ThinkProgress has been reporting on how GOP contenders have practically been tripping over each other to offer the harshest, most costly proposal for dealing with undocumented immigrants. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (PA) joined in the chest-thumping yesterday on Fox News, opposing the idea that undocumented immigrants who have been here for decades should have any path to reside here legally or apply for citizenship. Santorum said there shouldn’t even be consideration for immigrants who have family members living in the U.S. legally.

He “doesn’t want to break up families,” he said, but deportation isn’t so bad because “we’re not sending them to any kind of difficult country”:

SANTORUM: Yeah I feel bad, I don’t like to break up families, but you know the family can go back. We’re not sending them to Siberia. We’re not sending them to any kind of, you know, difficult country. They’re going to Mexico, which is a great country, a nice country. And they can go back like every other Mexican that wants to come to America and come here legally.

Watch it:

Santorum may think that being deported to Mexico is akin to taking a permanent vacation in Cancun, but most immigrants find it a harrowing experience. Immigrants, some of whom have lived in the U.S. since childhood, are forcibly removed from their families and sent to a place where they often have no remaining connections, no relatives, and no housing or job prospects.

In search of a better life and more economic opportunity, approximately 400,000 migrants go through Mexico each year to reach the United States. Nearly half the Mexican population, or 52 million people, live in poverty, 11.7 million of them in extreme poverty. Much of the population lacks access to food, clean water, education, and health care.

Some immigrants who come to the U.S. are also refugees who are too scared of being deported or intimidated by the difficult legal process to apply for asylum. The U.S. asylum system has been particularly unmerciful for people running from Central American gangs — despite a surge in gang-related claims, their petitions are rarely granted. Many immigrants have been killed by gangs after being deported, proving their lives really were at risk — but too late.

Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX) spoke to his House colleagues this morning about the tragic suicide of Joaquin Luna, an 18-year-old undocumented immigrant in Texas who committed suicide because his immigration status left him trapped and out of options. His brother Diyer Mendoza said Luna had wanted to be an engineer but didn’t think he could get into college or even get a job as an undocumented immigrant without the DREAM Act.

In his speech today, Hinojosa said Luna’s death underscores the need for the DREAM Act, which would give undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children legal status if they meet certain criteria. Last year, the House passed the DREAM Act, but it failed in the Senate. In his remarks, Hinojosa spoke about the talented students who could qualify under the DREAM Act:

In the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and Across the country, DREAM students have excelled in school, and become valedictorian, and AP scholars, and student leaders, despite facing difficult circumstances. [...]

Many of these students are working tirelessly to earn their high school and college diplomas and aspire to become professionals in the sectors of our workforce which need their talent, skills, and ingenuity.

Watch Hinojosa’s floor speech:

“Simply stated, these talented youth can help our nation increase its global competitiveness and be the innovators of tomorrow,” Hinojosa said, urging his colleagues to co-sponsor the DREAM Act.

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, the slew of unnecessary voter ID laws passed by Republicans in many states this year are a transparent attempt to disenfranchise core Democratic voters, especially college students, the poor and minorities. But Republicans usually claim these laws are passed for the sake of curbing nonexistent voter fraud — it’s rare to have one admit their intention is to stop Democrats from getting to the polls.

But that’s exactly what New Hampshire Speaker William O’Brien (R) told a Tea Party crowd recently. As the new laws are already stifling students’ efforts to participate politically, O’Brien confessed that he wanted to make it more difficult for students to vote because they “vote their feelings” — i.e. vote as liberals:

A New Hampshire measure that ultimately failed earlier this year stoked Democratic concerns about the law’s true intentions. The law would have ended same-day registration and prohibited most college students from voting from their school addresses.

New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien, a Republican, told a tea party group that allowing people to register and vote on Election Day led to “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do — they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire’s voter ID bill failed to pass, but illegal signs nevertheless appeared on the door of a polling station in O’Brien’s own district, demanding that voters show ID before they could vote.

Under many state’s voter ID laws, student IDs and even government-issued veterans identification cards are unacceptable for use at polling stations.

Republican lawmakers across the country are pushing the marginalization of low-income Americans by insisting they take a drug test before receiving federal aid. Joining Arizona, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, Maine, and GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the bandwagon, Ohio GOP state Sen. Tim Schaffer wants to break “the cycle of drug-induced poverty” with a bill forcing welfare recipients to pay for and pass a drug test first. After all, it’s “the compassionate thing to do,” he says:

“Implementing this bill is the compassionate thing to do. It will end the cycle of poverty by referring drug users to treatment and providing safety for children,” he told a Senate committee considering Senate Bill 69.

As written, the applicant would pay for the test, which Schaffer said can cost $15 to $35.

The bill initially would establish pilot programs in three counties, scaled back from his earlier proposal and another introduced by a Republican colleague that would have implemented drug-testing statewide immediately.

Under the bill, Ohioans who fail the drug test would be ineligible to receive cash assistance for one year and would have to complete treatment through local alcohol-and drug-addiction services. The first time Ohio Republicans pushed this idea, a Democratic legislator shot back with a proposal to test state lawmakers and statewide officeholders. While Schaffer readily admits there is no data to support the need for such tests, he insists “taxpayers should not be paying for people’s illegal drug use.”

But what lawmakers definitely should not do is introduce measures that flout the constitution. UCLA Professor Adam Winkler notes that the Supreme Court has only upheld “suspicion-less” searches like random drug testing in very limited circumstances, like in “high-risk public safety environments.” Such generic circumstances like testing federal aid recipients is seen as government overreach. Indeed, courts have rejected policies just like this one again and again.

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice.

• Florida’s new law making students who have lived in the state all their lives pay out-of-state tuition if they can’t prove their parents are in the country legally may violate the equal protection clause.
• Students are starting to feel the effects of many states’ new voter ID laws which disproportionately effect groups like them that tend to vote Democrat.
• Yesterday the governors of Washington and Rhode Island asked the federal government to ease rules on marijuana to allow for its medical use in states like theirs that have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes. 16 states now allow medical marijuana but are still at risk of federal prosecution for regulating the safe distribution of the drug.
• Yesterday the National Labor Relations Board voted to approve a rule that will eliminate delays between when employees file for a vote on whether to start a union and the day the ballots are cast. Republicans, who are upset the NLRB still even exists, naturally opposed the decision.
• Ahead of the 2012 election, state election officials are going on a high-tech blitz, making it easier to cast ballots and get information through iPads, online voting, and social media.