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Kathleen Miller writes:

Police officials from Washington, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County said Wednesday they do not have any agreements to accept ID cards issued by a Maryland pro-immigrant advocacy organization as valid identification, contrary to the claims of the group’s leaders.

Montgomery police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said: “We do not have an agreement with them.”

“If the police departments are expressing another policy, we will obviously have a conversation directly with them about the utility of accepting the identification,” [CASA spokeswoman Kim] Propeack said in an e-mail.

The Washington Post has been more interesting over the past few days than has this week’s Gazette, so, given limited time this week, I’ll round up some of the articles from the Post:

• Pamela Constable writes, Sometimes, A Labor Day:
  

  This has been a tense summer for the men who arrive each morning at the Center for Employment and Training in Gaithersburg, operated by the nonprofit CASA de Maryland. Many have no legal documents. They have anxiously followed the news of Virginia communities passing laws against illegal immigrants, of stepped-up factory raids and deportations. And they hear the angry voices.

  But no worker is asked whether he is in the country legally, and it is assumed that many are not. On the front table is a stack of brochures that explain in Spanish what to do in case of an immigration raid. “Don’t lie. . . . Don’t turn over false documents. . . . Don’t discuss your migratory status. . . . Ask to speak to a lawyer . . . ask to see a warrant . . . contact your consulate.”

  And I have to give this guy credit; this is one of the first times I’ve heard a CASA employee talking sense:

  “Some guys still prefer to wait for jobs outside the 7-Eleven. They say it gives them more freedom. But what they really want is to be drinking a beer and hiding it behind the dumpster,” says German Reyes, a staff member at the trailer. “This is bad for everyone. It is not a question of freedom. It’s a question of discipline and order.”

• Bill Turque writes, Laborer Ruling a Setback for Herndon:
  

  A Fairfax Circuit Court judge threw out Herndon’s anti-solicitation ordinance yesterday, finding that the town’s two-year-old prohibition against laborers and motorists discussing employment on the streets violates First Amendment rights to free speech.

  The third prong is where the town falls short, [Judge Leslie] Alden said, noting that governments restricting public speech must “open ample alternative channels” for communication of the prohibited speech.

  Alden said the Herndon Official Workers Center is not adequate because it is described in the ordinance as a temporary site. She also cited Reston Interfaith’s agreement with the town, which was based on a temporary permit.

  The bar on solicitation described in the ordinance, however, is permanent.

• Karin Brulliard writes, Immigrant Laws Tread Uncharted Legal Path:
  

  As officials in places such as Prince William County increasingly respond to public discontent over illegal immigration by passing ordinances, law scholars say a key question remains: Are local regulations legal?

  For now, they say, some things are clear. The Supreme Court has ruled that true immigration matters — who enters and leaves the United States — fall under the federal government’s realm alone. When it comes to laws related to noncitizens, the Constitution invalidates, or “preempts,” state laws that clearly conflict with federal laws or that courts interpret to be ground that Congress intended to dominate.

  That is where things get hazy, experts say.

  As the Virginia task force’s co-chairman, Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), put it: “I’ve been working on this for three years, and everybody is confused about what you can and can’t do. . . . You ask four attorneys, and you’ll get four answers.”

  Albo, himself a lawyer, asked whether state police could arrest people who approached them and said they had expired visas. Probably not, the lawyers said, because that is a civil immigration violation. And if the person said he had entered the country illegally? Probably so, he was told, because that is a criminal violation.

• Spencer S. Hsu writes, Planned Crackdown on Immigrants Denounced:
  

  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO this week separately assailed a new White House-backed crackdown on illegal immigration, warning of massive disruptions to the economy and headaches for U.S. citizens if the proposal goes ahead as planned in the coming days.

  Under the new rules, set to take effect on Sept. 14, employers that receive “no-match” letters have 90 days to resolve discrepancies. If they do not, the DHS may conclude that employers knowingly violated the law by employing illegal workers, opening the door to fines and even criminal arrests.

  That approach marks a major change. The Social Security Administration has long sent “no-match” letters, and it has found that 4 to 10 percent of workers have suspect numbers because of typographical errors, name changes resulting from marriage or multiple surnames, as well as fraud. But, until now, it has not held employers liable.

• Nick Miroff writes, A Strong, but Divisive, Voice for Immigrants:
  

  Twelve years ago, Ricardo Juarez was an unemployed government clerk standing in the dark on a riverbank outside Eagle Pass, Tex. He had no particular American dream in mind, he says, no vision of white picket fences or the Liberty torch. The youngest male in a family of 12 siblings, Juarez was mostly thinking about food. He and a group of other migrants set their inner tubes into the swirling blackness of the Rio Grande and let the current carry them across.

• Andrea Hopkins of Reuters writes, U.S. immigrants worry as families face deportation:
  

  When 300 U.S. immigration agents surrounded the chicken processing plant where Danny Alvarez-Reyes works, he did the only thing he could think of: he gave his coat to a scared friend determined to hide in the walk-in freezer.

• Tim Craig writes, Va. Republican Bill Would Bar Illegal Immigrants From College:
  

  Virginia Republicans announced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit public colleges and universities from accepting illegal immigrants even if they attended a public high school and were brought to the United States at an early age by their parents.