Analyst's note:  Basically the Obama administration, through the Department of Homeland Insecurity, told the state of Arizona to drop dead on this matter of illegal immigration.  We now learn that "Federal officials said they’ll still perform the checks as required by law but will respond only when someone has a felony conviction on his or her record. Absent that, ICE will tell the local police to release the person."  Does this sound right to you?  It doesn't sound right to me either.  I guess our actual national borders will be the next to go. 

DHS refuses to act dispite the fact that the Supreme Court has recently ruled that the state of Arizona is acting legally by requiring police to conduct immigration checks on individuals they arrest or for merely stopping people for questioning whom they suspect are in the U.S. illegally.  These actions do not violate the Constitution by intruding on the federal government’s powers to control immigration .... but the DHS refuses to do its job when it comes to illegal immigration.

"The Obama administration said Monday it is suspending existing agreements with Arizona police over enforcement of federal immigration laws, and said it has issued a directive telling federal authorities to decline many of the calls reporting illegal immigrants that the Homeland Security Department may get from Arizona police.

Administration officials, speaking on condition they not be named, told reporters they expect to see an increase in the number of calls they get from Arizona police — but that won’t change President Obama’s decision to limit whom the government actually tries to detain and deport.

“We will not be issuing detainers on individuals unless they clearly meet our defined priorities,” one official said in a telephone briefing.

The official said that despite the increased number of calls, which presumably means more illegal immigrants being reported, the Homeland Security Department is unlikely to detain a significantly higher number of people and won’t be boosting personnel to handle the new calls.

“We do not plan on putting additional staff on the ground in Arizona,” the official said.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Arizona may not impose its own penalties for immigration violations, but it said state and local police could check the legal status of those they have reasonable suspicion to believe are in the country illegally.

That means police statewide can immediately begin calling to check immigration status — but federal officials are likely to reject most of those calls.

[....] the Obama administration is under pressure from immigrant-rights groups to cut down on the number of people it is deporting and has taken a number of steps to try to limit deportations of rank-and-file illegal immigrants and focus instead on those with criminal records or repeated immigration violations. [....]"