Daily Border Bulleting: Jeb Bush flip-flops on a pathway to citizenship, Immigration is priority No. 1 for Napolitano, More

Submitted by Kristian Ramos on 3/5/13

Daily Border Bulletin is up! Today's stories include:

Immigration is priority No. 1 for Janet Napolitano: Immigration reform is the “No. 1” legislative priority for the Department of Homeland Security this year, trumping cybersecurity issues, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday at a POLITICO Playbook breakfast. “…I would say, frankly, that our No. 1 priority in terms of legislation is immigration,” Napolitano told POLITICO’s Mike Allen at a breakfast marking the 10th anniversary of the agency.

Rick Perry calls agency move “federally sponsored jailbreak:” Texas Gov. Rick Perry is blasting the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement’s release of illegal immigrants to offset automatic budget costs, calling it a “federally sponsored jailbreak.” “Aside from allowing this federally sponsored jailbreak to occur, ICE has also failed to provide any information regarding the number of detainees released, their countries of origin, locations where these individuals have been released and the reasons they were detained — despite repeated requests from my office,” the former GOP presidential candidate said in a public statement on Monday.

Jeb Bush flip-flops on a pathway to citizenship: In late January, Jeb Bush wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he seemed to endorse a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and criticized members of his own party who think “illegal immigrants should return to their native countries and wait in line like everyone else.” He argued that, for most illegal immigrants — those without a relative in the country and without access to the limited number of work-based visas — “no line exists.” Discussing his new book “Immigration Wars” on NBC’s Today, he confirmed that he only favors a path to legal residency, not citizenship. “Our proposal is a proposal that looks forward,” he said. “And if we want to create an immigration policy that’s going to work, we can’t continue to make illegal immigration an easier path than legal immigration.”