Several attempts have failed over the years but a state newspaper reports that Democrats, emboldened that they control both chambers of the legislature, will push a bill through this year. Democrats hold a 37-28 majority in the House and a 20-15 majority in the Senate “What we’re looking at is a simpler, more equitable approach to tuition,” according to the state senator from Denver who is leading the effort to give illegal aliens discounted tuition.

On at least four occasions in the last few years the Colorado legislature has rejected measures to grant illegal immigrants cheaper tuition at all 30 of the state’s public institutions of higher learning. The perk is traditionally reserved for legal residents who graduate from state high schools, though a handful of states—including Texas, California, Utah, Washington and New York—extend the benefit to illegal immigrants.

Because the legislation has repeatedly failed to pass in Colorado, one of the state’s public universities— Metropolitan State College of Denver—took matters into its own hands and created a special category of tuition for illegal immigrants last summer. It allows illegal immigrants who graduated from state high schools to pay cheaper tuition at the school, which has an enrollment of about 24,000 and offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in a variety of fields.

Judicial Watch called on the school to immediately rescind the measure, which violates both federal law and Colorado law and constitutes a power beyond the board of trustees. Under federal law illegal immigrants are ineligible for state or local public benefits, including post-secondary education benefits unless a state enacts a measure affirmatively granting the perk. “In approving this new category of tuition, the College recognized that these students would otherwise be required to pay full non-resident tuition because of their inability to demonstrate lawful presence in the United States,” JW writes in a letter to the school’s Board of Trustees.

At least three states—Georgia, Oklahoma and Arizona—have solved the contentious issue by creating policies banning discounted tuition for illegal aliens at public colleges. One Colorado Republican opposed to the discount tuition law points out the irony in having taxpayers subsidize undocumented aliens’ college education since they can’t legally get a job in the U.S. It gives false hope, the lawmaker said.

The decision, issued this week by the famously liberal 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, rambles on for 27 pages and is almost comical. “This undoubtedly appears to be a difficult question at first glance,” it reads. “Kidnapping is a serious crime, and our instincts may be that it would meet the moral turpitude definition. Even for serious offenses, we must look to the specific elements of the statute of conviction and compare them to the definition of crimes involving moral turpitude.”

The case involves a Mexican man named Javier Castrijon-Garcia who entered the United States illegally in 1989 and incidentally has three American-born anchor babies. He has twice been convicted for driving with a suspended license (yes, California gives illegal aliens driver’s licenses) and in 1992 pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping. He received a suspended sentence of 300 days in jail and 36 months of probation.

Years after the kidnapping case, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally earmarked Castrijon-Garcia for removal. He appealed but an immigration judge found that he was deportable because the kidnapping conviction is a categorical crime of moral turpitude. The Board of Immigration Appeals, the government’s final authority on immigration matters, agreed noting that it had previously listed kidnapping as an example of a crime of moral turpitude and that California’s penal code also defined it as involving moral turpitude.

But the 9^th circuit, the most overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, disagrees writing in its decision that precedent dictates that “non-fraudulent crimes of moral turpitude almost always involve an intent to harm someone, the actual infliction of harm upon someone, or an action that affects a protected class of victim.” The type of “simple kidnapping” that this illegal immigrant committed doesn’t necessarily involve such evil intent and harm therefore it doesn’t constitute moral turpitude, according to the San Francisco-based court.

The ruling orders the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the Justice Department, to “conduct a modified categorical analysis” of the illegal immigrant’s crime. Keep in mind that the BIA has already determined that kidnapping is a serious enough crime that merits deportation, so the court is essentially ordering it to make an exception or change the criminal code.

Over the years the 9^th Circuit Court has been kind to illegal immigrants with criminal records. In separate 2010 rulings it spared an illegal alien from Mexico and a gangbanger from El Salvador—both convicted of serious crimes—from deportation.

A few years earlier the 9^th Circuit reversed a lower court ruling calling for the deportation of a Mexican immigrant convicted of having sex with a minor. In that ruling, the 9^th Circuit claimed that while the crime violated state law and was unwise and socially unacceptable, it wasn’t base, vile or depraved enough to warrant deportation.

 The measure had strong bipartisan support in both the Illinois House and Senate, easily passed and will likely get signed by the governor, who has expressed support for the law. It is expected to give about a quarter of a million illegal aliens the chance to apply for a valid state driver’s license simply by providing a photo identification from their native country and some sort of proof that they’ve lived in Illinois for a year.

 Here is language straight from the bill that just passed in the Land of Lincoln: “Allows the Secretary of State to issue temporary visitor’s driver’s licenses to applicants who have resided in this State for more than a year, are ineligible to obtain a social security number, and who are unable to present documentation issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services authorizing the person’s presence in this country.” It also allows a consular identification document—like a fraud-prone one issued by Mexico—to be used for the acquisition of the license.

Washington State and New Mexico have also enacted similar laws so that illegal immigrants could get driving privileges. Each time this sort of bill gets introduced, it’s promoted as a way to improve public safety because driving tests and proof of insurance are required of candidates. Another popular argument is that it allows the government to create an official database of who’s on the roads.

 It will cost Illinois taxpayers $800,000 for the first year of the illegal alien driver’s license program, according to a regional news report that cites state officials. The state will cover the cost mostly by delaying filling employee vacancies, said a spokesman from the secretary of state’s office. After the initial year, the program will cost around $250,000 annually, according to the official.

While a few Republican lawmakers in Illinois expressed concerns about the new license bill, including the potential for fraud and abuse, the party’s leader in the state House offered strong support in the local newspaper. That’s because Illinois should be a place welcoming to immigrants, said House Republican leader Tom Cross. “We should work with them, not fight with them,” he said.

The president even signed a rare private bill a few days ago to grant a Nigerian immigrant living in Michigan with an expired visa permanent U.S. residency. The man, Victor Chukwueke, came to the U.S. more than a decade ago with a special visa to undergo medical treatment and never left. So Congress decided to reward him by passing a private bill granting him permanent residency and the commander-in-chief proudly signed it into law.

The influential open borders movement is surely popping the champagne as 2013 gets underway. The administration has also cancelled a crucial local-federal partnership known as 287(g) that calls on local police to notify federal immigration authorities whenever they arrest an illegal immigrant. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) then takes custody and begins deportation proceedings.

The program has been effective in reducing violent crime in local communities nationwide and aiding in the deportation of tens of thousands of criminal illegal aliens who would otherwise fall through the cracks. But open borders advocates assert it leads to racial profiling and discrimination against Hispanics so ICE is nixing it by not renewing any of its agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies that operate task forces under the 287(g) program.

Officials in Virginia, where a drunken illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal record killed a nun in 2010, are outraged. Judicial Watch obtained Homeland Security records that show Obama’s Department of Homeland Security released the illegal immigrant (Carlos Martinelly-Montano) despite multiple arrests. The commission chairman in Prince William County, where the tragic crime occurred, told a local news conglomerate that the violent crime rate has come down nearly 50% since 287(g) was implemented and police have turned over 5,500 criminal aliens to the feds in the last few years. This occurred without a single instance of racial profiling, according to the commission chair, Corey Stewart.  

Another administration gift to illegal immigrants is a continued decline in deportation orders, allowing otherwise removable aliens to remain in the country. The feds have slashed monthly deportation orders by an average of 25%, according to the nonpartisan New York-based data research center, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), that studies government.  

The administration is also working behind the scenes to extend special programs like hurricane amnesty for violators of student visas like the 9/11 hijackers. The announcement was first made in November in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In it, the Homeland Security agency in charge of legal immigration said that it “understands that a natural disaster can affect an individual’s ability to maintain a lawful immigration status.”

The agency recently extended the storm amnesty an additional 18 months for Haitian nationals “given the impact Hurricane Sandy has had on regions where Haitians reside…” Approximately 60,000 Haitian nationals (and people having no nationality who last habitually resided in Haiti) are eligible, according to the announcement posted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The case involves a Mexican national, Nicolas Carpio-Leon, arrested and charged for entering the country illegally, using a fake Social Security to obtain a driver’s license and owning two guns. Carpio-Leon has lived in Orangeburg South Carolina for more than a decade and has three American-born children (anchor babies).

It was a slam-dunk case for the feds when they indicted him last year; an illegal immigrant using a fake identity in possession of a .22 caliber Marlin rifle, a 9 millimeter Hi-Point pistol and ammunition. Hiding behind the Second Amendment right to bear arms, Carpio-Leon claims he’s entitled to keep the firearms to protect his kids and home.

In a court motion, he argues that the constitution also applies to illegal immigrants, that they too have the right to keep guns in their homes for their families’ protection. The Second Amendment could not possibly have excluded illegal immigrants, Carpio-Leon asserts in his motion, because when it was enacted “attitudes toward immigration were the reverse of today’s attitudes.”

This laughable argument was slammed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which notes the constitutional right to bear arms has always been reserved for law-abiding, responsible citizens. This would automatically exclude those who violate U.S. immigration laws. Therefore illegal immigrants are not covered by the Second Amendment since they are not law-abiding citizens, the court says.

In fact, when it comes to the Second Amendment, the Virginia-based appellate court put illegal aliens in the same category as felons convicted of violent crimes. “Thus, the Second Amendment does not guarantee the right to possess for every purpose, to possess every type of weapon, to possess at every place, or to possess by every person,” according to the decision which has been posted by an online publication that covers legal matters.

It’s not uncommon to see illegal immigrants suing over the violation of their constitutional rights in U.S. courts, especially the Fourth Amendment because it involves racial profiling and illegal searches by police. Another popular one is the First Amendment, which has been repeatedly used by open-borders activist to fight laws prohibiting day laborers from congregating in public places.

This is yet another one of those sad, only in America stories. The very government that boots an illegal immigrant out of the country later clears the violator to receive taxpayer-funded benefits. In some cases the illegal aliens have been convicted of serious crimes like child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon and drug-related offenses yet Uncle Sam rewards them with free health insurance (Medicaid) and food stamps.

Many Americans may wonder how this could possibly occur.  Here is how, according to a new federal audit; the Homeland Security agency in charge of keeping track of foreigners, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) isn’t doing its job. The agency is headed by Alejandro Mayorkas, a Clinton federal prosecutor who resigned in shame after orchestrating the pardon of a major league drug trafficker from Argentina serving a 15-year sentence.

Incredibly, President Obama handpicked Mayorkas to head the Homeland Security agency responsible for overseeing lawful immigration to the United States. Turns out his agency is using an outdated and inept system to keep track of foreigners who have been ordered removed. The government estimates that there are about 800,000 illegal immigrants in the U.S. who have ignored deportation orders.

Some are bold enough to apply for unemployment and disability insurance, food stamps, driver’s licenses and other benefits. When they do, a special USCIS database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) is supposed to flag them. This is supposed to prevent American taxpayers from supporting these outlaws and should ultimately end with deportation. Incredibly, SAVE approves one in eight illegal immigrants who have been ordered to leave to get public benefits as if they’re legal residents.

Read all about it in this unbelievable report made public this month by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General. Investigators found that SAVE regularly provides “outdated and erroneous” information about an individual’s immigration status to benefit granting and licensing agencies. The system was “generally not updated when the immigration court issued a decision to deport, remove, or exclude an individual,” investigators found.  

The report includes a number of examples, including a man who was deported after being convicted of homicide and manslaughter. When he applied for student aid in the District of Columbia, SAVE cleared him. In another case an immigrant who obtained legal residence was deported after multiple felony convictions yet was approved by SAVE to receive public health benefits in California.

Mayorkas, the USCIS director, doesn’t deny that his agency needs to do a better job of updating SAVE and promises that his agency will work with others to “map a way forward to ensure that more timely information is shared.”

The three-part series (“Justice in the Shadows”) was published this week by Massachusetts’ largest newspaper after a yearlong investigation into what’s become the nation’s biggest law enforcement network after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is recommended reading for those interested in national security issues that affect everyone living in the U.S.

The vast and secretive U.S. prison system for immigrants has quietly released thousands, including killers, the investigation found. Last year alone, the system detained a record 429,247 immigrants but a culture of secrecy prevents the public from knowing their name. While the feds release hardcore criminals, thousands with no record—including the sick and elderly—are held for months in centers that treat them like delinquents.

Clearly the system is in disarray and a lack transparency only makes things worst. Part one of the newspaper series outlines this recipe for disaster and focuses on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) routinely releases dangerous detainees to the streets of America without warning the public. In the past four years ICE has freed more than 8,500 detainees convicted of murder, rape and other crimes, according to the agency’s own statistics quoted in the story.

A disturbing number of foreigners have been arrested after their release, the probe found, including some for heinous crimes. The article includes a number of examples, including a murder so gruesome it made international headlines in 2010. It involved a Chinese illegal immigrant who was supposed to get deported after serving time for brutally assaulting his neighbor years earlier. Instead, ICE quietly let him go without warning the victim. The illegal alien came back to stab the woman and rip her heart and lungs out of her body.

Here are some other cases; an armed robber from Cuba shot and killed a Florida woman after getting released by ICE, reportedly because his native country wouldn’t take him back. In another, an armed robber from Vietnam massacred five people in San Francisco after ICE freed him, also because he couldn’t be deported. A Liberian national who went to jail for shooting a man kidnapped and robbed two people in Rhode Island after the feds released him. A Vietnamese man on parole for a previous felony murdered a teenaged girl and her mother during a kidnapping.

There are dozens of other examples that prove federal officials are releasing people that they know are dangerous without bothering to warn the public or notify crime victims. The culture of secrecy can be deadly to Americans and foreigners alike, the new

It’s a highly unusual step for the agency, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, to reopen a case like Uncle Obama’s because he has violated previous deportation orders and was arrested for driving drunk in Massachusetts last year. This should be a slam-dunk case in which the illegal immigrant gets deported, in this instance to his native Kenya.

But Uncle O’s nephew lives in the White House so he may get to stay in the U.S. like the president’s illegal immigrant aunt, Zeituni Onyango, who had two deportation orders hanging over her head. In a rare secret hearing, she was granted political asylum in 2010 by the same judge who had previously deported her. The judge’s abrupt reversal remains a mystery because it all took place behind closed doors even though the Justice Department’s immigration court manual—as well as a federal appellate court—says such proceedings should be open.

If Uncle O is rewarded in the same way, it will mark the icing on the cake of special treatment, including the reinstatement of his driver’s license after the DUI arrest. In July Judicial Watch obtained government records that illustrate the special treatment the feds have given the president’s illegal immigrant uncle, who is mentioned in the commander-in-chief’s memoir “Dreams from My Father.”

The documents weren’t easy to obtain because the administration clearly wants to keep details of the case from the public, despite promises of unprecedented transparency. JW had to sue for the information. The records, released by JW in two parts (click here and here to see them), show that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) withheld information on Uncle O’s release from the press and Congress and that the agency curiously permitted him to seek the reopening of deportation proceedings that had been closed in 1992. ICE leadership also tracked the politically sensitive case and granted Uncle O a special stay of deportation.

The records also include an embarrassing internal agency email from Brian Hale, ICE’s Assistant Director of the Office of Public Affairs, to ICE Director John Morton dated April 1, 2012, titled “Onyango Statement and TP’s [Talking Points].” The email (on page 43) confirms that ICE gave the president’s uncle favorable treatment. JW will continue tracking the case.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer issued the order in late August to help counter the Obama Administration’s stealth amnesty program, which is sparing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from deportation. Under the plan, called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who came to the U.S. as children can remain in the country and obtain work permits. President Obama sidestepped Congress and created it in June via executive order.  

Brewer fought back with her own order to stop illegal immigrants who obtain work permits under the federal program from getting taxpayer-funded perks or licenses in her state. In the document Brewer explains that allowing Arizona’s 80,000 deferred action recipients improper access to state or local benefits will have significant and lasting impacts on the state’s budget, its healthcare system and additional public benefits that taxpayers fund.

The open borders movement immediately blasted the governor, calling her order a “mean-spirited” policy that compounds the “climate of fear and mistrust” already created by Arizona’s strict immigration control law. Denying illegal aliens driver’s licenses is a “feeble attempt to score a political point against the president’s humane and sensible action” and a “cruel slap in the face to thousands of young Arizonans,” according to National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguia.

Now Arizona has to waste taxpayer dollars to defend its policy in court. In a 32-page complaint the groups—which include the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—claim the measure is unjust and unconstitutional because it violates the supremacy and equal protection clauses of the United States Constitution. “As the President of the United States has recognized, these young immigrants are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: On paper,” the lawsuit says.    

Nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants have already applied for the president’s six-month-old amnesty, according to Homeland Security figures quoted in an Arizona newspaper. The program is expected to spare around 1 million illegal aliens from deportation nationwide and has already proven to be quite costly, according to a variety of news reports from states that share a border with Mexico.  

For instance, it’s costing a cash-strapped California public school system hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s because applicants must prove they have lived in the U.S. continuously since 2007 so they are rushing to obtain school records that confirm it. In the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) this has created a “bureaucratic nightmare” because an estimated 200,000 current and former students are eligible and they have flooded schools throughout the sprawling urban district to get documents. This is costing the district at least $200,000 in staff expenses, according to the area’s largest newspaper.    

Last week Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick took the liberty of ordering the state’s Department of Education to immediately begin offering illegal aliens the perk that’s supposed to be reserved for the state’s legal residents. Even U.S. citizens who didn’t graduate from a Massachusetts high school must pay the higher out-of-state tuition at taxpayer-funded colleges. This policy applies to publicly-funded, post-secondary education in virtually every state.

But the increasingly powerful open borders movement has been pushing hard to get every state to participate in the costly initiative of subsidizing illegal immigrants’ college education. Several—including California, Illinois, New York, Utah and Texas—already offer illegal immigrants discounted tuition. Others, such as Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Indiana, have laws barring illegal aliens from qualifying for in-state tuition.

Massachusetts is estimated to have 15,000 to 17,000 residents in the age group that could qualify for cheaper tuition, according to a mainstream newspaper report that quotes the state’s secretary of education. “Our experience has been that the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition is a prohibitive barrier,” the education secretary said. As an example he revealed that the state’s flagship college, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, charges state residents $13,230 in tuition and fees; students from outside the state pay more than twice as much, $26,645.

Governor Patrick’s order will apply to 29 campuses throughout the state. This has incensed officials in Oxford, a town of about 13,000 residents. They accuse Patrick of overreaching and abusing his authority. This week Oxford’s council voted unanimously to send the governor a letter decrying his executive order. One lawmaker was quoted in the town newspaper saying that it will be a letter “outlining our dismay over his abuse of his executive authority.”

A second letter will be fired off to state lawmakers “asking them to advise college administrators not to follow this policy until the state Legislature acts.” The governor should not have taken this upon himself, according to an Oxford council member who indicates that he favors discounted tuition for illegal aliens but says it should have gone through the legislative process. A fellow council member wasn’t so diplomatic: “What values is this teaching our children—that you do something illegal and benefit from it?”