Tag Archive for: arrests

SANCTUARY POLICIES PROTECT SEX OFFENDERS: Victims are mere ‘speed bumps’ on the road to anarchy.

On September 12, 2018 the Department of Homeland Security issued a press releaseICE arrests 16 during 2-day Operation SOAR in the New York City metropolitan area.<

Here is an excerpt from that press release:

In years past, most of these individuals would have been turned over to ICE by local authorities upon their release from jail based on ICE detainers. Now that many sanctuary cities, including New York City, do not honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat.

“Many of those arrested in this operation had been found guilty of inappropriate sexual behavior against a minor,” said Thomas R. Decker, field office director for ERO New York. “Our communities are safer, our children are safer, from the efforts of the men and women of ICE. We have removed them from our city’s streets and we will seek to remove them from the United States.”

Arrests include:

  • In the Bronx, a 53 year-old, Mexican national, released from NYPD custody with an active detainer, who has convictions for criminal possession of a loaded firearm; criminal possession of a weapon: defaced for concealment; and sexual misconduct: male has intercourse with a female without her consent;
  • In Manhattan, a 42 year-old previously removed Salvadoran national, who has a conviction for sexual abuse of a child less than 11 years of age;
  • In Maspeth, a 39 year-old Dominican national, who has a conviction for sexual abuse, and is a registered sexual offender;
  • In Wyandanch, a 32 year-old Guatemalan national, who has a conviction for course of sexual conduct against a child less than 13 years of age;
  • In Huntington Station, a 40 year-old previously removed Salvadoran national, who has a conviction for rape, and who has failed to register as a sexual offender;
  • In Deer Park, a 54 year-old Italian national, who has a conviction for possession of sexual performance by child less than 16 years of age;
  • In the Bronx, a 42 year-old Ghanaian national, who has a conviction for sexual contact with an individual greater than 17 incapable of giving consent;

Criminal histories of those arrested during the operation are as follows: Acting in Manner Injure Child, Assault, Attempted Assault, Attempted Rape 1st: Forcible Compulsion, Course of Sexual Conduct Against a Child Criminal Possession of a Loaded Firearm, Criminal Possession of a Weapon, Disorderly Conduct, Forcible Touching, Harassment, Possession of Sexual Performance; Sexual Abuse 1st , Sexual Abuse 2nd, Sexual Contact, Sexual Misconduct, and Unlawful Surveillance.

As the press release noted, and as I have noted in previous articles and commentaries, when criminals complete their prison sentences and are put back on the street, all too often the results are horrific with more innocent people falling victim to these criminals.

For all of the efforts made to  alter the criminal behavior of criminals, the problem of recidivism is pervasive.  Many jails are optimistically referred to as “Correctional Facilities” but tragically all too often the attempts at “correction” fail, frequently with catastrophic results.

One of the best and most effective ways of dealing with the problem of recidivism where alien criminals are concerned, is to deport aliens who have been convicted of committing crimes.  Our immigration laws provide for this remedy, yet the mayors of so-called “Sanctuary Cities” obstruct the federal government’s efforts to enforce immigration laws.

Law enforcement field operations, particularly those that result in arrests are inherently dangerous for all involved.  This includes innocent bystanders who may be injured as the subject of the arrest attempts to flee or violently resist arrest.

When aliens are incarcerated, it is a simple matter to transfer custody of the alien from the prison to ICE agents in the secure and controlled environment of a prison.  Aliens who are incarcerated are certainly not armed.  From all perspectives, transferring custody is safe and time-efficient in this ideal setting.

Yet mayors of Sanctuary Cities are eager to create the illusion that they are being “compassionate” by obstructing ICE agents, whom New York’s Governor Cuomo described as “thugs” from carrying out their sworn duties to protect national security and public safety.

In reality, Sanctuary Cities Endanger – National Security and Public Safety.

It is truly mind-boggling to imagine anyone believing that permitting aliens back on the street, even if they are registered sex offenders, or have been convicted of committing sex crimes, out of a desire to be “compassionate.”

It is beyond comprehension that New York City would refuse to cooperate with ICE to enable an alien from Mexico who had been convicted of carrying a defaced firearm who had been convicted of apparently raping a woman- perhaps at gun point, while New York City boasts that it has the toughest gun laws in the nation.

New York’s Mayor de Blasio is apparently okay with turning loose sex offender aliens who could be deported, even when such aliens illegally possess firearms, even firearms that are defaced (had their serial numbers removed) to make tracing those guns difficult or impossible.

Every violent felon who has been released and remains at large should be thought of as a “ticking time-bomb” who may, at any time, “go off.”

Yet the sympathies of the mayors of “Sanctuary Cities” and the Governors of “Sanctuary States” are clearly with the criminals and not with their potential victims, even when the criminal in question has a demonstrated proclivity to sexually abuse young children.

For all of the public breast-beating these politicians engage in about the separation of illegal alien children from their illegal alien parents, these same politicians, in the name of “compassion,” gleefully shield alien predators, who rape children loose in their “Sanctuary Cities.”

For all of the efforts to take guns away from Americans these same mayors turn illegal aliens, who have committed firearms-related crimes, loose in their towns and cities rather than have ICE take those violent criminals into custody.

Furthermore, by making it clear that criminal aliens will be actively shielded by local law enforcement from detection and arrest by ICE agents, Sanctuary Cities become extremely attractive “Magnet Cities” that attract transnational criminals, international terrorists and fugitives.

Time and again we have seen the publicized cases where criminal aliens who had been deported repeatedly returned to the United States to live and ply their criminal trades in Sanctuary Cities where they knew that they would be far less likely to be arrested by ICE for having illegally returned to the United States.

However for every such highly-publicized case like the case of Kate Steinle, who was killed by an illegal alien who had been previously deported from the United States numerous times, only to illegally reenter the United States, there are many, many more victims that the media does not report on.

This was the underlying them of my article, Many More Victims Of the Immigration Crisis Than Kate Steinle.

In the early 1980’s I approached then-senator Al D’Amato with the idea of amending the immigration law where the crime of reenter after deportation was concerned.  At the time no considering was given to whether or not an alien who had been previously deported and then reentered the Untied States without permission had a criminal history.  Any alien who illegally reentered the United States, without permission, faced a maximum of 2 years in prison.

Because of limited resources and the relatively paltry penalty for the crime, it was almost impossible to get the U.S. Attorneys to prosecute aliens for that crime.  This meant that there was no deterrence.  Aliens who had been deported from the United States were unlikely to be punished for illegally reentering the United States.  At that time that crime was essentially a “punishmeantless” crime.

I suggested to Senator D’Amato that while two years might be a fitting punishment for aliens who had no criminal histories who had been deported and illegally reentered the United States, aliens who had convictions for serious crimes (aggravated felonies) should face a maximum of 20 years in federal prison.

My efforts were backed up by some of my colleagues at the INS along with Walter Connery who had been the head of the Investigations Branch for the INS in New York and was previously the Deputy Inspector for Internal Affairs for the NYPD before he retired and joined the INS.

Senator D’Amato succeeded in changing the law so that today such aliens face a maximum of 20 years in prison.  That section of law is 8 U.S. Code § 1326(b).

In point of fact, today this felony is the most frequently prosecuted federal felony.

However, when Sanctuary Cities shield felonious aliens from detection by ICE.  Consequently their presence goes undetected and their crimes go unpunished, leaving them free to commit more sociopathic crimes in towns and cities across our nation.  Frequently their victims are the members of the ethnic immigrant communities where these thugs live.

I never thought I was see the day when the victims of criminal aliens, including children, would be thought of as mere “speed bumps” by political “leaders” determined to leave America and Americans defenseless against international terrorists and transnational criminals costing thousands of Americans and others their lives.

We the People must demonstrate true compassion for the innocent victims of these criminal aliens by voting their political guardians out of office.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Iran Seizes Two U.S. Patrol Boats – Holds 10 Sailors Hostage

Two U.S. Navy riverine torpedo boats were on a training mission between Kuwait and Bahrain when one of the vessels became disabled ‘drifting’ into Iranian waters.  The boats were promptly detained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval units on Farsi Island in Persian Gulf.  Ten U.S. sailors  (9 men and 1 woman) aboard the two boats were arrested Secretary Kerry called his opposite number in Tehran, Foreign Minister Zarif seeking the release of both the boats and crew. The response was that their release “might come with hours”. Don’t count on it.

US Navy Riverine Command Boat 802

U.S. Navy Riverine Command Boat 802. Source: US Navy

Note the comments in this NBC news report from retired Army Gen . Barry McCaffrey, GOP Presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio:

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an NBC News military analyst, said the seizure of American boats is “very bad news” and highlights how the Navy may have failed to have surveillance on its vessels.

“We simply can’t allow ground, air or naval units to be seized by a foreign hostile power,” McCaffrey said on MSNBC. “I hope they’re back real quickly. This is an affront to our military presence in the Gulf and will unsettle our allies in the region.”

GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush was among the first to attack Obama for appearing weak in front of Iran, which has been at odds with the U.S. over a nuclear deal that was finally reached last year.

“No more bargaining. Obama’s humiliatingly weak Iran policy is exposed again,” Bush tweeted.

GOP rival Marco Rubio during an interview on Fox News called for Iran to release the sailors immediately, saying the nation is “testing the boundaries of our resolve.”

With less than 270 vessels in our Navy, we cannot project power in any of the world trouble spots, be it the volatile Persian Gulf with much of the world oil trade traffic flows or the South China Sea.

Last April 2015, the Iranian fired warning shot across a Marshall Islands flagged vessel, the Maersk Tigris forcing the container ship with 34 Eastern European and South Asian sailors aboard to anchor off the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. See our  NER/Iconoclast  Post, “What’s Behind Iran’s Piracy in the Persian Gulf over an Unresolved Cargo Claim?” Allegedly the seizure of the container ship was for alleged unpaid claims. The US did not provide naval intervention as required under a treaty with the Marshall Islands. When the alleged unpaid claims were paid, the vessel returned to its original voyage dropping off cargo in the UAE. Obviously the Administration didn’t want to ruffle the feathers of their Iranian nuclear deal  interlocutors.

In discussions this afternoon with Shoshana Bryen of the Jewish Policy Center we commiserated about the seizure of six  British Royal Marines in June 2004 by the IRGC naval contingent. The Royal Marines were taken to land, blinded and demanded to apologize for entering Iranian waters. They were then taken out onto the desert and blindfolded while weapons were chambered in a mock execution. They were released three days later in what was billed as a “misunderstanding.”  The Royal Marines were operating in Iraqi waters when seized by Iran.

As noted in a Reuters report on today’s seizure of US patrol boats and arrest of US Navy personnel, , there was another seizure of  British naval  and marine personnel by Iranian Revolutionary guards  that created a diplomatic crisis in 2007:

In March 2007, Iranian forces seized 15 British servicemen – eight Royal Navy sailors and seven marines – in the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that separates Iran and Iraq, triggering a diplomatic crisis at a time of heightened tensions over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. They were held for 13 days.

Look at Iran’s track record over the last several months since the JCOPA was endorsed by the UN Security Council. Iran fired off two ballistic missile tests in October and November 2015 in violation of UN Res. 1929. Last week. the IRGC  missile boats  hailed the USS Harry Truman giving it and an accompanying destroyer, the USS Bulkley and a nearby French frigate  a 23 minute warning before firing rockets in a live fire exercise 1,500 yards away. The Administration has been humiliated time and again by the Ayatollah and will continue to be held in contempt for being weak, even  after the, Administration releases $100 billion in sequestered funds in foreign banks , perhaps as early as this week.

The President is giving his last SOTUS tonight. Perhaps members of Congress might show their contempt for this latest action of Iran seizing our vessels arresting 10 sailors by not applauding him, or better yet, not showing up.  Meanwhile the spin at the White House is that the crews of the two patrol boats may be released by daylight to return to their base in Bahrain. Think, also,  of those other American hostages held by the Islamic Regime in Tehran, an ex-FBI agent, a former Marine, a Christian Pastor, two American Iranian Businessmen and a convicted Washington Post reporter.  We’ll believe the release of our sailors when that occurs and the patrol boats are also returned. The patrol boats are used to monitor freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf.

The fate of the American civilian prisoners held by the Ayatollah and his IRGC henchman are uncertain at best.

RELATED ARTICLE: Humiliated in Front of the Entire World

RELATED VIDEO: White House spokesman: Iran’s seizure of Navy boats “precisely” why Obama made the nuke deal:

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Is There a Middle Road between Marijuana Incarceration and Marijuana Legalization?

As part of its special series titled Race Matters, an investigation by Miami’s CBS4 News this week, provides an opportunity to consider new ways to think about marijuana and racial imbalances in the way our laws are enforced.

CBS4 News gathered and analyzed police records of every misdemeanor marijuana case in Miami Dade County between 2010 and 2014. They found:

  • Misdemeanor marijuana arrests accounted for ten percent of all cases filed in the court system.
  • Of 44,860 closed cases, 55 percent had African-American defendants, even though the county is less than 20 percent black.
  • Just two percent of these cases resulted in a conviction.
    • Of these, 74 percent were black.
  • Prosecutors dismissed or dropped 49 percent of these cases.
    • Of these, 56 percent were white.
  • The other 49 percent of cases were settled by a “withhold of adjudication,” an admission of guilt but not a formal conviction. However, the admission stays in a person’s permanent record, hurts his or her ability to find work or housing, and can prevent the person from enlisting in the military, receiving student loans, or becoming a citizen.
    • 65 percent of these were black.

CBS4 News writes, “Miami Dade Police Director JD Patterson and others in his department have argued police officers are not targeting blacks, they are merely making stops and arrests in neighborhoods with a high crime rate. And those neighborhoods just happen to be predominantly black.”

“Donald Jones, a constitutional and civil rights law professor at the University of Miami, says that may have been the initial intent of the police, but what has happened over time is that officers begin looking at everyone in those neighborhoods as a suspect and begin treating them differently as well. ‘It says to me that we’re profiling,’ Jones said. ‘We’ve gotten to a point where we criminalize whole communities. We see certain communities as being communities of criminals and we police them that way.’ Jones said it can have a chilling effect on the relationship between the police and the community. ‘It creates an atmosphere as if this is a different America,’ he said.”

We note that the 44,000-plus marijuana cases CBS4 News examined are only 10 percent of all cases that went through the Miami Dade County court system over the five-year period.

Proponents have built their case for marijuana legalization on racial inequities in the enforcement of marijuana laws like these in Miami Dade County, implying that legalizing pot will end unequal enforcement of the law. But the problem of racial disparities in the criminal justice system is much deeper than marijuana alone, as Professor Jones explains. Until we can see that, we won’t be able to change it effectively.

Few Americans believe that putting low-level marijuana offenders, black or white, in jail is appropriate. Few believe that straddling them with lifetime criminal records is fair or just. Judges in Miami Dade County hope the county commission will adopt a proposed civil citation ordinance that would give police the option of issuing a $100 ticket to marijuana offenders. This would keep them out of the criminal justice system and reduce costs to taxpayers.

We believe that is a good first step, but it does not go far enough. Despite denials from legalization proponents, marijuana is addictive. Some nine percent of people who try the drug will become addicted. The number rises to 17 percent if use begins in adolescence and to 25 percent to 50 percent for daily use. We would like to see a public health/social justice system replace the criminal justice system for low-level marijuana offenders. Its goal would be to provide public health and social services to them after they pay their fines. Such services would medically assess them to determine if they are addicted. Those who are would receive treatment. Those who aren’t would receive educational and social services to help them pursue more productive lives. Money saved from removing marijuana cases from the courts could be used to finance this system.

Or we could do away with the marijuana laws, legalize pot, and ignore the consequences. To do so would be to allow a commercial marijuana industry to emerge that will rival the tobacco and alcohol industries, as all three prey on children, the addicted, the poor and the vulnerable, while simply discarding the victims who can’t handle their products.

Read “Race Matters: Marijuana Cases Flood Court System” here.

THIS COLUMN IS COURTESY OF NATIONAL FAMILIES IN ACTION

National Families in Action and partners, Project SAM and the Treatment Research Institute, welcome our new readers. We hope you enjoy this weekly e-newsletter to keep up-to-date with all aspects of the marijuana story. Visit our website, The Marijuana Report.Org, and subscribe to the weekly e-newsletterThe Marijuana Report to learn more.

National Families in Action is a group of families, scientists, business leaders, physicians, addiction specialists, policymakers, and others committed to protecting children from addictive drugs. We advocate for:

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  • Nurturing, addiction-free families
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  • A nation free of Big Marijuana
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  • Expanded access to medicines in FDA clinical trials for children with epilepsy