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Charlie Reich

St. Augustine

Lots of talk going on in D.C. regarding building a fence across our southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. The word is we have 12 million or so illegal immigrants living in the U.S. who walked across our border. Thats about 7 percent of our population.

Now we are going to build a multi-billion dollar fence to keep them out. This dream comes at a time when we have a short-term debt of a $1 trillion-plus catchall spending bill covering the rest of the fiscal year that must be paid by Sept. 30 in order to avoid a government shutdown.

This emergency appropriation will throw our national long-term debt to over $21 trillion, and those on both sides of the fence on Capitol Hill are finally starting to worry about how we can start paying down this debt rather than keep adding another $1 trillion every year.

The Department of Homeland Security has estimated the wall will cost nearly $22 billion. But Democrats have said the price tag could be as high as $70 billion. Oh well, whats a few (?) billion dollar difference between friend? Its only taxpayer money, anyway.

And now we hear of forthcoming tax cuts for the rich, and some companies. Were already minus $1 trillion every year and now were going to give tax cuts to the wealthy people and Industries? Who makes up the difference? What are they smoking up in D.C.?

Those folks that walked over the border have secured jobs that most of us dont want to do in on farms, ranches and in industries that require back-breaking hard work much of it outdoors in all kinds of (increasingly hot) weather. (That increase in hot weather is another unspoken D.C. subject, while we continue to turn down our AC and watch the icecaps melt). The fact is we need these industrious, hard-working immigrants. Theyve established their families here, pay taxes and are educating their children to become future citizens and taxpayers in the U.S.

The government says the mission of the Department of Defense is to provide the military forces needed to deter war and to protect the security of our country. The departments headquarters is at the Pentagon.

If the idea is to protect the security of our country, why didnt it secure our southern border and prevent 12 million immigrants from invading our shores? Maybe they were too busy invading other peoples borders in the name of wars we couldnt win like Korea, Vietnam plus a few others I missed.

And we have The United States Department of Homeland Security a Cabinet department of the government, with responsibilities in public security roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries.

Its stated mission involves anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber-security and disaster prevention and management. It was created in response to the 9-11 attacks and is also currently the youngest Cabinet department.

Again: whose border security is it securing?

We have these two multi-faceted departments with thousands of military under their supervision. Why arent they protecting our southern border? Establish small military bases along that area and provide 24-hour patrols.

When illegals are caught, give them a meal, a bottle of water and immediately transport them back across the border to Mexico. Procure an agreement with Mexico for its military to accept them back from U.S. when caught, and arrange transportation back to their homes.

Dont lock them up in a jail awaiting a bus to take them back to a border station or whatever long-term expensive transfer process is currently being used.

And dont spend billions of dollars more shipping those back that are already here. Let them work off a future citizenship.

We dont need De-fence. We need defense by those departments we taxpayers pay them to do!

Go here to see the original:
Illegal immigration: Use defense, not 'de fence' - St. Augustine Record

WASHINGTON Before President Donald Trumps hardline immigration policies took effect early this year, thousands of undocumented residents were given a break from being deported.

Government immigration officials would hold off if the illegal immigrants were married to American citizens or longtime residents of the U.S., gainfully employed and had committed no crime other than being in the country illegally.

It was, said immigration lawyer Heather Prendegast of Cleveland, the governments attempt to be nice.

The cordiality ended when Trump officials instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to get tough on illegal immigration, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Giving undocumented residents a pass has largely been abolished, the study concluded.

From February through June of this year, less than 100 immigrant cases per month were dismissed or suspended, compared with 2,500 per month during the same period last year, the study found.

The administration is taking such an inflexible approach that ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said in an email the agency no longer accepts requests for leniency from lawyers for illegal immigrants.

Instead, it is re-examining earlier deportations ICE attorneys had agreed to put on hold before Trump took office to see if they should be re-opened, particularly if the person has since been arrested or convicted of a crime.

Private immigration attorneys have noticed. Prosecutorial discretion has come to a screeching halt, said Michelle Edstrom, an Oklahoma City attorney who is the American Immigration Lawyers Association liaison with the government.

Boston attorney Gregory Romanovsky, chairman of the associations Massachusetts chapter, said ICE has privately said deportations will not be put off unless someone is dying.

The shift reflects the unbending stance on illegal immigration Trump promised during his presidential campaign. Arrests are being carried out on a broad scale.

The Obama administration prioritized the arrest of serious criminals, including suspected terrorists, persons who committed violent crime, dealt drugs or were considered a serious threat to public safety. It did not aggressively pursue law-abiding immigrants.

ICE said in a statement to CNHI this week it is no longer excusing those undocumented residents who have not committed weighty crimes.

All of those in violation of the immigrant laws may be subject to immigration arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, said the agency.

Reaction to the change illustrates divisions over how to handle longtime illegal immigrants who havent caused problems. Advocates of leniency argue they should be left alone. Hardliners say all immigrants have committed a crime by illegally entering the U.S. and should be treated as criminals.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the tougher enforcement advocate Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the numbers show how the Obama administration had been overly lenient in its deportation policies.

In essence, said Mehlman, the Obama policy wasnt prosecutorial discretion but rather nullification of most immigration laws.

Jessica Vaughan, policy director for the Center for Immigration studies, another group that wants tougher enforcement, said ICE under Obama carried out a giant rolling amnesty for thousands of illegal aliens, just by throwing their cases out of immigration court.

She said government data shows just how dramatically things have changed under the Trump administration.

But critics of Trumps hard-nosed policies say the numbers illustrate how the country has moved away from humanitarian considerations to going after any undocumented immigrant ICE encounters or discovers.

According to Justice Department figures released last week, 57,069 illegals were either deported or left voluntarily between Feb. 1 and July 31 nearly a third more than the same period last year.

Edstrom, the Oklahoma City attorney, said one of her clients was caught up in Trumps tougher stance. The man is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico married to a U.S. citizen but he cannot gain re-entry to the U.S. to be with his wife.

Under the Obama administration, he could obtain a waiver in advance to leave the U.S. and then return by going to the American consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and applying for citizenship and a green card. The purpose of that approach was to minimize the amount of time immigrants had to be away from their U.S. family, said Edstrom.

ICE attorneys no longer agree to allow people in the situation to apply for a waiver until they first leave the U.S., Edstrom said. Thats a problem because it can take six months to get an appointment at the consulate and almost another five months to get a waiver to return to the U.S. and obtain a green card.

The result is the Mexican immigrants U.S. wife has to fend without the income from her husbands job in America and will likely end up on government assistance.

How does that make any sense whatsoever? she asked.

Contact reporter Kery Murakami at kmurakami@cnhi.com.

Minnesota

Nearly 4,500 Minnesota residents have cases pending in immigration courts, according to data compiled by Syracuse Universitys Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. In the last three months, 313 immigration cases have been opened against Minnesota residents.

Minnesota ranks 21st in the number of deportation cases. California ranks No. 1 with nearly 112,000 cases.

In south-central Minnesota, Watonwan County has the most residents in immigration court: 54, with three of those cases filed in the last 90 days.

In Sibley County 29 residents are facing deportation, and in Le Sueur County 26 residents are in immigration court. In both those counties four cases were recently filed.

Twenty-five residents of Blue Earth County and 23 residents of Nicollet County are in immigration court, with three of those cases recently filed in Blue Earth and two in Nicollet.

No cases have been filed in the last three months in Brown, Faribault or Waseca counties.

Follow this link:
Immigrant deportations up sharply under Trump - Mankato Free Press

Twitter has rejected a conservative organizations request to promote tweets highlighting the harmful effects of illegal immigration, apparently because using the word illegal to refer to immigrants violates the companys hate speech rules.

Organizations can pay Twitter to re-up previously posted tweets in the form of promoted content. The promoted tweets function as ads, allowing businesses or advocacy groups to push their content out to a wider group of Twitter users.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington, D.C.-based immigration research group, recently submitted three tweets for promotion:

Much to the groups surprise, all three tweets were rejected on the grounds of hate, says executive director Mark Krikorian.

According to Twittersad policy, promoted content cannot include hate speech or advocacy against anyone belonging to number of protected categories, including refugees and immigrants. The CIS tweets, which pointed out the fiscal drain of illegal immigration in the U.S., were apparently too hateful to be re-posted as promoted ads.

The question over how far internet content hosts should go to censor speech in the digital space has taken greater salience in the wake of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville on Saturday. Following the rallies, web hosting company Cloudflare canceled the account of The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website that had suggested the company secretly supported the Stormers agenda.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told CNBC that he expelled The Daily Stormer because he woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldnt be allowed on the Internet, but he acknowledged that such power could be abused to tamp down on the speech of other individuals or groups decidedly less extreme than the Stormer.

That looks to be the case with Twitters rejection of the CIS tweets even objective but inconvenient facts about illegal immigration still run afoul of the sites hate speech censors. As Krikorian noted in a blog post Thursday, the case offers a small but illustrative example of why internet companies may need to be regulated like public utilities not to restrict speech, but to allow it.

The internet is now a utility more important than phones or cable TV, Krikorian wrote. If people can be denied access to it based on the content of their ideas and speech (rather than specific, illegal acts), why not make phone service contingent on your political views? Or mail delivery?

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Anti-Illegal Immigration Ads Violate Twitter's 'Hate Speech' Rules - The Daily Caller

August 18, 2017 4:10 PM

DENVER (CBS4) The driver who struck and killed a young woman in downtown Denver last fall was sentenced on Friday.

Norlan Estrada Reyes was behind the wheel when he struck Karina Pulec at 13th and Broadway in October 2016. A friend she was walking with was also injured.

Norlan Estrada-Reyes (credit: Denver Police)

He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident in June.

Karina Pulec (credit: CBS)

Estrada Reyes was identified as the driver after he crashed and then abandoned his white pickup truck just a few miles from the scene.

Karina Pulec (credit: Facebook)

Estrada Reyes, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, had been deported before, and was wanted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If he had been deported by ICE after the crash, there would have been no plea or sentencing.

Norlan Estrada-Reyes is suspected of driving this truck in a deadly hit-and-run (credit: Denver Police)

We worked very diligently with the federal authorities, with ICE, to ensure that he stayed here so that we could try him and get a conviction, said Williams.

A judge issued a $1 million bond that essentially kept Estrada Reyes behind bars during the court proceedings.

Estrada Reyes was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

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Illegal Immigrant Sentenced In Deadly Hit & Run Crash - CBS Local

ICE has arrested the driver of a tractor-trailer and a passenger Wednesday, after they were found with 23 illegal immigrants and 256 pounds of marijuana in the truck.

The arrests were made on Interstate 10 near the city limits by ICEs Homeland Security Investigations unit.

There were 18 adult males and two unaccompanied boys in the trailer; there were also two women and another man in the sleeper cabin. Three of the immigrants were from Guatemala and 20 were from Mexico. The immigrants are in federal custody pending disposition of the immigration cases, according to ICE.

In addition to the immigrants, agents also found 256 pounds of marijuana in the sleeper cabin.

The driver, Comothial Harper, 44 of Bainbridge, Ga., was arrested and charged with transporting illegal aliens for financial gain, investigators said. They added that the passenger, Gerardo Aguilar-Roque, 35, was arrested and charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

Despite there being no ventilation system, the immigrants all appeared to be in good health inside the trailer. According to court documents, agents with the El Paso Border Enforcement Security Task Force found the immigrants in the trailer hiding behind commercial boxes.

The people inside the trailer had a long trip ahead of them, and nothing assures us they would have arrived at their destination alive, said Waldemar Rodriguez, special agent in charge of HSI El Paso in a statement. HSI and its law enforcement partners will continue to work tirelessly to dismantle human smuggling networks operating on the border.

KFOX reported agents found the truck because of a traffic violation and outstanding warrant. Harper was paid anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to smuggle the immigrants, according to KFOX.

Ray Bogan is a Fox News multimedia reporter based in El Paso, Texas. Follow him on twitter: @RayBogan

The rest is here:
23 illegal immigrants, 250 pounds of weed found in semi-trailer in El Paso - Fox News