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The number of unauthorized foreigners in the US fell from 12.5 million in summer 2007 to 10.8 million in early 2009, according to an analysis of Current Population Survey data by the Center for Immigration Studies. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated that the number of unauthorized fell from 12.4 million in 2007 to 11.9 million in 2008, while DHS estimated that the number fell from 11.8 million in 2007 to 11.6 million in 2008.

There is agreement that the number of unauthorized is falling, but a debate over the relative importance of the recession and stepped-up enforcement to explain the decline. If the number dropped because the unemployment rate more than doubled between summer 2007 and summer 2009, from 4.6 to 9.7 percent, the number of unauthorized could be expected to resume increasing with recovery. If more enforcement explains the drop, the number of unauthorized would be expected to continue shrinking during recovery.

The National Council of La Raza released a report on September 1, 2009 that estimated there were 10 million unauthorized workers in the US, including 8.1 million from Latin America.

Stepped-up enforcement worries migrant advocates, who question what they call "the aggressive enforcement policies" of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. She responded: "The underlying complaint is that we are simply enforcing the law. Because people are unhappy with the underlying law doesn't mean that we are not going to enforce it."

Napolitano emphasized the changes at DHS under President Obama: "our overall approach is very, very different," including holding employers responsible for hiring illegal workers and targeting foreigners convicted of US crimes rather than those whose only crime was working in the US.

Napolitano, who believes that tough enforcement is necessary to pave the way for legalization, defended policies that require federal contractors to use E-Verify to check new hires, more immigration audits of employers, and expanding the 287(g) program that deputizes state and local police to enforce immigration laws; 66 police agencies participated in the 287(g) program in August 2009.

Starting September 8, 2009, federal contractors providing goods or services worth more than $100,000, and subcontractors providing more than $3,000, had to participate in E-Verify.

DHS in July 2009 told the 66 state and local police trained to enforce immigration laws under the 287(g) program to focus on those accused of violent crimes. Under a new MOU to be signed with DHS by October 2009, police cooperating with DHS are not supposed to arrest foreigners simply because they are illegally in the US.

DHS said that deputized state and local police identified more than 120,000 suspected illegal foreigners between 2006 and 2009; most were later deported. Migrant advocates say that police often engage in racial profiling to identify unauthorized foreigners. Some 356,739 foreigners were deported in FY08, including 113,462 removed under expedited procedures and 97,133 convicted of US crimes? a third were drug-related crimes.

Almost 70 percent of those removed were Mexicans, who are usually sent by bus to the border. So-called ICE Air flights take foreigners to Central America and the Caribbean.

DHS in July 2009 announced that it would end efforts to have the Social Security Administration include immigration-enforcement notices in the no-match letters the SSA sends to US employers with 10 or more employees who pay Social Security taxes when employer-supplied information does not match SSA records. DHS attempted the no-match enforcement strategy in August 2007, but the effort was blocked by a federal court injunction.

The Senate adopted an amendment to the $43 billion DHS appropriation bill preventing DHS from rescinding no-match with FY10 funds, prompting DHS to use FY09 funds to formally rescind the no-match strategy in August 2009 with FY09 funds. As a result, there were never any DHS notices included with no-match letters.

Border. Some 791,600 unauthorized foreigners were apprehended in FY08, down from 960,800 in FY07 and 1.2 million in FY06. The Border Patrol expects to apprehend fewer than 600,000 foreigners in FY09, which ended September 30, 2009.

Almost 90 percent of those apprehended between ports of entry were Mexicans, and eight percent were from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Between October 2008 and June 2009, some 429,000 foreigners were apprehended trying to enter the US illegally between border posts and 130,000 were stopped trying to come through ports of entry using false documents or hidden in cars.

The Government Accountability Office in September 2009 criticized the Secure Border Initiative, which relies on cameras, radars and sensors to detect and deter illegal entries over the Mexico-US border. Boeing, the major contractor developing the "virtual fence," received $500 million over the past three years but repeatedly failed to deliver promised technology that can withstand the environment and help agents to locate unauthorized foreigners. The US government spent a total of $3.7 billion on border security improvements in the past three years.

Between 350 and 500 foreigners die each year on the Mexico-US border; the number of deaths has not dropped in line with apprehensions. Since 1994, the US government has built walls and fences in areas where successful border crossers could easily disappear into US urban areas. Migrants responded by using smugglers to try to enter the US via mountains and deserts, where the risk of death is higher.

The US has no effective system to determine if foreigners admitted legally for visits leave as required; there is no exit-control system. In FY09, some 39 million temporary foreign visitors were admitted, most nationals of countries that do not require visas to enter the US and most arriving by air for tourist visits. Almost three million did not officially check out of the US, although officials believe that most left but did not turn in the card that is usually collected by airlines upon departure; they estimate that 200,000 may have remained in the US.

The arrest of a 19-year-old Jordanian who was charged in October 2009 with overstaying his tourist visa and plotting to blow up skyscrapers in Dallas renewed calls by Congress for an exit-monitoring system.

Interior. DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement on July 1, 2009 announced that it was auditing the I-9 forms completed by newly hired workers at 654 businesses across the US; in FY08, ICE audited I-9 forms at 503 businesses. ICE said that its I-9 audits "illustrate ICE's increased focus on holding employers accountable for their hiring practices and efforts to ensure a legal workforce."

One of the firms audited, American Apparel in Los Angeles, announced that 1,800 workers, a quarter of its employees, would be fired because they could not prove they were legally authorized to work in the US. American Apparel makes T-shirts and miniskirts in a pink seven-story sewing plant in the center of Los Angeles. CEO Dov Charney has campaigned to "legalize L.A.," by granting legal status to illegal immigrants.

ICE's activities at American Apparel are similar to the strategy used in Operation Vanguard in the late 1990s to remove unauthorized workers from Midwestern meatpacking plants. At that time, INS agents subpoenaed employee records from the plants and checked them against government databases and informed plant managers that they would be coming to interview the 20 percent of employees who appeared to be unauthorized.

Before INS agents arrived at the plants, most of those suspected of being unauthorized quit. Operation Vanguard was criticized by migrant advocates for pushing immigrant families into poverty by denying parents the chance to work, by restrictionists for not removing known unauthorized workers from the US, and by farmers for reducing slaughtering capacity at a time of low meat prices due to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. The program was stopped.

In the course of a typical year, the US detains about 400,000 foreigners in federal facilities as well as 350 local jails and private prisons. The current 32,000-bed immigrant-detention system costs the federal government $2.4 billion a year, and has resulted in questionable deaths at a number of privately owned detention facilities.

In October 2009, DHS announced that it was reviewing the 350 contracts it has with jails, state prisons and private facilities to detain 80 percent of the foreigners held pending removal or grants of asylum. Advocates hope that DHS will embrace electronic monitoring and other alternatives to incarceration, emphasizing that monitoring electronic ankle bracelets can cost as little as $14 a day while detention costs $100 a day.

RICO. After ICE arrests unauthorized workers at a workplace, attorneys sometimes sue employers on behalf of legal workers, alleging that the employer engaged in a conspiracy to hire unauthorized foreigners in order to hold down the wages of legal workers. Under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, legal workers can win triple damages if they can prove such hiring occurred to depress their wages.

Most of the cases brought against US employers are settled before trial by employers who fear triple-damage verdicts. Of those that go to trial, few result in victories for the legal workers.

For example, in Chicago in July 2009 a federal court ruled that RICO applied only to actual conspiracies. If the employer did not know the workers were unauthorized, the court ruled, there is no RICO case. A.L.L. Masonry, represented by Chicago attorney Howard Foster, sued after competitor Omielan was awarded a remodeling project with a bid that was about $100,000 lower. A.L.L. Masonry sued, alleging that Omielan hired at least 10 unauthorized workers, but the court found that simply hiring 10 unauthorized workers was not a conspiracy.

USCIS. Alejandro Mayorkas, director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in October 2009 that USCIS was ready to handle a flood of legalization applications if Congress approves comprehensive immigration reform in 2010. USCIS currently handles about six million applications for immigration benefits a year; the additional work load could involve up to two-thirds of the 11 million unauthorized foreigners in the US.

Real ID. The Real ID Act of 2005 requires states to issue more secure driver's licenses and IDs by collecting and verifying more personal information from applicants for licenses, including birth certificates and Social Security numbers. States are to link their databases so that drivers cannot get licenses in several states simultaneously.

Many states consider Real ID an unfunded mandate and have refused to implement it despite the threat that persons without so-called Real IDs may be subject to extra screening to fly and to enter federal buildings after January 1, 2010. State reluctance to implement Real ID may lead to another delay in the date by which states must begin taking steps to make their IDs more secure. The alternative PASS ID act pending in Congress would eliminate the birth certificate verification and the requirement that people have a Real ID compatible driver's license or ID to board an airplane.

Asylum. DHS in July 2009 reversed a 2008 position and offered asylum to foreign women abused by their husbands abroad. In 1996, a Guatemalan woman named Rody Alvarado was granted asylum by an immigration court based on her account of repeated beatings by her husband and the failure of local police to protect her. However, an immigration appeals court reversed the Alvarado decision in 1999, and the issue had been in limbo since.

Applicants for asylum must demonstrate a "well-founded fear of persecution" because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or "membership in a particular social group." In FY08, almost 23,000 foreigners were granted asylum in the US.

Advocates urge DHS to state explicitly that abused women are part of a "particular social group," that is, being women in countries that tolerate gender-specific violence. Women fleeing abuse abroad must file applications for asylum within a year of arriving in the US.

A Mexican woman was first denied asylum despite abuse at the hands of her common-law husband, and DHS urged that the case be returned to immigration court for further review. A Honduran woman abused at the hands of her police officer husband was granted Convention Against Torture protection, allowing her to live and work in the United States as long as the threat in Honduras exists. Advocates want suchwomen to receive asylum, which provides welfare and medical assistance to resettle in the US.

Lawyers. Salt Lake City immigration lawyer James Hector Alcala was indicted on July 28, 2009 for defrauding employers and immigrants. His main offense was obtaining 5,000 H-2B visas for landscaping and construction employers seeking to hire the unauthorized foreigners they already employed.

Between 2000 and 2008, some 300 lawyers were suspended or expelled from US immigration courts.

Anna Gorman, "U.S. plans to overhaul how immigrants are detained," Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2009. Julia Preston, "Firm Stance on Illegal Immigrants Remains Policy," New York Times, August 4, 2009. Anna Gorman, "Obama setting the priorities on immigration," Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2009. Julia Preston, "New Policy Permits Asylum for Battered Women," New York Times, July 16, 2009. Miriam Jordan, "New Curbs Set on Arrests of Illegal Immigrants," Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2009.