Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is expected to push for heavy immigration enforcement as chairman of the House immigration subcommittee next session. (Tina Fultz/ZUMApress.com)

During his campaign for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama made the now-broken promise to Latino supporters that he would pass comprehensive immigration reform in his first year as president. But in remarks to the press on Wednesday, after Republicans took control of the House and won back several seats in the Senate, talk of immigration reform was noticeably absent.

Democrats will still hold a majority in both chambers during the lame-duck session, when leaders hope to pass the DREAM Act to give some undocumented young people and military service members legal status. But after January, immigration reform efforts that include paths to legal status for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States seem next to impossible, meaning the next few years will see little progress for immigration reform advocates.

“The new leaders of the House have made it clear that they’re going to continue to push an enforcement-only strategy,” said Mary Giovagnoli, director of pro-reform Immigration Policy Center. “It’s going to be a hard couple of years.”

The Republicans ushered into power in the midterms favor tight border security, strict enforcement and policies that would allow states, along with the federal government, to police immigration. Many campaigned on hard-line immigration positions that cost them support among Latinos, but won backing from the broad segments of the population that approve of illegal immigration crackdowns like Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

In short, Republicans who won on Tuesday hold radically different views on tackling illegal immigration from the president and Senate Democrats. Prospects are bleak for anyone who hopes to see meaningful change on immigration policy: A Democratic Senate will have trouble getting immigrant-friendly measures past the House, while the House will have trouble getting enforcement-only measures past the Senate — or the president’s desk. The result will likely be more of the same on immigration policy.

There are a few areas where Republicans have brought forth proposals to reform the immigration system. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who is expected to take over as chairman of the House’s immigration subcommittee, plansuse his leadership position to call in Obama administration officials and question them on immigration enforcement, claiming “they’re not enforcing the laws.”

It’s a common argument from Republicans, who have repeatedly accused the Obama administration of taking a lax approach. After reports that immigration courts were throwing out deportation cases for illegal immigrants who were deemed non-dangerous or had pending citizenship applications, the seven current Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committeesent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano demanding to know how much it would cost to find and deport every illegal immigrant in the country.

“[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has cited a lack of resources as one of the reasons for its prioritization of cases and for its selective enforcement,” the Oct. 21 letter reads. “But to date, we have not seen any efforts by ICE, your Department, or the Administration to request an increase in ICE funding. … As a result, it appears that your Department is doing the very thing that we have raised concerns about in several letters – allowing illegal aliens to evade the law.”

If Republicans attempt to force increased immigration enforcement, it would require a huge increase in funding for ICE. The agency currently receives$2.6 billion from Congress each year to detain and remove illegal immigrants. ICE Chief John Morton says this budget allows the agency to deport about 400,000 people per year — a number it approaching this year. Deporting the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, then, could cost as much as $70 billion.

Of course, most Republicans don’t advocate a deportation-only method to decreasing illegal immigration numbers in the country. GOP members also say they hope to pass legislation to eliminate possible incentives for foreigners to stay in the country by cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, eliminating the few social services illegal immigrants can receive and in some cases even eliminating citizenship for children born in the country to undocumented parents.

A GOP-led initiative to end birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants under the 14th Amendment received support from 95 House members in 2009, although the bill never made it out of committee. Instead of attempting to amend the Constitution, the bill would create a statute limiting citizenship to children with at least one parent in the country legally.

King plans to push for the bill again in the next session of Congress, where support for the measure will be even stronger. King insists the bill is both legal and necessary to stop the “anchor baby” phenomenon — the idea that illegal immigrants come to America and have children in order to gain legal status — which most immigration experts agree does not exist because citizens cannot petition for legal status for their families until they are adults.

Expanding E-Verify, a controversial program that allows employers to check the immigration status of potential employees, is another likely priority for the Republican-led House. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who is expected to head the Judiciary Committee, co-sponsored a bill to make use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers. (Federal agencies and contractorsare already required to use the program.)

Of course, House Republicans cannot enact any laws without the support of Obama or the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is unlikely to risk angering Latino voters by passing enforcement-only immigration measures. But even if it means gridlock, House leaders seem committed to blocking comprehensive immigration reform.

“The best solution to the problem of illegal immigration is to enforce current laws,” Smith told the Chicago Tribune last week. “Attrition through enforcement can reduce the number of illegal immigrants already in the U.S.”

Illegal immigrants are held at a detention facility in Phoenix, Ariz. (Mary F. Calvert/ZUMApress.com)

Until last week, local officials in Arlington, Va., Santa Clara, Calif., San Francisco and Washington, D.C., thought they’d have no trouble opting out of the Secure Communities program, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiative that runs fingerprints collected by local police through federal immigration databases. After all, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and an assistant attorney general had both written letters confirming that an opt-out was possible, and the ICE website even lists steps for communities to opt out.

But in the past week, these local officials’ plans have been thrown into turmoil, as a senior ICE official told The Washington Post that opting out of the program was impossible and Napolitano confirmed on Wednesday, “We don’t consider Secure Communities an opt-in, opt-out program.”

Now, however, local officials say they plan to go ahead with the opt-out process. Arlington County Board member J. Walter Tejada, a Democrat, told TWI the county still intends to contact state and ICE officials to begin removing itself from the program.

“I’m aware there is some internal turmoil with ICE, but for us nothing has changed,” Tejada said. “We’re moving forward.”

Local politicians and activists say Napolitiano’s statements have not deterred them from pushing back against Secure Communities, arguing that ICE cannot impose the program without their consent. In many cases, however, it already has: ICE signs a memorandum of understanding with state officials to agree to the program, and local communities are often only notified they are participating after it has already taken place. If guidelines for opting out turn out to be meaningless, critics of the program say, then ICE has misled the public.

“If ICE for some reason decides not to follow through, I think we’re looking at possible massive deception,” said Sarahi Uribe, lead organizer of the Uncover The Truth Campaign, a coalition that opposes Secure Communities. “We’re going to continue to push for transparency and accountability.”

The path of fingerprints from local police stations to ICE has been obscured in public statements from the agency. Secure Communities is often explained as a fingerprint-sharing program between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials, which hints at a straight transfer of biometric information. But as The Washington Post reported, the program actually depends on an agreement between the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, meaning local jurisdictions have little control over where information they provide to one agency ends up. When fingerprints are submitted to the FBI to check for criminal records, they can be sent along to ICE without additional consent from local law enforcement agencies, an ICE official confirms.

This means opting out, at least in the sense local jurisdictions understood it, is impossible. All local police send fingerprints to states, which send it to the FBI for criminal background checks. The only way to withhold information from ICE under such a system would be to eliminate these checks entirely — something no jurisdiction has indicated it would be willing to do.

Local communities can only opt out of receiving information about why specific individuals needed to be detained; they cannot opt out of sending the fingerprints that could lead to their detention.

“That’s not really opting out because you’re still going to send a lot of people to ICE without due process,” said Angela Chan, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco. “‘Opt out’ means something much more: It means the information is never sent to ICE in the first place.”

Previous statements by government officials seem to back up that definition. Last month, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of a House subcommittee on immigration, sent a letter to the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security requesting clear instructions for the opt-out process, which she defined as “how local law enforcement agencies may opt out of Secure Communities by having the fingerprints they collect and submit to the [state identification bureaus] checked against criminal, but not immigration, databases.”

In his Sept. 8 response, Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich quoted her definition of opting out, then listed instructions for how a local jurisdiction could remove itself from the “Secure Communities deployment plan.”

Napolitano also responded without correcting Lofgren’s definition of what “opt out” would mean. A month later, as communities began to vote to opt out, the message seems to have changed. Immigrant rights groups and local officials are baffled — and angry — after beginning an opt-out process Napolitano now claims does not exist.

“We definitely were led to believe that we could opt out,” said D.C. City Council member Jim Graham, who led the charge for the District to opt out of the program. “Our chief of police had been negotiating a memorandum of understanding with the FBI.”

In San Francisco County, officials say they plan to move forward with removing the county from the program. Sheriff Michael Hennessey has already notified officials his county would like to opt out of the program and plans to meet with ICE staff and the California attorney general’s office after the Nov. 2 elections. Still, he said, the constant confusion over the program is frustrating.

“Obfuscation and misdirection seem to be ICE’s preferred method of communication, because that is all we have been getting so far,” Hennessey said.

Although ICE has said it prioritizes criminal illegal immigrants for deportation — and does deport more criminal than non-criminal illegal immigrants — some critics express concern about those caught up in the system by Secure Communities. Anyone who is arrested has his fingerprints taken, even if he is not ultimately charged with a crime. Even victims of crimes such as domestic abuse can be fingerprinted, and critics of the program argue they might not come forward if they fear they could be deported by reporting their abusers. According to ICE data released in August, one-quarter of the illegal immigrants deported through Secure Communities had no criminal records.

Opting out is also an issue of cost, critics claim. Secure Communities nets a larger number of illegal immigrants than routine law enforcement, particularly in communities that instruct officers not to ask about immigration status. This means higher costs when ICE asks police to hold people for immigration violations, said Margaret Huang, executive director of the Rights Working Group, who lobbied for Arlington to opt out of the program.

ICE officials say they routinely ask local police to hold suspected illegal immigrants and that Secure Communities does not change that process.

Still, immigrant rights advocates argue the program must be voluntary because it was not created by federal law. Since local law enforcement agencies are not given additional funding for the program, requiring them to participate amounts to an unfunded federal mandate, Chan says.

“Unless it is federally mandated by Congress, then it seems they have to make sure there is a real mechanism for opting out,” Huang said. “If ICE has created a program that cannot respond to jurisdictions that want to be removed, they need to fix the program so they can.”

Mullins, from his campaign Web site

Republican 3rd Congressional District candidate Tom Mullins says he wasn’t making a statement of support for the recently arrested members of a Michigan-based militia group when he wrote in a blog posting that the government is “after the militia” but “the citizen militia is not the problem.”

Mullins made this statement on Monday in the blog posting on his campaign Web site:

“Janet Napolitano and the Federal Government are after the militia now. Don’t fall for the media spin accusing Americans with guns as the problem. When you disarm the American people that will be tyranny. We are all citizen soldiers and we will protect our nation when our government fails us.”

Earlier this week, the Michigan militia members were arrested and charged with planning to kill police officers in the hopes of sparking an uprising against the government.

In his blog posting, Mullins stated that “the citizen militia is not the problem. We are the solution to many of the challenges that face our nation.” He encouraged people to “Please step forward to serve New Mexico and our great nation in whatever way that you can” and mentioned “volunteering in your local community” or church, donating blood or “assisting a political campaign.”

Mullins wrote in an e-mail that his blog posting shouldn’t be interpreted as support for those who were arrested. He said he was simply trying to convey his fear that the situation will be used to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans.

“My point is that sensationalism sells,” Mullins wrote in the e-mail. “There are many instances where our government has gone after law abiding Americans for questionable reasons. I know of many folks who are concerned about being labeled domestic terrorists without due process.”

“Our law enforcement folks do a difficult job, but oftentimes law abiding Americans get corralled by the media as militia,” he wrote. “Owning a gun is not a crime. Training with guns in the woods is not a crime.”

“I believe this Michigan matter like many others will be used by the gun control believers to disarm law abiding Americans. That is my fear,” he wrote in the e-mail.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, there have been nearly 600 murders in Juarez, including 202 in March according to Dr. Jose Z. Garcia, a professor at New Mexico State University.

“We all have a responsibility to protect our citizens, property, and communities,” said Richardson in a statement. “While we have invested money in local law enforcement along the border, we must continue to be on guard against drug-related violence on the Mexican side of the border.”

New Mexico Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall and Rep. Harry Teague, who represents the border area, called for Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to increase border patrol presence in the “boot heel” area of New Mexico. In a letter to Napalitano, the three Democrats asked for the Department of Homeland Security to establish a Border Patrol Forward Operating Base (FOB) in the area.

“Although the Border Patrol force strength is now at a record 20,000 agents and the apprehension rate along the southern border is at the lowest level since the 1970s, it is clear that more still needs to be done to fully secure our nation’s borders,” the three wrote in the letter yesterday. “Just this last weekend, a rancher was murdered at his ranch in Arizona just across the New Mexico state line after he encountered a person on his property.”

The Arizona Republic reported on the “firestorm” that has resulted from the murder, which included calls from former Republican U.S. Congressman, and staunch immigration opponent, Tom Tancredo for increased National Guard presence on the border. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Senator John McCain, both Republicans, also joined in on the call.

In 2005, Richardson declared a state of emergency in border areas to provide more law enforcement funding for the border area in New Mexico. In 2006, President George W. Bush ordered national guard troops to the border to stem the flow of immigrants flowing into the United States from the U.S.-Mexico border.

At that time, Richardson was critical of using National Guardsmen to patrol the border.

“Our guardsmen are tired, they’ve been in Afghanistan and Iraq. I need our National Guard for forest fires,” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said to ABC News in 2006.

Last year, however, Richardson asked for funding, along with the other border governors, for additional National Guard troops on the United States-Mexico border.

The murder, if it is proven to be by an illegal immigrant, would be a rarity, Omar Candelaria, a Border Patrol spokesman, told the Republic. Candelaria told the Republic that he was not aware of any U.S. citizen being murdered by an illegal immigrant in that sector for more than a decade.

Earlier this week, Congressman Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., wrote a letter to Napolitano asking her to consider using Los Alamos National Laboratory technology to help detect liquid explosives.

The Christmas Day terror attack involved Abdulmutallab failing to detonate the explosive PETN reportedly sewn into his underwear while on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Obama said of the failed attack, “at this stage in the review process it appears that this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies.”

Later in the address, Obama mentioned the national laboratories; Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory are both located in New Mexico.

“And today, I’m directing that the Department of Homeland Security take additional steps, including: strengthening our international partnerships to improve aviation screening and security around the world; greater use of the advanced explosive detection technologies that we already have, including imaging technology; and working aggressively, in cooperation with the Department of Energy and our National Labs, to develop and deploy the next generation of screening technologies,” Obama said in his address to the media according to White House transcripts.

“As we work to address the vulnerabilities this plot has exposed, we must institute systems and technologies that would prevent the specific security breaches on Flight 253 while having the vision and flexibility to deter future threats,” said Luján in a statement sent to the press Wednesday morning. “An overarching objective of these applications is to get the traveling public through security in a rapid manner.”

Luján specifically referred to MagViz technology in the statement.

Los Alamos’ Petr Volegov referenced MagViz technology and its potential aid to airport screening in a pdf file from September of 2009:

Our group built a ULF-MRI instrument, MagViz (R&D 100 Award Winner), specifically designed to screen threat substances at airport screening portals. It was tested successfully at the Albuquerque Sunport in December 2008. MagViz discriminates threats from benign items using the same MR contrast mechanisms for brain imaging. This is presently one of the only non-invasive techniques that can determine chemical composition in multiple unopened bottles, and through opaque and foil containers and without exposure to large magnetic fields.

According to a LANL news release, the technology would “mak[e] airline liquid restrictions obsolete.”

This is not the first time Luján has brought up the MagViz technology. In a March 18, 2009 hearing of the Subcommittee on Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection of the House Homeland Security Committee, Luján referenced the Magviz technology while speaking to Stephen Lord, the director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues at the Government Accountability Office.

According to a Lexis search, Luján said at the subcommittee hearing, “The national labs are developing technologies that will improve the safety and affordability of air cargo screening and air travel in general. For example, the MagViz scanner is capable of identifying liquids and gels within sealed cargo or baggage using technologies similar to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems.”

The Department of Homeland Security report on domestic rightwing extremism followed a report on domestic left-wing extremism two months earlier. The report on right-wing extremism caused an outcry in the conservative blogosphere.

Pearce wrote of the right-wing extremism report, “The document never once mentions the radical jihadists who are in this country and wish to ‘annihilate America and annihilate Americans.’”

As for Hasan, Pearce wrote:

Instead of heeding the warnings about this domestic terror threat and stopping him, Secretary Napolitano again missed the obvious while still clinging to the belief that if you are a veteran, or pro-lifer, if you attend church or are stockpiling food for bad economic times, then you are more of a threat than the terrorists who have been identified by the system.

A report on underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is expected to be released later today.

Napolitano has been under fire for saying “the system worked” in the case of Abdulmatullab. Washington Independent reporter Spencer Ackerman writes that this quote is taken out of context:

How hard is it to watch a clip of an interview? Yesterday on ABC’s “This Week,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made the following observation about the aftermath of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted detonation of Northwest Airlines Flight 253:

Once this incident occurred, everything went according to clockwork, not only sharing throughout the air industry, but also sharing with state and local law enforcement. Products were going out on Christmas Day, they went out yesterday, and also to the [airline] industry to make sure that the traveling public remains safe. I would leave you with that message. The traveling public is safe. We have instituted some additional screening and security measures, in light of this incident, but, again, everyone reacted as they should. The system, once the incident occurred, the system worked.

Pearce is not the only person to be calling for Napolitano’s resignation; Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., called for her resignation on December 29. A number of conservatives called for her resignation in the wake of the Abdulmatullab attack, which was thwarted by a fellow passenger on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Napolitano is not the first Homeland Security Secretary to face calls for resignation; many, including Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nev., called for the resignation of Michael Chertoff after the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina. FEMA is a part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Update:

Scott Forrester, the executive director of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, responded to Pearce’s call for Napolitano’s resignation. Forrester said in an e-mail to the New Mexico Independent, “Considering that Steve Pearce voted multiple times against making the recommendations of the non-partisan 9-11 Commission the law of the land, Pearce’s overheated rhetoric on national security should be seen as nothing more than it is: hypocrisy.”

Napolitano, shown here during Wednesday’s speech. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)

Napolitano did not promise that such reform would happen at all, but pointed out that President Barack Obama has said immigration reform will be one of his top priorities when the debate over health care reform concludes.

The New Mexico-born Homeland Security Secretary said it would include a proposal similar to the DREAM Act , which would grant certain undocumented immigrants–such as those who arrived in the United States as children and graduate from high school–the opportunity to earn permanent residency.

Any reform bill, she said, must address the fact that “we are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants and opportunity.”

“Our hope is that a bill will come out,” she said about immigration reform. “I’m not going to give you a timetable.”

‘A historic moment’

In the meantime, Napolitano told hundreds of people during her keynote address at the Domenici Public Policy Conference, efforts to step up border enforcement and interrupt the flow of drugs from Mexico and the flow of weapons and cash into Mexico are “zooming along.”

Napolitano spent much of her time listing all of the programs related to border enforcement and security that have received increased funding — including the tripling of the number of intelligence agents and the inspection, for the first time, of vehicles and trains heading south into Mexico.

She said the Mexican government is more willing to cooperate and involved in the fight against the cartels than ever before, which presents a unique opportunity to break up the cartels. The Mexican government has started inspecting vehicles going into Mexico for the first time, she said, and has sent federal agents — and in the case of Ciudad Juárez, the military — to help quell violence.

In addition, the two governments are working more closely together. Napolitano noted an attempt to develop a system that would allow the sharing of information between local, state and federal law enforcement agents on both sides of the border nearly instantaneously.

“We really stand at a historic moment,” Napolitano said. “This is a time that we just have not seen before, and may not see again, so it’s very important.”

‘It needs to be done’

Napolitano said she could cite all the statistics to show that the situation is improving, but those numbers don’t tell the real story. And when a University of Texas-El Paso student talked about the severity of the violence in Juárez during a question-and-answer period, the secretary’s tone turned somber.

“It’s not easy, and it does not fit into an organizational box, and it’s not quick,” she said of efforts to break up the cartels. “But it needs to be done.”

Acknowledging that it’s going to be a long fight, Napolitano said her message is that “the United States is going to be there.”

Napolitano is scheduled to speak on homeland security and the U.S./Mexico border this evening at 6:30 p.m. On Thursday, among those scheduled to speak are U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright, and former U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.

Here is the full schedule and the speaker bios. You can also watch the conference live online.

Former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici will also be speaking at the conference, giving opening remarks when the event begins at 2 p.m. today.

This is the second year of the conference. Named for New Mexico’s longest-serving senator, who retired last year, NMSU’s Domenici Institute aims to bring together top experts to focus on significant national issues.

The conference is being held in NMSU’s Corbett Center Ballrooms.

Violence in Mexico is reaching alarming levels, with over 6,000 drug-related murders reported in the country, a federal report released this week shows.

And one way of keeping the violence at bay, officials said, is to choke the flow of money and weapons from the U.S., into Mexico, where the drug cartels receive them with open arms.

But at the heart of what Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other officials rolled out today as a new Southwest Counternarcotics Strategy is a stress on greater cooperation among an alphabet soup of federal, state, local and tribal agencies.

And that means a greater emphasis will be placed on the nation’s growing network of fusion centers. Napolitano acknowledged as much.

“From the Homeland Security department standpoint, we intend to use the fusion centers as our major connect with law enforcement, not exclusive but major in the sense in sharing information, getting information out and receiving information from,” Napolitano said.

Fusion centers are little-known facilities over the country — there are 70 currently, including in New Mexico — that have popped up over the past half decade or so.

Fusion centers put representatives of federal, state, local and tribal agencies in the same place where they and their respective agencies share tips on everything from terrorism to suspected drug trafficking and public health emergencies.

Supporters describe fusion centers as an antidote to “siloing” of information, a practice often said to have contributed to the intelligence breakdown leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But as the fusion center movement has grown into a national trend, it also has drawn concern from civil liberties groups. The ACLU submitted a report in mid-2008 that was critical of fusion centers and spoke of “overzealous intelligence gathering, the expansion of uncontrolled access to data on innocent people, hostility to open government laws” and “watching and recording the everyday activities of an ever-growing list of individuals.”

Napolitano was not asked Friday and did not discuss the ongoing debate – often conducted below the public’s radar – on how to strike the balance between supporting national security and protecting civil liberties.

But she said that the new counternarcotics strategy unveiled Friday will require “growing the concept of fusion centers.”

“If you have people together, who work together, who know each other, who have access to each other’s databases, access to information sharing to the greatest extent possible — it facilities law enforcement,” Napolitano said.

Already Napolitano’s department is beginning to send more of its intelligence analysts to work at various fusion centers around the country.

“One of the things we want to have a greater capacity for out of Washington is not just the gathering of intelligence but the analyzing of intelligence,” Napolitano said.

It is unclear whether New Mexico had gotten its own Homeland Security intelligence analyst, but as of last summer, it had not gotten any officers from the federal agency. New Mexico’s All Source Information Center, or fusion center, began operating in September 2007.

Narcotics “phenomenon”

Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were in Albuquerque Friday to meet with the 21-member advisory council impaneled by Napolitano to give advice on issues affecting homeland security. The council, which Napolitano swore in Friday, met at the University of New Mexico.

One of the big issues confronting the country is the flow of narcotics from Mexico, officials said.

“The secretary has asked us how to come up with concrete examples on how to fight against that phenomenon,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Alan Bersin, known more informally as the U.S. border czar, said Friday.

He told the Albuquerque Journal in a story that ran Friday that the U.S. will tighten border checks for people heading south and will muster more border resources in an effort to halt the flow of American guns and cash of the cartels.

That is resulting in the first-ever inspections of southbound rail shipments into Mexico, and the increase of the number of inspections of southbound vehicles should help meet that goal, Napolitano said Friday.

Bersin said new southbound border checks had already seized tens of millions in drug cash and about 1,000 weapons.

Federal officials also hope to roll out nationally a program that is up and running in select cities and counties. It would give law enforcement authorities at local jails across the country access to an immigration database to help pinpoint individuals who may be potential risks.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said there would be greater efforts toward prosecuting money launderers.

“Money and weapons are clearly as important to the cartels as the drugs,” added Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The roll-out of the strategy didn’t go over well with everyone.

“Success in winning or combating the drug war should not solely be defined by number of drugs seized, or the number of arrests and incarcerations of those involved with drug trafficking organizations and drug cartels,” said Bill Piper, director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

“Success in combating drugs and drug use should be defined by the number of people entering substance abuse treatment programs, the number of successful drug prevention programs being implemented, and the reduction in the number of people harmed by drugs and drug use.”

The U.S.’s efforts at addressing border security and drug trafficking come at a time when Mexico is taking the fight to the drug cartels like never before under the direction of that country’s president, Felipe Calderon.

“It’s one of the best times to engage the country’s southern neighbor,”  said advisory council member and former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Jim Jones.

“A trust has been created,” Jones said.

For anyone who views the council as merely window dressing, former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Gary Hart had a different take Friday.

“I’ve served on a number of commissions and committees,” said Hart, an advisory council member. “Most of them are pretty lackluster, more or less a formal way to bring in people from the outside. I’ve checked into it. This is meant to be, and is going to be, a very active advisory council. I had dinner with the secretary last night and she made it very clear that she takes the role of the council seriously, and invites the ideas from those who are participating, both about how the department can improve its mission and new ways of doing things.”

Kate Nash of the Santa Fe New Mexican doesn’t answer the question. But she ferreted out some information with this blog that goes some way to answering it.

Was the guv at the first game of the NBA championships in Los Angeles?

I’m not really sure. The guv’s press office hasn’t immediately responded to an e-mail and a phone call about his whereabouts today.

But this story says it pretty plainly that Richardson was in the crowd that watched the L.A. Lakers demolish the Orlando Magic.

UPDATE: The governor’s office said Friday afternoon that the governor had previous commitments, which is why he didn’t attend the event Friday at UNM featuring Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

According to his office, Richardson was in Truth or Consequences to attend the U.S. Border Patrol Change of Command Ceremony and to announce the Western State Boating Officer of the Year Award.