We're on Hiatus
Due to the press of other commitments, InsideINS will be on hiatus for the rest of 2016.
But I promise you we'll be back stronger than ever in 2017. Thanks to all my faithful readers for your continued support.
Labels: immigration, on hiatus, taking a break, we'll be back
That's less than 1% - pretty sad!!
ICE Boasts About Arresting Only 101 of 172K Criminal Aliens
by Brittany M. Hughes, www.mrctv.org
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials just arrested 101 illegal aliens, most of them criminals with extensive rap sheets, and you and I are supposed to be over the moon about it.
ICE reported that of those criminals arrested during the 12-day operation last month, 64 had criminal histories in the United States – meaning that Americans and lawfully abiding immigrants had to be put in harm's way before these people were ever picked up and put in deportation proceedings.
But ICE data published by the Center for Immigration Studies show there are more than 172,000 convicted criminal aliens with final orders of removal still loose in the United States. So based on this data, ICE arrested only about 0.05 percent of the dangerous unlawfully present persons in our communities during this operation, making joyous back flips over this latest string of arrests seem a bit premature.
ICE reports:
During the 12-day enforcement action, ERO officers apprehended 64 aliens with criminal convictions. The remaining 37 fall under the agency's enforcement priorities as recent immigration violators or important federal interest cases. Those arrested had criminal histories with past convictions for drug trafficking, DUI, weapons violations, child sex offenses, identity theft, and other serious criminal offenses.
These 101 aliens hailed from 24 countries including Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Poland, Brazil, Italy, Morocco, Liberia, Guinea, Kenya, Honduras, Jamaica, Georgia, Bahamas, Columbia, Peru, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Korea, Ecuador, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and India.
Among those arrested were:
§ A 46-year-old Liberian man with a felony conviction for statutory sexual assault on a minor. He was arrested in Philadelphia, Aug. 15 and will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
§ A 57-year-old Jamaican man with a felony conviction for aggravated assault. He was arrested Aug. 15 in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, and will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
§ A 29-year-old Sierra Leonean man with prior convictions for DUI, drug possession and corruption of minors. He was arrested in Hamilton, New Jersey, Aug. 19 and will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.
§ A 22-year-old Mexican man with a prior conviction for carrying a deadly weapon. He was arrested in Huntington, West Virginia, Aug. 26 and will remain in ICE custody pending his removal from the United States.
Unfortunately, unlawfully present aliens committing crimes in the United States is nothing new, and probably won't stop anytime soon. Earlier this year, MRCTV reported three illegal alien gang members were convicted of a slew of violent crimes including openly shooting one guy and viciously stabbing and hacking up another, as well as engaging in various racketeering and weapons crimes – all about 30 minutes from ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C. At least two people, including one innocent person the criminals mistakenly thought was a gang rival, had to die before these guys were arrested.
ICE Director Sarah Saldaña recently testified before Congress that she doesn't know how many illegal aliens with criminal records are currently living in American communities. However, she did confess ICE had released nearly 20,000 criminal aliens back into American communities last year alone, on top of more than 30,000 released the year before.
Ben Ferro (Editor, InsideINS.com)
Labels: arrests, criminal aliens, ICE, illegal immigrant, Obama, public safety, Removals
Border Patrol - San Diego Horror Story
KUSI News - San Diego, CA
Labels: Border Patrol, border security, illegal immigration, Obama, Wall
Now that that the Obama Administration's attempt to allow millions of deportable illegal aliens to remain in the United States through the issuance of an unlawful executive order, has been thwarted by the US Supreme Court, they are taking a different approach to establishing their unlawful amnesty for illegal aliens.
Faced with large backlogs of removal cases, many immigration judges are now just closing deportation proceedings and letting illegals stay in the country rather than actually trying to remove them, simply because it's easier; this despite the fact that most are clearly deportable under US immigration laws. As noted in the following Fox News story, this "pass the buck mentality" appears to be something that has permeated the Executive Office of Immigration Review which oversees Immigration Judges, and is a sentiment that the Obama Administration apparently actively supports and encourages. I consider them "The Enemy
Within."
Ben Ferro, Editor (InsideINS.com)
Judges nixed DHS bids to deport illegal immigrants 100,000 times: report
by Malia Zimmerman, Fox News U.S.
Immigration judges around the country are denying the Department of Homeland Security's attempts to deport illegal immigrants in record numbers, according to a new report.
Over the last 10 months, immigration judges opted against the department's efforts to remove some 96,223 illegal immigrants, including criminals, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University-based nonprofit.
At this rate, TRAC estimates the number of illegal immigrants allowed to remain in the U.S. despite DHS attempts to remove them will surpass last year's breaking number of 106,676. With the court's protection, subjects can often remain indefinitely.
"It's concerning to me that the immigration courts are becoming such a frequently used back-door route to green cards," said Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute, noting these cases will be nearly 10 percent of the green cards approved in 2016.
"Many of them arrived illegally, and are being awarded legal status simply because they managed to stay a long time and have acquired family members here."
One in four of the illegal immigrants allowed to stay in the country despite DHS efforts to remove them this year is from Mexico, TRAC reported.
Another 44 percent were from the three Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — where vast numbers of unaccompanied minors and women with children have crossed the border to seek asylum.
There are a number of reasons why an individual may be allowed to remain in the country, according to TRAC.
"… the judge can find that the government did not meet its burden to show the individual was deportable," the report stated. "Or, the judge may have found that the individual was entitled to asylum in this country, or may grant relief from removal under other provisions of the law.
"A person also may be allowed to remain because the government requests that the case be administratively closed through the exercise of ICE's prosecutorial discretion, or for some other reason," the report also stated.
The Phoenix federal Immigration Court had the highest percentage of non-citizens allowed to stay in the country over the objections of DHS officials.
"In more than four out of every five, or 82.2 percent of its 3,554 cases closed so far in 2016, the individuals were successful in their quest to remain in the U.S," TRAC reported.
The New York Immigration Court was not far behind at 81.5 percent of the 16,152 non-citizen cases closed to date, followed by the Denver Immigration Court at 78.0 percent of its 831 cases.
Nationwide, there is a backlog of around 500,000 cases pending in the immigration courts, and as it grows, judges become more lenient, said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
"This is by design," Mehlman said. "The longer the attorneys draw out the cases, the better it is for their clients because the likelihood that they will get to stay in the country increases. It is also better for the immigration attorneys because they can charge more fees.
"From the judge's perspective, because the courts are so backlogged, it is easier to let people stay in the country than actually try to remove them," he said. "There are endless layers of appeal and no finality in it."
On the opposite end of the scale, Oakdale, La., Lumpkin, Ga. and Napanoch, N.Y., Immigration Courts only allowed between 11.3 percent and 17.5 percent of the non-citizens slated for removal to remain in the U.S., TRAC reported.
There is a great deal of money spent, and government resources dedicated, to prosecute a removal case for detention, to monitor those who are released, for attorneys to prosecute removal cases and for the court personnel to conduct hearings, said Claude Arnold, a retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations.
Arnold believes the Obama administration has sent the message to immigration judges to push back when DHS attempts to enforce its rules regarding illegal immigrants. By law, they are subject to deportation when local, state or federal authorities cross paths with them, but several local governments refuse to cooperate in the removal process.
The administration of the immigration courts does not comment on third-party analysis of data, said Kathryn Mattingly, spokesperson for the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review. However, she said the year prior to the TRAC report, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, immigration judges granted 48 percent of asylum applications, marking the third year in a row that percentage has decreased, falling from 56 percent in 2012.
for Immigration Review. However, she said the year prior to the TRAC report, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, immigration judges granted 48 percent of asylum applications, marking the third year in a row that percentage has decreased, falling from 56 percent in 2012.
Labels: administrative amnesty, illegal immigration, Immigration Judges, interior enforcement, Obama, Removals
Terrorists Queuing up at the Border?
Report: Illegal Migrants from Terror-Linked Countries Surging at Southern Border
by Edwin Mora. www.breitbart.com
U.S. officials are trying to establish closer cooperation with various Latin American nations to combat an increase in the number of illegal migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East attempting to sneak into the United States.
Between October 2015 and May 2016, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), detained 5,350 African and Asian migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Reuters.
The apprehensions of illegals from Africa and Asia during that period marks an increase from those that took place in all of 2015 (4,261) and 2014 (1,831).
In its report, Reuters highlighted attempted entries into the U.S. by individuals from Pakistan, Syria, and Afghanistan, which the U.S. considers to be terrorism-linked countries.
Most countries considered by the U.S. government to be linked to terrorism are located in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. American border authorities are trying to stop the illegal migrants at the Mexico border with Guatemala, before they reach the United States.
U.S. agents deployed to an immigration facility on Mexico's southern border have vetted the more than 640 migrants from countries outside the Americas who have been detained at the center since October 2015, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents reviewed by Reuters…
The U.S. agents' findings come as Mexican immigration data show 6,342 Asian, African and Middle Eastern migrants were apprehended trying to enter Mexico in the first six months of this year. That was up from 4,261 in all of 2015, and 1,831 in 2014.
U.S. border apprehensions point to the same trend. Between October 2015 and May 2016, U.S. agents apprehended 5,350 African and Asian migrants at the U.S. Southwest border. That's up from 6,126 in all of fiscal year 2015 and 4,172 in all of fiscal year 2014.
"The reality is that the vast majority of the people that Mexico encounters that are extra-continental will eventually end up on our border," an unnamed official from CBP, told Reuters.
The Reuters report came soon after Central American authorities dismantled a human trafficking network dedicated to smuggling illegal migrants into the United States from terror-linked countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Moreover, the top American military official in Latin America and the Caribbean, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) chief Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, recently warned that there are various networks in his area of responsibility that specialize in trafficking illegals into the United States from countries affiliated with terrorism.
He noted that both the Shiite Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, and the Sunni Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) are known to operate in the region.
Reuters points out:
Washington is seeking closer coordination with several Latin American countries to tackle a jump in migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East who it believes are trying to reach the United States from the south on an arduous route by plane, boat and through jungle on foot…
The migrants often fly to Brazil, obtain fake passports there, and are smuggled to Panama before heading through Central America to Mexico's porous southern border, according to transcripts of 14 interviews conducted at the center and other internal briefing documents seen by Reuters…
U.S. concerns about potential security risks from migrants using the unusual and circuitous southern route have been growing in recent years, following a string of Islamic State-inspired attacks in the West and the surge in Syrian refugees fleeing that country's civil war.
Breitbart Texas previously released leaked documents from CBP showing that hundreds of individuals from 75 countries outside the Americas, including some compromised by terrorist organizations, were attempting to sneak into the United States through the southern border.
Labels: Border Patrol, border security, illegal immigration, ISIS, Middle East, public safety, terrorists
New Obama Administration Plan to Solve Border Crisis
U.S. to Admit More Central American Refugees
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, New York Times
WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday announced a substantial expansion of a program to admit Central American refugees to the United States, conceding that its efforts to protect migrants fleeing dangerous conditions had left too many people with no recourse.
The administration said it would broaden an initiative that currently lets unaccompanied Central American children enter the United States as refugees, allowing their entire families to qualify, including siblings older than 21, parents and other relatives who act as caregivers.
It is unclear how many refugees might be eligible, but during its two years, the program for children has drawn 9,500 applicants, which could eventually grow to many times that with the broader criteria.
The expansion was denounced by Republicans, and it sharpened a contrast with Donald J. Trump, who has centered much of his presidential campaign on a call to shut out immigrants.
Republicans said the Obama administration should be focused on tackling what they called a border crisis. The expansion would instead essentially open an entirely new channel for Central American families escaping endemic violence to gain legal entrance to the United States.
"What we have seen is that our current efforts to date have been insufficient to address the number of people who may have legitimate refugee claims, and there are insufficient pathways for those people to present their claims," Amy Pope, a deputy Homeland Security adviser, said in a conference call to announce the changes. She said the revisions showed a recognition that "the criteria is too narrow to meet the categories of people who we believe would qualify under our refugee laws, but they just don't have the mechanism to apply."
The White House also said it had reached an agreement with Costa Rica to serve as a temporary host site for the most vulnerable migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras while they wait to be processed as refugees. These migrants would first undergo security screening in their home countries. Costa Rica would accept up to 200 people at a time among those who are found to be eligible, for periods of six months.
The United Nations high commissioner for refugees has agreed to set up an unusual process to review requests from potential refugees while they are in their home countries. Administration officials also said they would begin reviewing applications from refugees in their home countries, a step they hoped would discourage people from making the dangerous trip to the United States border.
Republicans said the expansion was the latest example of the White House's misuse of its authority.
"Once again, the Obama administration has decided to blow wide open any small discretion it has in order to reward individuals who have no lawful presence in the United States with the ability to bring their family members here," Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. "Rather than take the steps necessary to end the ongoing crisis at the border, the Obama administration perpetuates it by abusing a legal tool meant to be used sparingly to bring people to the United States and instead applying it to the masses in Central America."
In making the revisions, President Obama was bowing to years of complaints from advocates for immigrants who have argued that he has turned a blind eye to the plight of refugees at the southern border. They complained that he has instead focused on deterring migrants from coming to the United States and deporting them if they do, even as he has expanded his effort to welcome people fleeing violence and persecution elsewhere, including those displaced by Syria's civil war.
The situation in Central America "is heartbreaking and it's distressing, and that is why the president had not been satisfied with the steps that we'd been taking," said Eric Schultz, the deputy White House press secretary. "That's why we have been able to expand some of these programs."
Ángel Herrera, the coordinator for the pastoral care of migrants in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, said the news that the United States would open its doors to more refugees was welcome.
"Violence has overwhelmed all limits," said Mr. Herrera, speaking by telephone from one of the region's most murderous cities. "The insecurity is tremendous. People see no other option than to emigrate."
The American program, he said, has not had much success because the process is slow and people do not understand it. But the church has begun to organize workshops to explain the program and guide people through it.
The Obama administration has grappled with how to respond to an influx of migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which spiked in 2014 with the arrival of thousands of unaccompanied children streaming over the border in South Texas. The administration has tried to address the root causes of the migration by allocating $750 million in foreign aid to Central America and pledging to set up new programs to extend humanitarian protection to those who need it.
But its primary response to date has been to try to discourage migrants from making the journey to the United States or entrusting their children to smugglers. The administration has also accelerated the deportation of newly arrived migrants — most of them held briefly in detention centers before being released to pursue asylum claims in immigration courts, often with no assistance from lawyers — if they are not granted asylum.
Only 600 people from Central America have entered the United States as refugees since the influx began, officials said, including 267 children under the program created for minors with parents living in the United States who are citizens or legal immigrants. The pace is increasing, however, with 2,880 minors approved to live in the United States. Now, that program will be further broadened to family members of such children.
People in the program will be screened to see if they meet the stringent requirements for refugee status, showing that they have been forced to flee their country because of a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality or political persuasion.
But people who do not meet the requirements could be offered an entry permission known as parole, according to a senior administration official. That status does not open a pathway to citizenship, but it allows migrants to enter legally to join family members in the United States. Many of the children admitted to the program have been paroled, the official said.
"It shows the administration now recognizes this is primarily a refugee flow, not an economic one," said Kevin Appleby, the director of international migration policy at the Center for Migration Studies in New York.
Advocates called the changes a long overdue step that moved the administration in the right direction after years of mismanaging the Central American crisis.
"We have long argued that what is happening is a refugee emergency and should be treated like one, and these modest measures at least recognize this reality," said Frank Sharry, the executive director of America's Voice, an immigration reform group.
But he said the administration must do much more, including affording migrants who arrive in the United States "full and fair proceedings."
"The administration has relied on an enforcement-centric approach that sends vulnerable young people back to countries where they may well face death," Mr. Sharry said. "Instead, we need to respond to this humanitarian emergency with a comprehensive refugee-centric strategy."
Labels: administrative amnesty, Obama, refugees
The "Show Me State" Shows the Way
Missouri has very few illegal aliens compared to the rest of the US – less than 1% of it's population are "undocumented"; go figure... shouldn't the other states do the same? Missouri's approach to the problem of illegal immigration appears to be more advanced, sophisticated, strict and effective than anything to date in Arizona . Does the White House appreciate what Missouri has done? So, why doesn't Missouri receive attention? Answer: There are few illegals in Missouri to demonstrate.
The "Show Me" state has again shown us how it should be done. There needs to be more publicity and exposure regarding what Missouri has done. Please pass this around.
In 2007, Missouri placed on the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment designating English as the official language of Missouri . In November, 2008, nearly 90% voted in favor! Thus, English became the official language for ALL governmental activity in Missouri . No individual has the right to demand government services in a language OTHER than English.
In 2008, a measure was passed that required the Missouri Highway Patrol and other law enforcement officials to verify the immigration status of any person arrested, and inform federal authorities if the person is found to be in Missouri illegally. Missouri law enforcement officers receive specific training with respect to enforcement of federal immigration laws.
In Missouri, illegal immigrants do NOT have access to taxpayer benefits such as food stamps or health care through Missouri Health NET.
In 2009, a measure was passed that ensures Missouri 's public institutions of higher education do NOT award financial aid to individuals who are illegally in the United States .
In Missouri all post-secondary institutions of higher education are required to annually certify to the Missouri Dept. of Higher Education that they have NOT knowingly awarded financial aid to students who are unlawfully present in the United States .
So, while Arizona has made national news for its new law, it is important to remember, Missouri has been far more proactive in addressing this horrific problem. Missouri has made it clear that illegal immigrants are NOT WELCOME in the state and they will NOT receive public benefits at the expense of Missouri taxpayers.
Please feel free to share this information.
Source: various
Labels: English, free tuition, health care, illegal immigration, Missouri
An Alarming Deterioration In Immigration Enforcement
New Statistics: Enforcement Continues Decline in 2016
By Jessica Vaughan, Center For Immigration Studies
ICE deportations continue to decline this year and are on pace to be the lowest since 2006, according to the latest ICE statistics. Deportations of criminals also keep declining, despite a nationwide litany of high-profile fatalities caused by criminal aliens, and despite the Obama administration's claimed focus on removing deportable criminals. ICE internal metrics, including arrests, detainers and charging documents issued, show that enforcement in the interior has reached the lowest level of this administration. Most of ICE's workload (72%) is still made up of cases referred from the Border Patrol rather than aliens arrested in the interior of the country, a trend that started in 2012. The number of aliens being detained is running slightly higher than it was at this time last year, but still well below the level mandated by Congress.
Deportations Keep Dropping
The most recent ICE enforcement statistics were disclosed in a document released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. These figures are current through the third week of June, and thus cover approximately 75 percent of the federal fiscal year.
To date, ICE has completed 168,781 deportations, a slight decline from the same point in 2015, but a continuation of the steep decline that has occurred since 2012, when the administration took steps to suppress interior enforcement and exempt the vast majority of illegal aliens from deportation.
ICE is on pace to complete about 230,000 deportations, which would be the lowest number since 2006.
According to the ICE report, the sharpest declines in deportations have occurred in the Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, and Atlanta field offices (see p. 17 of the report).
Most Deportations are Border Cases
The great majority of deportations (72%) completed by ICE are border crossers who were initially arrested by the Border Patrol or port of entry officers and turned over to ICE for deportation. Most of the rest are aliens who were arrested in the interior, with only a handful of cases (less than 1%) initiated by other agencies.
In previous administrations, border crossers did not make up a large share of deportations credited to ICE. The inclusion of hundreds of thousands of border cases in ICE deportation totals became the basis for deceptive Obama administration claims of "record deportations" beginning in 2012, when in fact, deportations resulting from interior enforcement were dropping sharply. Exposure of this statistical manipulation by the Center led then-incoming DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to acknowledge that Obama administration deportation statistics are not comparable with those of previous administrations.
Interior deportations fell to 46,511 to date, according to the report, putting ICE on pace to complete 63,700 this year. This is approximately one-fourth the number of interior deportations completed by ICE in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration.
Criminal Deportations Still Declining
Despite a claimed focus on the deportation of criminal aliens, and a motto of "felons, not families," ICE is deporting fewer criminals too. To date, ICE has completed 43,005 deportations of criminals from the interior. ICE is on pace to complete about 59,000 deportations of criminal aliens in 2016. This is a decline of more than 60 percent from 2011, which was the peak of criminal deportations that resulted from the implementation of the Secure Communities program. Under Secure Communities, ICE developed the ability to locate criminal aliens by matching the fingerprints of all those arrested nationwide with the DHS databases of known aliens.
ICE Enforcement Activity Still Declining
By every measure, ICE is doing less and less enforcement. According to the agency's key metrics – Encounters, Arrests, Detainers, and Charging Documents Issued – fewer aliens have been put on the path to deportation in 2016. The agency has simply stopped reporting on the number of encounters (an in-person screening of an alien, usually in a jail). The number of arrests is down 10 percent over the same time last year. The number of detainers (a notice to a law enforcement agency that ICE intends to take custody of an alien for deportation) is down 16 percent from last year. The number of aliens charged with immigration violations is down by about five percent from 2016.
In 2014, the Obama administration aligned itself with anti-enforcement legal activists and, in a significant departure from decades of practice and the language of federal regulations, declared that local law enforcement agencies would have the choice to accept or refuse ICE detainers, or immigration holds. Detainers are the main way ICE is able to take custody of illegal aliens who have been arrested and/or incarcerated. Sanctuary jurisdictions typically refuse to comply with ICE detainers and instead release criminal aliens back to the streets, forcing ICE to have to track them down. In addition, to appease sanctuary jurisdictions, ICE has begun issuing "Requests for Notification" in lieu of traditional detainers (now called "Requests for Action").
Number of Non-Departed Aliens Still Growing
The number of aliens who have been ordered removed but who have not departed grew by more than 25,000 since the end of FY2015 and now stands at 953,507. For more information, see the Center's recent publication on the non-departed, which includes a map of the aliens' countries of citizenship.
Of these, 182,786 are convicted criminals, an increase of more than 3,700 since last year. Of the criminals, 176,126 are at large, an increase of nearly 4,000 since last year.
ICE Fails To Comply With Detention Bed Mandate
As part of the appropriations process, Congress has mandated that ICE maintain an average daily detained population of 34,000. In the current year to date, ICE has detained an average of 28,449, or 16 percent below capacity. The last time ICE complied with the congressional detention mandate was in 2012. Even though space is available, ICE has released more than 86,000 criminal aliens from its custody since 2013, including more than 19,000 in 2015.4
Detainers Still a Key Tool
Despite the efforts of anti-enforcement legal activist groups to subvert the use of detainers, or immigration holds, they remain the primary way in which ICE obtains custody of criminal aliens who have been arrested or incarcerated. According to the report, ICE issued more than 44,000 of the most assertive form of detainer, known as a "Request for Action." To help institutionalize the controversial claim that detainers are optional for local jurisdictions to honor, the Obama administration has promoted the use of the meeker "Request for Notification" or "Request for Voluntary Transfer" forms, but these were used in only about one-fourth of the cases to date.
These statistics reveal an alarming deterioration in immigration enforcement. The economic, social, and public safety consequences of this nullification of immigration law will surely be a lamentable legacy of the Obama administration.
Labels: ICE, interior enforcement, Obama, public safety, Removals
A Terrible Move on the Part of CBP and DHS!!
Editor's Note: Law Enforcement, the public, and the United States in general, will rue the day that the Long Green Line of the Border Patrol has been severed for political and short-sighted reasons. With proven outstanding leadership within the organization, the appointment of an outsider can only reflect the continued negative attitude of this Administration to weaken enforcement at every quarter. The attack on this great organization as outlined in the following newspaper article from political and biased voices is shameful.
In An Attempt To Stem Abuses, The Border Patrol Gets A New Chief — From The FBI
By Brian Bennett, The Los Angeles Times
A senior FBI official was named chief of the long-troubled U.S. Border Patrol on Monday in an effort to curb abuses, investigate corruption and improve discipline within the 21,000-member force.
Mark Morgan, who heads the FBI training division, is the first outsider to lead the Border Patrol in its 92-year history.
He inherits a force under fire for ignoring or downplaying shootings of unarmed people and other abuses by agents, and of doing too little to stem corruption by drug cartels, smugglers and other criminals.
The Border Patrol is responsible for securing the nation's borders. Driven by concerns about national security, the number of agents and other personnel has grown dramatically in the last 15 years.
Critics say that has led to a lack of accountability and an array of other problems, from excessive use of force to racial profiling.
In a statement, R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol's parent agency, praised Morgan's "strong law enforcement and leadership credentials."
Morgan's career has included stints as a Los Angeles Police Department officer, as a deputy sheriff in Platt County, Mo., and 20 years at the FBI.
He ran an FBI-led Hispanic gang task force in the Los Angeles field office that focused on MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. He also held senior FBI roles in Baghdad, Iraq; New Haven, Conn.; and El Paso, Texas.
Most recently, Morgan headed training at the FBI's training center in Quantico, Va., and at FBI headquarters in Washington.
FBI Director James Comey said in a statement that Morgan brought "passion for justice and public service" to his work.
Morgan also led the internal affairs office at Customs and Border Protection in 2014, a post that put him at odds with the Border Patrol's insular culture.
Officials say he helped internal affairs overhaul how abuse cases are investigated, identified weaknesses in how agents were trained to use force, and pushed to get greater authority for internal affairs officers.
Morgan's appointment immediately took flak from the Border Patrol's powerful union, however. It complained that Kerlikowske had ignored viable candidates within the force.
"How can someone who has never made an immigration arrest in his career expect to lead an agency whose primary duty is to make immigration arrests?" asked Joshua Wilson, a spokesman for the union's local chapter in San Diego.
The union had urged Kerlikowske to choose Ronald D. Vitiello, a veteran of the Border Patrol who has served as acting chief. Vitiello improved new shift rotation schedules, Wilson said.
Some advocates of tougher immigration actions also criticized the selection of an FBI veteran over an internal candidate.
"It basically is saying that the existing border agents don't know what they are doing and need an outsider to come in from a totally separate branch of law enforcement and tell them how to do their jobs — it's offensive," said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a Virginia-based advocacy group that lobbies to reduce immigration levels.
By almost any measure, the Border Patrol's problems are significant.
In March, for example, an independent task force said in a report that the system for disciplining abusive or corrupt Border Patrol agents is "deeply flawed."
A separate independent review of 67 uses of deadly force made public in 2014 found that some agents had deliberately stepped in front of cars to justify shooting at drivers and had fired weapons at people throwing rocks from the Mexican side of the border.
"It is not a secret that the Border Patrol has major accountability problems resulting from years of unchecked abuse," James Lyall, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in Tucson, said in a telephone interview.
Morgan "needs to act promptly to implement modern law enforcement best practices that the Border Patrol has resisted for far too long," Lyall said.
Labels: Border Patrol, border security, CBP, DHS, FBI, immigration law enforcement, Kerlikowske, Obama
The Other Cost of Accepting Refugees from the Middle East
The Steep Cost Of Obama's Refugee Push
By Brendan Kirby – Fox News.com
Aided by a screening "surge operation" to speed up the vetting of refugees in Middle Eastern camps, the Obama administration is on track to keep the president's promise to permanently resettle an additional 10,000 refugees displaced by the Syrian conflict by September.
The danger posed by people coming from terrorism-infested regions has been a hotly contested issue, as is the potentially outsized impact on the small American communities often called upon to receive them. What does not appear in doubt is the hefty price tag, which is projected to total some $644 million over those refugees' first five years in the United States.
Unlike other classes of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for a full range of welfare benefits.
The figure comes from an analysis performed by the Center for Immigration Studies, which looked at processing and administrative costs of the federal agencies, money for assistance provided to refugees directly or through federally funded nonprofit organizations and consumption of government-assistance programs. Unlike other classes of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for a full range of welfare benefits.
"My point was that relative to how many people we could help over there (near their home countries), it's very expensive," the report's author, Steven Camarota, told LifeZette Tuesday.
Camarota, director of research for the Washington-based think tank, estimated costs of the federal welfare programs by examining five-year usage rates contained in a report by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The most recent figures, show usage rates for welfare programs by refugees from the Middle East that are even higher for most programs than when Camarota first wrote the report.
Refugees from the Middle East use those programs at rates that far exceed participation by refugees from any other region. In five of seven programs, the percentage of Middle Eastern refugees participating are higher than those of refugees from Africa, the region with the next-highest usage rates. In some cases, the rates are substantially higher. Nearly nine in 10 were on food stamps, for instance, compared with 80 percent of African refugees.
If the latest participation figures hold up for the Syrians admitted between Oct. 1 last year and Sept. 30 this year, Camarota's five-year cost projection -- $64,370 per person and $257,481 per household -- may be low-ball estimates.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation of American Immigration Reform, said it would be more cost-effective for the United States to provide financial assistance to Jordan and Turkey, which are housing the bulk of refugees who fled war-torn Syria. Those refugees also would have an easier time returning home after the fighting ends.
"In terms of helping people, you get far more for your money helping people close to where they live," he said.
Nayla Rush, a Center for Immigration Studies research fellow also noted that the Obama administration is encouraging several back-door channels for Syrians who do not come in via refugee relocation. One method is the Priority-2 Direct Access Program, originally set up for Iraqis in 2008 and now available to Syrians. It allows U.S. citizens and green card holders to petition for relatives to come into the country.
Other possible methods of entry are student visas and work visas, Rush said. Her report noted that the president of the nonprofit Institute of International Education estimated that some 200,000 displaced Syrians in the Middle East are "university-qualified."
Rush said there is no telling how many people might enter through one of these back channels, which will not count against the refugee cap or receive the same level of scrutiny applied to refugees.
"These are numbers you have to be watching for," she said.
The government refugee report indicates that refugees struggle in the United States. Even those who had been in the county for five years in December 2104, the most recent year available, trailed their American counterparts. The unemployment rate among that cohort was 8.9 percent, 2.7 points higher than the U.S. rate at the time.
That combined with cultural disruption can lead to radicalization, some experts contend.
"We are seeing evidence that the difficulty is significant when people are coming from places in the Middle East, particularly the second generation," Mehlman said. "The consequences of failure to assimilate can be quite significant."
"It's 10,000 on top of a million and a half people coming here legally and illegally every year," he said.
Note: Content of story edited for this blog
Labels: cost of immigration, Obama, resettlement, Syrian refugees
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