America Needs a Border Wall Like Houses Need Insulation
How Trump's wall will help keep heinous criminals out of America's cities.
By Michael Cutler
FrontPageMag.com
Remittances, massive as they are, do not account for all of the money that flows from the United States to Mexico and because they are legal and transparent are easy to quantify.
Remittances, massive as they are, do not account for all of the money that flows from the United States to Mexico and because they are legal and transparent are easy to quantify.
Money is often smuggled covertly out of the U.S. to other countries around the world. by illegal and hence opaque means. Sometimes the money is concealed in furniture, appliances or vehicles. Sometimes the money is converted to gold or other precious metals to make it more portable. However, no matter how money leaves the United States, a wall would create a barrier against illegal alien workers who send their ill-gotten wages back to Mexico.
That wall could help stem the flow of dangerous narcotics into America - an act that destroys the lives of children and fuels the violence that plays out in towns and cities across the country.
Indeed, a secure southern border could help to insulate America from terrorists operating in Latin America, an issue of grave concern that I wrote about in my recent article, Congresional Hearing: Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S.that included the testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who said, in part:
. . .
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271010/america-needs-border-wall-houses-need-insulation-michael-cutler
Chain Migration Gone Wild in Third Circuit
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog
Sometimes a citizen child can save his or her illegal alien parent from deportation, on the grounds that the deportation of the parent would create an undue hardship on the child. For example, if the illegal alien parent is the sole source of the family's income or the child has a medical condition that is unlikely to be treated in the parent's home country.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has just made a caricature of this scenario by stretching the concepts of "marriage", "parenthood", and "hardship" to the extreme.
https://cis.org/North/Chain-Migration-Gone-Wild-Third-Circuit
41,000 Unaccompanied Children Apprehended at Border in Recent Months
Richard Hudson, acting chief of Law Enforcement Operations Directorate with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP),said at a hearing on Thursday that, in recent months, agents have apprehended 41,000 children without parents or guardians and encountered as many as a quarter of a million since 2014 at the U.S. border with Mexico.
“Between Oct. 1, 2017, and July 31, 2018, more than 41,000 UACs have been apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol,” Hudson said, noting that 7,000 of those were deemed inadmissible at ports of entry.
“Since 2014, when we saw the first surge of UACs, CBP has encountered nearly 250,000 UAC’s along the southwest border,” Hudson said.
“These children arrive at our border after a difficult and dangerous journey, and many have been subjected to abuse at the hands of human traffickers, criminals, and opportunists,” Hudson said.
“The men and women of CBP treat each of these children with the utmost professionalism and compassion,” Hudson said. “…and work to ensure their welfare while they are in our custody.”
The hearing focused on how UACs taken into federal custody can be protected from human trafficking and other criminal enterprises when released to family or sponsors in U.S. communities.
Hudson noted that there is a backlog of more than 700,000 cases on UACs and that it can take “years” for the cases to work their way through the system.
Moreover, when children are placed in communities around the U.S., the government can lose track of them, and this can put them at risk. Hudson said:
It is important to note that current laws and court rulings which favor the release of family units and UACs often require the federal government to release illegal alien families and UACs into communities across the United States. This practice has not only led to aliens failing to appear for court hearings and failing to comply with removal orders but has also incentivized smugglers to place children into the hands of adult strangers so they can pose as families and be released from immigration custody after crossing the border.This creates a safety issue for these children, who have already made an extremely dangerous journey to reach the United States, risking possible trauma, abuse, abandonment, injury, and death along the way.
The hearing follows a subcommittee report on the federal government’s handling of UACs and ahead of legislation that lawmakers said they would be crafted to address the issue.
“There is plenty of blame to go around, but I’m a lot more interested in solving the problem than making this into a partisan issue,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), chairman of the subcommittee said at the start of the hearing.
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ICE Arrests 45 in Houston Area During ‘At-Large Criminal’ Roundup
HOUSTON, Texas — Federal officers arrested 45 illegal immigrants in the Houston area during a five-day operation. Forty-two had previous criminal convictions and 15 were previously deported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers carried out a five-day operation in the Houston area that targeted “at-large criminal aliens” and those with previous deportations. During the operation, ERO officers arrested 45 illegal immigrants, according to ICE.
“Our primary focus with conducting targeted immigration enforcement operations is to improve public safety by removing criminal aliens from our local communities,” ERO Houston Field Office Director Pat Contreras said in a written statement. “The dedicated immigration enforcement officers who conducted the operation did just that by taking 42 dangerous criminal aliens off the streets.”
ICE stated that 15 of those arrested were previously been deported. Forty-two had criminal histories which included convictions for “serious or violent crimes.” Those convictions include rape, child exploitation, robbery, drug trafficking, and assault.
Officials provided examples of those arrested:
- In Houston, a 29-year-old Turkish national convicted of child exploitation;
- In Houston, a previously removed 43-year-old Honduran convicted of rape;
- In Houston, a 44-year-old Cuban convicted of burglary; and
- In Tomball, a twice-removed 46-year-old Mexican national convicted of burglary and drug trafficking.
Officers made the arrests in the following cities in the Houston Metropolitan Area: Houston (26), Conroe (9), Cleveland (2), Alvin (1), Tomball (1), the Woodlands (1), Texas City (1), Channelview (1), Clearlake (1), Baytown (1), and Bellville (1). The illegal immigrants came to the U.S. from: Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, Cuba, Nigeria, India, Chile, and Turkey.
Some of those arrested could now face new federal felony charges for illegal re-entry after removal as a convicted felon. They could face up to 20 years in prison. Those without previous removals could also face criminal prosecution for immigration violations and will be processed for removal.
“To make our communities safer, ICE deportation officers carry out targeted enforcement operations every day in locations around the country as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to uphold public safety and protect the integrity of our nation’s immigration laws,” ICE officials concluded.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
Border Patrol Agents Find 27 Migrants Locked in Rental Trucks
Border Patrol agents assigned to the Falfurrias Checkpoint found 27 migrants locked in the back of two commercial rental trucks in separate incidents this week. The smuggled include at least one unaccompanied minor.
Rio Grande Valley Sector agents assigned to the Falfurrias Border Patrol checkpoint on Sunday observed a rental box truck approaching for an immigration inspection. During the initial interview, a K-9 agent alerted to the possible presence of drug or human cargo present. The agents ordered the driver to the secondary inspection station, according to Rio Grande Valley Sector officials.
During a secondary inspection, agents opened the rear door of the truck and found 18 illegal immigrants locked inside the hot truck with no ventilation or means of escape if an accident were to occur. The agents identified the migrants as having come from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua.
The agents transported the 18 illegal immigrants to the Falfurrias Station for initial intake processing and a biometric background investigation. During the records check, agents identified one of the migrants as a 17-year-old unaccompanied minor.
A similar incident occurred the following day when agents again observed a rental box truck approaching the immigration checkpoint. A K-9 agent again alerted to the possible presence of drugs or humans in the rental truck’s cargo area. The agents referred the driver to a secondary inspection station for further investigation.
The agents carried out a search and found nine more migrants locked in the rear. An investigation revealed the human cargo came to the U.S. from Honduras and Mexico, officials stated.
Agents arrested the migrants and turned both cases over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations for possible prosecution for immigration violations and human smuggling.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
it's not the number they catch, it is the number that get past them. most put that number at about 8xs the number caught!
Mexican Police Find 161 Central American Migrants Bound for Texas
MONTERREY, Nuevo León — Mexican authorities found 161 migrants from Central America locked inside a tractor-trailer in the southern part of this border state.
The detention took place over the weekend in the Ascension neighborhood of Aramberri. Agents with the Nuevo León Fuerza Civil police unit stopped a tractor-trailer and found 161 individuals–including 6 unaccompanied minors–inside. The police officers arrested two men from the state of Tabasco who were driving the truck and leading the smuggling attempt.
The officers requested local backup to help guard the migrants until they could be taken by Mexican immigration authorities. There were 39 families from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as six Central American children traveling alone.
Law enforcement information provided to Breitbart Texas revealed the group paid approximately $2,500 USD per person to start the trip in the truck and would be paying anothee $2,500 to $4,000 at the border in order to cross the Rio Grande. The failed smuggling operation appears to follow a growing trend where criminal organizations are circumventing the states of Tamaulipas and Veracruz, two regions seeing a dramatic spike in violence as rival cartels fight for local control.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tony Aranda from Nuevo León.
South Texas Border Patrol Agents Arrest 110 Migrants in 2 Days
Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents arrested 110 migrants in less than two days. The apprehensions occurred along the border and in stash houses. The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector continues to lead the nation with nearly half of all arrests of illegal immigrants alone.
RGV Sector agents assigned to the McAllen Station received a tip on Sunday morning about a group of people hiding in an abandoned house near Abram, Texas. The agents responded, along with local law enforcement officers, and found 16 illegal immigrants hiding in the house, according to RGV Sector officials.
Interviews and background investigations revealed the migrants were smuggled to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
Later that day, the Mission Police Department requested assistance from McAllen Station agents. The local police received information about a stash house operation in their city located near the Texas-Mexico border. The agents responded and found eight more inside the house.
A short time later, Weslaco Station agents patrolling near the border town of Hidalgo came upon a group of 42 illegal immigrants who were just smuggled across the Rio Grande River. Officials said the group contained Family Unit Aliens and Unaccompanied Alien Children. The migrants came to the U.S. from Guatemala and Honduras.
In nearly the same place the following day, Weslaco Station agents came upon another group of illegal immigrants who recently crossed the border. The group of 44 migrants included additional Family Unit Aliens and Unaccompanied Alien Children. The migrants all came to the U.S. from Guatemala.
In total, the RGV Sector agents apprehended 110 illegal immigrants in less than two days, officials reported. This sector accounted for nearly half of all apprehensions along the entire southwest border in July.
The Rio Grande Valley Sector in South Texas continues to lead the nation in the apprehension of FMUAs who illegally cross the border from Mexico. So far this fiscal year, agents arrested 47,409 units. This is up from 44,445 the previous fiscal year — a seven percent increase, Breitbart Texas reported.
The sector also leads the nation in the apprehension of unaccompanied minors. However, the sector saw an eight percent drop in July.
The Yuma, Tucson, and El Centro Sectors all witnessed significant increases in the numbers of unaccompanied minors crossing the border in dangerous conditions. The apprehension of UACs in the Yuma Sector rose by 114 percent from 2,229 in June to 4,762 in July. The El Centro Sector also saw a near 100 percent increase rising from 1,116 in June to 2,186 in July. The Tucson Sector observed an increase from 2,994 to 4,323 (59 percent). The Texas sectors of Laredo and Big Bend also saw increases of more that 40 percent, the report states.
Of the 31,303 illegal immigrants apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico Border in July, 13,241 were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Those arrests included 5,219 family units and 1,931 unaccompanied minors. The total apprehensions in this sector are four times that of the next largest sector, according to the July Southwest Border Migration Report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
What is MS-13?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/02/americas-open-borders-border-to-open.html
10,000 LOOSE IN OUR OPEN BORDERS RAPING, MURDERING AND VOTING DEMOCRAT FOR MORE ANCHOR BABY WELFARE.
AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS TO TERRORIST… as we defend the borders of every Muslim dictator on earth!
RECOMMENDED VIDEO:
What is MS-13?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/02/americas-open-borders-border-to-open.html
10,000 LOOSE IN OUR OPEN BORDERS RAPING, MURDERING AND VOTING DEMOCRAT FOR MORE ANCHOR BABY WELFARE.
AMERICA NEEDS A BORDER WALL LIKE HOUSES NEED INSULATION
How Trump's wall will help keep heinous criminals out of America's cities.
August 14, 2018
Readers familiar with my writing know of my fondness for analogies to break down the, sometimes complex and always frustrating issues on U.S. immigration. Today, I will use an analogy comparing the proposed border wall along the U.S./Mexican border to insulate America with the way that various forms of insulation are used in constructing buildings to save money and provide other benefits.
Properly constructed homes and buildings are weatherproofed and insulated to create barriers that keep out rain and to keep their interiors warm and cozy in the winter and cool in the summer.
Various strategies and materials are used to achieve these essential goals. Insulation is installed inside outer walls and in the spaces under the roofs of the houses while double-pane windows, storm doors, and weatherstripping are used to seal up other vulnerable areas.
These measures are costly to install, but over the life of the building, these measures more than pay for themselves. Depending on location, home heating and cooling costs can be significantly reduced when effective insulation prevents costly warm air from escaping from the house during the frigid days of winter, and by preventing hot air from leaking into our homes during the sweltering days of summer when the air conditioners are humming and devouring expensive electricity.
Simply stated - effective insulation improves the environment in our homes and simultaneously saves homeowners considerable amounts of money.
Those homes are not hermetically sealed. However, their doors and windows can still open, just as America’s ports of entry permit easy access to lawful foreign visitors and commerce.
America’s sovereign borders are essential to protect Americans from a different sort of intrusion - the intrusion of international terrorists and transnational criminals and fugitives. Our borders are also crucial in preventing the entry of foreign workers who would take jobs Americans need to support themselves and their families.
Finally, our borders are supposed to prevent contraband from being brought into the country. That contraband includes unfathomable quantities of illegal drugs such as heroin, cocaine, meth, and others. It includes counterfeit prescription drugs and counterfeit parts for cars, airplanes and other devices that may endanger lives. The contraband may also include weapons and, indeed, among them weapons of mass destruction.
But our borders can only function as effective barriers if they are more than mere “lines in the sand.”
The preface of the official report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel begins with this clear and unequivocal statement:
It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.
Today I focus on the U.S./Mexican border, but it is essential to understand that our nation has 50 “border states” (any state that lies along our northern, as well as our southern borders, are border states as are those states that lie along America’s 95,000 miles of coastline. Finally, any state that has an international airport is also a “border state”).
While the porous and dangerous U.S./Mexican border must be made secure and is my focus today, many other measures must be taken in this particularly dangerous era. I have come to compare a border wall along that problematic border with a wing on an airplane. Without its wings and airplane most certainly will not fly, however, a wing by itself won’t fly either!
This was the premise behind an article I wrote some time ago, Border Security and the Immigration Colander.
The lack of security on that approximately 2,000 mile border represents a vast, gaping hole in the immigration colander, yet the leadership of neither party appears to be genuinely determined to finally build a secure wall even though more than ten years ago Congress voted for the construction of a “border fence” that was never constructed.
In point of fact, a significant contingent of anarchist extremists in the Democratic Party has created “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States” and have called for dismantling our borders and ending immigration law enforcement altogether throughout the United States.
New York’s Governor Cuomo, in spite of the clear warnings of the 9/11 Commission, has now threatened to prosecute ICE agents for enforcing our nation’s immigration laws even though alien terrorists have repeatedly targeted new York in repeated deadly terror attacks.
President Trump has made it clear that he will take whatever measure(s) he must to finally have that wall constructed and has not ruled out shutting down the government because this issue is just that important.
In a July 31, 2018, Chicago Tribune report, Trump doubles-down on a government shutdown threat to build the wall:
"I don't care what the political ramifications are, our immigration laws and border security have been a complete and total disaster for decades, and there is no way that the Democrats will allow it to be fixed without a Government Shutdown," Trump said in a tweet Tuesday afternoon."Border Security is National Security, and National Security is the long-term viability of our Country," he added. "A Government Shutdown is a very small price to pay for a safe and Prosperous America!”
Opponents of that wall have raised various objections to the wall including lamest of excuses, the cost of building it.
Candidate Donald Trump proclaimed that as President he would build the wall and that Mexico would pay for that wall. It was no surprise when the current and previous Mexican presidents ridiculed President Trump and his assertions about forcing Mexico to pay for our wall.
The globalist media and globalist politicians refuse to acknowledge that Mexico would pay for the entire wall and its maintenance, without having to send a single dollar to the United States.
On July 3, 2018, Mexico News Daily reported on the flow of money from the United States to Mexico in the form of money wire transfers known as remittances as noted in the article’s title:
Remittance numbers took a big jump.May’s record-high remittances clear US $3-billion markThe figure is 17% higher than the previous record, set last October
Remittances, massive as they are, do not account for all of the money that flows from the United States to Mexico and because they are legal and transparent are easy to quantify.
Money is often smuggled covertly out of the U.S. to other countries around the world. by illegal and hence opaque means. Sometimes the money is concealed in furniture, appliances or vehicles. Sometimes the money is converted to gold or other precious metals to make it more portable. However, no matter how money leaves the United States, a wall would create a barrier against illegal alien workers who send their ill-gotten wages back to Mexico.
That wall could help stem the flow of dangerous narcotics into America - an act that destroys the lives of children and fuels the violence that plays out in towns and cities across the country.
Indeed, a secure southern border could help to insulate America from terrorists operating in Latin America, an issue of grave concern that I wrote about in my recent article, Congresional Hearing: Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S.that included the testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who said, in part:
In recent years, Hezbollah’s Latin American networks have also increasingly cooperated with violent drug cartels and criminal syndicates, often with the assistance of local corrupt political elites. Cooperation includes laundering of drug money; arranging multi-ton shipments of cocaine to the United States and Europe, and directly distributing and selling illicit substances to distant markets. Proceeds from these activities finance Hezbollah’s arms procurement; its terror activities overseas; its hold on Lebanon’s political system; and its efforts, both in Lebanon and overseas, to keep Shi’a communities loyal to its cause and complicit in its endeavors.This toxic crime-terror nexus is fueling both global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into America. It is sustaining Hezbollah’s growing financial needs. It helps Iran and Hezbollah consolidate a local constituency in multiple countries across Latin America. It is facilitating their efforts to build safe havens for terrorists and a continent-wide terror infrastructure that they could use to strike U.S. targets.
Trump's proposed wall would be a “win-win,” saving innocent American lives, reducing violent crime and protecting national security while bolstering the U.S. economy.
Opponents of the wall are true opponents of America and Americans.
We honestly cannot afford to not finally "build the wall."
Exclusive—Lou Barletta: ‘How Would Bob Casey Justify’ Sanctuary Cities to Child Rape Victim?
Congressman Lou Barletta (R-PA) chastised Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) support for sanctuary cities on Monday, contending that a five-year-old rape victim was not provided “sanctuary” from criminal illegal aliens.
Last week, Juan Ramon Vasquez, a 45-year old Honduran national, was sentenced to two years in jail for illegally entering the country. Vasquez raped a five-year-old child after Philadelphia authorities ignored an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer and released him. Vasquez was deported from the country in 2009 but was later re-entered the United States illegally. Rep. Barletta slammed Sen. Casey for supporting the city of brotherly love’s sanctuary city policy.
Barletta asked rhetorically, “How would Bob Casey justify his support for sanctuary cities to the family of the little girl who was raped? Does Bob Casey believe it was a sanctuary city for them?”
William McSwain, the U.S. Attorney for the Philadelphia region, said in a statement last week, “The facts of this case highlight the danger posed by the City of Philadelphia’s decision to disregard ICE detainers and release previously deported aliens from local custody.”
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, McSweeney blamed Philadelphia’s sanctuary city status for “fostering mistrust between the community and local law enforcement” by favoring illegal aliens.
Stu Bykofksy, a staff columnist for the Inquirer, noted in his article, “Given sanctuary in Philly, he raped a child”:
ICE had requested that he be detained for deportation, but our self-righteous city turned the Honduran loose, and the next time he was in custody it was for raping a 5-year-old girl. I’m sure the victim’s family appreciates Kenney’s policy that protects foreign convicted felons, which is what Vasquez was.
Sen. Casey voted against legislation in 2016 to defund sanctuary cities, including Philadelphia, as well as Kate’s Law, which imposes harsher penalties on illegal immigrants who reenter the United States. Kate’s Law would have hit Vasquez, who reentered the country after previously being deported.
“If someone is deported for a criminal conviction then we need to make sure they are prevented from ever coming back into this country,” Sen. Casey said in a 2016 statement.
Congressman Barletta said last year that “everyone’s family is put at risk” by sanctuary cities.
The United States Border Patrol in El Centro, CA nabbed their 30th illegal alien who has a history of sex offenses this year after arresting a previously deported man who was convicted of sexually assaulting an American minor in April 2004.
According to a press release issued August 10th, Border Patrol agents stationed at the Calexico office arrested Jose Humberto Ojeda-Gutierrez, a 30-year-old Mexican national, who had previously been deported. According to court records in April 2004, Ojeda-Gutierrez was "sentenced to 40 hours of community service and on-year probation" for "Sexual Contact-No Consent" with a juvenile.
“Keeping our communities safe from dangerous criminals such as these is vital to our role as Border Patrol agents,” said Chief Patrol Agent Gloria I. Chavez.
The most recent Border Patrol statistics indicate that CBP agents have arrested at least 72 sex offenders in the 2018 fiscal year.
Border patrol agents in Texas also arrested another illegal alien with a history of sexual offenses this week.
New in GOP logic: Antipoverty programs worked so well, we must get rid of them
For many decades now the GOP has sought to undo the New Deal and the Great Society. But a report released last month from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, lost in a sea of grabbier news items, applies a new logic to the goal of shredding the safety net.
No Justice for Taxpaying Americans
By Howie Carr
The Boston Herald, August 08, 2018
But the real double standard kicks in when the undocumented Democrat gets to the courtroom. A taxpaying American can only dream of the kid-gloves treatment these Third World fiends get.
Here’s a 2016 headline: “If Springfield market owner illegally cashing food stamps had been U.S. citizen punishment would have been greater, judge says.”
This one involved a 56-year-old Dominican bodega owner who was running an EBT-card scam for illegal immigrants in Springfield — stop me if you’ve heard this one before. He stole $38,000 and didn’t do a day in jail. As Judge Tina Page said, “Had he been a citizen of the U.S. he would in all likelihood be serving a substantial sentence.”
But if he’d been imprisoned he’d have been deported, and God knows we don’t want to deport Dominican welfare fraudsters — or Dominican heroin dealers.
Freeing Dominican heroin dealers (and future cop killers) is the specialty of Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley, who cut loose a Dominican heroin dealer with no prison time, as the prosecutor put it, “to help him avoid deportation.”
Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Sometimes law-abiding taxpayers get murdered because of this double standard of justice for welfare-collecting noncitizens.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/08/carr_no_justice_for_taxpaying_americans
By Howie Carr
The Boston Herald, August 08, 2018
But the real double standard kicks in when the undocumented Democrat gets to the courtroom. A taxpaying American can only dream of the kid-gloves treatment these Third World fiends get.
Here’s a 2016 headline: “If Springfield market owner illegally cashing food stamps had been U.S. citizen punishment would have been greater, judge says.”
This one involved a 56-year-old Dominican bodega owner who was running an EBT-card scam for illegal immigrants in Springfield — stop me if you’ve heard this one before. He stole $38,000 and didn’t do a day in jail. As Judge Tina Page said, “Had he been a citizen of the U.S. he would in all likelihood be serving a substantial sentence.”
But if he’d been imprisoned he’d have been deported, and God knows we don’t want to deport Dominican welfare fraudsters — or Dominican heroin dealers.
Freeing Dominican heroin dealers (and future cop killers) is the specialty of Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley, who cut loose a Dominican heroin dealer with no prison time, as the prosecutor put it, “to help him avoid deportation.”
Are you starting to notice a pattern here? Sometimes law-abiding taxpayers get murdered because of this double standard of justice for welfare-collecting noncitizens.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/08/carr_no_justice_for_taxpaying_americans
New in GOP logic: Antipoverty programs worked so well, we must get rid of them
By SASHA ABRAMSKY
According to “Expanding work requirements in non-cash welfare programs,” comprehensive antipoverty programs are no longer necessary because 50 years of antipoverty programs — yes, those same interventions long hated, and their effectiveness belittled, by the GOP — have succeeded so spectacularly that poverty is largely a thing of the past.
The report claims that the War on Poverty led to “the success of the United States in reducing material hardship,” but “that it also came at the cost of discouraging self-sufficiency.” It proceeds to lay out a case for limiting access to benefits and setting in place work requirements in exchange for basic nutritional and medical benefits.
This is beyond disingenuous. Yes, in the years after 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, the percentage of poor Americans did significantly decline; by some measures it was cut in half from about 22% of the population down to about 11%. But over the last 40 years it has rebounded with a vengeance.
Only a government stocked with billionaires and reveling in its lack of empathy could conceivably claim that real poverty no longer exists in the U.S.
Hunger is up again. Homelessness is up again – though the report claims erroneously that, “[f]ortunately, homelessness is rare in the United States.” The number of casual and hourly laborers one accident or sickness away from a financial disaster is up, the number of elderly Americans financially unable to retire is increasing, and the proportion of the workforce with secure salaries and guaranteed pensions is down.
Income inequality in today’s America is as extreme as it has been at any point since the Gilded Age. In an era of flamboyant affluence and dot.com billionaires, the Princeton sociologist Kathryn Edin has found that at least 1.5 million Americans live on incomes of under $2 a day.
In the downtowns of cities such as Los Angeles, tens of thousands of homeless live on the streets. Meanwhile, high-end homes in those same cities sell for tens of millions of dollars. All of this and more was pointed out in the recent United Nations report on the dangerous levels of extreme poverty and inequality in the United States.
Somewhere between one in six and one in seven Americans live below the government’s own, extremely cautious definition of the poverty line: less than $13,000 for a single person, just over $25,000 for a family of four. That’s vastly higher than in most other developed economies. Somewhere around one in five American kids live in poverty, and in many counties that number surpasses one in four.
While reporting on American poverty, I encountered people in New Mexico who lived without running water in their homes. I met grandparents in Idaho standing for hours on food bank lines so they could feed their grandchildren. I met Wal-Mart workers earning so little they qualified for food stamps. I met a man in Pennsylvania bankrupted by bills from his quadruple bypass heart surgery. I met schoolchildren in Nevada who were homeless. I met day laborers working for far below the legal minimum wage.
In Fresno and in Orange counties, I’ve seen dozens crammed into two-bedroom houses. I have talked to old men and women who have lost homes and cars to predatory payday lenders. A couple of months ago, I interviewed the director of a medical clinic in Oakland, most of whose clients were impoverished immigrants. She talked of a poor patient so terrified of medical bills that he refused to go to the hospital even after she told him that he was having a stroke right in front of her.
Only a government stocked with billionaires and reveling in its lack of empathy could conceivably claim that real poverty no longer exists in the United States.
Trump’s ghastly regime is seeking to shred the food stamp system, Medicaid and other vital benefits. It is proposing to triple the rent for large numbers of poor families who live in public housing. It is about to unveil a new definition of “public charge” that would allow the administration to deny permanent residency to any legal immigrant who uses, or whose children use, food stamps, public health systems, low-income heating assistance or other vital programs. And it is aggressively pushing to impose onerous work requirements for benefits, not because the country is genuinely strapped for cash, but because, abetted by a far-right Congress, they have handed out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest among us and are now looking for a way to pay the bill.
All of this is guaranteed to exacerbate the country’s already stark income divides, and to make the quality of life for America’s least fortunate even worse.
I wonder how President Trump, Ben Carson, Steven Mnuchin, Jared Kushner, and the other architects of America’s war on the poor would cope were they to try to live on $2 a day.
Something tells me that these pampered princelings would then quickly find that poverty is indeed something all too real, all too pervasive, all too soul-destroying.
Sasha Abramsky’s most recent book is “Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream.”
PROTECTING OUR BORDERS!
Our government is too busy easing illegals over the borders!
THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!
This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government ....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.
Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for
$5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200..... free.
He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.
He qualifies for food stamps.
He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.
His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.
He requires bilingual teachers and books.
He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.
If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.
Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.
He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.
Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material.
He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits.
Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after Paying their bills and his.
The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up.
Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people!
Will Californians Prevail Against the Little Picture of Hell?
https://townhall.com/columnists/arthurschaper/2018/06/05/draft-n2487359
The one topic Democrats don't dare bring up in today's SoCal primary
It Pays to be Illegal in California
Maybe if California and New York Cared as Much about the Middle Class as They Do About Illegal Alien…
California Goes Rogue
By Mark Krikorian
How the Golden State defies immigration law
‘I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.” That was President Andrew Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s intention to prevent enforcement of a federal law within the state. Despite his admiration for Jackson, President Trump hasn’t yet threatened to start hanging California politicians. But that state’s “sanctuary” policies protecting illegal immigrants and obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law echo the long-ago fight over nullification and states’ rights.
The passage of three sanctuary bills last year by the state legislature in Sacramento is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was the culmination of a decades-long process, as mass immigration transformed California’s politics from reddish purple to deep blue.
The first measure that could be described as a sanctuary provision was the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order 40, enacted in 1979, which prohibited officers from arresting a person for the federal crime of illegal entry and, unless he was arrested for another crime, from even inquiring as to legal status. But that order merely instructed police to abstain from involving themselves in immigration enforcement. In the 1980s, a more proactive conception of illegal-alien sanctuary spread, as Central Americans fleeing war in their homelands snuck into the U.S. but did not qualify for asylum.
At first, only some pro-Sandinista churches postured as sanctuaries for these illegal aliens. But in late 1985, Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein signed a resolution declaring San Francisco a “city of refuge” for illegals. She ordered that “City Departments shall not discriminate against Salvadorans and Guatemalan refugees because of their immigration status, and shall not jeopardize the safety and welfare of law-abiding refugees by acting in a way that may cause their deportation.” The declaration was followed four years later by a city law formally prohibiting city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities.
Even measures such as this, which were adopted by other big cities over the years, were of largely local interest until a new system, developed at the end of the Bush administration and completed in 2013, went online. The fingerprints of every person booked by police throughout the country have long been sent to the FBI. But under the new system, dubbed Secure Communities, those fingerprints now also go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So while in the past the feds didn’t necessarily know whether cops in San Francisco arrested an illegal alien for, say, a drug offense, now they do. Every time.
There will still be some illegal aliens who elude detection if ICE has no record of them because they’ve never interacted with the immigration authorities. But if police arrest anyone who’s in the Department of Homeland Security database — who was deported previously, got turned down for asylum, was picked up by the Border Patrol, overstayed a visa, or appeared before an immigration judge — ICE learns about it.
There are only so many hours in the day, so not every arrested illegal alien can be taken into custody. But if ICE wants the alien because, for instance, he has previously been deported or is a fugitive from a deportation order, it notifies the local authorities to hold him, as they would for any other state or federal law-enforcement agency, up to 48 hours after they would otherwise have released him, so that agents can collect and deport him.
With this new fingerprint-matching system in place, instead of receiving the occasional hold notice, or “detainer,” cities and counties with large numbers of immigrants started hearing from ICE constantly. In some states where large-scale immigration was a recent development, the political culture had not yet shifted to the left to such a degree that this new level of cooperation with ICE met objections. But immigration, legal and illegal, has transformed California’s population and political culture so profoundly that the pushback there was inevitable.
Of California’s 40 million people, about 15 million are in immigrant households (immigrants and their children under 18), accounting for more than 37 percent of the state’s population. Not only is that by far the highest percentage in any state, but the increase in people in immigrant households in California from 1970 to today — just the increase — is nearly twice as large as today’s total population in immigrant households in Texas, the state in second place.
Survey after survey shows that immigrants are disproportionately big-government liberals. As one overview of the data concluded, “solid and persistent majorities of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their children share the policy preferences of the modern American Left.” As a result, as University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel has demonstrated, in the nation’s largest counties (which are where immigrants tend to settle), “Republicans have lost 0.58 percentage points in presidential elections for every one percentage-point increase in the size of the local immigrant population.”
The results in California are plain to see. There hasn’t been a Republican in statewide or federal office since Arnold Schwarzenegger (and he was only nominally Republican). Only 13 of 40 state senators and 25 of 80 state assemblymen are Republicans. This has enabled leftist maximalism on a wide range of issues, including immigration.
Even in this environment, the effects of Secure Communities in identifying deportable aliens were blunted for a time by the Obama administration’s lax policies. Despite the anti-borders Left and its kabuki protests that Obama was the deporter in chief, his administration effectively exempted most of the resident illegal population from immigration law. Even though ICE continued to be notified of arrested illegals, administration policy was to ignore all but the worst cases. In the words of John Sandweg, who headed ICE during part of Obama’s term, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen.”
Then came Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just that Trump pledged tough immigration enforcement in his raw and often coarse manner. It wasn’t just that Hillary Clinton, who said publicly that she would not deport anyone who hadn’t first been convicted of a violent felony, won California by 30 points. It was the whiplash from Obama to Trump that supercharged the sanctuary push in the state legislature. Democratic politicians, their activist allies, and illegal aliens themselves had gotten used to Obama’s arrangements and had come to think that was the way things were going to be from now on. Trump’s reversal of Obama’s laxity fell on them like a bucket of ice water.
The state took a variety of steps in response to the return of immigration enforcement. Lawmakers appropriated $45 million for a fund to help illegals fight deportation. And the state senate appointed an illegal alien to a state education commission.
But most consequential were three laws designed to limit the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law. The best known is Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, the most sweeping measure of its kind in the nation, making the entire state a sanctuary for illegal aliens. It prohibits state and local law enforcement from complying with ICE detainers in most cases. It prohibits notification to ICE about an alien unless in the past 15 years he’s been convicted of one of a list of the most serious crimes. It prohibits state and local authorities from allowing ICE to use space in their jails and from providing ICE any non-public information on suspects. It restricts state and local participation in any multi-agency task force that includes ICE.
The second of the three measures attempts to impose state oversight on any facility ICE uses to detain deportable aliens. And the final law seeks to shield illegal-alien workers from detection by, among other things, prohibiting private employers from voluntarily allowing ICE agents into any non-public area of their business.
The Trump administration has pushed back. The first step was to threaten to cut off certain Justice Department grants to sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide; longstanding doctrine limiting the withholding of federal funds to coerce states makes a broader cutoff unlikely. A few jurisdictions outside California have changed their sanctuary policies in response to the funding threat, but the administration’s initiative is tied up in litigation and, in any case, is unlikely to hurt sufficiently to persuade hard cases such as California to mend their ways.
That’s why in March the Justice Department filed suit against California to strike down all or parts of the three sanctuary laws, claiming that they were preempted by federal law and that they violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution. (Interestingly, the complaint cites, among other things, the Supreme Court ruling overturning parts of Arizona’s SB 1070, which was intended to assist in enforcement of federal immigration laws, on the same grounds of federal preemption.) But it will be a long time before the case reaches the Supreme Court; the defendants no doubt hope to drag things out long enough that President Maxine Waters or Dennis Kucinich can reverse the policy.
But change may come sooner than that. The legislature’s overreach has sparked a rebellion of communities seeking sanctuary from the sanctuary law. The small Orange County city of Los Alamitos got things rolling by voting to opt out of SB 54 and join the federal lawsuit. A growing list of other cities has joined the suit as well, as have Orange and San Diego counties. More cities and counties are likely to join them.
In an attempt to harness this political energy, two people whose children were killed by illegal aliens have launched a ballot initiative to repeal the sanctuary laws. Don Rosenberg, one of the parents, told the Washington Times , “This will be David versus Goliath. We’re clearly David on this side. But there are millions of Davids here.”
While the steady stream of preventable crimes by illegal immigrants protected by sanctuary policies keeps the issue before the public, the very extremism of the Left may supply the five smooth stones this army of Davids will need to slay the sanctuary Goliath. In February, for example, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegals that an ICE raid was planned for the Bay Area. Such brazen acts delegitimize sanctuary policies in the eyes even of moderate voters.
South Carolina eventually repealed its Ordinance of Nullification. The state’s subsequent acts of resistance against legitimate federal authority also failed. It’s too early to tell whether California will succeed where South Carolina did not.
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
Will Californians Prevail Against the Little Picture of Hell?
https://townhall.com/columnists/arthurschaper/2018/06/05/draft-n2487359
The state of California has descended into a modern-day version of Dante’s Inferno, where treachery of all kinds occupies the bottom circle. Public sector unions are running (or rather ruining) the state into bankruptcy, betraying the public trust while charging the taxpayers for the perverse privilege. Republicans collude with the supermajority of Democrats to raise taxes, fees, and unrelenting regulatory burdens.
The public schools indoctrinate their young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining California’s already depleted public services while endangering our lives, the rule of law, and public safety for all citizens. The federal government has filed lawsuits against Sanctuary California, and ICE is rounding up illegals in their homes and in workplaces. However, demonic pro-illegal forces still parade in the streets and cross our borders, defying American sovereignty. Larger cities have more homeless than homes for citizens.
The natural disasters are hitting crisis level, too. The Bible depicts torturous flames with respite in hell without respite, (Luke 16: 24). So too parched conditions have engulfed California. Wildfires have become a year-round terror, yet the state’s leadership refuses to prepare emergency water storage. This past week, two hundred firefighters had to quell another massive conflagration in south Orange County, and summer hasn’t even begun yet. To make matters legislation to make the current drastic water rationing permanent!
Even wealthy coastal elites have found that the cost of living in California is slowly exceeding its value. Money can’t create water, and financial gain provided nothing for West Los Angeles socialites when a few homeless transients set a blaze along the 405 Freeway overpass along the Santa Monica mountains.
All of this is a testimony to the damage wrought by progressive policies which have transformed California into a picture of hell. That’s precisely what Evangelical preacher Franklin Graham called California … or at least that’s what he called the sanctuary cities. During an interview on the Todd Starnes Show, Graham commented:
"People are leaving the state. The tax base is eroding. They are turning their once beautiful cities into sanctuary cities, which are just a little picture of Hell," Graham said. "Just go to San Francisco and go to this once-beautiful city and see what has happened to it."
But why did the son of the renowned Reverend Billy Graham take time to comment on the harrowing horrors of California? For his latest Gospel Crusade, he visited ten cities in the once-Golden State. Starting on May 20 in Escondido (one of several cities to challenge SB 54, aka the Sanctuary State law over the past three month), Graham is bringing the message of the Good News to the dispirited wasteland along the Left Coast.
Returning to Pastor Graham’s signature statement from the Starnes interview, finally a pastor of stature and renown is condemning sanctuary city policies, and a welcome response from the all-too-quiet church leadership in California and across the country. Pastors should be the first to denounce this misnamed, misleading agenda. The concept of sanctuary comes from the Bible, better known as “cities of refuge” (cf. Numbers 35:11-28), locations reserved for those who had accidentally killed someone. To avoid retribution, they would flee to those cities.
In California, sanctuary policies bar local and state law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials to arrest and deport illegal aliens. These cities are not safeguarding otherwise innocent people, but are protecting criminals who have broken into the United States and reside illegally to this day. Pundits left and right contend that these policies actually protect otherwise law-abiding residents to seek help and report crimes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
However, is it fair to tie the long list of hellish outcomes from these left-wing enclaves to their refusal to enforce federal immigration laws?
Yes.
What has happened to sanctuary city San Francisco, for example? The progressivism that made God nothing and man’s “ideas” everything created the s***-hole dystopia that resides there today. It’s an overpriced progressive utopia, to put it charitably. For the vast-majority of residents, even for those who can afford it, a salary of $100,000 a year barely pays the rent. Roommates doubling up is the norm, especially among the Big Tech interns who take the bus to Silicon Valley to work all day on the latest app for the Google, Facebook, EBay overlords.
For the price they pay to live in the city, San Franciscans aren’t getting their money’s worth. Intravenous drug needles litter the streets everywhere. Homelessness is more common than homeownership. “S***hole” better describes the streets of the city, where the feces piles have so overwhelmed the streets, that visitors receive maps on how best to navigate away from the crap and corruption. Street fights among transients and the mentally ill have exploded, rampant moral decline has overshadowed the once great city. Tourists find enough to see, then flee.
Freedom of speech and freedom of religion have lost their place, even though Graham’s latest crusades have succeeded in otherwise unfriendly territory, like Berkeley. Last year, the Patriot Prayer movement, headed by Joey Gibson, attempted to throw two rallies for freedom of speech and thought. The elected officials of San Francisco (including Nancy Pelosi) and the now-deceased mayor Ed Lee, smeared the peaceful program as a “White supremacy rally.” Gibson is half Japanese, by the way.
Where Gibson had tried and failed, Graham’s message of hope accomplished peaceful gatherings with a call to action to California’s Christians. And I say it’s about time. There have been flickers of hope in spite of the deranged left-wing agenda ravaging my home state. Californians in general, and Christians in particular, need to step up. They are called to be light in a dark, hellish world, but nothing good will happen if they don’t vote for their values, then educate the public how to fight against the devilish lawlessness foisted upon us by our political leaders and the cultural elites running—or rather ruining—the state.
The one topic Democrats don't dare bring up in today's SoCal primary
The airwaves in Southern California are flooded with Democratic candidate ads, with most openly touting extremely loony far-left positions – promises of free health care for all, free college for all, beefed up public funding for Planned Parenthood, full gun control, pretty much the full Bernie Sanders plate of pie-in-the-sky goodies. Democrats, whether in the House, Senate, governor, or assembly races, are all openly offering all the free stuff on the far left's wish list, not holding back at all. Fiscal discipline isn't in fashion with this bunch. If I had to speculate, I'd say it's because at the time these platforms were formulated, Democrats were convinced that a blue wave was upon them. In a crowded field, and at primary time, where only the most committed voters show up, extremism seems to be the way to stand out and get ahead of the pack.
There's one topic among these offerings that isn't being touched – not even in one campaign ad:
Illegal immigration.
As the sign says: "Caution."
We all know that Democrats favor open borders, given the potential for muscling mendicant votes in the state's poorest cities from their well oiled political machines. Democrats favor DACA, DAPA for the parents, amnesty, state benefits for illegals – from driver's licenses to free health care – an end to deportations, and no border wall, let alone National Guardsmen at the borders. You can find vague admissions of these stances on candidates' websites, buried deep.
But somehow, this topic isn't one they want to bring up in the heat of the primaries, at least not in ads, where they have an overcrowded slate of candidates on the June ballot, and face the real prospect of seeing no Democrats making it to the slate in November.
Illegal immigration seems to be the electric third rail.
That says a lot about the sentiment of the voters in illegal alien-filled California, which houses one quarter of the nation's illegals. Nobody's brought up the Democratic plan for free health care for illegals, now wending its way through the California statehouse. Nobody's asked Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for governor, what he thinks of the state's inundation of illegals, and he's certainly said nothing to the broad public about it in his ads. The costs of illegal immigration are being carefully hidden by Democrats.
Meanwhile, city after city and county after county in Southern California has joined the lawsuit against the state for its "sanctuary state" laws, which require them to house and feed illegals instead of turn them over to the feds for breaking the law. It's probably significant that increasingly blue San Diego and Orange Counties, the two areas Democrats have placed all their hopes and cash on for winning the House back, have joined this movement.
It all suggests that this topic is dry tinder among voters, the internal polls look bad for Democrats on their free everything for illegals, and the Democratic Party line is far more unpopular than anyone on the left is willing to admit.
President Trump should have a field day enacting his orderly immigration agenda, even in California, when crunch time comes at the November midterms.
It Pays to be Illegal in California
It certainly is a good time to be an illegal alien in California. Democratic State Sen. Ricardo Lara last week pitched a bill to permit illegal immigrants to serve on all state and local boards and commissions. This week, lawmakers unveiled a $1 billion health care plan that would include spending $250 million to extend health care coverage to all illegal alien adults.
“Currently, undocumented adults are explicitly and unjustly locked out of healthcare due to their immigration status. In a matter of weeks, California legislators will have a decisive opportunity to reverse that cruel and counterproductive fact,” Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula said in Monday’s Sacramento Bee.
His legislation, Assembly Bill 2965, would give as many as 114,000 uninsured illegal aliens access to Medi-Cal programs. A companion bill has been sponsored by State Sen. Richard Lara.
But that could just be a drop in the bucket. The Democrats’ plan covers more than 100,000 illegal aliens with annual incomes bless than $25,000, however an estimated 1.3 million might be eligible based on their earnings.
In addition, it is estimated that 20 percent of those living in California illegally are uninsured – the $250 million covers just 11 percent.
So, will politicians soon be asking California taxpayers once again to dip into their pockets to pay for the remaining 9 percent?
Before they ask for more, Democrats have to win the approval of Gov. Jerry Brown, who cautioned against spending away the state’s surplus when he introduced his $190 billion budget proposal in January.
Given Brown’s openness to expanding Medi-Cal expansions in recent years, not to mention his proclivity for blindly supporting any measure benefitting lawbreaking immigrants, the latest fiscal irresponsibility may win approval.
And if he takes a pass, the two Democrats most likely to succeed Brown – Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – favor excessive social spending and are actively courting illegal immigrant support.
Maybe if California and New York Cared as Much about the Middle Class as They Do About Illegal Alien…
TWEET
Economists Arthur Laffer (the guy with the famous curve) and Stephen Moore, a leading libertarian voice for mass immigration, predict that some 800,000 people will pack up and leave California and New York over the next three years. The reason they cite for the exodus in their Wall Street Journal op-ed is that the new federal tax law, which eliminates deductions for state income taxes, will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Implicit in their assignment of blame to the federal tax overhaul is that the people who will be leaving are the ones who pay taxes – the sort of folks that state and local governments rely to provide a revenue stream. As such, one would think that these would be the people whose concerns would get a lot of interest in Sacramento and Albany. But clearly that is not the case.
For the privilege of living in places like the Bay Area, Los Angeles, or New York City, you must bear some of the most ridiculous housing costs in the nation, along with crushing state and local taxes. In California, be prepared to turn over as much as 13.3 percent of your income to the state. High-earning New Yorkers fork over a more modest 8.82 percent, but if you live in the five boroughs you can tack on an additional 3.87 percent in city income taxes. California and New York also have some of the highest sales tax rates in the country at 8.54 percent and 8.49 percent respectively (and higher in many cities). And now, as Laffer and Moore point out, you can’t even deduct those costs on your federal taxes.
One might also think that for all these state and local taxes, residents could expect the most modern infrastructure, efficient public transportation, world class public schools, affordable housing, and other amenities. Ha. No, in Sacramento and Albany they prioritize an ever-growing list of public benefits and services to immigration law violators; subsidies and grants to go to college, and legal aid for illegal aliens in deportation proceedings. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is even threatening to sue the federal government (with taxpayer money, of course) for even trying to enforce immigration laws.
Some $23 billion of California taxpayers’ money and $7.5 billion of New York taxpayers’ money is expended on illegal aliens and their dependent children. For the benefit of the trolls at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the problems of California and New York cannot entirely be blamed on illegal aliens. Many, many factors have led to the middle class flight from these states. But one has to wonder why states wouldn’t want to do as much to woo their tax base into staying as they are doing to attract, protect, and reward illegal aliens.
Cutting back on benefits and protections for illegal aliens would not solve all of these states’ problems, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. In the meantime, every U-Haul packing up a middle or upper-middle class family headed out of California and New York represents a loss of vital revenue necessary to address myriad needs of both citizens and legal immigrants.
Steinle’s murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!
California Goes Rogue
By Mark Krikorian
National Review Online, April 26, 2018
How the Golden State defies immigration law
‘I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.” That was President Andrew Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s intention to prevent enforcement of a federal law within the state. Despite his admiration for Jackson, President Trump hasn’t yet threatened to start hanging California politicians. But that state’s “sanctuary” policies protecting illegal immigrants and obstructing enforcement of federal immigration law echo the long-ago fight over nullification and states’ rights.
The passage of three sanctuary bills last year by the state legislature in Sacramento is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. It was the culmination of a decades-long process, as mass immigration transformed California’s politics from reddish purple to deep blue.
The first measure that could be described as a sanctuary provision was the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order 40, enacted in 1979, which prohibited officers from arresting a person for the federal crime of illegal entry and, unless he was arrested for another crime, from even inquiring as to legal status. But that order merely instructed police to abstain from involving themselves in immigration enforcement. In the 1980s, a more proactive conception of illegal-alien sanctuary spread, as Central Americans fleeing war in their homelands snuck into the U.S. but did not qualify for asylum.
At first, only some pro-Sandinista churches postured as sanctuaries for these illegal aliens. But in late 1985, Mayor (now Senator) Dianne Feinstein signed a resolution declaring San Francisco a “city of refuge” for illegals. She ordered that “City Departments shall not discriminate against Salvadorans and Guatemalan refugees because of their immigration status, and shall not jeopardize the safety and welfare of law-abiding refugees by acting in a way that may cause their deportation.” The declaration was followed four years later by a city law formally prohibiting city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities.
Even measures such as this, which were adopted by other big cities over the years, were of largely local interest until a new system, developed at the end of the Bush administration and completed in 2013, went online. The fingerprints of every person booked by police throughout the country have long been sent to the FBI. But under the new system, dubbed Secure Communities, those fingerprints now also go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). So while in the past the feds didn’t necessarily know whether cops in San Francisco arrested an illegal alien for, say, a drug offense, now they do. Every time.
There will still be some illegal aliens who elude detection if ICE has no record of them because they’ve never interacted with the immigration authorities. But if police arrest anyone who’s in the Department of Homeland Security database — who was deported previously, got turned down for asylum, was picked up by the Border Patrol, overstayed a visa, or appeared before an immigration judge — ICE learns about it.
There are only so many hours in the day, so not every arrested illegal alien can be taken into custody. But if ICE wants the alien because, for instance, he has previously been deported or is a fugitive from a deportation order, it notifies the local authorities to hold him, as they would for any other state or federal law-enforcement agency, up to 48 hours after they would otherwise have released him, so that agents can collect and deport him.
With this new fingerprint-matching system in place, instead of receiving the occasional hold notice, or “detainer,” cities and counties with large numbers of immigrants started hearing from ICE constantly. In some states where large-scale immigration was a recent development, the political culture had not yet shifted to the left to such a degree that this new level of cooperation with ICE met objections. But immigration, legal and illegal, has transformed California’s population and political culture so profoundly that the pushback there was inevitable.
Of California’s 40 million people, about 15 million are in immigrant households (immigrants and their children under 18), accounting for more than 37 percent of the state’s population. Not only is that by far the highest percentage in any state, but the increase in people in immigrant households in California from 1970 to today — just the increase — is nearly twice as large as today’s total population in immigrant households in Texas, the state in second place.
Survey after survey shows that immigrants are disproportionately big-government liberals. As one overview of the data concluded, “solid and persistent majorities of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their children share the policy preferences of the modern American Left.” As a result, as University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel has demonstrated, in the nation’s largest counties (which are where immigrants tend to settle), “Republicans have lost 0.58 percentage points in presidential elections for every one percentage-point increase in the size of the local immigrant population.”
The results in California are plain to see. There hasn’t been a Republican in statewide or federal office since Arnold Schwarzenegger (and he was only nominally Republican). Only 13 of 40 state senators and 25 of 80 state assemblymen are Republicans. This has enabled leftist maximalism on a wide range of issues, including immigration.
Even in this environment, the effects of Secure Communities in identifying deportable aliens were blunted for a time by the Obama administration’s lax policies. Despite the anti-borders Left and its kabuki protests that Obama was the deporter in chief, his administration effectively exempted most of the resident illegal population from immigration law. Even though ICE continued to be notified of arrested illegals, administration policy was to ignore all but the worst cases. In the words of John Sandweg, who headed ICE during part of Obama’s term, “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen.”
Then came Donald Trump.
It wasn’t just that Trump pledged tough immigration enforcement in his raw and often coarse manner. It wasn’t just that Hillary Clinton, who said publicly that she would not deport anyone who hadn’t first been convicted of a violent felony, won California by 30 points. It was the whiplash from Obama to Trump that supercharged the sanctuary push in the state legislature. Democratic politicians, their activist allies, and illegal aliens themselves had gotten used to Obama’s arrangements and had come to think that was the way things were going to be from now on. Trump’s reversal of Obama’s laxity fell on them like a bucket of ice water.
The state took a variety of steps in response to the return of immigration enforcement. Lawmakers appropriated $45 million for a fund to help illegals fight deportation. And the state senate appointed an illegal alien to a state education commission.
But most consequential were three laws designed to limit the federal government’s ability to enforce immigration law. The best known is Senate Bill 54, the California Values Act, the most sweeping measure of its kind in the nation, making the entire state a sanctuary for illegal aliens. It prohibits state and local law enforcement from complying with ICE detainers in most cases. It prohibits notification to ICE about an alien unless in the past 15 years he’s been convicted of one of a list of the most serious crimes. It prohibits state and local authorities from allowing ICE to use space in their jails and from providing ICE any non-public information on suspects. It restricts state and local participation in any multi-agency task force that includes ICE.
The second of the three measures attempts to impose state oversight on any facility ICE uses to detain deportable aliens. And the final law seeks to shield illegal-alien workers from detection by, among other things, prohibiting private employers from voluntarily allowing ICE agents into any non-public area of their business.
The Trump administration has pushed back. The first step was to threaten to cut off certain Justice Department grants to sanctuary jurisdictions nationwide; longstanding doctrine limiting the withholding of federal funds to coerce states makes a broader cutoff unlikely. A few jurisdictions outside California have changed their sanctuary policies in response to the funding threat, but the administration’s initiative is tied up in litigation and, in any case, is unlikely to hurt sufficiently to persuade hard cases such as California to mend their ways.
That’s why in March the Justice Department filed suit against California to strike down all or parts of the three sanctuary laws, claiming that they were preempted by federal law and that they violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution. (Interestingly, the complaint cites, among other things, the Supreme Court ruling overturning parts of Arizona’s SB 1070, which was intended to assist in enforcement of federal immigration laws, on the same grounds of federal preemption.) But it will be a long time before the case reaches the Supreme Court; the defendants no doubt hope to drag things out long enough that President Maxine Waters or Dennis Kucinich can reverse the policy.
But change may come sooner than that. The legislature’s overreach has sparked a rebellion of communities seeking sanctuary from the sanctuary law. The small Orange County city of Los Alamitos got things rolling by voting to opt out of SB 54 and join the federal lawsuit. A growing list of other cities has joined the suit as well, as have Orange and San Diego counties. More cities and counties are likely to join them.
In an attempt to harness this political energy, two people whose children were killed by illegal aliens have launched a ballot initiative to repeal the sanctuary laws. Don Rosenberg, one of the parents, told the Washington Times , “This will be David versus Goliath. We’re clearly David on this side. But there are millions of Davids here.”
While the steady stream of preventable crimes by illegal immigrants protected by sanctuary policies keeps the issue before the public, the very extremism of the Left may supply the five smooth stones this army of Davids will need to slay the sanctuary Goliath. In February, for example, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf warned illegals that an ICE raid was planned for the Bay Area. Such brazen acts delegitimize sanctuary policies in the eyes even of moderate voters.
South Carolina eventually repealed its Ordinance of Nullification. The state’s subsequent acts of resistance against legitimate federal authority also failed. It’s too early to tell whether California will succeed where South Carolina did not.
Adios, Sanctuary La Raza Welfare State of California
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
A fifth-generation Californian laments his state’s ongoing economic collapse.
By Steve Baldwin
American Spectator, October 19, 2017
What’s clear is that the producers are leaving the state and the takers are coming in. Many of the takers are illegal aliens, now estimated to number over 2.6 million. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates that California spends $22 billion on government services for illegal aliens, including welfare, education, Medicaid, and criminal justice system costs.
BLOG: MANY DISPUTE CALIFORNIA’S EXPENDITURES FOR THE LA RAZA WELFARE STATE IN MEXIFORNIA JUST AS THEY DISPUTE THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS. APPROXIMATELY HALF THE POPULATION OF CA IS NOW MEXICAN AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE LIKE BUNNIES. THE $22 BILLION IS STATE EXPENDITURE ONLY. COUNTIES PAY OUT MORE WITH LOS ANGELES COUNTY LEADING AT OVER A BILLION DOLLARS PAID OUT YEARLY TO MEXICO’S ANCHOR BABY BREEDERS. NOW MULTIPLY THAT BY THE NUMBER OF COUNTIES IN CA AND YOU START TO GET AN IDEA OF THE STAGGERING WELFARE STATE MEXICO AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAVE ERECTED SANS ANY LEGALS VOTES. ADD TO THIS THE FREE ENTERPRISE HOSPITAL AND CLINIC COST FOR LA RAZA’S “FREE” MEDICAL WHICH IS ESTIMATED TO BE ABOUT $1.5 BILLION PER YEAR.
Liberals claim they more than make that up with taxes paid, but that’s simply not true. It’s not even close. FAIR estimates illegal aliens in California contribute only $1.21 billion in tax revenue, which means they cost California $20.6 billion, or at least $1,800 per household.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
Nonetheless, open border advocates, such as Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the Center for Immigration Studies has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegal aliens were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, California, with its 2.6 million illegal aliens, would be booming.
Furthermore, the complexion of illegal aliens has changed with far more on welfare and committing crimes than those who entered the country in the 1980s. Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has testified before a Congressional committee that in 2004, 95% of all outstanding warrants for murder in Los Angeles were for illegal aliens; in 2000, 23% of all Los Angeles County jail inmates were illegal aliens and that in 1995, 60% of Los Angeles’s largest street gang, the 18th Street gang, were illegal aliens. Granted, those statistics are old, but if you talk to any California law enforcement officer, they will tell you it’s much worse today. The problem is that the Brown administration will not release any statewide data on illegal alien crimes. That would be insensitive. And now that California has declared itself a “sanctuary state,” there is little doubt this sends a message south of the border that will further escalate illegal immigration into the state.
"If the racist "Sensenbrenner Legislation" passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and "Immigrant Sanctuary" movements to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan."
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
Indeed, California goes out of its way to attract illegal aliens. The state has even created government programs that cater exclusively to illegal aliens. For example, the State Department of Motor Vehicles has offices that only process driver licenses for illegal aliens. With over a million illegal aliens now driving in California, the state felt compelled to help them avoid the long lines the rest of us must endure at the DMV. And just recently, the state-funded University of California system announced it will spend $27 million on financial aid for illegal aliens. They’ve even taken out radio spots on stations all along the border, just to make sure other potential illegal border crossers hear about this program. I can’t afford college education for all my four sons, but my taxes will pay for illegals to get a college education.
If Immigration Creates Wealth, Why Is California America's Poverty Capital?
California used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a word: immigration. According to the U.S. Census Bureau'...: The Golden State is peddling fool's gold lately.
California used to be home to America's largest and most affluent middle class. Today, it is America's poverty capital. What went wrong? In a word: immigration.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure, California's poverty rate hovers around 15 percent. But this figure is misleading: the Census Bureau measures poverty relative to a uniform national standard, which doesn't account for differences in living costs between states – the cost of taxes, housing, and health care are higher in California than in Oklahoma, for example. Accounting for these differences reveals that California's real poverty rate is 20.6 percent – the highest in America, and nearly twice the national average of 12.7 percent.
Likewise, income inequality in California is the second-highest in America, behind only New York. In fact, if California were an independent country, it would be the 17th most unequal country on Earth, nestled comfortably between Honduras and Guatemala. Mexico is slightly more egalitarian. California is far more unequal than the "social democracies" it emulates: Canada is the 111th most unequal nation, while Norway is far down the list at number 153 (out of 176 countries). In terms of income inequality, California has more in common with banana republics than other "social democracies."
More Government, More Poverty
High taxes, excessive regulations, and a lavish welfare state – these are the standard explanations for California's poverty epidemic. They have some merit. For example, California has both the highest personal income tax rate and the highest sales tax in America, according to Politifact.
Not only are California's taxes high, but successive "progressive" governments have swamped the state in a sea of red tape. Onerous regulations cripple small businesses and retard economic growth. Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, gives a few specific examples of how excessive government regulation hurts California's poor. He writes in a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times:
Extensive environmental regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions make energy more expensive, also hurting the poor. By some estimates, California energy costs are as much as 50% higher than the national average. Jonathan A. Lesser of Continental Economics ... found that "in 2012, nearly 1 million California households faced ... energy expenditures exceeding 10% of household income."
Some government regulation is necessary and desirable, but most of California's is not. There is virtue in governing with a "light touch."
Finally, California's welfare state is, perhaps paradoxically, a source of poverty in the state. The Orange Country Register reports that California's social safety net is comparable in scale to those found in Europe:
In California a mother with two children under the age of 5 who participates in these major welfare programs – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), housing assistance, home energy assistance, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children – would receive a benefits package worth $30,828 per year.
... [Similar] benefits in Europe ranged from $38,588 per year in Denmark to just $1,112 in Romania. The California benefits package is higher than in well-known welfare states as France ($17,324), Germany ($23,257) and even Sweden ($22,111).
Although welfare states ideally help the poor, reality is messy. There are three main problems with the welfare state. First, it incentivizes poverty by rewardingthe poor with government handouts that are often far more valuable than a job. This can be ameliorated to some degree by imposing work requirements on welfare recipients, but in practice, such requirements are rarely imposed. Second, welfare states are expensive. This means higher taxes and therefore slower economic growth and fewer job opportunities for everyone – including the poor.
Finally, welfare states are magnets for the poor. Whether through domestic migration or foreign immigration, poor people flock to places with generous welfare states. This is logical from the immigrant's perspective, but it makes little sense from the taxpayer's. This fact is why socialism and open borders arefundamentally incompatible.
Why Big Government?
Since 1960, California's population exploded from 15.9 to 39 million people. The growth was almost entirely due to immigration – many people came from other states, but the majority came from abroad. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that 10 million immigrants currently reside in California. This works out to 26 percent of the state's population.
BLOG: COME TO MEXIFORNIA! HALF OF LOS ANGELES 15 MILLION ARE ILLEGALS!
This figure includes 2.4 million illegal aliens, although a recent study from Yale University suggests that the true number of aliens is at least double that. Modifying the initial figure implies that nearly one in three Californians is an immigrant. This is not to disparage California's immigrant population, but it is madness to deny that such a large influx of people has changed California's society and economy.
Importantly, immigrants vote Democrat by a ratio higher than 2:1, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies. In California, immigration has increased the pool of likely Democrat voters by nearly 5 million people, compared to just 2.4 million additional likely Republican voters. Not only does this almost guarantee Democratic victories, but it also shifts California's political midpoint to the left. This means that to remain competitive in elections, the Republicans must abandon or soften many conservative positions so as to cater to the center.
California became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.
REALITIES OF A STATE IN MELTDOWN:
THE INVISIBLE CALIFORNIA
De facto apartheid world in the Golden State.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270265/invisible-california-bruce-thornton
In 1973, as I was going through customs in New York, the customs agent rifling my bag looked at my passport and said, with a Bronx sneer, “Bruce Thornton, huh. Must be one of them Hollywood names.”
Hearing that astonishing statement, I realized for the first time that California is as much an idea as a place. There were few regions in America more distant from Hollywood than the rural, mostly poor, multiethnic San Joaquin Valley where my family lived and ranched. Yet to this New Yorker, the Valley was invisible.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S WAR ON AMERICA’S LEGAL WORKERS, BORDERS AND LAWS as they build the LA RAZA welfare state on our backs.
*One in every eleven persons born in Mexico has gone to the U.S. The National Review reported that in 2014 $1.87 billion was spent on incarcerating illegal immigrant criminals….Now add hundreds of billions for welfare and remittances! MICHAEL BARGO, Jr…… for the AMERICAN THINKER.COM
"Chairman of the DNC Keith Ellison was even spotted wearing a shirt stating, "I don't believe in borders" written in Spanish.
According to a new CBS news poll, 63 percent of Americans in competitive congressional districts think those crossing illegally should be immediately deported or arrested. This is undoubtedly contrary to the views expressed by the Democratic Party.
Their endgame is open borders, which has become evident over the last eight years. Don't for one second let them convince you otherwise." Evan Berryhill Twitter @EvBerryhill.
Democrats Want Catch-and-Release for all Pregnant MigrantsPro-migration advocates are trying to reopen a catch-and-release loophole for the growing number of pregnant migrants which has been narrowed by President Donald Trump.
The effort builds on the Democrats’ success in using emotional images of detained migrant parents and their children to undo Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy, and it may help Democrats gain support among suburban voters who are disturbed by televised coverage of the sometimes-distressing process of deporting migrants.
From mid-December 2017 to early-April 2018, almost 600 pregnant migrants were caught crossing the border, and almost 40 were in detention on April 7, the Department of Homeland Security told Breitbart News. The agency declined to say if the pregnant migrants were returned home or were released into the United States.
The inflow of pregnant migrants in the first quarter of 2018 has jumped to 292 women, up by one-third over 2017 numbers, says a July 13 letter from four Democratic Senators to the Inspector General at DHS who asked for an investigation of the agency’s practices.
In March, amid the rise, Trump’s DHS deputies began ending the automatic-release policy for all pregnant women which was established by President Barack Obama in 2016. According to the DHS policy, only third-trimester pregnancies are grounds for release:
ICE has ended the presumption of release for all pregnant detainees … Generally, absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE will not detain a pregnant alien during the third trimester of pregnancy.
Once released into the United States, most migrants evade enforcement agencies by disappearing into the population of roughly 11 million illegals and then getting jobs. Also, migrants who give birth in the United States win the hugely valuable prize of U.S. citizenship for their children — and likely, eventually, also f0r themselves — because of the U.S. government’s practice of granting citizenship to all people born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ foreign citizenship or prior deportations.
Migrants are aware of the pregnancy loophole, and some make the dangerous trip north once they are pregnant. For example, the Getty image above shows a migrant from El Salvador, seven months pregnant, who turned herself over to border agents on December 7, 2015, near Rio Grande City, Texas. According to the Getty photographer, “many pregnant women, according to Border Patrol agents, cross illegally into the U.S. late into their terms with the intention of birthing their babies in the United States.”
In August, a British TV network followed a pregnant woman and her husband to the border. Once at the border the couple separated to improve their chances of each getting into the United States:
The nine-month pregnancy-loophole push is being supported by Democratic Senators and Representatives, pro-migration groups, and immigration lawyers and their media allies. Twenty-three Democratic Senators are co-sponsoring the “Stop Shackling and Detaining Pregnant Women Act” which says the Department of Homeland Security:
(A) shall not detain a person under any provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.) during pregnancy or postpartum recovery, pending a decision with respect to whether the person is to be removed from the United States; and(B) shall immediately release any detainee found to be pregnant.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that in our country pregnant women are being detained, shackled, and denied the care they need to have a healthy pregnancy,” claimedWashington Sen. Patty Murray in July. “The Trump Administration should immediately reverse course on this heartless and dangerous policy that puts the health of mothers and infants at risk.”
Pro-migration groups also want to reopen the loophole. For example, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health complained that Trump’s policy:
gives ICE officials the authority to freely detain pregnant individuals and determine their release on a case-by-case basis. Given ICE’s record of not releasing other immigrant populations, we can expect them to also keep pregnant women indefinitely detained. We at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) believe this policy change was made to boost private prison company profits and to meet the goals of an anti-immigrant agenda …If we want this barbaric practice to end, we must abolish ICE and the institutions that are perpetuating unjust practices. Efforts to abolish ICE seek to overhaul the system in the long run, which endangers the lives of our community members held in these facilities, and in the interim we demand ICE adopt a presumption of release for pregnant detainees.
One unnamed poster-child for the new policy is being offered up by immigration lawyers, via the Daily Beast website, in an article titled “ICE Is Detaining a Woman Who Is 32 Weeks Pregnant”:
The woman arrived in the United States on July 24 of this year, along with her husband and three children, according to Katy Murdza, advocacy director of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which is representing her. The family came from Mexico seeking asylum. They were initially put in Customs and Border Protection custody. Then the father was sent to one ICE detention facility, and the mother and three children—all under age 12—were sent to the Dilley family detention center in Texas.After arriving at the detention center on July 27, the woman––whose name is being withheld because of her tenuous immigration status––had troubling symptoms, including fatigue, insomnia, and abdominal pain. And, for the first time in her pregnancy, she began having serious vaginal bleeding. Her baby is due to be born on Sept. 19, putting her almost halfway through the third trimester of her pregnancy.Before the Trump administration, ICE had a policy––one it sometimes violated––against detaining pregnant women. In March, the Trump administration [has] announced that the policy had changed, and that pregnant women would not automatically be released from ICE custody. But in that announcement, the agency said that “Generally, absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE will not detain a pregnant alien during the third trimester of pregnancy.”
The article was amplified by pro-migration advocates.
However, Trump policy has made it more difficult for pregnant migrants to slip into the United States, pro-migration activists told Buzzfeed News in July:
Pregnant women were often released from CBP centers faster than other detainees, particularly after August 2016, when ICE issued a policy limiting detention of pregnant women to only “extraordinary” circumstances or cases of mandatory detention. Often it took only a phone call to the center to get a pregnant woman released on parole, Linda Rivas, the executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, told BuzzFeed News. After Trump entered the White House, these calls stopped working, she said. And after the new policy was announced, advocates stopped having a reason to think they would.
In a statement to Breitbart News, DHS said:
To better align with the President’s Executive Order, ICE has ended the presumption of release for all pregnant detainees. Instead, as with all detainees except those in cases of mandatory detention, ICE will complete a case-by-case custody determination taking any special factors into account. This does not mean that all pregnant aliens will be detained; only those whose detention is necessary to effectuate removal, as well as those deemed a flight risk or danger to the community. Generally, absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE will not detain a pregnant alien during the third trimester of pregnancy. ICE detention facilities will continue to provide onsite prenatal care and education, as well as remote access to specialists for pregnant women who remain in custody.
An agency statement to Breitbart News said:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is committed to ensuring the health, safety, and welfare of all those in our care. In accordance with ICE’s rigorous performance-based national detention standards, all woman up to age 56 are screened for pregnancy shortly after being processed into the agency’s detention facilities. In cases where the intake screening results are in question, further lab tests will be ordered to confirm a negative or positive pregnancy result. In addition to pregnancy screenings at intake, ICE detention facilities provide onsite prenatal care and education, as well as remote access to specialists for pregnant women who remain in custody.ICE makes custody decisions on a case-by-case basis, following a comprehensive review of the circumstances including any known medical conditions. In making such determinations, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers weigh a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, the person’s criminal record, immigration history, ties to the community, risk of flight, and whether he or she poses a potential threat to public safety.ICE Health Service Corps (IHSC) and the service providers who provide care to ICE detainees are required to comply with ICE standards and government contractual terms governing ICE’s detention operations. While in ICE custody, female detainees receive routine, age-appropriate gynecological and obstetrical health care, consistent with recognized community guidelines for women’s health services.When positive pregnancy test results are received, this information is entered into the detainee’s health record, so that appropriate medical care is provided. For non-IHSC staffed facilities, the IHSC Field Medical Coordinator (FMC) assigned to the facility is notified. In addition, local ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Field Office leadership is also notified of any pregnant females in custody and will ultimately determine if detainees should be transferred to other facilities or released.All detainees, determined to be pregnant, are provided appropriate education, pre-natal care, and post-natal care. Such care includes referral to a physician specializing in high-risk pregnancies when high risk pregnancy is indicated.IHSC providers must provide relevant laboratory results and objective measurements (e.g., fetal heart tones rate, fundal height measurement) to the obstetrician to facilitate continuity of care. Medical providers must see pregnant detainees/residents on a monthly basis, or more often, based on risk factors or the recommendation of the obstetrics specialist.At all non-IHSC staffed facilities, detainees are evaluated and treated pursuant to the contractually applicable detention standards.
College-Grad Salaries Eroded by Hidden Army of 1.5 Million Visa-Workers
Every CEO in every company sees the business opportunity: Will I earn higher profits by replacing my American staff with cheaper H-1B workers? The answer is an obvious yes.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.
STARING IN THE FACE of AMERICA’S UNRAVELING and the ROAD TO REVOLUTION
“It will more likely come on the heels of economic dislocation and dwindling wealth to redistribute.”
"The kind of people needed for violent change these days are living in off-the-grid rural compounds, or the “gangster paradise” where the businesses of drugs, guns, and prostitution are much more lucrative than “transforming” America along Cuban lines." BRUCE THORNTON
*
There can be no resolution to any social problem confronting the population in the United States and internationally outside of a frontal assault on the wealth of the financial elite.
The political system is controlled by this social layer, which uses a portion of its economic plunder to bribe politicians and government officials, whether Democratic or Republican.
THE INVITED INVADING HORDES: IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"In the decade following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the capitalist class has delivered powerful blows to the social position of the working class. As a result, the working class in the US, the world’s “richest country,” faces levels of economic hardship not seen since the 1930s."
"Inequality has reached unprecedented levels: the wealth of America’s three richest people now equals the net worth of the poorest half of the US population."
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