“Fewer than two dozen law-enforcement agencies across the country have opted to partner with ICE to train officers to enforce immigration laws,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jim Nolan notes. U.S. and Mexican officials say increased border security has thwarted people smugglers, even as immigrants encounter mounting Americans hostility, The Associated Press’ Traci Carl recounts, explaining a sharp drop in detention rates.

Cracking the whip: Americans “will require prior approval from DHS to get a job,” under the immigration guidelines introduced last Friday, Press Esc’s Adam Thomas announces — in a common blogosphere take on new E-Verify measures. “Let's not make employers our primary immigration officers,” Pia Orrenius similarly urges in a Wall Street Journalop-ed decrying the Social Security Administration's newly adrenalized no-match letter program. Nevada’s DMV cannot comply with a DHS request for info about and photos of drivers without a change in state law, The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Ed Vogel quotes officials — while the Arizona Daily Star’s Howard Fischer has that state’s squeaky-wheel governor griping about zero consultation.

Feebs: ICE agents ignored or dropped leads and at times entire cases involving terror activities because of disputes with the FBI, AP has a report from DHS and Justice’s IG stating yesterday. “I get my priorities from my director. The first priority is to deal with terrorism attacks. The second is counter-intelligence. The third is cyber crime,” the Tampa area’s new top FBI dog tells The St. Petersburg Times’ Carrie Weimar. Five reporters must testify about their FBI sources in an ex-Army bioterror expert’s lawsuit against Justice for leaking that he was “of interest” in the 2001 anthrax mailings, The New York Times’ Adam Liptak tells.

Homies: A tourism and biz coalition has been deploying ex-DHSer Tom Ridge in “an aggressive lobbying campaign to fundamentally alter the nation's travel policies that is already scoring legislative victories,” Technology Daily’s Chris Strohm records. Air marshals will no longer have to participate in ground security ops wearing law-enforcement jackets and badges that compromise their anonymity, The Newark Star-Ledger’s Ron Marsico mentions. DHS faces a legal challenge from the ACLU over a passenger at JFK who was forced to cover up Arabic script on his T-shirt before being permitted to board in the days after a major terror alert, The New York Sun’s Joseph Goldstein relates.

State and local: Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., really went to bat to help confirm his state’s Republican ex-homeland security chief, tapped for the No. 3 slot at FEMA, The Baltimore Sun spotlights. The growing number of year-round residents along Delaware's southern coast has state officials concerned about evacuation plans, AP reports. More than 5,100 Iraq- or Afghanistan-bound Mississippi National Guards have taken an eight-hour Arabic or Dari course since a language lab opened in February, The Birmingham News notes. For the first time, the NYPD is preparing to release its own study examining how the 34,000 officers who worked at Ground Zero have fared, The New York Sun says.

Follow the money: “If there was an upside to having a terrorist cell in central Ohio, it was the likelihood that additional federal security money would follow,” The Dispatchleads, complaining that in fact, Columbus “has been near the tail end of the pack.” The prosecution in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial has spent two weeks so far laying out the connections between U.S. Muslim groups and Middle East terrorists, The Washington Times catches up. People in Texas have strong feelings about Gov. Rick Perry's push for state pension funds to divest holdings in companies doing business in Iran, with most supporting it, The Houston Chronicle recounts.

Bugs ‘n bombs: The FBI searched a home last weekend in connection with the two Florida students jailed in South Carolina on pipe bomb charges, The Tampa Tribune tells. Two bomb-sniffing German shepherds were “honorably discharged from the Air Force Friday in a bittersweet military ceremony at Hanscom Air Force Base,” The Boston Globe reports. “About 2,000 of these working dogs confront danger alongside U.S. soldiers, largely in the Middle East,” the Post adds. A new flu vaccine plant is set to start up in Pennsylvania as soon as next year, providing a much-desired U.S. source of vaccine for use in a pandemic, USA Today spotlights.

Air wars: There has been “a slow evolution of increasing inspections and screening of air cargo shipments placed on passenger aircraft since 2002,” a new CRS Report on the topic notes. Authorities eventually just stopped searching for a man who bypassed Charlotte airport screeners Friday, AP reports — while a Mississauga News item emphatically implies the idiocy of trying to move 8 kilos of cocaine through Toronto’s airport disguised as benign liquids in various bottles.

Coming and going: The FBI is looking into debris left on Oregon railroad tracks as an apparently intentional attempt to derail a train, Bend’s KTVZ recounts. In a reprise of last week’s replica vintage sub scare in New York Harbor, a suspicious boat got too close to a docked cruise ship in Long Beach, sparking a big security sweep Sunday, The Press-Telegram tells. Texas’ governor will sign a law today creating the Houston Ship Channel Security District, the Business Journalrecounts.

Border law: Because theirs is a civil offense, lawyers are not provided for immigrant detainees facing deportation, and so three attorneys aim to educate detainees held at a North Texas ICE facility, The Dallas Observer observes. A CBP agent is suing the feds for $3.3 million, alleging discrimination after being demoted in an incident that allowed “a potential terrorist-related subject into the U.S.” without a completed background check, The Houston Chronicle conveys.

Over there: The Brit military's “ability to fight global terrorism is being hampered by an exodus of officers from the Intelligence Corps, with 20 per cent departing in the past three years,” The Daily Telegraph tells. Amid civil war fears, odds are good that Pakistan will shake off both military rule and messy insurgency, NOW Magazine predicts. The U.S. embassy warned Monday of possible “terrorist” attacks in the Philippine’s southern island of Mindanao, Agence France-Presse reports — while Newsweek International notes that “the Philippines has managed to liquidate half the terrorists on Manila's most-wanted list and drive the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group from its main bases.”

Qaeda Qorner: Christopher Hitchens wields his Slatecolumn to assail “hair-splitting secularists who cannot accept that al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia is a branch of al Qaeda itself.” According to experts, “al Qaeda and its offshoots are engaged in a jihadi sweeps season, flooding the Internet with propaganda in an increasingly aggressive campaign to radicalize and recruit a global army of believers,” Newsday’s Carol Eisenberg surveys. After extensive image analysis of al Qaeda’s many video releases, a specialist concludes that “in many cases the tapes were likely doctored to give a false impression of the speaker's location,” ABC News’ Maddy Sauer says.

Strategies: The objective “isn't to kill every enemy fighter — you simply can't — but to persuade the population to abandon the insurgents' cause,” Nathaniel Fick instructs in the Post as to the fight in Afghanistan. “Don't believe the naysayers. Afghanistan is doing as well as anyone has a right to expect,” Ann Marlowe maintains in The Wall Street Journal. Pakistan’s president told Afghan tribal leaders Sunday that because a “particularly dark form” of terrorism plagues the region, extremists must be confronted with “dialogue,” The Sarasota Herald-Tribune briefs.

Talking terror: “Unless we come to terms with the phenomenon, female Islamist militants might be an important part of our future,” Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank counsels in the Post. “The idea that we as a nation still have large segments of the population that not only don't believe the nation is at war, but also can't identify the enemy is truly disturbing,” The Counterterrorism Blog’s Jeffrey Imm inveighs. “Bringing terrorists to justice will always be a priority. But in the age of catastrophic terrorism it is equally important to ensure that attacks do not occur, and that will require tools of prevention, not just prosecution, Stuart Gottliebargues in the Times.

Dirty, dirty, dirty bomber: Jose Padilla was the “star recruit” for a Florida terror support cell, Reuters has a prosecutor asserting in closing arguments yesterday. The case against Padilla and two co-defendants is based not on facts but on fear and post-9/11 politics, the Post has the defense launching its summation. The question of intent is critical for those jurors, AP adds. Padilla's treatment in the brig raises the issue of the constitutionality “of forcing a man to confess to involvement in terrorist plots and, in doing so, risking destruction of a portion of his mind,” The Christian Science Monitor spotlights — and see a CSM follow-up on his “43 months of severe isolation.”

Guantanamo Bay Watch: The Bush administration won't ask Canada to take back youthful Toronto-born terrorist suspect Omar Khadr as part of its efforts to reduce the population at Gitmo, The CanWest News Service is told. The Pentagon has claimed that five terror suspects whom Britain wants back from Guantanamo Bay have close ties to some of al Qaeda’s most high-ranking leaders, The Times of London tells. Reference a CRS Report on “Enemy Combatant Detainees: Habeas Corpus Challenges in Federal Court.”

This just in, from The Onion: “WASHINGTON, D.C.—According to an alarming new Department of Defense report combining civilian, military, and calendric evidence, Iran may be as few as nine years away from the year 2016. ‘Every day they get one day closer,’ Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during a White House press conference Tuesday. ‘At the rate they're going, they will reach 2016 at the same time as the United States—and given their geographic position relative to the international date line, possibly even sooner.’ The report recommended that the U.S. engage in bellicose international posturing, careless brinksmanship and an eventual overwhelming series of nuclear strikes in order to prevent Iran from reaching this milestone.”