TRUMP CONNECTS THE DOTS ON DANGERS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
But the Left attacks him for the picture it creates.
October 31, 2018
President Trump has publicly expressed concerns about the nature and nationality of the individuals heading towards the U.S. in the supposed “Caravan of Migrants.” Consequently he ordered that the military provide active duty members of the Army to assist with efforts to secure the U.S./Mexican border.
Trump warned that embedded within that organized mob of foreign nationals are members of transnational gangs such as MS-13 and individuals from the Middle East who may be involved in terrorism.
The talking heads on the supposed “journalists” from the mainstream media, and such brilliant television personalities as the panel on the television program “The View” have derided the president, claiming that he had no justification for making those statements and, essentially accused him of lying to fire up his base of right wing conservatives.
In reality, President Trump is connecting the dots, but the globalists and the radical Left don’t like the picture that the connected dots create, so they attack him.
By now this tactic of attacking the President is not a surprise. If President Trump were to say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, it is likely that the Radical Left would trot out a supposed astrophysicist who would find a way to claim that the President was wrong.
Each day the President is given a security briefing where he is provided with intelligence from the intelligence community. It is entirely likely that during those briefings the issue of the nature of the foreign nationals heading to the United States was a topic.
Of course I am only speculating about whether or not the President’s Daily Briefing has provided President Trump with information about the nature of the members of the caravan. What is not speculation is the fact that the Border Patrol has been encountering and arresting illegal aliens from countries from around the world who attempted to enter the United States without inspection when they were apprehended.
Additionally, my article, Congressional Hearing: Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S. addresses a hearing that was conducted on April 17, 2018 by the House Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee, on the topic, "State Sponsors Of Terrorism: An Examination Of Iran’s Global Terrorism Network."
Here is an excerpt of the testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
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 the rising threat of global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into the United States. It is sustaining Hezbollah’s growing financial needs. It is helping Iran and Hezbollah consolidate a local constituency in multiple countries across Latin America. It is thus facilitating their efforts to build safe havens for terrorists and a continent-wide terror infrastructure that they could use to strike U.S. targets.
My April 21, 2017 article, Border Security Is National Security referenced an April 12, 2017 Washington Times report, Sharafat Ali Khan smuggled terrorist-linked immigrants.
Khan is a citizen of Pakistan who had established himself as a permanent resident in Brazil and then smuggled numerous illegal aliens from the Middle East into the United States through Mexico. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) issued a press release about this case, Foreign national extradited and pleads guilty to human smuggling conspiracy.
On April 17, 2018 the Washington Free Beacon published a report with the unambiguous and disconcerting headline, Iranian-Backed ‘Sleeper Cell’ Militants Hibernating in U.S., Positioned for Attack.
On March 21, 2012 the House Committee on Homeland Security that was then chaired by New York Congressman Peter King, conducted a hearing on the topic, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Threat to the Homeland. The Huffington Post published a report on the hearing, Peter King: Iran May Have ‘Hundreds’ Of Hezbollah Agents In U.S.
On April 21, 2010 the Washington Times published a disturbing report predicated on a Pentagon report to Congress on Iran’s military operations in Latin America, Iran boosts Qods shock troops in Venezuela. Here is an excerpt:
The report gives no details on the activities of the Iranians in Venezuela and Latin America. Iranian-backed terrorists have conducted few attacks in the region. However, U.S. intelligence officials say Qods operatives are developing networks of terrorists in the region who could be called to attack the United States in the event of a conflict over Iran’s nuclear program.
On March 18, 2015, during the Obama administration, The United States Institute for Peace published a primer on Iran, Iran's Influence in Latin America, that began with the following excerpt:
On March 18, the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a joint hearing about Iran and Hezbollah’s involvement in Central and South America. The committees discussed Iran's attempts to expand its influence in Latin America during the last 30 years, as well as the Islamic Republic's alleged involvement in attacks in Peru and Uruguay and the mysterious death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman. The following are excerpted statements from the subcommittee chairmen and testimony of the witnesses.Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere Jeff Duncan“Given the impending deadline for nuclear negotiations over Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program, I believe it is critical for the U.S. to re-examine Iran and Hezbollah’s activities in our own neighborhood. Congress has conducted sustained, rigorous oversight on this issue with multiple Committee hearings, classified briefings, and the passage of legislation I authored, the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act, into law in 2012. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration continues to ignore this threat even while Iran and Hezbollah expand their reach. Following a September 2014 Government Accountability Office report that found the State Department failed to follow this law, the Administration has taken no concrete action to address these problems.”Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa Ileana Ros-Lehtinen“Iran and Hezbollah’s history of involvement in the Western Hemisphere has long been a source of concern for the United States. Given the nature of transnational criminal networks existing in Latin America and the rise of terrorism ideology being exported worldwide from Middle East, it is disturbing that the State Department has failed to fully allocate necessary resources and attention to properly address this potential threat to our nation. It is well known that Iran poses a security threat to regional affairs and has expanded its ties in countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador. The United States needs a comprehensive understanding of Tehran’s efforts in Latin America in order to thwart any potential risk to our allies and U.S. national security.”
While the thousands of aspiring illegal aliens who have become a part of the caravan now heading north have captured headlines and much attention as they make their way northward, in point of fact, each and every day, 24/7, illegal aliens enter the United States by evading the inspections process at ports of entry along the northern and southern borders of the United States, by stowing away on ships or finding other means to evade the inspections process conducted at ports of entry.
Other aliens enter the United States legally, through the inspections process as temporary (non-immigrant) visitors and then remain in the United States after their authorized period of admission expires and/or otherwise violate the terms of their admission.
No one really knows how many illegal aliens are actually present in the United States but as written in a recent article, Twice As Many Illegal Aliens In Us According To MIT.
I would compare the impact to the United States of the onslaught of the thousands of aspiring illegal aliens in the caravan to a person trying to shovel out his driveway during a blizzard getting hit by a snowball. That snowball may well get his/her attention, but the vast majority of the snow in his driveway is the result of hours of constant snowfall.
The biggest issue where the caravan is concerned is that by surging at the border, the Border Patrol may well find itself overwhelmed. This is the most dangerous part of the problem, that the Border Patrol might not be able to deal with the huge numbers that suddenly confront them. The Adjudications Officers will also likely be overwhelmed when these aliens proclaim that they are seeking asylum. With limited resources to detain these asylum seekers and with limited resources to interview them and then conduct investigations into their claims for asylum, many of these aliens will either not be stopped or will have to ultimately be released.
It has been estimated that only about 2% of aliens who are released ever show up for their immigration court dates. 98% disappear into communities across America.
These aliens demonstrate little fear of repercussions for not appearing when ordered. In the game of “hide & seek” that they play with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), there are precious few ICE agents who are available to try to find them and take them into custody when they fail to show up. Furthermore, if they can make their way to the increasing number of supposed “Sanctuary Cities” that have been created around the United States by Democratic mayors and Sanctuary States created by Democratic governors, they know the their chances of escaping detection by ICE increases exponentially.
Of course the Republicans who refuse to provide funding for the Border Wall and for adequate numbers of ICE agents also adds to the immigration crisis, making certain that illegal aliens have no reason to fear the consequences of their violations of our borders and our laws.
John Adams was right, “Facts are stubborn things!”
TRUMP CONSIDERS ENDING ANCHOR BABY LOOPHOLE
Fierce legal challenges expected.
October 31, 2018
Days before the midterm elections, President Trump has sparked another controversy regarding his hardline position on illegal immigration. The president said, during an exclusive interview for "Axios on HBO," that he is considering issuing an executive order to end what some have called the “anchor baby” loophole. The president says that it is time to take on the claim of an unfettered constitutional right to citizenship for babies born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents. "It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," President Trump said. "It's in the process,” he added. "It will happen with an executive order." White House and Justice Department attorneys are reportedly studying the legal issues involved with such an executive order. Thus, at this point, it is only an idea that may find political resonance, especially among voters concerned with the Central American invasion forces continuing to make their way towards the United States.
Many legal experts believe that an executive order by President Trump to end citizenship for children born in the United States to aliens in this country illegally would be unconstitutional. They cite the first sentence of the 14thAmendment to the Constitution, which states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The phrase “all persons,” the argument goes, literally means any babies born within the sovereign territorial boundaries of the United States. The foreign nationality or legal status of the parents is irrelevant, according to this expansive interpretation, unless a change is made via a constitutional amendment.
We can expect court challenges from progressive lawyers to any executive order seeking to curtail birthright citizenship. The ACLU tweeted: “The 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is clear. You can’t erase the Constitution with an executive order.” The radical left group accused President Trump of engaging in “a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms.”
However, progressive lawyers are not the only ones raising concerns. Even some conservative lawyers, who deem themselves originalists when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, have declared that the president cannot change by executive order the birthright to citizenship of any “persons” born in the United States as enshrined in the 14th Amendment. Dan McLaughlin, an attorney and online contributor to National Review, for example, argued that “a proper originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, as presently written, guarantees American citizenship to those born within our borders, with only a few limited exceptions.” He based his argument on both the text and legislative history of the 14th Amendment, as well as on Supreme Court precedent. Mr. McLaughlin added that any exceptions would be limited to instances considerably narrower than all babies born in the United States to illegal immigrants, such as babies of foreign government officials who still owed their allegiance to foreign governments.
The leading Supreme Court case cited by birthright citizenship advocates is United States v. Wong Kim Ark. This case was decided back in 1898, but still stands as a binding precedent unless and until overruled. In Wong Kim Ark, it should be noted, the Supreme Court was dealing with a child born in the United States to Chinese parents in the country legally, not to illegal immigrants. “A child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent,” the Supreme Court majority opinion stated, “who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicil (sic) and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States, by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”
The Wong Kim Ark case reasoning, at least with regard to the broad interpretation of the term “persons” as used in the 14th Amendment, was extended by the Supreme Court to apply to illegal alien children in a case decided in 1982. “Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is surely a ‘person’ in any ordinary sense of that term,” the Supreme Court held in the 1982 case, Plyler v. Doe. “Aliens, even aliens whose presence in this country is unlawful, have long been recognized as ‘persons’ guaranteed due process of law by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.” The 1982 case did not involve the citizenship birthright issue itself, but the case extended 14thAmendment rights to illegal immigrant children relating to free public education that Texas was offering to other children residing legally within its borders. The majority opinion held that Texas had not shown a sufficiently substantial state interest to justify discriminating against children who happen to be illegal aliens.
Supreme Court case holdings are binding precedents but are not immutable. They can also be distinguished. The 1898 Wong Kim Ark case applied to a baby born in the United States whose foreign parents were in the United States legally at the time of their baby’s birth. It could be argued that the Wong Kim Ark holding should not apply to the happenstance of a birth in the United States to parents here illegally at the time of the birth. The wrongful circumstances under which the birth occurred in the United States to illegal aliens who should not have been in this country in the first place to give birth would arguably negate any finding that their children so born in the U.S. are legally "subject to U.S. jurisdiction" as required by the 14th Amendment or automatically entitled to its protections. Under this line of reasoning, the illegal presence of a pregnant parent should not be rewarded with citizenship for the parent's children because it would encourage circumvention of the basic principle and purpose of the United States' jurisdictional sovereignty. This is especially the case where it can be shown that aliens have entered the United States illegally for the express purpose of having their babies in the United States in order to game the system.
As for the 1982 Supreme Court case extending the definition of “person” in the 14th Amendment to illegal aliens in the context of equal rights to education, it may not survive if a similar case comes before the current conservative-leaning Supreme Court. It could be overruled altogether on the grounds that the majority opinion did not take sufficient account of the state’s interest in making reasonable distinctions between legal and illegal residents in allocating scarce resources for public education. Even if the Supreme Court would not go that far, the 1982 case was dealing with a different portion of the 14th Amendment involving equal protection rights. It did not deal with the specific issue of defining the scope of birthright citizenship under the first sentence of the 14th Amendment. It did not address the ruling of the Wong Kim Ark case directly at all, which only applied the birthright citizenship clause to children born in the United States to parents who were domiciled in the country legally at the time of the child’s birth.
However, even if the Supreme Court would be inclined towards a narrower interpretation of the birthright citizenship clause as only applying to the children of parents residing in the United States legally, the question still remains whether President Trump has the authority to issue an executive order on this matter. Section 5 of the 14thAmendment vests in Congress the “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Congress has not legislated on the enforcement of the birthright to citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Nor has Congress passed a bill to limit its scope, which the Supreme Court could then adjudicate as to the constitutionality of such a law. A congressional statute setting parameters around the birthright to citizenship clause for enforcement purposes would stand a far better chance of surviving judicial review than an executive order alone. It would also have more permanence.
That said, Congress has legislated regarding immigration more generally, including delegation of certain powers to the president, which Congress can do pursuant to its own constitutional authority.
In upholding President Trump’s temporary ban on travel of foreigners to the United States from certain countries, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the president of the United States has broad discretionary authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to issue a proclamation that would “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever he “finds” that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” 8 U. S. C. §1182(f). It may be a stretch, but President Trump could possibly issue an executive order suspending entry of all aliens from Central America until an orderly process for handling asylum requests can be established at established ports of entry. In that connection, the executive order could include a directive to the executive branch that no birth certificate listing birth in the United States of a child born in the United States to illegal aliens who managed to get into this country despite the suspension order will be recognized by any executive branch agency. That could mean barring the issuance to the child of a social security card or a U.S. passport, refusing to grant visas to family members of the child based on chain migration, or the refusal of federal government benefits.
Whether President Trump decides to issue such an executive order remains to be seen, as well as its timing if he does decide to go ahead. He may simply be using the “anchor baby” issue to make a political point in advance of the midterm elections and is baiting the press and Democrats to holler and scream. If the president does follow through with what many legal scholars would consider to be a long shot idea, he can expect an all-out legal challenge. But who knows? The challenge would inevitably have to be resolved by the Supreme Court, which thankfully now includes Justice Kavanaugh.
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