Report: ICE Releases Border-Crossing Terrorist Suspect from Venezuela Despite FBI Recommendation
A Lebanon-born Venezuelan on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist due to “highly derogatory information” is free in Michigan
When President Joe Biden’s government ended interior deportations of illegally present foreign nationals in America last year, one group left on a very short list of potential expellees was “suspected terrorists”.
But a new and so-far undisputed news report has it that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Washington, D.C., ordered the release of a Lebanon-born Venezuelan named Issam Bazzi who swam the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas, and then was flagged as being on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist.
All this and more comes from former New York Times writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie LeDuff, reporting in a January 27 story for the online news outlet Deadline Detroit. LeDuff’s report stated that ICE HQ overrode FBI recommendations to keep the 50-year-old Bazzi in custody on the Texas border because of “highly derogatory Information” and that he posed a flight risk.
The reason ICE headquarters intervened for the release of a suspected border-crossing terrorist from Hezbollah-friendly Venezuela whose intelligence file contained highly derogatory information?
Concern that he might catch Covid-19 in the detention center because he was overweight, LeDuff reported.
Instead of extended detention, investigation, and deportation that are all supposed to be in store for every FBI watch-listed migrant caught crossing the border, Bazzi is living free on his own recognizance in Dearborn, Mich., pending the outcome of an asylum case that will take years to conclude because of a backlog.
Someone in the federal government apparently was left so aggrieved or fearful by ICE headquarters’ intervention that they leaked classified, “sensitive government documents” about the episode to LeDuff. He went with it after the FBI and ICE stonewalled his calls for comment.
Those documents describe Bazzi as a person with highly derogatory information and ties to an unspecified terrorist group, LeDuff wrote (although it is likely Hezbollah, as I’ll explain shortly).
In October, Bazzi flew with his wife and daughter from the Venezuelan capital of Caracas to Monterrey, Mexico, a typical travel plan for record numbers of Venezuelans fleeing the economy destroyed by the military dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro and now swelling the mass migration crisis at the U.S. southern border.
Some 24,819 Venezuelans crossed in December 2021, well more than double the number in just September and compared to 206 in December 2020, CBP data show. Some who got in before March 2021 will get to stay under a benefit the Biden administration announced called Temporary Protected Status. Most who came in after March still get to stay while they pursue asylum on grounds of persecution by Venezuela’s government.
The Bazzi family was amid this latter throng. In November 2021, they hired a smuggler who crossed them from Matamoros, Mexico, into Brownsville.
A National Security Problem Emerges in the New Venezuelan Border Migration
If LeDuff’s story is true — and, again, no one has challenged it — the Bazzi river crossing and release to the Detroit area reveal a national security threat embedded in this new Venezuelan traffic not previously considered. It is a threat with which U.S. homeland security will be challenged to contend, competently, due to the mass migration crisis. That crisis has reached historic proportions and appears to have overburdened almost every border management control system in the American arsenal, including counterterrorism programs that should have kept Bazzi in custody.
As I report in America’s Covert Border War: The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jhadist Infiltration, such finds trigger in-person interrogations by federal officers and further investigation to determine threat level, purpose, and other potential collaborators. A routine database check at the Texas border apparently showed Bazzi was on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist. In line with those protocols, after at least one federal in-person interview, the FBI recommended to ICE that Bazzi remain in detention as a flight risk, LeDuff cited the leaked documents as saying. That would be the norm.
Usually, anyone caught at the border who is already flagged as a suspected jihadist terrorist is deported, I report in my book. No known public reporting has shown that migrants on the watchlist were simply released on their own recognizance.
But very abnormally, ICE headquarters ordered him released on or about December 9 with a personal recognizance bond and honor-system promise that he voluntarily report to Detroit immigration offices in March. In this, Bazzi was treated like any other of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who are not on the FBI terrorism watchlist that the Biden administration has let in since taking office,.
Evidence Stacking Up that Border Counterterrorism Systems Are Faltering
Last year, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended some 14 migrants who crossed the southern border and were on the FBI terrorism watchlist, according to former Chief Border Patrol Agent Rodney Scott. This number would not account for an undisclosed number of others almost certainly also caught south of the border on the routes through Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico. And they often enough are.
Americans can only hope that, in the current mass migration crisis that started and went on throughout 2021, none of those 14 were released into the country on their own recognizance to pursue asylum claims. All should have been deported in line with standard procedure. Deportation also should have happened to all of those caught by American allied countries south of the border, as Mexico typically does and also as Costa Rica and Panama do, working closely with the Americans.
The Bazzi case is only the second case I have noted where these wise protocols have broken down.
One explanation why Bazzi was released might be that the border crisis of historic proportions in the American experience is finally breaking down the systems that catch migrant-terrorists that I described in America’s Covert Border War.
The first case seems to have happened In late December, in Mexico. I reported that Mexico’s government released a Yemeni migrant it knew, from a previous encounter, had flagged on the FBI’s terrorism watchlist. CBP considered the Yemeni to be a “Category 5” member of a terrorist organization.
Mexico first captured Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed in April 2021 and, in line with American protocols, deported him back to Yemen. But an American law enforcement intelligence source told CIS that Mexican authorities left him in Europe at the airport and returned to Mexico. Ahmed abandoned his flight and returned to Mexico, too. The Mexicans caught him again in July 2021.
Mexican immigration, by then utterly swamped with huge and historic volumes of migrants going to the southern border, held him for nearly five months. But then they had to clear their own detention centers. They flushed out Ahmed with everyone else, the law enforcement source told CIS. Like any Central American or Haitian migrant, the Yemeni was told to voluntarily report in once a week to Mexican immigration, but of course, he disappeared instead.
That release presented a sharp departure from normal collaborative protocols with American intelligence, wherein the two governments together would make sure such a migrant was deported and never released.
The Americans felt compelled to issue a bulletin warning law enforcement in the Del Rio, Texas, area to be on the lookout for the man.
Of Venezuela’s Terrorism Nests and Rolling Luggage on the Rio Grande
Venezuelans arriving in Tapachula, Mexico, in January 2021 from the Rio Suchiate river border with Guatemala. Photo by Todd Bensman.
Iran and its Lebanon-based proxy, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah, maintain deep ties with Venezuela’s central government, through the nation’s wealthy Lebanese diaspora. The Iran-Hezbollah presence inside Venezuela, working within Lebanese clan structures, dates to when the late leftist dictator Hugo Chavez took power in 1999 and appointed many Venezuela-born Lebanese to powerful cabinet posts, including offices of immigration, foreign trade, and tourism. That presence and influence, backed in recent years by Russia, continued after Chavez died to the present-day regime of Nicolas Maduro.
Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure and Free Society with contacts inside Venezuela, reports extensively about how Iran and Hezbollah work closely with the Maduro regime building transnational organized crime, human smuggling, and financial networks throughout South America and into the United States.
He told CIS that American and Israeli intelligence services have long known that Iran, Hezbollah, and Venezuela’s Lebanese government officials provide these foreign operatives with elaborate state-sponsored cover identities and access to its state-run airline and banking systems, enabling them to move freely in the Western Hemisphere.
The state-issued fake identities have allowed terrorist operatives to travel all over the region and world developing illicit businesses and building terrorism capability, without the true origins and identities of these operatives becoming known, Humire said.
“I have examined a couple dozen cases of individuals who got the full suite of records enabling establishment of identities,” Humire said. “New birth certificates, passports, banking, and property all get put under these names so that that person now has a document ledger saying they were born in Venezuela.”
Clandestine agents of Hezbollah’s notorious Unit 910 are periodically uncovered inside the United States, including, as I have extensively reported, in the Detroit area.
Humire said he does not recognize the name Bazzi, which LeDuff provided in his story.
But he said his organization has uncovered links between the major human smuggling organization that is moving significant numbers of Venezuelans right now and the state-run airline that most often flies the migrants into Guatemala or Mexico for their journey into the United States.
LeDuff reported that Bazzi flew from Caracas, Venezuela, to Monterrey, Mexico, which is known to be a typical leg of the Venezuelan migration route. Many Venezuelans are, almost comically, seen dragging rolling luggage over the Guatemala border river or up the Texas banks of the Rio Grande.
With regard to Bazzi and thousands of others reaching the American southern border, he described a problem for American law enforcement: “The real big question is, is he just a Venezuelan Lebanese who is part of the community where everyone is fleeing the conditions in the country? Or that he is one of those terror figures whose movement the [Maduro] government facilitated with new identities?”
“American homeland security”, Humire said, “is going to have a hard time figuring that out.”
The Bazzi case, he said, “may be the first proven case where individuals fitting this background are moving through the corridor. If this is not the case with him, it still is going to happen sooner or later.”
What Nations Do Criminal Aliens in Oregon Come From?
Are migrants more likely than natives to commit crimes? I leave that question to my colleagues Steven Camarota and Jessica Vaughan.
But do some nations provide us a higher proportion of criminal aliens to their foreign-born population in the U.S., generally, than other countries? Absolutely. Which nations send us the most criminals on a percentage basis and which send us the least?
We have received recent data from the Oregon prison system on the nations of origin of its prison population. They indicate that Mexico, among major migrant-producing nations, sends that state the largest proportion of criminals compared to the nation's population in the U.S. as whole, and China and India send the least. The definition used by Oregon authorities is of those with ICE detainers in the state’s prisons.
Oregon’s Foreign-Born Population | |||
| Nation | Foreign-Born Population in Oregon | Prisoners in Oregon Custody | Prisoners per 1,000 Foreign-Born |
| Mexico | 138,504 | 550 | 3.97 |
| China | 24,397 | 2 | 0.08 |
| India | 17,890 | 1 | 0.06 |
Sources: Column 2: ”State Immigration Data Profiles: Oregon”, Migration Policy Institute; Column 3: David Olen Cross, “Oregon Department of Corrections: Criminal Alien Report for the Americas December 2021”, January 8, 2022; numbers for India and China were secured from Cross. | |||
In other words, in Oregon at least, someone from Mexico is 66 times as likely to wind up in prison as someone from India. Putting it another way, of the 697 prisoners from a country other than the U.S., 78 percent of them were from Mexico.
It should be noted that there are at least three variables at work here. First, there is the economic class of the incoming migrants, with Mexico producing a high percentage of working-class migrants, and the other two nations a predominance of middle-class ones. Second, there are or may be differing criminal proclivities, nation by nation; and third, there is the variable of biases that may or may not exist in the law enforcement system.
I suspect the first variable is more important than the other two combined.
Another possible factor is that some of the criminals, notably from Central America, may have fibbed about the real country of origin, thinking if they claimed to be Mexicans, they would be released at the border rather than shipped to their true homes much further south.
Before reacting further to the remarkably high percentage of Mexicans in this one-off report, we at CIS will be seeking comparable data from other prison systems in other states.
In the meantime, this is a reminder that those crossing our southern border are not all just folks looking for better lives – there are others who are simply criminals.
Biden Admin Turns Countless Locations Across the Country Into Safe Spaces for Criminal Aliens
By Jon Feere
In a truly disturbing development, the Biden administration has declared that federal law enforcement is largely prohibited from conducting any immigration enforcement of criminal aliens near countless locations throughout the country, including near any “place where children gather” such as a playground or recreational center.
Biden Admin Turns Countless Locations Across the Country Into Safe Spaces for Criminal Aliens
By Jon Feere
In a truly disturbing development, the Biden administration has declared that federal law enforcement is largely prohibited from conducting any immigration enforcement of criminal aliens near countless locations throughout the country, including near any “place where children gather” such as a playground or recreational center.
GRAPHIC EXCLUSIVE: Mexican Authorities Probe Alliance Between Cartels to Hold Turf near Texas
HIGHLY GRAPHIC IMAGES OF AMERICA UNDER LA RAZA MEX OCCUPATION
This is what America will look like with continued open borders with Narcomex. That is the agenda of the Globalist Democrat party for endless hordes of ‘cheap’ labor.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2013/10/america-la-raza-mexicos-wide-open.html
Ted Cruz: ‘Criminals, Murderers, Rapists’ Entering on Biden’s ‘Most Radical Immigration Plan Proposed in History’
Sen. Ted Cruz issued a stunning rebuke on Thursday of President Joe Biden’s “most radical immigration plan any administration has ever proposed in history.”
“They have proposed allowing every single person who was deported from this country for the last four years to come back. And by the way,” Cruz explained, “they don’t make exceptions for criminals, for murderers, for rapists. I mean, it is utterly bizarre to have a federal administration refusing to enforce the law against violent criminals.”
Cruz noted, “And frankly, it makes, it makes our country more dangerous…”
Today’s Democratic Party has been radicalized to the point they’re not even willing to enforce the law against violent criminals who are committing horrific crimes. pic.twitter.com/goYvoFhNEj
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 25, 2021
“We are a nation of immigrants and there are wonderful people who come here and come here legally. There’s a right way to come,” the Texas senator said. “But today’s Democratic Party has been radicalized where they’re you know, they’re not even willing to enforce the law against violent criminals who are committing horrific crimes.”
Cruz’s comments come amid a federal judge blocking Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from implementing a halt on deportations, a blow to the administration’s efforts to dismantle interior immigration enforcement.
Hours after taking office on January 20, Biden’s administration issued a memo that sought to halt most deportations of illegal aliens for at least 100 days. As a result, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit requesting a preliminary injunction on the “unlawful” deportation halt.
On Wednesday, United States District Judge Drew B. Tipton granted the preliminary injunction, which prevents the Biden administration from implementing the deportation halt until the U.S. Southern District of Texas District Court, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, or the U.S. Supreme Court resolves the case.
Dale Wilcox with the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) said Tipton’s blockage of the deportation halt “should hold up on appeal” and called Biden’s memo a “bizarre and sinister attempt to shutter our entire immigration law enforcement system.
WHO BENEFITS FROM JOE BIDEN AND THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS’ AGENDA OF OPEN BORDERS?
Start with the Mexican drug cartels which now operate in all major American cities. Their drug proceeds are laundered by some of the biggest banksters on Wall Street, all cronies of Joe Biden!
Tom Cotton: Joe Biden Will Keep Foreign Drug Dealers in U.S.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) slammed President Joe Biden’s administration amid evidence that his deputies want to minimize the deportation of illegal migrants who are caught dealing deadly drugs.
“It’s the Biden administration policy to allow illegal aliens to stay in America even after they: -Deal fentanyl and heroin -Commit fraud -Commit assault -Drive drunk -Launder money,” Cotton tweeted February 8.
“More than 80,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year. And the Biden administration just announced that deporting illegal alien cartel members who deal with fentanyl and heroin is no longer a priority for his administration,” he added.
For more than 20 years, many Americans have been killed by drunk-driving illegals, including many killed after federal and state officials decide not to deport illegals.
It's the Biden administration policy to allow illegal aliens to stay in America even after they:
-Deal fentanyl and heroin
-Commit fraud
-Commit assault
-Drive drunk
-Launder moneyhttps://t.co/Vr0RhYAJQV
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 8, 2021
The Washington Post reported February 7 how Biden’s deputies are changing deportation priorities for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency:
While ICE’s new operational plans are not yet final, interim instructions sent to senior officials point to a major shift in enforcement. Agents will no longer seek to deport immigrants for crimes such as driving under the influence and assault, and will focus instead on national security threats, recent border crossers and people completing prison and jail terms for aggravated felony convictions.
“Generally, these convictions would not include drug based crimes (less serious offenses), simple assault, DUI, money laundering, property crimes, fraud, tax crimes, solicitation, or charges without convictions,” acting director Tae Johnson told senior officials in a Thursday email advising them on how to operate while new guidelines are finalized.
“The priority for the enforcement of immigration laws will be on those who are imposing a national security threat, of course, a public safety threat, and on recent arrivals,” Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in the February 8 White House press briefing:
Nobody is saying that DUIs or assaults are acceptable behavior, and those arrested for such activities should be tried and sentenced as appropriate by local law enforcement. But we’re talking about the prioritization of who is going to be deported from the country.
The priority list for deportations also excludes migrants who take American’ jobs and wages. This policy will largely abandon the task of protecting Americans’ right to a national labor market.
Biden has repeatedly declared he wants to make the nation’s immigration system more “fair” to migrants. Since January 20, he has minimized deportations, stopped construction of the border wall, offered an amnesty to migrants, broken anti-migration deals with three counties, and has lowered legal barriers to migration.
However, he has said little or nothing about how he will protect Americans’ rights, wages, safe streets, and reasonable housing from foreign criminals or job seekers. A February 2 statement said:
President Biden’s strategy is centered on the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair, safe and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and allows people—both newly arrived immigrants and people who have lived here for generations—to more fully contribute to our country.
Amid Biden’s inrush of migrants and shutdown of deportations, more than 20 million Americans are unemployed or are stuck in part-time jobs.
Biden is also rolling back protections for American graduates, who have lost at least one million jobs because Fortune 500 CEOs and their subcontractors have hired more than 1 million foreign graduates for jobs sought by Americans.
In a separate tweet, Cotton lambasted Biden’s team for dropping a rule that would protect American graduate from losing jobs to H-1B graduate visa-workers who are willing to work for low wages in the hope of getting green cards:
Big Tech abuses the H-1B visa program to hire cheap foreign labor instead of Americans. That isn’t good for American workers, but the Biden administration is letting companies get away with it.https://t.co/YIolIoyqJl
— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 5, 2021
For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the hiring of temporary contract workers into the jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, priority-driven, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and immigration in theory.
Joe Biden's deputies attack Americans' right to their own national labor market, by quietly barring the deportation of illegal migrants who take Americans' wages and jobs.
That labor policy helps corporate donors.
But hurts blue collars & college grads. https://t.co/RNCMFv4aJh
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) February 8, 2021
Angel Families: Biden Plan Is $450K for Illegal Aliens, $0 for American Victims
Drew Rosenberg/Matthew Denice
5 Nov 20210
5:44
Angel Families, whose loved ones were killed by illegal aliens, say that while President Joe Biden weighs providing reparations-style payouts to border crossers, the American victims of open borders receive no compensation for the federal government’s failure to enforce federal immigration law.
Last month, reports circulated that Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were working to settle with a number of border crossers represented by the ACLU, who claim they have suffered trauma as a result of former President Donald Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy that was briefly imposed in 2019.
As part of the settlement, attorneys with the DOJ, DHS, and HHS are considering a plan that would give each border crosser about $450,000 and family units about $1 million. The total cost of the payouts would reach $1 billion.
U.S. President Joe Biden stands alongside Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas after signing executive orders related to immigration in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, February 2, 2021. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
Angel Families with Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime (AVIAC) — including Don Rosenberg whose son Drew Rosenberg was killed by an illegal alien in 2010 and Maureen Maloney whose son Matthew Denice was killed in 2011 by an illegal alien — detail in an open letter how Biden plans to reward border crossers while American victims of open borders are ignored.
“Just when you thought Biden had reached the pinnacle of absurdity in welcoming illegal aliens into the country and refusing to deport those who once here violated our laws comes a plan to create millionaires out of over 5,000 illegal alien families,” Rosenberg and Maloney write:
On its face, none of these illegal aliens deserve anything more than a removal back to their country of origin. [Emphasis added]
Paying these families anything compared to the amount paid to our fallen soldiers and victims of 9/11 shows how completely devoid of reality this administration is. But we already knew that. [Emphasis added]
One group conspicuous in its absence is the victims of illegal alien crime. But, unlike these “mothers,” the victims of illegal alien crime weren’t breaking any laws. [Emphasis added]
Rosenberg and Maloney also hit back at the various pro-mass immigration groups representing the border crossers in the case, asking if they have ever considered the pain brought to Angel Families as a result of illegal immigration:
Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, representing five mothers and their children, said, “No amount of money can compensate for the amount of pain and suffering these parents and children endured under this unconscionable and unprecedented policy.” [Emphasis added]
Lee Gelernt, a lead negotiator on behalf of the families and deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s immigrant rights project, said, “There is no question that the Biden administration is doing the right thing by providing meaningful monetary compensation, given that the U.S. government deliberately brutalized these families, including babies and toddlers. But ultimately, the Biden administration will be judged on whether it provides a pathway for these families to remain in the United States, to allow them to once and for all try to put this trauma behind them.” [Emphasis added]
Well, Trina and Lee, what about the families who have lost a loved one FOREVER because of illegal immigration. What pain and suffering have they endured? Unfortunately, the U.S. Government, often with your organization’s help, has deliberately ignored illegal immigration resulting in tens of millions of crimes being committed against American families, including hundreds of thousands of rapes where often the victims are children and over 100,000 deaths since the last amnesty. [Emphasis added]
In two weeks, it will be eleven years since an illegal alien killed my son. Our vice-president’s son was killed over ten years ago. Our other two Board members lost their brothers twelve and ten years ago. If these payments compensate for the “psychological trauma” these families “suffered” for being separated – often of their own doing – for a few months, what does the government owe the families who have been victimized by illegal aliens, often forever? [Emphasis added]
Not only are Angel Families left to deal with the loss of their loved ones, without any financial help from the federal government, but they often struggle to sue the sanctuary jurisdictions that sometimes aid the illegal alien suspects in a case.
Former President Trump endorsed a plan, initially authored by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), called the Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act that would give Angel Families the right to sue a sanctuary jurisdiction if it had helped shield an illegal alien suspect.
In this Feb. 18, 2017, file photo, thousands of people take part in the “Free the People Immigration March,” to protest actions taken by President Donald Trump and his administration, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)
“The United States of America should be a sanctuary for law-abiding Americans — not criminal aliens,” Trump said at his last State of the Union address in 2020.
Tillis has since reintroduced the legislation, alongside Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), with Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Lee (R-UT), Steve Daines (R-MT), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Mike Braun (R-IN).
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Mayorkas Uses Drug-Free Zones as Template for Protecting Criminal Aliens
ICE is further hampered by a perversion of state laws designed to protect children
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By Andrew R. Arthur on November 5, 2021
On October 4, I analyzed Biden administration directives gutting ICE immigration enforcement. Since then, the Biden administration announced it will halt ICE worksite enforcement efforts, furthering this effort. It was the latest diktat from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, “Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas”, that really gave up the game, however. The administration is attempting to create a de facto amnesty for the vast (vast) majority of criminal aliens in the United States, using state laws protecting children from drugs as a guide.
Jon Feere’s Take
My colleague Jon Feere dissected those most recent guidelines (which were issued on October 27) in a November 1 post captioned “Biden Admin Turns Countless Locations Across the Country Into Safe Spaces for Criminal Aliens: Playgrounds are now sanctuaries for illegal-alien sex offenders”. He explained:
What used to be safe spaces for vulnerable members of society have been transformed into safe spaces for violent offenders. This new policy prohibits even basic surveillance of a criminal alien suspect who happens to be in or near so-called “protected” areas. These locations are mini sanctuaries for criminal aliens who are now “protected” from federal law enforcement officers at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Why would Mayorkas propose creating “mini sanctuaries” for rapists and murderers? Feere posits that “shielding criminal aliens from the law is the top priority” for the Biden administration, and that these restrictions further that effort. If you review the October 27 guidelines, it is difficult to disagree with that assessment, and reference to state law proves it to be true.
Mayorkas’s Faux Maudlin Tone
Before I explain, however, let me first note that the secretary veers into the faux maudlin in that memo, stating:
It is because of the profound impact of our work that we must consider so many different factors before we decide to act. This can make our work very difficult. It is also one of the reasons why our work is noble.
One can almost picture Mayorkas stiffening his lip as he writes those words, drawing a carefully ironed, brilliantly bleached monogrammed handkerchief from the breast pocket of his expertly tailored bespoke suit to daub away a manly tear.
Of course, he does not consider ICE’s work to be “noble” in the least. That word is defined as “having, showing, or coming from personal qualities that people admire”. He hates the fact that ICE officers remove aliens, as that guidance reveals.
The Insidious Passage
Want proof? Three paragraphs after Mayorkas makes that factitious assertion, he states:
We can accomplish our enforcement mission without denying or limiting individuals’ access to needed medical care, children access to their schools, the displaced access to food and shelter, people of faith access to their places of worship, and more.
You need to read that passage carefully to understand how insidious (to say nothing of insipid) it is, and how much it reflects Mayorkas’s disdain for immigration enforcement.
First, the insidious part. In the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), Congress mandates that the immigration laws be enforced, period, regardless of whether an alien facing removal will have to seek medical care elsewhere, change schools, get a new job or house, or find a new place of worship.
In fact, once aliens are removed, they must do all those things. It is baked into the removal scheme.
Second, the disdain. As the Supreme Court has held, an “order of deportation is not a punishment for crime”, but rather “a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions upon the performance of which the Government ... has determined that his continuing to reside here shall depend.”
In this context, the purpose of removal is not to punish aliens by forcing them to seek medical care elsewhere, find new schools for their kids, get new houses and jobs, and find new places of worship, but rather those are the inevitable costs of being removed from the United States.
Mayorkas either ignores or is ignorant of that fact, but he implicitly castigates the ICE officers who enforce the INA, and thereby impose those consequences on removable aliens. Worse, however, he is attempting to create an enforcement scheme in which those consequences are avoided by inflating the “protected areas” that are off limits to ICE officers — which will lead to no enforcement at all.
ICE October 2011 “Sensitive Locations” Memo, and Mayorkas’s Expansion
ICE officers have been required to obtain pre-approval to enforce the INA at certain protected areas since October 2011, when then-ICE Director John Morton issued a memo to that effect. His list included schools, hospitals, places of worship, funerals, weddings, other religious ceremonies, and (oddly) public demonstrations.
Mayorkas expands these restrictions, as Feere explains, to add areas “near” playgrounds, bus stops, rec centers, domestic violence shelters, food banks, pantries, and various other locations.
The secretary admits that there is no definition of “near” in this context, but asserts: “A variety of factors can be informative, such as proximity to the protected area, visibility from the protected area, and people’s behavioral patterns in and around the protected area.” Respectfully, that explanation makes the word vaguer, not clearer.
The “Rosary” Exception that Makes the Universe a “Protected Area” from ICE Enforcement
Significantly, this list includes places “where a ... rosary ... occur[s]”. Not only is that bad grammar (Rosary is capitalized, and Rosaries are “prayed”, they don’t “occur”), but it shows an unconscionable ignorance of the practices of the nation’s 51 million Roman Catholics, coupled with an expansion of ICE “no-go” zones to the universe as a whole.
I am a Catholic and own several Rosaries, and they were regular fixtures at the prison where I served as an immigration judge. Some Catholics pray the Rosary (a series of prayers) daily, others only when deeply troubled, and many not at all.
The point is, however, that “a [R]osary” can “occur” anywhere. Given the fact that Mayorkas’s memo restricts ICE “surveillance” in areas, how would any officer know that a Rosary was being, or could be, prayed there? Does that sacred object now carry the same power to daunt ICE officers that garlic possesses to defend against vampires in ancient lore?
Perversion of State Laws Protecting Children from Drugs
The insidious nature of that guidance, however, only gets worse, because it perverts state laws that protect children from drugs into a federal policy that shelters criminal aliens.
That is because it closely tracks “drug-free zone” laws, which enhance the penalties for drug trafficking and/or possession, on the books in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As the Sentencing Project (which opposes such laws) explains:
The premise behind drug-free zone laws was that drug trafficking near schools posed a danger to children. In order to protect children from drug activity, lawmakers established protected zones around the places where children were most likely to be present, including schools and public parks.
Like the Mayorkas restrictions, those drug-free zones include “schools, school buses ... public parks [and] churches” (Illinois); day care centers (Louisiana); and rec centers (Utah). No mention in any of hospitals, food banks, or domestic violence shelters (added by Morton and/or Mayorkas).
Many — progressives, moderates, and conservatives — have begun to rethink those zones, not least because they “are so extensive they aren’t effective in moving drugs away from children”.
One analysis done in Connecticut showed that 94 percent of residents in Hartford, 93 percent in New Haven, and 92 percent in Bridgeport live in areas with such sentencing enhancements (which include public housing, not on Mayorkas’s list).
Logically, Biden’s policy people are aware of those issues, which means Mayorkas’s list is deliberately expansive, all the better to (1) make it harder for ICE to arrest illegal aliens and, thus, (2) create sanctuary zones in major metropolitan areas. The “Rosary” exception makes the policy universal.
“Protected Areas” Guidance Only Protects Terrorists, Spies, and Serious Criminals
It only gets worse, however, because this “protected areas” guidance is to be applied in addition to, not in lieu of, Mayorkas’s earlier ICE enforcement restrictions.
As explained in that earlier post, Mayorkas restricted ICE’s “priorities” for immigration enforcement in a September 30 memo to three groups: Terrorists and spies; aliens who have engaged in “serious criminal conduct”, and recent illegal entrants.
ICE officers can act against other removable aliens, but must go through a review process so restrictive I described it as “as non-enforcement through micromanagement”.
Thus, the only aliens who are protected under this perverse game of “tag”, in which vast swaths of areas are “safe zones” where they cannot be touched (assuming they failed to bring a Rosary), are spies, terrorists, criminals, and those who entered illegally after October 31, 2021.
Given that there is no real way for ICE officers to know who entered illegally, as a practical matter the latest guidance exists only to protect hard-core criminals and national-security risks.
Conclusion: The Topsy-Turvy World of Biden Immigration Enforcement
Why? Because, as the Washington Post has explained: “ICE under President Biden is an agency on probation”, for no greater offenses than enforcing the INA and having the favor of Donald Trump.
That is how topsy-turvy immigration enforcement has become under the Biden administration: ICE officers charged with enforcing the law are treated as criminals on probation, and state laws protecting children from drug dealers are now being used as a template to protect real criminals (and spies and terrorists) from removal.
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