Failing to use required DNA technology to identify criminal aliens

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DHS malfeasance undermines national security and public safety.

The pace at which events occur often makes it all but impossible to keep pace. This is particularly true where the multi-faceted immigration crisis is concerned.

While much attention is paid to the abject lack of security of the U.S./Mexican border, there are many other failings of the immigration system that often go unreported and ignored by the mainstream media and our politicians.  I have repeatedly noted that while I am a firm supporter of the need to construct an effective wall/barrier along the southern border, there are many other elements of the immigration system that are no less important.  I have therefore come to compare the wall along the border with a wing on an airplane.  Without its wing an airplane won’t fly, however, a wing by itself goes nowhere.

On Wednesday August 21,  I was invited by the producers at Fox News’ Fox & Friends First to participate in an interview to discuss a just-posted  Fox News report, Watchdog Alerts President Trump That Border Agency Violated DNA Collection Law For Years, Letting Violent Criminals Walk Free.

That troubling report included the following excerpt:

In a scathing letter to Trump, exclusively obtained by Fox News, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said CBP’s “noncompliance with the law has allowed subjects subsequently accused of violent crimes, including homicide and sexual assault, to elude detection even when detained multiple times by CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

CBP REBUKED FOR FAILURE TO COLLECT DNA FROM MIGRANT DETAINEES

The OSC told the White House that it was taking the “strongest possible step” to “rebuke the agency’s failure to comply with the law,” as well as its “unreasonable” attempts to defend its own conduct.

Under the law, CBP was required to collect DNA from individuals in its custody, to be run against FBI violent-crimes databases. The procedure is separate from DNA collection designed to establish familial relationships among migrants at the border.

Aliens who were released by this demonstration of nonfeasance and, indeed, malfeasance, have committed more violent crimes, thereby claiming more innocent victims.

I accepted the invitation and Fox News has posted my interview under the title, Government watchdog says CBP violated its DNA collection law for years.

As I noted during my interview, bad guys use changes in identity the way a chameleon uses changes in coloration, to hide in plain sight among its intended victims.

Everyone associates the arrest of suspects with the fingerprinting and photographing of those who are arrested as a means of determining their true identities and to make certain that their fingerprints are retained for future reference.  Currently DNA is also used as a means of identifying those who are taken into custody for the same reason.

Fingerprints, photographs and DNA all constitute biometrics.

The law that mandated that ICE and CBP use DNA to properly identify aliens who are taken into custody, was enacted back in 2005.  During the Obama administration, Secretary Janet Napolitano asked the Attorney General to waive this important requirement claiming a lack of resources.  Not surprisingly, the Attorney General complied.

Incredibly, nothing has apparently changed under the Trump administration and, as a consequence, hundreds of thousands of aliens who should have undergone DNA screening did not during the Obama administration and during the current administration.

The issue of the consequence of the failure of immigration law enforcement to effectively use biometrics is not new.  In fact, we can look back to the particularly egregious case of Ángel Maturino Reséndiz-Ramirez  aka the “Railway Killer” as noted in this excerpt in a Wikipedia article about him:

Murders and methodology

By illegally jumping on and off trains within and across Mexico, Canada and the United States, generally crossing borders illegally, Reséndiz was able to evade authorities for a considerable time. United States government records show that he had been deported to Mexico at least four times since first entering the U.S. in 1973.[4]

Reséndiz killed at least 15 people[5] with rocks, a pickaxe, and other blunt objects, mainly in their homes. After each murder, he would linger in the homes for a while, mainly to eat; he took sentimental items and laid out the victims’ driver’s licenses to learn about their lives. He stole jewelry and other items and gave them to his wife and mother, who lived in Rodeo, Durango, Mexico. Much of the jewelry was sold or melted down. Some of the items that were removed from the homes were returned by his wife and mother after his surrender. Money, however, was sometimes left at the scene. He raped some of his female victims; however, rape served as a secondary intent. Most of his victims were found covered with a blanket or otherwise obscured from immediate view.

Reséndiz-Ramirez had been in Border Patrol custody at least four times, was deported back to Mexico, illegally reentered and killed more innocent people.

He was eventually identified as the cold-blooded murderer of at least 15 people, put on trial and found guilty.  He was subsequently executed but his execution did not bring any of his victims back to life.  The families of those victims will never be the same.

Back then immigration law enforcement personnel did not transmit fingerprints electronically but usually by mail!  All too often we would arrest an illegal alien, mail out the fingerprints and then, weeks later, receive a response that the alien was wanted for serious crimes.  Of course, by then he/she had been deported or released.

During my first Congressional hearing, on May 20, 1997 before the House Immigration Subcommittee on the topic of Visa Fraud And Immigration Benefits Application Fraud when I was asked about a common problem I encountered in my positions as Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and Special Agent, I replied that one of the biggest challenges was to uncover the true identities of those whom we interacted with and that imposters were a huge issue.  Within a year the former INS began implementing electronic fingerprinting, but on a limited scale.

Here we are approaching the 18th anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.  The 9/11 Commission was clear in its finding that the key method of entry and embedding for terrorists was immigration fraud and identity fraud.

Yet we are now finding out that DNA technology which is a tremendously valuable tool that could enhance national security and public safety has been all but ignored by elements of the Department of Homeland Security or, as I came to refer to it when it was first created, the Department of Homeland Surrender.

It is completely unacceptable that CBP and ICE failed in its most fundamental mission: to protect America and Americans from aliens who pose a threat to national security and/or public safety.

Immigration enforcement personnel should learn from the mistakes of the past.  However, as the famed playwright George Bernard Shaw lamented, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

The Trump administration must act swiftly and decisively to plug this gaping hole in the immigration system.

Failure is not an option!

RELATED ARTICLE: Taxpayer-Funded Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society Sending Immigration Lawyers to Border so More Migrants Can Get In!

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The Inconvenient Truth about Public Charge Provisions of Immigration Laws

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There are two broad categories of lies that could be referred to as crimes of commission and crimes of omission.

The crime of commission is when facts are blatantly misrepresented, while the crime of omission involves leaving out relevant information, for example, when statements are taken out of context or relevant information is left out of the report.

These tactics have become commonplace and routine particularly when the mainstream media reports on the Trump administration and also when it reports on issues pertaining to immigration.

When the Trump administration promulgates policies that impact immigration, synergy kicks in and the truth is likely nowhere to be found.

Over a century ago a popular expression, the streets are paved with gold, drew immigrants to the United States who were determined to strike it rich in America.  When they got here they found that the streets were paved, not with gold, but with cobblestones that came from the cargo holds of ships that used those cobblestones as ballast.

Back then the cargo holds of the merchant ships that arrived at America’s ports were filled with cobblestones that served as ballast to keep those ships stable on the voyage to the United States.  Once here, those stones were off-loaded and all sorts of products that were made in America replaced the cobblestones in the cargo holds of those ships that returned to their original ports with merchandise to be sold.

The cobblestones were used to pave the roads of the port cities.

Nevertheless the immigrants who came to America worked hard and earned a living and built their futures in our nation.  None of them expected, nor received a “free ride.”

You could say that rather than being paved with gold, the streets were paved with blood, sweat and tears of the immigrants.

With their new-found freedom to worship and to pursue their dreams, many succeeded in building successful and happy lives in the United States.

On August 12, 2019 Business Today breathlessly published a Reuters News report under the title, “New Trump administration rule to target legal immigrants who get public assistance”.  The subtitle of that report utterly twisted the truth:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled a sweeping rule on Monday that would limit legal immigration by denying visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor

That article also included this excerpt:

The 837-page rule could be the most drastic of all the Trump administration’s policies targeting the legal immigration system, experts have said. Advocates for immigrants have criticized the plan as an effort to cut legal immigration without going through Congress to change U.S. law.

The new rule is derived from the Immigration Act of 1882, which allows the U.S. government to deny a visa to anyone likely to become a “public charge.”

That last paragraph creates the utterly false impression that President Trump had to dig back to law books published 137 years ago to find legal justification for invoking the concept of public charge to prevent aliens on public assistance from receiving lawful immigrant status.

In reality, while the notion of public charge was first codified in 1882, it has persisted in all subsequent rewrites of America’s immigration laws and, in fact, is still an element of the current Immigration and Nationality Act.

The claim that Trump’s public charge policies would deny entry to aliens who are poor is false.  This concern does not deny entry to aliens who are poor.  Historically many immigrants who were destitute have come to the United States.  However, they worked their way up the economic ladder to create the American Dream for themselves, their families and ultimately, for America.

The issue is not whether or not an alien seeking to enter the U.S. is poor but if that alien has the physical capabilities and skills and/or education to work and be self-sufficient in the United States.

In fact, Ellis Island was run by Public Health officials along with immigration officials.  Public Health officials had two concerns- that the arriving immigrants were not suffering from dangerous communicable diseases that could create a deadly epidemic and that the arriving immigrants were mentally and physically capable of working and supporting themselves and, perhaps, their families.

My earlier article, “The Left’s Immigration Con Game”, referenced the extraordinary documentary, “Forgotten Ellis Island”, that chronicles the true story about Ellis Island, and the story is not particularly pretty or romantic and runs contrary to the bogus mythology told by the immigration anarchists of today.

On August 16, 2019 CNBC reported, “Advocacy groups file suit to block Trump’s new ‘public charge’ immigration rule” that included this outrageous quote:

“This rule change is a direct attack on communities of color and their families and furthers this administration’s desire to make this country work primarily for the wealthy and white,” said Antionette Dozier, senior attorney at the Western Center on Law and Poverty. “Our immigration system cannot be based on the racial animosities of this administration or whether or not people are wealthy.”

More recently NBC reported, “New York, Connecticut and Vermont sue to block Trump’s public charge rule.”

Once again, the Left is resorting to “Lawfare”, filing lawsuits to achieve political objectives.

The quote that appears in the CNBC article noted above from Western Center on Law and Poverty was quick to invoke race.  Let us also be clear that race, religion and/or ethnicity play absolutely no role in determining whether or not to admit aliens into the United States.

The grounds for determining admissibility of aliens into the United States is codified in a section of the current Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S. Code § 1182.

Among the categories of aliens who are excludible are aliens who suffer dangerous communicable diseases, serious mental illness, are criminals, spies, terrorists, human rights violators, fugitives from justice, aliens who had been previously deported (removed) from the United States and aliens who have committed fraud in their applications for visas and/or immigration benefits.

Additionally, it establishes that aliens are inadmissible (excludible) if they are likely to become public charges.

This is how the current Immigration and Nationality Act unambiguously lays out the entire issue of public charge:

(4)  Public charge

(A)   In general

Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.

(B)   Factors to be taken into account

(i)  In determining whether an alien is inadmissible under this paragraph, the consular officer or the Attorney General shall at a minimum consider the alien’s–

(I)  age;

(II)  health;

(III)  family status;

(IV)  assets, resources, and financial status;  and

(V)  education and skills.

(ii)  In addition to the factors under clause (i), the consular officer or the Attorney General may also consider any affidavit of support under section 1183a of this title for purposes of exclusion under this paragraph.

The media has accused President Trump of wanting to separate families.  In point of fact, family members may provide an affidavit of support wherein they guarantee that they will provide financial assistance to their family members who seek to immigrate to the United States.  This would help to unite families not divide them.

The issue is not about dividing families or denying poor people an opportunity to immigrate to the United States, but to protect the financial solvency of the United States, an issue of increasing concern as the national debt continues to soar into the stratosphere, by simply enforcing existing laws.

I must remind you that the imposition of American policies to address public charge laws is not new, but has a long-established history that goes back 137 years.

It is clear that the United States is unable to secure its borders.  Billions of humans around the world live below the poverty line.  If the United States was to permit all of the world’s poor to come to America with the expectation of receiving free healthcare, free education, housing subsidies and other such free benefits, our nation would implode.

As it is, our national debt has soared into the stratosphere and continues its upward trajectory.

The time has come for the Radical Left to be reminded of one of their favorite chants, the one that deals with “sustainability!”

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

64% Of Federal Arrests Were Of Non-Citizens In 2018, DOJ Finds

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Federal arrests of non-citizens has increased exponentially over the past two decades, and account for the majority of all federal arrests, data released by the Justice Department revealed.

Non-citizens made up 64% of all federal arrests in 2018 despite making up 7% of the U.S. population, according to Justice Department data released Thursday and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Between 1998 and 2018, federal arrests of non-citizens grew by 234%, while federal arrests of U.S. citizens climbed 10%.

While the numbers provide credence to President Donald Trump’s argument that illegal immigration results in increased crime, immigration experts also pointed out that migrant apprehensions make up a significant portion of current federal arrests.

“Experience has taught the immigration agencies and DOJ that this works to reduce recidivism — in other words, when illegal crossers face some more severe consequence than just being sent back home, they don’t keep doing it,” Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies told the Washington Examiner.

Trump made increased immigration enforcement a hallmark goal of his administration. His efforts at beefing up border security and providing additional funding to the Customs and Border Protection have yielded satisfactory results. Federal immigration apprehensions climbed more than 50,000 from 2017 to 2018, according to the Justice Department data.

Ninety-five percent of the increase in federal arrests over the past 20 years were, in fact, due to immigration offenses, the Justice Department data found. Non-citizens accounted for 28% of all federal fraud arrests, 25% of all federal property arrests, and 24% of all federal drug arrests. The Justice Department identified the top five crimes non-citizens were most likely be prosecuted for: illegal re-entry, drugs, fraud, alien smuggling and misuse of visas.

“Opponents of immigration enforcement are obsessed with trying to establish that illegal aliens and legal immigrants commit fewer crimes than Americans, and so, as their narrative goes, local law enforcement agencies should not cooperate with ICE and should adopt sanctuary policies,” Vaughan continued in her statement. “This is first of all not true, but is off-point and a dangerous conclusion.”

COLUMN BY

JASON HOPKINS

Immigration and politics reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Hundreds Of Illegal Migrants Carry Criminal Histories, DHS Investigation Finds

109 US Counties Have Become Majority Non-White Since 2000, Analysis Finds

Just 20 Miles From White House, Illegal Immigrant Rape Cases Keep Piling Up

New Report Shows Taxpayers Lost BIG TIME Last Year Because Of ‘Non-Citizens”

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Nigerians Arrested by FBI for Scamming Millions from Elderly and Vulnerable Women

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“We believe this is one of the largest cases of its kind in U.S. history.” – US Attorney Nick Hanna

The FBI announced this week that over a dozen were under arrest in the U.S. and efforts were being made to find additional co-conspirators around the world in fraud schemes  involving at least 32 victims.

Here is The Hill on this good news,

Justice charges 80 in massive online fraud case linked to Nigerian defendants

The Department of Justice on Thursday unsealed a 252-count federal indictment charging 80 defendants, many of whom are Nigerian nationals, with conspiring to steal millions of dollars through online scams.

The indictment was unsealed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California and was made public shortly afterauthorities arrested 14 of the defendants across the United States, with 11 of these defendants apprehended in the Los Angeles region. The majority of the defendants are outside the country, with many likely in Nigeria.

The defendants involved in the case were charged with attempting to defraud individuals of millions of dollars through the use of business email compromise (BEC) and online romance scams, in addition to other schemes meant to target the elderly.

The investigation is being led by the FBI, with each of the defendants charged with “conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to launder money, and aggravated identity theft,” according to Justice Department. Some defendants also face fraud and money laundering charges.

U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna described the scams used by the defendants during a press conference on Thursday, saying that “fraud networks now target individuals and businesses alike.”

“In the BEC scams, the fraudsters will often hack a company’s email system, impersonate company personnel, and direct payments to bank accounts that funnel money back to the fraudsters in Nigeria,” Hanna said. “In the romance scams, victims think they are developing a dating relationship, when in fact they are just being tricked into sending money to the fraudsters.”

Hanna added that “we believe this is one of the largest cases of its kind in U.S. history.”

Paul Delacourt, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said during the same press conference that losses involved in this case for victims total around $10 million. He said defendants attempted to obtain $40 million from victims.

There were at least 32 victims in the case, from the United States and other countries including Japan, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, Ukraine, China, Mexico, Germany, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Delacourt said the case began in 2016 after one individual was victimized by the defendants. The two main defendants in the case are Nigerian citizens Valentine Iro and Chukwudi Christogunus Igbokwe.

More here.

And, don’t miss the  Stars and Stripes story about how some of the crooks pretended to be US military personnel when they scammed hundreds of thousands from lonely women.

I know you are shaking your head and wondering who in their right mind would be so foolish to send money to a stranger they met on the internet.  Well, as we have heard in previous posts on Nigerian romance scammers, these Nigerian creeps are skilled actors and preying on vulnerable and lonely people seems to come naturally to them.

Keep an eye on your elderly friends and family members and don’t let them fall for these despicable scams.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Utah: Nigerian Arrested for Murder Faces Additional Charges

64% Of Federal Arrests Were Of Non-Citizens In 2018, DOJ Finds

Just 20 Miles From White House, Illegal Immigrant Rape Cases Keep Piling Up

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

House Democrats consider action against Israeli and U.S. ambassadors over banning of Tlaib and Omar

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Senior Democratic members of Congress are “are considering releasing a statement of no confidence” in Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer and “opening an inspector-general investigation” into U.S. envoy to Israel David Friedman over Israel’s decision to ban Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel.

The Democratic lawmakers are advancing the idea that Omar and Tlaib were banned from Israel because they are Muslim; nothing could be further from the truth. The Dems:

raised an incident in 1975 in which Henry Waxman, a longtime Democratic congressman from California, was initially banned from Saudi Arabia for his Jewish roots. He was eventually granted entry following pressure from the State Department.

Friedman’s endorsement of Israel’s decision to bar Omar and Tlaib’s entry into the country broke with that precedent, they argued, and as a result called for an investigation “the role the ambassador played in barring them from entering the country.”

The Waxman case is completely different from that of Omar and Tlaib. Waxman was banned from Saudi Arabia because he was Jewish, while Omar and Tlaib have been banned from Israel because they are a security threat to the Jewish state. They were going there with the intention of furthering the Palestinian jihad against Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained when he defended his decision on the basis that the “the two intended to use the visit to harm Israel.” He stated:

“Several days ago, we received [Omar and Tlaib’s] trip itinerary,” Netanyahu said, “which clarified that they planned a visit whose sole purpose was to support boycotts and deny Israel’s legitimacy. For example, they called their destination ‘Palestine’ and not ‘Israel,’ and unlike all Democratic and Republican members of Congress before them, they did not seek any meeting with any Israeli official, whether government or opposition.”

Omar and Tlaib have brought to the forefront a fact that has been virtually ignored since 1948: that the aim of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and every other Palestinian movement is to obliterate the state of Israel. Accusations against Israel about “racism,” “apartheid,” and the so-called “occupation” are intended to delegitimize the Jewish state. When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that “not a single Israeli” would live in a future Palestinian state, that was a demonstration of apartheid.

As Robert Spencer writes:

Omar and Tlaib are not just Congresswomen with opinions that are critical of Israel. They are not just spokesmen; they are activists. They are active apologists for the jihad terror networks Hamas and Hizballah.

In 2017, Israel passed a law that barred entry to those advocating for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and “Israel’s Interior and Strategic Affairs Ministries have denied visas to students, activists and artists who have a proven record of publicly calling for the boycott of Israel.” Tlaib and Omar not only advocate for BDS; they also sponsored a bill in Congress to support it, and Tlaib has compared the boycott of Israel to the American boycott of Nazi Germany.

Without the support of useful idiots, the relentless Palestinian jihad would not have advanced into Congress and continued its dogged efforts there. In the words of Rashida Tlaib:

The more they try to silence us, our voices rise. The more they try to weaken us, the stronger we become.

But in reality, the supporters of BDS and other anti-Israel initiatives are emboldened by the weakness they perceive in their opposition.

“Report: House Democrats Weighing Action Against Israeli, U.S. Envoys over Tlaib, Omar Ban,” by Deborah Danan, Breitbart, August 18, 2019:

TEL AVIV – Senior Democratic members of Congress are said to have launched discussions to formally censure the U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Jerusalem’s envoy in Washington over Israel’s decision to bar entry to congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

Around a dozen lawmakers, several of whom are Jewish, have begun talks to communicate a “deep lack of confidence and trust” in Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer and U.S. envoy to Israel David Friedman, the McClatchy news service reported, citing congressional sources.

According to the report, the Democrats are considering releasing a statement of no confidence in Dermer and opening an inspector-general investigation into Friedman.

Among the twelve are House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, two Jewish lawmakers from New York.

“We are reviewing all of our options,” McClatchy quoted a source as saying. “With Dermer, the issue is that there already was a severe lack of trust. But now there is a severe lack of confidence. It is completely unclear that he represents his government given he has made promises that he has not kept and wasn’t clear if he ever had any chance of keeping.”

Last month, Dermer assured lawmakers that Omar and Tlaib — open supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel — would be allowed into Israel “out of respect for Congress.”

However, on Thursday, Israel said the two would be denied entry.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement defending the decision to bar entry to Omar and Tlaib, said the two intended to use the visit to harm Israel.

“Several days ago, we received [Omar and Tlaib’s] trip itinerary,” Netanyahu said, “which clarified that they planned a visit whose sole purpose was to support boycotts and deny Israel’s legitimacy. For example, they called their destination ‘Palestine’ and not ‘Israel,’ and unlike all Democratic and Republican members of Congress before them, they did not seek any meeting with any Israeli official, whether government or opposition.”

On Friday, Omar claimed that she had planned to meet with Knesset members and security officials, although the jam-packed itinerary — released days before their planned visit — showed otherwise.

The trip, according to the itinerary, would be based exclusively in the Palestinian territories with the exception of the first day that would take place in the primarily Arab-populated eastern area of Jerusalem. The two were slated to meet only with Palestinian officials as well as representatives from human rights groups and other organizations.

The congresswomen were scheduled to meet with representatives from Palestinian groups Miftah, a sponsor of the trip, and the Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), groups that have endorsed terrorism and have ties to terror organizations.

“In addition, the organization that is funding their trip is Miftah, which is an avid supporter of BDS, and among whose members are those who have expressed support for terrorism against Israel,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister said that Tlaib was welcome to apply to visit on humanitarian grounds to see her family, with the caveat that she not engage in promoting boycotts of Israel while in the country. Tlaib acquiesced, and quickly received permission to visit. However, she changed her mind hours later, saying that coming to Israel on its terms would be “humiliating” and she would not “bow down to their oppressive & racist policies.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who recently led a large Democratic delegation to Israel, issued a statement Thursday censuring Israel over the decision and said it contradicted what he and others had been told by Dermer.

McClatchy quoted the source as saying, “Dermer is saying privately that he expects this to go away within a day — it’s a real lack of understanding on the consequences of this.”

In the discussions Friday, the lawmakers raised an incident in 1975 in which Henry Waxman, a longtime Democratic congressman from California, was initially banned from Saudi Arabia for his Jewish roots. He was eventually granted entry following pressure from the State Department…..

RELATED ARTICLES:

Rashida Tlaib Blames ‘Senior’ Democrats After Partnership With Terror-Linked Group Draws Backlash

Tlaib attends Shabbat event with far-Left Jewish pro-BDS group after rejecting Israel visit

Ilhan Omar Falsely Claims That ‘White Men’ Are Greater Threat Than Jihadis

Rashida Tlaib’s media darling grandmother on Donald Trump: “May Allah ruin him”

RELATED VIDEO: Tlaib’s Guest Praised Murderer of 4-Year-Old Einat.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Maryland: Salvadorans Arrested for Repeatedly Raping 11-year-old

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Montgomery County, Maryland is a sanctuary county and thank goodness I no longer live there!

Daniel Horowitz, writing at Conservative Review, reminds us of the 11-year-old poster girl the leftwing media has been promoting lately—you know the girl crying because her father was rounded up in a recent meatpacking raid.  Surely you have seen the clip.

Horowitz asks about another 11-year-old—the one repeatedly raped by illegal alien monsters from El Salvador.

The one whose face you will never see.

(Emphasis below is mine.)

2 illegal aliens accused of raping 11-year-old girl in sanctuary Maryland county

The video of a crying 11-year-old girl is being used by the Left to militate against enforcing our sovereignty and immigration laws. Apparently the rule should be that anyone can come here and remain here illegally if they have a child, because enforcing our laws will result in hardship to the kids. But no such heart-tugging imagery exists for all the girls raped and harmed by criminal aliens thanks to the lack of enforcement or loopholes in our laws. The latest atrocity involves a different 11-year-old girl who will never be seen on camera.

Yesterday, WJLA news reported that Montgomery County, Maryland, police arrested two illegal aliens from El Salvador, Mauricio Barrera-Navidad, 29, and Carlos Palacios-Amaya, 28, for raping an 11-year-old child known to the alleged attackers.

The investigation was triggered by a discussion the child had with a school social worker last month, and the rapes are alleged to have occurred last September.

In September 2018, the victim was introduced to her older brother’s friend, Palacios-Amaya. Over the course of the next few months, the then 27-year-old man raped the middle schooler on multiple occasions, authorities allege.The victim recalled one instance where Palacios-Amaya “used his cell phone to video record the two of them having sex,” police noted in court documents.

The victim told the social worker that Palacios-Amaya would often pressure her not to attend school so that she could stay home while her parents were at work. That gave Palacios-Amaya unsupervised access to the girl.

Palacios-Amaya is charged with four counts of second-degree rape, and Barrera-Navidad is charged with one.

This story demonstrates, once again, that the people harmed the most by the lack of enforcement can be immigrant or illegal immigrant children. While the identity of a child victim is never released, it’s clear from the story that her older brother was friends with these individuals and they likely traveled in the same circles.

ICE spokeswoman Justine Whelan provided CR with the same statement regarding the immigration status of the accused as in the local ABC news report:

On July 25, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged a detainer with the Montgomery County (Maryland) Detention Center on Carlos Ernesto Palacios-Amaya, a Salvadoran national, and a repeat immigration violator, following his arrest for rape. Palacios was previously removed from the U.S. in 2014.

On July 26, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged a detainer with the Montgomery County (Maryland) Detention Center on Mauricio Barrera-Navidad, a Salvadoran national, unlawfully present in the United States, following his arrest for rape. Barrera is subject to a final order of removal that was issued by an immigration judge in December 2016.

Sadly, it’s unlikely that a single elected Republican, the DHS secretary, or anyone in the White House will even mention this horrific story, much less ask the salient public policy questions that Congress and the DHS must grapple with.

Continue reading hear.  Horowitz discusses the sorry state of US immigration policy and Washington’s inability (or is it a lack of will?) to control the invasion.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Department of Homeland Security NOW Collecting Biometric Data on Refugees

Utah: Nigerian Man Charged in Killing of College Coed had Child Pornography in his Home

Missouri: Somali Wanted for Kidnapping Children as Mother’s Body is Identified.

Sanctuary in the Big Apple: NYPD Ignores Thousands of ICE Detainer Requests

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

ICE Field Operation Helps American Workers

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When will compassion apply to beleaguered Americans?

On August 7, 2019 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release that announced, ICE executes federal search warrants at multiple Mississippi locations.  Fox News also reported on that massive field operation in its report, ICE raids on Mississippi food processing plants result in 680 arrests.

The mainstream media, in reporting on the ICE field operation, immediately sought to paint the most disturbing picture it could about the nature of the ICE operation and along the way, the children of illegal aliens who had been arrested were interviewed on camera, hysterically crying that they wanted their mother/father or both to come home to take care of them.

However, I doubt the media will show the lines of American workers lining up to take the jobs that have been liberated by the ICE agents.

While it is admittedly heart-wrenching to see a child in distress, it is remarkable that the media totally ignores that children are frequently separated from the parents whenever their parents are arrested for a wide spectrum of violations of law that include administrative motor vehicle violations.

Every year as the dreaded “Tax Day” approaches, the IRS frequently arrests tax cheats and fraudsters and publicizes their law enforcement actions to remind tax payers that they should not defraud the IRS.  This is a clear tactic of intimidation that creates a “climate of fear.”  Yet Nancy Pelosi who frequently lambasted immigration law enforcement efforts for creating such a climate of fear, I have never seen her or any other politician complaining about the tactics of the IRS.

When taxpayers are arrested for not paying their taxes, it is likely that their children will have to be cared for by other family members, friends of the family or, as a last resort, child welfare.

However, when was the last time you saw a reporter interview a child who parent was carted off by the IRS or other law enforcement agency?

As a former INS special agent, my goal today is to set the record straight.

I was an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) special agent for 26 of my 30 year career with the INS.  Having rotated through all of the squads within the Investigations Branch of the New York District Office I participate in many similar “raids” to locate and arrest aliens working illegally in the United States.  Therefore my comments are not based on speculation but real-world experiences.

To begin with, since the passage of the massive immigration amnesty legislation in 1986 known as IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) employers who can be shown to have knowingly hired illegal aliens can be fined and even criminally prosecuted for such hiring practices.  This is important because until passage of IRCA employers were essentially shielded from any adverse consequences for hiring illegal aliens unless they were involved in smuggling such aliens into the United States and/or harboring them.

Employers could also be punished for failing to meet labor standards or committing tax fraud, but there were no penalties for knowingly hiring illegal aliens.  Most illegal aliens violate our immigration laws to work illegally and it was believed that punishing unscrupulous employers who intentionally hire exploitable illegal aliens would deter their crooked hiring practices, thereby turning off the “jobs magnet.”

Of course there has always been an abject lack of immigration law enforcement personnel for this to work effectively.

Prior to World War II the Labor Department bore the primary responsibility for enforcing and administering our immigration laws.  The concern was that illegal alien workers would displace American workers and, adversely impact wages and working conditions for American workers.

That mission is now one of many assumed by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

I began my career with the INS as an Immigration Inspector assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.  While we were concerned about preventing fugitives, criminals and spies from entering the United States and worked closely with other federal as well as state and local law enforcement agencies, our most frequent concern was that aliens we admitted might disappear and take jobs that they were not authorized to take.

You would imagine that all Americans would be happy that our goal as immigration law enforcement agents was to protect the jobs and wages of American and lawful immigrant workers and that all politicians from both parties would support that vital mission.

But today, we live in a time that only George Orwell could have predicted where up is down and good is evil!

This past April I wrote an article about another massive field operation to locate and apprehend aliens working illegally while also seeking to punish the employer, Ice Field Operation Liberates Hundreds Of Jobs.  In that article I noted that such interior enforcement of our  immigration laws helps American workers.

The meatpacking industry used to provide decent-paying jobs for Americans.  The work was always filthy and dangerous but the wages were essentially commensurate with the nature of those jobs.  In the mid 1980s such workers generally earned roughly $20 per hour.

Today those jobs frequently pay approximately half that amount, but when taking inflation into account, in reality, the purchasing power that the wages provide is far less than half of what the wages had been before illegal aliens flooded into that industry.

Wikipedia posted an insightful article under the title, Labor rights in American meatpacking industry.  This excerpt was published under the heading of “Meatpacker Demographics”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2000, 148,100 people worked in meatpacking and over 250,000 worked in poultry processing. Despite the growth of the meat production industry, slaughterhouse workers’ wages have been decreasing rapidly. Slaughterhouse workers’ wages were historically higher than the average manufacturing wage. This trend reversed in 1983 when slaughterhouse worker wages fell below the average manufacturing wage. By 2002, slaughterhouse workers’ wages were 24% below the average manufacturing wage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006, the median wage for slaughterhouse workers was $10.43 per hour which comes out to $21,690 per year.

Isn’t it remarkable that the Democrats insist that they want to establish a minimum wage of $15.00 per hour today while years ago workers in slaughterhouses were earning more than $20.00 per hour until illegal aliens displaced American workers.  Yet today the Democrats want to import an endless supply of exploitable illegal alien workers, figuratively and literally, at the expense of hardworking American and lawful immigrant workers.

Frequently illegal aliens who take jobs in the United States have violate more than our immigration laws.  Many such aliens also have committed identity theft, hardly a “victimless crime” and some of these aliens may also have criminal histories and may be fugitives in their home countries.

As an INS special agent I frequently arrested aliens from countries around the world who we found working illegally in various jobs who had extensive criminal backgrounds.  This placed their coworkers at risk.

However, one case in particular stands out.  I remember in the early 1980’s encountering a man in his mid-thirties from Honduras working at a glass factory in Brooklyn.  He claimed that he had become a naturalized United States citizen.  I took down his name, date of birth and other relevant information and his boss approached me and told me that this guy had worked for him for a few years and was extremely trust worthy- so much so that he had given him the keys to the factory so that he could open the factory if he was late and lock up at night if he had to leave early.

I checked in with my office but they could find no record of this individual.  The only solution was to bring him down to our office.  It turned out that he was a citizen of Honduras but that he had not only lied about his name and date of birth but he had left out some additional information.  He had pleaded guilty to homicide and had been sentenced to jail time.  Upon his release he had been deported from the United States, only to return illegally.  Because of his criminal conviction he was arrested and prosecuted for unlawful reentry after deportation and escaped from a federal penitentiary where he was serving his sentence.

You should have seen the look on his employer’s face when I briefed him on his “loyal employee’s” extensive criminal “resume!”

If you believe that employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens are being compassionate, then you would likely believe that the person who puts cheese on a mousetrap is simply trying to feed hungry mice!

Employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens are not demonstrating compassion but greed.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Church World Service on the Sanctuary Bandwagon; Cut Their Federal Funding!

Everyday Americans Shoulder The Burden Of The Immigration Crisis

What Democrats Say Happens At The Border Vs. What Actually Happens

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Mass Shootings: Lone Wolf or Stochastic?

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Following the recent mass shootings, Americans are coming together to explore new methods for preventing violent extremism (PVE).

For starters, we need to rethink how we look at the label of “lone wolf” terrorist. The new buzzword for these “lone wolf” acts of terrorism that has popped up is “stochastic (randomly occurring but statistically predictable) terrorism.”

It’s an concept being explored in the wake of our recent domestic terror and mass shooting sprees.

Writing in the The Washington Post, Juliette Kayyem proposes there is, in fact, no lone wolf. Kayyem is the assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and the faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. According to Kayyem,

“Public speech that may incite violence, even without that specific intent, has been given a name: stochastic terrorism, for a pattern that can’t be predicted precisely but can be analyzed statistically. It is the demonization of groups through mass media and other propaganda that can result in a violent act because listeners interpret it as promoting targeted violence – terrorism.”

In other words, this is terrorism that’s statistically predictable but individually random due to incitement by decentralized propaganda outlets. The term was originally used by Leftist to describe white supremacist violence, but it also refers to Islamist violence.

Moving the needle to more particular language is as important in the conversation on preventing violent extremism and mass shootings as the more predominant narratives such as background checks and banning assault weapons. The underlying root issue with preventing mass shootings is understanding behavior drivers, which is where the need for a preventing violent extremism program comes in.

Writing for The Daily Wire, Clarion Project’s National Correspondent Shireen Qudosi advocated for a preventing violent extremism program rooted in community resilience. The program, consistent with Clarion’s PVE initiative, is

“…designed to bring together key stakeholders across law enforcement, education, clergy, civil leaders and business. The second front of the preventing violent extremism program goes further and caters specifically to youth through educational programming.”

These are the tougher conversations we need to have. Almost 20 years after September 11, 2001, we’re just beginning to understand Islamist extremism. We can’t afford to make the same mistake with domestic terrorism.

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING: “Women are significantly involved in trafficking of persons, both as victims and as offenders.” “75% of the sex traffickers were African American.”

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We witnessed in the 1960s the feminist movement and feminist activism. More recently we have seen the rapid growth of the #MeToo movement in October, 2017. But to what end? Both movements have failed to stem the tide of human trafficking, which harms primarily underage girls and women. The #MeToo movement isn’t focused on the roles of women as both victims and perpetrators of human trafficking. Immigration and human trafficking go hand in hand. Organized crime and human trafficking go hand in hand. Businesses need for cheap labor and human trafficking go hand in hand.

Background

In preparing for this exposé we looked at four reports on human trafficking:

  1. The 2014 United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.
  2. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Human Trafficking/Involuntary Servitude website.
  3. The McCain Institutes’ A Six-Year Analysis of Sex Traffickers of Minors.
  4. and The National Criminal Justice Services’ An Empirical Analysis of the Intersection of Organized Crime and Human Trafficking In the United States.

We selected these four reports to find commonalities and insights into human trafficking globally and within the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Blue Campaign defines human trafficking as:

Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act.

Homeland Security lists the following facts about human trafficking:

Human trafficking exists in every country, including the United States.  It exists nationwide—in cities, suburbs, and rural towns—and possibly in your own community.

Human trafficking victims can be any age, race, gender, or nationality.  They may come from any socioeconomic group.

Sex trafficking exists, but it is not the only type of human trafficking. Forced labor is another type of human trafficking; both involve exploitation of people.  Victims are found in legitimate and illegitimate labor industries, including sweatshops, massage parlors, agriculture, restaurants, hotels, and domestic service.

Under U.S. federal law, any minor under the age of 18 who is induced to perform commercial sex acts is a victim of human trafficking, regardless of whether he or she is forced or coerced.

Human trafficking is not the same as smuggling.  “Trafficking” is based on exploitation and does not require movement across borders.  “Smuggling” is based on movement and involves moving a person across a country’s border with that person’s consent in violation of immigration laws. Although human smuggling is very different from human trafficking, human smuggling can turn into trafficking if the smuggler uses force, fraud, or coercion to hold people against their will for the purposes of labor or sexual exploitation.  Under federal law, every minor induced to engage in commercial sex is a victim of human trafficking.

Human trafficking is often a hidden crime.  Victims may be afraid to come forward and get help; they may be forced or coerced through threats or violence; they may fear retribution from traffickers, including danger to their families; and they may not be in possession of or have control of their identification documents.

The Villainy of Human Trafficking – Key Findings

Here are some key findings taken from the the UN, FBI, McCain Institute and National Criminal Justice Services reports:

United Nations:

  • UN report detected victims of trafficking in persons, by age and gender, 2011: 49% women, 21% girls, 18% men, 12% boys.
  • Human trafficking for sexual exploitation by region: Europe and Central Asia 66%; Africa and Middle East 53%; Americas 48%; East Asia, South Asia and Pacific 26%.
  • Human trafficking for forced labour, servitude and slavery like by region: East Asia, South Asia and Pacific 64%; Americas 47%; Africa and the Middle East 37%; Europe and Central Asia 26%.

The Department of Justice Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit reports:

  • In recent months we have convicted labor traffickers who exploited victims in restaurants, bars, and cantinas on Long Island, New York, and in massage parlors in Chicago, Illinois.
  • We convicted a Seattle couple who held a young Micronesian woman in domestic servitude, and secured a 14-month sentence against a defendant who held two young Nigerian women in domestic servitude in Georgia.
  • We have indicted labor traffickers who exploited Vietnamese victims in bridal shops in Arizona, and we have dismantled organized criminal networks that held Dominican, Filipino, and Jamaican workers in forced labor on cleaning crews.

McCain Institute:

  • Three-quarters of the cases involved only minor victims.
  • The average age of the sex traffickers of minors was 28.5 years old and the average age decreased significantly from 2010 to 2015.
  • 24.4% of the sex traffickers were female and they were younger than the male sex traffickers.
  • 75% of the sex traffickers were African American.
  • Nearly one out of five arrests for sex trafficking of a minor involved a person who was gang involved.
  • 55.5% of the females arrested were identified in the report as the role of a“bottom” which is the most trusted sex trafficked person by the sex trafficker who may also be prostituted, may recruit victims, give rules and trainings, and may give out punishment.
  • 24% of the arrested sex traffickers had a previous criminal history, the most common previous crime was a violent crime. o4% had a previous arrest for sex trafficking of a minor.
  • The minor victims were transported to up to 17 states for the purpose of being prostituted with the average of 2.7 states.
  • 67.3% of the cases used technology (email, online ads, smart phones) in the sex trafficking activities. oBackpage.com was used by the sex trafficker in 592 cases (41.8%).
  • Recruitment tactics focused on runaways; friendship, romance, giving a place to stay to the victim, and promises of money and wealth.

National Criminal Justice Services:

  • 58% (1227) of all defendants in human trafficking cases operated as part of an organized criminal group.
  • Although Cartels/Mafias/Syndicates are not represented at all among the federally prosecuted human trafficking cases involving organized crime, there is evidence that they are involved in facilitating the human trafficking operations of other types of organized criminals (facilitating transportation, providing false documentation, etc.).
  • Defendants who trafficked minors for commercial sex come from 13 different countries of origin. The vast majority is from United States.
  • Primary push factors involve socio-environmental variables over which the individual has very little control. These include: childhood abuse and/or neglect, lack of education, and a destructive social network.
  • Secondary push factors are symptoms of the primary push factors. They include criminal history, drug and/or substance abuse, and financial stress. These lead to feeling a lack of control over one’s life.
  • Based on federal prosecution records, the counties in the United States with the most bases of operations of organized crime groups engaging human trafficking include: Harris County, Houston, TX; Fulton County, Atlanta, GA; and Queens County, Queens, NY.

Human trafficking for the purposes of either sexual or labor slavery is spreading across America. Congress needs to come together to address this growing problem in light of the Jeffery Epstein case.

© All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Utah: Nigerian Man Charged in Killing of College Coed had Child Pornography in his Home

Large Numbers of Prison Inmates are Muslims Costing Taxpayers Millions

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I’m glad to see that someone has done a deep dive into the issue of the costs of incarcerating Muslims, many of whom are immigrants we have welcomed to America.

Of course, although some of the Muslim prisoners being counted are American Muslims and converts to Islam, we can still see that incarceration rates for this segment of the population is on a percentage basis extremely high.

Every time I see one of those gushing reports about how new immigrants to America are causing the economy to boom, I know that the pro-open borders bias of the researchers has kept them from reporting the costs of law enforcement, trials, and incarceration of some of those ‘new Americans.’

I wonder what the cost will be of the investigation and ultimate prison term of the alleged Somali refugee terrorists in my previous post?

Here is Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage earlier this month,

IN 5 STATES, 1 IN 5 PRISONERS ARE MUSLIM

At 1%, Muslims are still a small percentage of the population. But there’s one place in America where they are vastly over-represented.

State prisons.

Take Maryland, which has an estimated 70,000 Muslims, making up over 1% of the population. But of Maryland’s 18,562 prisoners, 5,084 were Muslims.

That’s 27.4% or over 1 in 4 prisoners.

It would also mean that 1 out of 13 Muslims in Maryland may have been in a state prison.

Those are startling numbers, yet they come from Muslim Advocates, an Islamist legal advocacy group. Both MA’s numbers and the number of Muslims in different states may be miscounted, yet these figures raise serious questions about public safety and the toll that immigration is taking on our communities.

While Maryland’s numbers are some of the worst, MA lists similar figures for Washington D.C. where out of 5,219 prisoners, 1,232 were Muslims, so that once again 1 in 4 prisoners were Muslim.

D.C. does have one of the largest Muslim populations in the country, numbering between 2 and 3 percent. Even taking the highest estimate, 6.5% of the Muslim population in D.C. was in jail in 2017.

Muslims make up 1% of the population in Pennsylvania, but 1 in 5 of its prisoners.

[….]

In 5 states, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, Muslims make up 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 5 prisoners.

In another 4 states, Wisconsin, Missouri, Delaware, and Arkansas, they make up 1 in 10 prisoners.

[….]

Overrepresentation may be partially a product of the success of Islamic Dawah or missionary activity in prisons. Islamic prison Dawah has produced many converts and at least some terror plots. And it may serve to explain high Muslim prison numbers in some states, but not necessarily in others.

[….]

The MA report also claims that 12% of federal prisoners are Muslims. (CAIR in the past had claimed that it was only 6%.) The current federal BOP population is 177,619. That would mean over 21,000 prisoners.

And over 105,000 Muslims are prisoners in state and federal prisons.

[….]

Using Pew’s growth estimate, which projects that the Muslim settler population will reach 8.1 million by 2050 (a severe underestimation of actual growth), that would mean a quarter million Muslim prisoners.

This is not just an abstract statistic. It’s a compilation of human misery, lives lost, futures taken, a litany of abuse, loss, assault, and the accompanying taxpayer expenditures on trials, prisons and free lawyers.

The current cost of incarcerating Muslim federal prisoners is taking $670 million a year from taxpayers.

By 2050, the cost could climb to over $1.5 billion.

Continue here for much more data-crunching information.

RELATED ARTICLE: Update on the Arizona Somali Refugees Arrested for Supporting ISIS

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Maine Homeless Question Why Asylum Seekers Will Get Housing Before They do!

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“How do they have a place for them but not for us?”  – (A homeless woman in Maine)

I can’t believe my eyes.  A local media outlet has dared to publish this news and it comes at a time when the national media is dumping on the President who says Americans should come first when it comes to public assistance!

150 African asylum seekers have jumped ahead of 18,000 Mainers who have been on a waiting list for years for Section 8 housing!

From WGME-13 (hat tip: Jeannine):

I-Team: Homeless Mainers feel left behind as asylum seekers get housing

PORTLAND (WGME) – Nearly 200 asylum seekers have to be out of an emergency shelter at the Portland Expo by this Thursday as the Red Claws move back in.

While state and city leaders scramble to find them housing, some homeless Mainers say they feel left behind.

The I-Team found more than 18,000 Mainers are on a waiting list for Section 8 and that’s just one program to help low-income families get affordable housing.

Many of those people are homeless and hungry and have already been waiting years for their number to be called. [Am I dreaming? I can’t believe any media in America would report this news!—-ed]

Zanetta Smith said she’s thankful for a storage shack in the woods where a friend is letting her live.

She said it’s not much, but it’s better than living in her car where she’s been for the last 5 years.

“It was pretty tough in the winter,” Smith said.

She lost her apartment after she got sick and couldn’t work anymore.

“You fall into bad times, and sometimes it’s hard to get out of it,” she said.

She’s trying to get a place of her own with a toilet, shower, and running water, which her temporary housing doesn’t have.

She said she’s been on the waiting list for a Section 8 voucher for years.

According to Maine Housing, the statewide Maine Centralized Section 8 waiting list is now up to 18,316.

“It’s years, unfortunately. We just don’t have the supply and stock,” said Dan Brennan, director of the Maine State Housing Authority.

Brennan said it could be five years to get a voucher to help pay for rent, and even if you get one, there’s no guarantee you’ll find a place.

“There simply is not enough supply of units available for people who need them,” Brennan said.
Local housing authorities also have waiting lists for public housing.

In Portland, for example, we found nearly 1,400 people waiting for a unit to open up, which could take as long as three years.

“Of course when the asylum seekers come up here they offered them free housing. How do they have a place for them but not for us?” Smith wants to know.

At last check, more than 150 asylum seekers who arrived in Portland since June have moved out of a makeshift shelter at the Portland Expo and into units in Bath, Brunswick, Lewiston, Portland, and Scarborough.

There is more!  Continue reading here.

See all of my previous posts on the DR Congolese migration to Maine, here.

BTW, yesterday I told you that over 11,000 DR Congolese were legally admitted as refugees to the US in the first ten months of this fiscal year.  This bunch in Maine came illegally and are now jumping the line for taxpayer supported housing!

RELATED ARTICLE: 167 Jewish Groups Urge President to Admit “at least 95,000 refugees” in FY2020

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Why Is California Such a Mess?

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The glamour and sophistication often associated with California stands in startling difference to its reality. The Golden State, home to some of the wealthiest people in the US, is also home to a disproportionate number of people who are living in poverty.

Check out FEE’s newest Out of Frame video, “Thanos is Still Alive… And Everywhere.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Foundation for Economic Education video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

President Donald J. Trump is Ensuring Non-Citizens Do Not Abuse Our Nation’s Public Benefits

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PROTECTING PUBLIC RESOURCES: The Trump Administration is taking action to help ensure that non-citizens in this country are self-sufficient and not a strain on public resources.  

  • The Trump Administration is releasing a final rule that will protect American taxpayers, preserve our social safety net for vulnerable Americans, and uphold the rule of law.
  • This action will help ensure that if aliens want to enter or remain in the United States they must support themselves, and not rely on public benefits.
  • An alien who receives public benefits above a certain threshold is known as a “public charge.”
    • Aliens will be barred from entering the United States if they are found likely to become public charges.
    • Aliens in the United States who are found likely to become public charges will also be barred from adjusting their immigration status.
  • President Trump is enforcing this longstanding law to prevent aliens from depending on public benefit programs.
    • The Immigration and Nationality Act makes clear that those seeking to come to the United States cannot be a public charge.
  • For many years, this clear legal requirement went largely unenforced, imposing vast burdens on American taxpayers. Now, public charge law will finally be utilized.

ENCOURAGING SELF-SUFFICIENCY: Self-sufficiency has long been a basic principle of our Nation’s immigration laws that has enjoyed widespread support.

  • Public charge has been a part of United States immigration law for more than 100 years as a ground of inadmissibility.
  • Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed two bipartisan bills in 1996 to help stop aliens from exploiting public benefits.
    • This included the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.
    • As Congress made clear at the time, it is our national policy that aliens should “not depend on public resources to meet their needs.”
  • Americans widely agree that individuals coming to our country should be self-sufficient, with 73 percent in favor of requiring immigrants to be able to support themselves financially.

PRESERVING THE SOCIAL SAFETY NET: We must ensure that non-citizens do not abuse our public benefit programs and jeopardize the social safety net needed by vulnerable Americans. 

  • Large numbers of non-citizens and their families have taken advantage of our generous public benefits, limited resources that could otherwise go to vulnerable Americans.
  • 78 percent of households headed by a non-citizen with no more than a high school education use at least one welfare program.
  • 58 percent of all households headed by a non-citizen use at least one welfare program.
  • Half of all non-citizen headed households include at least one person who uses Medicaid.

© All rights reserved.

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VIDEO: Former Islamist Extremist Describes His Escape From the Ideology

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What leads a person to become an Islamist extremist? For one immigrant, it was not fitting in with his American classmates.

Mohammed Khalid, a former Islamist extremist, described what drew him to the radical ideology and why he left it at an event last month at The Heritage Foundation.

Khalid, now a scholar in cybersecurity studies at the University of Maryland, was born in the United Arab Emirates and lived in Pakistan before emigrating to the United States in 2010.

As a 14-year-old struggling to fit in at an American public high school, Khalid said he turned to the internet to make sense of what some saw as the negative connotation of his first name, “Mohammed.”

He said he quickly became enthralled with the answers online extremists offered.

He absorbed as much material as he could, Khalid said, watching propaganda videos that painted the West in a negative light. He said the ideology resonated with him because he remembered seeing the same clips on the news when he lived in Pakistan.

“One of the biggest things that I remember was that the Twin Towers, when they were falling down—I could not forget one of the comments,” Khalid said. “One of the commentators was like, ‘Well, maybe they had it coming.’ This was when it began to kind of make sense to me, that well, maybe what’s happening to me is reflective of a wider ideology that I’m not aware of.”

At 16, Khalid said he was spending 40 hours a week communicating with Islamists through password-protected online forums, translating Islamist propaganda videos into English to radicalize American Muslims. He confided in these Islamists, whom he considered closer than family.

“The more I confided in them, the more separated and secluded I became from my own family,” Khalid said. “My family could not figure out what was wrong with me; they did not know what was happening because I kept it very well hidden from them.”

Khalid was arrested in April 2014, charged with conspiracy to provide material to terrorists, and convicted. He says he spent five years in federal prison.

At 17, he was the youngest person to be convicted of terrorism-related charges in the U.S.

Slowly, with the help of officers at the juvenile detention center, he said, he began to emerge from the extremist mindset.

The officers “explained about their struggles, they explained about their dreams, about their journeys,” Khalid said.

“And so began a process of humanization, a process in which I was able to finally relate to these people whom I’d other-ized under the umbrella of Islamist ideology, and whom I finally, when I reached that beginning step, began to see as human beings,” he said.

When an audience member asked whether it is possible for Muslims to reject extremism without leaving their faith, Khalid, who remains a Muslim, answered yes:

I see … a lot of my friends actually struggling to reconcile [Islam] with the society they find themselves in. They want to be partakers of this American culture. At the same time, they want to hold on to a Muslim identity that unfortunately, you know, sometimes is collapsed together with a whole bunch of outdated traditions. … I think moving forward, a lot of people individually have to decide how they want to interpret the religion, instead of letting religion be this one-size-fits-all approach.

Maajid Nawaz, founder and chairman of the London-based counterextremism think tank Quilliam, also spoke at the event.

Nawaz said the most vulnerable groups in society are former Muslims. He suggested that Islamic theology should be updated to develop a “Western Muslim identity.”

Muslims have a responsibility to respect those who leave the religion, he added, rather than isolating or targeting them.

“If Muslims … want to explore other faith traditions, or none, we have to protect them and their right to do so,” Nawaz said. “Because in our communities still, that is a big to-do, and they are discriminated against.”

COLUMN BY

Carmel Kookogey

Carmel Kookogey is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

A Note for our Readers:

Conservative lawmakers MUST be able to point to tremendous policy victories they have been able to achieve by the end of 2019.

To do that, they will need to be focused on a few specific priorities before the end of the year arrives.

Guess who has the ideas for a clear plan policy agenda for conservative leadership? That’s right — The Heritage Foundation.

Click here to learn how you can do your part in achieving policy victories for conservatives everywhere today.

LEARN MORE >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

“Protecting” Illegal Aliens Isn’t Neighborly or Virtuous: It’s a Crime

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You could hardly have missed it.  It was all over the media in the past few days, and seemingly painted more as a human-interest story than one about people flagrantly violating the law: “Nashville neighbors stop ICE agents from nabbing father and son by linking arms in driveway”; “ICE agents back down after neighbors, activists link arms to help father and son avoid feds”; “ICE tries to bring man into custody, neighbors form human chain to let them get home”;  etc., etc.

Amazingly, one reporter even stated, as if it were an indisputable fact, that “[b]ecause this was a civil matter … citizens are not committing a crime by interfering.”  That’s simply incorrect as a matter of law, and reckless to even suggest.

So why were none of these “neighbors” arrested for stopping ICE from picking up someone the agency says was a known convicted criminal?  When police come looking for an American citizen who’s committed a crime, do the neighbors normally think they can get in the way without consequences?  Do they think keeping law enforcement from doing their jobs and keeping the community safe is just the neighborly thing to do?

When 10 News Nashville spoke to Lincoln Memorial University law professor William Gill to try to explain to viewers why none of the “human chain” were arrested, he didn’t say ICE couldn’t have arrested them.  Instead he recognized the agency likely could have for “some kind of obstruction charge” but for whatever reason “probably decided they didn’t want to do that.”

But what does the law actually say?  The law sure sounds like this was a crime.  Probably multiple crimes.

Professor Gill’s first instinct was correct in mentioning the federal obstruction of justice laws.  When ICE is actively looking for a particular illegal alien, that often means the alien has already been ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge.  It follows  that someone getting in the way of ICE enforcing that order of removal could be committing “obstruction of proceedings” before a federal agency, namely before the immigration court that issued the order.

But there are also other federal crimes more specific to people getting in the way of immigration enforcement.  In Title 8 of the United States Code, Section 1324 is called “Bringing in and harboring certain aliens.”  It’s often referred to as the federal alien “smuggling” statute, but it actually criminalizes many more activities regarding protecting or assisting aliens than just anything that could described as smuggling.

It’s probably more accurate to refer to it as the alien harboring statute.  It might or might not have applied to this particular situation, but easily could in similar circumstances.

Notably, neither the obstruction nor harboring statute requires federal agents to have a criminal warrant for the person they’re looking before someone else deliberately getting in the way can be arrested.  Neither statute draws any distinction between criminal and civil enforcement at all.

This is just one prominent episode in an alarming trend: a lot of people don’t just think illegal aliens can freely break the law, but that everyone else can do it too if it’s to “help” or “protect” illegal aliens.  It’s one more part of what’s been described as “a radical new framework that treats any restrictions on immigration and enforcement of current laws as immoral.”

Even people like the Mayor of Oakland or a state court judge in Massachusetts—public officials sworn to uphold the law—buy into it and act on it.  It’s easy virtue-signaling as long as there are no consequences.

So there need to be consequences.  This dangerous myth needs to be dispelled or more people will interfere with immigration enforcement and it’ll become ever more dangerous for everyone involved.  While ICE exercised their judgment and discretion to act with restraint and not make criminal arrests this time, the only way to make people realize it’s unacceptable to obstruct the enforcement of immigration laws may be for ICE and other federal agencies to start making more arrests in the future when the “neighbors” try to get in the way.

COLUMN BY

DAVID JAROSLAV

Dave joined FAIR in 2017 after more than ten years as an Assistant State Attorney in Broward County, Florida. His prosecutorial experience covered trial litigation at the misdemeanor and felony levels, drug court and mental health court, and two years as an intake attorney in the juvenile division working closely with law enforcement. Before this, he was a legislative analyst/staff attorney with the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives, where he assisted state legislators in ensuring the effectiveness and constitutionality of legislation on a wide variety of subject matter. In both capacities, he often dealt with the interaction of state law and immigration. Dave holds BAs in History and International Relations from American University and a JD from Tulane University Law School.

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