Andrea Bazán has beennamed to a federal border task force.

The Durham resident, who currently serves as president of the Triangle Community Foundation and chair of the board of the National Council of La Raza, will serve on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Southwest Border Taskforce. 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the initiative last month as a way to support Mexico's campaign against violent drug cartels.

The task force will work to reduce the flow of guns and cash from the U.S. to Mexico, reduce the transfer of contraband across the border in both directions and improve enforcement of immigration laws.

Other members of the task force include law enforcement from border areas, the mayor of San Diego and the preisdent of the California Endowment.

The group will hold its first meeting on June 4 in Albuquerque, N.M. 

U.S. Rep. David Price is meeting this afternoon with new Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Price holds the purse strings for the Homeland Security agency as chairman of the spending subcommittee with jurisdiction over the department. He plans to talk with her today about his priorities within the department, said his spokesman, Paul Cox.

Those include focusing enforcement efforts on criminal illegal immigrants, and ensuring that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a strong connection with local and state governments.

The meeting also could be helpful to Napolitano as she shapes her budget request for next fiscal year. She will go before Price’s panel this spring to ask for funding for the agency.

U.S. Rep. David Price is heading to Southeast Asia this week.

The Chapel Hill Democrat will lead a bipartisan delegation to monitor the work of the Department of Homeland Security in the Phillippines, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

The trip is designed to give members of Congress a better understanding of the department's coordination with foreign governments to secure U.S.-bound cargo and work on anti-terrorism efforts and international adoption issues.

The delegation includes Democratic Reps. Sam Farr, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Mike Honda and Mazie Hirono as well as Republican Rep. John Carter.

Most of the members sit on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which Price chairs.

They were scheduled to meet with Phillippines president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, among other foreign leaders, during the trip.

U.S. Rep. David Price traveled to New York City on Monday to take a look at how the city is protecting sites from radiological or nuclear attacks.

New York recently received $29.5 million for its "Securing the Cities" protection program. The federal project is to be expanded to other cities as well, Barb Barrett reports.

Price and three other members of Congress flew over sites by helicopter and visited Grand Central Station. Price also was a guest of Mayor Michael Bloomberg for dinner at the mayoral residence.

Such visits allow host cities to show how they're spending federal dollars and lobby for more funds. Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, holds the purse strings as chairman of the funding subcommittee for the Department of Homeland Security.

Price visited New York at the invitation of Rep. Steve Israel. 

Tom Ridge argued that Barack Obama is untested and inexperienced.

Speaking to reporters before a rally for John McCain in Fayetteville, the former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that Obama does not have insight into foreign policy because he's not had any relevant military or political experience.

He said that McCain "knows the consequences of war in ... a personal way" and "understands when anybody at Fort Bragg puts on a uniform, the whole family puts on a uniform." 

Ridge said he was surprised that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Obama.

"It seemed to me that he was more unhappy with the Republican Party than with John McCain, which is an interesting reason to go the other way," Ridge said. "I think he's wrong on this one."

The former Pennsylvania governor has traveled with McCain there and is campaigning with him today. The two are old friends from the Congressional class of '82, the only Vietnam veterans elected that year.

Some political observers have suggested that McCain is campaigning alongside old friends this week to keep his spirits up in the face of troubling polling numbers.

"Whatever John needs me to do to help get him elected president, I'm prepared to do," Ridge said. 

U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick wants immigration officials to clarify their position that illegal immigrants can be admitted to North Carolina's community colleges.

Myrick, who has made illegal immigration a key cornerstone of her work in Congress, wrote Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Julie Myers last week that the federal law appears to disagree, Barb Barrett reports.

The statute, Myrick wrote, says that North Carolina would have to specifically pass a law allowing undocumented residents to be admitted to the colleges.

And even so, Myrick continued, the colleges could not allow in-state tuition.

Myrick's letter comes after a scuffle about whether community colleges can allow illegal immigrants as students. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper wrote a memo saying they couldn't. The N&O asked the federal government for clarification and was told that the decision can be made on a school-by-school basis.

"I am concerned that ICE's stated position conflicts with the intent of federal law and undermines ICE's recent progress to enforce immigration laws," Myrick wrote.

She asked Myers, an assistant secretary within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for a response.

Attorney General Roy Cooper has steadfastly refused to discuss the advisory letter his office sent out last week, which recommended barring illegal immigrants from the state's 58 community colleges.

On Monday, after speaking at a conference on gangs, he brushed off a reporter's questions about the letter, Kristin Collins reports.

Cooper would not comment about the letter, which advised that federal law banned allowing illegal immigrants to attend public colleges and universities, or about the response to it from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Officials there said that federal law does not determine who can be admitted to state schools.

"You wouldn't print our statement," Cooper said before walking away from the reporter.

He was referring to a two-sentence statement that his spokeswoman, Noelle Talley, sent out on Friday after federal officials contradicted his office's advice.

The News & Observer printed a portion of it, but did not print it in full. The statement was a summary of the advisory letter released earlier in the week.

After the jump, the complete statement.

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Fred Smith checks the immigration status of his employees online.

Two businesses run by the Republican gubernatorial candidate, the Fred Smith Co. and the C.C. Mangum Co., participate in E-Verify.

The voluntary program allows companies to check federal databases to see whether employees can legally work in the United States. Smith's businesses signed up in 2005 in part because of his impending gubernatorial bid.

"When you put yourself in the public square, when you put yourself under the microscope, we have to go to extra steps to ensure we're complying with the law," Smith told Dome. "It's our effort to comply with the law. It's just that simple."

A Republican-sponsored bill in 2007 would have required employers who receive incentives and public contracts in North Carolina to use E-Verify. It never made it out of committee.

More after the jump.

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