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More troopers to train for immigration busts |
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
VIVI ABRAMS
News staff writer
Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson said Monday he hopes Alabama’s system of using troopers to enforce immigration laws can be copied nationwide.
Hutchinson, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and the state Department of Public Safety announced plans to train 25 more troopers to recognize and detain illegal immigrants during traffic stops.
Alabama volunteered for the program in September 2003 and has 21 immigration-trained troopers. The troopers have referred 44 immigrants for federal prosecution in the past year and a half, said DPS Maj. Charles Andrews. Alabama and Florida are the only states to use troopers in immigration enforcement.
Hutchinson, who oversees border and transportation security for the Department of Homeland Security, was in Birmingham to learn about the program’s progress.
“This has been a very successful experience and we hope this will become a model for the nation,” Hutchinson said. “Homeland Security should be about expanding our partnerships with the states.”
Some immigration advocates and business supporters have opposed the program, saying it is not the best way to fight terrorism and hurts people who are here to work.
“We would hope Senator Sessions would work for immigration reform rather than looking at Alabama to address the immigration issue from the state level,” said Isabel Rubio, director of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, who sent Sessions a letter in 2003 along with other organizations that opposed the program. She said Sessions never responded.
There are thought to be as many as 75,000 or 100,000 undocumented immigrants in the state, many of whom work in agriculture and construction. Sessions said he doesn’t think cracking down on immigrants more will hurt the state’s economy.
“That knife cuts two ways,” he said. Illegal immigrant labor “drives down wages for American people,” he said.
Sessions and Hutchinson said comprehensive reform won’t be possible until the state and federal governments prove they can enforce current immigration laws. President Bush has proposed a guest worker program to allow immigrants to work here for several years without fear of deportation. Sessions said he won’t support the proposal unless it includes sufficient enforcement rules.
Troopers who participate in the immigration enforcement program go through a five-week training session to learn how to distinguish immigration status and how to process, transport and detain criminal aliens.
Police chiefs oppose it:
The trained troopers have the authority to detain an immigrant for up to 72 hours until an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer comes to investigate. There are 28 agents in Mobile, eight in Birmingham and three in Montgomery who can respond, said ICE New Orleans Special Agent-in-Charge Mike Holt.
\ Andrews said the people apprehended since the program started include five previously deported immigrants who had felony convictions, a person who was wanted for armed robbery and possession of controlled substances, a man with a fraudulent resident alien card and someone who was carrying 9 pounds of marijuana.
He said he did not know offhand how many total immigrant arrests the troopers have made. In August, DPS announced that since September 2003 troopers had made 109 arrests resulting in 28 deportations.
Local law enforcement divisions are allowed to apply for immigration enforcement training but so far in Alabama state troopers are the only division to do so. The International Association of Chiefs of Police opposes such training, saying that acting as immigration officers could compromise police officers’ ability to enforce other laws because it would make immigrants afraid to report crimes.
Andrews said the state plans to expand the number of county jails that are used to hold detained immigrants.
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DIRECTORS OF CIA AND FBI WARN OF SECURITY THREAT AT OUR SOUTHERN BORDER
Proposed FY 2006 Budget Slashes Funding for
Border Security
(Washington, D.C. — February 17, 2005) In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, three of the nation’s highest ranking homeland security officials issued a chilling and unambiguous warning that al-Qaeda will exploit lax border enforcement to infiltrate terrorists and weaponry into the U.S. CIA Director Porter Goss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Admiral James Loy, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security all warned that al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations will use our poorly guarded border with Mexico to launch another lethal attack on American soil.
According to Loy, intelligence reports “strongly suggest” al-Qaeda considers our southern border to be a point of vulnerability. Goss told the committee, “It may only be a matter of time before al-Qaeda or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons” against the U.S. Mueller warned that at the top of the FBI’s list of concerns is “the threat from covert al-Qaeda operatives inside the United States.”
In spite of these dire warnings, the Bush Administration’s proposed FY2006 budget neglects border security and other immigration enforcement priorities. Even the modest increase of 2,000 Border Patrol agents authorized by Congress in the intelligence reform bill passed in December is not being supported by the White House, which plans to fund only 200 new border guards. Instead of acting decisively to seal the border, President Bush has exacerbated the crisis by advocating a policy widely interpreted as an offer of amnesty for just about anyone who can gain entry to the U.S.
“The danger posed by our failure to guard our borders and enforce our immigration laws could not be clearer or more ominous,” says Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “What we have at our southern border is the potential for a catastrophe far greater than the one we experienced on 9/11. Our porous borders and the lack of enforcement of standing laws mean that the terrorists who perpetrate the next attack may be armed with WMDs instead of box cutters.
“The response to the warnings issued by Goss, Mueller and Loy must include immediate deployment of the military to the border and full funding for the additional 2,000 border agents approved by Congress,” continues Stein. “In light of this disturbing testimony, it is also imperative President Bush drop his schemes to legalize millions of illegal aliens and institute a massive guest worker program. The enormous amount of money, manpower and resources these schemes would require must be directed, instead, to the nation’s single overriding priority: protecting our homeland security.”
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SPANISH MEDIA IGNITES HATE
CAMPAIGN AGAINST NOINVADERS.ORG
by Jim Wood
The controversial Web site NoInvaders.Org realized an escalation to over 2,000 visits a day as of February 17, mostly due to radio and television coverage from Spanish-speaking media sources like Univision National News and Telemundo. As expected, the visitors were mostly hostile and expressed their outrage in e-mail and discussion board postings, but there were several paid-uploads from what appears to be the Spanish-speaking audience to the “Bad Employers” and “Illegal Dwellers” directories that profile information about immigration law violators.
Many of the e-mail messages and postings consisted of insults like “stupid racist white pig”, an interesting self-contradiction. There was a flurry of visits on February 16, about one thousand total, mostly with Mexican IP addresses, and when traffic peaked over 2,000 visits the next day, it became apparent the visitors emanated from the U.S. in almost equal numbers, but the e-mail came mostly from people with Spanish surnames. I received over 200 hateful messages stipulating an overused anti-immigration-reform line about wanting “to kill your mother” and threats to others who use the discussion board peacefully. Looking at all the e-mail and discussion board postings, it never [ceases] to amaze me the preoccupation with “race” as a factor in one’s contempt for this Web site or legal Americans, when the content of the site makes it clear that race is not an issue. Those who have no logical argument to deflect the problems created by illegal immigration love to use racism as propaganda hoping it will “stick” after many libelous accusations. Again, themes of American “genocide” in places like Iraq are hammered out, “Nazi” America, and a disgust for George W. Bush, who has done everything possible to facilitate the continued invasion of the U.S. since he took office to accommodate those who threaten him or complain. Some want to counter the “Report Employers” page with a “Report Rednecks” page; others condemn the authors of immigration reform proposals as culprits who will soon be “judged by God.” One woman described herself as a mortgage banker who is proud to give out home loans to illegal aliens, and cannot understand the “anger” toward illegals as the U.S. will be “80% Hispanic by 2032” so we need to “get real.” Whereas even I might confide in some of the statements made by Ted Kennedy in the 1960’s that immigration should favor non-whites, as a majority ethnic group may not be desirable in multi-cultural egalitarian America, how does an illegal policy that favors replacing one ethnic majority with a new majority help those on the left? Truthfully, I think all the left cares about is how to impoverish America, so they can spew their double-think and build their power base. Sadly, Karl Rove and the president have adopted a similar policy, and a prosperous America with a strong middle-class seems to be a thing of the past.
Insiders claim Telemundo and other sources hope to bombard the Web site with enough traffic to make it over-consume bandwidth and crash, but NoInvaders.Org is equipped to handle about 1 million visits a month, or 33,000 visits a day, and the record is 2,157 for one day. Also, foreign IP addresses are now being blocked on much of the Web site.
George Putnam of radio’s Talk Back was again contacted February 7, and we discussed state governors who promote illegal immigration, and the Minuteman demonstration in Naco, Arizona, on April 2, as well as Minuteman II scheduled for June. I will be there to advertise my Web site, amongst other things. Jim Gilchrist, organizer of the project, advised holding-off on displaying URL’s on vehicle banners until given approval by Chris Simcox of Civil Homeland Defense, as altercations from counter-demonstrators may ensue.
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Mexico probes killing of two U.S. citizens
One body ID’d as U.S. Army reservist.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The bullet-riddled bodies of two U.S. citizens have been found in the central Mexican state of Michoacan, U.S. and Mexican authorities said Saturday.
The Americans were among four bodies found on Friday near Tacambaro, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) west of Mexico City.
Family members identified the U.S. victims as Omar Chavez and Alejandro Munoz, of Dallas, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Diana Page. Munoz was a U.S. Army reservist.
The bodies of Mexicans Mariano Perez and Delfino Perez also were recovered, said Ignacio Roque, spokesman for the Michoacan state attorney general’s office.
An assault rifle was used in the killings, an indication that drug trafficking groups may have been involved, according to local media reports.
But the federal attorney general’s office, which can intervene in organized crime cases, on Saturday said the investigation remains in the hands of local prosecutors.
The U.S. State Department issued the travel alert in January, telling Americans that violent crime related to drug trafficking, including murder and kidnapping, had increased in northern Mexico along the U.S. border. The alert did not concern the Mexican interior, where the bodies were found on Friday.
The four men had disappeared more than a week ago, and the bodies already showed signs of decomposition when discovered.
While the men appeared to have been shot to death, state authorities were performing autopsies, Roque said.
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GUEST COMMENTARY:
Taxpayers shouldn’t support illegal immigrants
 by Joseph Perkins
I don’t consider myself a “racist” or a “bigot.” But Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee apparently does. I happen to see the merit of a measure, proposed by two Arkansas state lawmakers, that would require anyone registering to vote in the Razorback State to prove citizenship and anyone applying for state services to prove legal residency.
To Huckabee’s mind, anyone who supports such a law has succumbed to “race-baiting and demagoguery.” That would include yours truly. It also would include a majority of my fellow California residents.
Indeed, in 1994, nearly 60 percent of voters in the Golden State approved a ballot measure that denied state benefits to illegal aliens. Proposition 187 even mustered a third of the state’s Latino vote.
Meanwhile, Arizona voters approved a similar measure by a comparable margin of victory last November. And Proposition 200 won the support of roughly 40 percent of the Grand Canyon State’s Mexican-American voters. The passage of Propositions 187 and 200 doesn’t mean that 60 percent of California and Arizona residents are racists or bigots or xenophobes, as critics of the measures disparage. It means that they believe in the rule of law.
They believe that taxpayer-funded benefits should be reserved for American citizens and for legal residents, and not for those who steal into the country, who thumb their noses at this nation’s immigration laws. The irony is that those, like Huckabee, who argue against denying benefits to illegals, are the same folks who argue that illegals come here simply to work, to earn a living here in the Land of Opportunity.
Well, if that is so, why do they need government benefits? It’s bad enough that government officials, like Huckabee, knowingly and willingly countenance illegal immigration. It’s worse that they also want to reward those who have stolen into the country. They want to give them driver’s licenses. They want to give them taxpayer-subsidized college tuition. Heck, in San Francisco, they want to give illegals the right to vote.
Illegal immigrant apologists argue that they are law-abiding folk but for violating this nation’s borders, but for breaking this nation’s immigration laws.
But that’s not entirely the case, as Heather McDonald documented a year ago in an article published in City Journal. In Los Angeles, she found, 95 percent of all outstanding murder warrants involved suspected illegal aliens. And up to two-thirds of all felony warrants were for undocumented illegals.
But illegals do the jobs “Americans won’t do,” claim their defenders, including Gov. Huckabee and President Bush, both of whom happen to be Republicans.
That’s just a myth, as I’ve noted in previous writings.
The fact is, before the two great waves of illegal immigration in the 1980s and 1990s, there were more than enough Americans performing the low-skilled and semi-skilled work needed by farms and orchards, factories and construction sites, restaurants and hotels, car washes and dry cleaners.
And there still are many lower-skilled Americans available to work for such employers, including the 10 million native-born Americans lacking high school diplomas.
And if that’s still not enough low-skilled labor to meet the needs of the nation’s industries, they can recruit workers from the legal immigrant population. That includes the more than 5 million legal Mexican immigrants without high school diplomas.
Finally, defenders of illegal immigration say that illegals contribute more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
That’s yet another myth. A study by the Center for Immigration Studies, a public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., concluded that, when all taxes are paid and all costs are considered, illegal households cost the federal government a net $10 billion in 2002.
And when the federal outlay is combined with that of California, Arizona, Arkansas and other states, the total net cost of illegal immigration is more than $20 billion a year.
What really irritates in the debate over illegal immigration is the dishonesty of those who oppose measures like California’s Proposition 187, Arizona’s Proposition 200 and Arkansas’ Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.
They suggest that those who support such measures are anti-immigrant; that they simply do not like people who are brown-skinned (or black or yellow).
Well, I, for one, am not anti-immigrant. I say come one, come all. Just come legally.
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Gingrich urges action
against illegals
By Ralph Z. Hallow
Newt Gingrich is demanding that the Bush administration get serious about stopping illegal immigration.
The former House speaker wants the United States to completely seal off its border along Mexico and Canada, deport illegal aliens within 72 hours of their arrest and exclude U.S. courts from reviewing such deportations.
“Let’s be serious about sealing off our borders or [else] have open borders,” Mr. Gingrich told more than 1,000 cheering conservatives on Saturday.
“It’s a complete misreading of the 14th Amendment” to the Constitution to think that illegal aliens are entitled to the same rights as U.S. citizens, he said on the closing day of the 32nd annual Conservative Political Action Conference.
He hit all the right notes for activists at a conference where immigration proved to be the hottest issue — in speeches, panel discussions and hallway talk.
Legal immigrants, he said, should “have to learn about American history to pass a citizenship test, and they should have to pass it in English.”
Mr. Gingrich was one of the three biggest attractions at the three-day meeting, with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and author Ann Coulter.
“We have to have a relatively open green-card policy to relieve pressure” from Mexico and elsewhere, as well as from U.S. firms seeking workers, Mr. Gingrich said.
Some skeptical conservative leaders interviewed after his speech noted that Mr. Gingrich did not explain how the “open green-card” program would work, or what more the administration should do to seal thousands of miles of border to the south and north.
Nor did Mr. Gingrich say whether he backed some form of President Bush’s guest-worker program to allow illegal aliens holding jobs in the United States to remain — or whether such aliens eventually could apply for citizenship.
Many in the audience booed and hissed Manhattan Institute analyst Tamar Jacoby’s defense of the guest-worker proposal. In a panel titled “Immigration Reform: Recognizing Reality or Surrendering Principles?” she clashed with Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly.
The audience — about a third populated with college-age members — sided heavily with Mrs. Schlafly on the immigration issue, as it had with Pat Buchanan in a speech Friday morning.
Many CPAC speakers emphasized the themes of limited government and individual freedom, which they said were at the heart of conservatism.
“The president has set for this nation a great task of extending liberty throughout the world,” said former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III.
“We can debate the method of doing that, but there is no debate about what our goal is as conservatives here at home,” he said. “It is to define and extend liberty here at home.”
The views of speakers displayed the deep divisions that run through the right on Iraq, same-sex “marriage,” Social Security and a host of other issues.
The Law of the Sea Treaty, backed by Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, came in for heavy criticism by Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, and others.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican and featured speaker at the CPAC Ronald Reagan Banquet on Friday, called the treaty a surrender of U.S. sovereignty.
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