near Edinburg, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said in a statement. Deputies shot Ubaldo Martinez, 41, once in the lower leg after he allegedly tried to stab another deputy about 20 minutes before at the intersection of Tower and Richardson roads.

For a Waynesboro illegal immigrant suspected of murdering another man, the difference between accidental freedom and deportation depended on the journey of a single fax.

When Graciela Bolaños of Nogales, Sonora gave birth to her two sons, she did it at Corondelet Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales, Ariz.

Bolaños, who works as an accountant in Mexico and has a tourist visa to visit the U.S., said she chose to have Mario, now 6, and Santiago, now 1, at Holy Cross, "to give them two options when they are grown: to work in the United States or Mexico."

SEATTLE -- When Maria Gianni is knocking on voters' doors, she's not bashful about telling people she is in the country illegally. She knows it's a risk to advertise
to strangers that she's here illegally -- but one worth taking in what she sees as a crucial election.

The 42-year-old is one of dozens of volunteers -- many of them illegal immigrants -- canvassing neighborhoods in the Seattle area trying to get naturalized citizens to cast a ballot for candidates like Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, who is in a neck-to-neck race with Republican Dino Rossi.

Luis Valencia kidnapped a woman and burned her alive three years ago this week -- all for a pound of stolen pot.

Judge John Kirihara sentenced the 27-year-old illegal immigrant Thursday to life without parole for murdering 27-year-old Rosa Avina. Merced County sheriff's detectives investigating the case said it was one of the most brutal crimes they'd ever seen.

Deputies said a suspected sex offender on the run for years, has struck again.

This time they said he molested a nine year old girl.

Lalo Gandara thought he'd be on his way to Mexico, but instead the illegal immigrant is in jail.

The laws of this state are known as Arizona Revised Statutes or ARS. I think most pope would be amazed if they went online and read ARS 41-1604.14.

Two Boiling Springs residents pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to file bogus tax returns, costing the federal government thousands in fraudulent refunds.

Rafael Angel Juarez Rodriguez, 28, escaped in handcuffs around 10:15 a.m. as Immigration and Customs Enforcement transported him from Taos to Albuquerque. Juarez had been arrest in Taos for being in the country illegally.

Metro police suspect a man responsible for a crash that killed a father and injured his daughter is an illegal immigrant, the Channel 4 I-Team has learned. But there's nothing police can do about it.

Police said the father and daughter were riding their motorcycle on Springfield Highway. Jose Vasquez told officers he did not realize they were next to him when he changed lanes in his SUV, hitting and killing them.

Prince William Board chairman Corey Stewart told The Examiner that a top aide at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted to him that ICE has released more than a half million convicted criminal illegal immigrants back into American communities instead of deporting them.

The five-day operation identified convicted sex offenders in Virginia and D.C. to determine if they should be removed from the country. More than 60 law enforcement officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Virginia State Police, the Bedford County Sheriff's Office and the Roanoke City Police Department participated in SOAR.

HAMILTON, OH (FOX19) - Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones is looking for help in filing a lawsuit against the Mexican government.

Jones calls it a "novel idea," saying Mexico should help pay for the cost of jailing illegal immigrants and tracking drugs that come across the border.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A sentence given to an illegal immigrant accused of opening fire on law enforcement and others is causing frustration, as some are saying the sentence is too lenient.

Moises Mendez robbed three convenience stores, including one on Loop 494 in southern Montgomery County, and then shot at the store clerk and a Houston police officer. Now the judge who sentenced him for his crimes is being criticized by the law enforcement community for not being tough enough.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—An illegal immigrant has pleaded guilty to raping a 94-year-old woman in a Northern California nursing home.

In the month after Homeland Security officials started a review of Houston's immigration court docket, immigration judges dismissed more than 200 cases, an increase of more than 700 percent from the prior month, new data shows.

FRIENDSWOOD — An illegal immigrant wanted for a 1993 Travis County murder was arrested in Friendswood last week, Friendswood police said Sunday.

The sad truth is, no one living any distance from the United States-Mexico border has the slightest idea about how bad things are relative to illegal immigration and the ongoing Mexican drug war. In fact, they treat the issues as if they were part of some scripted drama on evening television.

ALGOMA - A new push in the area toward allowing immigrants regardless of status to have "driver cards" - a limited purpose driver's license. The idea was part of the state budget plan last year, but was removed.

Thursday, a group that has tried to get the cards approved before held a forum in Kewaunee.

Las Vegas police have arrested a man suspected in the 1998 cold case slaying of two elderly residents in a retirement community.

Gustavo Ramos, 31, was arrested Wednesday in connection with the murders of 86-year-old Helen Sabraw and 75-year-old Wallace Siegel after new DNA tests revealed his blood at the murder scenes.

As Sharron Angle has pointed out, Harry Reid is an illegal immigrant's best friend. His proposal to give illegal immigrants social security benefits from the time they started working in the United States has produced massive anger over the Internet. The group Citizens United Against Criminal Aliens (CUACA), based in Los Angeles, calls Harry Reid a traitor.

Police say the infant suffered from skull fractures and was bleeding in his brain when he was taken to the hospital. The state's Department of Children and Families has now taken legal custody of the baby. Flores is being held on $1,500 cash bail.

Education officials in Georgia voted Wednesday to bar illegal immigrants from attending the state's five most selective public colleges, a decision that immigrant rights groups threatened to challenge in court.

Last May, Princeton Borough and Princeton Township agreed to accept community identification cards issued by the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit organization with an office in Princeton, to people without documented proof of legal immigration. All that is required to receive a card are a passport or consular documents from another country and proof of residency, such as utility bills.

When she turned 17, Maricruz and older sister Marisol decided to leave their family and take the arduous, illegal trek across the border in 1985. Their plan was to work the Oxnard fields and get jobs as house cleaners, then return to the village in a few months.

Instead, the sisters decided to stay in Oxnard, continue working odd jobs and send the money back home to their family.

A Mexican citizen living in Virginia Beach has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for illegally re-entering the United States after being deported following a felony conviction.

Federal immigration officials announced Friday that over the past five days, they have arrested and initiated deportation proceedings against 15 illegal immigrants who had been convicted of sex crimes and were living in Virginia and the District.

Eric Olvera Nieto, 21, allegedly struck the motorcyclist, who was stopped at a red light, in a horrific crash in Menlo Park on Monday, police said.

After two days of unrest in the Westlake area, Beck canceled a Wednesday night appearance in Pacoima and met instead with Westlake District residents angry about Sunday's shooting death of Manuel Jamines, 37.

He asked local residents for "peace on the streets" while the Los Angeles Police Department investigates the shooting.

Beck was shouted down, booed and interrupted several times by angry activists in the crowd of about 300 residents at the forum held not far from where Jamines was killed.

LaRive said about 40 people from the buses got away. He said that although he doesn't have independent knowledge that the people were working on the spill, given that the buses were from Michigan and Hallmark had been a subcontractor, he could "surmise they were the workers" on the spill.

TUCSON, AZ (KOLD) - In the wake of a recent murder, where a man was shot and burned on the Ironwood Forest National Monument this weekend, people living in the area are worried for their safety.

"These things happen a lot, and have happened over the years quite a bit."

Cindy Coping is talking about the violence near her home Northwest of Tucson.

A Mexican citizen has been charged federally for using false identification documents to land a job at Ark City's Creekstone Farms meatpacking facility, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office in Wichita.

Welfare payments to children of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County increased in July to $52 million, prompting renewed calls from one county supervisor to rein in public benefits to such families.

An illegal immigrant charged with trafficking cocaine worth millions of dollars suffered a massive stroke in the Douglas County jail earlier this year and ran up $400,000 in medical bills that were charged to the county.

Authorities in Douglas decided to dismiss the charges against Luis Luna Baro, 71 -- in large part because the county didn't want to cover his bills anymore, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.

One area not widely discussed is that the PEW Center also reported the unemployment rate for illegal immigrants in the United States is estimated to be 10%, compared to the national average of 9.7 percent for unemployed 'legal' workers.

Immigration inspectors poring over the hiring paperwork of a California company last summer found that 262 employees — a whopping 93 percent of the total workforce — had "suspect" documents on file.

At an Illinois service company, auditors found dubious documents for nearly 8 in 10 of its 200-plus employees.

Inspectors examining records at a Texas manufacturing firm found suspicious paperwork for more than half of the 107 employees on the payroll.

ATLANTA — Thirty-eight end-stage renal patients, most of them illegal immigrants, would receive the dialysis they need to stay alive at no cost under a rough agreement brokered Tuesday among local dialysis providers and Atlanta's safety-net hospital, Grady Memorial.

EWING — An illegal alien who faced being separated from his family here via deportation proceedings has been given a rare 90-day release from incarceration prior to his removal from this country, said his attorney and a federal spokesman.

PROVO — Courts are increasingly interpreting employment laws in ways that leave illegal immigrants unprotected in the workplace, according to an article in the Wisconsin Law Journal by D. Carolina Nunez, an associate law professor at BYU.

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Felix Ortega, an illegal immigrant accused of killing two teens is a car crash last year, pleaded guilty this morning to murder.

The former owner of the Sorrento Grocery, who admitted cashing payroll checks for undocumented workers during the construction boom in Lake County, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison.

But anti-illegal-immigration activists say the result of registration drives that target Latinos will invariably lead to fraudulent registration of noncitizens.

"It's probably the intention for some (groups) but an unintended consequence for most," said Rick Oltman, spokesman for Californians for Population Stabilization. "But regardless of their intention, some illegal aliens will be registered."

U.S. Border Patrol agents working in cooperation with local and federal law enforcement agencies identified a new clandestine tunnel Friday under the southbound lane at the DeConcini port of entry.

After the weight of a passenger bus traveling south caused a collapse in the road, officers from Customs and Border Protection's Office of Field Operations responded to the scene and then contacted the Border Patrol to assess the possibility of an illicit tunnel.

An EPIC/MRA poll of 600 likely voters last weekend showed that nearly three-fourths favor the Arizona law and two out of every three state residents would support a similar law being approved by Michigan lawmakers. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

SALT LAKE CITY — Several civil rights groups are asking Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff not to use a now-infamous list of 1,300 alleged illegal immigrants to pursue criminal charges against them.

More than 100 groups made a similar request last month to federal immigration officials. Now, many of them are asking the same of Shurtleff after media reports that he might use "the list" to help prove that some people on it were fraudulently using Social Security numbers.

The 28-year-old University of Houston student was trying not to get her hopes up too much. She had good reason to be optimistic. A week before, the government had terminated her younger sister's deportation proceedings in a separate case. But still, she thought, it might not happen to her.

Immigration enforcement officials have started to cancel the deportations of thousands of immigrants they have detained, a policy they said would pare huge case backlogs in the immigration courts.

An undocumented immigrant was charged with the molestation of an 8-year-old girl earlier this week, according to a Murfreesboro Police arrest report made available for public inspection Wednesday.

The Etowah County Sheriff's Office reported arresting an illegal alien for allegedly sodomizing two male juveniles.

Lorenzo Mondragon-Sanchez, 38, a Mexican national, tried to enter the base Aug. 11 as part of a work crew for Djon Construction Co., a subcontractor of Lakeshore Engineering Services Inc., which has building projects underway on the base.

A documentary released last week by Latino performance artist Jose Torres-Tama titled "From Chocolate City to Enchilada Village" is reigniting the controversy on local talk radio.

"When I arrived to this city, the city was destroyed. We rebuilt it," said Dennis Soriano, a construction worker and organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers, a local advocacy group founded after Katrina. "Do you want us to go back?"

The cost of keeping illegal immigrants in prison and providing them with medical care exceeded $250 million last year in Texas, according to state health and corrections officials.

The testimony before the House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday came as lawmakers faced a projected state budget shortfall of up to $18 billion.

An undocumented immigrant from Macedonia was sentenced Thursday to two years' probation and forfeited his nursing license as punishment for selling 100 Percocet pills to an undercover police officer in Montville.

GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. -- A Gwinnett County family says they're in shock after learning the illegal immigrant who hit their loved one, Aubrey Sosebee, with a car is still in the United States.

The Homeland Security Department plans to acquire an electronic health record system to better manage healthcare services to the increasing numbers of illegal aliens and other foreign fugitives detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

A man with ties to Arizona City was sought by the Pinal County Sheriff's Office after fleeing a shootout Monday night. He would have been deported had a judge not ruled in his favor earlier this year, officials say.

An illegal immigrant from Mexico burglarized the same Sarasota home four times since he was hired to paint there about a year ago, Sarasota Police said.

"If he doesn't get purged, he can't become a citizen," Steidl told NewsChannel 5, in an exclusive interview Tuesday afternoon.

New Mexico issued more than 10,000 licenses to immigrants in the first half of this year. Compare that to just over thirteen thousand for all of last year. State senator Rod Adair of Roswell, NM, says he saw this coming when he voted the bill down back in 2003.

A man who'd been previously deported for a number of crimes was arrested at an El Paso port of entry as he tried to make his way back in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested Jose Duran Pascual, 39, at the Paso del Norte Bridge.

As she made arrangements Thursday to bury her 14-year-old daughter, Keisha Lambert learned that the suspected gunman in the teenager's killing had been previously deported twice from the U.S.

"It's not right that he came back a third time," Lambert said.

CHARLOTTE – An Ecuadorian man accused of raping two children in south Charlotte should not have been in the country, according to Mecklenburg County Sheriff Chipp Bailey.

Police arrested 40-year-old Ricardo Velasquez on Sunday. He's charged with two counts of rape, on children ages 7 and 8, but had been previously convicted of several other crimes, including at least one DWI in 2007.

SALINAS, Calif. - A program to keep dangerous illegal immigrants out of the country is leading to tens of thousands of deportations. Now it's under fire because some say immigration officers are taking advantage, to kick illegal immigrants out of the country. Monterey County is the only county in our area taking part in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Program. Tuesday night, the Sheriff's Office said on a weekly basis they find about 200 criminals in the County Jail who are in the country illegally.

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. - A town near the South Carolina coast is taking up a proposal that would prevent illegal immigrants from living in the community.

The proposed ordinance goes before the Summerville town council today.

The United States removed or deported about 47,000 people after sifting through 3 million sets of fingerprints taken from bookings at local jails, according to government data obtained by immigration advocacy groups that have filed a lawsuit.

From the sounds of the guitar to the spicy food, the festival celebrating El Salvador's culture reminded Jose of everything he missed about his native country. But he was initially reluctant to come.

The 25-year-old came to Virginia without documents in search of "a new life" and works at construction jobs.

"The police can stop you and ask to see your documents," he said in Spanish. "To me, this seems discriminatory against the community."

CASSOPOLIS — If living in the United States illegally for 12 years wasn't enough of a crime, Mexican citizen Leticia Sosa-Cepeda compounded her problems by committing identity theft in Cass County.

DENVER -- A report published Thursday appears to show the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment may be paying unemployment insurance to illegal immigrants.

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - Marlen Moreno was greeted with a huge ovation as she walked into the Southside Presbyterian Church. She was scheduled to be deported this Sunday but Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stepped in and ordered ice to stop.

"Thank you so very much. I really appreciate that. I want to tell all the persons who are in my same situation to never give up," Moreno said.

At 6:39 p.m. Saturday, police were called to Gonzalez's home in the 500 block of Walnut Street on a report of a loose pit bull.

Officers arrived and Gonzalez, seated in a chair in front of his garage with several beers, got up and put Snoopy in a fenced area.

That should have been the end of it.

The man suspected of drunken driving and killing a Catholic nun in Prince William County this weekend is an illegal immigrant who was awaiting deportation and who federal immigration authorities had released pending further proceedings, police said Monday.

Since everyone arrested would be screened, the program could easily deport more people than Arizona's new law, said Sunita Patel, an attorney who filed a lawsuit in New York against the federal government on behalf of a group worried about the program.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A Dominican national has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for entering the country illegally for a third time.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- The Utah attorney general's office says three dozen Social Security numbers that appeared on a list of purported illegal immigrants will be reviewed to see if they were involved in any violations of state law.

On 4 July, Patricia had packed her daughter, Talia, son-in-law Raul, and three grandchildren into a battered pick-up truck outside their bungalow on the outskirts of Phoenix. After a tearful and very fond farewell, she waved goodbye as they set off on a seven-hour drive across the desert toward a new home and what they hoped would be a new life in California.

Nicaraguan mother Lorena Aguilar hawks a television set and a few clothes on the baking sidewalk outside her west Phoenix apartment block.

On the day following the holiday weekend on which Americans celebrated their nation's independence from a foreign country.....

From the article:
With one lawmaker citing President Lincoln's respect for the rule of law, the Massachusetts Senate passed a far-reaching crackdown this afternoon on illegal immigrants and those who would hire them, going further, senators said, than any immigration bill proposed over the past five years.