THE BIDEN INVASION - Health inspections for foreign nationals entering our country illegally have gone out the window. That's enabled the importation of many diseases which affect livestock and other agricultural output, and already these things are happening. Legal immigrants and even returning U.S. citizens must pass these inspections to protect the U.S. food supply. But under Joe Biden's catch-and-release, illegals are exempt from such cumbersome requirements. MONICA SHOWALTER
If
you believe what’s currently going on with Hillary’s campaign is an
indication that the Clinton political prowess has begun to falter, you’d
better think again.
It
may not seem like it, based on what the media and political pundits are
saying about Hillary’s campaign losing ground fast to Bernie Sanders,
but everything is going exactly as planned by the Clinton campaign
strategist. The
Clinton team knew from the beginning that Hillary was an unappealing
presidential candidate for anyone except the hardcore Democrat base.
They also knew she carried the negative political baggage of lingering
problems with her emails, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation.
Knowing
all this, the Clinton team knew that Hillary would never make it for
all those months as a front-running candidate with a big target on her
back. So the strategy has always been to keep Hillary under the media
radar – at least long enough for her to get the Democrat presidential
nomination. It took a while for Bernie to gain some traction, but once
he did, the spotlight dimmed on Hillary and began to light him up.
Didn’t anyone find it odd that questions about Hillary’s emails and her
other simmering scandals dried up all of a sudden? Could it be just a
coincidence? Not with the Clintons.
Every
bit of news coming from the media about the Democrat primary these days
is highlighted by Bernie’s surprisingly successful campaign. The media
spouts that Bernie’s growing popularity could spell big trouble for
Hillary. But no one is happier about this seemingly bad news than
Hillary’s campaign, because this is exactly the kind of “trouble” they
prefer Hillary to have – all the way to the Democrat convention.
Bernie
Sanders is the perfect shill in the Democrat presidential primaries.
And so far, he is working exceptionally well for Hillary’s “low profile”
campaign strategy. The higher Bernie climbs in the polls, the better
his chances are of staying longer in a primary battle with Hillary. And
the longer he stays in the primary, the longer Hillary’s shady
political past stays under the media radar – and out of sight of the
American electorate.
But
there’s not a political pundit on the planet who believes that Bernie
Sanders has a snowball’s chance of winning the Democrat presidential
nomination. If you care to check out the delegate count as of today,
Hillary is well on the way to being nominated. And getting to the
nomination unscathed by any of her “real” political (and legal) troubles
is the key to Hillary’s success.
When
Hillary accepts the Democrat nomination for president, Bernie Sanders’s
valiant effort will become a big political feather in her hat. The
media will say: Wow – that Hillary sure is a fighter! (You do know her slogan is “Fighting for Us,” right?)
And
when the Republicans, and their beleaguered and battle-worn
presidential nominee, finally get around to campaigning against only
Hillary, all those questions and allegations they’ll be making about her
emails, Benghazi, and the Clinton Foundation will be noted and branded
by the leftist media as old news, anti-woman, and you guessed it –
another right-wing conspiracy.
Just 3.5 percent of over 127,000 illegal youths arrested on
the U.S.-Mexico border over the last two and a half years have been
returned home, sparking Sen. Jeff Sessions to bark at a Senate hearing,
"Give me a break, who's running this country? Aren't we entitled to have
a system of laws?"
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
on the topic of the two recent surges of minors across the U.S. border,
Sessions provided the new numbers: 127,193, apprehended over last two
and a half years and 4,680 returned. He later added, "97 percent of
unaccompanied minors evade deportation through administration
lawlessness."
The rest, said the Alabama senator, have either been placed with family and friends or are in the legal system.
Immigration has become a contentious issue on Capitol Hill and
on the campaign trail, with GOP front-runner Donald Trump pushing for
better border control.
On the Hill, Sessions and other administration critics claim
that by letting in so many illegal immigrants, especially youths, the
message to those in Central America is that the United States has an
open door policy.
Sessions believes that if a majority of those trying to enter
illegally were sent back, the message would be don't try to cross the
border, and two different administration officials said a tougher border
policy would likely limit illegal crossings.
"I don't disagree with that," said Thomas Homan, executive
associate director for enforcement and removal operations with the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He added, "I think that if you have a consequence and deterrence to illegal activity the illegal activity will slow down."
Ronald Vitiello, deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, added, "Yes, I believe that matters."
Sessions hit president for looking on every unaccompanied illegal minor as a victim of crime back home, and eligible for asylum.
"If caught, they should be treated fairly and sent home," said
Sessions. But, he added, "it cannot be that every young person that
appears from Central America is entitled to asylum or entry into the
United States contrary to our laws. It just cannot be. Does anybody in
this government not understand that? That's what people are upset
about."
Democrats approached the issue differently, backing the
president's open door policy and calling for more legal and social aid
for the children.
Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, for example, said that those given
legal help typically have a better chance of getting asylum. He said
that 73 percent of those provided lawyers got to stay in the country.
Issues of sex abuse and forced labor involving the illegal
minors was also raised, and officials could not rule out that there has
been abuse.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at
Angie Martinez, a 27-year-old mother of
three, was killed in Laredo in 2015. Her estranged husband, an
undocumented immigrant, is charged with her murder.
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LAREDO – The sirens, the crime-scene tape, the tears and agony
belonged on the television screen in Martha Martinez’s living room.
Some of her favorite evenings were spent there with her sister
Angelica — Angie, her siblings called her — watching "The First 48," a
reality television show on which investigators scramble to solve murders
within two days or risk the crimes going unsolved.
The sisters were “open diaries,” Martha Martinez recalled recently, best friends who kept tabs on each other daily.
In 2015, Angie Martinez had turned a corner at age 27. After earning
her degree in criminal justice, she'd landed a steady job at the Webb
County Jail. But more importantly, as far as her sisters were concerned,
Angie had gained some independence and confidence. She had separated
from her husband, Juan Francisco De Luna Vasquez, an undocumented
immigrant from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, this Texas town’s sister city
just across the Rio Grande.
“He used to control her so much — a lot,” Martha Martinez said. “She
started to defend herself. But their lives were always very
complicated.”
On the evening of July 2, Martha Martinez’s phone calls to Angie’s
cell phone went unanswered. An hour later, she saw flashing police
lights up close. Angelica Martinez had stopped by the central Laredo
apartment she previously shared with De Luna to pick up their three
children, ages nine, eight and three.
The kids were ordered outside and warned not to come back into the
apartment, Martha Martinez recounted. Moments later the children said
they heard their mother scream, and their father quickly packed them in
his car and delivered them to a relative’s house.
Angie Martinez was found inside the apartment bludgeoned to death.
“When I got there, they wouldn’t let me go up, and that’s when a
police officer told me that she had passed away,” said Martha Martinez,
who drove to the scene after her mom told her Angie hadn’t shown up like
she was supposed to. “And I had told him ‘No, it’s not her. She
wouldn’t give up that easily.’”
Any hopes that her sister was still clinging to life were dashed when
Martha realized there was no ambulance among the flashing lights. “I
remember telling him to give her CPR, to call an ambulance. [I said,]
‘There’s no ambulance here – you need to call somebody.’ But she was
already dead,” Martha Martinez recalled.
De Luna allegedly bashed in the side of Angie's head and strangled
her, according to Laredo police. Beside her body they found a
hand-written confession from De Luna, who was caught after he allegedly
tried to commit suicide in an upper-middle class neighborhood where
Martha Martinez said De Luna used to work as a handyman. He is now
awaiting trial for the murder. Martha and her older sister Kimberly
Martinez don’t need TV cops to help solve the mystery of who killed
their sister. They would still like someone to explain how a man with De
Luna's lengthy criminal history could be living illegally in the United
States.
By the time he was arrested in July 2015 for the Martinez murder, De
Luna had been through the Webb County Jail at least four times on a
half-dozen charges, according to Webb County Sheriff’s Department
records. He had been caught illegally crossing the border under
different aliases and sent back to Mexico four times, according to a
statement the Department of Homeland Security issued after his murder
arrest.
But it is unclear if federal immigration authorities were told about
all of De Luna's crimes or whether any effort was made to detect his
return to the United States. De Luna was first arrested in January 2006, on an assault charge.
That charge was dismissed, and De Luna was deported to Mexico later
that month. In late June, the U.S. Border Patrol caught De Luna trying
to come back in, and he was charged with improper entry by an alien,
according to federal court documents. But less than a week later, Webb County records show he was again
picked up and charged with evading arrest, resisting arrest and making
terroristic threats. Those charges were still pending when Angie
Martinez was killed.
On July 3, 2006, a federal magistrate convicted De Luna of improper
entry and ordered him deported and placed on unsupervised probation for
three years. He was also ordered to pay a $10 fine, and he served no
time in prison.
In 2010, De Luna was arrested after a warrant was issued for failing
to show up to court on his earlier charges, according to Webb County
Jail records. But he was out on the streets soon after.
Despite De Luna's arrest record, it’s unclear if federal authorities
used any tools at their disposal — including prison time or threats of
penalties — to delay or thwart De Luna’s repeated returns to Texas.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement referred all inquiries about
federal interactions with De Luna to the U.S. Border Patrol. Agents with
the U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo Sector said there is no record their
office ever came across De Luna. A senior official for U.S. Customs and
Border Protection’s public affairs office in Washington said the agency
doesn’t release details about some deportees due to privacy concerns.
De Luna lived in Laredo enjoying his “fresa” lifestyle — a border
term for Mexican socialites who enjoy, and often demand, the finer
things society has to offer no matter their social standing, Martha and
Kimberly Martinez said. His arrest history prevented him from gaining
legal status but didn’t seem to affect his ability to live in Texas,
working as a maintenance technician and handyman in the neighborhood
where he was caught.
A few weeks before Thanksgiving 2013, De Luna was arrested again and
charged with DWI and striking an object on a highway. With his previous
assault and evading arrest charges still pending, he was booked into
Webb County Jail for the fourth time. But he was soon on Texas streets
again, bonding out the same day he was arrested after posting $2,500.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement hasn’t responded to several requests
asking if the agency took any actions to have De Luna transferred into
their custody before he was released.
Armando Martinez, Angie’s father, said De Luna's 2013 arrest should
have been the last straw for a “born criminal.” Had De Luna been locked
up, or deported, his daughter might still be alive.
Juan Francisco De Luna Vasquez is charged with the 2015 murder of his estranged wife.
“Why didn’t the police or immigration go get him at his house?” he
asked. “I never called the cops on him because I wanted to protect my
daughter. But they should have gotten him. He’s nothing but a bandido.”
Angie Martinez was murdered in Laredo the day after a homeless
undocumented immigrant in San Francisco allegedly shot and killed Kate
Steinle. Steinle's death provoked national outrage, and state lawmakers
often use it to highlight what they call the Obama administration’s
“recklessness.” But no one at the state Capitol mentioned the Martinez
case during interim committee hearings on border security.
The sisters aren’t sure why, but say it doesn’t seem to matter.
They’re grappling with their own feelings about immigration — something
they say they never really thought heavily about until their sister was
killed.
“There’s a lot of illegal people here, right? But sometimes you come
back because you need to work,” Martha said. “But what he did and how he
lived his life, it does make you angry because he got in a lot of
trouble with the law.”
Despite his confession, De Luna’s case remains pending in a Webb
County court. During a court appearance Jan. 8, a judge set his trial
date for May. Eduardo Peña, his court-appointed attorney, said his
client’s guilt isn’t in doubt.
Cases like De Luna’s prove the border isn’t as sealed as some say.
After being arrested, it’s only a matter of time before dangerous
immigrants are back in Texas, Peña said.
“[Undocumented immigrants] are sometimes just given time served. It’s
a merry go round,” he said. “Some are back in a day or two. It’s
definitely a problem. It’s a race to post bond before ICE can detain
them. There’s no question the border isn’t properly secured.”
It’s Peña's job to convince a jury the killing wasn’t premeditated
but “a crime of passion” that could win De Luna a lesser sentence.
That would be a living nightmare for the Martinez family.
“After all the evidence and the autopsy, it’s more then enough to
find him guilty and for him not to ever, ever come out. She didn’t
deserve to die that way,” Martha said.
The badge of Captain Jaime Magaña in Webb County Jail in Laredo, TX, on Nov. 5, 2015. Photo by Martin do Nascimento
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*Correction appended With a $6 billion budget and more than 20,000 employees, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stands poised to seize and deport immigrants — undocumented or not — who commit serious crimes in the United States. Provided someone else catches them.
The behemoth agency at the center of the nation’s immigration
enforcement efforts has no proactive way — watch lists, data mining or
the like — to systematically search for dangerous undocumented
immigrants, including those who have returned to the United States after
being deported for committing crimes.
Instead, if an immigrant criminal is caught and thrown out of the
country, the process most likely begins when a local police officer or
sheriff's deputy pulls them over for a traffic stop or arrests them as
part of a criminal investigation.
The success of federal deportation policy in Texas and nationwide
depends for the most part on a heads up from county sheriffs. They run
the jails where people are taken when arrested and where the culling of criminal immigrants begins.
Being at the bottom of the enforcement pyramid places tremendous
pressure on them — political, legal and otherwise — sheriffs say, and
with federal policy increasingly targeting serious, repeat criminal
offenders, their role in the process has grown.
“When some of these sheriffs talk about bringing in an undocumented,
it may be one a month,” said Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez. “With
us, it’s several a day.”
The legal tool federal authorities use to take custody of immigrants they want is the detainer.
Around in some form or fashion since the 1950s, detainers are notices
sent to jails asking them to hold on to an immigrant once local
authorities are done with them so federal agents can come by and get
them.
In its latest incarnation,
the detainer is reserved for the most serious convicted immigrant
criminals. This new, narrower restriction, imposed in November 2014, has
caused the number of detainers to drop. As of October 2015, the latest monthly figure available, 7,117 detainers were issued. That's down from an all-time monthly high of 27,755 in August 2011, according to voluminous Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Texas is central to the federal agency’s deportation
efforts. Nationwide, only eight jails received more than 1,000 detainer
requests in the last year, according to clearinghouse data. Four were in
Texas — Harris, Travis, Dallas and Hidalgo counties.
A report
last year on the federal agency’s enforcement operations shows it
plucked 139,368 people from the nation's jails and prisons during the
fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2015. That accounted for about 59 percent
of the total number of people ICE removed from the country that year for
a variety of reasons.
Many came from Texas, screened out of state prisons or found among
the approximately 71,000 people who are booked into local Texas jails
each month, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. On
average, 3,724 undocumented immigrants were detained in Texas jails each
month in 2015, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of immigration
detainer reports from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
Between December 2012 and October 2015, undocumented immigrants who
sat in Texas county jails cost taxpayers a total of $210.6 million,
according to reports filed with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards
that were released to The Texas Tribune.
In 2015, the federal government provided about $12 million
to Texas to care for incarcerated undocumented immigrants. Most of that
- more than $8 million - went to the Texas prison system, not jails.
Yet for all the statistics, no federal, state or local agency can
claim it has a handle on the number of "criminal aliens" — the
government's term for foreigners who commit crimes in the U.S. — who are
currently in the country, how many crimes they are responsible for and
what share the system catches.
Local options
In Harris, the state’s most populous county, 135,000 inmates each year come through the jailhouse doors. It and the city of Carrollton are the only two
Texas jurisdictions that contract with the federal government to have
immigration agents stationed at its jail helping pinpoint criminal
immigrants. Nine federal officers and nine Harris County deputies
schooled in federal procedures comb booking documents and interview
inmates suspected of being in the country illegally.
A guard inside the Webb County Jail in Laredo, TX, on Nov. 5, 2015.
By contrast, in Brewster County, the state's geographically largest —
as in, bigger than some states — things work a bit differently. About
9,200 people live in the West Texas county, and its jail in Alpine has
no official policy for handling undocumented immigrants.
How does it strive to alert federal authorities when a criminal
immigrant is arrested? “We’ve got a sign on the wall,” jail
administrator Lora Nussbaum told the Tribune, referring to a torn ICE
flier taped on a jail wall that lists the agency's phone number.
County jails may be the front line of efforts to keep undocumented
immigrants who commit serious crimes from slipping through the cracks,
but the state of Texas has no uniform method of going about that task,
or measuring the scope of the problem.
To gain a better picture of crimes committed by undocumented
immigrants and how counties handle them, the Tribune asked for booking
data and immigration procedure policies from 26 Texas counties,
including the state’s 10 most populous.
Almost none would provide it. Some, like Montgomery and Presidio
counties, insisted that providing booking information, including an
inmate’s date of birth, violated the inmate’s right to privacy. Harris
County claimed that releasing a list of noncitizens was essentially
creating new information — something the Texas Public Information Act
does not require a governmental body to do.
Some counties argued that that federal law specifically prohibits releasing information about immigrants.
Attorney General Ken Paxton's office upheld most of the counties’ arguments, saying state open records laws don't compel release of the information.
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office went a step further and insisted
that booking records are court records and, as such, are not subject to
the state’s open records law. The attorney general’s office agreed,
blocking their release.
Five counties responded to the Tribune’s request for booking data:
Brewster, Nueces, Fort Bend, Travis and Tarrant. Of those, only Travis
responded with enough detailed information to analyze.
“We don’t want to be in a position where somebody loses their life because of something we didn’t do that was legal for us to do.”— Maj. Wes Priddy, chief administrator for Travis County jails
The numbers show that Travis County booked about 20,000 inmates with
federal immigration detainers between 2008 and 2015, facing charges that
were roughly evenly divided between felonies and misdemeanors. More
than 7,000 of those inmates faced drunk driving charges, the most common
charge by far. That was followed by family violence-related assault
charges, which about 1,900 inmates faced. An estimated 2,400 of the
total inmates were repeat offenders.
Maj. Wes Priddy, chief administrator for Travis County jails, said
local law enforcement’s primary concern was public safety, not
investigating immigration status. But he said that part of keeping
dangerous people off the streets involved close cooperation with federal
authorities.
“We don’t want to be in a position where somebody loses their life
because of something we didn’t do that was legal for us to do,” Priddy
said.
After arresting someone, the Department of Public Safety, county
sheriffs, and even the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — the
nation’s largest prison system — all have to rely on the federal
government to inform them who is in the United States illegally.
“What our obligation is, is to provide ICE with the population
information,” said Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson. “They go through
it. They determine who they’re going to put a hold on and who they’re
not, and our people don’t really have a way to further investigate are
they truly here legally or not.”
That typically happens during the booking process, when a suspect’s
fingerprints are sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a
procedure used for every new inmate. If the fingerprints match a profile
in the federal database of non-U.S. citizens with previous criminal
histories, ICE can decide to ask for a detainer. Texas jail officers do
ask arrestees to name their country of birth as a part of the booking
process, but an arrested immigrant’s answer is written down without
being verified.
The same holds true for inmates in Texas prison. As of Nov. 30, 2015,
three-fourths of the 9,135 inmates in the Texas prison system with ICE
detainers were in the United States illegally. The remainder include
those serving time for crimes who had legal immigration status.
“Ultimately, ICE will make the determination whether that person is
in country illegally,” said Texas prisons spokesman Jason Clark. In
2010, the agency began asking for ICE help verifying those among the
system’s 148,000 inmates who were illegally in the country.
But the federal tracking system of verifying what law enforcement
refers to as “criminal aliens” is less than precise. It relies on
someone's fingerprints being in the system because they have been
arrested before. If an undocumented immigrant has never encountered law
enforcement, the federal tracking system might not notice their first
arrest.
Jumbled numbers
There is no definitive data showing that undocumented immigrants
commit crimes at a higher rate than the citizen population, and a few
indications that in Texas they do not.
The Pew Research Center estimates undocumented immigrants comprise about seven percent of the Texas population. On average, 3,724 undocumented
immigrants were detained in Texas jails each month in 2015, according
to a Texas Tribune analysis of immigration detainer reports from the
Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
Of the 148,000 inmates held in 100 Texas prison units, about 9,135
inmates have federal detainers asking that they be handed to federal
officials when their sentences are complete. Not all were in the country
illegally when arrested. Those that were illegal account for about 4.6
percent of the prison population.
Nationwide, almost 60 percent of immigrants who are deported had some
previous criminal charges, according to 2015 numbers from ICE.
A group of undocumented Mexican nationals who
were convicted of crimes in the U.S. enter Mexico at the US-Mexico
border crossing at Brownsville/Matamoros after being deported from the
United States on Nov 4, 2015.
The Pew Center, relying on 2012 U.S. Census numbers, estimated that
Texas has 1.7 million undocumented immigrants, ranking second in the
nation. What portion of that 1.7 million is responsible for crimes is a
tougher calculus.
Estimates from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which gets the
information from jails, are considered inaccurate because there’s no
uniform requirement to verify citizenship during the jail booking
process.
In 2014, then-Gov. Rick Perry was
criticized for relying on DPS’ first attempts to calculate the impact
of crimes committed by immigrants. That year, Perry repeated the
department's claim that “criminal aliens” had committed more than
642,000 crimes in Texas since 2008. It was later revealed
that “criminal aliens” referred to all foreign-born immigrants in
Texas, not just those in the state illegally, and the "crimes" counted
included charges, not convictions, some dating back decades.
One year later, DPS tried to clarify the numbers, but even director
Steve McCraw, appearing before the Texas House Committee on State
Affairs in December, tried to lower expectations about the “criminal
alien statistic” his agency featured on its website.
“It’s an undercount,” McCraw testified on Dec 10. “We acknowledge it
woefully undercounts the amount, but it does accurately count the ones
who are in fact here and the ones who have committed crimes.”
The DPS statistics continue to confuse both the public and lawmakers.
ICE officials consider a foreign national — here legally or otherwise
— a "criminal alien" if they've been convicted of a crime. DPS broadens
the definition to include foreign nationals who have only been
arrested.
“Criminal alien is a foreign national with a criminal record,"
explained DPS Assistant Director Skylor Hearn, who oversees the agency’s
law enforcement support division, which includes the state's crime
records. “There was probable cause to arrest them for something, and it
would apply to the rest of us as well, generally speaking. If you’ve
been arrested, you have a criminal record; you are not a criminal, but
you have a criminal record.”
By DPS's count, 177,060 foreign-born individuals were charged with
crimes from 2011 through Jan. 31. That's a much larger number than those
foreign nationals actually convicted during the same time frame in
Texas: 84,182 non-U.S. citizens. Of those, 58,128 were determined to be
in the United States unlawfully.
State Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, says the DPS numbers on "criminal
aliens" are artificially pumped up by counting the number of criminal
charges filed against undocumented immigrants instead of actual
convictions. Charges are routinely dismissed for lack of evidence or
other reasons, he noted.
But by hyping the number of charges, the agency bolsters the argument
for more border security money. Last year, the Texas Legislature
approved an additional $800 million for border security.
"When crime rates were higher in this state, did the legislature move this much money?" Blanco asked.
Adding to the mathematical
murkiness, immigration status can be fluid. A foreign-born Texas jail
inmate could be legally in the country at the time of one arrest but
have an expired visa by the next arrest and be undocumented the second
time around, further bedeviling Texas’ attempts at measuring
unauthorized immigrants’ impact on the state’s criminal justice system.
Attempts by DPS to connect criminal aliens to their crimes also fall short.
The agency's data, obtained by the Tribune, shows that 177,060 non-U.S. citizens arrested from 2011 through Jan. 31 were charged with252,083 offenses during that time. This is less than what DPS reports on its own website becausethe agencycounts crimes committed over a U.S. citizen's lifetime, outside the five-year span.
DPS officials insist that its
criminal alien counts, based on federal immigration data, are not an
attempt to construe that foreign-born criminals are a greater threat
than U.S. citizens.
“The department has not made that statement and does not have
information to support that statement,” DPS spokeswoman Summer Blackwell
said in a statement. “The Department of Public Safety believes any
individual who has committed a violent crime or is party to criminal
activities — no matter their citizenship status or country of origin —
is considered a potential threat to public safety and the security of
Texas.”
The arrest of an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. kicks off a complicated interplay between local and federal authorities.
Just say no
Even when federal immigration authorities decide they want to take
immigrants from the state criminal justice system into custody, there
can be obstacles.
Federal records obtained by the Tribune show that in more than 18,000
cases over the past two years, local jails across the country failed to
hand over deportable immigrants to federal authorities. Jurisdictions
in many states, including Pennsylvania, California and Colorado, have
become reluctant to honor the detainers after facing a series of lawsuits from inmates challenging the constitutional legitimacy of the extended detention.
Further information about the outcomes in cases where local officials
declined to detain someone — whether those inmates, many with previous
criminal histories, had been released to the public — proved difficult
to come by, even in Texas, where there were only 146 such cases.
Of the 11 state jails contacted by the Tribune, only one could
provide definitive answers about what had happened with declined
detainers in its jurisdiction.
In Collin County north of Dallas, where agency records show two
declined detainers, one for an inmate with a criminal history, a
spokesman for the sheriff’s office said it “would literally be too
manpower-intensive and potentially impossible to locate the reasons they
were released.”
The Texas county with the most declined detainers — Travis, which had
72 instances, including 33 on inmates with a prior criminal history —
referred all questions about the records to the federal government.
“I do not know how ICE came up with those numbers and we do not keep
stats for ICE,” Travis County Sheriff’s office spokesman Roger Wade said
in an email. “You will have to ask ICE how they arrived at those
numbers and what their definition is of declining detainers.”
The federal agency itself could not verify further details about the
cases. An ICE official, who lacked authorization to comment and thus
spoke on condition of anonymity, said a small number of the cases could
be a result of administrative errors at the federal or local level.
But beyond that, the official said it would be “resource-prohibitive”
to determine what exactly happened in the individual circumstances.
Step away from the direct cost to jails to house undocumented
immigrants — and the troubling lack of standardized record keeping — and
there’s the added pressure of keeping up with the federal government’s
ever-shifting parameters of who in local jails is eligible for
deportation.
On Nov. 20, 2014,
ICE’s parent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, discontinued a
policy known as Secure Communities in favor of a new plan called the
Priority Enforcement Program. Secure Communities — which targeted anyone
in the United States illegally — had faced fierce pushback from local
officials across the country who feared legal liability under the
program.
With the new program, the federal agency decided to focus its
deportation efforts on undocumented immigrants who committed the most
serious crimes.
In congressional testimony and internal documents detailing the new
policy’s implementation, ICE officials have stressed the importance of
local cooperation. A 2015 memo from the federal immigration agency
describes “expansive efforts to encourage state and local law
enforcement partners” to collaborate with the agency.
The program was developed to “bring back on board those state and
local jurisdictions that had concerns with, or legal obstacles to,
assisting us,” said ICE Director Sarah Saldaña in July testimony before a
congressional committee.
But the federal agency has opposed requiring local authorities to
honor immigration detainers. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson
told members of the House Judiciary Committee in July that it would a
“huge setback” to mandate compliance with immigration policy.
“I do not believe that mandating through federal legislation the
conduct of sheriffs and police chiefs is the way to go,” he said. “I
think it will be hugely controversial. I think it will have problems
with the Constitution. I want to see us work cooperatively with state
and local law enforcement, and I believe they are poised to do that.”
The voluntary guidelines from federal authorities can leave local
officials in a politically precarious position — often, no matter what
decision they make will land them in hot water.
Jurisdictions in Democratically controlled urban areas face intense
pressure from activists critical of federal immigration policy to cease
any cooperation with ICE.
“Our ideal situation would be for there to be no ICE collaboration
whatsoever,” said Carolina Canizales, the San Antonio-based deportation
defense director of United We Dream, a national immigrant rights
organization, which regularly stages protests at jails in the state, in
an October interview. “I think they shouldn’t condemn thousands of
undocumented immigrants for one crime that has been committed.”
At the same time, state lawmakers are on the watch for any sign that
county sheriffs are failing to hold unauthorized immigrants singled out
by ICE for deportation until federal ICE officers can pick them up and
return them to their home country.
Take the case of Dallas County Sheriff Valdez, who throughout her
time in office has most often found herself in the crosshairs of
immigrant rights activists. She currently faces a lawsuit alleging her
jail has held immigrants for unconstitutionally long periods of time
even after they received bond.
But recently, she has become better known for the harsh public denunciation she received from Gov. Greg Abbott,
who wrote her a letter saying that what he viewed as lacking
enforcement of federal immigration policy posed a “serious danger to
Texans.”
Abbott’s letter came after Valdez told reporters in October she would
review federal detainers placed on inmates in her jail on a
case-by-case basis and would not hold immigrants arrested for minor
crimes for up to 48 hours for ICE officers.
Her comments seemed to mirror ICE’s changed focus on the most serious
immigrant criminals — but before she had a chance to clarify, Abbott
blasted her stance and threatened to cut off grants to any sheriff’s
office choosing to not abide by federal immigration detainers.
Valdez said late last year that her statement was taken out of context.
“What I said was, when there’s a disagreement (over whether a jail
inmate was undocumented or not) we look at it case-by-case,” Valdez told
the Tribune in December. “But in this whole time we haven’t had a
disagreement ... The feds and I are great. ICE and I are fine.” Becca Aaronson contributed data analysis and reporting to this story. Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated
the percentage of the Texas prison population that is undocumented. The
correct number is 4.6 percent.
WASHINGTON, DC (February 19, 2016) — A new analysis by
the Center for Immigration Studies of government data shows no
improvement over the last year in the number of native-born Americans
not in the labor force (neither working nor looking for work). The data
also shows that there were 1.3 million fewer working-age (16 to 65)
natives holding a job in the fourth quarter of 2015 than in the same
quarter of 2007, while over the same time period the number of
immigrants working went up by 1.8 million.
Dr. Steven Camarota, the Center's director of research and author of the
analysis, said, "The unemployment rate gives a false picture of what's
going on in the labor market. There has been enormous growth in the
number of working-age (16 to 65) people, especially native-born
Americans, not working. In the fourth quarter of 2015, 55 million
native-born Americans of working age were not employed. Only about 6
million of them are officially classified as "unemployed." The key
question for our political leaders and candidates is, does it make sense
to admit a million new permanent immigrants each year, along with
several hundred thousand guestworkers, given the enormous pool of
working-age Americans not holding jobs?"
The employment situation in the 4th quarter of 2015:
The unemployment rate for natives in the fourth quarter of 2015 was
4.9 percent (6.4 million). Despite recent improvements, this is higher
than the 4.6 percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2007 and the 3.6
percent rate in the fourth quarter of 2000.
In addition to the unemployed,
28.2 percent (48.8 million) of working-age (16 to 65) natives were not
in the labor force, which means they were neither working nor looking
for work. This is much higher than the 25.3 percent rate (42.5 million)
in the same quarter of 2007 and the 23.2 percent rate (36.3 million) in
2000.
Combining those not in the
labor force and those unemployed shows 55.2 million working-age,
native-born Americans without jobs in the fourth quarter of 2015, 14.3
million higher (with rounding) than the 40.8 million in same quarter of
2000.
There were also 10.7 million working-age immigrants unemployed or not in the labor force in the fourth quarter of 2015.
In addition to those
unemployed and not in the labor force, there were 5.9 million immigrants
and natives working part-time, but looking for full-time work.
In total, there were 71.8
million natives and immigrants unemployed, not in the labor force (16 to
65), or forced to work part-time in the fourth quarter of 2015.
(CNSNews.com) --
Although the national unemployment rate in January was 4.9%, a broader
measure used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), called U-6, which
includes total unemployed, persons marginally attached to the labor
force, and those working part-time for economic reasons, shows that the unemployment rate was 9.9% in January 2016.
That
9.9% unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, was the same in December
and November 2015, and up slightly from October, when it was 9.8%.
In January 2015, a year ago, the U-6 unemployment rate was 11.3%.
Prior
to October 2015, the last time the U-6 unemployment rate was in the
9.8-9.9% range was in May and June 2008, seven months before Barack
Obama was inaugurated president.
Source: Gallup and Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When
Obama entered office in January 2009, the U-6 unemployment rate was
14.2%. It's peak was in late 2009, early 2010, when it hit 17.1%
unemployment for several months.
The Gallup polling company calls the U-6 number the "Real Unemployment" rate
in America. As it states, "Widely reported unemployment metrics in the
U.S. do not accurately represent the reality of joblessness in
America."
"For
example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not count a
person who desires work as unemployed if he or she is not working and
has stopped looking for work over the past four weeks," says
Gallup. "Similarly, the BLS does not count someone as unemployed if he
or she is, for instance, an out-of-work engineer, construction worker or
retail manager who performs a minimum of one hour of work a week and
receives at least $20 in compensation."
The
Unaccompanied Children Crisis: Does the Administration Have a Plan to
Stop the Border Surge and Adequately Monitor the Children?
Kevin writes that it’s a mystery to him “that conservatives are so
miserable at the moment, when they are presented with such a desirable
choice” between Cruz and Rubio. Let me explain.
There’s no doubt that both “are self-conscious conservatives in the
sense that they are products of the conservative movement,” as Kevin
says, “in a way that no president has been since Ronald Reagan.” I’ll
even concede that Rubio got into bed with Schumer because he was
auditioning for the job of Republican We Can Do Business With, a
deal-maker who can get things done, and a deal on immigration seemed
like a good place to start.
But there are two factors that might help resolve Kevin’s mystery.
First, as I argue on the homepage today, immigration is not just another
issue. It impacts every aspect of policy, and is irreversible. Angela
Merkel’s conservative bona fides are irrelevant next to the damage she
has done to her country. If Rubio were to change his tune on immigration
after winning the election (as he’s done after winning every previous
election), nothing else he did would matter.
And the chances of that happening are greater than Kevin thinks. He
writes that, “our hypothetical President Rubio is never going to sign
that amnesty bill because Congress isn’t ever going to send it to him.”
He could be right – If Rubio wins, I certainly hope that’s the way it
would play out. But the House has different leadership than in 2013.
While John Boehner was basically in favor of a Gang of Eight-style
policy of amnesty for illegals and massive expansion of legal
immigration, he wasn’t an ideologically committed supporter of unlimited
immigration like Paul Ryan. Remember, in 2013-2014, Ryan worked with
Luis Gutierrez to pass a version of the Senate bill, just as Rubio had
worked with Schumer. With Ryan as Speaker and Rubio in the White House,
the odds that they’d try again are greater than we should be comfortable
with, especially when the anti-borders interests would take a Rubio
victory as proof that you can push amnesty and increased immigration and
live to tell about it.
This notion that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true.
Eagle Forum has published a memo detailing Marco Rubio’s lies to
conservatives in his effort to get Chuck Schumer’s immigration bill
passed. “Lies” is a strong word, but it’s the only word that fits. This
wasn’t the natural trimming of politicians, like Rubio’s justification
of sugar subsidies in the service of his financial patrons the Fanjul
brothers. From Cicero to Reagan, all successful politicians engage in
misdirection or exploit ambiguity (including all the other current
Republican hopefuls). In this case, though, Rubio led a Clintonian
campaign of calculated falsehoods designed to sell Schumer’s Gang of
Eight bill to conservatives.
Those falsehoods are too numerous to list in a blog post – read the
whole paper. But some examples regarding just one part of the bill: As
Rubio himself was forced to admit eventually, Schumer’s bill granted
work permits and Social Security numbers to illegals up front, and
promised the enforcement targets would be met in future years – just
like the failed 1986 amnesty. And yet, here’s what he told conservative
media:
To Limbaugh: “if there is not language in this bill that guarantees that
nothing else will happen unless these enforcement mechanisms are in
place, I won’t support it.”
To Hannity: “I don’t think any of that [amnesty] begins until we certify
that the border security progress has been real. That a workplace
enforcement mechanism is in place. That we are tracking visitors to our
country, especially when they exit.”
Bill O’Reilly said: “Senator Rubio told me on the phone today that it
would be at least 13 years, 13, before people in the country illegally
right now could gain full legal working status and even longer to
achieve citizenship.”
Rubio also lied about the size of the bill’s unprecedented increase in
legal immigration, he lied about the scope of waivers, he lied about
welfare eligibility, he lied to law enforcement about amnesty for gang
members.
Disagreement over policy is one thing; Jeb’s immigration views, for
instance, are not shared by most of the people whose votes he’s seeking,
but he’s honorably forthright about what he believes. Rubio, on the
other hand, tried to trick his own partisans. I had actually forgotten
the scope of his dishonesty in pushing Schumer’s bill; Eagle Forum has
done a service by collecting it all in one place. And Rubio has never
apologized for it. Maybe someone will bring it up at tonight’s debate.
Immigration isn’t just another issue. Despite his “does not compute”
glitch Saturday night (which will likely dog him for the rest of his
career, like Rick Perry’s “oops” and Dan Quayle’s “you’re no Jack
Kennedy” moment), Marco Rubio is still a live contender for the
nomination. So it remains important to explain why I think his
immigration record disqualifies him from being the 2016 nominee.
Many conservatives who admire Rubio’s genuine political talent agree
that his shilling for Chuck Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill was bad. But
they offer two reasons that this should not be an impediment to his
being the Republican presidential nominee. First, they say, Rubio has
learned his lesson and, second, he’s quite solid on many other issues.
Both parts of this defense warrant examination: Has Rubio truly changed
his spots on immigration? And is immigration simply one issue among
many, so that Rubio’s deviation there is outweighed by his fidelity on
others?
As to the first question: There’s every reason to suspect Rubio is
merely an election-year immigration hawk. A devastating 14-page
indictment of Rubio’s immigration record, prepared by Eagle Forum (html
and pdf), lays out his duplicity in painful detail. Early in his career,
anti-borders groups were delighted with Rubio’s conduct in the Florida
legislature; the head of one of them, NALEO, said, “He, as speaker, kept
many of those [immigration-control bills] from coming up to a vote. We
were very proud of his work as speaker of the House.”
Then, when Rubio ran for the Senate, he turned into a hawk. As CNN’s
greatest-hits clip at last month’s debate showed, Rubio said the
following, among other things, during his 2010 campaign: “Earned path to
citizenship is basically code for amnesty, it’s what they call it. . . .
It is unfair to people who have legally entered this country to create
an alternative pathway for individuals who entered illegally and
knowingly did so.” This hawkishness on immigration was an important
reason for his upset victory over Charlie Crist.
“Once he got elected, he betrayed us all,” according to Phyllis
Schlafly, Rubio’s first major outside endorser in the Senate primary.
Rubio chose to become the chief salesman and public face of Chuck
Schumer’s Gang of Eight bill and, as the Eagle Forum indictment shows,
his mendacity went well beyond embracing the amnesty he’d so recently
denounced: It included a calculated effort to dupe conservatives about
what was really in the bill. It was so bad that the head of the ICE
agents’ association said that “he directly misled law-enforcement
officers” at a meeting right before the bill was introduced in the
Senate.
Then, when the voters rebelled at Senate passage of his monstrous bill
and the House refused to pass it, Rubio denounced his own bill, saying
the public doesn’t trust Washington to follow through on its enforcement
promises. (Of course, this was apparent to anyone with eyes to see and
ears to hear, not just in 2013 but even in 2007, when Bush’s amnesty
push failed.)
To sum up: Rubio was anti-enforcement in the Florida legislature, then
an enforcement hawk at election time in 2010, then Schumer’s cabana boy
in 2013, then a hawk again at election time. Anyone can flip once —
people really do change their minds, or even see political writing on
the wall and embrace a new position. But flipping and flopping in time
with the election cycle should be cause for skepticism, to say the
least.
And Rubio hasn’t even really renounced Schumer’s bill. He still supports
all the parts of it, but thinks they should be passed separately rather
than in a comprehensive package. And he is still an enthusiastic
supporter of the most important piece of the Schumer-Rubio legislation —
its doubling of legal immigration, from 1 million a year to 2 million,
which, combined with the amnesty, would have resulted in the issuance of
30 million green cards in the first decade after passage.
Not only has Rubio not recanted his support for doubling immigration,
he’s actually sponsored a bill in this Congress to triple H-1B
admissions of foreign workers (the I-Squared Act — which Michelle Malkin
has cheekily labeled Rubio’s second-worst immigration bill). What’s
more, personnel is policy, and Rubio’s inner circle — pollster Whit
Ayres, for instance, and Cesar Conda, his chief of staff during the
Schumer romance and likely White House chief of staff — are confirmed
opponents of immigration limits. The idea that the open-borders
corporate culture of the Rubio operation would be trumped by some
enforcement promises made on the campaign trail is a fantasy.
But even supposing all this is true, Rubio is sound on many other issues
— his answer on the abortion issue Saturday night, for instance, was
very strong and, while he’s a little too interventionist for my taste,
he’s firmly in the GOP mainstream and probably more knowledgeable on
foreign policy than his rivals. Since no candidate is perfect, isn’t
focusing so intently on immigration an unrealistic demand for purity?
After all, Rubio’s opportunistic embrace of sugar subsidies, at the
behest of a major donor, is the kind of soiled compromise we often
accept.
But immigration isn’t just another issue, like farm subsidies or taxes
or even battling radical Islam. Immigration is a meta issue, one that
affects almost every arena of national life — from politics to education
to jobs to security to health care to national cohesion. If we set
taxes too high, we can lower them later. If we let the Navy get too
small, we build more ships. But if we get immigration wrong, we can’t
undo it: People are not widgets, and we can’t ask for a do-over after
adding 30 million green cards in a decade.
What’s more, the deep gulf in views over immigration between elites and
the public, between globalists and patriots, has given immigration a
symbolic importance as a marker of legitimacy. As Ramesh Ponnuru has
written, “A hard line on immigration, however it is defined, is now part
of the conservative creed.”
In effect, Rubio is an Angela Merkel Republican — genuinely conservative
on most every issue, except the one that counts above all others.
For this reason alone, he should be denied the nomination. If he were to
succeed in getting it, the donor class and its politicians would take
away the lesson that they can betray the voters all they want on this
potentially nation-breaking issue, and simply talk their way out of it.
Voltaire wrote, in Candide, that “it is good to kill an admiral from
time to time, in order to encourage the others.” Rubio’s betrayal
doesn’t warrant the gallows, but he must be denied this prize, “in order
to encourage the others.”
This doesn’t mean he’s finished in politics. He’s a young man with
immense political gifts and has plenty of time before 2020 or 2024 to
atone in Congress for his transgressions and earn back the people’s
trust. If he were to run for governor of Florida, for instance, he could
amass a record of fidelity to immigration law by, say, passing
mandatory E-Verify for his state. Even before then, during the remainder
of his Senate term, he could work with Jeff Sessions to introduce
legislation to end chain migration and abolish the Visa Lottery — or, at
the very least, withdraw his sponsorship of the anti–American-worker
I-Squared H-1B bill.
If Marco Rubio can convincingly turn away from his Merkelian past, he
can have a bright future, perhaps even become the 46th or 47th president
of the United States. But to nominate him in 2016 would be a profound
mistake.
4. Where Does United States v. Texas Stand after Scalia's Death?
By Jon Feere
CIS Immigration Blog, February 14, 2016
. . .
If United States v. Texas results a 4-4 split decision, it
means that the lower court holding stands and President Obama's
unilateral amnesty remains enjoined. Critical to this analysis, any
opinion issued by the Supreme Court would not be precedent-setting.
(It would also likely be quite short. For example, in a 4-4 case from
2010, the Court simply wrote: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally
divided Court.")
What is unique in this situation is that the lower court's holding is in
the injunction phase – a full trial on the merits of DAPA and the
states' interests has not been held. This means that if the Supreme
Court were to split evenly, a hearing on the merits of the case is still
likely to be held at some point in the future by the lower court. At
some point after that, it is possible that the case would get appealed
back up to the Supreme Court. This would presumably happen after a new
justice has been appointed and after a new president has been elected.
What's interesting about this is that if the Obama administration hadn't
pressured the Court to take up the case, it could have slipped to the
next term and perhaps the immigration case would not be on everyone's
radar to the extent that it is now, making it easier for the president
to persuade Congress to allow him to appoint a new justice later this
year. It would be much more preferable from the administration's
perspective to appoint a new justice before the immigration case is
decided.
. . . http://www.cis.org/feere/where-does-united-states-v-texas-stand-after-scalias-death
5. Criminal Alien Assistance Funds: Wanting Your Cake and Eating It Too
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
. . .
But one can understand congressional interest in creating favor with
politically savvy and powerful law enforcement officials throughout the
country, such as county sheriffs and major city police chiefs, by
establishing an atmosphere of good will and cooperation between law
enforcement agencies nationwide and federal immigration agents charged
with finding and removing alien criminals.
The problem is that recalcitrant state legislatures and city and county
councils have erected barriers to such cooperation. Likewise, many
sheriffs and police chiefs have adopted rules that render the jobs of
federal agents much more difficult by refusing to honor immigration
detainers and declining to notify agents of arrests or the release dates
of aliens. This "sanctuary city" movement (which includes counties and
states along with cities), having gone unchecked by the administration,
has experienced mushroom-like growth — especially since the
administration itself has unilaterally created policy barriers by
narrowly defining when agents may even file such detainers. Not to
mention the litigiousness of open-borders groups that have sued state
and local law enforcement organizations for honoring the detainers
(suits which, as often as not, the federal government has run from,
leaving their enforcement "partners" to fend for themselves).
Still, there is something unconscionable about holding out one hand for
federal money and using the other to stiff-arm federal immigration
agents trying to do their job. Such is the case with California, which
even as it receives tens of millions of dollars in SCAAP money, has
enacted into law the "Trust Act", a statute prohibiting both state and
local California agencies from fully cooperating with immigration agents
or honoring detainers. This has on more than one occasion led to
unnecessary deaths (see here, here, and here). Yet, amusingly, a
California spokesman is quoted as lamenting the potential loss of money
because of the serious impact it will have on his state, and talking
about the number of alien inmates with detainers filed against them. One
wonders how many would, in the end, actually be honored, and how many
were rejected out of hand in the first place.
. . . http://www.cis.org/cadman/criminal-alien-assistance-funds-wanting-your-cake-and-eating-it-too
6. "We Might as Well Abolish Our Immigration Laws"
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
I mentioned two ways in which this ultimate dismantling might come
about. One involved stacking the deck of key appointments, such as
enlarging the bench of immigration judges with individuals who share the
president's open borders outlook. That has been happening in earnest,
and as one can see from a cursory glance at the official website of the
Executive Office for Immigration Review, it includes not just
rank-and-file judges, but also a slew of six new assistant chief
immigration judges who will ride herd over the others. Can anyone doubt
their philosophical proclivities?
The other way involves continuing to mandate executive actions that
crush even the semblance of immigration law enforcement. This most
recent directive to the Border Patrol certainly meets that test. And it
is not the only one. The administration has also directed that aerial
surveillance of our borders be cut in half. This is incredible at a time
when ISIS terrorists have threatened to infiltrate the United States by
any means necessary. One suspects that they care little about that
fight, though, since they have shown no will for it to date, and since
it will become the inheritance of the next president. It takes little
imagination to gauge that the reasons for the cut are twofold: First, to
permit the flooding of our borders with citizens from our southern
neighbors in a way that they believe, or at least hope, will force the
issue of a future broad-based amnesty. Second, and more prosaically, to
minimize the possibility that there will be a leak of aerial
surveillance videos that reveal exactly how damaging the new rules of
engagement for Patrol Agents are by showing footage of large numbers of
aliens crossing the border with impunity and indifference to the
possibility of apprehension.
. . . http://www.cis.org/cadman/we-might-well-abolish-our-immigration-laws
7. DHS OIG Issues a "No Recommendation" Audit Report — Or Does it?
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
As one can easily see, the left column, highlighted in blue, says, "What
We Recommend: We made one recommendation to CBP to develop and
implement a process to determine program costs for the SOG."
The text immediately to the right of the blue says, "We made no
recommendation regarding the lack of formal performance measures in the
SOG program [but that] CBP concurred with our recommendation. The
recommendation is resolved and open."
8. A Look at the New Center for Migration Studies Illegal Population Estimates
By Steven A. Camarota
CIS Immigration Blog, February 8, 2016
. . .
One of the biggest problems with the CMS report is the way the findings
are presented. The headline and the accompanying article emphasize a
"continued" decline in the illegal population. But this conclusion is
not supported by data they present. The illegal estimates from CMS are
based on the public-use file of the American Community Survey, and like
any survey it has a margin of error. Although CMS does not provide it,
for a population of 10.9 million illegal immigrants drawn from the
public-use file of the ACS, the margin of error must be a little over
100,000. We can estimate the margin of error for the illegal population
by using the total foreign-born Mexican population in the 2014 ACS as a
proxy population. In 2014 the ACS showed 11.7 million Mexican
immigrants, with a margin of error of ±110,000. If we simply use the
same procedure for calculating the margin of error for an illegal
population of 10.9 million, the margin of error would be ±106,000 for
2014. This assumes a 90 percent confidence level. If we assume a 95
percent confidence level the margin of error is +/- 127,000. The illegal
population is very similar in characteristics to the overall Mexican
immigrant population so the confidence interval would have to be nearly
identical.
. . . http://www.cis.org/camarota/center-migration-studies-report-falls-short
9. The House Presents a Sprightly Hearing on EB-5
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
The full House Judiciary Committee produced a lively and often
stimulating hearing on the immigrant investor (EB-5) program yesterday.
. . .
TApparently the government has had, for 25 years, the power to raise the
minimum investment, but never used it, even as inflation climbed.
Colucci said that the administration was thinking about it.
Several people said that the half-million/one-million differential was
supposed to channel funds into depressed rural and urban areas, but that
EB-5 promoters had through gerrymandering managed to distort the
program into its current shape. Then in one of those moments we
sometimes see in these hearings, witness Calderon pointed out something
that had been forgotten for decades.
She said that "in footnote six of my paper there is a reference to a
third level of investment in the 1990 act, and it calls for a minimum
stake of $3 million" for an investment in a really prosperous area. She
was arguing for a sliding scale of investment to help depressed areas.
At about this point, witness Gordon said, in response to a question
about how to break the strangle-hold of affluent urban areas, that a new
and vigorous use of differential rewards (with higher ones for
investments in poor areas) could change the current patterns, but only
if the government made that a priority.
Calderon had another interesting observation. There are something like
63,000 visas backlogged in the program because there are more
applications on hand than can be filled within the annual ceiling of
10,000. The backlog has been worsened due to the fact that there usually
are about 2.5 visas per investment, and also by the heavy use (87
percent) of the program by Chinese nationals. The Chinese usage has
bumped into another provision of the law setting overall migration
ceilings on aliens from individual nations.
10. Strategic Objective Is Questionable, but Tactics Are Attractive
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 11, 2016
. . .
Yesterday's Immigration Daily featured a brief article by "Dino
Palangic et. al." to which is attached an Excel spreadsheet that
enables immigration attorneys use eye-catching graphics to support their
petitions for either nonimmigrant treaty investors (E-2) or immigrant
investors (EB-5).
11. What Money Can and Can't Buy in Our Immigration System
By David North
CIS Immigration Blog, February 10, 2016
. . .
E visas are nonimmigrant ones and do not, in and of themselves, lead to a green card.
As an aside, my caller said that one of the reasons why there are so
many small Korean retail establishments is that a migrant with $100,000
to $200,000 can buy a retail establishment and thus qualify for an E-2
visa. This is another way to buy your way into the country, but not
permanently.
The Treaty Trader (E-1) and Treaty Investor (E-2) programs are worrisome
because they are handled totally by the State Department, which has no
on-the-ground oversight and enforcement mechanism. Further, there are no
statutory minimums for the size of the investments.
. . . http://www.cis.org/north/what-money-can-cant-buy-our-immigration-system
12. Most of the Gains from Immigration Go to Immigrants Themselves – Not to Natives
By Jason Richwine
CIS Immigration Blog, February 10, 2016
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured a reasonably balanced
look at the economic effects of Arizona's crackdown on illegal
immigrants. The state has enjoyed a 40 percent decline in its illegal
population since it mandated E-Verify and empowered local police to
check immigration status during traffic stops. (Because Arizona's
decline is larger than in surrounding states, we may plausibly attribute
it to the new policies.) The Journal points out that fewer illegal
immigrants has meant less overall economic output for Arizona, but also
higher wages in some sectors and less of a financial strain on schools
and hospitals.
Sorting through these different effects can be tricky, and it tripped up
even Kevin Drum, a sharp-minded liberal blogger for Mother Jones.
Reacting to the Journal piece, Drum noted that Arizona's annual GDP is
$6 billion lower because of the new policies, whereas schools and
hospitals are saving only $410 million. "Arizona is paying a high price
for cracking down on illegal immigration," Drum concluded.
But Drum seems to assume that the benefits of a higher GDP accrue to
Arizonans. As CIS's Steven Camarota pointed out in congressional
testimony, gains in GDP and gains to the native-born are very different
things. Most GDP gains from immigration are captured by the immigrants
themselves.
. . . http://www.cis.org/cis/most-gains-immigration-go-immigrants-themselves-%E2%80%93-not-natives
13. The Ideological Divide on Immigration: Prevention vs. Protection
By Jerry Kammer
CIS Immigration Blog, February 7, 2016
. . .
South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, the immigration subcommittee
chairman, charged the Obama administration with failure to manage the
crisis. He pointed to reports that migrants had told Border Patrol
agents they came north because they had heard that if they made it
across the border they would be allowed to stay in the country.
"In other words, no adequate steps have been taken to halt the surge or
discourage aliens from attempting to enter the United States," Gowdy
said. "We must at some point send a clear message to potential unlawful
immigrants" that they will not be allowed to stay in the United States.
In response to Gowdy's call for tough-minded resolve, Michigan Democrat
John Conyers called for big-hearted compassion. Said Conyers: "People
need to live free from an endless cycle of violence and persecution. ...
We must address the root causes of the hemisphere crisis. ... We have a
moral as well as a legal obligation to provide asylum seekers the
opportunity to apply for humanitarian protection."
Thirty years ago Democrats and Republicans managed to bridge the much
narrower ideological divide of that era. Congress passed and President
Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, calling it a
solution to illegal immigration. IRCA was built on a hard-won compromise
that promised to combine protection in the form of amnesty with
prevention in the form of worksite enforcement.
. . . http://www.cis.org/kammer/ideological-divide-prevention-vs-protection
14. Attention Syrian Refugees: U.S. Is Looking into Your Facebook Accounts
By Nayla Rush
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
. . .
Based on the following excerpts from the witness statements, here's the
deal. The U.S. government is going to hire more people, spend more
money, deploy more resources to vet more and more immigrants, asylum
seekers, and refugees (unaccompanied minors from Central America have
just been added to the list of people we "need" to bring in). And this,
despite the fact that the system is already backlogged, staff is
overwhelmed, and the budget is tight. As usual, it is the American
citizen and the legal immigrant who will pick up the tab in order to
keep up with this administration's overseas humanitarian enthusiasms.
. . . http://www.cis.org/rush/attention-syrian-refugees-us-looking-your-facebook-accounts
15. Democrats Get Immigration Wrong, Again
By Kausha Luna
CIS Immigration Blog, February 12, 2016
Last night, the Democratic debate in Milwaukee became the latest example
of the ill-informed immigration narrative propagated in the United
States and the lack of interest in enforcement of immigration law.
During the debate Sen. Bernie Sanders went after Hillary Clinton's vague
support for deporting some Central Americans, claiming she was willing
to deport "people who were fleeing drug violence and cartel violence,"
making an explicit reference to Honduras. Yet, violence is not the
principal reason Honduran are choosing to migrate.
. . . http://www.cis.org/luna/democrats-get-immigration-issue-wrong-again
16. Survey Shows Main Cause of Honduran Emigration Is Economics, Not Violence
By Kausha Luna
CIS Immigration Blog, February 9, 2016
. . .
Regarding migration, the survey confirmed the economic crisis in
Honduras as the main cause for migration. Of the respondents that had a
family member who had migrated in the last four years, 77.6 percent did
so due to lack of employment and a search for better opportunities.
Meanwhile, 16.9 percent migrated due to violence and insecurity. In
comparison, the 2014 ERIC-SJ survey showed that 82.5 percent migrated
for the former causes and 11 percent migrated for the latter. So while
violence and insecurity have grown in importance among causes for
migration, they continue to lag far behind economic factors as the
primary cause.
Homicide rates in Honduras have been decreasing since 2012.
However, the Obama administration's narrative insists that Central
Americans are fleeing violence and as such should be welcomed into the
United States with open arms as "refugees." This narrative ignores the
economy as the primary push factor for migration, as well as the pull of
incentives created by the Obama administration in its refusal to
enforce immigration laws.
. . . Return to Top
********
********
17. The Next Administration's Immigration Crisis
By Michael Cutler
FrontPagMag.com, February 8, 2016
. . .
While the politicians downplay the actual number of likely illegal
aliens they also never mention that if legalized, millions of illegal
aliens would have the right to immediately bring in their spouses and
minor children. Think of how many millions of additional aliens would
suddenly be admitted into the United States with lawful status- flooding
our educational and healthcare systems.
We should be concerned about the growing national debt. However, when
was the last time you heard anyone on any of the news programs talk
about the fact that each year more than $200 billion is wired out of the
U.S. by foreign workers- both legally and illegally working in the
United States?
. . . http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261725/next-administrations-immigration-crisis-michael-cutler
18. How to Fix Illegal Immigration in Five Steps Without Building a Wall
But we should build some walls too
By Kevin D. Williamson
National Review Online, February 9, 2016
. . .
No, not the question of immigration — illegal immigration.
There’s a temptation to bundle those together, because we have problems
with our legal immigration regime, too, but the more tightly we tie them
together, the more closely we bind ourselves to “solutions” that
aren’t. With illegal immigration, we won’t get 100 percent of the way
there with five reforms, but we might get 92 percent of the way there.
One: Enact a law that does one thing: prohibit people
who have entered the United States illegally from applying for
citizenship — even if their current status is legal. If you ever have
entered the United States illegally, you don’t ever become a citizen.
Two: Enact a law that does one thing: prohibit people
who have entered the United States illegally from applying for a work
permit — even if their current status is legal. If you ever have entered
the United Sates illegally, you don’t ever get a work permit.
That’s your firewall against amnesty. Vote against those laws, and
you’re voting for amnesty; vote to repeal them down the line, you’re
voting for amnesty. This creates good political incentives in Washington
and removes bad incentives among those who come here illegally
expecting that their status eventually will be made legal.
. . . http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431012/fixing-illegal-immigration-five-steps
19. U.S. Election Comm. Quietly Lets States Verify U.S. Citizenship
Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles, February 12, 2016
. . .
Nevertheless, election officials in some states have confirmed that
requiring ID is not enough to prevent fraud. American citizenship,
mandatory to vote in U.S. elections at every level, must also be
verified. But first states must get approval from the feds, specifically
the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The bipartisan
commission is tasked with assuring that elections are administered in
accordance with federal laws. This includes accrediting voting system
test labs, certifying voting equipment and keeping a national mail voter
registration form.
For years the EAC has rejected requests from several states to allow the
citizenship verification of its registered voters. Judicial Watch has
been involved in several of the cases and years ago filed documents with
the EAC in support of efforts by Arizona, Kansas and Georgia to require
voter registration applicants to provide proof of citizenship. In its
filing with the EAC Judicial Watch writes that under Section 8 of the
National Voter Registration ACT (NVRA), states are under a federal
obligation to assure that non-citizens neither register nor vote. A
failure to allow states to require such information would undermine
Americans’ confidence that their elections are being conducted fairly
and honestly, and would thwart states’ ability to comply with the
election integrity obligations imposed by federal law.
. . .
In the last few weeks, however, the EAC has quietly reversed itself by
approving the petition of three states—Kansas, Georgia and Alabama—to
add a citizenship requirement to their voter registration forms. The
letters, signed by the EAC’s new executive director, Brian D. Newby,
were issued on January 29, 2016. They can be viewed here. The about-face
opens the door for other states seeking to preserve the integrity of
elections by requiring evidence of voter eligibility before ballots are
cast.
. . . http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/u-s-election-comm-quietly-lets-states-verify-u-s-citizenship/
20. Unaccompanied Alien Children Charged in Execution-Style Murder, Media Calls Them “Baby-Faced Boys”
Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles, February 11, 2016
It appears that the recent execution-style murder of a Massachusetts man
was committed by two Central American teens that came to the U.S. as
Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) under President Obama’s open border
free-for-all. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors—mostly from
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—have entered the country through the
Mexican border since the influx began in the summer of 2014 and the
administration has relocated them nationwide.
News reports indicate that the 17-year-olds charged in the gruesome
Massachusetts killing entered the U.S. recently as UAC’s and both have
ties to MS-13, according to authorities cited by various outlets. They
lived in Everett and one of the teens, Cristian Nunez-Flores, moved to
Massachusetts from his native El Salvador a year and a half ago which is
when the influx of Central American minors began. His parents remain in
El Salvador, according to a local news article. The other gangbanger’s
name is Jose Vasquez Ardon and he too is a recent arrival from Central
America. Prosecutors say the teens, described in a local news article as
“baby-faced boys,” shot a 19-year-old in the head. Both are being held
without bail for obvious reasons.
. . . http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/02/unaccompanied-alien-children-charged-in-execution-style-murder-media-calls-them-baby-faced-boys/
Remember this moment from 2009 when President Obama was trying to
reassure Americans that Obamacare would not benefit illegal immigrants?
"There are also those that claim our reform efforts would insure illegal
immigrants. This too, is false. The reforms I am proposing do not apply
to those who are here illegally," Obama said. "You lie!" South Carolina
Congressman Joe Wilson shouted out.
22. America’s Balkan Values
White liberals and black careerists vigorously reject the MLK ideal of a color-blind society.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, February 9, 2016
. . .
So who is deserving of special set-asides? Take the case of
multimillionaire Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who fled Mexico’s
censorship and came to America to establish a lucrative career under the
singular protection of the U.S. Constitution as a self-appointed
advocate against supposed American nativism. Has America been so unkind
to Ramos that his children will have to have special help getting into
college, while the progeny of an out-of-work coal miner in West Virginia
or an Armenian farmer in Chico cannot qualify?
. . . http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431014/race-privilege-america
23. A Day in the Life of Central Americans Crossing Mexico
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
American Thinker, February 12, 2016
. . .
First, many families need to send their young men to the U.S. to send
back money. El Salvador receives about $4 billion in remittances or
"remesas." It's probably the strongest safety net in the country. My
guess is that other countries have similar numbers.
Second, the Obama administration refuses to speak clearly and defend
U.S. sovereignty. Also, we indirectly invite people to come north when
we offer legalization to anyone who crosses over.
The attitude in Central America is simple: get to the U.S., and you are likely to stay.
On one hand, we appreciate a young man who wants to cut our grass and
support his mom back home. At the same time, we shouldn't encourage
people to come with vague enforcement language.
24. Rubio's Immigration Plan Will Only Cause Suffering for Americans
By Mark Thies
Overpasses for America, February 8, 2016
. . .
Equally compelling data are stagnant STEM wages, with increases
averaging a tiny 0.4 percent per year from 2000-2012
(cis.org/no-stem-shortage). In 2013, PBS ran a story called “The Bogus
High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower US Wages”. And last
week in his blog, Professor Norm Matloff at University of
California-Davis pointed out that computer science starting salaries
went up a microscopic 0.06 percent last year.
H1-B-visa
But if Rubio has his way, prospects for our STEM students will be
getting substantially worse. That’s because of a bill he is
co-sponsoring in the Senate: S. 153, the Immigration and Innovation
(I-Squared) Act. If passed, S. 153 would be a game changer — a bill that
should scare the heck out of parents paying for a STEM education for
their kids. Let’s look at how I-Squared will make it even harder for
Americans to get good-paying jobs.
Work visas called H-1B visas are granted to foreign workers who have a
bachelor’s or higher degree in a wide range of areas. S. 153 would
increase the number of H-1B visas from 65,000 up to 245,000. Contrary to
popular belief, there are no worker protections to prevent companies
from firing American workers, replacing them with H-1B’s, and even
forcing them to train their replacements (e.g., Disney).
As pointed out in Trump’s on-line immigration plan, 87 percent of current H-1B holders are paid wages in the bottom third.
. . . http://overpassesforamerica.com/?p=24134
25. Hispanic Television's Most Influential Racialist
By John Perazzo
FrontPageMag.com, February 8, 2016
The National Council of La Raza (Spanish for “The Race”) once honored
Ramos with its “Ruben Salazar” award for his positive portrayal of
Latinos. It is fitting indeed that Ramos should have been singled out
for praise by an organization obsessed with promoting open borders,
lawlessness, racial and ethnic division, and perpetual anger against a
nation that is supposedly racist to its core. Those are precisely Jorge
Ramos's obsessions as well.
. . . http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/261726/hispanic-televisions-most-influential-racialist-john-perazzo
26. Liberal Race-Baiters Embarrassed on Univision's Al Punto
By Jorge Bonilla
Newsbusters.org, February 9, 2016
. . .
The panel featured Democrat Freddy Balsera, and Republicans Adolfo
Franco and Otto Reich. When you factor Ramos, this adds up to an even
panel.
Balsera dutifully took Ramos' first softball and dished out a steaming
pile of racial vitiation against Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, charging both
with being "anti-Hispanic" and "anti-immigrant". The evidence offered
to support that claim is that they both built a base of support beyond
the community (unlike, say, Luis Gutiérrez - whose district consists of
the Puerto Rican neighborhood, the Mexican neighborhood, and the stretch
of interstate that connects the two), the claim that they don't grant
interviews to the network (false), and the charge that Cruz doesn't
speak Spanish (which didn't stop the network from anointing Julián
Castro).
27. On Immigration, Time for the West to be Realistic
By Michael Curtis
American Thinker, February 9, 2016
. . .
Some of these parties are virulent in their opposition to immigration
and their fear of the challenge to Western values. Nevertheless, two
factors are relevant. It is not racist to suggest that, for practical
reasons, reasonable limits be put on those attempting to immigrate.
Considering the millions desiring to leave not only from the Middle
East, but also from Africa, Europe faces the possibility of an enormous
increase in scale and an uncontrollable pressure. That pressure becomes
even more potent since the native population of Europe is aging and
declining.
More important is the perceived threat of Muslim migrants to Western
values and the possibility of social, cultural, and religious conflicts,
and especially Islamist terrorism, they may bring. The question is not
one of discrimination, but of real differences: educational levels,
cultural behavior, and religious and political views.
. . . http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/on_immigration_time_for_the_west_to_be_realistic.html
28. After Hiring 1,000 New DMV Bureaucrats, California Issues 605,000 Licenses to Illegals
By Monica Showalter
Investor's Business Daily, February 10, 2016
. . .
Apparently the biggest reason they didn’t issue all of them this year is
that so many illegals lacked basic literacy skills in any language,
according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
The Daily News reported that the spike in driver’s license applications
didn’t lead to a rise in vehicle registrations or insurance purchasing,
either, as might be expected given the rationale that Gov. Jerry Brown
gave for opening the door to illegals’ driver’s licenses when he signed
AB60 last year.
What the law does do is open the door for vast new benefits for
illegals, something they have not hesitated to take advantage of, given
the failure of the Obama administration to show any will to enforce U.S.
law. A large number have received $750 million in illegal health care
subsidies under ObamaCare, despite the president’s hard-argued selling
point to the public that “those individuals” would not qualify.
It also opens the door to the right to vote. The California DMV
automatically registers to vote anyone who gets a driver’s license, and
it ascertains that eligibility to vote based on statements made by
applicants on an honor system. What’s more, the law Brown signed
explicitly exempts from prosecution anyone who’s cast an illegal vote.
Large numbers of illegals already vote in U.S. elections, and it’s
consequence-free.
. . . http://www.investors.com/politics/capital-hill/after-hiring-1000-new-dmv-bureaucrats-california-issues-605000-licenses-to-illegals/
29. WSJ: Arizona’s Pro-American Immigration Reform Boosts Wages, Productivity, Housing
By Neil Munro
Breitbart.com, February 10, 2016
. . .
All those economic, social and technological benefits emerged from only a
40 percent drop in illegal population caused by the state’s modest
reforms, and despite President Barack Obama’s refusal to seriously
enforce popular federal laws intended to bar illegal migration. Also,
there was no recorded drop in the annual inflow of legal immigrants. The
state reforms only “barred [illegals] from receiving government
benefits, including nonemergency hospital care … drivers’ licenses and …
in-state tuition rates.”
30. Dear Mexico: You Might Wind Up Paying For That Wall After All
By Jazz Shaw
HotAir.com, February 10, 2016
Over the weekend the former president of Mexico took a rather scoffing
tone when he said that Mexico wasn’t going to pay one cent for Donald
Trump’s “stupid wall.” This is a knock we’ve heard from plenty of The
Donald’s critics back here at home as well, coming from Democrats and
Republicans alike. I mean… it’s crazy, right? How could anyone expect
that to happen?
There’s an article this week over at The Last Refuge which might be
worth a look if you’ve got an open mind on the subject. One of the less
commented on aspects of international relations with Mexico is the
volume of cash which Mexicans living in America (including illegal
aliens) send home every year to their families. There’s nothing shocking
about the idea at first glance. People send money home all the time.
But just how much is it?
. . .
Is it possible? Absolutely, assuming you can mount the pressure required
to make it happen. It would be complicated and politically messy, but
such things don’t seem to bother Trump much to begin with. It all comes
down to the idea of directing law enforcement to direct resources and
vigorous attention to impound all remittance payments derived from
illegal wages. And once the word is out on the street that such payments
are being looked at closely, both through electronic transactions and
the purchase of money orders from banks and post offices, the flow might
not be stopped but it would be severely reduced.
. . . http://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/10/dear-mexico-you-might-wind-up-paying-for-that-wall-after-all/
31. Prescient Trump – Hidden Report: Mexico Remittances Total More Than Entire Mexican Oil Revenue
By Sundance
The Conservative Treehouse, February 9, 2016
. . .
Yes, you read that correctly. Immigrant remittances received by Mexico
have surpassed Mexico’s $23.4 billion in oil earnings. This means the
government of Mexico is more dependent than ever on the earnings of
maids and gardeners in the U.S. to keep itself afloat. This is the
leverage Donald Trump talks about to pressure Mexico to pay for the
border wall.
. . . http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/02/09/prescient-trump-hidden-report-mexico-remittances-total-more-than-entire-mexican-oil-revenue/
32. New Jersey Man Slays Child
By Ann Coulter
Human Events Online, February 10, 2016
. . .
Meanwhile, over on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was agog at the fact that IN
THIS COUNTRY, 66 PERCENT OF GOP VOTERS ARE COMFORTABLE WITH BANNING
MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS.
Her neurotic repetition of the popularity of Trump’s Muslim ban should
be considered an in-kind donation to his campaign. Most people heard it,
and thought: “Is that true? Then I’m definitely switching to Trump.”
Even Muslim immigrants were saying, “I probably won’t commit jihad
myself, but I know some of the Muslims coming definitely will.”
It’s like importing immigrants with Ebola. We feel bad for them, we know
it’s not their fault, but we just can’t let them in. For every 100,000
Muslims we admit, we know that at least a few hundred either plan to
engage in terrorism right away or can be persuaded to engage in
terrorism later. Another 10,000 will send them money or help them hide.
Trump could probably help himself by saying: “Fine. You don’t want a
temporary ban on Muslim immigrants? How about we temporarily suspend all
immigration?” Let’s take a breather while we watch what happens to
Europe.
34. Enforcing Immigration laws Puts Georgia on Right Side of History and Popular Opinion
By D.A. King
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 7, 2016
. . .
It is amusing to see the leftist advocates invoke the very dubious
conclusions of the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute’s
latest “report” on immigration and the alleged monetary boost to the
Georgia economy. That is if we would only ignore several federal and
state laws and put illegal aliens in line with American citizens and
legal immigrants in our university admittance offices. And also put them
into our workforce to compete with American workers and their already
stagnant wages.
After that, in the never-ending game of political incrementalism, the
next oft-quoted report would no-doubt carefully explain the
mega-benefits to the Georgia economy if only we had officially open
borders and a constant, unregulated influx of immigrants to replace the
workers already struggling to live the American Dream in their own
country.
All concerned should pay attention to the legislative process under the
Gold Dome on the pending Senate Bill 6. It addresses existing state law
to clear up intentionally created confusion on just who is an illegal
alien after President Obama’s dubious executive action on deferred
action on deportation.
The Impact of US Immigration on Democratic and Republican Election Outcomes
By Giovanni Peri, Anna Maria Mayda, and Walter Steingress
VoxEU.org, February 2, 2016
. . .
An important aspect of the political effect of migration, which has
received less attention in the US debate, is that natives' votes too can
be affected by the increase in the share of immigrants, through the
indirect channel described above. When we distinguish between the effect
of naturalised and non-naturalised immigrants, our empirical analysis
shows that this is indeed the case. The impact of immigration on
Republican votes in the House is negative when the share of naturalised
migrants in the voting population increases. Yet, it is positive when
the share of non-citizen migrants increases above a threshold.2 Our
results are consistent with naturalised migrants being less likely to
vote for the Republican Party than native voters, and with native
voters' political preferences moving in favour of the Republican Party
but only at high levels of non-citizen immigrant shares. This second
effect is significant only for quite high shares of (non-citizen)
immigrants (above 0.132). According to CPS data as of 2012, only in six
US states (California, District of Columbia, Nevada, New Jersey, New
York and Texas) was this share sufficiently high to push natives towards
the Republican Party. For the other states, the share of
non-naturalised immigrants in the population was less than 13.2% in 2012
(and it still is) and the corresponding impact on Republican votes of
non-citizen immigrants was null to negative.
. . . http://www.voxeu.org/article/us-immigration-s-electoral-impact-new-evidence
The GOP's Suicidal Immigration Stance
By Jacob Sullum
Townhall.com, February 3, 2016
. . .
On the face of it, the Republican Party is not in a very pro-immigrant
mood. Yet the positions staked out by Cruz and Trump are unpopular even
among Republicans and could prove fatal to a party that needs support
from Hispanic voters to win.
In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump remains
the front-runner nationally, polling at or above 30 percent, and
hostility to immigration is the most prominent theme of his campaign.
The billionaire reality TV star, who has disparaged Mexican immigrants
as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers, promises to end birthright
citizenship, triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officers, "humanely" deport 11 million unauthorized immigrants, and
build a wall on our southern border at the Mexican government's expense.
Reader comment: Opposing illegal immigration and importation of foreign
"refugees is NOT suicidal !!! In fact, the opposite is what is suicidal.
Trump and other GOP candidates are more in touch with the actual
sentiments of the CITIZENS of USA who clearly want closed borders, and
enforcement of immigration laws already on the books !!! Even legal
Hispanic immigrants want an end to Illegals coming into this country and
undercutting them and taking their jobs !!!! And black Americans,
likewise resent jobs that they could have, being farmed out to illegals
!!!
This Is The Jeff Sessions Election and the GOP is Just Along for the Ride
By Lauren Fox
Talking Points Memo, February 1, 2016
. . .
"Ted Cruz was with me, Steve King, Mike Lee and others who were opposed
to this bill. Don't let anyone tell you differently," Sessions said,
according to a report from al.com.
The truth of the matter is that if Sessions were to endorse Trump over
Cruz or Cruz over Trump, it might actually have an impact on the
first-in-the-nation presidential contest. Earlier this week a key
Sessions aide, Stephen Miller, left the senator's office to join the
Trump campaign.
For now, however, Sessions says, he's just there to be helpful. He's not endorsing anyone.
"I don't know if I will ever endorse anybody, but I do believe that a
candidate who can effectively understand and articulate the American
people's concerns on immigration and on trade can win this election,"
Sessions said. "Everybody is for the economy, everybody is for GDP,
everybody is for more education, everybody is for more highways. How do
you distinguish yourself?"
House Appropriations Boss Initiates Crackdown on Sanctuaries
By Jessica Vaughan
CIS Immigration Blog, February 1, 2016
. . .
Culberson's letter outlines several steps he expects the Justice Department to take:
* Work with sanctuary jurisdictions to change their policies, and if
they do not, take legal action to compel their compliance with federal
law;
* Beginning this year, amend the grant application forms for the
Byrne/Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), Community Oriented Policing
Services (COPS) grants, and State Criminal Alien Assistance Program
(SCAAP) reimbursement program to require agencies seeking these funds to
swear that they do not have policies that violate Section 1373; and
* Deny funding to any non-compliant sanctuary jurisdictions.
In addition, he asks the attorney general to look at whether
jurisdictions that release criminal aliens sought by ICE are in
violation of 8 USC 1324, the federal felony statute that prohibits
anyone from shielding illegal aliens from detection. After all, these
jurisdictions have been notified in writing by the detainers (federal
Form I-247) that the aliens' identities and status have been confirmed
by biometric fingerprint matching, and that federal agents wish to take
custody of the aliens, and/or to be notified of the date, time, and
place of release — so the sanctuaries are knowingly releasing deportable
aliens sought by ICE. He said that he will consider applying this
section of the law next year to block funding to jurisdictions that
release criminal aliens sought by ICE. This action could affect the
hundreds of agencies that fail to comply with or accept ICE detainers,
for example.
. . .
http://www.cis.org/vaughan/house-appropriations-sanctuaries
It’s
ironic that some of the illegal immigrant minors that the Obama
administration claims to have rescued from “persistent violence in
Central America” have been placed in abusive homes by the U.S.
government. Some have even been forced to become prostitutes or personal
slaves, according to a scathing Senate investigation that’s ignited
bipartisan fury.
A
Customs and Border Protection vehicle patrols on the Texas border near
the Rio Grande, Thursday, July 24, 2014, in Mission, Texas. Texas is
spending $1.3 million a week for a bigger DPS presence along the border.
Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar,
a Laredo Democrat, pressed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on
Monday to explain why the agency plans to reduce its aerial surveillance
on the Texas-Mexico border. In a letter
to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, the lawmakers said the cut to a requested
3,850 hours of aerial detection and monitoring in 2016 amounts to 50
percent less coverage than recent years. “Given
the recent surge of migrants from Central America and Cuba along the
southern border, we believe DHS should request more surveillance and
security resources, not fewer,” Abbott and Cuellar wrote in a letter.
The pair also reminded Johnson that in September, Abbott’s office asked the DHS for more aerial resources and U.S. Border Patrol agents but that the request was never acknowledged.
A DHS spokesperson said the agency would respond "directly" to the governor and the congressman.
Monday’s
request comes as CBP is reporting a new surge in the number of
undocumented immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. From October to
December of 2015, about 10,560 unaccompanied minors entered Texas
illegally through the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border
Patrol. That marks a 115 percent increase over the same time frame in
2014. The amount of family units, defined as at least one child and
adult guardian or parent, has increased by 170 percent to 14,336 in the
Rio Grande Valley.
The El Paso sector also saw 1,030 unaccompanied minors, an increase of almost 300 percent. In
Monday’s letter, the pair also requested a detailed breakdown of how
the DHS determined the reduction in aerial surveillance was warranted
and information on how staffing and operation levels would be affected.
While
Abbott has spoken extensively about illegal immigration from Mexico and
Central America, the letter marked the first time Abbott has
referenced a recent surge of Cubans coming into Texas.
Abbott visited
the island nation last year to explore expanding trade between Cuba and
Texas. During that trip, he spoke about the current trade embargo but
not the migrant issue.
During the 2015 fiscal year, about 28,400
Cubans entered Texas through U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Laredo
field office, which extends from Del Rio to Brownsville. That’s
compared to about 15,600 in 2014.
The surge came after the Obama
administration announced in 2014 its plans to re-establish ties with
Cuba, leaving many Cubans fearing they will lose a special designation
that allows them to apply for legal residency status, or a “green card,”
after living in the country for a year. Cuellar and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, have called for the repeal of that designation.
Today
the chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee in charge of
funding the Department of Justice, John Culberson (R-Texas), put the
Obama administration on notice that it must take steps to rein in
sanctuary jurisdictions or risk problems getting approval for its own
budget requests. In addition, Culberson announced that he will begin
requiring local jurisdictions to follow federal law and stop
obstructing communication with immigration agencies as a condition for
receiving certain federal law enforcement funding.
BLOG:
LIKE ALL OF OBAMA'S CABINET, ONE MUST FIRST BE CONNECTED TO THE
BANKSTER SECTOR AND SECONDLY BE AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS, SABOTAGE
E-VERIFY AND PROMOTE THE INTERESTS OF LA RAZA ABOVE LEGALS. THAT IS
EXACTLY WHAT LORETTA LYNCH HAS AND WILL DO.
In a sternly worded letter
to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Culberson said that he has a
responsibility to ensure that state and local law enforcement agencies
are following federal law before they can get federal grants. He said
that sanctuary policies restricting communication between local and
federal officials are a clear violation of Section 1373
of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Among the jurisdictions that
have imposed such policies are San Francisco, Cook County, Ill., and New
York City. In addition to prohibiting local officers from communicating
with immigration authorities, these jurisdictions bar federal officers
from coming into jails to interview or arrest deportable criminals.
State
and local sanctuary policies obstruct immigration enforcement and
cause the release of criminal aliens back to the streets of American
communities. According to ICE records that the Center obtained in a
FOIA request, in 2014 more than 9,000 criminal aliens that ICE was
seeking to deport were instead released. More than 2,300 of these
criminal aliens went on to commit additional crimes within just a few
months.
The three law enforcement funding programs that
could become off-limits to sanctuaries currently dispense more than $1
billion a year to state and local agencies.
Mr. Culberson contacted the Center shortly after the publication of this information
in July, saying that he had long sought concrete information on the
extent of this problem and that he was determined to use his authority
to address it. The Center has compiled a list of over 300 cities,
counties, and states that have laws, ordinances, regulations,
resolutions, policies, or other practices that protect criminal aliens
from deportation — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from
complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on
detainer acceptance, or otherwise impeding open communication and
information exchanges between their employees or officers and federal
immigration officers. These jurisdictions are noted on a map here.
Culberson's letter outlines several steps he expects the Justice Department to take:
Beginning
this year, amend the grant application forms for the Byrne/Justice
Assistance Grants (JAG), Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
grants, and State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP)
reimbursement program to require agencies seeking these funds to swear
that they do not have policies that violate Section 1373; and
Work
with sanctuary jurisdictions to change their policies, and if they do
not, take legal action to compel their compliance with federal law;
Deny funding to any non-compliant sanctuary jurisdictions.
In addition, he asks the attorney general to look at whether
jurisdictions that release criminal aliens sought by ICE are in
violation of 8 USC 1324,
the federal felony statute that prohibits anyone from shielding illegal
aliens from detection. After all, these jurisdictions have been
notified in writing by the detainers (federal Form I-247) that the
aliens' identities and status have been confirmed by biometric
fingerprint matching, and that federal agents wish to take custody of
the aliens, and/or to be notified of the date, time, and place of
release — so the sanctuaries are knowingly releasing deportable aliens
sought by ICE. He said that he will consider applying this section of
the law next year to block funding to jurisdictions that release
criminal aliens sought by ICE. This action could affect the hundreds of
agencies that fail to comply with or accept ICE detainers, for example.
Culberson
warned that if the administration stubbornly continues to tolerate
sanctuaries, he will find it hard to look favorably on any spending
requests from DOJ in the coming appropriations season: "I hope the
attorney general will do the right thing here so that I am not
compelled to object to relevant portions of the Department's spending
plan and reprogramming requests. Any refusal by the Department to comply
with these reasonable and timely requests will factor heavily in my
consideration of their 2017 budget requests."
Even
following public outcry over a series of cases of murders committed by
criminal aliens after release by sanctuaries, including the killing of
Kate Steinle in San Francisco, the Obama administration has resisted
calls for action to discourage or punish the jurisdictions that obstruct
immigration enforcement. Instead, it has pressed ahead in implementing
the so-called Priority Enforcement Program, which explicitly allows
sanctuary policies that violate federal law. It's clear that the
administration is more interested in protecting criminal aliens than in
protecting the public from their acts; now we'll see if the Department
of Justice is willing to jeopardize its own funding to spare
sanctuaries from being sanctioned, and if the sanctuaries are willing
to sacrifice federal funding in order to protect criminal aliens.
Surge in Illegal Aliens, 500% Increase in Some U.S. Ports of Entry
Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles, December 30, 2015
The
agency’s own statistics certainly contradict that, showing that the
southern border region is as porous and vulnerable as ever. Other entry
ports that saw large hikes in Central American illegal immigrants
during the first two months of this fiscal year include Del Rio, Texas
(269%), El Centro, California (216%) and Rio Grande Valley, Texas
(154%). The Border Patrol breaks the stats down by “family unit” and
illegal immigrants under the age of 18, referred to as “Unaccompanied
Alien Children” or UAC. The Rio Grande Valley port of entry topped the
list in both categories with 8,537 family units and 6,465 UACs during
the two-month period. In all, the nation’s nine southern border
crossings saw an average of 173% increase in family units and a 106%
increase in minors during the short period considered.
Some
of the illegal immigrants are Mexican nationals, but the overwhelming
majority comes from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The government
records show that somehow 4,450 family units from El Salvador evaded
our topnotch border security and entered the United States in a period
of only two months. Guatemala and Honduras had 3,934 and 3,203
respectively. Mexico had 538 family units. Of interesting note is that,
during this period, the Border Patrol reports 35,234 apprehensions in
the region of foreigners labeled by the government as “Other Than
Mexican” or OTM. This is a term used by federal authorities to refer to
nationals of countries that represent a terrorist threat to the U.S.
. . . http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/12/surge-in-illegal-aliens-500-increase-in-some-u-s-ports-of-entry/
Dan Golvach, father of Spencer Golvach, at his son's grave in Houston Tuesday, October 20, 2015.
The
Texas Tribune is taking a yearlong look at the issues of border
security and immigration, reporting on the reality and rhetoric around
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HOUSTON — Julie Golvach remembers that something felt “off” the night she lost her only child.
It
was exactly one year ago today, a few minutes before 1 a.m. Standing
in the driveway of her Houston home, waving goodbye to her sister under
a clear winter sky, something didn't feel right. The stars didn’t look
the same.
Golvach tossed and turned in bed for a while but was sound asleep when a knock on the door came at 6 a.m.
“I jumped up and I knew,” she said.
She
stopped by her son’s boyhood bedroom, the one with the window looking
out onto the driveway. He’d slept there a week earlier, the evening
they went to see "American Sniper" together. She slipped past the
picture of him and his best childhood friend on the wall, skirting the
bed with the stuffed toy lamb — a baby shower relic — lying on top.
Out
the window, Golvach saw three people — two uniformed police officers
and a woman wearing a shirt that read “chaplain.” Her chest pounded as
she made her way to the front door and opened it.
“Is it Spencer?” she asked.
The
second those words tumbled out of her mouth, she knew the answer, just
as she had known when she uttered that exact phrase the day he was born,
before anyone told her if the baby was a boy or a girl. She just knew.
It was Spencer. One night off
Spencer
Golvach grew up in the sprawl of northwest Houston, surrounded by
guitars and destined for a career in music, his father’s passion.
When
he turned 16 in 2005 and got his driver’s license, the easygoing
musician started working at a local guitar store in a strip mall not
far from Jersey Village High School, where he excelled in shop class and
anything he could do with his hands.
He had always fiddled with
his dad’s guitars, and he developed a knack for fixing and rebuilding
them at the store. A few years later, when the shop owner announced his
retirement, Spencer decided to buy the Cy-Fair area business.
Spencer
Golvach, at the age of three, pictured with a guitar. Authorities say
Golvach was killed by Victor Reyes, an undocumented immigrant, during a
random shooting spree in January 2015.
With nine
employees and a soft economy, life as an entrepreneur proved tough
sledding. He struggled to turn a profit, and he took a second full-time
job as a receiving lead and forklift operator at a local warehouse.
Even
that wasn’t enough to cover the bills. By early 2015, Spencer was
preparing to move into a smaller — and cheaper — space in the same
shopping mall. He could hardly wait for Saturday, Jan. 31 to arrive, the
day the slimmed-down version of Spencer’s Guitar Shop was set to open.
Between giving guitar lessons, working an 8-to-5 day job, building out
the new store and playing bass in his band — The Dead Revolt — Spencer
needed a break.
“The guy was burning the candle at both ends for a
long time,” recalled Dan Golvach, his father. “He takes one night off,
to go take his girlfriend out for her birthday. That was Jan. 30. And
he drops her off ... and 15 minutes later he pulls up to that red
light.”
Less than a mile from his apartment, Spencer steered into
the left turn lane at 18th Street and Mangum Road and waited for the
green light. The details of what happened next are captured in the
records of two police agencies, more than a dozen news articles and the
unceasing nightmares of Spencer’s parents and loved ones.
An
undocumented Mexican national named Victor Reyes, a native of Reynosa
along the Texas-Mexico border, pulled up next to Spencer's beloved
white Toyota pickup. He pointed a pistol at Spencer’s head and pulled
the trigger.
The bullet went through the passenger side window and into Spencer’s skull, at the top of his right ear.
“I
choose to believe it killed him instantly,” his father said in an
interview months later. “I think he was just there and then it’s like
someone turned the lights off. I don’t think he suffered.”
But the
Golvach family’s suffering — compounded by the feeling that Spencer’s
death could have been prevented — was just beginning.
Houston
police, their report indicates, found 25-year-old Spencer dead in his
truck at 12:56 a.m. — right around the moment Julie Golvach, waving
goodbye to her sister, couldn't shake the feeling that something was
off.
A few hours later, she was phoning her ex-husband to break the news.
“I couldn’t make out what she was saying and I finally just said, ‘is my son dead?’”— Dan Golvach
“She
was just inconsolable,” he recalled. “I couldn’t make out what she was
saying and I finally just said, ‘is my son dead?’ She said, ‘yes.’
Then of course I started. I joined the chorus.”
More than a
thousand people attended Spencer’s memorial service, a tribute to his
fun-loving nature and penchant for making friends across generational,
ethnic and gender lines.
Those who knew Spencer universally
describe him as fun-loving and strikingly calm. After he died, a family
friend ordered up a batch of commemorative rubber bracelets emblazoned
with his laid-back motto: “Chill Don’t Freeze."
A bloody rampage
More
than once since the funeral, Julie Golvach has found herself wishing
that her son’s attacker had gotten to know Spencer. She’s convinced he
never would have pulled the trigger. But the official evidence of the
crime, while scant, suggests Spencer was chosen randomly. And he wasn’t
the only victim.
Police say Reyes shot a man in the face,
wounding him, in the suburban city of Jersey Village minutes before
killing Spencer, and they connected him to at least two more random
shootings shortly thereafter. All told, Reyes shot two dead and wounded
three others before a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy took him down
after a violent shootout, officials say.
John Weston, 67, says
he’s lucky to be alive after encountering Reyes on the Hempstead Highway
near Pinemont, about 10 minutes north of where Spencer had just been
killed. He remembers seeing a big, dark truck driving aggressively
behind him. When he got to the stoplight, it pulled up alongside him.
“All
of a sudden I hear this ungodly noise,” Weston recalled. “I don’t know
if you can imagine how fast your mind works, but I saw a shattered
window and I saw a bullet hole in my window. My mind is thinking, ‘Oh
my goodness, somebody’s shooting at me and this guy at this light.’”
He
pressed his foot to the accelerator to get out of the line of fire,
but not soon enough. He heard the second shot, and its impact felt like
someone “hauled off and hit you upside the head,” he said.
Weston
realized the truck's driver was the gunman. “I saw blood everywhere,”
he said. His hands were covered in it, so he could only manage to
re-dial on his cell phone. He finally reached his wife, who told him to
go to the nearest toll booth. An ambulance was called. Doctors found
that a bullet had entered his left cheek and stuck in the other side of
his mouth.
A year later, after reconstructive surgery to replace a
badly shattered jaw, his mouth remains completely numb below the
tongue. With his health woes and lost time at work, he’s struggling to
keep his printing business afloat.
“Everything I do now is a
little more difficult, but considering I’m here talking, I’m blessed to
be here,” Weston said. “It’s scarred me forever. I don’t break down
and cry, but I think about it all the time.”
Had Reyes been a
homegrown criminal, the story might have ended in the empty field where
the deputy shot him — chalked up as another random act of violence in a
city and nation all too used to them.
But as word spread about
Reyes’ long criminal record and multiple deportations, the case was
thrust into the volatile debate over illegal immigration and control of
the southern border: first in local news stories, then at the Capitol
in Austin and most recently on the presidential campaign trail — on
a stage in mid-November with GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump in
Beaumont, where Dan Golvach spoke out and held up a poster of Spencer
along with others killed by undocumented immigrants. Gunman's long record According
to the Houston office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Reyes
had been removed from the country four times between 2003 and 2010, but
little is publicly known about what he was doing in Houston prior to
terrorizing its northwest environs — or why he did it. His
criminal and illegal entry records stretch back at least to 2002 when,
at age 18, he was convicted of burglarizing a building in Hidalgo
County, across the border from Reynosa, which he told police was his
place of birth. He spent a month and a half in jail before a state court
sentenced him to three years' probation, ordered him to pay an $850
fine and mandated 120 hours of community service.
Victor
Reyes, shown in 2001 jail mug shot from Hidalgo County. Authorities say
Reyes, an undocumented immigrant, went on a January 2015 shooting
spree in Harris County that killed two and wounded three.
A
year later, he was back in the Hidalgo County Jail for breaking a beer
bottle over a man’s head at the Tejano Saloon in Pharr. He was sent
back to Mexico after serving about a month in the local jail, but he
came back. By then, his previous probation had been revoked, and he
served several months in a state jail in Raymondville. Deported
again on Jan. 20, 2004, Reyes was caught trying to cross the border the
next day, triggering a 90-day sentence in federal prison and yet
another deportation — his third. A
few months later, on Aug. 10, he was caught again, in McAllen, and
received a one-year federal prison sentence for his fourth known illegal
re-entry. His crimes didn’t end there. A few weeks before his prison
release date, Reyes beat up a fellow inmate — described by his lawyer as
a rival gang member — cutting and fracturing his face, according to
federal court records. Two
new assault charges made Reyes eligible for 20 years behind bars.
Despite his history of violence, burglary and repeat illegal crossings,
federal prosecutors offered Reyes a deal: In exchange for a guilty plea
on one of the counts, and in recognition of his “truthful testimony”
and “acceptance of responsibility,” they promised to give him a sentence
“at the lowest end of the applicable guidelines” on a single charge,
court papers show. Under the plea bargain, Reyes' sentence was 63
months, a quarter of the maximum he faced under the two counts. That’s
a few more spoonfuls of salt in the wound for Dan and Julie Golvach.
Had Reyes been given even half of his possible sentence on the two
assault counts, he would have been in prison instead of at that traffic
light killing their son.
“The people who agreed to this
deal need to be held accountable,” Julie Golvach said. “The result was
the horrific murder of my son.”
The prosecutor who signed the plea
agreement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Hammer, declined to talk about
the case, referring questions to U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman
Angela Dodge in Houston.
Dodge sent The Texas Tribune a
boilerplate description of plea deals, saying they “ensure a resolution
of the case and that someone is convicted of the crime(s) we believe
they committed without going through the time and expense of a trial,”
while providing “justice for all.” She declined to say whether
prosecutors took Reyes' previous crimes into account, or if they
frequently offer plea deals to convicted criminals who commit additional
crimes behind bars.
It’s another official secret in a case with no shortage of them. Family still seeking answers
The
Houston Police Department, using its own discretion under the Public
Information Act, blocked release of all but a few details on the
Golvach and Weston shootings. The department cited a provision allowing
it to withhold criminal records absent a final disposition, such as a
conviction or deferred adjudication. Since Reyes is dead and the city’s
case is otherwise closed, that means Houston police likely can withhold
the information indefinitely.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office
declined to release its investigative files, but for an entirely
different reason: After every officer-involved shooting — in this case,
a deputy ended Reyes’ deadly rampage — the Harris County district
attorney’s office presents the case to a grand jury even if no one
complains. That happened last week, just days before the one-year
anniversary of the shooting spree.
The federal government holds
onto its files with a tight grip, too, citing the 1974 U.S. Privacy
Act. The act covers only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents,
but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decreed that its
protections apply to federal immigration detention records, even those
related to undocumented immigrants convicted of horrific crimes. The
agency voluntarily released a narrative of its multiple encounters with
Reyes, but the Tribune has not yet heard back from ICE or U.S.
Citizenship & Immigration Services on its written request for his
entire immigration file.
The
secrecy across local and federal agencies that came into contact with
Reyes confounded and frustrated the people touched by his violence.
Weston said his wife became “very disillusioned” about their quest for
even the simplest answers.
Dan
Golvach, father of Spencer Golvach, in Houston Tuesday, October 20,
2015 at the intersection where his son was killed by an undocumented
immigrant in January.
“I mean, we asked them, ‘Who
was the guy?’” Weston said. “We had to fill out paperwork and all that
kind of stuff, but we never got any satisfactory answer. It was almost
like it was top secret information.”
Hoping to break through the
bureaucratic walls and get some answers about who killed their son and
why, the Golvaches eventually hired a former investigative reporter,
ex-KTRK-TV newsman Wayne Dolcefino. In a letter last year to
then-Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia, Dolcefino said the sheriff’s
office was “doing a disservice to this crime victim by not responding
to this request in a proper manner.” The local investigative files
remained sealed as of late last week, but the Harris County Sheriff's
Office asked the Tribune to resubmit its request for the records and
promised a quick turnaround.
Even with new information beginning
to trickle out, the victims and their families still don't know where
Reyes lived or if he had a job, who owned the truck he was driving that
night or — least of all — the motive for his deadly rampage.
According to Harris County Assistant District Attorney Heyward Carter, some elements of the senseless crime may never be known.
Carter,
who handled a single aspect of the case — the officer-involved
shooting — was able to speak about the case for the first time last
week. He revealed that Reyes was "extremely intoxicated" and had a
"significant amount of cocaine" in his system. He also identified the
weapon, a .380 caliber pistol, that he said was legally purchased at
one point, but authorities haven't determined how a convicted felon and
undocumented immigrant, barred from buying or possessing firearms,
obtained it.
“We live in an age of mass shootings, and even though this one didn’t get a whole lot of publicity, that’s what this is."
— Heyward Carter, Harris County Assistant District Attorney
Carter
also provided details about the actions of the Harris County deputy
sheriff, Javier Rojas, who finally put an end to the deadly rampage. By
chance, Rojas was patrolling the area and heard shots being fired. He
saw the truck of Reyes' final victim, identified by police as Juan
Garcia, in obvious distress, weaving randomly at an intersection.
Garcia later died from his wounds, and a woman in the car with him was
slightly injured from the broken glass.
Rojas chased after Reyes,
who crashed his truck through a barrier at the end of a dead end street
and went another 200 yards or so into an empty field. Rojas continued
the pursuit on foot and found Reyes crouching behind the truck. He
ordered the suspect to drop his weapon but Reyes stood and fired at the
officer instead. Rojas returned fire and struck him in the chest. When
authorities photographed the body his hand was still gripping the
pistol "with his finger on the trigger," Carter said.
In terms of
a motive, authorities can only speculate based on a conversation Reyes
had with a supposed girlfriend about three hours before the shooting
spree began. He wanted her to go out to a bar or nightclub with him,
and she turned him down. Authorities speculate he may have been taking
out his rage on couples: It's possible he saw Spencer Golvach dropping
off his girlfriend shortly before shooting him at the red light and
then targeted Garcia after seeing he had a woman in his vehicle.
But it's just a theory.
“We
live in an age of mass shootings, and even though this one didn’t get a
whole lot of publicity, that’s what this is," Carter said. "I don’t
understand why he was doing it.”
Carter did confirm what the families had learned from detectives
in the immediate aftermath of the shootings: Reyes still had plenty of
ammunition left in his truck — suggesting that he was planning a more
extensive shooting spree. There were at least 20 live rounds left in the
vehicle, and he appeared to be reloading while driving near the scene
of his final attack.
“Had this officer not been there just
coincidentally ... there were plenty of roads for him to go down. He
had plenty of ammo, and it didn't seem like he was stopping, that's for
sure," Carter said. "As horrible as this situation was, it could have
been way worse.”
After the facts were presented to grand jury last
Wednesday, the panel decided not to proceed with any further action
related to the incident. The Golvach family calls Rojas' response
heroic. "Why was he allowed to be here?" Julie
Golvach burst out into tears again last week after hearing for the
first time some of the details of the crime that took her son's life. “I
really feel I deserve to know what brought them together at that point
in time, what caused him to shoot my son,” she said. “I think we
deserve to know why he was even here — why he was allowed to be here.”
It’s
a common refrain among those who have been victimized by people in the
country illegally. They weren’t supposed to be here in the first
place, and the government's inability to keep them from crossing the
southern border after they’ve been deported — and prevent them from
committing crimes — provokes a unique brand of helplessness and outrage.
Even
Weston, a lifelong Democrat who attended both of Barack Obama’s
inaugurations and favors allowing otherwise law-abiding immigrants into
the United States to work and seek a better life, said he had to fight
the urge to call Donald Trump and tell him he was “dead-on” with his
focus on foreigners who commit crimes here.
“Somebody’s got to do
something about it,” he said. In the same breath, Weston emphasized
that he doesn’t support Trump for president and said keeping dangerous
felons from crossing the border or entering the vast illegal workforce
defied simplistic solutions.
“If there’s some way to filter out
the ones that intend to harm people, I would be in support of that,” he
said. “It may prevent something like this from happening to somebody
else.”
Dan Golvach is more blunt and outspoken. A few weeks after
his son’s murder, he was at the state Capitol testifying in favor of
2015 state legislation — ultimately doomed — that would have prohibited
local law enforcement authorities in Texas from adopting “sanctuary”
policies that keep police out of immigration matters.
Then late
last year, he appeared with Trump at a campaign rally in Beaumont,
saying his son died as “the result of politically correct politics” —
namely, bipartisan policies that he believes go too easy on
undocumented immigrants and the people who hire them.
“When you
lose the thing you love the most, you’re not that worried about being
PC,” Golvach said in an interview. “If you’re going to come here, you
need to do it legally on our terms, not your terms.”
Golvach
readily admits that anger over his son’s killing sometimes hits “toxic”
levels. He says he’s still haunted by the image of Spencer in a
hastily chosen coffin, still upset he was killed right next to the
stadium where he used to watch baseball as a kid, still mad as hell that
the government won’t cough up the records they have on his son’s
killer.
It would be worse without all the good memories of his
son, and without the certainty that if Spencer were alive today he
would say to him: “chill don’t freeze.”
“He’d tell me, ‘Don’t
have a heart attack. You know, clear your mind and keep it cool,'” he
said. “He would tell me not to hate anybody.”
Concrete Evidence of the Continuing Plunge in Both Civil and Criminal Immigration Enforcement
By Dan Cadman
CIS Immigration Blog, January 23, 2016
Two
recent reports from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse (TRAC) reflect the continued erosion of immigration
enforcement under the Obama administration.
On January
20, TRAC reported that criminal prosecution for immigration offenses
fell 22.3 percent from November 2014 to November 2015, and more than 36
percent over the course of five years, excluding magistrate court
(which deals exclusively with petty offenses).
The
following day, TRAC announced that "ICE [Immigration and Customs
Enforcement] Detainer Use Stabilizes Under Priority Enforcement
Program". The Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) is the replacement to
the Secure Communities Program mandated by Homeland Security Security
Jeh Johnson as a part of the president's "executive actions" on
immigration. It significantly restricts the ability of immigration
agents to file detainers against aliens arrested by police on criminal
charges.
I have no idea what TRAC means by
"stabilizes". A quick look at Figure 1a of their report shows a more
accurate state of affairs, if one considers the number of detainers
being filed over the course of five years, from a high in April 2011,
when Secure Communities became fully effective nationwide and kicked
into high gear, versus October 2015. I would use other phrases:
"plummeted" or "Dropped like a stone". Or, as my colleague Jessica
Vaughan has noted, particularly in relation to detainers filed at
county jails, where the lion's share of criminals of any stripes are
held after being booked for offenses small and large: "a stunning free
fall".