By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer

 For technology companies and research institutions that have spent recent autumns lobbying for permission to hire more foreign workers, this was supposed to be the year that ended the annual rite of desperation.

A bill that passed the Senate this spring would have doubled the number of visas issued every year for highly skilled professionals, such as scientists and engineers. And it would have helped clear a backlog of applications for permanent residency from such workers.

But the attempt by Congress to rewrite the nation's immigration laws has bogged down in controversy over border security and illegal immigration. That means changes in the skilled-worker programs, while less controversial, are also in limbo.

With Congress due to recess tomorrow, advocates of the programs have given up on winning immediate change. Now they're hoping members of Congress will focus on the issue in the lame-duck session late this year.

Herndon Town Council Votes to Apply for Federal Training Program
 

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
 

The Herndon Town Council voted late last night to apply for a federal program that would train some police officers to enforce U.S. immigration laws, allowing them to hold illegal immigrants so that deportation proceedings could begin.

The 6-1 vote, taken shortly before midnight, came after a long evening of sometimes impassioned public testimony about whether the western Fairfax town's small, 50-plus member police department should become involved in an area of law enforcement traditionally left to the federal government.

The council's decision authorizes town officials to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to express interest in enrolling some officers in the agency's "287 (g)" program, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders in the House and Senate were blocked Tuesday by a senior GOP senator in their efforts to add immigration, handgun and Internet gambling measures to a defense bill.

Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, rejected appeals from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert to use his bill on military pay raises as a vehicle for their pet measures.

Warner said in a memo to Frist he is "firmly opposed" to including unrelated bills in the defense bill. Two other Republicans also oppose the add-on bills, Warner said.

Hastert had insisted on adding to the defense bill a measure the House passed last week that would make it easier to detain and deport illegal immigrants who are members of violent criminal street gangs.

"Cracking down on gangs might be divisive in San Francisco, but it's not in the rest of America," Hastert said in a reference to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who represents the city by the bay. "It's my hope the Senate will live up to its word so that we can send this measure to the president for his signature."

More than 100 people accused of immigration violations were arrested in the Sacramento area last week, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

The 109 arrests -- which centered in and around Sacramento, Lodi and Stockton -- were part of Operation Return to Sender, an ongoing effort targeting alleged criminal illegal immigrants, foreign nationals with final orders of deportation and other suspected immigration violators, ICE officials said.

As of Monday, 98 of the foreign nationals taken into custody during this latest operation had been removed from the country, ICE said. The remaining suspected violators are in ICE custody and are awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge.

The majority of the alleged illegal immigrants taken into custody are from Mexico, but the group also included alleged immigration violators from El Salvador, Fiji and the Philippines.