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Phoenix, Arizona (CNN) — Parts of an Arizona immigration law go into effect Thursday as it was passed — after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that blocked the most controversial aspects of it.

The injunction, issued Wednesday, means that, at least for now, police are prevented from questioning people’s immigration status if there is reason to believe they are in the country illegally.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also blocked provisions of the law making it a crime to fail to apply for or carry alien registration papers or “for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work,” and a provision “authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person” if there is reason to believe that person might be subject to deportation.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the state would file an expedited appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, signaling a legal escalation that some expect will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The parts of the law that go into effect include a ban on so-called sanctuary cities, and the criminalization of hiring day laborers who are in the country illegally. The parts of the law dealing with sanctions for employers who hire illegal immigrants also withstood the first legal test.

CNN senior analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the ruling reflects the government’s argument that immigration enforcement should be dealt with at the federal level.

“Arizona may have good intentions, they may be trying to make up for where the U.S. government has failed, but what the judge is saying is, this is not the way to do it,” he said.

Video: Immigration law showdown

Video: Arizona’s new police force training

Video: Sheriff Arpaio talks immigration

Video: Immigrant laborer for a day

“I think this [is] a case very much destined for the Supreme Court,” as other states pass similar laws, Toobin said.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the law, said he foresaw a protracted legal fight from the beginning.

“I wrote it to go to the Supreme Court,” he said before the ruling came down. “I’m begging for that fistfight at the Supreme Court. We will win in a 5-4 decision and finally settle this problem.”

He added, “My message to the judge is uphold the Constitution. Uphold state’s rights. This is a battle of epic proportions. This is the states versus the central government.”

The Court of Appeals could take up the case in a matter of days, but the earliest the Supreme Court could look at it would be October, because the high court is in summer recess.

Brewer said that she was disappointed by the ruling.

“This fight is far from over. In fact, it is just the beginning, and at the end of what is certain to be a long legal struggle, Arizona will prevail in its right to protect our citizens,” she said in a statement. “I am deeply grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from across our nation in our efforts to defend against the failures of the federal government.”

Another supporter of the law, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, said that he and his crusade against illegal immigration will not be deterred.

“I am not really disappointed about the judge’s decision,” Arpaio said. “I know what my policies are, and we are going to continue doing what we have been doing.”

The Justice Department issued a statement saying the court “ruled correctly.”

“While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive,” the statement said. “States can and do play a role in cooperating with the federal government in its enforcement of the immigration laws, but they must do so within our constitutional framework.”

While officials and their staff issued statements, a small group of activists in Phoenix, Arizona, expressed how they felt about the state’s law in a traffic-stopping way.

Four protesters wearing hard hats and work boots climbed a crane high above the streets of downtown Phoenix on Wednesday night and unfurled a banner that read “Stop Hate.”

The banner also had a black mark through the number 1070. That was the number assigned to the immigration measure when it was introduced in Arizona’s legislature as a bill.

Capt. Scott Walker with the Phoenix Fire Department called the four protesters “experienced climbers” and said they would be arrested when they came down.

CNN’s Catherine Shoichet, Phil Gast, Adam Blank, Holly Yan and Arthur Brice contributed to this report.

Ariz. immigration law partly goes into effect

By

Amanda Paulson,

(CNN) — American officials from the president down tried Tuesday to downplay the leak of tens of thousands of documents about the war in Afghanistan, a disclosure experts are calling the biggest leak since the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam.

Pentagon officials have not found anything top-secret among the documents, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

“From what we have seen so far, the documents are at the ‘secret’ level,” Col. David Lapan said. That’s not a very high level of classification.

Lapan emphasized that the Pentagon has not looked at all of the more than 75,000 documents published on WikiLeaks.org on Sunday.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that he is “concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information” about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan but asserted that the documents don’t shed much new light on the issue.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said Tuesday that the importance of the leak should not be overstated.

“I think it’s important not to overhype or get excessively excited about the meaning of those documents,” Kerry told the committee.

But, he said, the leak “breaks the law, and equally importantly, it compromises the efforts of our troops, potentially, in the field and has the potential of putting people in harm’s way,” he said.

The top-ranking U.S. military officer, Adm. Michael Mullen, said he was “appalled” by the leak but questioned the current significance of the documents, which date from 2004 to 2009.

Video: Congressmen talk WikiLeaks and the war

Video: Pentagon responds to WikiLeaks

“Much has changed since 2009, particularly with respect to our focus, our new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Baghdad, Iraq. “A lot of it is focused on the past, and I am very focused on the future.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the Foreign Ministry and National Security Council to study the vast cache of documents, Karzai’s office said Tuesday.

The documents are divided into more than 100 categories. Tens of thousands of pages of reports document attacks on U.S. troops and their responses, relations between Americans in the field and their Afghan allies, intramural squabbles among Afghan civilians and security forces, and concerns about neighboring Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban.

The “direct fire” category accounts for the largest number — at 16,293 reports — while “graffiti,” “mugging,” “narcotics” and “threat” each account for one. And WikiLeaks has another 15,000 documents that it plans to publish after editing out names to protect people, according to the website’s founder and editor in chief, Julian Assange.

He said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” that the firsthand accounts represent “the cut and thrust of the entire war over the past six years,” through the military’s own raw data: numbers of casualties, threat reports and notes from meetings between Afghan leaders and U.S. commanders.

“We see the who, the where, the what, the when and the how of each one of these attacks,” Assange said. That includes, he said, possible evidence of war crimes by both U.S. troops and the Taliban, the Islamic militia that has been battling U.S. troops since 2001.

Assange said some events listed in the reports are “very suspicious,” such as reports of skirmishes in which “a lot of people are killed, but no people taken prisoner and no people left wounded.”

“In the end, it will take a court to really look at the full range of evidence to decide if a crime has occurred,” he said. But earlier, he noted, “This material does not leave anyone smelling like roses, especially the Taliban.”

CNN has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents, but neither the White House nor the Pentagon has denied that they are what WikiLeaks claims they are.

On Monday, the White House condemned the release of the documents as “a breach of federal law” but simultaneously dismissed them as old news.

“I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed — whether by you or by representatives of the U.S. government — for quite some time,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. But he said an investigation into the source of the leak had begun by last week.

“There is no doubt that this is a concerning development in operational security,” he said.

The reports tend to be filled with jargon, like this one that describes a border incident from September 4, 2005:

“The Pakistan LNO [liaison officer] reports that ANA [Afghan National Army] troops are massing and threatening the PAKMIL [Pakistani military] 12km NE of FB Lwara [Firebase Lwara, a U.S. military base] …”

And that’s not even the entire first sentence.

Assange said WikiLeaks withheld some documents that dealt with activity by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA, “and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups.”

But he said the documents reveal the “squalor” of war, uncovering how a number of small incidents have added up to huge numbers of civilian deaths.

“What we haven’t seen previously is all those individual deaths,” he said. “We’ve seen just the number. And like Stalin said, ‘One man’s death is a tragedy; a million dead is a statistic.’ So, we’ve seen the statistic.”

The release of the documents is being called the biggest intelligence leak in history, drawing comparisons to the disclosure of the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers.

“There hasn’t been an unauthorized disclosure of this magnitude in 39 years,” said Daniel Ellsberg, the onetime Pentagon official who leaked that multiple-volume secret history of the conflict.

Others disagreed with the comparison. Bruce Riedel, an analyst at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, noted that the Pentagon Papers were part of a document prepared for U.S. leaders that analyzed how the United States got into Vietnam, “which assessed successes and failures in a comprehensive way.”

“This is really the raw material of the war — unassessed, raw, fragmentary data that I think in each case, you have to be very careful how much of a larger picture you can conclude from these fragments and snippets,” Riedel said.

And CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen said the Pentagon Papers revealed “a huge disconnect between what the American government was saying officially and internally.”

“Here, all sorts of American government officials are saying the war is not going very well. No one is disagreeing with that,” Bergen said.

But Ellsberg said the documents, “low-level as they are,” raise the question of whether the United States has a winning strategy in Afghanistan and whether it should continue to pursue the war.

“They do give us the sense of the pattern of failure, of stalemate, and why we’re stalemated — civilian casualties that recruit for the Taliban … and raise the question of what we’re doing there,” he said.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The attacks were carried out by the Islamic terrorist network al Qaeda, which operated from bases in Afghanistan with the approval of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that ruled most of the country at the time.

The invasion swiftly toppled the Taliban, but al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar escaped and remain at large. Meanwhile, the Taliban regrouped along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is now battling its own Taliban insurgency as well.

Gary Berntsen, who led a CIA commando team in Afghanistan in the hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said on CNN’s “Rick’s List” that the documents “probably are accurate.” But Berntsen, now a Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, said the reports are likely to be a propaganda coup for the Taliban and “sap morale in the United States.”

“It does paint a bleak picture on this,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean this fight is less worth fighting and trying to make progress on.”

And Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the information should be put “in context” and that journalists should avoid publishing anything that could harm U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Assange, he said, “is an anti-war activist who has repeatedly cast a very unfair light on the American military and on the American population in general.”

“There are American troops in harm’s way getting shot and killed,” Rieckhoff said. “If WikiLeaks is endangering them, we need to push back, and the American public needs to push back.”

Once the jargon of the report is pierced, the stories can be eye-opening.

In a February 5, 2008, incident, Task Force Helmand reported that an Afghan National Police officer — referred to as ANP — was in a public shower smoking hashish when two members of the Afghan National Army walked in.

“ANP felt threatened and a fire fight occurred,” the report says. “The ANP fled the scene and was later shot. ANP and ANA commanders held meetings to contain the incident.”

An October 15, 2007, incident describes an Afghan National Police highway officer’s shooting of another Afghan National Police officer in the shoulder and leg, not seriously. “The shooting was not accidental the policeman had been arguing with each other for a few days,” the report said.

In a March 19, 2005, incident, “FOB [Forward Operating Base] Cobra received a local national boy who had received a gunshot wound to his stomach,” another report said.

“He had been shot during a green-on-green [Afghans attacking Afghans] firefight in Jangalak Village. The boy and his older brother had heard shooting outside of their compound and went outside to check it out, at which point the boy was shot in the stomach. Another brother had also been shot and died at the compound. No adult males had accompanied the brothers, and only the older brother of the injured boy could provide information on the incident. The older brother explained that men in the village were having personal disputes with each other and had then began shooting at each ones’ compounds.”

Assange said the documents were “legitimate” but said it was important not to take their contents at face value.

“We publish CIA reports all the time that are legitimate CIA reports. That doesn’t mean the CIA is telling the truth,” he said.

He said his website is not campaigning against the war.

“WikiLeaks does not have an opinion whether the war in Afghanistan should continue or not continue. … It should continue in a just way if its to continue at all,” he said.

He declined to tell CNN where he got the documents and said the identities of his sources are less important than the authenticity of the documents they provide. And he denied that WikiLeaks has put troops in danger and said the documents’ publication will help people make informed decisions about whether to support the war.

Assange, an Australian, said the site is coming under “significant pressure” from authorities, including several recent “surveillance events.” But he said that due to the response the latest release has received, “It is not politically feasible to interfere with us at a high level.”

CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr and CNN’s Atika Shubert, Richard Allen Greene, David DeSola, Adam S. Levine and Atia Abawi contributed to this report.

Pentagon: Leaked Afghan reports are not top-secret

Moscow, Russia (CNN) — The United States and Russia completed a spy swap Friday, exchanging the agents on chartered planes at an airport in Vienna, Austria, a U.S. official and Russian media said.

The plane carrying 10 Russian agents, who were expelled from the United States on Thursday for intelligence gathering, landed at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on Friday afternoon, the airport press office said.

A separate plane believed to be carrying four people convicted of spying for the United States was scheduled to land at Washington’s Dulles International Airport shortly before 5:30 p.m.

“The United States has successfully transferred 10 Russian agents to the Russian Federation and the Russian Federation has released four individuals who had been incarcerated in Russia,” Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the National Security Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, said in a statement released just as the plane landed in Moscow. “The exchange of these individuals … has been completed.”

The elaborately choreographed transfer — which took place while the planes sat on the ground for about an hour — was reminiscent of a scene from the Cold War.

The 10 pleaded guilty in the United States on Thursday for failing to register as foreign agents and were ordered out of the country. They then boarded a U.S.-chartered flight accompanied by U.S. marshals, a federal law enforcement source said.

Video: Spy swap between U.S., Russia

Video: Russian spies: Deal or no deal?

Video: Accused spy responds to photos

“As a result of the successful exchange … the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has requested that the court dismiss any remaining charges against the 10 Russian agents,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Friday.

In Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder said none of the 10 had passed classified information and therefore none was charged with espionage.

“They were acting as agents to a foreign power,” he told CBS News, referring to the Russians who, U.S. officials have said, had been under observation by federal authorities for more than a decade.

Four young children of the Russian agents are now in Russia, according to attorneys for the agents. Two older children are no longer in the United States, though their exact location is unknown. Another two older children have remained in America, the attorneys indicated.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told PBS’ “NewsHour” that although the 10 agents didn’t plead guilty to being spies, they “were clearly caught in the business of spying.”

In a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials said the agents agreed never to return to the United States without permission from the U.S. government.

Holding them would have conferred no security benefit to the nation, they said.

This “clearly serves the interests of the United States,” one official said.

A second official said the four prisoners in Russia were in failing health, a consideration that prompted quick completion of the deal.

Under the plea agreements, the defendants disclosed their true identities in court and forfeited assets attributable to the criminal offenses, the Justice Department said in a news release.

“Defendants Vicky Pelaez, Anna Chapman and Mikhail Semenko, who operated in the United States under their true names, admitted that they are agents of the Russian Federation; and Chapman and Semenko admitted they are Russian citizens,” the Justice Department said.

Carlos Moreno, an attorney for Pelaez, said his client does not want to take up residence in Russia and would prefer ultimately to live in her native Peru or in Brazil, where she has family. Pelaez hopes to continue her work as a journalist, according to Moreno.

Pelaez told the court that Moscow promised her free housing in Russia and a $2,000 monthly stipend for life, as well as visas for her children to travel to see her. Pelaez and her husband, both naturalized American citizens, were stripped of that citizenship as a part of the plea deal.

Authorities have lost track of an 11th suspect, who was detained in Cyprus, released on bail, and then failed to check in with authorities as he had promised to do.

In Moscow, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree Friday pardoning the four individuals imprisoned for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies, the Kremlin press service said, according to state-run RIA Novosti.

Though the four Russians were released to the custody of the United States, that does not necessarily mean they would go to America, an embassy spokesman said.

“Three of the Russian prisoners were convicted of treason in the form of espionage on behalf of a foreign power and are serving lengthy prison terms,” the Justice Department said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood, who handled the case in the United States. “The Russian prisoners have all served a number of years in prison and some are in poor health. The Russian government has agreed to release the Russian prisoners and their family members for resettlement.”

It added, “Some of the Russian prisoners worked for the Russian military, and/or for various Russian intelligence agencies. Three of the Russian prisoners have been accused by Russia of contacting Western intelligence agencies while they were working for the Russian (or Soviet) government.”

The individuals pardoned by Russia are Alexander Zaporozhsky, Gennady Vasilenko, Sergei Skripal, and Igor Sutyagin.

All four appealed to the Russian president to free them after admitting their crimes against the Russian state, press secretary Natalia Timakova said.

But in Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner denied Thursday that Sutyagin had been a spy.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the move was made “in the general context of improving Russian-American relations, and the new dynamic they have been given, in the spirit of basic agreements at the highest level between Moscow and Washington on the strategic character of Russian-American partnership.”

CNN’s Dugald McConnell contributed to this report

U.S., Russia swap spies at Vienna airport

Washington (CNN) — The Justice Department weighed in on one of the most explosive issues in American politics Tuesday, filing a lawsuit to overturn a tough new Arizona immigration law that has sharply divided people along partisan, ideological and ethnic lines.

It also asked the federal courts to grant an injunction to stop enforcement of the measure before it takes effect late this month.

Arizona’s law requires immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and allows police to question the residency status of people in the course of enforcing another law. It also targets businesses that hire illegal immigrant laborers or knowingly transport them.

Justice Department lawyers argued in its brief that the state statute should be declared invalid because it has improperly preempted federal law.

“A state may not establish its own immigration policy or enforce state laws in a manner that interferes with the federal immigration laws,” the brief states. “The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.”

The Arizona law “disrupts federal enforcement priorities and resources that focus on aliens who pose a threat to national security or public safety. … If allowed to go into effect, [the law's] mandatory enforcement scheme will conflict with and undermine the federal government’s careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives.”

Arizona is interested only in “attrition” in order to end illegal entries and has not addressed several other federal obligations to deal with immigrants, including removal proceedings, humanitarian concerns and foreign relations, the brief contends.

President Barack Obama said in a speech July 1 that the measure has “fanned the flames of an already contentious debate.” Among other things, it puts pressure on police officers to enforce rules that are “unenforceable” while making communities less safe — in part, by making people more reluctant to report crimes, he said.

It also has “the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”

Before the government’s filing, Arizona’s two senators, both Republicans, called the Obama administration move “far too premature.”

“Moreover, the American people must wonder whether the Obama administration is really committed to securing the border when it sues a state that is simply trying to protect its people by enforcing immigration law,” Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain said in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick called the lawsuit a “sideshow” in a statement released before it was officially filed.

“A court battle between the federal government and Arizona will not move us closer to securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” she said.

Arizona’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, has accused the Obama administration of failing to secure the border with Mexico, thereby forcing her state to act on its own.

“Do your job. Secure the border,” Brewer said of the president in a July 1 speech to a Republican group. She pledged to “defend this law against every assault, including attacks by the Obama administration.”

Obama renewed his push for comprehensive immigration reform last week, calling for bipartisan cooperation on an issue reflecting deep social and political divisions.

Seeking an elusive middle ground on the subject, the president highlighted the importance of immigrants to American history and progress while acknowledging the fear and frustration many feel with a system that he said seems “fundamentally broken.”

He asserted that the majority of Americans are ready to embrace reform legislation that would help resolve the status of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

In his July 1 speech, Obama warned that rounding up everyone in the country who has entered illegally would be both “logistically impossible” and “tear at the fabric of the nation.” At the same time, the president indicated it would be wrong to offer blanket amnesty for people who came into the United States unlawfully.

Despite Obama’s call for bipartisan immigration reform, several senior Democratic sources said Thursday that they see virtually no chance of Congress taking up such a measure before November’s midterm elections.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted in late May indicated that public support for beefing up security along the U.S. border with Mexico had grown significantly. According to the survey, nearly nine out of 10 Americans want to increase U.S. law enforcement along the border with Mexico.

Eight in 10 questioned also supported a program that would allow illegal immigrants already in the United States to stay here and apply for legal residency, provided they had a job and paid back taxes.

But only 38 percent say that program should be a higher priority than border security and other get-tough proposals. Six in 10 said border security was the higher priority.

CNN’s Terry Frieden, Bill Mears and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report

Feds challenge Arizona immigration law

Washington (CNN) — President Obama renewed his push for comprehensive immigration reform Thursday, calling for bipartisan cooperation on an issue that has repeatedly led to deep social and political division.

The president tried to find what has often proven to be an elusive middle ground on the subject, highlighting the importance of immigrants to American history and progress while also acknowledging the fear and frustration many people now feel with a system that he said seems “fundamentally broken.”

He asserted the majority of Americans are ready to embrace reform legislation that would help resolve the status of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

“I believe we can put politics aside and finally have an immigration system that’s accountable,” Obama told an audience at Washington’s American University. “I believe we can appeal not to people’s fears, but to their hopes, to their highest ideals. Because that’s who we are as Americans.”

The president targeted Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, which requires immigrants to carry alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the United States illegally. It also targets businesses that hire illegal immigrant laborers or knowingly transport them.

Video: White House: Republicans needed

Video: Marine’s mom fears deportation

Video: Obama pushes on immigration issue

The measure — under review by the Justice Department — has “fanned the flames of an already contentious debate,” Obama said. It puts pressure on police officers to enforce rules that are “unenforceable” while making communities less safe — in part, by making people more reluctant to report crimes. It also has “the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”

Rounding up everyone in the country who has entered illegally would be both “logistically impossible” and “tear at the fabric of the nation,” the president warned.

But at the same time, Obama suggested, it would be wrong to offer blanket amnesty for people who came into the United States unlawfully.

To do so “would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. … It would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally.”

Ultimately, he said, “our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.”

Obama said those who entered the country illegally must admit they broke the law, register with the appropriate authorities, pay taxes, pay a fine and learn English. They must “get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship.”

The president urged Congress to tackle immigration reform legislation but stressed that it would require support from both Democrats and Republicans.

“That is the political and mathematical reality,” he said.

Obama’s remarks, however, immediately received a cold reception from one top Senate Republican.

Obama and congressional Democrats “made a strategic decision to put immigration on the back burner, and they now claim they can’t even propose immigration legislation without a Republican,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “It’s time for the president and congressional Democrats to stop the charade. Op-eds, outlines and speeches won’t cut it anymore.”

In turn, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, lashed out at the GOP, arguing that “instead of matching the leadership of Democrats to solve this problem and engaging in good-faith negotiations, Republicans continue to engage in political grandstanding and polarizing rhetoric that encourages intolerance of our vibrant immigration population.”

Reid, who is facing a tough re-election fight this year, is counting on a strong turnout among Latino voters in November.

Despite Obama’s call for bipartisan immigration reform, several senior Democratic sources said Thursday that they see virtually no chance of Congress taking up such a measure before November’s midterm elections.

Though some hold out hope for potential movement during a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, most sources said next year is the more realistic earliest target. But even that, according to one source, may be “happy talk.”

Still, these sources said that, politically, it was crucial for the president to give a speech like he did Thursday to put pressure on Republicans and, more importantly, to reassure angry Latino voters that Democrats haven’t forgotten about the issue.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted in late May indicated that public support for beefing up security along the U.S. border with Mexico had grown significantly. According to the survey, nearly nine out of 10 Americans want to beef up U.S. law enforcement along the border with Mexico.

Eight in 10 questioned also supported a program that would allow illegal immigrants already in the United States to stay here and apply for legal residency if they had a job and paid back taxes. Thirty-eight percent said that program should be a higher priority than border security and other get-tough proposals. Six in 10 said border security was the higher priority.

The president’s speech followed a highly anticipated meeting this week in which he discussed immigration reform with grass-roots reform advocates.

“From our meeting, it is clear that the president is committed to comprehensive immigration reform and understands that congressional action is needed urgently,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum and a meeting attendee.

Other topics discussed at the meeting included concerns that grass-roots leaders had about reforms to current detention and deportation procedures, Noorani said.

CNN’s Dana Bash contributed to this report.

Obama calls for immigration reform

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WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has given a green light to the Homeland Security Department to be more competitive and choosey as it hires up to 1,000 new cyber experts over the next three years, the first major personnel move to fulfill its vow to bolster security of the nation’s computer networks.

The announcement follows a wave of cyber attacks on federal agencies, including a July assault that knocked government Web sites off the Internet and earlier intrusions into the country’s electrical grid.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who made the announcement on Thursday, said the hiring plan reflects the Obama administration’s commitment to improving cyber security. The move gives DHS officials far greater flexibility to hire whom they want, outside of more stringent federal guidelines. And it will also allow more latitude in pay.

As a result, Napolitano told an audience of cyber industry professionals, the new rules “will allow us to be competitive with you all” in luring quality applicants.

Much of the funding already has been budgeted, but DHS also is working with Congress for more money. Officials refused to say how much money the program would represent.

The hiring push also underscores the administration’s ongoing struggle to better organize and manage the country’s vulnerable digital defense. President Barack Obama vowed in February to tackle cyber issues, but still has not named a cyber coordinator, a job that experts say will be difficult to fill.

Napolitano said her department does not anticipate filling all 1,000 positions, which will include cyber analysts, developers and engineers who can detect, investigate and deter cyber attacks.

The secretary’s announcement marked the start of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which reflects the White House goal to draw more public attention to the need for everyday computer users to exercise more diligence in protecting their online security.

In other comments, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said the Pentagon expects to make decisions in the coming weeks on whether to relax restrictions on the use of external computer flash drives and social media Web sites by members of the military and department employees.

The Pentagon banned the use of flash drives last November because of a virus threat officials detected on Defense Department networks.

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On the Net:

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month: http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/gc(underscore)1158611596104.shtm

(CNN) — Five men in El Salvador, including a police officer, were arrested Wednesday in connection with the killing last week of French filmmaker and photographer Christian Poveda, the country’s attorney general’s office said.

Two of five men arrested Wednesday in connection with the killing of French filmmaker Christian Poveda.

A sixth man who allegedly ordered the murder was already in prison, according to a statement from the agency.

Poveda — who recently finished a documentary about a violent street gang, part of the Mara 18 gang in El Salvador — was found shot dead in the town of Tonacatepeque, about 10 miles northeast of the capital, San Salvador, on September 2, authorities said.

Four of those arrested were members of the same Mara 18 gang that was the subject of Poveda’s film, the attorney general’s office said.

National Civil Police Officer Juan Napoleon Espinoza also was arrested, it said.

Poveda’s documentary, “La Vida Loca,” which follows the lives of members of the Mara 18 gang, had been screened at a handful of film festivals and is slated for wider release later this month. His body was found in an area controlled by that same gang, local reports said.