06/4/15

Jeh Johnson Responsible for Illegal Criminal Release

The House is taking some positive steps this year as they did last by taking away Obama’s money defending the illegals.

House votes to block Obama legal defense on immigration actions yet Jeh Johnson is acting quietly on his own. Just consider what Jeh Johnson did in 2013 releasing thousands of prisoners.

The Department of Homeland Security has a National Terrorism Advisory System that states on the website they effectively communicate information about terrorists threats to the public. The website even asks for your help. Then they have the nerve to have a fact sheet on the ‘broken’ immigration system where suggestions are noted that through Executive Orders, the ‘brokenness’ can be fixed.

So, releasing almost 4000 level 1 foreign national criminals from prison to roam our streets is the answer? Would this include those that are domestic ISIS terrorists?

3,700 illegal immigrant ‘Threat Level 1’ criminals released into U.S. by DHS

Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress.

Some of those released were the worst of the worst — more than 3,700 “Threat Level 1” criminals, who are deemed the top priority for deportation, were still released out into the community even as they waited for their immigration cases to be heard.

Homeland Security officials have implied their hands are tied by court rulings in many cases, but the numbers, obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, showed 57 percent of the criminals released were by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own choice, and they could have been kept instead.

“Put aside the spin, and the fact is that over 17,000 of the criminal aliens released last year were released due to ICE discretion, representing 57 percent of the releases,” said Mr. Goodlatte. “The Obama administration’s lax enforcement policies are reckless and needlessly endanger our communities.”

In a statement to The Washington Times, ICE said it takes release decisions seriously and makes a judgment in each case. That holds true even for Threat Level 1 criminals.

“Not all Level 1 criminal aliens are subject to mandatory detention and thus may be eligible for bond,” the agency said, pointing to mitigating circumstances that can convince agents to release the most serious criminals.

“ICE personnel making custody determinations also take into consideration humanitarian factors such as deteriorated health, advanced age, and caretaking responsibilities. All custody determinations are made on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration the totality of circumstances in each case,” the agency said.

ICE officials insist that those who are released are still monitored, often by electronic ankle bracelets but also through a system of phone checks or by paying a bond.

However, nearly all of those released under electronic monitoring broke the terms of their release, according to ICE numbers.

In fiscal year 2014, ICE put about 41,000 immigrants through electronic monitoring, and more than 30,000 of them broke the terms of their release — many of them racking up multiple violations. All told, they notched nearly 300,000 violations in one year alone, or an average of 10 instances per violator.

The rate has gone down slightly so far in fiscal year 2015. Of the 34,002 immigrants put into electronic monitoring, 27,317 have broken the rules a combined 162,322 times.

ICE said violations can include what they deem minor problems, such as someone lacking a strong enough cell signal for voice verification by phone or someone calling in too early or a few minutes late. Low batteries or jostling an electronic bracelet during sports can also cause a monitoring alarm to go off incorrectly, ICE said.

Of the more than 30,000 detainees who broke the conditional terms of their release and monitoring in 2014, only 2,420 were deemed to have been serious enough breaches to rearrest them.

Part of ICE’s problem is that it doesn’t have enough beds to go out and pick up violators, according to an inspector general’s report released earlier this year.

Agency officials said they would like to be able to hold those who willfully break the rules, but they haven’t requested more beds. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s 2016 budget request actually asked for fewer beds to hold detainees next year, arguing that he wants to put more emphasis on the very alternatives that are being violated.

ICE’s treatment of those awaiting their deportation proceedings has been controversial for several years.

In 2013, the agency released 36,007 convicted criminals who were awaiting the outcome of their deportation cases. Those released had amassed 116 homicide convictions, 15,635 drunken driving convictions and 9,187 convictions stemming from what ICE labeled involvement with “dangerous drugs.”

The total dropped to about 30,000 in 2014 — but the seriousness of the offenses increased, with 193 homicide convictions among the detainees and 16,070 drunken driving convictions. There were also 426 sexual assaults and 303 kidnapping convictions, ICE said.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and ICE Director Sarah Saldana said the numbers were unacceptable and imposed new rules requiring releases to be vetted by senior agency officials to make sure they were correct.

Both Mr. Johnson and Ms. Saldana also said many of the releases are required and give them little discretion — particularly those made under a 2001 Supreme Court decision known as the Zadvydas case, when the justices ruled that immigrants couldn’t generally be detained indefinitely.

That means that if a home country won’t take someone back, ICE must release them after about six months.

But the new numbers obtained by Mr. Goodlatte suggest Zadvydas-related releases were fewer than 2,500 in 2014, or only about 8 percent of the total — compared to the 57 percent that ICE admits were completely discretionary.

The rest of the releases were divided between cases where an immigration judge ordered bond or where ICE was unable to obtain travel documents but it wasn’t considered a mandatory release under the Zadvydas ruling.

04/22/15

Obama and the Media Still Hiding Immigration Agenda

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Once again, the Obama administration is deceiving the courts, and the American people, about its plans for amnesty for millions of current and future illegal aliens. And to make things worse, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, for which President Obama is seeking fast-track authority, would, according to Dick Morris, writing in The Hill, “override national immigration restrictions in the name of facilitating the free flow of labor.” And in this instance, whether wittingly or otherwise, Republicans are lining up to support the President in the name of free trade.

The proposed free trade agreement would undermine Congressional oversight over immigration, adding more power to the presidency, Morris argues. Pair this development with President Obama’s push to legalize illegal immigrants as U.S. residents, and this could become a dangerous policy combination.

Immigration reform is often presented by the media in terms of the human cost, and the alleged inhumanity in not allowing these persons to stay in the United States. The liberal media therefore, delight in pointing to any evidence they can find suggesting hypocrisy on the right on this issue and ignore the blatant abuses by the Obama administration in pursuit of his amnesty agenda.

News coverage of the recent hearing before the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ignores the fact that the Obama administration misled a lower court judge, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, about the implementation of the Department of Homeland Security’s, and therefore President Obama’s offer of “temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, along with an indefinite reprieve from deportation.” The administration claims it is acting with prosecutorial discretion, and that it should be able to prioritize the removal of illegal immigrant criminal elements.

The reality is that illegal immigrant rapists and murderers are being released by this administration, and that arrests and deportations of that group have declined, as well.

The administration has acted deceptively. “For three months while the lawsuit was pending and Judge Hanen was reviewing briefs and holding hearings and conference calls with the parties, [Department of Justice] lawyers were telling him that none of the president’s announced new policies were being implemented,” wrote Hans A. Von Spakovsky for National Review on March 20. “However, on March 3, Justice suddenly filed an ‘Advisory’ notifying the court that the administration had, in fact, issued three-year deferrals to more than 100,000 aliens.”

The Department of Justice apparently “knew all along that the administration had started issuing three-year terms of deferred action and work permits” in November 2014, even though “it knew the states’ lawsuit challenged the entirety of the DHS Directive,” he reports.

When Judge Hanen realized what he had been told was false, he told Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Hartnett: “When I asked you what would happen and you said nothing, I took it to heart. I was made to look like an idiot,” He added, “I believed your word that nothing would happen. . . . Like an idiot, I believed that.”

During the April 17 hearing, Benjamin C. Mizer, Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, argued that “For an employer to employ an individual who does not have work authorization, that employer has engaged in a crime. So giving the deferred action and giving the employment authorization actually reduces crime by reducing the third party employer crime.”

In other words, the administration wants to ignore the alleged illegal acts of one favored group in order to reduce crime by another less favored one.

On April 16, the day before this Fifth Circuit hearing, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue characterized illegal immigrants as the victims of political forces. She reported that President Obama’s unilateral executive policies were “announced with great fanfare” and would “shield” up to “5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.”

Similarly, Politico’s Josh Gerstein, the day of the hearing, expressed his concern that “If the administration can’t get its new moves underway sometime this year it may have difficulty getting them done before Obama leaves office” and called Obama’s plan a “legacy agenda item.”

Clearly, the media are more interested in the success of programs such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) than holding the administration accountable.

“It will be an uphill climb for the programs’ supporters, made worse by the fact that two of the judges are Republican appointees who may be hostile to their position,” wrote De Vogue in advance of the hearing—revealing her transparent concern for the administration’s success.

Pundits in the Hispanic media community also continue to mislead their audience by running segments which promote a culture of fear.

MSNBC’s biography of Jose Diaz-Balart lists him as “one of the most respected voices in Hispanic journalism in the United States.” During his April 16 show, he brought on two Democratic Congressmen and asked them softball leading questions all about the climate of fear and uncertainty for those “waiting” in “legal limbo.”

Diaz-Balart asked, “What do you tell them when there’s so much uncertainty about these programs?”

“That fear is not going to go anywhere while this legal limbo continues, and really nothing is being done in Washington as far as immigration reform,” he said.

“But you know there are a lot of families that are being separated that do qualify right now under DACA or DAPA and nothing’s being done,” he commented. In other words, President Obama should act more, not less, to shield illegal immigrants from the consequences of breaking U.S. laws.

An El Paso Intelligence Center report using Obama administration data released last year indicated that “Of the 230 total migrants interviewed, 219 cited the primary reason for migrating to the United States was the perception of U.S. immigration laws granting free passes or permisos…”

Diaz-Balart’s Congressional guests spoke about how illegal immigrants can protect themselves and that lawyers will be provided to them, and the show featured pictures of people rallying to the cause.

One must ask, however, whether lawyers, rallies, and endless sympathetic media coverage will also be provided for the potential victims of the dangerous criminals who are currently being released by the administration.

“…both arrests and deportations of criminal aliens are down about 30 percent through the first six months of fiscal year 2015, signaling that agents, who have been told to stop focusing on rank-and-file illegal immigrants, have not been able to refocus on criminal illegal immigrants instead,” wrote Stephen Dinan for The Washington Times on April 14.

A hearing with “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana, also showed that the 30,558 criminal aliens ICE knowingly released back into the community in 2014 had amassed nearly 80,000 convictions, including 250 homicides, 186 kidnappings and 373 sexual assaults,” reports Dinan.

These predators released back into the American community are very likely to strike again.

But the media are not concerned about reporting on the facts which might sully the administration’s reputation or harm the left’s illegal immigration agenda.