Obama administration poised to challenge Arizona immigration law

The White House is expected to file a lawsuit next week. Arizona has raised more than $120,000 in private donations to defend the legislation.Reporting from Washington  A White House showdown with the state of Arizona over its tough new immigration law is likely to unfold next week, when the Obama administration is expected to file a lawsuit aimed at blocking the state’s bid to curb illegal immigration on its own, according to people familiar with the administration’s plans.

Arizona officials are girding for the legal challenge. The state has raised $123,000 in private donations to defend the law, according to Gov. Jan Brewer’s office. Money has come in from all 50 states, in donations as little as $1.Obama administration officials declined to reveal the basis for the suit. But legal experts say the challenge is likely to include the argument that in passing the law, Arizona violated the Constitution by intruding on the federal government’s authority to regulate immigration.To date, the state has been hit with five lawsuits. The law, SB 1070, was signed in April and is scheduled to go into effect July 29.

By confronting Arizona, the Obama administration would be making a political statement as much as a legal one. Obama has already criticized the Arizona law as “misdirected.” Criminal action against illegal immigrants is not, by itself, a satisfactory solution to the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system, the White House says.Obama has said that part of the remedy must include a path to legal status for the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. But with mid-term elections approaching, the president has not made the politically explosive issue a legislative priority for 2010.

Brewer and other Republican officials have recoiled at the prospect of a federal suit.”Perhaps the administration should focus on getting the assets they promised to the border region rather than wasting time and taxpayer dollars on suing the state of Arizona,” said Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The Obama administration tipped its hand on its plans earlier this month when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in an Ecuadoran television interview that a lawsuit was coming. Outraged, Brewer said the administration should “inform us before it informs the citizens of another nation.”

The Arizona law empowers police, after making a lawful stop, to verify the immigration status of people they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally.

Opponents warn that the law could be easily abused — enforced in a fashion that unfairly targets Latinos.Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project and an attorney who is part of a group of civil rights organizations contesting the law, said: “A legal challenge by the Justice Department would help ensure that Arizona’s renegade state law, which will cause racial profiling and undermine effective law enforcement, does not actually go into effect.”

WASHINGTON, May 14 AFL-CIO to DHS: Stop training Arizona cops

WASHINGTON, May 14 The AFL-CIO and a civil rights coalition urged federal officials to stop training Arizona’s law enforcement officials because of the state’s immigration law.

Unless the Homeland Security Department ends its agreements to train Arizona state and local law enforcement personnel, “the federal government will be complicit in the racial profiling that lies at the heart of the Arizona law,” AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights President Wade Henderson said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

“We are grateful that President Obama has spoken out to correctly call the Arizona” ( UPI)

Chronology of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

A drilling rig explosion on April 20 left 11 workers missing and presumed dead, and the rig’s subsequent collapse unleashed a major oil spill that threatens the ecosystems and economy of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.Also threatened is the heart of U.S. energy production, as a giant, unprecedented underwater leak spreads oil across the northern Gulf of Mexico, threatening areas from Florida to points west of the of the Mississippi River.

President Barack Obama’s plans to widen offshore drilling have been suspended, and energy giant BP Plc (BP.N) (BP.L) faces another blow to its reputation and a multibillion-dollar bill for cleaning up the mess and paying damages.

Below is a chronology of the spill and its impact:

* April 20, 2010 – Explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd’s (RIG.N) (RIGN.S) drilling rig Deepwater Horizon licensed to BP; 11 workers missing, 17 injured. The rig was drilling in BP’s Macondo project 42 miles (68 km) southeast of Venice, Louisiana, beneath about 5,000 feet (1,525 metres) of water and 13,000 feet (4 km) under the seabed. A blowout preventer, intended to prevent release of crude oil, failed to activate.

* April 22 – The Deepwater Horizon rig, valued at more than $560 million, sinks and a five-mile long oil slick is seen.

* April 23 – The U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for missing workers.

* April 25 – The Coast Guard says remote underwater cameras detect the well is leaking 1,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The agency calls the leak a “very serious spill” that threatens ecosystems along the Gulf Coast. It approves a plan to have remote underwater vehicles activate a blowout preventer and stop leak, but the effort fails.

* April 26 – BP’s shares fall 2 percent on fears the cost of cleanup and legal claims will deal the London-based energy giant a heavy financial blow.

* April 27 – U.S. departments of Interior and Homeland Security announce joint investigation. Coast Guard says leaking crude may be set ablaze to slow the spread of oil in the Gulf.

* April 28 – The Coast Guard says the flow of oil is 5,000 barrels per day (bpd) (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres) — five times greater than first estimated. A controlled burn is held on the giant oil slick.

* April 29 – Obama pledges “every single available resource,” including the U.S. military, to contain the spill, which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says is of “national significance.” Obama also says BP is responsible for the cleanup. Louisiana declares state of emergency due to the threat to the state’s natural resources.

* April 30 – An Obama aide says no drilling will be allowed in new areas, as the president had recently proposed, until the cause of the Deepwater Horizon accident is known.

* BP Chairman Tony Hayward says the company takes full responsibility and will pay all legitimate claims and the cost of the cleanup. The Interior Department orders safety inspections of all 30 deepwater drilling rigs and 47 deepwater production platforms.

* May 1 – Coast Guard says leak will affect the Gulf shore.

* May 2 – Obama visits the Gulf Coast to see cleanup efforts first hand. U.S. officials close areas affected by the spill to fishing for an initial period of 10 days. BP starts to drill a relief well alongside the failed well, a process that could take two to three months to complete.

* May 5 – A barge begins towing a 98-ton containment chamber to the site of the leak. BP says one of the three leaks has been shut off by capping a valve, but that would not cut the amount of oil gushing out.

* May 6 – Oil washes ashore on the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast, uninhabited barrier islands that are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge and important nesting and breeding areas for many bird species.

* May 7 – BP engineers use undersea robots to move the containment chamber over the larger of the two remaining leaks on the seabed. A fishing ban for federal waters off the Gulf is modified, expanded and extended to May 17.

* May 8 – BP’s containment dome hits a snag when a buildup of crystallized gas forces engineers to postpone efforts to place the chamber over the oil leak and siphon oil to the surface. “Tar balls” suspected to come from the leak wash up along a half-mile stretch of Dauphin Island, Alabama.

* May 9 – BP says it might try to plug the undersea leak by pumping materials such as shredded up tires and golf balls into the well at high pressure, a method called a “junk shot.”

* May 10 – Forecasts suggest the oil spill could move significantly west of the Mississippi River delta as brisk onshore winds prevail. BP announces plans to place a small containment dome, known as a “top hat,” over the blown out well to funnel oil to the surface.

* May 11 – Executives with BP, Transocean and Halliburton appear at congressional hearings in Washington, where Senators criticize their safety records. The executives blame each other’s companies for the explosion. The oil slick washes ashore on a third land mass: Louisiana’s Port Eads area, on the southern edge of the Mississippi Delta.(Reuters)

Arizona is well accustomed to the derision of its countrymen.

Arizona is well accustomed to the derision of its countrymen.The state resisted adopting Martin Luther King’s birthday as a holiday years after most other states embraced it. The sheriff in its largest county forces inmates to wear pink underwear, apparently to assault their masculinity. Residents may take guns almost anywhere, but they may not cut down a cactus. The rest of the nation may scoff or grumble, but Arizona, one of the last truly independent Western outposts, carries on.Now, after passing the nation’s toughest immigration law, one that gives the police broad power to stop people on suspicion of being here illegally, the state finds itself in perhaps the harshest spotlight in a decade.

The law drew not only the threat of a challenge by the Justice Department and a rebuke from the president, but the snickers of late-night comedians. City councils elsewhere have called for a boycott of the resort-driven state; one trade group of immigration lawyers has canceled a conference planned for Scottsdale at a time when the state is broke and desperate for business. Meanwhile, a continuous protest is taking place at the State Capitol.

Bruce D. Merrill, a polling expert here, is tired of picking up his phone. “Usually it is somebody asking me, ‘What the hell is going on in Arizona?’ ” Mr. Merrill said.But while Arizona may have become a cartoon of intolerance to much of America, the reality is much more complex, and at times contradictory. This state is a center of both law and order and of new age om. Red-meat-loving. Red-rock-climbing.

Arizona is home to some of the toughest prison sentencing laws in the country, and one of the cleanest campaign finance laws, too. Voters overwhelmingly re-elected Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, as governor the same year they returned the conservative senator Jon Kyl to Washington. The current Republican governor signed this law, but is also pushing for a tax increase.

Further, while Arizona may seem on the fringe with its immigration law, the measure mirrors the 1994 battle in California over a voter-approved law that Gov. Pete Wilsonsigned barring illegal immigrants from getting health care, public education and other services. Like California then, Arizona is taking its own tack instead of waiting on the federal government to change policies.

“The political and emotional landscape is almost identical,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, who served as an aide to Mr. Wilson. “History doesn’t repeat itself, it just moves east.”

The table was set for the passage of the new law by a confluence of factors, say residents, political scientists and businesspeople in Arizona. Those factors include shifting demographics, an embattled state economy and increased violence in Mexico, as well as the perception that the federal government has failed to act. Arizonans find that particularly irksome, given that Ms. Napolitano is now head of the Department of Homeland Security.

Hispanics make up 30 percent of the population here, up from roughly 25 percent in 2000, according to census data. As the state’s economy, largely dependent on construction and development, has slumped, hostility toward illegal immigrants has increased in recent years. “More people now seem to think Hispanics are taking jobs from Anglos,” said Mr. Merrill, the polling expert.

Further, laws like the immigration statute and another new law requiring political candidates to prove citizenship are generally written by the hard-right lawmakers who dominate the Legislature — with far-left-of-center minority members opposing them — but neither side reflects the relatively centrist political views of most residents.

More than 30 percent of registered voters here are independents, double the proportion in 2000. “People have been leaving both political parties, which leaves the remainders in the party much more ideological,” Mr. Merrill said.

Residents are unnerved by the violence in Mexico and the heavy drug trade and illegal immigrant trafficking in Arizona. Most studies have shown illegal immigrants do not commit crimes in a greater proportion than their share of the population, and Arizona’s violent crime rate has declined in recent years. But in this state any crime tied to illegal immigrants gets notice.

Half of the drugs seized along the United States-Mexico border are confiscated in Arizona, and it is a major hub for human smuggling. Last month, Robert Krentz, 58, a member of a prominent ranching family, was killed on his property 20 miles from the border, and the police said the gunman was probably connected to smuggling.

“People outside of Arizona are not living in this state and don’t understand the issue,” said Mona Stacey, a computer technician from Mesa. “Most of them coming across are mostly good, Catholic families getting over here. But you also have the drug lords and the smugglers. It makes the good guys look bad, and you don’t know who is who.”

Conversations here about the new law tend to begin or end with a reference to Ms. Napolitano, who personified the state’s blended politics. As governor, she backed the posting of National Guard troops on the border, expanded the use of the state police in antismuggling operations, and pressed Washington for an overhaul of immigration law.

When it came to the Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, however — a staunch supporter of immigration enforcement and one of the highest profile figures on the issue — she took a largely hands-off approach.

Now, as Homeland Security secretary, she has played up the administration’s devotion of resources to the border, while resisting pressure to put National Guard troops there.

This, too, is an echo of California circa 1994. There, Proposition 187, the measure limiting services for illegal immigrants, was struck down by the courts (a possibility here, too, say legal experts). The Clinton administration responded with Operation Gatekeeper, an effort to strengthen the border in California. It ended up pushing trafficking east, and as a result, Arizona posts the highest number of people arrested for crossing along the 2,000-mile border.

The former director of Operation Gatekeeper has just been appointed President Obama’sCustoms and Border Protection commissioner.

With more rallies opposing the law set for Thursday, Sheriff Arpaio has planned another of his controversial sweeps to net illegal immigrants.

“Arizona is the most unpredictable political patch of earth I’ve ever seen,” said Chip Scutari, a former political reporter who now runs a Phoenix public relations firm. “It’s the land of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s tough-as-nails Tent City, and super-liberal Congressman Raul Grijalva calling for a boycott of his own state. That’s Arizona.”

Arizona immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom

Arizona’s strict new immigration law escalates, immigrant advocates are preparing to move the fight to the courtroom, where their legal challenges have successfully sunk other high-profile laws against illegal migrants.The American Civil Liberties Union, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Immigration Law Center are set to announce in Phoenix on Thursday plans to challenge the measure.

The law, which is set to take effect in mid-summer, makes it a state crime for illegal migrants to be in Arizona, requires police to check for evidence of legal status and bars people from hiring or soliciting work off the streets.

The key legal issue, according to lawyers on both sides, will be one that also was at the center of the court fight over Proposition 187 in California whether the state law interferes with the federal government’s duty to handle immigration.The announcement of legal action, one of several expected as attorneys across the country scrutinize the law for weaknesses, comes after days of frantic e-mails, conference calls and lengthy strategy sessions. Attorneys haven’t finalized when a court challenge would be filed, but said it would be before the law takes effect.

“The entire country has been galvanized,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “People within the legal community are trying to figure out what we can do…. We have seen an enormous amount of energy responding to this.”

Attorneys who successfully challenged laws against illegal immigrants in California, Texas and elsewhere argue that the Arizona law faces a similar fate because of the federal/state issue. Immigrant advocates also argue that the law could violate guarantees of equal protection if selectively enforced against certain ethnic groups.”The Arizona law is doomed to the dustbin of other unconstitutional efforts by local government to regulate immigration, which is a uniquely federal function,” said Peter Schey, a Los Angeles attorney who led both successful challenges to the 1975 Texas law denying illegal migrant children a free public education and the 1994 California initiative that would have barred public services to illegal migrants. Schey said he also planned to file a separate lawsuit.

But the attorney who helped write the Arizona law said he carefully crafted the measure to avoid those constitutional issues.Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri-Kansas City law professor who handled immigration law and border security under U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft during the Bush administration, said the law does not seek to regulate immigration but merely adds state penalties for what are already federal crimes.

Under the legal doctrine of “concurrent enforcement,” he said, states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, he said, the courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal migrants.Kobach, who is running as a Republican candidate for Kansas secretary of state, also dismissed claims that the bill will result in racial profiling. He said he took care to include an explicit ban on using “race, color or national origin” as the sole basis for stopping someone to ask for papers.

“I anticipate that anyone who challenges the law will throw everything but the kitchen sink at this to see if it will stick,” Kobach said. “But this is consistent with federal law.”Indeed, immigrant advocates raise several legal questions. The portion of the law that prohibits laborers from soliciting work in public places is particularly vulnerable, said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of MALDEF.

The organization has successfully challenged similar laws in Arizona and California. In 2008, a federal judge ruled that an Arizona town could not enforce an anti-solicitation ordinance that advocates said infringed upon the free speech rights of day laborers.In addition, there probably will be due process claims because police officers won’t know who would be eligible for immigration relief, Saenz said. Many arrested won’t have the opportunity to make their claims in immigration court.”There are a lot of people who are going to be arrested and swept into this dragnet who have every right to be in this country,” he said.

Even before lawsuits are filed, immigrant advocates are seeking a commitment from federal officials that they will not enforce the law.On Tuesday, Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee that the law could distract the agency from using its resources to go after serious criminals.”We have concerns that at some point we’ll be responsible to enforce or use our immigration resources against anyone that would get picked up in Arizona,” said Napolitano, who noted that she had vetoed similar measures as Arizona governor.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder also said this week that he was considering a possible legal challenge to the law.Another lawsuit may come from one of Arizona’s own elected officials. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said this week that he planned to file a lawsuit.”I have under the charter the ability given to me by the people to file a lawsuit on behalf of the people,” Gordon said Tuesday to cheers from a packed City Council meeting and one angry cry of “socialism!”

As both sides gear up for their legal battle, the wild card is the panel of judges who will end up deciding the case.Judges have ruled differently on key immigration questions. In 2007, a federal judge ruled that a Pennsylvania city couldn’t punish landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and employers who hire them. A federal judge also ruled against a Texas measure that sought to ban landlords from renting to illegal migrants.Advocates didn’t succeed, however, in getting the courts to block another Arizona law, which shuts down businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In 2008, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to stop the law before it took effect, saying that businesses and immigrant rights groups hadn’t shown an adequate need for delaying enforcement.

Schey said he is not confident that legal challenges against the Arizona case would prevail in today’s political and legal climate. The U.S. Supreme Court is a very different panel today than it was when a narrow majority of 5 to 4 struck down the 1975 Texas law denying free education to unauthorized migrant children.”It’s a far cry from a slam-dunk case,” Schey said. “It’s a very close call with the current composition of the Supreme Court. What’s really needed here is federal leadership.”

But Erwin Chemerinsky, UC Irvine’s law school dean, argued that the Arizona law is a far more brazen attempt to regulate immigration than either the Texas or Proposition 187 cases. The Texas law was overturned primarily on equal protection grounds while the California law was struck down as an unconstitutional attempt to usurp federal immigration responsibility.”It is so firmly established that only the federal government can control immigration that I don’t see it,” he said, referring to chances that courts would uphold the Arizona law. “Even with a conservative court and a lot of sympathy to Arizona’s concerns, I don’t see it.”

Mexico condemns Anti-Immigration Law

Mexico has warned its citizens to visit Arizona, responding to one anti-immigration legislation that cause anger strict in Mexico and throughout America. The law, signed in January Brewr, U.S. state governors, the southern part of it, from Republicans, allows police to inspect and arrest anyone who they suspect may be illegal immigrants, although they are not suspected of criminal acts.

Action caused resentment on both sides of the border, with MPs California, on Tuesday called for economic boycott against Arizona and one Mexican airline warned it may cancel more flights to the southern U.S. states that. Mexico’s foreign ministry suggested its citizens carry identity documents and to respect the laws of Arizona, warned that an adverse political situation for the migrant community and all visitors of Mexico.

“With this legislation is estimated to every citizen can be disrupted and examined for reasons that are not important at all times,” the statement said. President Felipe Calderon criticized the law as racial discrimination and said the government would use all means available to defend its citizens.

He said the law threatens the relationship of friendship, business, tourism and culture between Mexico and Arizona. Many Mexican migrants and the opposition party called for a boycott of businesses on the southern U.S. states, while the businessmen concerned about the negative reaction.

“Without doubt it will have an impact on traffic and the pelacong between Mexico and the state’s (Arizona),” Leader said Andres Conesa Aeroméxico airline told reporters at a tourism conference in Acupulco, Tuesday. “Aeroméxico’ve closed the routes between the cities of Mexico City and Guadalajara and Phoenix in Arizona in recent months,” he said.

In Sonora, the Mexican state bordering Arizona government symbolically membatalan one annual meeting with officials of Arizona, said its Internet pages, but said that trying to maintain good relations. North of the border, the legislation sparked a wave of criticism, including from U.S. President Barack Obama, and create legal and political fights while the Democratic party would consider filing a change in the law immigration wide.

Members of Congress in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Tuesday called for a boycott, including tightening up contracts with companies in Arizona and encourage private companies to reduce business with the state.

U.S. Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano says U.S. justice officials very worried about the law and the Justice Department is considering whether the law meets constitutional requirements. Mexico, which have a 3.200km long border with the United States, estimated to have approximately 12 million citizens in the U.S., half of them do not have documents or illegal. Arizona estimates in its territory there are 460 000 illegal immigrants, mostly from Latin America.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano talk about the "Calls to boycott Arizona grow over new immigration law "

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that she had “deep concerns” with the law and said it could siphon resources needed to target criminals. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said he was considering “the possibility of a court challenge.”

“I think that that law is an unfortunate one,” Holder said. “It is, I fear, subject to potential abuse. And I’m very concerned about the wedge that it could draw between communities that law enforcement is supposed to serve and those of us in law enforcement.”The law makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork. The legislation also bars people from soliciting work or hiring day laborers off the street.Gov. Jan Brewer cast the law in terms of public safety, saying, “We cannot sacrifice our safety to the murderous greed of drug cartels.” Brewer said she would order the state police training agency to formulate guidelines for law enforcement officers.

But critics said the law will result in racial profiling and discrimination.Calls for boycotts spread throughout California this week after the bill was signed by Brewer on Friday. The law is scheduled to take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends this week.On Tuesday, seven members of the Los Angeles City Council signed a proposal for a boycott, calling for the city to “refrain from conducting business” or participating in conventions in Arizona. Councilman Ed Reyes, who coauthored the proposal with Councilwoman Janice Hahn, said he wants city officials to spend the next 90 days assessing the financial relationships that exist between various city departments and businesses based in Arizona.

“If Arizona companies are taking our money, I want to sever that,” he said.Hahn acknowledged that a boycott would be logistically complicated but said the city should not remain silent. “When people are asked to show their papers, it brings back memories of Nazi Germany,” she said.

A spokesman for City Controller Wendy Greuel identified at least 12 city contracts with Arizona companies that are worth an estimated $7.2 million.San Francisco supervisors introduced a similar resolution Tuesday, and Mayor Gavin Newsom imposed an immediate moratorium on city-related travel to Arizona, with limited exceptions. Newsom also announced the convening of a group to analyze how a boycott would affect city contracts and purchasing.

City Atty. Dennis Herrera said he hoped the city’s resolution would “be an impetus to others taking an aggressive stand in terms of scrutinizing the services they have with Arizona companies.”The leader of the California Senate, Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), called the law a “disgrace” and said the state also should consider a boycott. He sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asking for an inventory of Arizona businesses and government agencies with which California does business.

“The Arizona law is as unconscionable as it is unconstitutional, and the state of California should not be using taxpayer dollars to support such a policy,” Steinberg wrote.Already, several organizations have canceled planned conventions in Arizona. The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. announced that it is moving its fall convention, originally scheduled for Scottsdale in September.

“We just felt that given this new law signed by the governor that it would not be right for our association to meet and convene there and take on the issues of immigration in a state that passed such a misguided bill,” said George Tzamaras, spokesman for the group.Arizona was already reeling from a decline in tourism because of the recession, and the fallout from the law has taken hotel owners by surprise, said Debbie Johnson, president of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Assn.”Obviously our members are concerned,” Johnson said. “I thought there would be political issues. It has become so tourism-focused and that, to me, is the unfortunate side.”

Johnson said 200,000 people, many of them Latinos and legal immigrants, depend on a paycheck from the tourism industry. “They don’t want to lose their jobs,” she said.Barry Broome, president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Development Council, compared the boycott resolutions to the aftermath of Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant measure passed by California voters in 1994.”You didn’t see people in Arizona trying to leverage political gain from California’s issues,” he said.

Brewer said at a meeting in Tucson on Monday that she wasn’t worried about possible boycotts. “I believe it’s not going to have the kind of economic impact that some people think that it might,” she said.But Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who himself called for companies not to plan conventions in the state, said in an interview Tuesday that he expected the state to see declines in business and leisure travel, the trucking industry and retail shoppers from Mexico.

“There are political, legal and economic consequences that are going to hit the state,” said Grijalva, who has received death threats since speaking out against the law. “The disgust goes across state lines.”The concern about the law crossed international borders, with a travel warning posted by the Mexican government Tuesday. The post, on the Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry website, urged Mexican citizens to be careful in Arizona and to expect harassment and questioning.

Mexican government warned its citizens Tuesday to use extreme caution if visiting Arizona

MEXICO CITY  The Mexican government warned its citizens Tuesday to use extreme caution if visiting Arizona because of a tough new law that requires all immigrants and visitors to carry U.S.-issued documents or risk arrest.Two top U.S. officials, meanwhile, criticized the measure and said it may face a legal challenge by federal authorities.A Mexican government-affiliated agency that supports Mexicans living and working in the United States called for boycotts of Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Phoenix Suns until those organizations rebuke the law.”We are making a strong call to the Arizona government to retract this regressive and racist law that’s impacting not only residents of Arizona, but people in all 50 states and in Mexico as well,” said Raul Murillo, who works with the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, an autonomous agency of Mexico’s Foreign Ministry.US Airways spokesman Jim Olson said “we have had absolutely no customers who have canceled fights” as a result of the controversy. Calls to the Diamondbacks and the Suns were not immediately returned.

The boycott demand came hours after Mexico’s Foreign Ministry issued its travel alert for Arizona, warning “that any Mexican citizen could be bothered and questioned for no other reason at any moment.”The law’s passage shows “an adverse political atmosphere for migrant communities and for all Mexican visitors,” the alert said.

In Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano criticized the law, with Holder saying the federal government may challenge it.A number of options are under consideration, including “the possibility of a court challenge,” Holder said.A citizen effort to repeal the law also is expected. Jon Garrido, who produces a Hispanic website and ran unsuccessfully last year for the Phoenix City Council, said he plans to begin gathering signatures next week to get a repeal referendum on the November ballot. If successful, the effort would block the law from taking effect until the vote.

U.S. politicians also weighed in on the growing controversy, with election season looming.In California, Meg Whitman, the Republican front-runner in the California gubernatorial primary, said Arizona is taking the wrong approach.”I think there’s just better ways to solve this problem,” Whitman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, seeking re-election, told CBS’s “The Early Show” that his state needed such a law because the Obama administration has failed to secure the borders, resulting in drugs pouring into the southwestern United States from Mexico.Arizona’s law – slated to take effect in late July or early August – makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally. State lawmakers said the legislation, which has sparked huge protests and litigation, was needed because federal officials aren’t enforcing existing U.S. laws.

Mexico’s alert says that once the law takes effect, foreigners can be detained if they fail to carry immigration documents. And it warns that the law will make it illegal to hire or be hired from a vehicle stopped on the street.

Each day, more than 65,000 Mexican residents are in Arizona to work, visit friends and relatives and shop, according to a University of Arizona study sponsored by the Arizona Office of Tourism. While there, the Mexican visitors spend more than $7.35 million daily in Arizona’s stores, restaurants, hotels and other businesses, the researchers found.

Bimbo Bakeries, one of many Mexican companies operating in Arizona, said Tuesday it doesn’t expect Arizona’s new immigration law to affect its employees.”We carefully screen all associates to ensure they are authorized to work in the United States,” Bimbo spokesman David Margulies said.At the Mexico City airport Tuesday, Mexicans heading for the U.S. said they were very troubled by the new law.”It’s humiliating,” said Modesto Perez, who lives in Illinois. “It’s really ugly.”(AP)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano concedes airline security system failed

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

WASHINGTON Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight from Amsterdam to Detroit.The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two areas of aviation security – how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened – as critics questioned how the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.”Our system did not work in this instance,” she said on NBC’s “Today” show. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”The White House press office, traveling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said early Monday that the president would make a statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the morning. White House spokesman Bill Burton did not elaborate.Billions of dollars have been spent on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when commercial airliners were hijacked and used as weapons. Much of that money has gone toward training and equipment that some security experts say could have detected the explosive device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of hiding on his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.On Sunday, Napolitano said, “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.” On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.

The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano’s initial assessment.Airport security “failed in every respect,” Rep. Peter King of New York said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s not reassuring when the secretary of Homeland Security says the system worked.”Investigators are piecing together Abdulmutallab’s brazen attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Dec. 25. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding his potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive material.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, says Abdulmutallab’s ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana. Demuren said Monday that Abdulmutallab bought the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam on Dec. 16.

Demuren declined to comment about Abdulmutallab’s travels in the days before he boarded his Dec. 24 flight from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam, saying FBI agents and Nigerian officials view the information as “sensitive.” He says Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carryon bag.Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but there was not enough information about his activity that would place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

However, British officials placed Abdulmutallab’s name on a U.K. watch list after he was refused a student visa in May.Home Secretary Alan Johnson added that police and security services are looking at whether Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Britain.

Abdulmutallab received a degree in engineering and business finance from University College London last year and later applied to re-enter Britain to study at another institution. Johnson said Monday he was refused entry because officials suspected the school was not genuine and they then put his name on the list.

Johnson says that people on the list can transit through the U.K. but cannot enter the country.Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son’s increasingly extremist religious views. In a statement released Monday morning, Abdulmutallab’s family in Nigeria said that after his “disappearance and stoppage of communications while schooling abroad,” his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for “their assistance to find and return him home.”

The family says: “It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day.”

The statement did not offer any specifics on where Abdulmutallab had been.

Abdulmutallab’s success in smuggling and partially igniting the material on Friday’s flight prompted the Obama administration to promise a sweeping review of aviation security, even as the Homeland Security secretary defended the current system.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.

Both lines of defense were breached in an improbable series of events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its safe landing in Detroit. Law enforcement officials believed the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. No undercover air marshal was on board and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.

Security experts said airport “puffer” machines that blow air on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on search using a swab. Most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives.

Abdulmutallab was treated for burns and was released Sunday to a prison 50 miles outside of Detroit.

Stiffer boarding measures have met passengers at gates since Friday and authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays.

Adding to the airborne jitters, authorities detained a man, also from Nigeria, who locked himself in the bathroom on Sunday’s Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land in Detroit. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. Despite the government’s decision after the attempted Friday attack to mobilize more air marshals, none was on the Sunday flight from Amsterdam.