The Arkansas attorney general's office has cleared the way for signature-gathering by supporters of a proposed ballot measure requiring government agencies to verify that all those seeking public benefits in the state are legal U.S. residents.

Even though E-Verify has been postponed until September of this year, one California company heeded the government’s warning and put all their employees through the verification process.

A Vernon, California food processing and packaging company, Overhill Farms, Inc. fired 260 workers who had given the company fraudulent Social Security numbers. The company found in a recent Internal Revenue Services audit that approximately 260 employees’ social security numbers were invalid.

One of Arizona's staunchest critics of illegal immigration says politicians who don't aggressively enforce immigration laws should be removed from office.

E-Verify is an effective way to attack the jobs magnet for illegal immigrants, said Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. Beck said he hoped the increase in funding would result in more employers signing up.

"If there aren't jobs, they stop coming," he said. "We would rather solve the immigration problems not with people wearing uniforms and guns but simply with papers, just running someone through the computer."

"Margaret Heintz sputtered in frustration.

"There's nothing we can do," the Marshalltown, Iowa, woman said to her daughter, Mona Kilborn, when they talked about their shared point of aggravation -- illegal immigrants.

"Mom, you can do something," Kilborn said. "You can write your congressman. I'll even get you the address."

So in September 2007, the 90-year-old Heintz put pen to paper for her first letter to a politician. Two weeks later, she died at the hands of an illegal immigrant.

"Ironic, isn't it?" Kilborn said. "This one issue, it's changed our lives forever....""

Colorado state Sen. Ted Harvey said he wasn't surprised to learn that a key vote on a bill to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants had been rescheduled after he went out of town to care for an Alzheimer's-afflicted relative in deteriorating health.

Mr. Harvey, a Republican, had planned to vote against Senate Bill 170 when it came up at the Friday committee hearing. After Mr. Harvey flew to Florida on Tuesday morning, however, Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee moved up the vote to Wednesday.

"The Maryland State Board of Education on Tuesday said Frederick County officials are prohibited by federal law from seeking a count of how many illegal immigrants are in the county school system....

"What the Supreme Court says is that you cannot deny the public education. The same Supreme Court decision doesn't talk about [the Board of Education's] ability to provide information," Mr. Jenkins said.

Mr. Jenkins said that if the number of illegal immigrants in the school system were known, taxpayers would know more about where their money is going. He also said that if the head count were taken, the county could ask the federal government to help fund the education of those without legal status"

A proposal, developed by Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger, asks for the approval to question suspects, arrested of violent crimes and weapons offenses, about their immigration status, a complete reversal in a county where government officials, for years, refused to do so even when neighboring jurisdictions adopted the practice.

President Bush granted clemency to 20 people Tuesday, including a man who was convicted of delivering planes used by Israel in its 1948 war of independence and a real estate developer whose father has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and the party.

Tuesday marked the start of housing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees in the new Hall County Jail.

"We got our first vanload today," Supervisor Scott Arnold said at a county board meeting Tuesday.

He chairs the county's Corrections Steering Committee.

Arnold wasn't certain how many detainees were in a "vanload" and Corrections Director Fred Ruiz had already left Tuesday's county board meeting prior to Arnold providing an update to other supervisors on the ICE contract.