A new Rasmussen poll shows that 66% of likely voters believe that the government should improve border enforcement and reduce illegal immigration.  However, only 32% of America's "Political Class" agree.

The poll also shows that 77% of likely voters believe that illegal aliens should not be able to receive driver's licenses and 73% of Americans believe that police officers should automatically check to see if someone is in this country legally when that person is pulled over for a traffic violation. 

Only 32% of Obama voters considered his support for amnesty as a factor in their decisions to vote for him. 67% said it was either not a factor at all, or they voted for Obama in spite of his stance on amnesty.

60% of voters said reducing illegal immigration and cracking down on employers who hire them is important to them, while only 21% supported "legalizing or creating a pathway to citizenship" for illegal aliens.

57% of voters stated that amnesty would harm American workers and further strain public resources, while only 26% believe amnesty would aid economic recovery and ease public burdens.

Twenty-six of respondents are angry over immigration policy in the United States.

Sixty-two percent say gaining control of the borders is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers.

"Since the landmark raid, an economic squeeze has destroyed several businesses. Postville's population has shrunk by nearly half, to about 1,800 residents, and townsfolk say the resulting anxiety -- felt from the deli to the schoolyard -- has been relentless.

"It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, resigned earlier this year....

Roy Beck, head of the Washington-based NumbersUSA group that advocates for reducing immigration, argued that Postville invited its problems by relying so heavily on a plant many suspected was violating labor and immigration laws.

"The situation should have never gotten to that point," he said. "If you don't enforce the laws steadily, then when you suddenly enforce them, there is more collateral damage....""

“I am disturbed that local religious leaders in Postville seem to think it is immoral to arrest people who violated federal laws,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that believes in limiting immigration.

Beck said he believed the detainees were being treated humanely despite claims from local religious leaders to the contrary.

"Rosemary E. Jenks, director of government relations at Numbers USA, a major foe of illegal immigration, said the steps being taken by the administration were 'long overdue.'"

Rosemary Jenks is with a group called Numbers USA, which seeks to reduce immigration. She said it is wrong to complain about an agency that is simply trying to enforce the law. 'Yes, it is unfortunate for the children to be stuck in the middle,' she acknowledges. 'But it is based on the choices of the parents. So if these parents had thought about this issue before they crossed the border illegally, they wouldn't be in this position.'"

"'We are not calling for I.C.E. to become the Gestapo knocking on doors in the middle of the night,' said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a group in Washington that seeks to curb immigration. 'But we have to increase the likelihood that if you are here illegally you will be caught...'"

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton made appearances in Washington on Thursday to announce that they are cracking down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants as well as recognizing those that try to follow the law by using an online system that verifies an employee's legal status.

Federal prosecutors today filed a 142-count criminal indictment against former managers at Agriprocessors Inc., the struggling Postville slaughterhouse, and increased the number of immigration charges against former plant executive Sholom Rubashkin.

"Since the landmark raid, an economic squeeze has destroyed several businesses. Postville's population has shrunk by nearly half, to about 1,800 residents, and townsfolk say the resulting anxiety -- felt from the deli to the schoolyard -- has been relentless.

"It's like you're in an oven and there's no place to go and there's no timer to get you out," said former Mayor Robert Penrod, who, overwhelmed, resigned earlier this year....

Roy Beck, head of the Washington-based NumbersUSA group that advocates for reducing immigration, argued that Postville invited its problems by relying so heavily on a plant many suspected was violating labor and immigration laws.

"The situation should have never gotten to that point," he said. "If you don't enforce the laws steadily, then when you suddenly enforce them, there is more collateral damage....""

"Calls for U.S. immigration officials to concentrate on deporting more illegal aliens who have serious criminal records are showing results, police say.

A new program at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency -- called Secure Communities -- is netting aliens for deportation when they are arrested for crimes by police in 48 communities, USA Today reported Tuesday.

The program was established in response to criticism of ICE during the Bush administration. Observers said the agency concentrated too much on mass deportations of immigrant workers picked up during raids on work places instead of targeting violent illegal aliens who commit crimes, the newspaper said...."

The immigration lawyers’ national bar association called on the Justice Department on Tuesday to consider dismissing the guilty pleas of nearly 300 illegal immigrant workers arrested in a meatpacking plant raid in Iowa last year, one day after the Supreme Court rejected a statute that prosecutors used to pressure them.

In its decision Monday, the court ruled that to win convictions for identity theft, prosecutors had to show that illegal immigrants knew that false identification documents they presented to employers actually belonged to another real person.

Mayor Bill White is facing increasing hostility over his decision to have the city participate in a federal program that trains local jailers to act as immigration agents.

Some activists have suggested the move toward stronger immigration enforcement could jeopardize the accuracy of the 2010 census count for people of Hispanic origin, who are estimated to make up the city’s largest ethnic group at more than 40 percent of the population.

The arrest of an undocumented immigrant returning last week from his LDS mission has sparked discussion at the highest levels of the church about how to limit such exposure in the future.

"With the known realization that those risks exist, then we want to do better, or at least learn more," LDS apostle Jeffrey R. Holland, said Friday during an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune . "We want to be more precise, if we can, about how to help, how to make [a mission] the calmest, most spiritually rewarding experience for everybody...."

A former personnel manager arrested after a large immigration raid at a slaughterhouse pleaded guilty to federal immigration charges. The ex-manager, Elizabeth Billmeyer, 48, of Postville, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to harbor undocumented immigrants for profit and one count of knowingly accepting counterfeit resident alien cards. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Ms. Billmeyer was working at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, once the nation’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, when federal agents arrested 389 people in an immigration raid in May.

The conduct of immigration agents during a raid at a meat processing plant in Minnesota did not violate the constitutional rights of 10 Latino plaintiffs who were working there legally, a federal district court ruled March 27 (Barrera v. DHS, D. Minn., No. 07-3879, 3/27/09).

The Obama administration itself seemed taken aback by the raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano vowing to Congress that she would "get to the bottom of this."

"The secretary is not happy and this is not her policy," a Homeland Security official said Wednesday evening, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the secretary's review is ongoing.