U.S. and State Law Allowed Illegal Immigrant to Secure Documents

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling and Wisconsin state laws allowed homicide suspect Raul Ponce-Rocha to attend school in Wausau and secure a driver's license, even though he was an illegal immigrant, authorities said. Read the full story from the Wausau Daily Herald.

Illegal Immigration Driving Growth of Counterfeiting Business

With millions of illegal immigrants looking for work in the U.S. the need for employment documentation is driving a new illegal trade - counterfeiting documents. Illegal immigrants in southeastern Minnesota who wanted fake green cards or Social Security numbers knew where to go -- a Rochester, MN, apartment used by Rodrigo Zambrano and Mateo Rosales. It is tempting, immigration officials say, to think of the counterfeit document business as a small-time cottage industry, but it is a lucrative national enterprise with "offices" in Minnesota. With the Obama administration's shift from prosecuting illegal immigrants to those that employ them, this problem is sure to only get worse. Read the story in today's Star Tribune.

E-Verify Making Gains Within States

With 1,000 new businesses signing up each week there are now more than 124,000 businesses, including nearly 10,000 in California, that are signed up for the Web-based identification program that enables employers to check whether an employee is authorized to work, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. For AppleOne Inc., human resources manager Linda Madigan "the E-Verify program is one of the best things we did....the [branches] don't have to look at the documents anymore and decide if it looks right or not." Read the full story in today's LA Times.