Showing posts with label illegals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illegals. Show all posts

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Border Surge: Apprehensions Decline with 23,767 Illegals Caught at Border Last Month

Breitbart | by CAROLINE MAY | 3 Feb 2016


Eduardo Verdugo/AP

While the level of border apprehensions of unaccompanied minors and adults traveling with children this fiscal year has dwarfed years past, the month of January saw fewer migrants detained illegally entering the U.S. than months prior.


In January, Customs and Border Patrol apprehended 3,113 unaccompanied minors and 3,145 adults with children, according to new Customs and Border Protection data. There were 23,767 overall apprehensions at the border.

The level of apprehensions represents a decline compared to earlier months. Total apprehensions were down nearly a third compared to December and apprehensions of unaccompanied minors and so-called family units dropped by more than 50 percent.

Department of Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson highlighted the new numbers as representing a decline in attempts to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The decline in apprehensions follows last month’s DHS enforcement actions to remove 121 illegal immigrant family units in the U.S. who crossed the border illegally after May 2014 and had been issued final orders of removal.

The DHS secretary indicated such immigration enforcement actions — though minor compared to the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant arrivals since 2014 — would continue.

“While the one-month decline in January is encouraging, this does not mean we can dial back our border security efforts. Recent enforcement actions, which focus on those apprehended at the border on or after January 1, 2014, will continue,” Johnson said in a statement.

While minor compared to the overall number of illegal immigrants who remain in the U.S., immigration activists and Democrats have decried the enforcement actions, claiming the largely Central American migrants who have illegally immigrated to the U.S. deserve protection.

Johnson acknowledged those concerns, saying that DHS would ignore large swaths of illegal immigrants who are in the U.S. and only take action against those who recently arrived and have committed serious crimes.

“Our borders are not open to illegal migration. If someone was apprehended at the border, has been ordered deported by an immigration court, has no pending appeal, and does not qualify for asylum or other relief from removal under our laws, he or she must be sent home. We must enforce the law in accordance with our enforcement priorities,” he said.

While there was a decline in apprehensions last month, the level of illegal immigration so far this fiscal year — which began on October 1, 2015 — is 102 percent higher than the level recorded last year for unaccompanied minors, with 20,455 apprehensions, and 171 percent higher for family units with 124,616 apprehensions.

Democrats have argued that violence in Central America is fueling the migration north. Republicans point to the Obama administration’s amnesty programs and lax enforcement polices as enticements for illegal immigration.

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

So it begins here: U.S. city 'overrun' with criminal refugees

WND News | LEO HOHMANN | FEBRUARY 3, 2016

IMAGE CREDITS: FLICKR, SYRIAFREEDOM.

More than 120 people braved the snow and ice Monday to rally in front of the Missoula County Courthouse, protesting an effort by the Obama administration and its army of community organizers to plant foreign “refugees” into small cities in western Montana.


One of the speakers was a woman who moved recently to Montana from Amarillo, Texas, which has been inundated with thousands of refugees over the past 15 years.

“Amarillo is overrun with refugees,” said Karen Sherman, who stood and spoke to the crowd amid blowing wind and falling snowflakes. Sherman just moved to Missoula, a college town that serves as home to the University of Montana.

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It’s a far cry from Amarillo, which she described as a city of rampant crime and cracking social fabric, thanks to the heavy influx of refugees sent there by the U.S. State Department in cooperation with the United Nations.

“Our city is failing because of the refugees. We have 22 different languages spoken in our schools. We’ve got 42 languages being fielded by our 9-1-1 call centers, and crime is just through the roof. We need to exercise caution, especially for the sake of our children,” she said.

The protesters carried signs that read, “Christian Refugees 2 Christian Nations, Muslim Refugees 2 Muslim Nations, That’s Only Fair,” and “Refugee Resettlement Means Big $$$ – No Accountability.”

Sherman said Amarillo, a city of just more than 200,000 people, has gang violence that has surpassed that of much larger Texas cities such as Fort Worth. She fears U.S. cities like Amarillo and Minneapolis, Minnesota, could be in line to become the next Rotherham, England, or Cologne, Germany, or Stockholm, Sweden, where mass rapes by Muslim men have gained much attention in Europe.

Touching off a rape epidemic

Amarillo was recently named the fifth most dangerous city in Texas, according to FBI crime statistics, up from sixth last year. And it has been nationally recognized as having one of the highest rates of rape in the nation.

That’s a dubious distinction that Sherman believes is tied to the high number of Muslim refugees shipped there by the U.S. government.

“The rape epidemic in this world is becoming pandemic. It’s not confined to one location. Fifteen years ago in Norway, rape was unheard of. Now it’s an epidemic,” Sherman said. “The perpetrators are 100 percent Muslim males. In Sweden, rape has gone up by 500 percent. Stockholm recently had the dubious honor of opening their very first rape center for men and boys.”

In the northern U.K. city of Rotherham, more than 1,400 children have been beaten, raped and trafficked in a well-documented turn of events that has gone largely unreported in the U.S.

“It was covered up by the local government for fear of being viewed as racist. This only came to light because a journalist decided we needed to know about that, not the government,” she said, referring to the rape scandal that unraveled in England in 2014, when it was revealed by media that gangs of mostly Pakistani men had been sexually assaulting English girls for years while police covered it up for fear of being perceived as “anti-Muslim.”

“You can have female equality, or you can have refugees. You cannot have both,” Sherman said.

Pamela Geller wrote the field manual for activists seeking to protect their community from Islamic supremacy encroachment in “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.”

Too late to save Texas?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbot has called for a stop to the influx of refugees, but it’s too late, she said. The program continues unabated because, if even one refugee is present in the U.S., he is entitled under current law to bring in his entire extended family.

“It’s called family reunification,” Sherman said.
Texas' GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has tried to turn off the refugee spigot but it may be too late.
Texas’ GOP Gov. Greg Abbott has tried to turn off the refugee spigot but it may be too late.


She said America, founded on Judeo-Christian principles of tolerance and respect for one’s fellow man, should not expect people from Third World cultures to share those values.

“If people don’t choose to follow the law, you cannot hire enough police officers,” she said.

“Whether you believe (in the Judeo-Christian God) or not, your values and your principles were influenced by that. Now we’re asking that these people come here, who have been taught for thousands of years of violence and hatred, and we’re expecting them to come here and assimilate to our way of life,” Sherman told the crowd gathered in Missoula. “This is a dangerous and foolish expectation.”

Watch video of Karen Sherman describing the life she left behind in Amarillo, Texas.



Amarillo has received 5,251 foreign refugees since January 2002, according to the federal refugee database. That's more than half of the nearly 8,000 refugees sent to Texas during that period.

President Obama has increased the number of foreign refugees bound for American soil in fiscal 2016 to 85,000. That's a 20 percent increase over the previous year, and 10,000 will come from the jihadist hotbed of Syria.

WND reported last week that two groups are working to resettle Syrian refugees in Montana. One group, WorldMontana, is working in Helena and the other, Soft Landing Missoula, is working in Missoula.

Caroline Solomon drove more than 100 miles to Missoula Monday from her home in Big Fork, Montana, to participate in the rally.

"About four people (from her group) didn't make it because of weather, but we think there were about 125 people on our side and about six with signs calling us 'racists,'" she said.

Softening up the soil

Soft Landing Missoula is working with city and county officials to bring Third World refugees to Montana while the state's Act For America chapter and other activists are trying to stop that from happening. Soft Landing, like most of the non-governmental organizations working with the government to plant refugees into U.S. cities, is working with churches and faith-based groups behind the scenes to create an atmosphere that is more "welcoming" of refugees.
David Lubell of Welcoming America works closely with the White House to soften up the soil in cities targeted to receive an influx refugees.
David Lubell of Welcoming America works closely with the White House to soften up the soil in cities targeted to receive an influx Muslim refugees.


Many of the community organizers have received training or consultation from David Lubell's Welcoming America organization, which was started with seed money from billionaire George Soros. Lubell is a close adviser to President Obama's "New Americans" initiative, which seeks to convert millions of refugees and recent immigrants into U.S. citizens with full voting privileges.

The modus operandi used by resettlement agencies usually involves sending a handful of refugees at first and then gradually increasing the influx to hundreds per year.

Mary Poole, who represents Soft Landing, Missoula, told KGVO News Radio that many immigrants have settled in Missoula over the past 30 years. She compared the mostly Middle Eastern migrants from Muslim countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to the Hmong refugees fleeing communist Vietnam in the late 1970s and early '80s.

"We’ve successfully resettled a Hmong community, as well as Belorussians and Ukrainians, who are now members of our community and part of the fabric of Missoula," Poole told KGVO. "We’re just working on revamping the infrastructure that has already existed here."

But according to the federal database, the state of Montana has not received any refugees since 2008, and only 61 have been sent there since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Montana resistance follows backlash in Idaho

Other small towns in the West have similarly struggled to oppose the plans of urban elites to import what they see as the problems of the Third World into their communities.

In Sandpoint, Idaho, City Council members voted last Wednesday to withdraw a resolution supporting refugee resettlement, bringing an end to a heated, month-long debate over whether that was a wise move. It had the full backing of Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad.

Cheers erupted from the audience when the newly elected Sandpoint mayor capitulated, asking the council to withdraw his resolution from consideration. His resolution was meant to counter statements from county commissioners and the local sheriff opposing the refugees. Rognstad said his resolution was intended to restate Sandpoint's commitments to "human rights."

"This resolution has only served to divide us and this community,” said Rognstad, as he requested the withdrawal. "That saddens me."

But others see the situation in reverse. They see nonprofits and NGOs, often flush with government grant money, coming in and stirring up controversy within their once-peaceful communities.

In Twin Falls, Idaho, Chobani opened the world's largest yogurt factory and gave 30 percent of the 600 jobs to foreign refugees, and the federal government has plans to send 300 more refugees, this time from Syria, to the Twin Falls area. That touched off a backlash from a group called 3 Percent of Idaho, which organized a protest at the Idaho Statehouse in late November that attracted more than 1,000 people from both sides of the issue.

If the past record is any indication, the groups seeking to bring Third World refugees to small town America will not be easily chased off by people with signs.

In fact, the pro-refugee Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, put together a field manual in 2013 on how to deal with "pockets of resistance" in the American heartland. One of the strategies in that manual is to research the backgrounds of resistors and identify them as "anti-Muslim" racists.

A WND report from May 2015 exposed the HIAS strategy to deride and intimidate any politician or activist who opposes the refuge industry's agenda to change the demographics of a town.

The HIAS report, titled “Resettlement at Risk: Meeting Emerging Challenges to Refugee Resettlement in Local Communities," calls for "new tools to fight back against a determined legislator or governor who has decided to challenge resettlement for political or other reasons."

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

As Feds Plan to Cut Border Monitoring, Texas Officials Ask Why

The Texas Tribune | by Julián Aguilar | Feb. 1, 2016

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.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Obama administration is starting in L.A. to help immigrants become citizens

LA Times | Sarah D. Wire | January 29, 2016




Obama administration officials are scheduled to meet in Los Angeles on Friday with Mayor Eric Garcetti, local nonprofits and business owners to discuss ways to encourage immigrants to become U.S. citizens.


The meeting is part of a multi-city tour by the White House’s Task Force on New Americans, which the administration previewed in a call with reporters Thursday.

Senior Deputy Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement Julie Chavez Rodriguez said Friday’s meeting will allow federal officials and members of Garcetti’s staff to coordinate with local leaders in business, nonprofit and community organizations.
Starting in California is a perfect kickoff from our perspective.- Julie Chavez Rodriguez, White House Office of Public Engagement


“Starting in California is a perfect kickoff from our perspective,” she said.


In recent years California has moved repeatedly to provide rights, benefits and protections to immigrants in the country illegally, including in-state tuition, driver's licenses, rules to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children.

Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose have signed on to participate in the task force, as have cities in 25 other states.

Rodriguez praised several California efforts, including the partnership between U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Los Angeles Public Library system to create “citizenship corners” at every branch and hold citizenship classes, increased funding for citizenship and naturalization services by the Napa Valley Community Foundation, and targeting of individuals eligible for naturalization and connecting them with resources in San Francisco.

Garcetti said Step Forward LA, a program created in 2015 that helps people determine whether they are eligible to become citizens and prepares them for the citizenship test, has helped 45,000 people.

He said there are an estimated 350,000 legal permanent residents in Los Angeles alone who are eligible to apply for citizenship but haven’t. In the greater area, the number soars to 750,000.

“This isn’t an abstraction for us. It isn’t an abstraction for me,” Garcetti said.

Joining the White House’s effort is former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who became a U.S. citizen in July. He said he wants people to know there are resources available to assist people starting the process and to help integrate new citizens.

“I am excited to vote in my first presidential election,” he said.

According to Garcetti’s office, attendees of the closed-door meeting will include the mayor, Special Assistant to the President for Immigration Policy Felicia Escobar, Chief of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Linda Lopez, and USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration Director Manuel Pastor.

Speakers include members of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Refugee Forum of Los Angeles, California Endowment, Univision, Asian Americans Advancing Justice of Los Angeles, and the Youth Policy Institute.