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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.

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 October 2009 announced that it had revamped the 287(g) program so that state and local police trained to help enforce immigration laws would focus on foreigners who have committed serious crimes in the US and would abide by federal anti-discrimination law. There had been complaints that some police agencies targeted immigrants who committed relatively minor offenses, like traffic violators.

DHS, which said that 67 police agencies are expected to sign agreements, up from 66 before the review of the program, reported that police agencies identified 135,389 unauthorized foreigners in FY09, 94 percent at state and local jails.

The 287(g) program was most controversial in Maricopa county surrounding Phoenix. Sheriff Joe Arpaio had the most federally trained deputies, 100, and was accused of singling out Latinos for stops that include a check of their immigration status.

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, no-match letters were never sent.

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.

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 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.