Mark Graham

Isenberg, a long long time ago.

Ralph Isenberg and Domingo Garcia haven't always been enemies. Back in 2010, in fact, they were all set to dine together at a fundraiser with President Obama, until Isenberg was unceremoniously disinvited by the White House.

Their relationship has since gone south, reaching its nadir this month with Garcia's Cinco de Mayo immigration march.

Isenberg dubbed the event as the "Mega Dollar March." Yahoo News ran a piece headlined "Money, Politics Overshadow Dallas Immigration March Plans"

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Rep. Louie Gohmert

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert is once again contributing to the public discourse, drawing connections between the attack during the Boston Marathon and immigration reform. On CSPAN's Washington Journal today, Gohmert, a Republican from East Texas, expressed concern over ethnicity-shifting terrorists aiming to abuse the U.S. immigration system:

"We know that Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border. We know that people are being trained to come in and act like they're Hispanic when they're radical Islamist."

Gohmert also compared the Boston bombing with attacks in Israel, saying: "Finally the Israeli people said this is enough. They built, over 70 percent of it is a fence and the rest is a wall to prevent snipers from knocking off their kids. They finally stopped the domestic violence from people that wanted to destroy them. I am concerned we need to do that as well."

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Ten ICE agents, including one from the Dallas office, are suing ICE and Homeland Security in a Dallas federal court over a directive from President Barack Obama that would defer in some cases the deportation of undocumented immigrants brought here as children. Dallas enforcement and removal officer David A. Engle and the other agents say the policy would force them to violate their oaths to uphold federal law.

The plaintiffs are represented by immigration warrior and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who helped author and defend Arizona's controversial immigration law, along with a Farmers Branch ordinance intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from renting apartments and houses within the city limits.

Obama's directive, a watered-down DREAM Act without the promise of permanent legal immigration status, would grant a two-year deportation deferral to undocumented immigrants brought here under the age of 16. The beneficiaries have to have a high-school education or military service and no criminal record.

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A protest in front of Farmers Branch city hall.

A controversial Farmers Branch immigration ordinance will get a second chance in court after a sound rejection back in March, and the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's controversial immigration bill will play a determining role.

Farmers Branch has three times passed a "housing" ordinance which would require anyone renting a house or apartment in the town to first prove their lawful immigration status and three times has been rebuffed in federal court, to the tune of some $5 million in legal bills. The town council passed the first measure back in 2006 on the grounds that it would combat the ills of illegal immigration, though those ills were never exactly quantified or studied. What was quantified was a sharp swing in the town's ethnic make-up, which is now majority Latino (the whole brouhaha is the subject of a recent cover story).

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Opposing counsel in a six-year legal battle over a proposed Farmers Branch immigration ordinance are trading letters to the judge, arguing, naturally, that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Arizona's immigration law supports their side.

Last month, the high court struck down the most controversial provisions of Arizona's law save one, which it left standing only conditionally. The remaining piece was one of the most controversial components of the law, allowing police to verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect is undocumented. The justices left the feds an opening for future lawsuits, saying the provision would remain constitutional only as long as suspected undocumented immigrants guilty of jaywalking, for example, aren't held by police performing an immigration check for longer than they otherwise would be.

Farmers Branch's ordinance, on the other hand, would require every tenant in a rental apartment or home to register with the town building inspector responsible for verifying their lawful immigration status. The ordinance's supporters and Farmers Branch's attorney, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, say the ordinance upholds federal immigration law. Apartment complex owners and documented and undocumented residents, represented by the ACLU and Dallas-based Bickel & Brewer Storefront, say Farmers Branch is stepping all over the feds' toes. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and rejected the ordinance as an unconstitutional attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants, specifically Latinos, from Farmers Branch.

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Kris Kobach, architect of immigration laws in Arizona and Farmers Branch

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down much of Arizona's illegal immigration law Monday morning, leaving its most controversial, show-me-your-papers provision standing, and that only provisionally. Experts say the decision provides a road map to federal courts evaluating immigration laws enacted in places like Alabama, Georgia and even Farmers Branch, Texas.

The town's six-year legal odyssey, chronicled in last week's cover story), has included several iterations of an ordinance requiring proof of legal immigration status for apartment rentals; several federal court defeats; and one federal appeals court rejection. Led by immigration warrior and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the town is petitioning the entire U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit for a re-hearing. We reached out to Kobach, who helped craft and defend both Farmers Branch's and Arizona's laws, but his voicemail is full and we suspect his email inbox is being inundated with media requests.

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President Barack Obama announced Friday afternoon that the Department of Homeland Security will no longer attempt to deport young undocumented immigrants brought here as children, signaling a compassionate shift in an immigration policy whose hallmark was aggressive enforcement and record-shattering deportation numbers.

With a few big caveats, undocumented immigrants meeting all of these criteria may be off the hook, at least temporarily: You were brought here before you turned 16, but you're not older than 30. You are enrolled in school, have a diploma, GED certificate, or military service with an honorable discharge. You have lived continuously in the United States for five years. And you haven't been convicted of a felony, a string of misdemeanors or otherwise pose some threat.

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A group of undocumented immigrants is asking a federal judge to declare unconstitutional the use of GPS ankle monitors to track immigrants who pose no threat to society.

The suit, filed by Arturo Rodriguez of the Isenberg Center for Immigration Equality, targets the ICE Dallas field office and BI Inc., a Homeland Security contractor and purveyor of ankle monitors. The plaintiffs are asking the judge for damages and a permanent injunction against the use of ankle monitors on immigrants accused only of being in the country without authorization.

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So often we think of undocumented immigrants as young, rootless men scaling border fences with plastic bags and gallon jugs of water slung over their shoulders. Truth is, people come here, set down roots and have kids. And when they get picked up by authorities, whether for a felony or for something petty, like driving without a license, they leave family behind.

According to a report from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees on Homeland Security, immigration officials removed nearly 47,000 undocumented immigrants who had U.S.-born children during the second and third quarters of 2011. In the Dallas district, nearly a thousand removal orders were obtained.

Unfair Park was curious about how these forced separations played out on a case-by-case basis, so we reached out to Dallas immigration attorney Lisa Schwamkrug. These stories, she says, are all too common.

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So, you're an undocumented immigrant. Your great hope is to stick around, make a living and, some day, become naturalized. Unfortunately, our immigration laws are a tangled morass of inscrutability, insensible to the realities of a globalized world.

You may have watched last week's Republican debate in Arizona with a growing sense of foreboding as the candidatry swung its collective, penetrating gaze from America's kibbles-'n'-bits to border security. Presumptive nominee Mitt Romney endorsed Gov. Jan Brewer's American Legislative Exchange Council-penned immigration law, designed to do little other than line the pockets of private-prison operator Corrections Corporation of America by filling its detention facilities.

"You know, I think you see a model in Arizona."

It'll be bad enough if primary voters can stomach pulling on the Mittens of Last Resort, but even if they can't, the GOP -- these days the party of craven, isolationist xenophobia -- has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. And because the Democrats have neither the political will nor capital to do anything about immigration reform, you're stuck with the current state of things.

But it's confusing out there. Buzzwords like "prosecutorial discretion" keep cropping up. What do they mean? And how, above all else, do you stay in this country and out of CCA's privately run pokeys you keep hearing such awful things (rape) about? To that end, Unfair Park chatted with local immigration attorney Furqan Sunny Azhar. Here's what we took from the conversation:

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