U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, had lunch last week with the top official of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, John Morton.
Price is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the Department of Homeland Security, and ICE issues are under his purview.
Price has pushed to have ICE focus its priorities on criminal aliens - those illegal immigrants convicted of crimes beyond the lack of documentation - and said Morton reported that ICE is on track to have a record number of criminal aliens deported this year.
"They really are focusing on that, and I'm really pleased with that," Price said late Thursday. "It's unacceptable to have people who have proved they will do us harm remaining in the country."
Price said he also was briefed on the latest drug violence scare along the Southwest border, a car bomb in Juarez, Mexico, that killed three people last week.
"It's the kind of importation of Middle East techniques into the drug wars, just when you think you've seen it all," Price said.
Three weeks before the car bombing, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, a Charlotte Republican and member of the House Intelligence Committee, called on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to convene a task force about whether Hezbollah, a Middle East terrorist organization, is operating on the Southwest border.
But Price stressed Thursday that though the car bomb might mimic terrorist tactics, he had no evidence that Hezbollah was operating on the border.
"I think we need to watch it very carefully, but there's no notion that Hezbollah and Hamas and other terrorist organizations are penetrating the Southwest border," Price said.
New chief regulator
Drexdal Pratt was named Thursday as the new director of the state Division of Health Service Regulation, which licenses hospitals and medical facilities. Pratt, who begins his new job Sunday, worked nearly 12 years as chief of the state Office of Emergency Medical Services.
"I look forward to Drexdal's leadership in DHSR, and his insight for problem solving," Lanier Cansler, the state's secretary of Health and Human Services, said in a news release issued Thursday. "His demonstrated leadership assures us that DHSR will not skip a beat as it continues to provide critical oversight of our many licensed care providers and assures that our citizens' many care needs are appropriately met."
Pratt replaces Jeff Horton, who served as interim director of DHSR. Horton will return to his previous position as deputy director.
Advantage wanes
"Who are you?" is a question Renee Ellmers might very well hear from national Republicans.
Politico reports that as furor over U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge's famous "Who are you?" encounter with a guy holding a video camera fades, so have Ellmers' chances of using the incident to give her campaign a boost against the long-time incumbent. Citing unidentified sources from within the National Republican Congressional Committee, the website says Republicans don't see a path for Ellmers to close the wide gulf between her fundraising and that of Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat.
The report says party officials were annoyed after Ellmers' consultant Carter Wrenn told Dome that the NRCC had information about the identities of the men who confronted Etheridge.
Wrenn dismissed claims that the NRCC isn't interested in Ellmers.
"Why they aren't concentrating there, you'd have to ask them. I've never understood Washington politicians," Wrenn, Jesse Helms' long-time consultant, told Politico.
By staff writers Barbara Barrett, Michael Biesecker and Benjamin Niolet
