In Eric Schneiderman’s Fall, Trump Resistance Loses ‘Ringleader’

Just two weeks ago, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was coming off a legal victory against the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda for fuel efficiency standards.

“As we’ve proven again and again, when the Trump administration puts special interests before public health and our environment, we’ll take them to court—and we will win,” Schneiderman said April 23.

And Saturday, Schneiderman boasted about taking on the Trump administration in a tweet with comic book art presenting him as a superhero.

But Monday evening, the Democrat resigned as New York attorney general amid allegations that he had beaten and physically abused four women.

The sudden fall came just hours after he announced plans to lead eight state attorneys general in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency.

First elected to his post in 2010 after eight years in the state Senate and seen as a contender for governor, Schneiderman made himself a leading figure among states challenging some of Trump’s biggest initiatives.

Touting his lawsuits against the Trump administration on the travel ban, environmental issues, immigration, and other matters, Schneiderman embraced his stature as a “resistance” figure. In a February video made for the leftist MoveOn.org to encourage voting in local elections, he said: “If you really, truly want to be part of the resistance, this is where the fight lives.”

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, chairwoman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, called Schneiderman the “ringleader” of anti-Trump activists fighting the president in the courts.

“As Schneiderman leaves office in disgrace, his impact and influence with activist Democrat state attorneys general and candidates cannot be overstated,” Rutledge told The Daily Signal in a prepared statement.

Schneiderman filed 100 lawsuits or administrative actions against the Trump administration in 2017, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in December.

“Schneiderman was the ringleader of the activist attorneys general that sought to use the courts to pursue their liberal political agenda,” Rutledge said. “While there will be a reckoning for those who directly benefited from his political power, unfortunately there remain plenty of activist Democrat attorneys general who will push each other down to lead the charge against the rule of law.”

In its 2017 year-end report, the Democratic Attorneys General Association heralded Schneiderman’s work in opposing Trump administration policies on abortion, contraception, student loans, and net neutrality.

In a public statement Tuesday, the group’s executive director, Sean Rankin, saidit opposes “any and all” forms of domestic and sexual violence.

“Our state attorneys general have a special and powerful responsibility in creating that culture—we must hold them to the highest standards of accountability,” Rankin said. “We will continue to support our Democratic attorneys general in their commitment to stand with survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, in addition to their ongoing work in protecting civil rights, keeping our communities and families safe, and serving as the people’s lawyers.”

Schneiderman announced his resignation Monday in one statement and in another, denied the four women’s allegations of physical abuse, first reported by The New Yorker magazine.

“While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time,” Schneiderman said in a statement from the attorney general’s office. “I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018.”

In a tweet that night from his private twitter account, Schneiderman asserted: “I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in non-consensual sex, which is a line I would not cross.”

Track Record With Trump

Schneiderman, 63, routinely took credit for “leading” lawsuits among other attorneys general against the Trump administration—and in many cases, they filed such litigation in a federal court in New York.

The legal standoff between Schneiderman and Trump predates the 45th president’s taking office.

In 2013, Schneiderman sued the businessman and real estate developer, alleging fraud in the case of Trump University. In late 2016, after the presidential election, Trump settled for $25 million. A federal court finalized the settlement last month.

The president was noticeably silent on Twitter about Schneiderman after the announcement. But citizen Trump predicted in 2013 that Schneiderman would suffer a fate similar to two other New York politicians, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, both Democrats who resigned over sex scandals.

After Trump took office, Schneiderman became the face of state litigation against Trump policies, usually joined by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

In early April, Schneiderman announced he would lead a coalition of attorneys general from 17 states and the District of Columbia, plus mayors, to sue to block the Trump administration from asking about citizenship status in the 2020 census.

“With immigrant communities already living in fear, demanding citizenship status would drive them into the shadows, leading to a major undercount that threatens billions in federal funding for New York and our fair representation in Congress and the Electoral College,” Schneiderman said in announcing the lawsuit. “I’m proud to lead this coalition in the fight for a full and fair census.”

More plaintiffs joined the suit by early May.

In March, Schneiderman teamed with Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to lead 17 other Democratic attorneys general in filing comments to oppose the Labor Department’s association health plans. The plans would allow small businesses and sole proprietors to band together to create employee health plans, which officials said would expand coverage options for 11 million uninsured Americans.

Schneiderman announced in February that he would lead a multistate lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from rolling back the Waters of the United States regulation promulgated by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency.

“Over the last year, we have not hesitated to fight back against the Trump administration’s assault on the law and New Yorkers’ fundamental right to clean water, air, and environment. We won’t stop now,” he said in the announcement.

In December, Schneiderman sued to stop the rollback of net neutrality regulations of the internet by the Federal Communications Commission.

Also in December, he led a coalition of 12 attorneys general in a statement supporting a lawsuit to protect the right of women who are illegal immigrants to get abortions.

That same month he joined 13 other states to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for not designating more areas as having unhealthy air by missing an Oct. 1 deadline.

Last fall, the Trump administration announced plans to phase out former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which shielded from deportation an estimated 800,000 persons brought to the country illegally as children by their parents or others.

Schneiderman called the decision “cruel, inhumane and devastating.”

He announced he would lead 16 state attorneys general to sue the Trump administration to maintain DACA, an action filed in federal court in New York.

Schneiderman consistently put politics before the law, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation.

“He clearly has, not just in the resist Trump movement and the lawsuits against the administration, but also in the absurd lawsuits filed against Exxon and other companies supposedly saying they’re responsible for global warming,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “So his being gone may take some of the energy and enthusiasm out of that movement.”

California’s Becerra hasn’t shown himself to be the type of lawyer to take the lead in Schneiderman’s absence, von Spakovsky added.

“This probably won’t make any difference in the litigation itself, but it may make a difference behind the scenes, where the folks behind all of this are doing their planning and coming up with their strategies and tactics,” von Spakovsky said. “He’s not going to be there.”

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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‘I Am the Law’– Schneiderman was abusive in his public and private conduct.

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.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman speaking on Sept. 6, 2017, about plans to sue the Trump administration to reverse its decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Photo: Erik McGregor/Sipa USA/Newscom)

Alienage Discrimination Is Now A Thing. And It’s Really Bad

“Alienage discrimination” is exactly what is sounds like; the discrimination against people specifically based on them being in the country illegally. It’s little known, but it is fatally dangerous for America.

Right up front, the threat here is that if alienage discrimination gains the same legal civil rights protections as, say, racial discrimination, then we can shut down ICE and any deportations. Once someone slips into the United States they will have essentially the full legal protections of any legal resident. Which is approximating insanity.

But traveling the remaining distance into the nationally insane, there would be standing and precedent to ultimately require “undocumented residents” the actual right to vote. If you are looking for the signs of America’s ultimate downfall from within, this would be in flashing neon.

Not surprisingly perhaps, this affront to legal, rational reasoning and national sovereignty comes courtesy of President’s Obama’s pen when he created DACA after Congress would not do what he wanted. Also not surprising, it is finding some foothold with Obama-appointed judges who act solely as policymakers, not arbitrators of law. (If political leaders are seeking appropriate places to use impeachment, these judges are prime targets.)

This is not a one-off.

Twice now in the past few years, a federal court has ruled that illegal immigrants have legal standing to sue American employers that won’t hire them because they are here illegally. The companies require their workers to be U.S. citizens or legal residents such as green card holders. Not that long ago, this was seen as the responsible way to limit illegal immigration; by businesses not hiring them.

The latest blow to the rule of law was delivered by an Obama-appointed federal judge in South Florida, who handed an open-borders group a huge victory in a case accusing a giant U.S. company of alienage discrimination against an illegal immigrant by not hiring him because he was in the country illegally.

The lawsuit was filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a radically leftist, anti-American group that launches lawsuits on behalf of illegal immigrants. MALDEF has an extensive political agenda, including pushing for free college tuition for illegal immigrants and lowering educational standards to accommodate new illegal immigrants. MALDEF officially labels American immigration enforcement as racist and xenophobic, going so far as to charge that it is racist for English to be the country’s official national language. And naturally, it violates civil rights to wall off the southern border.

Judicial Watch has been following these cases. It reports:

In the recent Florida case a Venezuelan immigrant, David Rodriguez, living in Miami is suing consumer goods corporation Procter & Gamble for refusing to give him a paid internship because he is not a legal resident or citizen of the United States. MALDEF filed the lawsuit last year in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Procter & Gamble requires citizenship and immigration status information on its applications and warns that candidates “must be a U.S. citizen or national, refugee, asylee or lawful permanent resident.” Rodriquez is neither and he quickly played the discrimination card after getting nixed as a candidate. In a statement MALDEF’s president reminds that “work-authorized DACA holders are valuable contributors to our economy” and “should not have to face arbitrary and biased exclusions from employment, especially by large and sophisticated corporations like Procter & Gamble.”

In 2014, MALDEF filed a lawsuit against Northwestern Mutual insurance company in New York because the company required a Mexican illegal alien protected by DACA to have a green card. MALDEF claimed that requiring Ruben Juarez, a Mexican national, to provide proof of legal residency resulted in “alienage discrimination.” The judge ruled in favor of Juarez.

In the most recent case, Judge Kathleen Williams, a 2011 Obama appointee, cited that 2014 ruling in her ruling in favor of Venezuelan Rodriguez. In denying Procter & Gamble’s motion to dismiss Rodriguez’s lawsuit, Judge Williams ruled the Venezuelan immigrant’s claims are “strikingly similar” to Juarez’s.

What this means is that DACA is clearly not seen as a temporary measure to help the “kids” — although Rodriguez is 34 years old, meaning he was nearly an adult when he slipped illegally into the United States. It’s obviously being used to create a pathway for permanent, legally-protected status and citizenship-level rights for people who came here illegally. And it’s being accomplished without any elected official ever taking a vote or making a decision. It’s all through activist judges.

But this alienage discrimination method/precedent has vaster implications. First, it could — and will with legal successes — turn into class action lawsuits against every major U.S. corporation that has policies in place for only hiring people in America legally. That would likely include all Fortune 500 companies plus thousands of others who have high training costs for new employees. It’s unknown what the total financial costs of that would be, but unarguably deep into the billions of dollars that American companies following American laws might be required to transfer to people who are in America illegally.

Second and most serious, establishing the concept of alienage discrimination would cripple America’s efforts to maintain internal order among its citizens. A nation that cannot regulate or deport people who come to the country illegally, or overstay illegally, is a country that is quickly enroute losing its sovereignty.

If “undocumented residents” are given special civil rights discrimination protections currently afforded to certain minorities — which is what MALDEF is asking for and these rulings are beginning to confer — then they have a case for proportional representation in employment, university acceptance and so on; againstalienage profiling by law enforcement; and ultimately a case for voting rights. If it is illegal to discriminate against blacks, for instance, in voting rights and illegal aliens are protected by the same civil rights, then voting must follow.

If that sounds absurd and extreme, please see the history of the past few years.

This is not how the United States continues as a functioning, sovereign nation. Many have long said that America will not fall from without, but from within. This would be a pathway in accomplishing that fall.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. Please subscribe to our Revolutionary YouTube channel.

DACA Ruling: Judicial Travesty Obstructs Presidential Authority

Fed. Judge Bates’ ruling ignores facts and national security.

The April 24, 2018 headline of the New York Times articleU.S. Must Keep DACA and Accept New Applications, Federal Judge Rules summed up Judge John D. Bates’ outrageous decision to force the Trump administration to continue the DACA program created by the Obama administration.

The judge has given the Trump administration 90 days to substantiate President Trump 90 days to justify his claim that DACA is illegal.

Judge Bates’ ruling ignores the indisputable fact that DACA was created by Obama’s Executive Order and not by legislation.  Judge Bates apparently believes that Exeuctive Orders must extend beyond the administration of the president who issued those Executive Orders, even when the new president disagrees with them.  Bates’ ruling obstructs President Trump’s ability to implement his policies.

In order to understand the issue we must begin by considering the origins of DACA, an acronym for Deferred Action – Childhood Arrival.

First of all, the action that is being deferred by DACA is the required departure of illegal aliens from the United States.

Prior to the Obama administration’s claim of exercising “prosecutorial discretion” to justify the creation of DACA, immigration authorities did use the notion of “deferred action” for humanitarian purposes in a case-by-case basis, to provide nonimmigrant aliens, that is to say aliens who had been admitted into the United States for a temporary period of time, with permission to remain in the United States beyond their authorized periods of admission.

If, for example, a family member of an alien visitor in the United States had fallen seriously ill or became seriously injured, nonimmigrant family members would be allowed to remain in the United States for a finite additional period of time, to tend to their stricken family member.

As an INS special agent I was, on occasion, tasked with interviewing medical professionals to verify the medical condition of such individuals to make certain that fraud was not being perpetrated.  Generally doctors were required to provide periodic documentation that reported on the medical status of the ill or injured family member.

Once the situation was resolved, hopefully with that family member making a sufficient recovery, the alien beneficiaries of that temporary deferred action were required to depart from the United States.

Obama however, exploited this humanitarian program, that was supposed to be used in a limited case-by-case basis, to achieve a political goal by enabling potentially millions of illegal aliens to remain in the United States as quasi-lawful immigrants for an initial two year period, even though there is no provision in the immigration laws for this action.

Under current immigration law, the U.S. generously, provides approximately one million aliens are granted lawful immigrant status for a number of circumstances that do not begin as a reward for violating our immigration laws.  That number of new immigrants surpasses the number of immigrants admitted by all of the countries on earth, combined.

On June 15, 2012 President Obama delivered a statement from the White House Rose Garden in which he announced his plans to create DACA via an Exeuctive Order.  His statement made it clear that DACA was an end-run, around the legislative process, to provide illegal aliens with immigration benefits contained in the DREAM Act, which failed to pass in the Congress.

The DREAM Act is an acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act.  It is more than a bit confounding that under the guise of “Political Correctness” actually an exercise of Orwellian Newspeak, the term “alien” has been expunged from discussions about immigration.  That term has come to be referred to as “hate speech” by immigration anarchists

Yet  that word is included in the acronym “DREAM” and illegal aliens who participate in this wrong-headed program have come to be known as “DREAMERS.”

Hypocrisy is alive and well in the immigration debate.

Furthermore, the claim that the “DREAMERS” were all children when they were brought to the United States and hence too young to have control over their circumstances, is yet another artifice and one repeated by the media every time this issue is discussed.

In reality, aliens were eligible to apply to participate in Obama’s program if they had not yet attained the age of 32 when they filed their applications and claimed that they entered the United States prior to their 16 birthdays.

With so many applications and so few resources, there were virtually no interviews and no field investigations to verify the claims made in the applications that, thus far, have been filed by nearly 800,000 illegal aliens.

This creates an open invitation to fraud.

Imagine, for example, how effective law enforcement would be in stopping speeders if police officers had no radar units and could only issue a speeding tickets if drivers admitted to exceeding the speed limit.  This is, in essence, how these DACA applications were processed and continue to be processed under Judge Bates’ ruling.

Today, six years after Mr. Obama’s DACA program was created, aliens as old as 37 years of age could apply for DACA- provided that they claim to have entered the United States before they turned 16.

An alien who lies on that application would be committing a serious crime, immigration fraud. However, given the scarce resources, if Judge Bates gets his way, unknown millions of illegal aliens could easily game this program.

Adult illegal aliens who have not yet entered the United States could easily falsely claim to have been present in the United States for decades, justifiably confident that their fraudulent claims would not only go undetected but rewarded.

What could possibly go wrong?

The answer that that question can be found in my article, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill wherein I quoted from the official report “9/11 and  Terrorist Travel:

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.

[ … ]

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

Obama falsely claimed that “Congress had failed to act,” blithely ignoring that when Congress votes down legislation it is, indeed, acting- just in this instance, not the way he wanted Congress to act.

On June 17, 2012, Fox News published my Op-Ed, Obama Invokes Prosecutorial Discretion to Circumvent Constitution and Congress, in which I stated that, given all of the facts, what Obama had referred to as “Prosecutorial Discretion” should, actually, be referred to as “Prosecutorial Deception.”

Prosecutorial discretion is often used by government and law enforcement agencies to not squander limited resources but to use them most effectively, not unlike the concept of a medical triage whereby in an instance of mass casualties, the most seriously injured are treated before those with relatively minor wounds.

In creating DACA, the Obama administration did not simply ignore illegal aliens not deemed essential to arrest, but created an expensive program that required that limited resources were diverted to provide huge numbers of illegal aliens with lawful status without legal authority.

This disingenuous, supposed justification for creating DACA caused me to describe Obama’s claims as an example of “Prosecutorial Deception” in my Fox News commentary.

Furthermore, the Obama administration’s use of the term “Deferred Action” was clearly another artifice.  DACA was not intended to postpone the eventual departure of the huge number of illegal aliens who were dealing with personal emergencies, but rather serve as a stop-gap measure to enable them to remain in the U.S. until, Obama had hoped, Congress would pass legislation that would permanently legalize their immigration status by creating a massive amnesty program.

This, in and of itself, runs contrary to the principles that underly the concept of “Deferred Action.”

News coverage about DACA has failed to report on that which I have noted in my commentary, but has become a conduit for the dissemination of propaganda and the disingenuous claims made by the Obama administration, parading those falsehoods as supposed facts.

Mainstream media coverage and discussions about DACA have ignored how the Obama administration perverted the discretionary authority inherent in deferred action, for humanitarian purposes, to create a de facto temporary amnesty program, conferring lawful immigrant status on nearly 800,000 illegal aliens, who may not even be children but actually middled-aged.

By denying President Trump the right to terminate DACA, Judge Bates apparently seeks to legitimize Obama’s DACA Executive Order, treating it as law, when in reality DACA co-opted Congress’ unique legislative authority.

America is a nation of laws, not Executive Orders.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

Why Florida is a Magnet for Illegal Alien Workers

In 1986, 32 years ago, Congress agreed to implement a mandatory system in the U.S.A. To protect American workers jobs by verifying that all workers were legal workers. Obviously that did not happen as all attempts failed.

In 2010 Governor Scott ran promising to make E-Verify mandatory in Florida. He lied. In 2012 he said it was a Federal not state matter. Another lie.

In 2017 the Miami Herald reported:

South Florida is home to nearly half a million immigrants who are in the country illegally, making it the metropolitan area with the fifth-largest undocumented population in the United States, according to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center.

About 450,000 unauthorized immigrants reside in the greater Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area, Pew found, based on 2014 estimates from government data. About 55,000 live in the city of Miami alone.

In 2007 the cost to Floridians was $1.85 Billion, in 2017 it was more than triple 2007 at $6.3 Billion. Unchecked, will it triple again in another decade to $20 Billion?

Meanwhile, seven states around us in the South passed what Scott said wasn’t their responsibility and so today we are the only state in the Southeastern part of the country that does not have mandatory E-Verify.

A campaign was launched by Floridians for E-Verify Now to get on the 2018 state ballot to be voted on to become a Constitutional Amendment. Early votes by the Commission were favorable but the final vote was negative. The Chamber of Commerce, Ag owners and criminal illegal alien employers exerted pressure to kill it.

So what some would ask?

The answer is as illegal aliens invade the country looking for jobs they will come to Florida where their legality won’t be checked.

Currently Chairman Bob Goodlatte has a bill, HR 4760, in Congress with 95 co-sponsors that includes mandatory E-Verify. We need to support the bill to protect Florida’s workers and our wallets.

Florida has 27 Representatives in Congress. ONLY FIVE representatives are currently co-sponsors. They are: Rep. Rutherford ®, Rep. Yoho ®, Rep. Posey ®, Rep. Rooney ® and Rep. Bilarakis ®. They are all Republicans and should be applauded for trying to protect Florida’s workers.

That leaves 22 Florida Representatives who either don’t care to protect Florida workers or are being compensated in some way to not support HR 4760.

Give them a call and ask them their reason for not wanting to support Florida’s legal workers. Encourage them to join Goodlatte and get the legislation passed.

Congressional Delegation from Florida

SENATE

Name Room Phone
Nelson, Bill 716 HSOB 202-224-5274
Rubio, Marco 284 RSOB 202-224-3041

HOUSE

District Name Room Phone
1 Gaetz. Matt 507 CHOB 202-225-4136
2 Dunn, Neal 423 CHOB 202-225-5235
3 Yoho, Ted 511 CHOB 202-225-5744
4 Rutherford, John 230 CHOB 202-225-2501
5 Lawson, Al 1337 LHOB 202-225-0123
6 DeSantis, Ron 1524 LHOB 202-225-2706
7 Murphy, Stephanie 1237 LHOB 202-225-4035
8 Posey, Bill 2150 RHOB 202-225-3671
9 Soto, Darren 1429 LHOB 202-225-9889
10 Demings, Val 238 CHOB 202-225-2176
11 Webster, Daniel 1210 LHOB 202-225-1002
12 Bilirakis, Gus M. 2112 RHOB 202-225-5755
13 Crist, Charlie 427 CHOB 202-225-5961
14 Castor, Kathy 2052 RHOB 202-225-3376
15 Ross, Dennis 436 CHOB 202-225-1252
16 Buchanan, Vern 2104 RHOB 202-225-5015
17 Rooney, Tom 2160 RHOB 202-225-5792
18 Mast, Brian 2182 RHOB 202-225-3026
19 Rooney, Francis 120 CHOB 202-225-2536
20 Hastings, Alcee L. 2353 RHOB 202-225-1313
21 Frankel, Lois 1037 LHOB 202-225-3001
22 Deutch, Ted 2447 RHOB 202-225-9890
23 Wasserman Schultz, Debbie 1114 LHOB 202-225-7931
24 Wilson, Frederica 2445 RHOB 202-225-4506
25 Diaz-Balart, Mario 440 CHOB 202-225-4211
26 Curbelo, Carlos 1404 LHOB 202-225-2778
27 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana 2206 RHOB 202-225-3931

RELATED ARTICLE: More than 56 per cent of crimes in German town are committed by asylum seekers

PODCAST: Why This New Lawsuit Could Finally End DACA Program

The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky joins us to discuss why a new lawsuit, spearheaded by Texas and including six other states, could succeed. Plus: The Boy Scouts are dropping the “boy” part of their name.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcast. She is also a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors. Send an email to Katrina. Twitter: @KatrinaTrinko.

Portrait of Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcastSend an email to Daniel. Twitter: @JDaniel_Davis.

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.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Cyrille Gibot /agefotostock/Newscom.

Justice Department Funded ‘Parent’ of Group Whose App Helps Illegal Immigrants

An organization whose parent group received taxpayer funds developed and offers an app that allows illegal immigrants to notify family and lawyers when they encounter law enforcement.

The app, a computer program designed to run on a cell phone or other mobile device, also allows the user to warn other illegal immigrants when authorities are in the neighborhood.

A division of the Justice Department awarded at least $206,453 to the National Immigration Law Center, which advises illegal immigrants on their rights, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch.

The Office of Justice Programs awarded the grants between fiscal years 2008 and 2010, the records cited by the conservative government watchdog group show. That would overlap the administrations of both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

One of the projects of the National Immigration Law Center is United We Dream, which describes itself as a youth program for “undocumented” immigrants.

United We Dream created the smartphone application, or app, which is called Notifica.

In a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch seeks to determine whether the federal government has given any other money to the National Immigration Law Center, said Irene Garcia, editor of the Judicial Watch blog and the group’s Spanish media liaison.

“Judicial Watch believes that using the app to warn someone could definitely be considered abetting, since it is helping lawbreakers—illegal immigrants—avoid law enforcement,” Garcia told The Daily Signal.

United We Dream also receives funds from liberal megadonor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Garcia said.

“We are working on getting the latest OSF [Open Society Foundations] funding, but essentially OSF is United We Dream’s biggest financial supporter,” Garcia said. “We are also in the process of obtaining the latest U.S. funding records. It appears that United We Dream may receive money under different umbrella groups.”

Neither United We Dream nor the National Immigration Legal Center responded to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal.

The Laredo Morning Times quoted Adrian Reyna, director of membership and technology strategies for United We Dream, as saying that “when something actually happens, most people don’t know what to do at that moment.”

The Texas newspaper also reported that United We Dream is working on a second version of Notifica that will include the ability to use more languages besides Spanish and English.

The second version, set to be released this summer, would include Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese. The updated app also will be able to determine where an illegal immigrant is being detained, the newspaper reported.

United We Dream pushes to give legal status to so-called Dreamers, illegal immigrants brought to the United States when they were children. The organization, which has a hotline, advises illegal immigrants against cooperating with agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a press release, the group says: “United We Dream calls on our communities to defend their rights, not open the door to ICE, and to report ICE activities to the United We Dream MigraWatch hotline.”

The April release adds: “United We Dream has also developed the mobile app, Notifica, which immediately alerts your loved ones and legal advocates to the user’s location in cases of detention. Text ‘Notifica’ to 877-877 for a link for download.”

The Soros-backed Open Societies Foundations don’t have a direct role in the app, but doesn’t find it objectionable, said Angela Kelley, the senior strategic adviser on immigration at the Open Society Foundations.

“The Open Society Foundations does provide general support to both United We Dream and the National Immigration Law Center. The foundations do not specifically fund this app,” Kelley told The Daily Signal.

“The app allows immigrants who face detention to notify loved ones of their whereabouts, and encourage them to contact a lawyer,” Kelley said. “It is a way of ensuring that people confronted by immigration enforcement are aware of their rights, are afforded due process, and have access to legal counsel in their hour of need.”

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLE: Soros-Funded Group Launches App to Help Illegal Aliens Avoid Feds.

Sanctuary Cities Protect Crooked Employers & Human Traffickers: Exploitation of the vulnerable is anything but ‘compassionate’

We have all heard the bogus claim that “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States” protect the “immigrants” from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and that the mayors of sanctuary cities are being compassionate.

There is no compassion to be found in exploitation

In reality, politicians who create and support sanctuary policies are every bit as disgusting and exploitative of illegal aliens as are human traffickers and unscrupulous employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens and benefit by sanctuary policies and, indeed those human traffickers and employers of illegal aliens are being provided with “sanctuary” and are being shielded from detection by ICE.

Mayors and governors of “sanctuary” jurisdictions are actually “partners in crime” with human traffickers and exploitive employers.

Before we go further, however, it is imperative to lay waste to that the false claim that mayors of sanctuary cities protect immigrants from immigration law enforcement agents.

Lies about sanctuary policies being motivated by “compassion” creates a hostile environment and antipathy for ICE agents and Border Patrol agents that impedes them from locating and arresting aliens who violate our immigration laws, but also makes it far more difficult for ICE and Border Patrol agents to engage with the public to develop actionable intelligence.

This hostility also endangers their safety (reportedly physical attacks on immigration law enforcement personnel have more than doubled in the past couple of years).

Let’s be clear, Immigrants need no protection from immigration law enforcement authorities.

Lawful immigrants and nonimmigrant aliens who have been admitted for a temporary visit under the aegis of various forms of visas, need no protection from immigration law enforcement authorities unless they violate the terms of their admission. They were lawfully admitted into the United States by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors in the first place.

Lawful immigrants who were have been granted lawful permanent residence in the United States and/or nonimmigrant (temporary visitors) who abide by their terms of lawful admission need no protection from immigration law enforcement officers.

Lawful immigrants only become subject to deportation (removal) is if they are convicted of committing serious crimes.

However, aliens who evade the inspections process conducted at ports of entry enter the United States without inspection should be fearful of detection, arrest and deportation (removal).

In point of fact, the fundamental law that underlies the decisions made by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors at ports of entry as to whether or not to admit a foreign visitors into the United States is Title 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens.

That section of law is contained within the Immigration and Nationality Act and enumerates the grounds for excluding aliens from the United States and includes aliens infected with dangerous communicable diseases, suffer from extreme mental illness and are prone to violence, aliens who are criminals, human rights violators, war criminals, spies or terrorists.

Finally that list also includes aliens who would likely become public charges or provide unfair competition for American workers and would either displace American workers or cause suppression of wages and have a deleterious impact on working conditions.

Nothing in that statute that makes any distinctions about the race, religion or ethnicity of aliens.

Aliens who evade the inspection process conducted at ports of entry do so because they know that they fall into one or more categories of aliens who, by law, would be inadmissable.

In the past I have written about how Sanctuary Cities Betray America and Americans and that by shielding illegal aliens from detection by ICE agents prevents those agents from discovering the human traffickers and other criminals who enabled those aliens to gain entry into the United States and perhaps, in the parlance of the 9/11 Commission, embed themselves in communities around the United States.

Sanctuary jurisdictions attract large number of illegal aliens including transnational gang members, international terrorists or fugitives from other countries because they know that local police, in those jurisdictions, will not report them to immigration law enforcement authorities even if they are arrested for committing crimes in those jurisdictions.

Transnational gangs invariably set up shop among immigrants from their home countries who live within the ethnic immigrant communities,  This is not only true for gangs from Latin America but from all over the world.  Human nature is universal and criminals can be found within every ethnic immigrant community.

In point of fact, the most likely victims of the crimes of these pernicious gangs are the members of these ethnic immigrant communities who often immigrated to the United States to get away from these very same criminals, only to find that they are now, once again, forced to live with them.

Sanctuary Cities also attract huge numbers of foreign workers who, because of their desperation, are willing to take whatever risks that they must in order to evade detection from the United States to take jobs in the United States, confident that sanctuary policies will shield them from ICE.

This incentivizes illegal immigration and, consequently, overwhelms Border Patrol resources to secure our borders.  This further undermines national security and public safety in violation of 8 U.S. Code § 1324 which, deems the following actions to constitute felonies:

(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;

(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or

(v)

(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or

(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts, shall be punished as provided in subparagraph (B).

When I was an INS agent, particularly when I was assigned to the Anti-Smuggling Unit in New York City many of the female illegal aliens we encountered told me that they took birth control pills for several months before they made their attempt to run our borders because they anticipated that they would be raped by the smugglers.

Today the level of violence perpetrated against these smuggled aliens by human traffickers has increased exponentially as the drug cartel and violent gangs became more involved in human trafficking, virtually cornering the market of this pernicious and violent “trade.”

Considering the extreme that these illegal aliens will go to in order to enter the United States, it is clear that they will also endure extreme exploitation by employers who intentionally hire them.

Sanctuary Cities provide a veritable “army” of readily exploitable illegal alien workers who are sought after by unscrupulous employers who eagerly hire alien workers they can exploit, paying them substandard wages under substandard, indeed, dangerous conditions that lawful immigrants and American workers would never tolerate.

The obvious question then, that must be asked, is why would a mayor or governor declare his/her city or state to be a “Sanctuary” given that this runs contrary to law, commonsense, morality and even the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that determined that multiple failures of the immigration system enabled foreign terrorists to enter the United States and then embed themselves in communities around the U.S.

A good place to start looking for the answer to that question can be found in the headline of a February 28, 2018 Breitbart news reportNY City Officials Hide Huge Workforce of Illegal Immigrants from ICE Enforcement.

Clearly sanctuary policies attract huge numbers of illegal aliens who entered the U.S. without inspection and often with the assistance of human traffickers- at great risk and expense, to seek illegal employment.

Employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens do so, not out of compassion, but out of greed.

Such unscrupulous employers hire illegal aliens because they know that these aliens will work for significantly substandard wages under substandard, indeed, often illegally hazardous working conditions.  Exploitation is not a demonstration of compassion.

Alan Greenspan included in his prepared testimony at an April 30, 2009 Senate Immigration Subcommittee hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform chaired by Sen. Schumer, the following:

Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.

Greenspan blithely neglected to note that “marginally suppressing wages” of those American workers all too often causes them to become homeless.

Furthermore, as was noted in the Breitbart article which focused on NYC,

The huge labor force of illegals has successfully kept food-industry wages extremely low, according to 2017 state data, despite the high cost of living in the city.

The report went on to state:

The taxpayers’ cost of this illegal immigration is high, partly because of the very low wages. In 2009, New York city’s support for illegal immigrants — including aid, education, housing — cost taxpayers roughly $9.5 billion, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

On December 6, 2007 the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) issued a report, The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments.

Cheap labor is anything but cheap and, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a “free lunch.”

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DOJ, DHS Report: Three Out of Four Individuals Convicted of International Terrorism and Terrorism-Related Offenses were Foreign-Born

Today, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report, revealing that three out of every four, or 402, individuals convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016 were foreign-born. Over the same period, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed approximately 1,716 aliens with national security concerns. Further, in 2017 alone DHS had 2,554 encounters with individuals on the terrorist watch list (also known as the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database) traveling to the United States.

This report was required by Section 11 of President Trump’s Executive Order 13780, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, which declared that “it is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, including those committed by foreign nationals,” directed a series of actions to enhance the security and safety of the American people. The actions directed by Executive Order have raised the baseline for the vetting and screening of foreign nationals, prevented the entry of malicious actors, and enhanced the safety and security of the American people.

“This report reveals an indisputable sobering reality—our immigration system has undermined our national security and public safety,” said Attorney General Sessions.  “And the information in this report is only the tip of the iceberg: we currently have terrorism-related investigations against thousands of people in the United States, including hundreds of people who came here as refugees.  Our law enforcement professionals do amazing work, but it is simply not reasonable to keep asking them to risk their lives to enforce the law while we admit thousands every year without sufficient knowledge about their backgrounds.  The pillars of President Trump’s immigration policy—securing our porous borders, moving to a merit-based immigration system that ends the use of diversity visas and chain migration, and enforcing our nation’s laws—will make their jobs easier and make the United States a safer place.”

“My top priority as Secretary of Homeland Security is to ensure the safety and security of the American people,” said Secretary Nielsen. “This report is a clear reminder of why we cannot continue to rely on immigration policy based on pre-9/11 thinking that leaves us woefully vulnerable to foreign-born terrorists, and why we must examine our visa laws and continue to intensify screening and vetting of individuals traveling to the United States to prevent terrorists, criminals, and other dangerous individuals from reaching our country. Without legislative change, DHS will continue to see thousands of terrorists a year attempt to enter the United States, and while we must be right every time, the terrorists only need to be lucky once.  Therefore, DHS has personnel deployed around the world and along our borders working with our global and domestic law enforcement partners to stop terrorists before they enter the homeland.”

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.

As mentioned above, in FY 2017, DHS encountered 2,554 individuals on the terrorist watchlist (also known as the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database) traveling to the United States. Of those individuals, 335 were attempting to enter by land, 2,170 were attempting to enter by air, and 49 were attempting to enter by sea. Where consistent with the law, such individuals are denied entry into the United States, while in some cases law enforcement authorities are notified and can take appropriate action.

From October 1, 2011, to September 30, 2017, a total of 355,345 non-U.S. citizen offenders, were administratively arrested after previously being convicted of an aggravated felony, as defined in 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43), or two or more crimes each punishable by more than one year (felony offenses).  During that same period, a total of 372,098 non-U.S. citizen offenders were removed from the United States after conviction of an aggravated felony or two or more felonies.

Data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate shows that between 2007 and 2017, USCIS referred 45,858 foreign nationals who applied for immigration benefits to ICE for criminal or civil enforcement action, based on information indicating that such foreign nationals had committed egregious public safety-related offenses within the United States.

Between FY 2010 and FY 2016, CBP identified and prevented the boarding of 73,261 foreign travelers on flights destined for the United States, who may have presented an immigration or security risk.

In October, the Trump Administration sent to Congress a list of legislative priorities that would enhance our national security—such as eliminating the diversity visa lottery and extended family chain migration, funding the wall, closing loopholes in our asylum system, combatting visa overstays, and closing other loopholes in existing law that potentially benefit aliens who pose threats to our national security.

Background on the Executive Order

Section 11 of Executive Order requires the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, to collect and make publicly available the following information:

  1. Information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been charged with terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; convicted of terrorism-related offenses while in the United States; or removed from the United States based on terrorism-related activity, affiliation with or provision of material support to a terrorism-related organization, or any other national-security-related reasons;
  2. Information regarding the number of foreign nationals in the United States who have been radicalized after entry into the United States and who have engaged in terrorism-related acts, or who have provided material support to terrorism-related organizations in countries that pose a threat to the United States;
  3. Information regarding the number and types of acts of gender-based violence against women, including so-called “honor killings,” in the United States by foreign nationals; and,
  4. Any other information relevant to public safety and security as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Attorney General, including information on the immigration status of foreign nationals charged with major offenses.

Why Should Whites be Happy about Becoming a Minority?

White people are finding it “difficult to adjust” to becoming a minority, goes the premise of a new AP history textbook — with the implication that this reflects some kind of character defect. Responding to this, conservative writers have generally denied the claim, sometimes calling it a “Marxist lie.” But a different point should be made.

Imagine that a history book presented European colonization of North America by asserting, with the same character-defect implication, that Indians found it “difficult to adjust” to becoming a minority. Would people be left scratching their heads? Might this even be called offensive? I think the only response really necessary would be “duh.”

So a question for libs: Can you cite for me one group, in all of history, that was happy about becoming a minority in what had been its homeland? Just one. I’ll be waiting.

Did the Ainus, the Japanese islands’ original inhabitants, jump for joy when being overrun and say, “Yay, now we can become a minority! Maybe we’ll even be subsumed!” (which did happen, for the most part)?

Did the Formosan aborigines cheer when the Chinese began outnumbering them and exclaim, “Yippee! Perhaps one day we’ll be just two percent of this island’s inhabitants” (which they are now)?

Did the population of Byzantine North Africa, faced with seventh-century Muslim invasion, declare, “Oh, joyous times! Maybe we can look forward to the day when these lands are entirely Arab and Muslim!” (which came to pass)?

We could go on forever. European history alone is replete with tribes — Alamanni, Franks, Angles, Vandals, Gepids, Burgundians, Lombards, etc. — that no longer exist as distinct peoples.

Now, I always fancied myself as having a keen grasp of man’s nature, but maybe I’m out of touch. Perhaps all these groups really did make merry over coming minority status or, even, exult at possible extinguishment. I’ve never heard of such a case, though.

Why would a group not be alarmed at the prospect of being reduced to minority status? Leftists themselves never tire of stressing how minorities have ever been persecuted; “progressive” histories are narratives of minority struggle against majority oppression (though liberals love impugning the West on this score, they do sometimes speak of the same phenomenon occurring elsewhere).

As usual, the reality is precisely the opposite of what leftists claim: Sleepwalking into cultural and demographic irrelevancy, there has never been a group less concerned about movement toward minority status than whites.

This is partially explainable by the fact that there has never before been a civilization as just as the West. For example, whites probably weren’t the first to practice slavery.

But they certainly were the first to end it.

Whites might not have been the first to violate human rights.

They are, however, the only reason we even talk about such violation — because they birthed our whole modern concept of human rights to begin with.

The West is unique. There simply has never been a civilization that has secured so much prosperity and so many rights for all its citizens, including minorities. In fact, it now often subordinates majority well-being to minority whim (e.g., that of the sexual “devolutionaries”). Thus, you truly might see no reason to fear becoming a minority if the modern West is your only frame of reference.

Yet this is an area where we actually should listen to the Left and be mindful of their warnings about minorities’ historical plight. If whites were more concerned about being reduced to minority status, their nations — gradually losing their Western character due to multiculturalism and the influx of unassimilable, non-Western foreigners — wouldn’t be so imperiled (though our growing immorality would still plague us).

The reality expressed in this article eludes most because of conditioning: The double standard, the prejudice, is ingrained. Whites are simultaneously portrayed as uniquely inhuman and something more than human, in that they’re supposed to be above normal human concerns (desire to retain one’s own culture, etc.). They’re cast as singularly oppressive for exhibiting the same moral failings as every other group, such as having practiced slavery, but as strikingly unexceptional despite taking unprecedented steps to mitigate those moral failings. They’re condemned as “cultural appropriators” merely for using foreigners’ food recipes, but given no credit for birthing a recipe for civilizational success copied the world over (which is why Western technology and economic practices are ubiquitous).

Lamentably, though, whites are uniquely successful in another way as well. Those most effectively peddling the anti-white propaganda — and most efficiently destroying the West — are white themselves.

Whoever guessed that modern Westerners’ perhaps final triumph would be reaching the very heights of self-flagellation?

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Does America have a moral obligation to resettle refugees?

That is the question a young opinion writer asks and answers (in the affirmative of course!) in the wake of Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on the President’s travel ban.

The long opinion piece in Deseret News by writer Gillian Friedman evoked a largely negative response by readers.  I especially got a chuckle out of this comment:

Screenshot (413)

I’ve snipped the following segments, but although we know the writer sought to answer the question with a resounding YES!, she has some useful historic nuggets buried between her quotes on why (she and all those she interviewed) say we are obligated to welcome the world to America (and pay for it all too).

Deseret News:

Gillian Friedman

Gillian Friedman

WASHINGTON — The first U.S. Supreme Court debate over President Donald Trump’s so-called travel ban took place this week, and while justices won’t make a ruling until June, the decision is playing out at a time in which the refugee crisis in one of the impacted countries, Syria, may be getting worse.

[….]

While missile strikes may be exacerbating the refugee crisis in Syria, the United States has accepted just 11 Syrian refugees this year, compared to over 15,000 in 2016 and over 3,000 in 2017, according to State Department figures.

All of which leads to a pressing question: what obligation, if any, does America have to refugees fleeing countries where the United States is engaged militarily?

The ‘Pottery Barn rule’

There is no legal obligation or provision in international law that requires a country to take in refugees, even in a case of war, says Ryan Crocker, who has served as a U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon.

But despite the lack of legal obligation, Crocker says that from 1945 onward, America has played a role of “international leadership” in refugee resettlement from countries where U.S. military forces were directly involved.

Me: The solution to that is for the US to stay out of mostly religious squabbles in the Middle East and Africa.  

The Refugee Act of 1980 enlarged upon the 1975 legislation by standardizing resettlement services for all refugees admitted to the United States. This act became the legal basis for today’s U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

9-11-moved-them-most-01

Gillian Friedman continues….

The policy remained consistent in its approach until the 9/11 terror attacks, when the refugee program was temporarily suspended, and then reinstated with new security protocols and lower admission rates.

Serena Parekh, associate professor of philosophy at Northeastern University and author of “Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement,” says 9/11 had a profound impact on U.S. attitudes toward refugee resettlement.

Yes, it did. It is when Americans woke up to the fact that migrants from Muslim countries harbored ill-will toward us!

Parekh says that pre-9/11, one of the central tenants of America’s approach to refugee resettlement had been the “Pottery Barn rule,” referencing a well-known incident in which Colin Powell warned President George W. Bush of the “Pottery Barn rule” before the invasion of Iraq.

“You break it, you bought it,” Parekh explains.

Crocker-1-w-hand-RyanCrockerAttendsConfirmationHearingSUAuAgZu8MCl

Ryan Crocker

[….]

Crocker says that in recent years, the United States has “sadly disengaged” from a leadership role in refugee resettlement.

“In 2017, we had 3,100 migrants drown in the Mediterranean [Sea],” he says. “How many times can you recall a U.S. Navy vessel sailing to the rescue of a floundering refugee boat? It’s a nice round number. Zero.”  [What the hell, does he really think that our Navy men and women should be responsible for diverting their mission and plucking Africans from boats and then possibly being responsible for them.  I can see it now—-the illegal migrants would demand asylum in the US—ed]

[….]

Crocker says he was one of 50 senior former national security officials to file an amicus brief in support of the state of Hawaii and the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project’s lawsuit against the Trump administration in the travel ban case.

Doesn’t it make you sick every time you hear this pablum about “nation of immigrants” and “who we are.” Let’s hope that Crocker’s ilk remain on the fringe of Washington policy maker circles for years to come.

Crocker continues…..

“I firmly believe that we are a nation of immigrants, that’s who we are, and it’s an obligation for those of us who feel that way to push back against those who try to change who we are as a nation,” says Crocker. “No matter how much lipstick you put on it, it is still a highly discriminatory measure based on national origin and religion. And that’s why it’s in front of the Supreme Court.”

There is more.  Looking for something to do?

Send a comment to Deseret NewsClick on the op-ed here, see the other comments and then send yours!

And, remember what a rare opportunity the Trump Presidency has given us to rethink this “moral obligation” issue.

Our obligation, as Trump has made clear, is to America First!

RELATED ARTICLE: Playing the Catholic card at the Supreme Court last week

Since President Trump’s Election 100 Refugee Offices Have Closed

If this is true, then nearly 1/3 of all refugee resettlement offices have closed around the country. Really?

And, if this is true, why has the Refugee Processing Center (Wrapsnet) not deleted any of the contact information for those now supposedly non-existent agencies from its database, or updated their resettlement site map? What are we paying them for?

First, here is the news I’m referring to.  It’s one more pro-more refugees/anti-Trump story about Trump’s (trickling, falling, plummeting) refugee admission numbers—this time at the Christian Science Monitor:

US has cut inflow of refugees to a trickle, dousing hopes upstream

Jeffrey Thielman

Jeffrey Thielman

Several paragraphs in….

Choking the overall pipeline of refugees means fewer federal dollars for the nonprofit agencies that are tasked with resettling them, which could make it harder to ramp up in the future under a more supportive administration.

Local refugee agencies have cut staff and closed offices; nearly half of all resettlement agencies in Florida have shut down due to the drop in caseloads.

Before the 2016 election, 351 agencies worked on resettlements. A year later, around 100 had closed, says Jeffrey Thielman, chief executive of the International Institute of New England, which places refugees in Boston, Lowell, and Manchester, N.H. and is working with the Jalhoums. [The International Institute of New England is a subcontractor of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, one of the big nine***)

Under Trump, the nativist wing of the Republican Party that wants both to slash legal immigration and expel undocumented residents has become ascendant. But the vexed politics in Congress on immigration reform has so far thwarted major changes. Refugees make an easier target since the president has discretion to set quotas and priorities for who comes to the US.

Shutting down the entire refugee program would require Congress to act, and there’s no sign of that happening, say refugee agencies. Instead, the administration is trying to gum up the process, a death by a thousand papercuts that is both constitutional and highly effective.

“They’re dragging their feet. They’re deliberately slowing things down,” says Mr. Thielman.

More here at the Christian Science Monitor.

REfugee Processing Center

So why is the Refugee Processing Center not updating its information on those offices?

Don’t we (the taxpayers) pay them through the US State Department to provide information as they say here:

Who We Are

We are the creators of WRAPS, a collaborative computer system built to assist in the processing of refugees to the United States. People all around the world use WRAPS (Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System) to process and track the movement of refugees from various countries to the U.S. for resettlement.

What We Do

The Refugee Processing Center (RPC) provides the technical and functional support for WRAPS so that it is accessible, current and easy for our stakeholders to use. Our Operations teams sit on the front lines, helping solve problems and make the most of the WRAPS software system. Our Development teams are constantly innovating, collaborating, testing and fixing things. And behind the scenes, we have trainers and communications teams working with our end users. We are here to make a difference.

Our Role

The Refugee Processing Center (RPC) is operated by the U.S Department of State (DOS) Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM). We assist DOS/PRM in achieving its annual U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) objectives.

Check out the most recent map of resettlement sites—from December 2015—what good is this?

(I know it is impossible to read, you will be able to see it better here, but it is pretty useless since it is so out-of-date.)

map 2015 contractors

That legend in the bottom right hand corner represents the nine contractors that monopolize all resettlement in the US. The 351 (?) are their subcontractors.

And, click here to see the full list (a list that has not been updated since January 1, 2017).

Come on, get with it! We all have a right to know which 100 of these offices have been shuttered!

***  I post the contractor list almost every day because I want new readers to know exactly who is responsible for driving the US Refugee Admissions Program (in addition to the UN!).

The number in parenthesis is the percentage of the nine VOLAGs’ income paid by you (the taxpayer) to place the refugees, line them up with (low paying) jobs in food production and cleaning hotel rooms, and get them signed up for their services (welfare)!  From most recent accounting, here.

EXPERT: Best hope for reforming U.S. Refugee Program is under President Trump

“I saw first-hand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeate the refugee program.” – Mary Doetsch, retired Foreign Service Officer

Will President Donald Trump and soon-to-be Secretary of State Pompeo, do what must be done and overhaul the USRAP?

Trump and Pompeo

Mary Doetsch is a retired U.S. State Department Foreign Service officer who spent eight years (of a 25-year career) as a Refugee Coordinator serving on four continents.

As someone who has worked on the inside, her op-ed at the Washington Examiner today carries more weight than anything I could ever write as an outsider looking in!

Entitled:

US refugee program needs a complete overhaul

Ms. Doetsch opines (emphasis is mine):

During my career in the State Department, I became a refugee coordinator in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, or USRAP, because I wanted to help and support persecuted persons in legitimate need of international protection. But the pervasive fraud I saw during my eight years in the field was alarming.

It cries out for a fix, and President Trump might just be the person to do it.

Undoubtedly, many individuals who work within the refugee field have humanitarian aims. But refugee resettlement has morphed into a numbers-driven, financially motivated business, growing blindly at the expense of the American public and our national security.

The US Department of State logo is displ

There once was a time when private charities, civic groups and faith-based organizations provided the bulk of funds and volunteers to resettle and help assimilate refugees in the United States. Today’s deeply flawed system relies almost exclusively on nine federal contractors (paradoxically referred to as “Voluntary Agencies” or VOLAGS) to resettle refugees.

[….]

The contractors have a vested interest in processing ever-larger numbers of applicants, since they make money on every refugee settled. And as non-governmental organizations they can and do lobby for advantageous changes to law, something they could not do if they were government agencies. Their lobbying umbrella wields enormous influence over refugee admissions policy, pressuring Congress and the bureaucracy to increase admissions and provide ever greater funding. They stage political rallies, file lawsuits against unfavorable policies, and lobby for causes that coincidentally help their bottom lines, yet this linkage is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

This isn’t just important from the oft-discussed security perspective, but also because of the rampant fraud and abuse that has permeated this program for generations.

[….]

As a former Refugee Coordinator who served throughout the Middle East, Africa, Russia and Cuba, I saw first-hand the flagrant abuses and scams that permeate the refugee program. I witnessed widespread exploitation and misuse, from identity fraud to marriage and family relation scams, and from private individuals profiting from their involvement in USRAP to distortion of the actual refugee definition to ensure greater numbers of people who should really just be migrants are admitted as refugees.

[….]

While refugee admissions have been declining under the Trump administration, without structural reform in the USRAP these numbers could again skyrocket under a new administration more favorable to the refugee industry.

Midway into fiscal year 2018, fewer than a quarter of the 45,000 individuals proposed in the FY18 refugee ceiling have entered the country. This slow-down in admissions may reduce the problem of fraud, but it cannot be eliminated without a complete overhaul of the program.

I’ve only snipped a portion of Doetsch’s op-ed, click here to read it all.

What you can do….

Contact the White House and tell the President it is now or never to overhaul the US Refugee Admissions Program, or once out of office the program will go back in to high gear.  Reducing numbers for a few years is not enough!

RELATED ARTICLE: Supremes to hear Trump travel ban case today, fears Trump will win

Amnesty International & London Mayor Threaten Large Protest if President Trump Visits UK

Don’t go Donald!

The city now exceeds NYC in violent crime because of the (immigrant/refugee) diversity welcomed by the UK! 

Stay home and make a point of mayor’s increasingly violent city.

From the Huffington Post:

Donald Trump Should Expect ‘Loud’ Protests If He Visits The UK, Sadiq Khan London Mayor Warns

Donald Trump should expect loud and peaceful protests if he visits the UK later this year, the London mayor has said.

Sadiq Khan, who has frequently clashed with the US president since they were elected to office nearly two years ago, made the comments during a St George’s event in London on Saturday.

Amnesty International confirmed that thousands of its supporters will take to the streets when Trump visits the UK, although no date has yet been officially announced.

Khan added that the capital respects, embraces and celebrates diversity.

Kate Allen amnesty

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, said: “When and if Donald Trump makes his much-discussed visit to the United Kingdom, we and thousands of our supporters will very definitely be making our voices heard.

“In the 15 months of his presidency, we’ve seen a deeply disturbing human rights roll-back – including the discriminatory travel ban, his reckless announcement on Jerusalem, and harmful policies on refugees, women’s rights and climate change.

More at the HuffPo here.

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Gorsuch Defends the Rule of Law in Immigration Case

If you take anything away from Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion concurring with the Supreme Court’s so-called “liberal” bloc in an immigration case this week, it should be his continued faithfulness to the rule of law and the separation of powers.

In Sessions v. Dimaya, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court’s opinion—joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and in part by Gorsuch—holding that part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which defines a “crime of violence” for purposes of removal proceedings, is unconstitutionally vague.

Gorsuch wrote a separate opinion expressing concerns about how vague laws can lead to the arbitrary exercise of governmental power.

Some media outlets and noted conservatives have suggested that Gorsuch’s opinion is surprising or misguided, ruling with the liberal justices and against the Trump administration. For example, a New York Post headline reads, “Gorsuch Sides With Liberal Justices in Supreme Court Immigration Vote.” And Mark Levin tweeted, “Gorsuch blows it, big time.”

Whatever you think of any immigration policies or other issues surrounding this case, one thing is clear: Gorsuch faithfully applied fundamental constitutional principles and upheld the rule of law.

In many ways, Gorsuch also carried on Justice Antonin Scalia’s legacy.

Consider what the law in this case required, and what Gorsuch wrote.

The Immigration and Nationality Act

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, any alien who is convicted of an “aggravated felony” in the United States is subject to deportation, regardless of their ties to the country. Congress defined “aggravated felony” by a long list of specific offenses and offense types (at 8 U.S.C. §1101(a)(43)), one of which is “a crime of violence” punishable by imprisonment for at least one year.

Congress defined “crime of violence” elsewhere, in 18 U. S. C. §16, in part by stating that it includes any felony “that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”

Only that provision, known as the residual clause, was at issue in this case.

But in order to figure out which convictions trigger that residual clause, the court assesses the presence of “substantial risk” by looking not at the facts of the case, or the elements of the crime, but to “the ‘nature of the offense’ generally speaking,” and asks this: Does “‘the ordinary case’ of [this] offense pose[] the requisite risk”?

Immigration judges held that James Dimaya, a Philippine native and lawful permanent resident, is deportable because he was convicted—twice—of first-degree burglary under California law. The government sought to remove Dimaya after his second conviction, and immigration judges found that first-degree burglary counts as a “crime of violence” under federal law.

Dimaya appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that the “residual clause” is unconstitutionally vague.

The 9th Circuit relied in part on Johnson v. United States, a 2015 opinion that the Supreme Court published while Dimaya’s appeal was pending.

In Johnson, the court struck down part of the definition of “violent felony” under the Armed Career Criminal Act on vagueness grounds.

That law increased the sentence of a defendant convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm if he had three or more previous “violent felony” convictions, which includes any felony that “involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.”

Scalia wrote the majority opinion for the court in that case, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

Scalia concluded that the residual clause left “grave uncertainty about how to estimate the risk posed by a crime,” and further “uncertainty about how much risk it takes for a crime to qualify as a violent felony.” Rather than make up those aspects of the law himself, Scalia chose instead to send Congress back to the drawing board.

For that, Scalia’s opinion advanced the rule of law and the separation of powers.

Gorsuch’s Concurring Opinion

In his concurring opinion this week in Dimaya, Gorsuch provided thorough reasoning for a narrow conclusion: that “to the extent it requires an ‘ordinary case’ analysis, the portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act before us fails the fair notice test for the reasons Justice Scalia identified in Johnson.”

Gorsuch’s concern in Dimaya was, like Scalia’s in Johnson, a fundamentally conservative one: hostility to vague laws and arbitrary power.

Gorsuch wrote that “vague laws … can invite the exercise of arbitrary power … by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing prosecutors and courts to make it up.” Gorsuch explained:

[T]he Immigration and Nationality Act requires a judge to determine that the ordinary case of the alien’s crime of conviction involves a substantial risk that physical force may be used. But what does that mean? Just take the crime at issue in this case, California burglary, which applies to everyone from armed home intruders to door-to-door salesmen peddling shady products. How, on that vast spectrum, is anyone supposed to locate the ordinary case and say whether it includes a substantial risk of physical force? The truth is, no one knows.

Gorsuch gave the following examples of the confusion that results from the “ordinary case analysis”:

Does a conviction for witness tampering ordinarily involve a threat to the kneecaps or just the promise of a bribe? Does a conviction for kidnapping ordinarily involve throwing someone into a car trunk or a noncustodial parent picking up a child from daycare? These questions do not suggest obvious answers.

Because the statute “leaves judges to their intuitions and the people to their fate,” Gorsuch wrote, “the Constitution demands more.”

And Gorsuch explained exactly why that is.

Looking to history, Gorsuch cited early American court cases and turned to the Federalist Papers for the principle that “[w]ithout an assurance that the laws supply fair notice, so much else of the Constitution risks becoming only a ‘parchment barrie[r]’ against arbitrary power.”

And Gorsuch discussed exactly how vague laws might jeopardize other constitutional rights.

“Take the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that arrest warrants must be supported by probable cause,” Gorsuch wrote, “and consider what would be left of that requirement if the alleged crime had no meaningful boundaries.”

Finally, Gorsuch observed precisely how vague criminal laws undermine the separation of powers.

Only Congress may enact law, but if Congress writes vague statutes, Gorsuch wrote, then it leaves judges, prosecutors, and police “free to ‘condem[n] all that [they] personally disapprove and for no better reason than [they] disapprove it.’”

Thus, to “keep the separate branches within their proper spheres,” Gorsuch wrote, is “the more important aspect” of the vagueness doctrine.

And that is the most important aspect of Gorsuch’s opinion in Dimaya.

To judge how individual justices vote in particular cases in relation to one another, without regard to the substance of their opinions, unjustifiably politicizes the judiciary.

Dimaya is interesting not because of how the justices voted in relation to one another, but because of how the justices—especially Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas—debated legal history and precedent, and did so respectfully.

Yes, the other conservative justices all dissented. Roberts dissented, joined by Thomas and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito, arguing that, unlike the law in Johnson, the statute at issue in this case was not vague.

Thomas also wrote a separate dissent, joined by Kennedy and Alito, challenging Gorsuch on the merits of the vagueness doctrine.

And yes, Gorsuch’s opinion is not what the government hoped for in this case.

The government had pointed to the executive’s “considerable constitutional authority” in immigration and foreign affairs but, as Gorsuch wrote, “to acknowledge that the president has broad authority to act in this general area supplies no justification for allowing judges to give content to an impermissibly vague law.”

Now, Congress can go back to the drawing board and draft a more precise law.

Gorsuch’s opinion has explained why that is a job for Congress, echoing his prior statements on the role of the judge: “to put aside their personal politics and preferences to decide cases and to follow the law and not try and make it.”

And by echoing Scalia’s opinion in Johnson, this case also illustrates how Gorsuch carries Scalia’s legacy.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of John-Michael Seibler

John-Michael Seibler is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

EDITORS NOTE: The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now. The featured image of Justice Neil Gorsuch is by Oliver Contreras/Sipa USA/Newscom.

Jihadis and Drug Cartels at our Border: A nightmare on the horizon.

The border that is supposed to separate the United States from Mexico must be made secure.

There is no shortage of compelling reasons why this must happen, and the sooner the better, but today, given the lunacy of Sanctuary Cities and Sanctuary States and the globalist goals of politicians from both political parties, particularly the Democratic Party leadership, rational and reasonable thought processes have been supplanted by greed, corruption and cowardice- fear of upsetting party leaders or fear of alienating deep-pocketed campaign contributors.

Indeed, it is irrational for any leader in the United States to refuse to take whatever measures must be taken to protect America and Americans from the rampant violence, corruption and potential for terrorists to traverse that highly porous border into the United States.

Yet this is precisely the situation that exists today in the United States.

Therefore, today we will consider some of the more compelling facts that demand that, for once and for all, the U.S./Mexican border be secured.

First of all, given the unstable and volatile situation in the Middle East, particularly Syria and U.S.-led military strikes in Syria, undoubtedly Iran and radical Islamists would like to be able to carry out terror attacks within the borders of the United States.

Iran and radical Islamists have a significant presence in Latin America, therefore, all that separates them from us is the U.S./Mexican border.

On April 21, 2017 I wrote an article, Border Security Is National Security in which I referenced an April 12, 2017 Washington Times report, Sharafat Ali Khan smuggled terrorist-linked immigrants.

Khan is a citizen of Pakistan who had established himself as a permanent resident in Brazil and then smuggled numerous illegal aliens from the Middle East into the United States through Mexico.  ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release about this case,

Foreign national extradited and pleads guilty to human smuggling conspiracy.

That Khan first became a resident of Brazil prior to beginning his smuggling operation is of particular concern.

Terror training camps run by Hamas and Hezbollah are to be found in the Tri-Border region of Brazil (where Brazil abuts with Argentina and Paraguay).  While there was no specific mention of Khan making use of those camps, given the nature of his crimes, this is a very real and troubling possibility.

It is also entirely possible that members of ISIS and al-Qaeda are present in those terror training camps.

Concerns about the Tri-Border Region were ably reported on in a paper, Islamist Terrorist Threat in the Tri-Border Region that was published by Jeffrey Fields, Research Associate, Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Khan is hardly the only alien smuggler who was operating in Latin America and has ties to the Middle East.

In addition to the nexus between Brazil and radical Islamic training camps, Iran routinely flies its Quds Forces, also known as “Shock Troops” into Caracas Venezuela.  They are not present in the the Western hemisphere for vacation.

In addition to the threats posed by Middle Eastern terrorists operating in Latin America, we need to also consider the deteriorating situation to be found in Mexico where it has been reported that last year more than 29,000 people were murdered.

On April 11, 2018 the San Diego Union-Tribune report, Studies find record violence costing Mexico billions of dollars included this excerpt:

As fighting between drug trafficking groups drives up violence in Mexico to record levels, a new study released on Wednesday measures the economic impact in 2017 at $249 billion in losses — close to 21 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Authors of the study presented at the University of San Diego say that focusing on homicides alone fails to address the broad range of factors that drive the violence, and affect the well being of Mexicans on a multitude of levels.

To bring down the violence will mean addressing issues such as corruption and the weak rule of law, the study states.

[ … ]

With more than 29,000 murders, last year was Mexico’s most violent year on record, “with the peacefulness in Mexico deteriorating by 10.7 percent,” states the institute’s study, the fifth in a series of annual reports focusing on Mexico.

The study found that the economic impact violence in 2017 “amongst the highest in the world.” The total economic impact of violence “was seven times higher than the education budget in 2017,” according to the report. “A one percent decline in the economic impact of violence would equal the federal government’s investment in activities related to science, technology and innovation last year.”

In an effort to somehow paint a less pessimistic and alarming image of the level of violence in Mexico, the report concluded with the following:

In spite of public perceptions, “Mexico’s violence is ‘average’ for the Western Hemisphere,” according to the USD study, with homicide rates well below those of smaller countries, including Belize, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, and Venezuela.

This is no comfort to be found in that last quote.  A caravan of citizens of Honduras making its way north through Mexico and headed for the United States, prompted President Trump to deploy National Guard troops along the southern border to augment the U.S. Border Patrol in non-law enforcement capacity- providing support for the Border Patrol as was reported in an April 4, 2018 USA Today report,  Trump keeps focus on caravan of Honduran asylum seekers headed to U.S.

It appears that the caravan of Hondurans is being egged on by the government of Honduras, consider that The Arizona Republic reported on April 12, 2018:

Although many migrants traveling in the caravan have decided to remain in Mexico, many still plan to continue on to the U.S. border and apply for asylum, especially the large number of women and children, and a small group of about 25 gay and transgender migrants.

The Honduran ambassador to Mexico, dressed in a suit, tie and dress shoes, joined the migrants in a 9-mile walk from the Honduran embassy in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City to the Casa de Peregrino near the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexican news media reported.

Given the totality of circumstances, the potential exists that criminals such as members of MS-13 and other such violent gangs and members of drug cartels may well infiltrate this and other such caravans.

In point of fact, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that terrorists from the Middle East might also seize the opportunity to infiltrate large-scale smuggling groups to gain entry into the United States, not unlike terrorists in Europe infiltrated refugee flows.

Furthermore, as we have seen in the past, the potential exists that aliens who seek asylum in the United States might actually be such criminals and/or terrorists.

This very topic was the focus of a November 21, 2013 Washington Times news reportMexican drug cartels exploit asylum system by claiming ‘credible fear.’

The report quoted Bob Goodlatte, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:

“It’s outrageous that members of Mexican drug cartels and others involved in illicit activity are so easily able to exploit our asylum laws and live in the U.S. virtually undetected,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican.

“Our asylum laws are in place to help individuals who are facing truly serious persecution in their country,” he said. “However, dangerous criminals are gaming the system by claiming they have a ‘credible fear’ of persecution when often they’ve been the perpetrators of violence themselves.”

Concerns about the lack of integrity to this system were the focus of two House Judiciary Committee hearings conducted as a result of Chairman Goodlatte’s concerns.

Of course while one of the hearings focused on how asylum abuse was overwhelming our borders, in reality, asylum abuse is overwhelming the entire immigration system throughout the entire United States of America.

Furthermore, this is not simply a matter of “asylum abuse” but of immigration fraud.

The official report that was authored by the 9/11 Commission Staff, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel noted on page 98:

Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.

Those concerns are very much as relevant today as they were at the time of those hearings and at the time that the 9/11 Commission reported its findings.

What more needs to happen before our “leaders” finally act to secure that dangerous border?

RELATED ARTICLES:

Asylum Abuse: Is it Overwhelming our Borders?

Asylum Fraud: Abusing America’s Compassion?

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.