Mediaboss Marketing

St Kilda beach lifeguard Simon Lewis is heading over to Europe for one of the hardest jobs Earth. Picture: Chris Eastman

THE buck stops with me. Im responsible, St Kilda lifesaver Simon Lewis says, if I get it wrong, people can die and if I get it right, then a lot of lives can be saved.

In his red and yellow uniform with windswept hair, 33-year-old Simon might look like any other typical Aussie surf lifesaver. But hes not.

Simon is an international humanitarian lifeguard who is about to face the most harrowing task of his career.

In a few short hours, hell board a plane to Europe and complete two back-to-back volunteer lifesaving missions. The second posting will see him installed as the first Australian head of mission for a non-profit organisation (NGO) on the deadliest migration route in the world, off the coast of Libya.

Each week, thousands of desperate people attempt to cross the treacherous Mediterranean Sea in flimsy inflatable boats. According to the United Nations, more than 5000 people died trying in 2016.

Reflecting on the enormity of his upcoming task, Simon explains that at any one time, 500 stricken refugees can be transferred to the Mission Lifeline vessel hell be stationed on.

We put a lot of strategies in place ... and weve got specialist mass rescue equipment, but the sad reality of it is that people do die.

Youve just got to give dignity in death. No matter what happens [and] what the outcomes are, you need to remember how you would want to be treated.

You dont put yourself in the sea and you dont put yourself in a situation where youre going to die unless its your single best hope of life, he says.

Even so, Simon who has already completed three previous missions acknowledges the so-called burden of rescue.

You cant un-see what youve seen, you cant un-smell what youve smelt the smell of death, the smell of fear, the smell of vomit, he says, You feel extremely proud of yourself when you save someone but when you dont you feel a deep low. You couldnt help them but you were right there.

Simon Lewis (left) with his colleagues during a previous rescue mission. Picture: Kevin McElvaneySource:Supplied

Over the last two years Simon has helped to save the lives of nearly 1,400 African and Syrian refugees as they attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Greece and Italy.

Sure, he could have stayed in his comfort zone patrolling St Kilda beach and working at various local swim centres. But he didnt. And he didnt because he couldnt.

I cannot just sit by in Australia and watch people drown in Europe and not help them, he explains.

Like so many of us, Simon saw the devastating photo of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi drowned and washed ashore near Bodrum in Turkey on September 2, 2015.

I saw that dead child and the way he washed up on the beach, the position of his body [and] because of my Australian lifesaving skills, I knew that the tidal currents were strong.

I knew how he would have died by the colour of the skin and how he would have had a very tragic death, Simon recalls.

The picture of little Aylan Kurdi that galvanised the world. Picture: Nilufer Demir / AFP / DOGAN NEWS AGENCYSource:AFP

He hit Google and quickly learned that Aylan Kurdi was not alone. Thousands of people fleeing war and political unrest in their homelands were dying trying to cross to Europe.

I thought to myself: Well I know how to save people, I know how to rescue people. Why am I not at the biggest humanitarian crisis of our generation, using my skills?

To Simon, little Aylan Kurdi looked just like any other child at St Kilda beach and he deserved to live.

After learning that the International Surf Lifesaving Association was looking for volunteers to assist in the European refugee crisis, Simon successfully applied. By January 2016, he was on his way to Lesbos, Greece.

Fairly rapidly, Simon made international news. Around the world, journalists reported the excruciating moment when Simon declined to take the baby of a desperate refugee woman in the middle of the Aegean Sea.

The boat was moving and she was looking at me, piercing me with her eyes and holding her child out of the boat and saying: Take my baby.

I wanted to take the baby but I couldnt because under international law, it would have been classed as people smuggling. The boat was not in distress. It hadnt stopped and started sinking.

I still remember the look on her face and just breaking her heart that sticks in my head a lot, Simon confesses.

Simon serving food to a rescued refugee girl on MV Aquarius. Picture: Kevin McElvaneySource:Supplied

Although Simon is listed as one of three Victorian Local Hero of the Year 2017 finalists, hes not searching for recognition: I get my thank you from the people we save. They look you in the eyes [and] thats the best reward and the moment that Im the most proud of.

Although Simons next mission is big one, hes focused on staying grounded.

I am anxious, but I know I can handle it because I did a previous mission with SOS Mediterranees MV Aquarius ship patrol in January this year. Ill be applying their search and rescue skills and transferring those professional skills to a new NGO.

Priority number one is myself being an active lifeguard, number two is my boat or my equipment and number three is the victim. So if I take myself out, no one gets saved. Youve got to have that situational awareness and sometimes you cant help everyone, he says.

Melbourne lifeguard Simon Lewis documents his mission with SOS Mediterranee in the SAR zone off the coast of Libya, rescuing refugees at sea. Courtesy: Simon Lewis

You can donate to Simons GoFundMe campaign.

Ginger Gorman is an award-winning print and radio journalist. Follow her on Twitter @GingerGorman or support her work on Patreon.

See the original post:
European migrant crisis: Lifesaver Simon Lewis has world's hardest ... - NEWS.com.au

President Trump has overseen huge increases in arresting illegal immigrants inside the U.S., pushing them through the immigration courts toward deportations and stopping newcomers from entering along the southwestern border, according to statistics released Tuesday.

While the giant border gains reported in the early days of the presidency have diminished, Mr. Trump is still well ahead of the Obama era, with the number of illegal immigrants being snared a measure of the overall flow down by 46 percent in July compared with the same period last year.

The immigration courts are also moving faster in ordering deportations, issuing nearly 50,000 removal orders from February through July up 28 percent compared with the same period last year under President Obama.

Administration officials said the numbers show Mr. Trump has taken the immigration issue seriously, which was one of his most prominent campaign promises.

At the border, the U.S. is on pace for the lowest number of apprehensions in four decades. That number is considered a rough yardstick for the overall flow, meaning a drop in the number of people caught signals a drop in the overall flow of illegal border crossings, officials say.

In the interior, deportations are down this fiscal year, but arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are up, as are orders of removal issued by immigration courts in the Justice Department.

That suggests the issue isnt a lack of willpower but rather a change in the composition of people ICE is handling. Simply put, Homeland Security officials say fewer people caught at the border means fewer people who can be deported without facing long legal battles.

You have fewer people coming across the border, so you necessarily, eventually, have fewer removals, said David Lapan, a spokesman for the Homeland Security Department.

One danger sign, though, is a renewed spike in the numbers of families and unaccompanied alien children (UAC) who are jumping the border. The Border Patrol reported a 27 percent rise in UAC apprehensions and a 46 percent surge in people traveling as families in July, compared with June.

Just a few months ago, the administration appeared to have resolved the problem. UAC and family apprehensions hovered at about 1,000 a month.

But UAC numbers are now nearly 2,500 a month, and family apprehensions were nearly 3,400 in July.

During the Obama-era surge, those numbers reached more than 10,000 a month each for UAC and family apprehensions, as Central American migrants streamed north, believing lax enforcement would give them a chance to earn a foothold in the U.S.

The Trump administration has been trying to dig out of that hole with a series of policies including targeting for deportation UAC and families that have had their day in immigration court but are ignoring orders or removal.

Mr. Trump has also asked for money to begin building his border wall, with prototypes to be built later this year.

Mr. Lapan said Homeland Security is studying the trends and isnt certain whether they mean a new spike or just seasonal tweaks.

The short answer is we dont know what all of those causes are, he said.

Still, even with the rise month to month, the numbers are lower than they have been in years.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the ports of entry recorded 6,833 inadmissible aliens trying to enter. The Border Patrol, meanwhile, nabbed 18,198 people who had sneaked across the border.

The combined number of 25,031, while the highest under Mr. Trump, is lower than any month under Mr. Obama dating back to December 2011.

When considered on a year-to-year basis, the gains are indeed stunning. In July 2016, the Border Patrol nabbed 33,737 illegal immigrants 85 percent more than this years total.

The president has repeatedly cited progress on the border as one of his major successes early in his tenure. He pointed to the progress as one of the reasons he tapped his first homeland security secretary, John F. Kelly, to become White House chief of staff.

Immigrant rights advocates have vehemently complained about Mr. Trumps expanded focus on enforcing immigration laws and begged him to use discretion to stop deporting longtime illegal immigrants who, despite their unauthorized status, have been able to build roots in their communities.

In one new case, advocates complained that ICE is preparing to deport an illegal immigrant woman in Texas whose 8-year-old daughter is battling lung cancer. The Obama administration allowed the woman to remain in the U.S. on a temporary stay of deportation, but the Trump administration reversed that decision.

Trumps deportation agents have reached a new level of cruelty, said Lynn Tramonte, deputy director of Americas Voice Education Fund. Taking an 8-year-olds mom away, leaving the child to battle a rare form of cancer alone? This is what inhumanity looks like when its allowed to infect a bureaucracy.

Activists have also planned a series of marches and rallies in Washington next week, the fifth anniversary of the start of Mr. Obamas deportation amnesty for Dreamers, known in governmentspeak as DACA.

That program is protecting about 800,000 young adult illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and who have kept relatively clean records while completing or working on their education.

Mr. Trump is facing a Sept. 5 deadline to decide whether to defend the DACA program in court. Texas has said it will ask a federal judge to invalidate the program unless the administration agrees to phase it out. Immigrant rights advocates are demanding that Mr. Trump defend the program, even though his top advisers say they have little hope of winning the case.

See the original post here:
Illegal immigration statistics show Trump's resolve to keep campaign promise - Washington Times

The Department of Justice on Tuesday touted a "return to the rule of law" in the Trump administration made possible by the president's immigration orders.

Statistics from the Executive Office of Immigration Review show that both orders for removal by an immigration judge and orders allowing illegal immigrants to leave the country on their own by a certain date are up during the first six months under President Trump compared to the same period in 2016.

Roughly 50,000 illegal immigrants were ordered by an immigration judge to be deported from the United States by the Department of Homeland Security. This does not mean that all of those immigrants were deported, but that a judge issued such an order. Such orders are often issued when an immigrant doesn't show up to a court hearing.

Another 57,000 illegal immigrants agreed in court to voluntarily leave the U.S. by a certain date, or face being deported.

According to the Justice Department, the orders are up 28 percent and 31 percent, respectively, over the same time period in 2016.

Both Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made illegal immigration a top priority, which began with the president's January executive order that sent more immigration judges to DHS detention facilities nationwide.

The Justice Department has also hired 54 more immigration judges since January.

The Justice Department is reviewing "internal practices, procedures, and technology in order to identify ways in which it can further enhance immigration judges' productivity without compromising due process," the department said in a press release.

Read this article:
Justice Department: Increased removal of illegal immigrants shows 'return to rule of law' - Washington Examiner

Jesse Lee Peterson blasts leftists for callous disrespect for law, citizens

Liberal Democrats are at war with President Donald Trump.

They are preparing to sue the Trump administration over the presidents latest attempt to punish sanctuary cities that harbor illegal aliens.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned that cities that do not assist federal immigration agents seeking to deport illegals would no longer receive funding.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra along with other California city and county attorneys is considering suing the Justice Department to stop the funds from being taken away from sanctuary cities and states. California was allocated nearly $18 million under a grant program in 2017.

Obama crony Rahm Emanuel also announced that Chicago is going to sue the Trump Justice Department over its new sanctuary city rules. Chicago has had more than 400 homicides this year and is on pace to surpass last years death toll. Yet, Emanuel is putting the Democratic Party and his selfish political aspirations over the safety of Chicagos black residents. Shameful!

Democrats want America overrun by hordes of illegal aliens that dont share our Christian values. Theyre enticing them with handouts in exchange for their vote in the future. This is the same way they seduced black Americans. Its all about power and votes for the Democratic Party.

This was evident on a recent forum I participated in at Politicon. I appeared on an immigration panel titled, Mr. Trump, Tear Down This Wall. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif.; Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California; Julissa Arce, CNBC and Huffington Post contributor; and Vann Newkirk, writer for the Atlantic, joined me on the panel. Former MSNBC host Krystal Ball was the moderator.

The panel was stacked with four highly educated and intellectual liberals. I was the lone conservative. Even the moderator was liberal and pro-illegal immigration.

During our discussion, Hector Villagra of the ACLU and others made the bogus claim that there is a direct connection between the prison industry complex and law enforcement going after illegal aliens. I told the sly Villagra that the ACLU is un-American and all it does is lie!

I asked Villagra if he was troubled that law-abiding black Americans are being adversely affected by the influx of illegal aliens. He refused to answer.

Order Rev. Jesse Lee Petersons book, The Antidote: Healing America from the Poison of Hate, Blame, and Victimhood.

Moderator Krystal Ball allowed the liberal panelists to personally attack me, but when I defended myself, she repeatedly interrupted.

All the liberals on the panel said a border wall is too expensive and ineffective. I made the point that illegals are receiving more food stamps and handouts than ever before. Therefore, we should stop paying for illegals and put that money toward securing the border. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers $113 billion a year!

Julissa Arce and the moderator agreed with me that we need to know who is coming into the country, but Julissa said building a wall wont keep us safe because people will still find ways to come in illegally.

Liberals claim a border wall wont keep out criminal aliens, yet they have no problem putting up walls around their homes to secure their properties. So I asked Julissa and the rest of the panel whether they have walls around their homes. They refused to answer.

Krystal Ball said illegal immigration is good for America, including blacks. The elitism, dishonesty and callousness that these liberals showed for American citizens and the law are shocking. They intentionally blur the lines between legal and illegal immigration. I told them, unlike liberals, I dont lie. And I made the point that were talking about illegal, not legal, immigration.

Democrat Ted Lieu and ACLUs Hector Villagra said illegals commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. I called them out on their lies.

The Heritage Foundation reported that the Government Accountability Office released two shocking reports in 2005 on criminal aliens who are in prison for committing crimes in the U.S. and issued an updated report in 2011. The first report shows that non-citizens commit federal crimes at three times the rate of citizens. The second report was even more disturbing.

Rep. Lieu openly admitted that the goal of Democrats is to get new immigrants registered to vote. I told the audience the reason most immigrants end up voting Democrat is because the party seduces them with taxpayer-funded handouts and Obama phones!

Hector Villagra claimed Obama was the deporter in chief. Again, I told him he was wrong, wrong, wrong! And that he was a dishonest man.

The Obama administration did not deport large numbers of illegals from the U.S. interior. It fudged the numbers by counting illegals turned away at or near the border by ICE as deportations typical liberal deception.

Despite the Democrats lies, Trumps leadership is making America great again. Republicans in Congress recently introduced bills that would put tens of billions of dollars toward completing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump is making gang eradication a priority. He is urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get real tough with vicious illegal-alien criminal organizations like MS-13.

Securing the border is a top priority for this president. Republicans must fight with him and follow through on their campaign promise to stop the illegal invasion.

Watch Jesse Lee Petersons debate at Politicon via Periscope.

Black pastor shuts down rude Democrat Rep. Karen Bass on Jim Crow and criminal justice at Politicon:

Jesse Lee Peterson is the most courageous, outspoken critic of the civil rights establishment in America today. Raised without his father on a plantation near Tuskegee, Alabama during the Jim Crow era, Peterson has lived a part of Americas history few have experienced. After a spiritual transformation, Peterson founded BOND, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization dedicated to Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man. Peterson is also a radio talk show host, speaker, and the author of SCAM: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America, and From Rage to Responsibility. Peterson writes a weekly column for WND.com and appears as a media commentator on Fox News Channel, CNN, and other national TV and radio networks.

Please adhere to our commenting policy to avoid being banned. As a privately owned website, we reserve the right to remove any comment and ban any user at any time.

Comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal or abusive attacks on other users may be removed and result in a ban. -- Follow these instructions on registering:

Read more from the original source:
LYIN' DEMOCRATS USE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION TO DESTROY AMERICA - Canada Free Press

Chicago is plagued with violent crime. It suffered nearly 800 homicides last year, and thats only part of the picture. So why is Mayor Rahm Emanuel fighting so hard to make sure that immigration authorities dont pick up and deport criminal illegal aliens from his not-so-fair city?

Emanuel announced last weekend that Chicago would sue the Department of Justice over its guidelines concerning sanctuary cities and federal grant money. On Monday, the city did just that.

Whats Emanuel upset about? On July 24, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made it clear that if cities want to receive discretionary Justice Department grants intended to fight crime and improve local law enforcement, they must demonstrate that they are interested in fighting crime, not in obstructing enforcement of federal law--including immigration laws.

Specifically, Sessions memo states that only cities that comply with federal law, allow federal immigration access to detention facilities, and provide 48 hours notice before they release an illegal alien wanted by federal authorities will be eligible for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. Last year, Chicago received a $2.3 million grant through this program.

As Sessions noted, the so-called sanctuary policies of cities like Chicago make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes. In fact, such policies encourage illegal immigration and even human trafficking by perpetuating the lie that in certain cities, illegal aliens can live outside the law, according to Sessions.

Why would Emanuel even want to keep criminal aliens on the already mean streets of Chicago? One 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of 55,322 criminal aliens found that they had been arrested 459,614 times and committed almost 700,000 criminal offensesan average of 13 offenses per illegal alien. The crimes included everything from murder to robbery to sex-related assaults.

A 2011 GAO report told a similar sad story. Reviewing the records of 251,000 criminal aliens in federal, state, and local prisons and jails, it found they had been arrested nearly 1.7 million times for close to three million criminal offenses.

Had these offenders not been in the country, their victims would have been spared much suffering. Or if cities and states had notified Washington that they were about to release these repeat offenders, the feds could have picked them up and removed them from the country.

The sanctuary policies championed by Rahm Emanuel make that impossible. Yet he arrogantly boasts that Chicago will not be blackmailed into changing our values.

The value he seeks to uphold is the self-proclaimed right to flout federal law to protect known predators. Only the most twisted logic could equate withholding federal agency grants from a city that refuses to allow the federal agency to do its job to some form of blackmail.

Emanuels lawsuit makes the false argument that the federal government would force the City to detain individuals longer than justified by probable cause, solely to permit federal officials to investigate their immigration status. In fact, the Justice Department is simply asking the city to give the federal government 48 hours notice of its intent to release a criminal alien. That will give the feds time to pick up the offender.

The lawsuit also claims without foundation that this new DOJ memo effectively federalizes local detention facilities because it requires the city to give federal immigration officials access to local police stations and law enforcement facilities in order to interrogate any suspected noncitizens held there.

Giving federal authorities access to criminals in custody in no way federalizes local detention facilities. Under that absurd claim, local police and sheriffs would have to bar FBI agents and all federal law enforcement officers from interviewing prisoners in their facilities who are suspected of committing federal crimes.

The citys lawsuit demands that the federal court stop the Justice Department from imposing these unlawful and counterproductive conditions on applying for a DOJ grant. But if Chicago doesnt like these conditions, it should not apply for the money. To say there is any substance to this lawsuit is to give it too much credit.

In talking about the lawsuit, Rahm Emanuel misleadingly conflated legal immigrants with illegal immigrants, a common tactic of the left. Emanuel said, Half the patents at the University of Illinois come from immigrants, and so we want to continue to welcome people, welcome their ideas, welcome their families to the city of Chicago, who want to build the American dream for their children and their grandchildren.

There is no question that immigrants over many generations have made great contributions to, and have had lasting impacts on, American society. But contrary to the mayors narrative, that is wholly irrelevant to the discussion at hand. ICE is not going after legal immigrants. And the grant requirements that he is fighting concern only illegal aliens already in jail for committing crimes on top of entering the country illegally.

Mayor Emanuel says, Ive always seen Chicago as a welcoming city. But shielding hard-core criminals from federal law enforcement isnt welcomingits just inviting trouble.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and former Justice Department official. He is coauthor of Whos Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.

Benjamin Janacek is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

See the article here:
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel welcomes criminal aliens - Fox News