Sunday, August 21, 2016

The Enemy Within

Now that that the Obama Administration’s attempt to allow millions of deportable illegal aliens to remain in the United States through the issuance of an unlawful executive order, has been thwarted by the US Supreme Court, they are taking a different approach to establishing their unlawful amnesty for illegal aliens.

Faced with large backlogs of removal cases, many immigration judges are now just closing deportation proceedings and letting illegals stay in the country rather than actually trying to remove them, simply because it’s easier; this despite the fact that most are clearly deportable under US immigration laws. As noted in the following Fox News story, this  “pass the buck mentality” appears to be something that has permeated the Executive Office of Immigration Review which oversees Immigration Judges, and is a sentiment that the Obama Administration apparently actively supports and encourages. I consider them "The Enemy
Within."

Ben Ferro, Editor (InsideINS.com)



Judges nixed DHS bids to deport illegal immigrants 100,000 times: report

by Malia Zimmerman, Fox News U.S.

Immigration judges around the country are denying the Department of Homeland Security’s attempts to deport illegal immigrants in record numbers, according to a new report.

Over the last 10 months, immigration judges opted against the department’s efforts to remove some 96,223 illegal immigrants, including criminals, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University-based nonprofit.

At this rate, TRAC estimates the number of illegal immigrants allowed to remain in the U.S. despite DHS attempts to remove them will surpass last year’s breaking number of 106,676. With the court’s protection, subjects can often remain indefinitely.

“It’s concerning to me that the immigration courts are becoming such a frequently used back-door route to green cards,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute, noting these cases will be nearly 10 percent of the green cards approved in 2016.

“Many of them arrived illegally, and are being awarded legal status simply because they managed to stay a long time and have acquired family members here.”

One in four of the illegal immigrants allowed to stay in the country despite DHS efforts to remove them this year is from Mexico, TRAC reported.

Another 44 percent were from the three Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — where vast numbers of unaccompanied minors and women with children have crossed the border to seek asylum.

There are a number of reasons why an individual may be allowed to remain in the country, according to TRAC.

“… the judge can find that the government did not meet its burden to show the individual was deportable,” the report stated. “Or, the judge may have found that the individual was entitled to asylum in this country, or may grant relief from removal under other provisions of the law.

“A person also may be allowed to remain because the government requests that the case be administratively closed through the exercise of ICE's prosecutorial discretion, or for some other reason,” the report also stated.

The Phoenix federal Immigration Court had the highest percentage of non-citizens allowed to stay in the country over the objections of DHS officials.

“In more than four out of every five, or 82.2 percent of its 3,554 cases closed so far in 2016, the individuals were successful in their quest to remain in the U.S,” TRAC reported.

The New York Immigration Court was not far behind at 81.5 percent of the 16,152 non-citizen cases closed to date, followed by the Denver Immigration Court at 78.0 percent of its 831 cases.

Nationwide, there is a backlog of around 500,000 cases pending in the immigration courts, and as it grows, judges become more lenient, said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

“This is by design,” Mehlman said. “The longer the attorneys draw out the cases, the better it is for their clients because the likelihood that they will get to stay in the country increases. It is also better for the immigration attorneys because they can charge more fees.

“From the judge’s perspective, because the courts are so backlogged, it is easier to let people stay in the country than actually try to remove them,” he said. “There are endless layers of appeal and no finality in it.”

On the opposite end of the scale, Oakdale, La., Lumpkin, Ga. and Napanoch, N.Y., Immigration Courts only allowed between 11.3 percent and 17.5 percent of the non-citizens slated for removal to remain in the U.S., TRAC reported.

There is a great deal of money spent, and government resources dedicated, to prosecute a removal case for detention, to monitor those who are released, for attorneys to prosecute removal cases and for the court personnel to conduct hearings, said Claude Arnold, a retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations.

Arnold believes the Obama administration has sent the message to immigration judges to push back when DHS attempts to enforce its rules regarding illegal immigrants. By law, they are subject to deportation when local, state or federal authorities cross paths with them, but several local governments refuse to cooperate in the removal process.

The administration of the immigration courts does not comment on third-party analysis of data, said Kathryn Mattingly, spokesperson for the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. However, she said the year prior to the TRAC report, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, immigration judges granted 48 percent of asylum applications, marking the third year in a row that percentage has decreased, falling from 56 percent in 2012.
for Immigration Review. However, she said the year prior to the TRAC report, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, immigration judges granted 48 percent of asylum applications, marking the third year in a row that percentage has decreased, falling from 56 percent in 2012.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Terrorists Queuing up at the Border?

Report: Illegal Migrants from Terror-Linked Countries Surging at Southern Border

by Edwin Mora. www.breitbart.com

U.S. officials are trying to establish closer cooperation with various Latin American nations to combat an increase in the number of illegal migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East attempting to sneak into the United States.



Between October 2015 and May 2016, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, a component of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), detained 5,350 African and Asian migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Reuters.

The apprehensions of illegals from Africa and Asia during that period marks an increase from those that took place in all of 2015 (4,261) and 2014 (1,831).

In its report, Reuters highlighted attempted entries into the U.S. by individuals from Pakistan, Syria, and Afghanistan, which the U.S. considers to be terrorism-linked countries.

Most countries considered by the U.S. government to be linked to terrorism are located in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. American border authorities are trying to stop the illegal migrants at the Mexico border with Guatemala, before they reach the United States.

Reuters reports:

U.S. agents deployed to an immigration facility on Mexico’s southern border have vetted the more than 640 migrants from countries outside the Americas who have been detained at the center since October 2015, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents reviewed by Reuters…

The U.S. agents’ findings come as Mexican immigration data show 6,342 Asian, African and Middle Eastern migrants were apprehended trying to enter Mexico in the first six months of this year. That was up from 4,261 in all of 2015, and 1,831 in 2014.

U.S. border apprehensions point to the same trend. Between October 2015 and May 2016, U.S. agents apprehended 5,350 African and Asian migrants at the U.S. Southwest border. That’s up from 6,126 in all of fiscal year 2015 and 4,172 in all of fiscal year 2014.

“The reality is that the vast majority of the people that Mexico encounters that are extra-continental will eventually end up on our border,” an unnamed official from CBP, told Reuters.

The Reuters report came soon after Central American authorities dismantled a human trafficking network dedicated to smuggling illegal migrants into the United States from terror-linked countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Moreover, the top American military official in Latin America and the Caribbean, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) chief Navy Adm. Kurt W. Tidd, recently warned that there are various networks in his area of responsibility that specialize in trafficking illegals into the United States from countries affiliated with terrorism.

He noted that both the Shiite Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, and the Sunni Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) are known to operate in the region.

Reuters points out:

Washington is seeking closer coordination with several Latin American countries to tackle a jump in migrants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East who it believes are trying to reach the United States from the south on an arduous route by plane, boat and through jungle on foot…

The migrants often fly to Brazil, obtain fake passports there, and are smuggled to Panama before heading through Central America to Mexico’s porous southern border, according to transcripts of 14 interviews conducted at the center and other internal briefing documents seen by Reuters…

U.S. concerns about potential security risks from migrants using the unusual and circuitous southern route have been growing in recent years, following a string of Islamic State-inspired attacks in the West and the surge in Syrian refugees fleeing that country’s civil war.

Breitbart Texas previously released leaked documents from CBP showing that hundreds of individuals from 75 countries outside the Americas, including some compromised by terrorist organizations, were attempting to sneak into the United States through the southern border.

Ben Ferro (Editor, InsideINS.com) 

benferro@insideins.com