When asked about the recent problem of separating children from their illegal immigrant families, I burst out laughing, which didn’t go over well with some people in the room who thought I was being insensitive to their plight. Of course I am sympathetic, but I realized this was just another soap opera manufactured by the Democrats. Separating children from illegal immigrants is certainly not new as it was done for at least the last two administrations. President Trump certainly didn’t invent the law, he just enforced it. Democrat strategists are perfectly cognizant of this, but they desperately want to convince the American public the president is evil. As such, they have turned this into a huge photo op to try and demonstrate their compassion and the president’s lack thereof.
We are now just five short months away from the midterm elections, and with each day it becomes painfully obvious the Democrats have no proposals for solving any problems. So, instead of working through the legislative process, they attack the president. Their mission is simple: keep the heat on President Trump, thereby defacing him and anyone associated with him, particularly Republican candidates.
The theatrics of the Left is rather entertaining as they can now produce crocodile tears on demand, quote Jesus to justify their position (someone they abandoned years ago), and claim outrage over the slightest disagreement. Their histrionics of pseudo-sympathy is all rather amusing but not the slightest bit credible. They may impress the main stream media, but the American public is not swallowing it.
In a recent Gallup Poll, Americans who are satisfied with the direction of the country has reached a twelve year high, going back to September 2005. In the survey, all age groups and genders showed a marked improvement, but in particular, independents showed an eleven point bump, making it bad news for the Democrats.
Since the Democrats have no policy or program to offer American voters, other than increased taxation and larger government, they practice attack politics, where character assassination is commonplace and identity politics is used to ridicule their opposition. From now until the November elections, the Democrats will spend little time legislating and more time attacking the president.
This is all being choreographed rather precisely. As soon as the public has grown weary of the illegal immigration problem, another “catastrophe” will emerge with considerable fanfare. The Democrats cannot win by attacking the economy, the military or veterans, so they will go after such things as the environment and the EPA, housing and HHS, or the FCC, FDA, or Department of Transportation. In other words, a systematic attack on the various government departments affecting our lives. The brouhaha du jour is all designed to generate hate against the Republicans. Again, the people are seeing through this as evidenced by the recent Gallup poll.
Do not ask the Democrats about the growing Gross Domestic Product, the decreasing trade deficit, the shrinking unemployment rate, or the diminishing number of people on food stamps. These are all indicators of a prosperous economy improving under the Trump administration, something simply not discussed by the Left.
The main stream media plays a large role in all of this and could easily clear up misunderstandings if they wanted to. The problem is, they do not want to. As an instrument of the Left they are complicit in the shenanigans of the Democrats. It is no wonder, the American public no longer trusts the media. As one of my readers recently said to me, a lawyer from Tampa, “We’ve stopped watching the mainstream media. They are becoming irrelevant, except as a foil to show our disgust.”
The Democrat’s Soap Opera in the media reflects a desperate party resorting to desperate measures. Regardless of how they spin it though, the American public is not buying into it. The Democrats, therefore, are only burying themselves by not offering viable solutions. Although the media would have us believe a “Blue Tide” is rising, the truth is the Democrats are facing a brutal disaster in November, one which will reshape their party for years to come.
Keep the Faith!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/pelosi-watters.jpg365640Tim Brycehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngTim Bryce2018-06-28 07:58:472018-06-28 07:58:47The Democrats’ Soap Opera
Two well-known and powerful members of the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte have proposed legislation to address the DACA aliens and a many other issues that all comprise failures of the immigration system.
The Goodlatte bill is seen as the “tougher” of the two bills.
It would fund the hiring of 10,000 additional employees for Customs and Border Protection including 5,000 additional Border Patrol Agents but no additional ICE agents.
Today, ICE has 6,000 agents, but half of them are enforcing customs or other non-immigration related laws.
Before we go further, consider this hypothetical question:
If President Trump was able to build the wall along the southern border that was 50 feet tall and topped with ultra high-voltage electrified concertina wire, what would a determined alien need to defeat that wall?
Some pundits would say that such an alien would simply need a 55 foot ladder. So to make things interesting, let me add that the device that could defeat President Trump’s wall could fit in the alien’s pocket.
We will consider the solution to the problem a bit further on, but first, on June 18, 2018 the Washington Times Examiner article, Paul Ryan’s immigration bill gains traction ahead of House votes provided an extremely limited comparison of the two competing bills as noted in this excerpt:
Goodlatte has acknowledged his own measure lacked the votes to pass, leaving the Ryan bill as the sole Republican option with any chance of becoming law.
The Ryan legislation includes four immigration reform requirements outlined by President Trump in January. That includes providing a special pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers who came here as children, a reduction in chain migration, an end to the visa lottery system, and money for a wall along the southern border.
The Goodlatte/McCaul measure provides a more difficult pathway to citizenship and only for the approximately 800,000 people now enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program put in place by President Barack Obama. Goodlatte’s bill would end chain migration, the visa lottery system, and would authorize border wall funding.
Two outside groups who favor reduced immigration rates are critical of the Ryan plan, arguing that it amounts to amnesty for those who came to the country illegally, continues chain migration, and does not include a mandate for companies to use E-Verify, which some immigration reform advocates say is needed to curb illegal immigration. E-Verify is a system that ensures new hires are in the country legally.
Ryan has promised a vote on E-Verify in July and has also pledged consideration of a bill to create a program for immigrant agriculture workers.
President Trump has expressed a willingness to sign an immigration reform bill to finally end the immigration crisis.
Whether or not he would sign either of the two bills is not certain but interestingly, Chairman Goodlatte stated that even though he is the author of one of the two bills being considered, he would be willing to support the Ryan bill.
Both bills emphasize constructing the wall along the U.S. / Mexican border. Goodlatte’s bill would only provide legal status to aliens who have already participated in the DACA program while Ryan would also provide lawful status to aliens who would claim to have been eligible to participate in the DACA program but, for one reason or another, did not do so.
Estimates as to how many additional aliens could thus be processed for lawful status vary widely, from 1.8 million to double that number (3.6 million).
No one really knows how many aliens would actually make thatclaimbut as I noted in a previous commentary, DACA: Trump and Congress Must Look Before They Leap- 800,000 DACA aliens just became 3.6 million.
There is absolutely no way to know how many aliens would attempt to game this program by falsely claiming to have entered the United States prior to their 16th birthdays. Records of entry are not created when aliens enter the United States without inspection by running our borders or stowing away on ships. The Ryan bill would enable aliens who are in their mid-thirties to file applications.
There would be so many applications that no interviews of applicants and field investigations to verify the information contained in applications would be possible.
The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Traveldetailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud- including political asylum fraud to enter the United States to also embed themselves in the United States.
Page 54 contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot.”
Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.
In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.
Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.
That excerpt above provides the answer to my question. An alien who has a green card or passport with a visa would not have to scale that wall but simply stroll into a port of entry and be cheerfully welcomed into the U.S. by CBP personnel. This is why immigration fraud is so dangerous.
Neither immigration bill calls for the hiring of a single additional ICE agent.
Mandatory E-Verify is absolutely essential, however, without ICE agents to conduct field investigations, unscrupulous employers could easily defeat mandatory E-Verify by hiring illegal aliens “off the books.”
Immigration fraud undermines national security. While Goodlatte does call for assigning ICE agents to embassies around the world to enhance visa security, many aliens acquire various immigration benefits inside the United States by defrauding the adjudications process.
The Tsarnaev brothers who attacked the Boston Marathon and their other family members were granted political asylum by lying about “credible fear.” They were ultimately granted lawful immigrant status and one of the two terrorist brothers became a naturalized citizen by committing fraud.
The Goodlatte bill also has lots of other “goodies” for aliens, employers and immigration lawyers including a massive guest worker program for agricultural workers.
Without agents to police this program there would be no way to assure that aliens would not apply for such visas and then disappear, never showing up for work.
The Goodlatte bill would require that the employers of such errant workers to notify ICE, but without any ICE agents to seek these aliens, they will likely remain at large, joining the millions of other such illegal alien absconders who play the successful game of “Hide and seek” in America, because ICE has no agents who can seek.
Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.
Not all DACA aliens are from Latin America- indeed some are from the Middle East.
“Sleepers” often commit immigration fraud to acquire lawful status as an embedding tactic.
Why in the world doesn’t either Ryan or Goodlatte seek increased resources for critical interior enforcement?
Only they can answer that question.
Finally, Goodlatte would provide an additional 55,000 high-tech foreign workers with visas. Not exactly good news for unemployed or under-employed highly-skilled, highly-educated and highly-experienced American workers or their families.
Neither bill would enable President Trump to keep his campaign promises to Americans and make America safe again!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/immigrants-illegals-border-wall1-e1513111291197.jpg391640Michael Cutlerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMichael Cutler2018-06-27 10:14:502018-06-28 18:08:38Neither ‘Reform’ Bill Would Solve the Immigration Crisis: Here’s why they’re doomed to fail — by design.
Last week, on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch said that every American who votes for President Donald Trump is a Nazi. His exact words: “If you vote for Trump, then you, the voter—you, not Donald Trump—are standing at the border like Nazis going, ‘You here. You here.’”
Now, as virtually every Jew of Deutsch’s generation knows, a Nazi saying, “You here. You here,” refers to guards at Nazi extermination camps sending Jews to gas chambers or to work the barracks.
Also last week, Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA (a fact that, among other things, gives credence to the increasingly widespread realization that our intelligence elites have been morally and intellectually compromised) tweeted a photo of the tracks leading into Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous Nazi extermination and concentration camps, with the caption: “Other governments have separated mothers and children.”
Deutsch, Hayden, and the myriad other fools who compare Trump to Hitler and the Nazis have utterly trivialized the Holocaust. As everyone who isn’t on the left knows, there is nothing morally analogous between the way the last three presidential administrations dealt with some children of immigrants who are in the country illegally and what the Nazis did to Jewish children.
American children are routinely separated from their parent when that parent is arrested, and if the arrestee is a single parent, the child is taken into government custody until other arrangements can be made. With regard to immigrants who are in the country illegally, the only way to avoid separation is to place the children in detention along with their arrested parent(s).
But this was expressly forbidden by the most left-wing court in America—the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals—if detention lasts longer than 20 days, as it nearly always does when either a not-guilty plea or an asylum claim is made.
Moreover, as awful as separation from a parent is, these children were not treated like animals in cages but transferred to the care of relatives or foster homes, or housed with other detained children where they were provided with room, board, education, sports facilities, etc.
By contrast, Jewish children separated from their parents by Nazi guards were sent to gas chambers to die a gruesome, painful death by their lungs being filled with poisonous gas. And their parents almost always eventually suffered the same fate unless they were worked, starved, or tortured to death.
Comparing the two is not only a trivialization of the Holocaust; it is actually a form of Holocaust denial.
If Jewish children were treated by the Nazis the same way Central American children have been by America, then everything we know about the Holocaust is false.
Jewish children weren’t subjected to torturous medical experimentation, and they weren’t gassed and cremated. They were simply separated from their Jewish parents for a finite period of time, sent to stay with Jewish relatives or provided for by foster families while their parents were detained pending due-process legal proceedings.
According to Deutsch, Hayden, and all the leftists comparing America and Trump to the Nazis, Jewish children weren’t gassed; they played soccer while waiting to be reunited with their parents.
What is even more depressing than Deutsch and Hayden is the reaction—or silence—of most American Jewish organizations.
The Anti-Defamation League, which once defended Jewish interests, is becoming just another leftist interest group. I looked for some condemnation of Deutsch or Hayden and found none. Instead, in the words of the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the Anti-Defamation League “made a direct comparison to the Holocaust.”
It tweeted: “Children separated from their parents during the Holocaust speak out about the trauma it has caused. How can anyone defend such inhumane policies?”
The only criticism the Anti-Defamation League could muster was this: “People need to be extremely careful in drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and the Nazi regime in whatever context it is used.” But it offered no condemnation of those who actually made this odious comparison.
Leftism has poisoned much of American Jewish life. That is the primary reason, as reported in the just released American Jewish Committee poll, American and Israeli Jews are so divided on so many issues.
There were rabbis who announced they fasted when Trump was elected. Non-Orthodox synagogues around America sat shiva (the religious mourning period for a deceased immediate family member) when Trump won. And the Hebrew Union College, the Reform Jewish movement’s rabbinical seminary, had an Israel-hating writer as this year’s graduation speaker.
If you support Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or hold almost any traditional Jewish worldview—like God creating the human being as male and female—you must either hide your opinion or risk being ostracized at almost any non-Orthodox synagogue.
To their credit, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Zionist Organization of America, and a few other organizations did condemn those who equate America under Trump with Nazi Germany. But most Jewish organizations kept quiet, offered tepid caution, or actually echoed the sentiment.
In other words, at this time, many American Jewish organizations are bad for the Jews, bad for Judaism, and trivialize the Holocaust in order to score political points.
If it’s any comfort (and it isn’t), things are no better in mainstream Protestantism or at the Vatican.
But here is real comfort: If the left keeps on smearing nearly half its fellow Americans as Nazis, it will assure more Republican victories this coming November.
Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU.
RELATED VIDEO: First Lady visits ICE facility for children and families.
Dear Readers:
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch is by BT1/Brian To/WENN/Newscom)
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/180626_Deutsch_Prager-1250x650-e1530106873287.jpg377640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-06-27 09:43:082018-06-28 19:45:14Comparing the Border Situation to Nazi Germany? That’s a Form of Holocaust Denial.
All videos shown below are for Citizen Briefings, to engage the communities and discussions needed to inform the public and the local Law Enforcement. The briefings are meant to provide a sample of what is included in the certified Law Enforcement training being offered.
To begin those discussions, an introduction is available here:
Citizen Briefing videos available below:
Women & Sharia
Sharia Compliant Mosques
To see the full list, place your cursor in the upper left corner of the video window and click on that icon for all of the videos available.
Sharia Crime Stoppers is a forthright campaign demanding that the American justice system effectively deal with the criminal aspects of Islamic Law, otherwise known as Sharia. Law Enforcement and Prosecutors must be trained in the ideology of Sharia and Citizens must demand that the full force of American law be applied in their communities, despite political pressure to the contrary.
Sharia Crime Stoppers is a campaign to provide training to citizens across America so they can engage their local Law Enforcement, from the Officers on the Street to Judges, in a conversation to determine the depth of their understanding of Sharia sanctioned crimes.
Sharia Crime Stoppers training is free to all attendees and also available to churches, synagogues, and community groups… in a variety of formats. Only cost is for instructors travel expenses.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/stealth-shariah-crime-wave-america.jpg363637Defend The Borderhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDefend The Border2018-06-27 07:41:552018-06-27 07:43:36Shariah Crime Stoppers Videos for American Citizens Released
Washington, DC – Illegal immigrants should be prohibited from accessing all but emergency public services because the cost of these services unfairly and disproportionately falls on black families, according to the black leadership network Project 21 in its “Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America.”
The Blueprint is Project 21’s 57-point plan for removing barriers blocking blacks from empowerment and ensuring that they have their chance of attaining the American dream.
The influx of millions of illegal immigrants has strained public services and placed a disproportionate burden on black communities, Project 21 notes. In education, for example, Project 21 says black students are more likely to suffer the consequences of expanding class sizes to accommodate immigrants than their white counterparts, noting that – in 83 of the largest 100 cities – black and Hispanic students attended schools with majority non-white populations.
Horace Cooper
“Millions of people being able to stay in our country illegally not only demonstrates the failure of our immigration system, but also causes a significant strain on public services – especially at the state and local level. Our neediest Americans, particularly blacks in urban communities, must compete for education and health programs with those who shouldn’t even be here,” explained Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper, a former professor of constitutional law and senior counsel to congressional leadership. “At the same time, much of the funding for these local programs comes from regressive taxes that hit poor and working-class blacks the hardest. This means they actually pay for the privilege of having unlawful immigrants in their neighborhoods. This is unfair, and it should end.”
Illegal immigration costs taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level, according to figures from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. About $84 billion is absorbed by state and local governments that mostly derive funding through property, sales and income taxes.
Black citizens pay their share of these taxes, Project 21 notes, yet the government programs funded through these taxes are then reduced or unavailable to black Americans in too many communities due to illegal residents taking advantage of them.
There are four specific proposals in Project 21’s Blueprint designed to give black citizens a better deal and prevent them from being forced to subsidize those residing illegally in the United States:
Bar illegal aliens from accessing any public services, except emergency services.
Terminate federal funding of any social service agency that provides non-emergency services to illegal immigrants.
Prosecute providers and recipients who allow scarce federally-funded social services to be used by those who are in the country illegally.
End states’ special programs for assisting unlawful immigrants, redirecting those funds to needy citizens.
Christopher Arps
“To the political left, illegal immigrants are the ‘new blacks.’ Thus, its entitlement agenda now prioritizes those who enter our country illegally over the lawful citizens whose ancestors were here and fought for this country as far back as its founding. It’s appalling and a disgrace,” said Christopher Arps, a principal with Red Tail Strategies and co-founder of the Move-On-Up black social media network. “What’s equally appalling and disgraceful are so-called black leaders who push these policies of unfair wealth transfer. These giveaways to non-citizens must end.”
Every Monday between now and July 9, Project 21 will continue to release reform recommendations from its “Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America” covering a specific subject area. The tentative remaining release schedule is as follows:
Strengthening Faith-Based Communities (June 25)
Promoting Self-Determination (July 2)
Ending Excessive Regulation (July 9)
Project 21 leaders have been briefing key staff at the White House and with congressional leadership about the 57 policy ideas – spread out over 10 subject areas and covering education, criminal justice, economics and more – that are available in its “Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America.”
Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives for over 25 years, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research. Its members have been quoted, interviewed or published over 40,000 times since the program was created in 1992. Contributions to the National Center are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated, and may be earmarked exclusively for the use of Project 21.
Founded in 1982, the National Center for Public Policy Research is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from some 60,000 individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. Sign up for email updates here.
EDITORS NOTE: Follow Project 21 on Twitter at @Project21News or general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by Project 21 members, follow our media appearances Twitter account at @NCPPRMedia.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/black-woman-wallet-e1530014732250.jpg363640National Center for Public Policy Researchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center for Public Policy Research2018-06-26 08:07:302018-06-26 08:07:30Stop Forcing Black Citizens to Subsidize Non-Citizens. Prohibit Illegal Immigrants From Accessing Public Services.
As soon as the Trump administration adopted a “zero tolerance” policy requiring law enforcement to prosecute all immigrants who crossed the border illegally, it became clear that officials weren’t prepared to deal with the crush of kids who would find themselves under their supervision. Nor were they able to implement the policy in a humane way.
Family separation is callous and ineffective, but its existence doesn’t excuse the ginned-up moral panic, the pious grandstanding, or the historically illiterate associations to Nazi death camps unleashed by its critics. Nor does it excuse the fact that Democrats have shown zero interest in dealing with the undermining problems that propel these situations.
“Why won’t the GOP stand up to Donald Trump?!” is the well-known refrain from those who lockstepped their way through the eight-year hard-left turn of Barack Obama. Yet every Republican member of the Senate claimed to support legislation to fix existing laws that separate children from parents who are caught crossing into the United States illegally even as the president defended it.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, despite criticism from the president, has proposed perhaps overly optimistic legislation expediting asylum claims by adding more immigration judges and prioritizing families to be processed first.
So maybe the House (also working on legislation) and the Senate won’t be able to come to an agreement. Or maybe Trump will veto the bill. We don’t know. Not that any of it is going to matter if Democrats block the legislation, which is what they were promising to do before even seeing it.
“There are so many obstacles to legislation, and when the president can do it with his own pen, it makes no sense,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is a co-sponsor of proposed Democratic legislation to supposedly fix the problem, stated. “Legislation is not the way to go here when it’s so easy for the president to sign it.”
Now, I realize Democrats have gotten used to the idea of a president ruling with a pen while concocting immigration law unilaterally. But even though Trump acquiesced to pressure and signed an executive order, the subsequent action will not be “easy.”
Democrats know that the administration could be stopped by the courts and that the long-standing Flores consent decree complicates efforts to enforce border laws and keep families together. They know that only legislation could allow both to happen. They’re more interested in returning to the status quo.
Someone should ask leading Democrats whether they believe that any immigrant illegally bringing children should be detained at the border for any reason whatsoever—because these Democrats, who ignore the moral cost associated with thousands of children wandering over the border, have yet to explain how we can possibly know whether these kids are going to be OK if we have no way of ensuring their parents’ compliance with a court.
Someone should ask Schumer whether he opposes the “child separation” policy or he opposes a “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration. Has any Democrat clarified why the latter position wouldn’t incentivize more migrants to bring children (sometimes their own and sometimes not) on the dangerous trek over the border rather than to ports of entry? There’s been a spike in the number of families and unaccompanied children at the border over the past five years. Claiming amnesty after apprehension is basically a get-in-free card.
Someone should ask Democrats what kind of undocumented immigrant they believe doesn’t deserve de facto asylum. I’m well aware that most of the people flowing in from Central America are escaping poverty and violence, and I’m highly sympathetic to their plight. But I assume migrants who properly ask for asylum are in the same situation—other than being punished for following rules.
I’m a pretty liberal guy on immigration—open to more asylum-seekers, bigger immigration, more temporary workers, etc. But I’m not a huge fan of chaos. And I suspect I’m not alone.
Yet we have Democrats and activists calling for the elimination of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have a Democratic Party unwilling to make any compromise on the issue even when we’re faced with a surge of migrant children.
As Gabriel Malor pointed out in The Federalist this week, the proposed legislation co-sponsored by every Senate Democrat was so carelessly written that it would prevent “federal law enforcement agencies almost anywhere inside the United States from arresting and detaining criminals who are parents having nothing to do with unlawfully crossing the border and seeking asylum.”
It’s not healthy for the country or the people who come here seeking a better life to be thrown into a system that doesn’t work. Nor, as we are increasingly seeing in Europe, is it politically tenable to rely on emotionalism as a means of ignoring all law.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist and the author of the forthcoming “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.” Twitter: @davidharsanyi.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer is by Joshua Roberts/Reuters /Newscom. COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/chuck-schumer-e1529929115155.jpg362640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-06-25 08:20:492018-06-29 17:10:57Democrats Have Zero Tolerance for Solutions to Illegal Immigration
With President Donald Trump still facing criticism over separating migrant families who illegally crossed the border, other families met with the president Friday to share their stories of “permanent separation” from children killed by illegal immigrants—and to complain of being ignored by the news media.
Among those family members were Laura Wilkerson, who recalled the 2010 slaying of her son Josh.
“He was brutally tortured, strangled over and over. He was set on fire after death. His last hours were brutal,” Wilkerson said, standing on a stage at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with Trump, administration officials, and family members of 13 other victims of crimes by illegal immigrants.
They were among the “angel families” advocating strong enforcement of immigration laws.
Wilkerson contrasted their situation with those of illegal immigrant parents who can communicate with the children they’ve been separated from on Skype.
“As with everyone standing up here, none of our kids had a minute to say goodbye. We weren’t lucky enough to be separated for five days or 10 days,” she said. “We were separated permanently. If we want to be close to our kids, we have to go to the cemetery. We can’t speak with them. We can’t Skype with them.
“You guys know the permanent separation. It’s the media that won’t share it with other people. It’s permanent. We can never have him again on this earth. Thankfully, I’ll see him again in heaven,” she said.
Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to halt the separating of migrant parents and children caught illegally crossing the southern border.
“We’ll not rest until our border is secure, our citizens are safe, and we end this immigration crisis, once and for all,” Trump told the families. “Your loved ones have not died in vain.”
Other officials at the event included Vice President Mike Pence and Thomas Homan, who is retiring at the end of the month as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones,” Trump said. “The word you have to think about is ‘permanently.’”
Steve Ronnebeck, whose 21-year-old son, Grant, was fatally shot over a pack of cigarettes, criticized the news media for ignoring thousands of Americans killed by illegal immigrants since 9/11 amid the virtually nonstop news coverage regarding the separating of illegal immigrant families.
“You don’t hear these stories. Some of our media won’t talk to you about it,” Ronnebeck said. “I wish some of our media had the same integrity as our president, our vice president, Director Homan, all of you in law enforcement.”
Mary Ann Mendoza’s son—Mesa, Arizona, Police Sgt. Brandon Mendoza—was killed in 2014 in a vehicle accident with an illegal alien who was allegedly driving with a blood-alcohol level at three times the legal limit.
“As you know, they could fill this stage up every day for the next five months of victims of illegal alien crime, and it would just keep going,” Mendoza said. “Unfortunately, we are members of a club of our children or loved ones who have been killed by illegal aliens.
“But there are hundreds of thousands who are affected by illegal alien crime, rape, assault, identity theft. These are things that go unreported, unchecked,” she said.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of U.S President Donald Trump discussing immigration during an event with Angel families who lost loved ones to violence by illegal immigrants in the South Court Auditorium of the White House, in Washington, D.C., on June 22, 2018. Photo by Olivier Douliery/ Abaca Press (Newscom TagID: sipaphotoseight264730.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/Angel-FamiliesTrump-1250x650-e1529924827161.jpg365640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-06-25 07:08:022018-06-25 07:08:02Families of Victims of Illegal Aliens Tell of ‘Permanent Separation’ From Children, Being Ignored by Media
Little is as unnerving as trouble with the IRS, especially if you haven’t done anything wrong. That happened repeatedly during the Obama administration, as his IRS enthusiastically targeted conservative groups.
We’re now understanding why the Congress didn’t do much of anything about it.
We just released internal IRS documents revealing that Sen. John McCain’s Former Staff Director and Chief Counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations, Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.” President Trump, presumably unaware of these new facts, appointed Kerner as Special Counsel for the United States Office of Special Counsel.
The explosive exchange was contained in notes taken by IRS employees at an April 30, 2013, meeting between Kerner, Lerner, and other high-ranking IRS officials. Just ten days following the meeting, Lois Lerner admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.
Lerner and other IRS officials met with select top staffers from the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a “marathon” meeting to discuss concerns raised by both Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that the IRS was not reining in political advocacy groups in response to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Senator McCain had been the chief sponsor of the McCain-Feingold Act and called the Citizens United decision, which overturned portions of the Act, one of the “worst decisions I have ever seen.”
In the full notes of an April 30 meeting, McCain’s high-ranking staffer Kerner recommends harassing non-profit groups until they are unable to continue operating. Kerner tells Lerner, Steve Miller, Nikole Flax, then chief of staff to IRS commissioner, and other IRS officials, “Maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous.” In response, Lerner responded that “it is her job to oversee it all:”
Henry Kerner asked how to get to the abuse of organizations claiming section 501 (c)(4) but designed to be primarily political. Lois Lerner said the system works, but not in real time. Henry Kerner noted that these organizations don’t disclose donors. Lois Lerner said that if they don’t meet the requirements, we can come in and revoke, but it doesn’t happen in a timely manner. Nan Marks said if the concern is that organizations engaging in this activity don’t disclose donors, then the system doesn’t work. Henry Kerner said that maybe the solution is to audit so many that it is financially ruinous. Nikole noted that we have budget constraints. Elise Bean suggested using the list of organizations that made independent expenditures. Lois Lerner said that it is her job to oversee it all, not just political campaign activity.
We previously reported on the 2013 meeting. Senator McCain then issued a statement decrying “false reports claiming that his office was somehow involved in IRS targeting of conservative groups.” The IRS previously blacked out the notes of the meeting, but we found the notes among subsequent documents released by the agency.
We separately uncovered that Lerner was under significant pressure from both Democrats in Congress and the Obama DOJ and FBI to prosecute and jail the groups the IRS was already improperly targeting. In discussing pressure from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat-Rhode Island) to prosecute these “political groups,” Lerner admitted, “it is ALL about 501(c)(4) orgs and political activity.”
The April 30, 2013 meeting came just under two weeks prior to Lerner’s admission during an ABA meeting that the IRS had “inappropriately” targeted conservative groups. In her May 2013 answer to a planted question, in which she admitted to the “absolutely incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate” targeting of Tea Party and conservative groups, Lerner suggested the IRS targeting occurred due to an “uptick” in 501 (c)(4) applications to the IRS but in actuality, there had been a decrease in such applications in 2010.
On May 14, 2013, a report by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed: “Early in Calendar Year 2010, the IRS began using inappropriate criteria to identify organizations applying for tax-exempt status” (e.g., lists of past and future donors). The illegal IRS reviews continued “for more than 18 months” and “delayed processing of targeted groups’ applications” in advance of the 2012 presidential election.
All these documents were forced out of the IRS as a result of an October 2013 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the IRS after it failed to respond adequately to four FOIA requests sent in May 2013 (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Service (No. 1:13-cv-01559)). Judicial Watch is seeking:
All records related to the number of applications received or related to communications between the IRS and members of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate regarding the review process for organizations applying for tax exempt status under 501(c)(4);
All records concerning communications between the IRS and the Executive Branch or any other government agency regarding the review process for organizations applying for tax exempt status under 501(c)(4);
Copies of any questionnaires and all records related to the preparation of questionnaires sent to organizations applying for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status and;
All records related to Lois Lerner’s communication with other IRS employees, as well as government or private entity outside the IRS regarding the review and approval process for 501 (c)(4) applicant organizations.
The Obama IRS scandal is bipartisan – McCain and Democrats who wanted to regulate political speech lost at the Supreme Court, so they sought to use the IRS to harass innocent Americans. The Obama IRS scandal is not over. We continue to uncover smoking gun documents that raise questions about how the Obama administration weaponized the IRS, the FEC, FBI, and DOJ to target the First Amendment Rights of Americans.
JW Sues for Mueller Deputy Andrew Weissmann’s Text Messages
This week we learned that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hid from Congress a text message by FBI official Peter Strzok declaring that Trump wouldn’t become President:
“No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
The highly partisan Strzok became a lead player in Robert Mueller’s Russian collusion investigation of Donald Trump. Also, and still, in the lead is Andrew Weissmann, a senior deputy for Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a former chief of the Justice Department criminal Fraud Division.
Now the question is: What was Weissmann saying about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? We will find out.
Our legal team just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit asking the court to compel the Department of Justice to produce “all text messages to or from DOJ official Andrew Weissmann” regarding President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-01356)).
We sued after the DOJ failed to respond to our December 15, 2017, FOIA request for:
All text messages sent to or from DOJ official Andrew Weissmann regarding Donald Trump and/or Hillary Clinton between August 8, 2016 and the present.
All calendar entries, whether in physical or electronic form, for Weissmann from January 1, 2015 to the present.
We’re not at all surprised that the Justice Department didn’t respond, given its deplorable record of transparency.
Weissmann’s objectivity in Mueller’s investigation was called into question in December 2017 when a separate JW FOIA lawsuit uncovered an email Weissmann wrote praising former acting Attorney General Sally Yates for defying Trump on enforcement of the President’s so-called travel ban.
Weissmann wrote to Obama appointee Yates in the email: “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.” President Trump fired Yates over her refusal to defend the policy. Yates was appointed by President Obama and was serving in an acting capacity as Attorney General for President Trump.
Also in December 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Weissmann had been in attendance at Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election night party. According to the Washington Post, Weissman contributed more than $4,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in 2008 and $2,300 to the Clinton campaign in 2007.
Weissmann, described by The New York Times as Mueller’s “pit bull,” is the lead prosecutor in the Mueller team’s case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Weissmann is demonstrably an anti-Trump/pro-Clinton activist. And it is suspicious that the Justice Department refuses to turn over any Weissmann text messages, especially given the anti-Trump bias documented in the FBI”s Strzok-Page texts.
Judicial Watch Seeks Obama-Era Records on Refugee Resettlement Sites
While the professional Left has successfully diverted everyone’s attention to a manufactured crisis involving illegal alien children on our Southern border, we are investigating other ways people flow into our country.
In particular, we continue to look at the UN-sponsored refugee program that has brought dangerous people across our borders. During the Obama administration, pro-refugee officials in several places gamed this system to disguise their intent.
We have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for records on sites that were considered for the resettlement of refugees in the United States during the last two years of the Obama administration. (Judicial Watch vs. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv-01244))
We sued after the State Department failed to respond to our February 23, 2017, FOIA request for:
All records reflecting the locations within the United States that were considered as possible sites for refugee resettlement under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in 2015 and 2016.
All records reflecting the criteria used to determine suitability of locations as refugee resettlement sites in 2015 and 2016.
All records reflecting the names of local organizations promoting any of the locations identified above for consideration as refugee resettlement sites.
In October 2016 we made public 128 pages of documents we obtained from the mayor of Rutland, Vermont, showing a concerted effort by the mayor and a number of private organizations to conceal from the public their plans to resettle 100 Syrian refugees into the small southern Vermont town. The mayor and resettlement organizations shrouded the plan in such secrecy that not even the town’s aldermen were informed of what was taking place behind closed doors. The aldermen eventually wrote to the U.S. Department of State protesting the plan and opened an investigation into the mayor’s actions.
The State Department says it currently works with nine nonprofit organizations to resettle refugees. Those nonprofits have about 315 affiliates in 180 communities throughout the U.S.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the U.S. admitted 84,994 refugees during fiscal year 2016, just short of the 85,000 target set by the Obama administration. The U.S. admitted 16,370 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 12,587 from Syria, 12,347 from Myanmar, 9,880 from Iraq and 9,020 from Somalia. Pew Research reports that nearly 39,000 Muslim refugees entered the U.S. in fiscal year 2016, the highest number on record, according to analysis of data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center.
In fiscal year 2015, the U.S. reportedly admitted 70,000 refugees. The Obama administration also proposed admitting 110,000 refugees for fiscal year 2017.
President Donald Trump on January 27, 2017 issued Executive Order 13769, which included a suspension of the USRAP for 120 days. There were 29,022 refugees reportedly admitted to the U.S. in 2017 – the lowest number since 2002.
In a July 2017 report on the refugee applicant screening process and associated fraud risks, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that, “Increases in the number of USRAP applicants approved for resettlement in the United States from countries where terrorists operate have raised questions about the adequacy of applicant screening.”
We are suing to find out which towns across America were, without input and over the objections of residents, targeted for refugee settlements by the Obama administration.
And to make sure the Deep State isn’t up to its usual tricks, we are investigating to make sure now that the current State Department is being more transparent and honest in its placement of refugees.
The Strange Case of McAuliffe & McCabe — Another Clinton/FBI Scandal
You won’t hear from this from the liberal media, but the IG report is chock full of facts and scandal leads that go way beyond Clinton emails and the “get Trump” fever that overtook the FBI leadership. As our own Micah Morrison points out in his latest Investigative Bulletin piece, raises more questions about other players in the Clintons’ orbit:
Every student of American politics knows that Terry McAuliffe is that swampiest of swamp creatures, the cool cat with the big bucks. Al Gore called him “the greatest fundraiser in the history of the universe.” In 1996 alone, as national finance chairman of the Clinton-Gore re-election team, McAuliffe raised $50 million, but plunged the Democratic Party into a sweeping campaign-finance scandal involving the sale of sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, coffee klatches at the White House, a vast cast of sketchy characters and rivers of money. The Clintons loved the ebullient money man and he loved them back. By 1999, McAuliffe claimed to have raised nearly $275 million for the Arkansas couple—and that’s before he joined forces with the Clinton’s 21st century money machine, the Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. In 2000, he was named chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In 2008, he chaired Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In 2013, with enthusiastic support from the Clintons, he ran for governor of Virginia and won.
By 2015, Governor McAuliffe already was “shaping a significant role for himself” in Mrs. Clinton’s second try at the presidency, Politico reported. A “consummate political animal, [McAuliffe] just can’t keep his fingers away from the flame. Despite the daily demands of running the state…he’s emerging as Hillary’s informal liaison to governors and the party’s biggest donors, while also keeping a finger on the pulse of the camp’s central operations in Brooklyn.”
By contrast, even today, in the wake of hundreds of media stories and last week’s Office of Inspector General report on alleged wrongdoing in the 2016 election, few people will recognize the name Andrew McCabe. He’s a swamp inhabitant too, though many would put him on the right side of the swamp, on dry land, chasing the bad guys. Except that’s not quite how it turned out.
Many of the McCabe details in the OIG report will come as no surprise to Judicial Watch followers. We’ve been uncovering facts about the McCabe affair for over a year. Read about our efforts here, here, and here.
A useful timeline in the OIG report sketches the McCabe-McAuliffe saga—a swamp tale of a particular sort. In 2014, McCabe, a rising star at the FBI, is assistant director of the bureau’s Washington, DC, field office. His wife is a pediatrician in Virginia. Terry McAuliffe is governor.
In February 2015, Dr. McCabe receives a phone call from Virginia’s lieutenant governor. Would she consider running for a state senate seat?
Less than two weeks later, in March 2015, McCabe and his wife drive to Richmond for what they thought was a meeting with a Virginia state senator to discuss Dr. McCabe’s possible run for office.
In Richmond, according to the OIG report, they are told there had been “a change of plans” and that “Governor McAuliffe wanted to speak to Dr. McCabe at the Governor’s mansion.”
It’s around this time that a veteran FBI agent’s radar might start blinking.
McCabe and his wife meet with McAuliffe for 30 to 45 minutes, according to the OIG report. Fundraising was discussed. “Governor McAuliffe said that he and the Democratic Party would support Dr. McCabe’s candidacy.” McAuliffe asked McCabe about his occupation and “McCabe told him he worked for the FBI but they did not discuss McCabe’s work or any FBI business.” McCabe later described it to an FBI official as a “surreal meeting.”
After the meeting, the couple rode to a local event with the governor, then returned to the mansion with the governor to retrieve their car.
McCabe informed FBI ethics officials and lawyers about the meeting and consulted with them about his wife’s plans. No one raised strong objections. McCabe recused himself from all public corruption cases in Virginia and Dr. McCabe jumped into the race.
In July 2015, the FBI opened an investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices.
Let’s pause to note here that while the official FBI investigation was opened in July 2015, Mrs. Clinton was known to be in hot water as far back as March 2015, when the State Department inspector general revealed her widespread use of a private, non-government email server.
Swamp cats will notice that March 2015 is also when Andrew and Jill McCabe got their surprise audience with McAuliffe, the longtime Clinton money man.
The McCabe fortunes rose in the autumn of 2015. Mr. McCabe was promoted to associate deputy director of the FBI. Dr. McCabe received $675,000 from two McAuliffe-connected entities for her state senate race. They were by far the biggest donations to her campaign.
In November 2015, Dr. McCabe lost her race.
In January 2016, the FBI opened an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
On February 1, Mr. McCabe was promoted again, to deputy director of the FBI.
Despite the McAuliffe connection, the OIG report notes, there was no FBI re-evaluation of McCabe’s recusals following his promotions. Although recused from Virginia public corruption investigations, he retained a senior role in Clinton-related matters.
In May 2016, news broke that McAuliffe was under FBI investigation for campaign finance violations. CNN reported that investigators were scrutinizing “McAuliffe’s time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative” and Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang, a U.S. permanent resident who made large donations to both the McAuliffe 2013 gubernatorial campaign and to the Clinton Foundation.
On October 23, the Wall Street Journal revealed the McAuliffe-linked donations to Dr. McCabe’s campaign. At FBI headquarters, McCabe resists pressure from senior executives to recuse himself from all Clinton-related matters.
Finally, on November 1—a week before the presidential election — McCabe recused from the Clinton email and Clinton Foundation investigations.
Following James Comey’s dismissal in May 2017, McCabe was briefly acting director of the FBI—the most powerful law enforcement position in the land. Following the appointment of Chris Wray as director, McCabe returned to the deputy director position and, as controversy engulfed him and the FBI, he went on paid leave. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him in March, 2018. The Justice Department inspector general has referred a possible criminal case against McCabe to federal prosecutors for lying to internal investigators in an earlier probe of the Wall Street Journal story and leaks.
One of the strangest claims in the OIG report is that the senior leadership of the FBI was not aware of — or perhaps simply did not care about — McAuliffe’s long history with the Clintons. “We were troubled,” the OIG report notes, “by the fact that the FBI ethics officials and attorneys did not fully appreciate the potential significant implications to McCabe and the FBI from campaign contributions to Dr. McCabe’s campaign and did not implement any review of those campaign donations. Thus, while the same factual circumstances that led to McCabe’s recusal on November 1, 2016, were present at the time McCabe became deputy director on February 1, 2016, the FBI ethics officials, McCabe, and Comey only learned of them as a result of the October 23 WSJ article.”
It seems likely now that the McCabe chapter of the larger battle in Washington will end with a whimper, not a bang. The beasts—investigative, media, political—move on. But what are we to make of Terry McAuliffe’s role in the episode?
Swamp aficionados will note the sudden “change of plans” that elevated the trip to Richmond from a meeting with a low-level political operative to an encounter with the governor. McAuliffe is charming and charismatic. Money is (vaguely) discussed, and oh by the way, McAuliffe asks McCabe, what is your occupation?
Now, Terry McAuliffe’s connections are legendary. His devotion to the Clinton ambitions is unswerving. He knows everybody, particularly anybody who has any business with the Clintons (remember, the email controversy is about to metastasize) and certainly he knew that Andrew McCabe worked for the FBI before he asked that question. But now McCabe knows that the governor knows. Next, money—a lot of it—flows to Dr. McCabe’s campaign.
Things might have turned out differently, after all. Jill McCabe might have been in the state senate. Hillary Clinton might have been in the White House. And Andrew McCabe was in line to be the next director of the FBI. Some of the best swamp plays are not about greed but ambition.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/bush-mccain-e1531389356176.jpg361428Judicial Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJudicial Watch2018-06-23 06:52:022018-06-23 06:53:21VIDEO: McCain’s Subcommittee Staff Director Urged IRS to Target Conservative Groups
It’s one thing to tell a story that tugs on people’s heartstrings. It’s quite another to manipulate that story to color people’s view. Of course, the liberal media knows a thing or two about twisting the truth to suit their narrative. And, after days of posting gut-wrenching photos of children at the border, the facts are finally catching up with them. Turns out, the faces of the immigration debate aren’t faces from this crisis at all!Time magazine is one of the biggest offenders. Its latest cover, a crying toddler staring up at President Trump, was never separated from her mother at all. In what is turning out to be a major embarrassment for Time and the far-Left, the little girl’s father went to the press to correct the story, insisting that she and her mom were never separated at the border. To its credit, the Washington Post outed the magazine and pointed out that, “The heart-wrenching image, captured by award-winning Getty Images photographer John Moore, was spread across the front pages of internationalnewspapers. It was used to promote a Facebook fundraiser that has collected more than $18 million to help reunite separated families.”
And Time isn’t the only outlet taking liberties with the truth. Other outlets have been forced to apologize on air for using a photo of a caged little boy, after describing him as “ripped from the arms of their mother” by the president’s immigration policy. The propaganda is so out of control that the New York Times took the rare step of shaming the Left in a column, “How Liberals Got Lost on the Story of Missing Children at the Border.” Using a picture of two little boys in a cage as an example, reporter Amanda Taub explains, “This image has been widely shared on social media in recent days, offered as an example of the Trump administration’s cruel policies toward immigrants, but in fact the picture was taken in 2014.”
The real irony is this — no one needs to manipulate the truth to horrify Americans about the situation. There are more than enough nightmarish stories to compel anyone to act — and we should. You’d have to be the Tin Man not to be moved by what’s happening to children before they even get to our borders. People at ground zero, like National Border Patrol Council spokesman Chris Cabrera, have seen enough to keep them awake every night of the week. On CNN, he explained the absolutely devastating impact our lawlessness has had on families.
“I don’t think everybody understands what’s happening down here. You know, a lot of these kids that are coming here, and put through terrible, terrible situations by their parents…When you see a 12-year-old girl with a Plan B pill, or their parents put her on birth control because they know getting violated is part of the journey, that’s just a terrible way to live. When you see a four-year-old girl traveling completely alone with just her parents’ phone number written across her shirt. I mean, come on now… We had a nine-year-old boy last year have heat stroke in front of us and die with no family around…”
Why? Because our refusal to enforce our laws has encouraged parents to gamble with their children’s lives. And despite the media’s anti-Trump drumbeat, the majority of Americans still hold the parents responsible. When families are arrested and separated after attempting to enter the United States illegally, Rasmussen reports, “54 percent of likely U.S. voters say the parents are more to blame for breaking the law… [O]nly 35 percent believe the federal government is more to blame for enforcing the law. Eleven percent are not sure.”
In the wake of President Trump’s executive order, which makes clear that compassion and upholding the law are not incompatible, you would think there would be political goodwill that could be used to address the overarching issue. Not so. Congressional Democrats aren’t interested in a solution. They’re interested in bypassing immigration laws altogether, regardless of the lives it costs and the havoc it wreaks.
But if they think the American people are on board with that approach, they’re mistaken. By a 3-to-1 margin, they reject Obama’s “catch and release” program, which essentially apprehends people at the border and then releases them into the country with a court date that they may or may not ignore. Even Democratic voters don’t agree with the idea, barely giving it 30 percent support.
The compassionate solution is not the status quo. This has, as Donald Trump pointed out, been going on for many decades. “Whether it was President Bush, President Obama, President Clinton — same policies. They can’t get them changed because both sides are always fighting… This is maybe a great chance to have a change.” He’s right — if liberal leaders will set aside their political games long enough to pursue it.
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/062218_immigration_770x400-e1529714794800.jpg353640Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2018-06-22 20:46:432018-06-22 20:47:35Media Separated from Reality at Border
The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.
Children are the future of every nation and culture on earth which makes them the most valuable natural resource in the world. Water, air, land, coal, natural gas, phosphorus, oil, minerals, iron, soil, forests and timber are all subjects of worldwide conservation efforts. What about the children?
Wars are fought over natural resources in competition for power and dominance. So it is with the children. The leftist exploitation of illegal immigrant children is a political dirty trick being played for the hearts and minds of the compassionate American electorate. This is how it works.
President Trump’s America-first policies are demonstrably positive for America and threaten the narrative of Obama’s leftist collectivist destruction. President Trump’s insistence on our national sovereignty is an existential threat to Obama’s battle for internationalized globalism. Obama’s promise to transform America has been exposed as a promise to destroy America from within and replace our infrastructure with socialism in preparation for the mother of all collectivism – planetary governance.
The left is exploiting ILLEGAL immigrant children in a desperate attempt to delegitimize President Trump before the midterm elections. A midterm victory is necessary for leftist Democrats to start impeachment proceedings against the President. Tear-jerking appeals for reunification of ILLEGAL immigrant families are completely disingenuous. They are pure political theater – a humanitarian hoax designed to engage compassionate voters and insure a midterm election victory because:
Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion fell apart and only served to expose serious malfeasance of Obama’s FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Department.
sensationalized news is a weapon designed to stigmatize Trump and offset his stunning economic victories before the midterm elections
reunification of families deflect attention away from the damning 6.14.18 IG report recommending more investigations into FBI improprieties during the Clinton email scandal which will ultimately expose Obama’s participation.
The colluding leftist mainstream media deliberately refuses to include the essential word ILLEGAL into its reports. There would be no issue of separated families if the families came to the United States LEGALLY! President Trump is in favor of LEGAL immigration and leftist attempts to deny that reality and present POTUS as anti-immigration are typical of the deceit that has come to characterize the leftist Democrats under Obama.
In a stunning 6.22.18 article Carolyn Glick exposes the deceitfulness of the media outcry over US government policy of separating illegal immigrant minors from their illegal parents:
“The policy is cruel. Indeed, recognizing its cruelty, Trump signed an executive order banning the practice.
But the policy isn’t new. This was the Obama administration’s policy following a court order prohibiting children from joining their parents in detention.
Rather than soberly acknowledge that law enforcement, including immigration law is often a cruel business and recognize that to remain a state of laws sometimes authorities undertake difficult and harsh actions, the anti-Trump media ignored reality and went straight for the kill. David Remnick, Frank Bruni and countless others didn’t care that the Obama administration separated children from their parents, placed them in cages and wrapped them in aluminum foil. As far as they are concerned, the continuation of the same cruel policy under Trump is proof that Trump is a Nazi.
Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the NSA and the CIA posted a photo of the entrance to Auschwitz on his Twitter feed with a caption ‘Other governments have separated mothers and children.’”
“In other words, it is the 9th Circuit’s misinterpretation of the Clinton administration’s settlement agreement that doesn’t allow juvenile aliens to stay with their parents who have been detained for unlawful entry into the country.”
“The Obama administration provided a huge incentive for illegal aliens to smuggle children across the border, since a child acted as a get-out-of-jail-free card for avoiding detention and prosecution for the adult accompanying the child. As the Department of Homeland Security correctly says, this policy ‘incited smugglers to place children into the hands of adult strangers so they can pose as families and be released from immigration custody after crossing the border, creating another safety issue for these children.’”
War makes strange bedfellows and the current culture war on America lead by Obama’s anti-American “resistance” movement has allies in its attempt to delegitimize and overthrow President Donald Trump. The economy is booming under President Trump. Unemployment for black Americans is the lowest in history. Optimism of small businesses is skyrocketing. Negotiations over fair trade are in America’s favor. President Trump is making America great again and the leftist Democrat predators in collusion with the mainstream media including Internet giants Google, Facebook, and Twitter are desperate to stop him from winning the 2018 midterm elections.
It is abusive for illegal immigrant parents to subject their children to separation at the US borders and equally abusive for leftist political predators to support the practice in a vile attempt to swing the midterm elections. It is time for the leftist/media/Internet alliance to stop abusing and exploiting the children they are entrusted to protect. Photographs of crying children tug at American hearts BUT the photographs are fraudulent and are pure political theater – it is a seismic humanitarian hoax!
Americans must understand the malfeasance, purpose, and value of politicizing illegal immigrant children at the border. Leftist child abuse and exploitation is the sinister leftist humanitarian hoax that misrepresents the facts of illegal immigrant family separation begun under Clinton, continued under Obama, and blamed on President Trump in a deceitful campaign to delegitimize POTUS before the midterm elections.
The mainstream media and Internet behemoths are deliberately colluding to misrepresent Clinton and Obama’s abusive family separation policies as belonging to President Trump. Americans believe in fairness. They do not appreciate being manipulated by the colluding mainstream and Internet media into believing leftist political propaganda masquerading as truth. If the humanitarian hoax of illegal immigrant family separation at the border is successful then leftist Democrats will have duped America into blaming President Trump for the abusive policies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/border-agent-with-illegal-family.jpg360640Linda Goudsmithttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLinda Goudsmit2018-06-22 17:34:242018-06-22 19:38:37The Humanitarian Hoax of Illegal Immigrant Family Separation at the U.S. Border
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to halt separating families that illegally cross the border, but also said he wants to sign a “comprehensive” immigration bill from Congress.
In signing the executive order, Trump said, “We are going to have a lot of happy people.”
“It’s about keeping families together while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border,” the president said. “Border security will be equal, if not greater, than previously. So we are going to have strong, very strong borders, but we are going to keep the families together. I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
Trump added, “It continues to be a zero tolerance. We have zero tolerance for people who enter our country illegally.”
“Zero tolerance” marked a tougher approach by the Trump administration in enforcing existing immigration law by arresting those who enter the country illegally.
The order is a temporary fix, and is titled “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation.”
The executive order says:
The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary), shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, maintain custody of alien families during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members. … The Secretary shall not, however, detain an alien family together when there is a concern that detention of an alien child with the child’s alien parent would pose a risk to the child’s welfare.
Trump was accompanied in the Oval Office Wednesday by Vice President Mike Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen
“This is a situation that president after president hasn’t dealt with for decades,” Nielsen said. “This one is willing to stand up and fix it. We ask Congress to do their part.”
Pence called it a “false choice between being a country of law and order and a country that demonstrates compassion and heart of the American people.”
Trump said that Congress must act, not only to address the minors situation but also for a “comprehensive” bill to address immigration.
“We are also wanting to go through Congress. We will be going through Congress,” Trump said. “We are working on a much more comprehensive bill.”
Past “comprehensive” proposals have awarded legal status to illegal immigrants, while increasing border security.
Trump met with 11 Republican senators and five GOP House members earlier Wednesday in the Cabinet Room of the White House where he first announced he would be signing the order, and also called for a broader measure.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., asserted that immigration has “bedeviled” lawmakers for 40 years.
“You’re the president who can help us solve the immigration problem with your leadership,” Alexander said. “You may be able to do for immigration what Nixon did for China and Reagan did for the Soviet Union and a lot of us would like to work with you on that.”
At least two bills have some GOP support in the House.
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., sponsored a more conservative bill that requires employers to use E-Verify, to check immigration status of employees, gives renewable legal status to beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for three years, authorizes a border wall, and ends chain migration.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has a “compromise bill” that gives DACA beneficiaries a pathway to citizenship and includes $25 billion for a border wall.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., told Roll Call of the two bills, “We don’t like any of them,” and said that “Immigration is kind of my sacrosanct. You’ve got to do this the right way. You just can’t do this badly.”
The detention of children has been a raging controversy as the administration increased enforcement.
According to immigration experts, under the federal government’s Flores settlement of 1997, the federal government would release unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants after no more than 20 days of detention. A separate 2008 law required unaccompanied minors be transferred out of custody of the Department of Homeland Security to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Then, a 2016 judicial interpretation expanded the Flores settlement to include minors brought into the country with their parents. So, conforming to the expanded interpretation of the settlement and the existing law, the DHS enforcement agencies, after arresting illegal immigrant parents, have transferred minor children to the custody of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, which tries to place them with relatives or a caretaker.
During the meeting with members of Congress, Pence told lawmakers the administration was limited.
“We don’t want children to be taken away from parents, but, right now under the law, and we sit with these lawmakers, we only have two choices before us,” Pence said. “No. 1 is don’t prosecute people who come into our country illegally, or prosecute them and then under court cases and the law, they have to be separated from their children.”
The executive order references the Flores settlement.
The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Sessions, CV 85-4544 (“Flores settlement”), in a manner that would permit the Secretary, under present resource constraints, to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.
The order is not a policy departure for the president, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow for The Heritage Foundation.
So to the extent the 1997 Flores settlement and the 9th Circuit’s misinterpretation of it prevents DHS from holding juveniles for more than 20 days, this language gives DHS the exception they need to still separate families if they have to in order to comply with Flores.
As I expected, the [executive order] also tells the AG in Sec. 3 (e) to file a request with the court in the Flores case to allow DHS to detain families together “throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”
So the president is not backing down from prosecuting all illegal aliens who cross the border, which is what the critics wanted.
Pence reiterated the president’s call for a comprehensive measure when talking to lawmakers.
“The president’s vision, as articulated in his State of the Union address, was let’s solve the whole problem,” Pence said. “Let’s build a wall, let’s close the loopholes, let’s solve the problem for 1.8 million people that were brought into this country through no fault of their own, and let’s deal with law and order and compassion with this issue of family separation at our border.”
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of President Donald Trump holding a signed executive order to keep families together at border in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2018. Photo by Olivier Douliery/ Abaca Press (Newscom TagID: sipaphotoseight258174.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/EO-families-Trump-1250x650-e1529578977116.jpg374640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-06-21 07:04:282018-06-22 10:09:54Trump Orders Fix to Family Separation on Border, Calls for ‘Comprehensive’ Immigration Solution
The Trump administration is taking heat from Democrats and Republicans for separating parents and children after they illegally crossed the southern border.
Over the six weeks from April 19 through May 31, federal officials separated about 2,000 children from their families at the U.S.-Mexican border, the Associated Press reported last week.
President Donald Trump blamed the procedure on Democrats in Congress.
“They’re obstructing. They’re really obstructionists and they are obstructing,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. It won’t be.”
“If you look at what’s happening in Europe, if you look at what’s happening in other places, we can’t allow that to happen to the United States—not on my watch,” he said.
During the White House press briefing Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said: “This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action.”
Here’s a look at four of the more questionable claims made about the enforcement action.
1. Democrats’ Law or Trump Policy?
“The Democrats forced that law upon our nation,” Trump asserted last week.
Democrats, backed by some media commentators, counter that it’s not the law but a Trump administration policy.
Actually, experts say, the situation is a combination of a bipartisan law and a Clinton administration policy.
In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into something called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which ended a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s.
The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied minors from custody to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days, or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for the child.
In a separate development, in 2008 the Democrat-controlled Congress approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking and President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.
Section 235 (g) in that law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, states that unaccompanied minors entering the United States must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than to the Department of Homeland Security.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement in 2016 to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents.
For consistency between the provision of the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody, said Art Arthur, former general counsel for Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as well as a former federal immigration judge.
“As soon as their parents are detained, the children are classified as unaccompanied,” Arthur, now a resident fellow for law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.
2. Unprecedented Action by Trump Administration?
Some media outlets have called the practice of separating children from parents at the border “unprecedented” or a “new low” for the United States.
What’s different under the Trump administration, though, is a “zero tolerance” approach to enforcing existing immigration laws and policy.
On May 7 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed federal prosecutors to prosecute all adults who illegally enter the country, including those accompanied by their children, under a provision of federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1325(a)) that covers illegal entry.
“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law,” Sessions said. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”
Since it takes more than 20 days to adjudicate an asylum claim, the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores Settlement Agreement essentially provides three options, said David Inserra, a homeland security policy analyst for The Heritage Foundation.
“The Trump administration currently faces two options: Either release every family that crosses the border and claims asylum and know that most of them will never show up at their immigration court hearing; or release the child as required by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Flores settlement while holding the parents while awaiting trial,” Inserra told The Daily Signal.
“A third, better solution is to fix the loophole created by the 9th Circuit with regard to Flores and improve the asylum process to discourage frivolous asylum claims, while also better serving those with legitimate asylum cases,” Inserra added.
Proposed legislation by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.; and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. would reverse the 9th Circuit’s interpretation.
“This would mean only a brief period of separation while the parents are prosecuted,” Arthur said.
Depending on the outcome, the family would be reunited and either be released or deported together.
3. ‘Concentration Camps’?
Much of the criticism of separating children from parents at the border has been from Democrats.
However, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who served under President George W. Bush, and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who was once lieutenant governor of Maryland, both compared the practice to Nazi concentration camps.
The Department of Homeland Security rejected the comparison, noting that most children caught crossing the border illegally are not detained by federal officials.
“We have high standards,” Nielsen said during the White House press briefing Monday. “We give them meals and we give them education and we give them medical care. There are videos, there are TVs. I visited the detention centers myself.”
In the last fiscal year, 90 percent of apprehended children were released to a sponsor who was either a parent or close relative, according to the department.
Homeland security officials also say they work with HHS to improve and ease communication between detained parents and their children in HHS care.
Sponsors may be “a parent, adult sibling, relative, or appropriate home that meets criteria for the safety of the child and continuation of any immigration proceedings,” according to DHS. Also, a parent who is prosecuted and later released can be a sponsor and ask HHS to restore custody of the child.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dedicated a facility to operate primarily as a family reunification and removal center. ICE staff who interact with parents will receive training in trauma-informed care, and the agency will assign staff trained in mental health care to detained parents who have been separated from children, according to DHS.
4. Taking Babies From Nursing Mothers?
CNN reported last week on an illegal immigrant from Honduras who claimed her nursing daughter was pulled away from her before she was handcuffed. CNN cited a lawyer from a liberal legal group called the Texas Civil Rights Project.
In a conference call with reporters last week, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said this was not the case.
“We do not separate breastfeeding children from their parents. That does not exist. That is not a policy. That is not something that DHS does,” an official told reporters Friday. “We believe that that is false.”
An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 individuals are smuggled into the United States each year. For perspective, that number constitutes about 5.7 percent of total apprehensions of illegal immigrants in 2017, though apprehensions don’t account for all border crossings.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is by Leah Millis/Reuters/Newscom.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/DHS-Sec-1250x650-e1529491986621.jpg392640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-06-20 06:53:172018-06-20 17:41:41Fact-Checking 4 Claims About Detaining Children at the Border
The Marxistsat the World Council of Churches and Pope Francis think they are going to bring the world together in harmony and love with a conference in September on defeating xenophobia and the menace of political populism (just as a major power shift fueled by populism is sweeping Italy).
Maybe they would get a lot farther in bringing peace to the world if they cut out the insulting language….just saying!
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has announced a joint venture with the Vatican to co-host a meeting next September on “migration, xenophobia, and politically motivated populism.”
The Pope and Rev. Tveit joining forces to defeat political populism…..
The WCC said it is partnering with the Vatican department for Promoting Integral Human Development in preparing the conference to be held September 17-20 as part of ongoing work toward“peace-building and migration.”
The General of the WCC, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, said the meeting would be a “very useful and significant workshop to dig a bit deeper” into the problems of xenophobia as an expression of populism, as well as its links to racism, conflict, and violence in countries around the world.
Last September, the Vatican launched a two-year campaign to change people’s minds about migrants and to encourage a more welcoming attitude toward them worldwide.
“Brothers, we mustn’t be afraid to share the journey! We mustn’t be afraid to share the hope!” Francis said in his weekly General Audience on September 27, in which he inaugurated the new project, titled “Share the Journey.”
[….]
The stated goal of the project is to shed light on both the challenges and effects of migration at every stage of the journey to provoke a “shift in thinking” on the issue.
Do they really think they will get a shift in thinking when they continue to denigrate people as xenophobes who disagree with them about immigration?
Part of this shift in thinking involves dispelling common “myths about migration,” the organization declared, before laying out “some common myths around migration and the facts behind the myths.”
Caritas said these myths include the idea that there are more migrants than ever before, that migrants live off welfare benefits and steal jobs from citizens, that closing borders will stem migrant flows, and that “people from poor countries migrate to rich ones.”
We are told daily by these very same people that the number of migrants worldwide is greater than ever before.
Myths? Migrants live off welfare benefits—-of course most of them do! Would they be flocking to generous welfare states like Sweden and Germany (and in the US Minnesota!) if they were denied all welfare?
And, do they really expect us to believe that people are migrating to poor countries instead of rich ones. Nuts!
By the way, if you didn’t know, US resettlement contractor Church World Serviceis a member of the World Council of Churches.
Both CWS and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops financially benefit from the movement of migrants from the third world to America, something never mentioned by them when they lecture us about “welcoming the stranger.”
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/pope-francis-facebook-e1456052437658.jpg376640Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2018-06-18 08:43:062018-06-18 08:45:10Pope and World Council of Churches to hold conference on xenophobia, migration, and populism
Diana Feldman received an unusual text message from the phone of her 14-year-old daughter, Susanna, late last month.
Written in broken German, the message said she would be back home in a few weeks and that her mother should not try to find her.
Yet the message was not from Susanna. She had already been raped and strangled, and her body was dumped next to some railroad tracks in the city of Wiesbaden in western Germany.
Almost three years earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had faced a crisis. Millions were fleeing the humanitarian catastrophes in Iraq and Syria and heading to Europe, and the enormous flow of people was placing unsustainable pressure on landing ports in Greece and threatening the territorial integrity of the Balkans.
Merkel responded by opening Germany’s borders, subsequently letting in a mix of genuine asylum seekers and economic migrants.
One of the beneficiaries was Susanna Feldman’s killer.
Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, entered Germany in October 2015 with his parents and was a blight from the beginning. According to the BBC, he was allegedly tied to a robbery, possession of a weapon, and sexual assault on an 11-year-old girl in the refugee shelter where he lived (and where he dealt drugs).
Bashar’s asylum claim was rejected toward the end of 2016, but he was allowed to stay in the country while he appealed the decision.
Over 18 months later, when he killed Susanna, a decision on his appeal still had not been made. Days after his crime, Bashar and seven other members of his family returned to Iraq. However, he was tracked down by Kurdish authorities and extradited to Germany.
It’s clearly a tragic case, but it’s also not an isolated one.
Hussein Khavari arrived in Europe in January 2013. He proceeded to throw a woman over a cliff that summer in Corfu, Greece, and was subsequently imprisoned for 10 years in February 2014 for attempted murder. However, he was released after just 18 months, part of a government amnesty aimed at reducing strain on its overcrowded prisons.
Khavari journeyed on to Germany, where he arrived in November 2015, and claimed asylum the following February. He claimed to be a 17-year-old Afghan upon arrival, saying that his father had been killed fighting the Taliban.
In October 2016, Khavari raped and strangled Maria Ladenburger, a 19-year-old German student, in Freiburg, in southwest Germany. Khavari left his still-breathing victim to drown in a nearby river after his attack. He was sentenced to life in prison.
During his trial, it emerged that rather than being a 17-year-old fatherless Afghan, Khavari was a Iranian. His father was alive and well, living in Iran. Khavari’s asylum claim was also undecided at the time of Ladenburger’s killing.
Another case from southwest Germany, this time in Kandel, saw Mia Valentin, a 15-year-old girl, being stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend last December. The killer, Abdul D., came to Germany from Afghanistan in April 2016, claiming to be 14 years old. In reality, he is now 20.
Such stories—coming in the wake of the mass sexual assault of more than 1,000 women in Germany on New Year’s Eve of 2015—have a variety of consequences.
One consequence is political. Concern over immigration could lead to the collapse of Merkel’s coalition government. Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister, wants to begin turning away refugees who have passed through another European Union country before getting to Germany. Merkel is refusing, concerned about the effects this would have on forging a coherent EU-wide refugee policy.
The coalition is splintering, and if an agreement cannot be reached, a vote of confidence in Merkel—and new elections—could be imminent.
Another consequence relates to security. One recent study demonstrated that violent crime had increased by more than 10 percent in 2015 and 2016. Ninety percent of that increase was because of violent crimes committed by male refugees.
Similarly, the sharp increase to the Islamist terrorism threat in Germany is not primarily from radicalized Germans, but from recently arrived asylum seekers. While some plots were thwarted, those in Wurzburg, Ansbach, Berlin, and Hamburg were not.
In that environment, many Germans have turned to a radical, outsider party that made a platform out of cracking down on immigration. Alternative for Germany got about 6 million votes (13 percent) in September 2017 and is now the third-biggest party in Germany.
That’s not because Germany has a hitherto concealed population of racists who were unearthed in the election, but because Merkel very clearly made a cataclysmic mistake.
Germany did take in too many people. It did not know who they were then, and so, it has no idea who is living in the country now. It was too trusting in accepting asylum applicants’ backstories—and the German Medical Association is still speaking out against checking claimants’ ages.
Germany is not deporting enough of those who have no right to be in the country, or making decisions on asylum appeals quickly enough.
If this were solely a German problem, then perhaps it would be easier to contain. Yet it also extends to Sweden, which is dealing with a surge in crime in areas with high concentrations of immigrants.
One recent study in Sweden showed that more than 75 percent (at a minimum) of those claiming to be children were actually adults. Austria, Italy, and other countries in Europe face similar challenges.
A responsible approach would be for nations to listen to voters’ concerns and craft policies that address them.
Merkel’s desire for an EU-led solution demonstrates the hopelessness of the current approach. An unresponsiveness to democratic impulses in the EU is a well-established theme.
Meanwhile, the numbers continue to grow. About 10,000 new asylum seekers come to Germany every month. The government hopes they will integrate, but has no real idea how to make that happen, and the crisis rolls on.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/MerkelPressConference-1250x650-e1529322872394.jpg396640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2018-06-18 07:55:262018-06-19 09:16:55Merkel’s Leadership Threatened by Killings by Immigrants, Wrought by Open Borders
On June 11, 2018 the Washington Times published an article, U.S. launching office to identify citizenship cheaters, reporting that the Trump administration is opening an office to identify aliens who defrauded the naturalization process by concealing material facts in filing for U.S. citizenship and seek their denaturalization.
This is an important measure and one that enhances the enforcement of immigration laws from within the interior of the United States that will plug yet another gap in the highly porous immigration system.
This, as you will see, also has serious implication for national security.
However, generally most aliens who commit naturalization fraud also committed fraud in their applications for various immigration benefits that subsequently enabled the to apply for U.S. citizenship.
Because of the huge number of applications for various immigration benefits, more than six million applications for various benefits are processed each year by the beleaguered adjudication officers employed by USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), many applications are adjudicated without so much as an in-person interview, let alone a field investigation conducted to verify the information contained in the applications.
This creates an invitation for fraud on a massive scale.
The Wasington Times article draws the parallel with this new effort to uncover aliens who lie on application for U.S. citizenship to previous efforts to identify Nazi war criminals who also gamed the naturalization process in order to secure U.S. citizenship to evade prosecution for their heinous crimes against humanity.
Naturalization fraud is of particular concern because U.S. citizenship provide the aliens with the veritable “Keys to the kingdom” as I have described in a series of previous articles and in my testimony before several Congressional hearings.
Here are a few reasons why citizenship is of particular concern and how some of the vulnerabilities must be addressed.
As the Washington Times article noted, aliens who acquire U.S. citizenship may be granted security clearances. I recently wrote an article about an April 2018 Congressional hearing on how Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S.
Immigration fraud, including naturalization fraud, enables sleeper agents from foreign countries to embed themselves in the United States in furtherance of their nefarious and often deadly goals.
Additionally, aliens who naturalize may legally change their names. In such instances, their U.S. passports only reflect their new names.
Criminals and terrorists can thus put themselves into their own “Witness Protection Program” concealing their original identities and gaining entry into countries around the world that might be aware of their original names and would never admit them if they knew who they really were.
However, when such an individual seeks entry with a new name, a name not known to border officials in that country it is likely that he/she will be permitted to enter that country.
The solution to this problem is simple and inexpensive- have U.S. passports reflect both names.
I raised this issue when I appeared at a Congressional hearing but no action was taken.
This is further exacerbated because many of these naturalized citizens have dual citizenship, they retain the citizenship and passports of their countries of birth.
Dual citizen terrorists and fugitives who defraud the naturalization process can travel easily around the world by using their U.S. passport to travel to an intermediate foreign country, let’s say Germany. They then conceal their U.S. passport and travel on the passport issued to them by their county of birth to travel to another country, perhaps to engage in terror-related activities. They return to Germany. In Germany they conceal the passport from their country of birth and return to the United States on their U.S. passport.
A review of entry stamps in their U.S. passport will make it appear that they spent several weeks in Germany when, in reality, Germany was just an intermediate destination on their way to other countries.
Alternating passports covers their tracks the way a smuggler drags branches behind him to cover his tracks in the sand in the desert.
The Trump administration must finally require that the U.S. passports issued to naturalized citizens reflects all names that these individuals have used, to thwart the tactic I have described above.
While it is encouraging that for the first time in decades we have an administration that is determined to not only secure our borders against illegal immigration but restore integrity to the immigration system to protect America and Americans.
The administration would do well to do more than simply attempt to identify aliens who secured U.S. citizenship via fraud. Denaturalization may be an involved process. It would be far better to uncover fraud in applications for immigration benefits that precede U.S. citizenship.
In order to qualify for citizenship, an alien must first become a lawful immigrant. In order to become a lawful immigrant an alien may have been granted political asylum or married a U.S. citizen or lawful immigrant.
Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.
In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.
Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.
My recently published booklet, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill also focused on the threat posed to national security by various forms of immigration fraud, including but not limited to naturalization fraud.
Let’s consider a few specific examples of terror suspects who engaged in immigration fraud.
The infamous Tsarnaev brothers Dzhokhar and his older brother Tamerlan carried out the deadly terror attack at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. They and other members of their family were granted political asylum when their authorized temporary period of admission into the United States expired, and they claimed to have “credible fear” that if they were to return to their native Russia, they would face persecution or worse.
Shortly after being granted political asylum in the United States, members of the family voluntarily returned to Russia. There had been no regime change and therefore, it must logically be presumed that they committed immigration fraud by making a false claim to “credible fear” upon which their application for political asylum rested.
However, no such investigation was launched into this obvious fraud.
Members of the Tsarnaev family were subsequently granted lawful immigrant status making them eligible to apply for United States citizenship.
Tamarlan was killed during the terror attack. Although he had applied for U.S. citizenship his application was held up when information was provided by the Russian government linking him possibly to Chechen terrorists.
Dzhokhar, however became a naturalized citizen. He is now on death row awaiting execution.
On January 23, 2018 the Justice Department issued a press release, Ohio Man Sentenced for Providing Material Support to Terrorists, Making False Statements to Authorities.
That “Ohio man” was Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, a native of Somalia who had become a naturalized U.S. citizen as part of his strategy to facilitate his travel to Syria.
I wrote about this case in two previous articles, A Terrorist and Naturalization Fraud and How DHS Ineptitude Facilitates Terrorist Operations. As I noted in the first of those two commentaries, Mohamud committed fraud when he lied on his application for his U.S. passport by claiming he intended to travel to Greece when, in reality, he traveled to Syria.
Finally, on January 16, 2018 the DOJ and DHS jointly issued a press release, DOJ, DHS Report: Three Out of Four Individuals Convicted of International Terrorism and Terrorism-Related Offenses were Foreign-Born.
That press release noted that:
The report reveals that at least 549 individuals were convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016. An analysis conducted by DHS determined that approximately 73 percent (402 of these 549 individuals) were foreign-born. Breaking down the 549 individuals by citizenship status at the time of their respective convictions reveals that:
254 were not U.S. citizens;
148 were foreign-born, naturalized and received U.S. citizenship; and,
147 were U.S. citizens by birth.
According to information available to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), since September 11, 2001, there were approximately 1,716 removals of aliens with national security concerns.
Clearly the Trump administration is on the right path, but more and bigger steps need to follow and follow quickly.
In signing the executive order, Trump said, “We are going to have a lot of happy people.”
e are told daily by these very same people that the number of migrants worldwide is greater than ever before. 
