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Thomas L. Knapp| Palm Beach Post

On May 10, Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology released a report "American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century" which you should find disturbing but shouldn't find surprising.

The part you should find disturbing: "ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time. In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has without any judicial, legislative or public oversight reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S."

In responding to the report, a number of commentators pronounce themselves shocked shocked! that a federal agency which the U.S. Constitution says can't be allowed to exist would do things the U.S. Constitution says it can't be allowed to do.

According to Article I, Section 9; Article V; and Amendment 10, the federal government has no legitimate power to regulate immigration. Zero. ICE has no lawful function whatsoever. It's just a bunch of guys with guns, running around harassing, abducting, and sometimes murdering, travelers.

Also according to the U.S. Constitution,Amendment 4, the government isn't allowed to conduct unreasonable searches and seizures of our "persons, houses, papers, and effects." The ICE "data dragnet" is the very definition of such unreasonable searches and seizures.

Your data and information are yours, not theirs, and absent very specific ("particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized") warrants issued on the basis of probable cause to believe you've committed a crime, ICE (even if it could legally exist) would have no business rummaging through that information even if doing so entailed the off chance it might catch a criminal, which it doesn't (immigration is not a crime -- see above).

But why on earth would anyone be surprised that a criminal organization like ICE would commit, you know, crimes like searching your stuff without a warrant?

Tolerating the very existence of a criminal organization like ICE naturally encourages it to constantly pursue, and frequently escalate, its criminal activities.

The solution to such problems is not "judicial, legislative or public oversight."

The solution to such problems is disbanding criminal organizations like ICE and obeying the Supreme Law of the Land, under which there's no such thing as an "illegal immigrant."

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism in north central Florida.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement is an illegal agency - Palm Beach Post

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A Texas woman faces federal charges after allegedly driving an 18-wheeler packed with illegal immigrants that broke down on a highway in Ganado, Texas, last week.

Police have identified the woman as Codi Denise Hartman. A Texas Department of Public Safety state trooper discovered Hartman's disabled vehicle, which was slightly open around 7 a.m. Thursday on Highway 59 and County Road 202.

When Trooper Alvarez stopped to assist Hartman, he first noticed four to five people walking around the trailer, according to court documents obtained by Fox 26 Houston. When police questioned her, she said she "she ran out of diesel" and was transporting "energy drinks."

Coli Denise Hartman faces federal charges for allegedly driving an 18-wheeler packed with illegal immigrants that broke down on a highway in Ganado, Texas. (Jackson County Jail)

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Hartman was then asked for cargo documents, which she said must be in the cab. Alvarez noticed several people through the cracked door of the trailer and secured the door for backup. Those inside began to bang on the trailer doors, which Alvarez opened. He noticed a number of disheveled men and women.

Approximately 60-100 people began to flee on foot in different directions, while 12 of them remained on site. Sixty-five of them were detained and treated by Jackson County Medical services. They were arrested, while seven were transported to Jackson County Medical hospital for extreme dehydration.

Hartman was arrested and charged with human smuggling after it was determined 65 people illegally entered the United States by crossing the Rio Grande without being admitted or inspected. The suspects were all taken to Jackson County Jail.

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Under questioning, Hartman reportedly told authorities she was contacted four or five days earlier to make a five-hour trip to somewhere in Houston for $800. When she arrived at a Love's gas station in Donna, Texas, she met an unidentified woman in the passenger seat. The woman took a picture of her driver's license before they began to drive and threatened Hartman's family if she spoke to law enforcement.

When the trailer ran out of diesel, she said, the unidentified woman began walking alongside the highway but left her phone inside the cab. Hartman told police she never opened the back of the trailer and thought there were energy drinks inside . She later gave authorities permission to search her phone, and they reportedly discovered two instances in which Hartman allegedly demonstrated knowledge of the people inside the trailer.

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After speaking with several of the detained immigrants, investigators learned that the refrigeration in the trailer did not work and they were not given any water.

"It was hot like fire. We couldnt breathe. We were going to die," one migrant from Guatemala told investigators.

Another said she had been choking before the trailer door was opened by Alvarez.

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Texas woman charged with driving tractor-trailer carrying over 60 illegal immigrants - Fox News

According to Jornal de Notcias, footballers are trafficked by false agents and club officials and there are currently 39 investigations underway by SEF.

The Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) have identified, over the past five years, 250 footballers who have been the target of illegal immigration, and most of the cases were practiced by managers of amateur clubs or lower level clubs.

Jornal de Notcias states that, in the last five years, SEF investigated 57 football clubs in mainland Portugal and in the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira on suspicion of crimes of illegal immigration and human trafficking. These investigations resulted in 93 defendants, including 62 managers, 13 agents, 12 athletes and a coach.

A source from SEF quoted by the newspaper reveals that most of these athletes enter Portugal under the visa exemption for short stays, that is, for tourism, "which does not allow the exercise of professional activity".

In the investigations carried out by SEF, crimes of forgery of documents in the elaboration of false employment contracts with companies of people linked to the clubs were also found. According to the newspaper, "officially they are, for example, construction workers, but in practice they just play football."

Excerpt from:
250 footballers in Portugal are victims of illegal immigration - The Portugal News

Studies show that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than those born in the United States.

Senate Republicans who continue to oppose measures that would make it harder for criminals to obtain and keep firearms are blaming immigrants for a rise in violent crime in the United States, despite having no evidence to support their accusations.

On Monday, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) introduced a resolution "urging the development of a strategy to counter the rise in violent crime across the United States."

"If there was ever a time that the American people want to know that the president and Congress are working together to defeat the scourge of crime, the time is now. This resolution is to send the message that combating crime is what we are focused on," Cassidy told Fox News in a statement.

The text of the resolution, which specifically calls out what it terms "gun violence in major, Democrat-run cities and States," accuses the Biden administration of pursuing an "alleged violent crime reduction strategy is actually a gun control strategy and wrongly puts lawful gun owners and dealers at the center of enforcement efforts instead of focusing on the criminals perpetuating violence, insecurity, and fear across the United States." It claims that "drug cartels have overburdened Border Patrol resources by surging illegal immigrants into strategic locations so that the cartels can traffic narcotics and other contraband into the United States undetected" and notes that "violent crimes related to illegal immigration and the illegal drug trade must stop for the sake of the sovereignty of the United States and the safety of the people of the United States."

The resolution expressly notes a correlation between violent crime and higher levels of undocumented immigrants, with no evidence whatsoever that one caused the other. It asserts that "rising violent crime in the United States can be directly correlated to a surge in illegal immigration at the southern border of the United States and a surge in the sale, distribution, and consumption of illegal drugs."

The text calls for a resolution "that it is the sense of the Senate that the President should work with Congress to develop and execute a strategy, drawing on the multiple instruments of power and resources of the United States to counter the rise in violent crime across the country by reinforcing strong criminal justice policies, by laying blame on the perpetrators of violent acts, and by securing the southern border."

Data shows that immigrants, documented or undocumented, are less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born citizens.

A study published by the journal Criminology in 2018 found "that undocumented immigration does not increase violence. Rather, the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is generally negative, although not significant in all specifications."

Even the Cato Institute, which calls itself a promoter of libertarian ideas, reported statistics on crime in Texas that pushed back against Republican talking points: In an October 2020 blog post that repeatedly used the offensive term "illegal immigrants," the think tank referred to a study by its researchers that found:

In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, 535 per 100,000 legal immigrants, and 1,422 per 100,000 nativeborn Americans. The illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 45 percent below that of nativeborn Americans in Texas. The general pattern of nativeborn Americans having the highest criminal conviction rates followed by illegal immigrants and then with legal immigrants having the lowest holds for all of other specific types of crimes such as violent crimes, property crimes, homicide, and sex crimes.

The author concluded: "There is more and more evidence that immigrants, regardless of legal status, are less likely to commit crimes than nativeborn Americans. However, a substantial number of Americans still think that immigration increases crime. As more evidence builds over time, we can only hope than Americans respond by updating their opinions so that they fit the facts."

The GOP resolution also dismisses without evidence the notion that keeping guns out of the hands of violent criminals does anything to reduce gun crimes.

Though Republicans have frequently claimed that Democratic-controlled jurisdictions are the only ones seeing an increase in violent crime, a March report by Third Way, a think tank that says it "champions modern center-left ideas," documented that the 2020 per capita murder rate was 40% higher in red states than in blue ones: "Murder rates in many of these red states dwarf those in blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts. And finally, many of the states with the worst murder rateslike Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Arkansasare ones that few would describe as urban." It also noted that Republican-run Jacksonville, Florida, and Bakersfield, California, had worse homicide rates than Democratic-led San Francisco.

Democratic lawmakers have pushed to address gun violence through extreme risk protection order ("red flag") legislation and through universal background checks. Both are designed to keep dangerous individuals from obtaining and keeping guns. Research has suggested that red flag laws and background checks may help reduce gun violence and gun deaths, but Republicans have opposed both.

While violent crime rates are way lower than they were in the 1990s, they have been rising in recent years. The trend began under then-President Donald Trump and has continued under President Joe Biden.

Thomas Abt, chair of the Council on Criminal Justice's Violent Crime Working Group, told the PBS NewsHour in January, "It is hard to tell what drives crime trends, but the experts broadly agree on three main reasons" for the spike. Those were the pandemic, an increase in gun sales, and "less proactive investigation from police" since the 2020 international protests against police violence, Abt noted.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have already been more than 16,200 gun deaths in the United States in 2022. That figure includes 203 mass shootings more than one per day on average.

On Saturday, an alleged white supremacist terrorist with a gun killed 10 people and injured three more in Buffalo, New York. A 180-page manifesto he apparently wrote professed the debunked "great replacement theory," promoted by Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures, that white Americans are being deliberately and systematically "replaced" by nonwhite immigrants.

Cassidy's resolution made no mention of the conspiracy theory.

As of Tuesday morning, 35 Senate Republicans and none of their Democratic colleagues had signed on as co-sponsors, including Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Rick Scott.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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Senate GOP resolution ignores the evidence and blames immigrants for violent crimes - The American Independent

The horrific massacre in Buffalo has created a debate about great-replacement theory, the rancid idea that Jews are conspiring to destroy white America by importing non-white immigrants.

The Buffalo shooter was in thrall to the theory, as have been other racist and anti-Semitic killers.

The theory should be denounced by all people of good will, and indeed, it thrives only in the most sewerish precincts of the Internet.

Yet there is an attempt to tar Republicans more broadly with the theory and somehow attribute responsibility for the horror in Buffalo to them on this basis. The argument is that the likes of Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, have warned that the Democratic Party views immigration as a way to change the electorate in its favor and so are mainstreaming the hateful replacement ideology.

This is a smear and especially perverse since Republicans sounding the alarm about this Democratic view have been unquestionably correct. There hasnt been any secretive cabal at work its all been out in the open, discussed by progressive political operatives and think-tank analysts and celebrated in the press.

The left-wing Center for American Progress issued a report in 2013 titled Immigration Is Changing the Political Landscape in Key States. It summarized its argument thus: Supporting real immigration reform that contains a pathway to citizenship for our nations 11 million undocumented immigrants is the only way to maintain electoral strength in the future.

Books were written about this idea. The widely cited (and over-interpreted) 2002 book The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira called the Democrats the party of transition as white America is supplanted by multiracial, multiethnic America. In 2016, Steve Phillips published Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority. His publishers website says the latest edition of the book contends hope for a more progressive political future lies not with increased advertising to middle-of-the-road white voters, but with cultivating Americas growing, diverse majority.

Donald Trumps 2016 victory suppressed some of this sentiment since it made it clear that white working-class voters didnt appreciate being spoken of as if they were a relic of the past, and the 2020 election and its aftermath made the assumption that Democrats will own Latino voters forevermore seem increasingly shaky.

But the left wants to create rules that define it as perfectly acceptable for Democrats to advocate high levels of immigration as a means of gaining political power and out of bounds for Republicans to call them on it.

Washington Post writer Greg Sargent slammed Stefanik for allegedly flirting with the great-replacement theory in Facebook advertisements last year. They warned that Democrats want a sweeping amnesty for illegal immigrants to overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.

Never mind that Stefanik could have drawn her warning directly from various left-wing writers and advocacy organizations. Or that Sargent himself wrote after Barack Obamas victory in 2012 that the election had been all about demographics and the outcome showed the electorate wasnt reverting to the older, whiter, more male version Republicans had hoped for.

What makes Sargents basic sentiment different from Stefaniks, other than the fact that he welcomes how immigration trends have changed our politics and she doesnt?

Immigration has been hotly contested throughout our history and is inherently a highly emotive issue, involving the composition of our polity and core questions of national identity. It can only inflame the issue further to explicitly weaponize demographic change, as the left has for decades now. We should have an immigration policy that serves the national interest, not the narrow interest of one political party.

Yes, by all means, further shun and marginalize great-replacement theory, but dont support high levels of immigration for partisan reasons and expect the other side not to notice.

Twitter: @RichLowry

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Dems advocate high immigration to gain political power and smear Republicans when called on it - New York Post