Illegal immigrants who get pulled over by police for traffic-related offenses will be set free if a proposed change in Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy is approved.
The proposal has come under fire by county sheriffs near the Arizona-Mexico border — including some who spoke out against SB 1070, the controversial Arizona law that directs law enforcement officials to question people they suspect are in the country illegally. A federal judge has effectively put that law on hold, pending resolution in federal court of the Department of Justice’s claim that it is unconstitutional.
The proposed changes in ICE policy state:
“Immigration officers should not issue detainers against an alien charged only with a traffic-related misdemeanor unless or until the alien is convicted.”
The ICE proposal would prevent law enforcement officers from reporting illegal immigrants identified during the course of a traffic-related stop or arrest to federal authorities unless:
— they are a convicted felon;
— they are wanted for a felony;
— they are part of an existing investigation;
— they were involved in an accident involving drugs or alcohol, or they fled the scene.
The draft proposal was posted on ICE’s website last month with a request for public comment. They will consider comments on the proposal from anyone who submits them and agency officials will reconvene at a future time to discuss the suggestions.
Click here to read the policy proposal.
Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada, who opposed Arizona’s new immigration law, told KGUN9-TV, “It is surprising they would make that decision. I would suspect once an individual is identified as being here illegally, some process would kick in … that would deport that person.”
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, a staunch supporter of the Arizona law, also spoke out against ICE’s proposal, telling KGUN, “Now it appears what they have in some draft policies and their proposal is to water down any strength in the federal law whatsoever, and this is clearly in direct opposition of what the people really want.”
Estrada told FoxNews.com in a phone interview that he didn’t think much would change for his department if the proposal became law.
“Now, we don’t detain anyone. We call Border Patrol if we suspect someone is illegal, and we’ll continue to do what we’re doing,” he said. “We’ll continue to call Border Patrol and if we call Border Patrol and they don’t respond, well…then they don’t respond.”
“I think this could be more of an issue everywhere else in the country with all the Border Patrol agents here at the border not that much will change,” he said.
Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., have written to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano expressing concern over the proposed change.
In a statement to FoxNews.com, Cornyn said:
“This situation is just another side effect of President Obama’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year. Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens.”
ICE spokesman Brian Hale provided this statement:
“Some recent news reporting grossly mischaracterizes ICE’s draft detainer policy for which that the agency presently seeks public comment. ICE has removed record numbers of criminal and non-criminal aliens under this administration. The draft policy is designed to solicit public input on how to best set priorities for the use of our limited detention resources to protect public safety.”
Welfare payments to children of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County increased in July to $52 million, prompting renewed calls from one county supervisor to rein in public benefits to such families.
The payments, made to illegal immigrants for their U.S. citizen children, included $30 million in food stamps and $22 million from the CalWorks welfare program, according to county figures released Friday by Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.
The new figure represents an increase of $3.7 million from July 2009 and makes up 23% of all county welfare and food stamp assistance, according to county records.
(CNSNews.com) – As of Sunday, Sept. 5, the Department of Homeland Security had a backlog of fugitive illegal aliens totaling 506,232 people — slightly more than the population of Sacramento, California, which currently numbers 486,189.
Fugitive illegal aliens are individuals who were apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for being in the United States illegally and then were released ahead of their court proceedings and deemed fugitive when they failed to appear in court.
Brian P. Hale, director of public affairs at ICE, was asked by CNSNews.com about the DHS’s annual report Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2009, which includes information on apprehensions and deportations but does not include data on illegal aliens who are fugitives from the law.
CNSNews.com asked if ICE could provide the number of illegal alien fugitives for FY 2009 and the number to date for 2010.
In an e-mail to CNSNews.com, Hale said the fugitive backlog as of Oct. 1, 2009 (the end of FY 2009) was 534,497. He also said that number had been reduced by 28, 265 since then, making the total fugitive backlog of illegal aliens 506,232 as of Sept. 5, 2010.
Sacramento County, California, incorporated and unincorporated areas. (Wikipedia Commons)Hale said that ICE personnel are spending more time arresting criminal illegal aliens rather than fugitive illegal aliens.
“It is important to note that our fugitive operations teams now can spend up to 30 percent of their time arresting convicted criminals at-large,” Hale said. “Thus, their fugitive arrests don’t reflect all of their work.”
In an earlier story on the number of fugitives that are in the United States illegally from countries other than Mexico, CNSNews.com asked ICE spokeswoman Gillian Brigham to define what DHS considers a fugitive.
Brigham said a “fugitive” is defined as an individual who has been found legally deportable and has evaded authorities.
“A fugitive is an individual who has a final order of removal and has absconded,” Brigham said.Given the fugitive backlog of 506,232, for comparison the population of the city of Sacramento, Calif., is 466,687, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, while Kansas City, Mo., is 482,299; Albuquerque, NM., is 528,497; and Atlanta, Ga., is 540,921.
Cherokee Street in south St. Louis is the site of a concentration of businesses catering to Mexican immigrants: restaurants, law offices, ice cream parlors, health care centers, convenience stores. Some bear signs: “Mexico vive aqui,” or “Mexico lives here.”
One storefront features a list — in English — of legal services such as traffic tickets, DWI and workers’ compensation. Right next to it — in Spanish — is a list that includes deportation, visas and other immigration-related matters.
As Jesus Ituarte walks from his law office on Pestalozzi Street in south St. Louis, he greets one immigrant after another.
“They’re all my clients,” Ituarte says. Many have recently been cited in area municipalities for driving violations that he regards as aimed more at immigration than law enforcement.
If their documents aren’t in order, they may be jailed, have to pay bond money and be turned over to immigration officials, Ituarte says.
Sister Paulette Weindel, who has helped refugees for many years from her office at St. Pius V Catholic Church, says she is sometimes grilled by longtime St. Louis residents who learn of her work.
“I get these questions a lot: ‘Are they legal?’ ‘Are you working with illegals?’ That ‘legal and illegal’ is in our face all the time now, from people outside my work, when they find out what I do,” she says.
For many years, two-thirds of all immigrants went to six states — New York, California, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois. But after California toughened its stance in the mid-1990s, new “destination states” with little recent experience with immigrants began receiving them, including some here illegally.
The population of undocumented immigrants in St. Louis is estimated by government agencies to exceed 20,000, up from about 12,000 in the mid-1990s.
Currently, about one of every 100 people in the region is here illegally, still below the national figure of about 5 percent, but a sizable population.
Immigration enforcement is now an issue in local, state and national governments. And the growing national polarization over immigration, fueled recently by Arizona’s efforts to enforce federal immigration laws, threatens to further roil the situation here.
“Everybody is worried since Arizona, the Hispanics and the immigrants generally, because that law can be adapted elsewhere,” says Cecilia Velasquez, editor of the newspaper Red Latina and host of a Spanish-language radio program. “People call us on the radio, at the newspaper, and ask, ‘What is going to happen? Is something going to happen in Missouri?’ We are telling them, ‘As soon as we know, we will tell you.’”
LOCAL CRACKDOWNS
State and local authorities began taking action against illegal immigrants in part because of the lack of a federal response.
In 2006, Valley Park passed the “Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance,” targeting anyone who employed or rented to illegal immigrants. The effort led to lawsuits and political upheaval in town.
Several other local jurisdictions took their own tough steps. And Missouri, under Gov. Matt Blunt, passed a tough statewide measure in 2008, which cracked down on employers who hired undocumented immigrants, made it easier to check the immigration status of anyone arrested, required legal checks of public employees and denied illegal immigrants a variety of benefits.
O’Fallon, Mo., Police Chief Roy Joachimstaler says his officers now ask people they arrest where they’re from, with an eye toward immigration issues.
“Everyone that’s arrested is asked where they were born, through the booking process,” Joachimstaler says. “We get the full pedigree of everyone. That’s normal procedure. But that’s after they’ve been arrested. Our policy mirrors the state law.”
O’Fallon also requires affidavits in publicly funded projects that workers are U.S. citizens or have legal immigration status, city spokesman Tim Drabelle says, because of concerns about employment of illegal immigrants and substandard wages.
In May, the St. Charles County Council — charging that the federal government was not enforcing immigration statutes — overwhelmingly approved a nonbinding resolution endorsing Arizona’s tough immigration law and calling on Missouri’s legislators to adopt a similar measure.
In Maplewood, which has a growing Hispanic population, city officials are dealing with housing issues.
“Somebody will rent property, showing a proper ID, and a month or two later we’re getting complaints: ‘The premises are overpopulated, there are eight to 10 males living in a one- or two-bedroom apartment,’” says Maplewood City Manager Marty Corcoran. “That’s been the issue we have to deal with.”
The calls are typically prompted by residents’ concerns over such issues as noise or problems parking, Corcoran says. “So we investigate, and we find the property indeed is overpopulated. We cite the property owner.”
Seeking opportunities
Immigration issues “have put the Hispanic community on the defensive,” says Jorge Riopedre, executive director of the newly expanded Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Chamber participants gather weekly, seeking ways to help new business owners plant roots and existing businesses tap into an expanding new market.
“Every company I’m asking for major dollars (to help pay for Chamber programs and staffing), they’re asking me in return to connect them with Hispanic bilingual talent,” Riopedre says.
He is happy about that “because the atmosphere is a little dicey now. … Any time a minority group becomes more visible, there’s always going to be a negative side to that, a cultural clash, so we are seeing the same transformative process that we’ve seen with different immigrant groups since this country was founded.”
Fred Wooten is a participant in the chamber who wants to build “bonds and referrals” between Hispanics and African-Americans in St. Louis and reach out to Bosnian, Vietnamese, Korean and other immigrant populations.
Anna Crosslin, who runs the International Institute of St. Louis, which recently received a competitive federal grant recognizing its work with refugees as among the best in the country, says immigrants and refugees bring much-needed entrepreneurial energy to the region.
Riopedre agrees.
“A more diverse work force is a more dynamic, creative and energetic population,” he says. “They’re going to create jobs, help the region think outside the box. With the global economy, we can’t do things the way they’ve always been done. We’ve got to have new visions of ways of doing things.”
John Ammann, director of the St. Louis University Legal Clinic and a SLU law professor, who has worked closely with Catholic Charities, a refugee resettlement agency here, notes that immigration issues have not reached the emotional level they have in other communities. If passions remain in check, polarization is unlikely to take root in St. Louis, he says.
“I think it’s a temporary situation we’re in,” he says. “We’re at the cusp of a problem, but I’m optimistic. When the economy improves, people won’t feel as threatened.”
The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.
The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.
They warn travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8” and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.
“Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona,” he said. “They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.
“This is going on here in Arizona,” he said. “This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States.”
He said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer condemned what she called the federal government’s “continued failure to secure our international border,” saying the lack of security has resulted in important natural recreational areas in her state being declared too dangerous to visit.
In a recent campaign video posted to YouTube, Mrs. Brewer - standing in front of one of the BLM signs - attacked the administration over the signs, calling them “an outrage” and telling President Obama to “Do your job. Secure our borders.”
BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The first bullets struck El Paso’s city hall at the end of a work day. The next ones hit a university building and closed a major highway. Shootouts in the drug war along the U.S.-Mexico border are sending bullets whizzing across the Rio Grande into one of the nation’s safest cities, where authorities worry it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt or killed.
At least eight bullets have been fired into El Paso in the last few weeks from the rising violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, one of the world’s most dangerous places. And all American police can do is shrug because they cannot legally intervene in a war in another country. The best they can do is warn people to stay inside.
“There’s really not a lot you can do right now,” El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. “Those gun battles are breaking out everywhere, and some are breaking out right along the border.”
Police say the rounds were not intentionally fired into the U.S. But wildly aimed gunfire has become common in Juarez, a sprawling city of shanty neighborhoods that once boomed with manufacturing plants. It’s ground zero in Mexico’s relentless drug war.
More than 6,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels started battling each other and Mexican authorities for control of the city and smuggling routes into the U.S. Nationwide, more than 28,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon launched his offensive against the cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006.
Until now, communities on the U.S. side of the border have been largely shielded from the violence raging just across the river. But the recent incidents are the first time that live ammunition has landed in American territory.
On Saturday, as gunmen and Mexican authorities exchanged gunfire in Juarez, police in El Paso shut down several miles of border highway. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said his agency asked for the closure - a first since the drug war erupted - “in the interest of public safety.”
No one was injured on the U.S. side, but one bullet came across the Rio Grande, crashed through a window and lodged in an office door frame at the University of Texas at El Paso. Police are also investigating reports that another errant round shattered a window in a passing car. Witnesses at a nearby charity said at least one bullet hit their building, too.
El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry said authorities have only confirmed the single bullet found at the university, but it is possible that several other shots flew across the border.
“As a local municipality, we are doing everything we can,” Petry said. “Looking where we’re at, the community we live in, that’s all we’ve got. It’s the reality of life here in El Paso for right now.”
Officers say the types of bullets used in the drug war can travel more than a mile before falling to the ground.
In Saturday’s shooting, the bullet that hit the campus building may have flown just under a mile before lodging in a door jam. Back in June, at least seven shots fired from Juarez flew more than half a mile before hitting City Hall.
In some places, El Paso is separated from Juarez by little more than a few yards of riverbed.
Andrew Kunert was napping Saturday when police started banging on his door at an apartment building just feet from the border. He said officers with high-powered rifles slung across their chests warned him to stay inside and away from windows until the shooting stopped.
The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire to the south is nothing new, but bullets coming north is a worrisome new development, Kunert said.
“About once a week, you can hear gunfire,” he said. He worries about the children who live at the Old Fort Bliss apartment building and routinely play outside when gunmen are trading shots across the river.
At the Rescue Mission of El Paso, kitchen manager Bill Cox said several bullets hit a pair of old silos on the charity’s property, which is down a hillside from the university campus. Volunteers and homeless people coming to the mission for food or other help could easily be in the line of fire, he said.
“Someone can be walking down the street out here and be hit,” Cox said.
In a letter to President Barack Obama after the City Hall shooting, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said it was “good fortune” that no one was injured and insisted the shooting was evidence of the need for more border security.
“Luck and good fortune are not effective border enforcement policies,” Abbott wrote. “The shocking reality of cross-border gunfire proves the cold reality: American lives are at risk.”
And Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement demanding more security.
“It’s time for Washington to stop the rhetoric and immediately deploy a significant force of personnel and resources to the border to protect our homeland,” Perry said.
Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman, said the governor believes that more security - in the form of federal agents and even troops - could all but shut down the border to smuggling and help put Mexico’s warring cartels out of business.
The only way cartels “are being successful is by being able to operate on both sides of the border,” Cesinger said. “If you shut down that border, they are out of business. They are not able to continue.”
Obama has ordered about 1,200 National Guard troops to the border in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to help the Border Patrol and officials from Customs and Border Protection.
But the federal government has insisted that the troops will only help federal agents with intelligence, surveillance and other duties that do not involve actually arresting anyone.
Sheriff Wiles says more security in El Paso won’t solve the problem because the war is in another country.
“Juarez is experiencing a major wave of violence, and we are feeling some of that,” Wiles said. “I don’t know of any way around that. Until that issue is resolved in Juarez, we are going to be dealing these kinds of things.”
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Concerned about the Obama administration’s plan to grant amnesty to illegal aliens? Guess what. It’s already happening.
According to The Houston Chronicle:
The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.
Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.
In some instances, the article notes, illegal aliens who have been convicted of crimes will be allowed to stay in the country as long as these crimes do not involve a DWI, family violence or sexual assault. But other than those specific circumstances, right now it appears the other deportation candidates are in the clear. (Most of these folks are in the system because they were arrested for committing crimes, so to release those who have only been “convicted” means that illegal alien violent criminals are being set free.)
The court “was terminating all of the cases that came up,” said one immigration attorney who was notified that the government requested dismissals in three of his deportation cases. “It was absolutely fantastic.”
According to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo, this new policy could impact up to 17,000 cases.
CORRUPTION CHRONICLES
And what is the justification for this lawlessness? The Obama administration is pretending it does not have enough money to do its job of deporting all aliens living in the United States illegally.
So there you have it folks. The Obama administration has decided that neither the will of the American people nor the rule of law matter at all. Obama is implementing illegal alien amnesty by hook and by crook.
But are we really all that surprised?
Remember, it was just a few weeks ago that an Obama administration memo surfaced outlining a comprehensive strategy to grant amnesty without approval by Congress. The two-faced Obama administration vehemently downplayed the significance of the memo. (Administration officials called it “brainstorming.”) But all the while the administration continued to push forward with its backdoor amnesty plan.
Following the memo’s disclosure, on August 23 Judicial Watch joined a number of other conservative organizations and sent a letter to the president expressing our extreme dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s unlawful strategy as outlined in the memo:
“There have been reports that your administration is considering usage of its administrative authority to effectively legalize significant numbers of illegal aliens. We strongly urge that you refrain from pursuing that tactic. We believe that such an abuse of power would further polarize the immigration issue, which already is so controversial that reasonable discussion is confounded.”
The letter (and a related press conference that included Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell) earned widespread press coverage: “A group of conservative activists slammed the Obama administration Monday for allegedly planning to use its administrative authority to undercut immigration restrictions in the wake of congressional inaction on a comprehensive reform bill,” CNN’s Paul Courson wrote. “In a letter sent to the White House, leaders of 17 conservative grass-roots organizations cited reports that the administration is considering using its executive power ‘to effectively legalize significant numbers of illegal aliens.’”
But nonetheless, President Obama has failed to alter his administration’s reprehensible and unlawful behavior one single bit. And it is causing a revolt in the Imigration and Customs Enforcement bureuacracy. Even the liberals at The Washington Post have noticed that ICE’s front-line immigration enforcement personnel are opposing the non-enforcement program being implemented by Obama political appointees. In a rare action, a major ICE union announced a unaminous vote of “no confidence” in the Obama leadership team at ICE. The detail of the union’s complaint is devastating and documents a crisis of law enforcement at ICE. The union notes, for instance, that:
Criminal aliens incarcerated in local jails seek out ICE officers and volunteer for deportation to avoid prosecution, conviction and serving prison sentences. Criminal aliens openly brag to ICE officers that they are taking advantage of the broken immigration system and will be back in the United States within days to commit crimes, while United States citizens arrested for the same offenses serve prison sentences. State and local law enforcement, prosecutors and jails are equally overwhelmed by the criminal alien problem and lack the resources to prosecute and house these prisoners, resulting in the release of criminal aliens back into local communities before making contact with ICE. Thousands of other criminal aliens are released to ICE without being tried for their criminal charges. ICE senior leadership is aware that the system is broken, yet refuses to alert Congress to the severity of the situation and request additional resources to provide better enforcement and support of local agencies.
What an ugly mess caused by the Obama administration’s radical hositility to the rule of law! And U.S. citizens and legal alien residents suffer as a result.
Judicial Watch’s investigations team is on top of this burgeoning scandal, trying to uncover the details behind this de facto amnesty. More to come…
Judicial Watch Counters Obama Legal Assault on SB 1070 in New Court Brief
While the Obama White House continues with its stealth illegal alien amnesty strategy, the administration’s legal assault against SB 1070, Arizona’s tough new illegal immigration law, continues. Just this week, Judicial Watch filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on behalf of our client Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, the author of the SB 1070. (You’ll recall Judicial Watch filed a motion to intervene on behalf of State Senator Pearce in the Obama administration’s lawsuit seeking to invalidate the law altogether.)
On July 28, 2010, just hours before the law was to take effect, a federal court judge put a hold on several of the legislation’s key provisions to determine if they are constitutionally sound. The court filing asks the appellate court to reverse the partial preliminary injunction granted by the lower court and to allow all of the provisions of the law to be enforced immediately.
Here’s how we summarize Senator Pearce’s argument in our brief: “Even though the Arizona Legislature has done nothing more than enact a series of law enforcement provisions under its well-recognized police powers to protect its citizens from serious public safety concerns, the district court has denied Arizona law enforcement officials the opportunity to reasonably interpret and apply the provisions in a constitutionally valid manner.”
In other words, SB 1070 is completely consistent with federal law.
With respect to the four specific provisions the court prevented from taking effect, here’s a summary of how we addressed each of them. (You can read the brief in its entirety here):
We conclude by asking the appellate court to lift the preliminary injunction and to allow all of the provisions of SB 1070 to be enforced immediately. State Senator Pearce specifically crafted SB 1070 to be entirely consistent with federal law. The district court jumped the gun by invalidating components of the law on a purely speculative basis. It is shameful that the Obama administration has chosen to mount a legal assault against the State of Arizona for simply trying to protect its citizens. It is little wonder that the situation at the border continues to deteriorate given the Obama administration’s unwillingness to secure the border and enforce the law. We hope the appellate court respects the rule of law and allows SB 1070 to be put into full force.
State Senator Pierce agrees, saying:
This ought to be a no-brainer for the courts. I hope the appeals court allows our state to enforce the rule of law because the Obama administration doesn’t seem to care one whit for the safety of the citizens of Arizona. SB 1070 simply reflects federal immigration law. This Obama team doesn’t want immigration laws enforced - but that doesn’t mean that Arizona can’t take common sense steps to protect its own citizens.
According to the Phoenix Journal, 22 states are currently considering legislation modeled after Arizona’s SB 1070. So this battle, which began in Arizona, has gone national. And you can be sure that Judicial Watch will be right in the middle of it fighting on the side of the rule of law.
Countrywide CEO Personally Approved Fraudulent VIP Mortgage Loans
Remember that controversial Countrywide VIP lending program where certain influential individuals were given preferential loan terms? It was known as “Friends of Angelo.” So I guess we should not be too surprised that federal officials now say the program’s namesake, company CEO Angelo Mozilo, personally approved some of the loans.
According to The Wall Street Journal:
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Countrywide Financial Corp.’s ex-chief executive Angelo Mozilo approved loans for favored borrowers that contradicted the company’s lending policies.
The SEC’s statements came in federal-court filings filed last week in its pending civil fraud case against Mr. Mozilo and two other former top Countrywide officials. It appears to be the first time in the year-old case that the SEC has addressed Mr. Mozilo’s role in the controversial VIP lending program, where borrowers sometimes received better loan terms and service than were generally available. Some of the borrowers included public officials.
Indeed, a number of politicians did improperly take advantage of the program, including soon-to-be-retired Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND). The accusations were particularly damaging for Dodd, who chaired the Banking Committee, which is responsible for regulating the mortgage lending industry, including companies such as Countrywide.
You may recall that the two Senators denied any knowledge of preferential treatment. But Robert Feinberg, who worked in Countrywide’s VIP program, contradicted the repeated denials by Dodd and Conrad regarding their knowledge of the program during testimony before Congress. When asked directly whether the two Senators were aware they were receiving special VIP treatment, Feinberg simply said, “Yes.”
Nonetheless, the Senate Ethics Committee did what it does best. It whitewashed the scandal and let the two Senators off the hook. (The WSJ editorial board notes that Dodd received as many as six loans from Countrywide.)
According to The Associated Press, Dodd and Conrad are apparently not the only “Friends of Angelo” in Congress: One member of Congress recently said that “more senators and congressional staff members than previously known received favorable mortgages from Countrywide based on their perceived ability to help the company.”
So now maybe we have a better sense of why Dodd and Conrad’s colleagues were not eager to hold them accountable?
But wait, it gets better. The AP’s article continues:
Documents provided to another congressional panel under a subpoena show that Countrywide gave preferential mortgages to more than three dozen employees of Fannie Mae while the two big companies were locked in an expanding, multibillion-dollar business relationship in subprime mortgages.
And so it appears Fannie and Freddie, Countrywide and their friends on the Hill were all in cahoots over this program to secure sweetheart mortgage deals. (Countrywide, as a major purveyor of subprime mortgage loans, depended upon Fannie and Freddie to buy and create a market for its loans.)
By the way, on the subject of influence peddling, Judicial Watch continues to pursue its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama administration regarding documents related to campaign contributions made by Fannie and Freddie over the last several election cycles. The president has advanced the shocking argument that government-run Fannie and Freddie are not FOIA-able, a ridiculous assertion we are countering in our groundbreaking federal lawsuit.
These latest revelations provide further evidence that the nearly $150 billion (and counting) implosion of Fannie and Freddie is perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in American history.
The Obama administration is moving to release thousands of illegal immigrants detained at facilities across the country if the immigrants have a potential path to legal residency.
The move could affect as many as 17,000 immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. It comes amid a push by ICE to focus on illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, rather than seek to deport all illegal immigrants. Officials say that the shift is needed to reduce massive clogs in the nation’s immigration courts - where detainees wait for months or years before their cases are decided - and to use deportation as a tool for public safety.
“ICE is dedicating unprecedented resources to the removal of criminal aliens,” said Richard Rocha, deputy press secretary at the immigration enforcement agency. “The focus now is clearly on criminal aliens… . We want to ensure convicted criminal aliens are not only removed from the community, but from the country as well.”
Rocha said that the deportation of criminals accounts for about half of all removals, an all-time high. If the immigrants released under the new policy have their applications for legalization turned down, ICE will resume removal proceedings.
While immigration advocates applauded the move and said it reflected a more humane approach to illegal immigrants in detention, Republican lawmakers and groups that favor stricter limits on immigration denounced it as a form of back-door amnesty.
The number of immigrants being detained in the United States has doubled in the last decade, to 369,000 annually. There are now about 248,000 cases awaiting review in backlogged immigration courts, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which tracks immigration statistics.
The increases have triggered huge logistical problems and exposed successive administrations to charges that those who are in the country illegally, a violation of civil statutes, are being exposed to unnecessarily harsh conditions.
Simultaneously, ICE officials maintain, clogged immigration courts divert officials from identifying, tracking down and deporting illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes and other offenses.
In a memo dated Aug. 20, ICE Director John Morton wrote that as many as 17,000 illegal immigrants have pending applications for legal status with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, ICE’s sister agency within the Department of Homeland Security.
As those applications are being reviewed, immigrants in detention who do not have criminal backgrounds might be eligible for release, Morton said. Local ICE officials have discretion in releasing detainees, he added, and would take into consideration a number of factors, including “national security and public safety.”
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter controls on immigration, warned that the move would demoralize agents working for ICE and also send the wrong message about illegal immigration.
Krikorian acknowledged that the government has to set immigration enforcement priorities, but said the shortfall in resources is stems partly from the Obama administration’s not seeking sufficient means to expedite the review of cases and the deportation of detainees.
“Simply letting them go sends a harmful message to immigration agents and to illegal immigrants,” he said. Agents feel “their work is not valued. The message sent to the illegals is that even if you are put into deportation proceedings, we will let you go.”
The Department of Homeland Security is reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to sources familiar with the efforts.
Culling the immigration court system dockets of immigrants who aren’t believed to be dangerous started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was tossing their cases.
Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Tuesday that the review is part of the agency’s broader, nationwide strategy to prioritize the deportations of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety.
Critics assailed the plan as another sign that the Obama administration is trying to create a kind of backdoor “amnesty” program.
Immigration attorney Raed Gonzalez, who is liaison between the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said Homeland Security has assigned five attorneys full time to review all active cases in Houston’s immigration court.
Gonzalez said Homeland Security attorneys are conducting the reviews case by case. However, he said their general guidelines allow dismissal of cases for defendants who have been in the U.S. two or more years and have no felony convictions.
In some cases, defendants can have one misdemeanor conviction, but it cannot involve a DWI, family violence or a sex crime, Gonzalez said.
Opponents of illegal immigration were critical of the dismissals.
“This situation is just another side effect of President Obama’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens.”
Gonzalez said the dismissals are necessary to unclog a massive backlog in the immigration court system. In June, there were more than 248,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the country, including about 23,000 in Texas, according to data compiled by researchers at Syracuse University.
Immigrants who have had their cases terminated are often left in limbo and are not given any form of legal status, immigration attorneys said.
“It’s very, very key to understand that these aliens are not being granted anything in court,” said immigration attorney Elizabeth Mendoza Macias. “ICE is just saying, ‘At this particular moment, we are not going to proceed with trying to remove you from the United States.’ ”
Susan Carroll,
MEXICO CITY—The U.S. consulate in Monterrey warned local U.S. citizens that Friday’s shootout in front of the prestigious American School Foundation stemmed from a failed kidnapping, and advised personnel to keep their children out of school—stoking fears authorities have lost control of the city to drug traffickers, kidnappers and other criminals.
“At this point it appears that [the gunfight] was an attempted kidnapping targeting the relatives of a local business executive,” the consulate said in a message posted on its website Sunday night. The investigation into the shooting incident was continuing, it said.
ReutersDetectives and soldiers investigate after Friday’s shooting near the American School in Monterrey. The U.S. says it involved a failed kidnapping.
While U.S. families didn’t appear to be targeted, the consulate urged Americans in Monterrey—Mexico’s business capital and home to many divisions of U.S.-based companies—to increase security measures.
“The sharp increase in kidnapping incidents in the Monterrey area, and this event in particular, present a very high risk to the families of U.S. citizens who might become incidental victims,” the message said. U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual urged consulate employees to keep children at home “while we assess the risks and what measures can be taken to reduce it,” the message said. The American School is attended by the children of many leading Mexican businessmen and U.S. executives who work in the city.
On Monday, a Mexican official whose children attend the American School said the school appeared normal except for the absence of children of U.S. consular staff. The American School didn’t answer an email seeking comment.
Monterrey isn’t Mexico’s only wealthy city now stalked by barbaric drug violence. On Sunday, the mutilated and decapitated bodies of four men were found hanging from a bridge in Cuernavaca, a city about 50 miles south of Mexico City where many affluent Mexicans have weekend homes, and Americans come to learn Spanish. After drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed by Mexican marines in December, Cuernavaca became a battleground for cartels fighting to take over his organization.
Mexico’s War on Drugs
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Mexico’s Drug Killings
Nearly 23,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006, according to the government, with northern border states experiencing the worst of the violence.
In Monterrey, the U.S. warning was a reaction to a 20-minute gun battle Friday between bodyguards working for Mexican beverage company Femsa SAB de CV and alleged drug-cartel gunmen in front of the American School, In the shootout, which sent children dashing for shelter into the school’s cafeteria, two Femsa security guards were killed and four others were taken by the gunmen, presumed to be members of one of the drug cartels that is fighting to control the city. They were released in front of a Femsa installation early Saturday.
Mexican authorities and Femsa deny that there was any kidnap attempt. Both say the gun battle erupted when Femsa security guards patrolling the area around the school, which is attended by children of the company’s executives, got into a verbal dispute with a group of armed men who were driving in front of the school. The dispute turned into a firefight. where the Femsa guards were outnumbered by the gunmen, who killed two and captured the other four.”It wasn’t a kidnapping attempt,” said a high ranking Nuevo Leon state official. “It was a confrontation.”
Mexico is one of the world’s kidnapping centers. In 2009, there were 1,128 cases of kidnapping reported to Mexican authorities. But the real number of kidnappings is estimated to be many times higher by analysts. In May, Mexico was shocked when kidnappers grabbed Diego Fernandez de Ceballos, a lawyer and former presidential candidate who is considered to be the grand old man of President Felipe Calderón’s PAN party. The whereabouts of Mr. Fernandez de Ceballos remain unknown.
Last week’s violence has put many affluent residents of Monterrey on edge. Many are thinking of either sending their children to study in the U.S., or moving the whole family abroad. “The big topic is whether to move to the U.S. altogether,” emailed a Mexican executive with children at the American School. “I don’t know the actual numbers, but there’s a feeling of “diaspora” from families moving to San Antonio, or Austin or Houston. I personally have two friends who have done so.”
The violence pushing the migration is the result of a turf war by violent drug cartels for control of Monterrey’s drug markets and drug routes to the U.S. that run by the city.
Speaking at a recent conference in El Paso, Mr. Pascual, the U.S. ambassador, said the city’s security environment had deteriorated in a few months from “seeming benevolence to extreme violence.” According to the newspaper Reforma, which tracks killings in Nuevo Leon, where it also runs a newspaper in the state capital of Monterrey, says drug-related murders have shot up in the state from 56 in 2009 to 420 so far in 2010.
Just last week, the mayor of a tourist town where many businessmen from Monterrey keep weekend houses, was kidnapped and killed. So far, seven police officers, apparently in the pay of drug traffickers, have been arrested in the case. In Mexico, some 28,000 people have died since 2006 when President Calderón sent out thousands of soldiers and federal police to reclaim the country from powerful drug traffickers.
A year ago when Monterrey residents chatted about security, no one could offer a first-hand anecdote about a friend or relative who had suffered a violent crime, the American School parent, who is an investment banker, wrote in his email. “Today it’s different,” he added. “My dentist’s son was kidnapped two weeks ago, the brother of a friend was kidnapped two months ago, the best friend of the entrepreneur where my fund was invested was kidnapped in December, and never returned, and this past Wednesday, a close acquaintance was kidnapped.”
