Say it ain't so, Joe

Yesterday I wrote that Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio was the 'poster boy' for efforts to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement take away some of the authority it has given to local law enforcement.

Evidently, America's toughest sheriff agreed on a local radio show (Feathered Bastard), where he was criticizing a new agreement that only allows his deputies to screen people who are already in jail on other charges. (I've got to find a new cliche'.)

I started down this path because, like other national immigration issues, the so-called 287(g) agreements are likely to become CNMI news Nov. 28, if not sooner.

The sentence this is taken from could use another rewrite, but evidently the previous agreements allowed "federally trained and supervised state and local law enforcement officials to investigate, apprehend, transport, and detain people who are living and working in the country without authorization." (Huffington Post.

According to the Arizona Republic, "The jail-screening effort helped officials catch nearly 30,000 illegal immigrants since the program began in February 2007, but it was the street-level enforcement that caused the most controversy and produced less substantial results, capturing about 264 illegal-immigration suspects."

Unrepentant, as you can see from the links, Arpaio leaked news of the new agreement in violation of its terms.

Closer to home

Congressman Gregorio C. Sablan says that the Department of Homeland Security is circulating a proposal to require "one additional form" under the coming Guam/CNMI visa waiver program for tourists.

That's a positive, but we're very much the tail of the dog on this one. "Guam" is the operative word here with the Department of Defense asked for comment while it's moving more Marines in.

"Sablan could not say whether DHS intends to apply the same policy for Russian and Chinese tourists visiting Guam," according to the Saipan Tribune.

This *should* have been posted a day ago, but I had an unfortunate encounter with party food and spent the day sitting elsewhere