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Detained immigrant children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center, a temporary home for immigrant women and children detained at the border, in Karnes City, Texas. (Associated Press)

Illegal immigrant child service contractors governed by strict rules

Want to bid for a contract to care for the illegal immigrant children coming across the border? Make sure your staff members get Hepatitis vaccines and regular TB tests and can speak foreign languages — probably Spanish but maybe Mandarin, suggesting a surprising number of the children are coming from China.

October 19, 2014
President Obama speaks to the media about the government's Ebola response in the Oval Office on Thursday. (Associated Press)

Ebola travel ban would let Africans sneak into U.S. undetected, CDC chief says

President Obama authorized calling up military reserves to help combat Ebola on Thursday, and one of the two nurses who contracted the disease in the U.S. was transferred from Texas to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, as federal officials continued to scramble to gain ground on the disease here and the outbreak abroad.

October 16, 2014
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a measure authored by Former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, for using bail as punishment. (Associated Press)

Court strikes down Arizona’s no-bail law for immigrants

Illegal immigrants have the same constitutional right to bail that U.S. citizens do, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in a decision striking down an Arizona statute designed to make sure criminals without any community ties didn't flee in the face of a looming trial.

October 15, 2014
President Barack Obama, with First Lady Michelle Obama, toasts with Vice President Joe Biden during the inaugural luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 21, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Feds’ tax-take hits all-time high

The federal government collected a record amount of taxes in fiscal year 2014, topping $3 trillion in revenue for the first time in its history, according to Treasury Department numbers released Wednesday that show the influx helped drop the deficit to its lowest level under President Obama.

October 15, 2014
Federal prosecutors won a new 18-count indictment against accused Benghazi attacker Ahmed Abu Khatallah on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2014. (Associated Press)

Benghazi indictment confirms 2012 attack was terrorist plot

Federal prosecutors won an 18-count indictment against accused Benghazi attacker Ahmed Abu Khatalla on Tuesday, which charges him with leading the assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and makes him eligible for the death penalty.

October 14, 2014
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden said that the diagnosis of 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham should not be an occasion for partisan bickering over the CDC's budget as it relates to Ebola. Despite campaign bluster about cuts, Ebola falls under the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases branch, whose funding has grown to more than $390 million in 2014 alone. (Associated Press)

Ebola sparks political battle over research funding

The Ebola finger-pointing kicked into a higher gear Monday as politicians in Washington blamed each other for cutting research funding, even as the federal government's top disease chief apologized for suggesting workers at a Dallas hospital failed to follow protocols, leading to this weekend's first U.S.-contracted case of the deadly virus.

October 13, 2014
Nina Pham, 26, who contracted Ebola, is seen here in a Facebook photo with her beloved King Charles Spaniel, which is not expected to be euthanized but has been quarantined.

Ebola nurse’s dog in Texas won’t be euthanized

The search is on for a location to take care of the dog belonging to the nurse who was diagnosed over the weekend with Ebola, said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services.

October 13, 2014

Disease chief says more doctors, nurses could have Ebola in Texas

The chief of the Centers for Disease Control said Monday he would "not be surprised" if more doctors or nurses come down with Ebola from the Dallas patient who died last week, after the first U.S.-contracted case was diagnosed over the weekend in one of the patient's nurses.

October 13, 2014
Youth from United We Dream chant slogans calling for an end to deportations outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices in downtown Phoenix. Top Hispanic leaders asked President Obama last week to grant some illegal immigrants access to Obamacare, saying the "dreamers" to whom the White House has given tentative work permits are already paying taxes, so they deserve government benefits. (Associated Press)

Hispanics want Obamacare for illegal immigrant ‘dreamers’

Top Hispanic leaders asked President Obama last week to grant some illegal immigrants access to Obamacare, saying the "dreamers" to whom the White House has given tentative work permits are already paying taxes, so they deserve government benefits.

October 12, 2014
FILE- In this Sept. 10, 2014 file photo, a woman and child are escorted to a van by detention facility guards inside the Artesia Family Residential Center, a federal detention facility for undocumented immigrant mothers and children in Artesia, N.M, A surge of cases involving immigrants from Central America has backed up federal courts and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The cases have been moved to Denver by judges in Arlington, Va. Officials say it makes more sense to hold the proceedings in the same time zone as the detention center. Hearings are being held by video from Artesia, N.M. starting on Monday, Sept. 29. (AP Photo/Juan Carlos Llorca, File)

Illegal immigration leaps for third straight year

Illegal immigration on the southwestern border spiked 14 percent over the past year, marking the third straight increase, though Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said it was almost all because of the surge of illegal immigrant children and families from Central America — a crisis he said is subsiding.

October 9, 2014
Bellevue Hospital nurse Belkys Fortune, left, and Teressa Celia, Associate Director of Infection Prevention and Control, pose in protective suits in an isolation room, in the Emergency Room of the hospital, during a demonstration of procedures for possible Ebola patients, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. The U.S. government plans to begin taking the temperatures of travelers from West Africa arriving at five U.S. airports, including the New York area's JFK International and Newark Liberty International, as part of a stepped-up response to the Ebola epidemic. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

U.S. commander warns of Ebola threat at Mexican border

While the Obama administration plans to start checking travelers from West Africa for Ebola at five U.S. airports, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command is warning that West Africans already are entering America illegally at the porous southern border.

October 9, 2014
Gina McCarthy (Associated Press)

EPA to admit it lost agency chief’s text messages

The EPA is poised to "do an IRS" — similar to what the tax agency had to do with dismissed top official Lois G. Lerner — and officially notify the National Archives that it may have lost key electronic records, according to a think tank that's suing to get text messages under an open-records request.

October 8, 2014
FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2010 file photo, voters cast their ballots for Illinois' primary at an early voting polling location in Chicago. Illinois Republicans are mounting what they say is an unprecedented and costly campaign to identify and eliminate ineligible voters and recruit their own election judges before the November vote. With their sights on unseating a Democratic governor and winning back several congressional seats, Republicans have allocated $1 million in Cook County alone to examine voter rolls and recruit 5,000 GOP election judges to watch over polling places in Democrat-heavy Chicago. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green,File)

Photo ID laws do hurt voter turnout: study

Requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls does lower turnout, the Government Accountability Office, Congress's non-partisan watchdog, concluded in a major report released Wednesday that said young, black and newly registered voters were most likely to stay home.

October 8, 2014
President Barack Obama meets with financial regulators in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 6, 2014. From left, Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Mel Watt, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Richard Cordray, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Treasury SecretaryJacob Lew, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Mary Jo White, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Tim Massad, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Martin Gruenberg, Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin, White House Council Neil Eggleston, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman, Obama, Budget Director Shaun Donovan, Deputy Budget Director Brian Deese, and Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy Seth Wheeler. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Feds run $486B deficit in 2014 — smallest of Obama administration

The federal government ran a deficit of just $486 billion in fiscal 2014, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates released Wednesday that show the budget, while not in the black, is on much firmer ground than when President Obama took office.

October 8, 2014
Rep. Luis Gutierrez

Immigration activists court Luis Gutierrez for presidential bid

Stung by President Obama's on-again, off-again attitude on immigration, one prominent activist is launching a Draft Gutierrez petition designed to convince Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, to run for president in 2016 as an independent.

October 7, 2014
In this Sept. 22, 2014 photo, two people are handcuffed together as they start to play a game at Escape the Quest in Miami Beach, Fla. Escape the Quest offers two games; Apartment 101 and Prison Escape, where groups of two to four have an hour to solve a puzzle and win their freedom. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

Obamacare opens door for inmates to get taxpayer-funded Medicaid: study

Obamacare has made most prison and jail inmates eligible for Medicaid in states that expanded the federal-state health program, according to a new study Monday from the Government Accountability Office — but few inmates are actually getting the kinds of services that can be reimbursed by federal taxpayers.

October 6, 2014