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The Department of Homeland Security's various agencies attracted coverage from all three networks: positive from ABC and CBS; mixed from NBC.
NBC is running a weeklong series on immigration entitled Whose America? Monday, Mark Potter covered the guestworker visa program that provides foreign workers for the Florida tourism industry. Yesterday, Ron Allen contrasted municipal tactics towards immigrants without proper papers: Suffolk County on Long Island cracks down on illegal residents; New Haven in Connecticut advertises itself as a sanctuary for them. Now Rehema Ellis investigated the consequences of the increasing volume of Homeland Security's ICE raids on immigrant workplaces: 3,600 have been arrested in the past year, with 95% facing deportation. That will tear families apart, Ellis told us, since many have children who are citizens and are therefore eligible to stay.
ABC took A Closer Look at Homeland Security's efforts to staunch illicit crossings at the US-Mexico border and came away impressed. Bill Redeker reported from Phoenix that a combination of increased Border Patrol staffing, support from the National Guard, fence construction and hi-tech monitoring had reduced the volume of unapproved entries by two thirds in the past year: "Migrants are still coming to America but in the hundreds not thousands." The only downside Redeker could find was that Arizona's construction and agribusiness sectors face a labor shortage--prison inmates may have to be hired to make up the shortfall.
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