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Articles by Stephen Dinan

**FILE** Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents take a suspect into custody on March 30, 2012, as part of a nationwide immigration sweep in Chula Vista, Calif. (Associated Press)

GOP lawmakers want Obama to hear out head of ICE union

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a top Republican senator on Thursday told President Obama that he and his aides must meet with immigration law enforcement "whistleblowers" who can expose the flaws in the Senate immigration bill.

May 24, 2013
“I am not going to get into the details of our negotiating, publicly, but I can tell you we’ve both made progress and have a ways to go” before an agreement on background checks, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, says. (Associated Press)

Senate OKs judge for D.C. circuit on 97-0 vote

Senators voted 97-0 Thursday to confirm Srikanth Srinivasan to a judgeship on the vitally important U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after Republicans relented and allowed the vote to go forward this week.

May 23, 2013
**FILE** Sens. Carl Levin (left), Michigan Democrat and Chairman for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent subcommittee on Investigations, and John McCain of Arizona, the subcommittee's ranking Republican, arrive on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 21, 2013, for the subcommittee's hearing to examine the methods employed by multinational corporations to shift profits offshore and how such activities are affected by the Internal Revenue Code. (Associated Press)

Top Senate investigators: Lerner misled Congress

Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain, who together run the Senate's permanent investigative subcommittee, sent a letter to the IRS on Thursday calling for Lois Lerner, the woman at the center of the agency's conservative-targeting scandal, to be suspended for dereliction of duty.

May 23, 2013
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, speaks with reporters as he leaves the weekly Democratic Caucus Lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 14, 2013. (Associated Press)

Reid: Immigration comes before Perez nomination

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he won't start to pick any big fights with Republicans because he's afraid of upsetting the momentum to pass an immigration bill — and that includes delaying President Obama's Labor Department nominee.

May 23, 2013
President Obama answers questions during his new conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on April 30, 2013. (Associated Press)

Obama defends drone strikes, reignites Gitmo debate in crucial speech

U.S. drone strikes have killed four Americans, including one who was "specifically targeted" and three others who were not targets, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a letter to Congress on Wednesday, publicly confirming the strikes for the first time.

May 22, 2013
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, speaks May 21, 2013, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington following the Democratic policy luncheon. (Associated Press)

Reid: D.C. court needs Obama nominees for ideological balance

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he will push to confirm more judges to the federal appeals court in Washington after that court ruled this year that President Obama's broad use of recess appointment powers was unconstitutional.

May 22, 2013
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., right, confers with Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, left, the ranking member, as the Senate Judiciary Committee assembles to work on a landmark immigration bill to secure the border and offer citizenship to millions, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, May 20, 2013. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stands at center. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Republicans find holes in immigration bill

Less than 24 hours after senators powered their immigration bill through committee, the legislation came under fire in the House, where the former head of immigration enforcement testified that it has too many loopholes that could delay enforcement, let dangerous people in, and hamstring agents from fighting illegal immigration in the future.

May 22, 2013
** FILE ** Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, responds to questions and offers remarks during an interview in Washington on Wednesday, July 6, 2011. (Rod Lamkey Jr./The Washington Times)

Immigration reform bill clears committee hurdles, heads to full Senate

The Senate immigration bill cleared the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote Tuesday night, ducking — for now — big fights on guns, gay rights and how broadly the legalization is drawn, and leaving the 867-page overhaul mostly unscathed by conservative attacks.

May 21, 2013
The exterior of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington is seen here on March 22, 2013. (Associated Press) **FILE**

Group sues over IRS, demands agency approve application

True the Vote — one of the conservative groups the IRS subjected to special scrutiny in its application for tax-exempt status — sued the federal government on Tuesday, demanding the tax agency approve its application that has now been pending for three years.

May 21, 2013
Senate Judiciary Committee members (from left) Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, confer Monday on the landmark immigration bill. (Associated Press)

Senate panel OKs tax-welfare benefits for newly legal immigrants

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Monday to allow illegal immigrants who get legal status to begin collecting tax-welfare payments, as the panel spent a fourth day working through amendments to the massive immigration bill and party-line splits began to emerge.

May 20, 2013
Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, introduced an amendment to the immigration bill that would prevent changes to the asylum or refugee systems until after an audit of what went wrong in Boston. (Associated Press)

Rethinking immigration rules for asylum after Boston

The Boston Marathon bombing hasn't derailed the immigration debate, but it has sent lawmakers back to the drawing board on some key provisions, including changes to the asylum system that the two suspects in the bombing used to come to the U.S.

May 19, 2013
Illegal immigrants easily step over a fallen barbed-wire fence between Mexico and the United States near the town of Sasabe, Mexico, in 2004. The number of apprehensions of illegal border-crossers is down while the number of deaths in the desert is high. (Associated Press)

Non-deportation rate drops — to 99.2 percent

The Homeland Security Department has granted legal status to 99.2 percent of all illegal immigrants who have applied under President Obama's new non-deportation policy for young adults, according to the latest numbers released Friday.

May 18, 2013
**FILE** House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 15, 2013. (Associated Press)

House GOP issues subpoena in Benghazi investigation

The chairman of the House oversight committee on Friday subpoenaed the senior diplomat who ran the State Department's investigation into the Benghazi attack, saying lawmakers deserve to be able to depose him before he testifies publicly.

May 17, 2013
**FILE** Protesters hold signs outside a U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform field hearing on a National Labor Relations Board complaint against Boeing Co., in North Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2011. (Associated Press)

2nd court invalidates Obama’s recess pick for NLRB

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he made a recess appointment to the National Labor Relations Board, marking the second panel to rebuke the administration and making the issue even more likely to draw Supreme Court scrutiny.

May 16, 2013
**FILE** Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents take a suspect into custody on March 30, 2012, as part of a nationwide immigration sweep in Chula Vista, Calif. (Associated Press)

Feds gave witness protection to terrorists

The federal government gave witness protection to known and suspected terrorists and the U.S. Marshals Service even lost track of two of those people, according to a report Thursday from the Justice Department's auditor that exposes the previously hidden side of the witness program.

May 16, 2013
**FILE** In this photo proved by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an unidentified immigrant is taken into custody in Dallas on Sept. 8, 2012. (Associated Press/ICE)

Final tally: DHS released 622 criminals as part of sequester

Two key senators said Thursday that Homeland Security officials should face discipline for their role earlier this year in releasing 622 criminal immigrants, including 32 with multiple felony convictions, in a move the Obama administration initially blamed on the budget sequester cuts.

May 16, 2013