Artful
02-28-2013, 04:39 PM
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/homeland-security-official-gary-mead-resigns-after-immigrants-are-freed-1.4723056
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/homeland-deportation-czar-resigns-budget-cutst-cuts-article-1.1275230
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/59716/gary-mead-a-mensch-at-homeland-security-takes-the-fall-for-obama-the-end-of-ice/
The Associated Press has learned that the Homeland Security Department official in charge of the agency’s immigration enforcement and removal operations has resigned after hundreds of illegal immigrants were released from jails because of government spending cuts.
In an email obtained Wednesday by the AP, Gary Mead told coworkers that he was leaving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the end of April. Mead is the head of enforcement and removal operations at ICE.
So, even though releasing the detainees very conveniently served Obama’s goal of increasing the pants-wetting over sequester cuts while also very conveniently making the amnesty fans in his base happy, this was just Gary Mead going rogue without any direction from the White House. And Obama’s so mad about it that Mead has to clear out his desk immediately two months from now. Let me gently suggest that in the unlikely event Mead really did order this on his own, perhaps he was just acting in the spirit of his boss, who not so subtly suggested a few days ago that if a deal wasn’t reached on cuts ASAP then border security might have to go bye-bye for awhile.
But let’s not join in the scapegoating. Is there any reason why the White House, having quietly ordered Mead to turn up the pressure on Republicans by releasing a few illegals yesterday, would suddenly reverse course and pull the plug on him today? Yes, actually. Check out who the paper of record used as an example in its story yesterday about the illegals who were released:
Among those released in the past week was Anthony Orlando Williams, 52, a Jamaican immigrant who spent nearly three years in a detention center in Georgia. “I’m good, man,” he said. “I’m free.”
Mr. Williams, in a telephone interview from Stone Mountain, Ga., said he became an illegal immigrant when he overstayed a visa in 1991. He was detained in 2010 by a sheriff’s deputy in Gwinnett County, Ga., when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time. He was transferred to ICE custody and has been fighting a deportation order with the help of Families for Freedom, an immigrant support group in New York.
Obama’s willing to take a political risk in releasing nonviolent illegals. He’s not willing to take the risk of releasing child abusers. The public might blame the GOP for the former vis-a-vis putting budget pressure on DHS, but they won’t give the chief executive a pass for not being more discriminating in choosing which illegals go free. Somebody had to pay. Congrats, Gary Mead.
Oh, incidentally, this isn’t the only lie the White House is telling about sequester cuts. Read WaPo’s fact-check of Arne Duncan claiming that teachers are already getting pink slips.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2992002/posts
Obama's Dangerous Illegal Alien Exodus: Past Released Detainees Murdered 19; Raped 142
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, said the thousands of detainees selected for release over the past week - among an estimated 8,000 - 10,000 scheduled for release - were “noncriminals and other low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal histories.”
This is a blatant lie. The aliens released by DHS are criminals, who will put families and communities at greater risk from coast-to-coast.
According to Jessica Vaughan of CIS, here are some categories of detainees who were released from ICE detention over the last week:
Aliens convicted of drug offenses, theft, identity theft, forgery, and simple assault;
Aliens who were arrested and charged with local crimes, but turned over to ICE for deportation in lieu of prosecution;
Aliens who were bonded out on local criminal charges and were placed in ICE custody as a result of a detainer (typically a public safety or flight risk); under new ICE detention priority purposes, these are "non-mandatory, non-criminal detainees", because aliens are not considered to be dangerous or criminal until they have been convicted;
Repeat immigration offenders (despite ICE leadership claims that these are "enforcement priorities"); and
Recent border crossers (also supposedly an "enforcement priority").
And DHS just released "thousands" of them, including 500 in a single weekend in a single Arizona county - without even informing the Sheriff.
So what can we expect from the criminal aliens Obama released this past week? Well unfortunately the statistics over Obama's first term do not paint a pretty picture.
According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, nearly 47,000 illegal aliens flagged for deportation between 2009 and 2011 were instead released by the Obama Administration, and 16% of them went on to commit further crimes, including 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes, according to CRS and the House Judiciary Committee.
“The Obama administration could have prevented these senseless crimes by enforcing our immigration laws,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). “But President Obama continues to further his anti-enforcement agenda while innocent Americans suffer the consequences. His unwillingness to enforce immigration laws puts our communities at risk and costs American lives.”
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/feb/26/dhs-releasing-illegal-immigrants-before/
WASHINGTON (AP) — A week before mandatory budget cuts go into effect across the government, the Department of Homeland Security has started releasing illegal immigrants being held in immigration jails across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday.
Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed "several hundred cases" of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release," she said.
Christensen said the agency's "priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety." She did not say how released immigrants were selected or what jails they were released from.
Tuesday's announcement of jail releases is the first tangible impact of the looming budget cuts for DHS.
The Obama administration has been issuing dire warnings about the impact of the sequestration and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters at the White House Monday that across-the-board cuts would impact the department's core operations, including border security and airport screening operations.
She also warned that DHS might not be able to afford to keep the 34,000 immigration jail beds mandated by Congress. On average last week, there were 30,773 people being held in ICE jails.
"I don't think we can maintain the same level of security at all places around the country with sequester as without sequester," said Napolitano, adding that the impact would be "'like a rolling ball. It will keep growing."
According to the National Immigration Forum, it costs the government about $164 a day to keep an illegal immigrant facing deportation jailed. In a report on immigration detention costs last year the advocacy group said costs for supervised release can range from about 30 cents to $14 a day.
Republicans lawmakers decried the releases Tuesday.
"It's abhorrent that President (Barack) Obama is releasing criminals into our communities to promote his political agenda on sequestration," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte. "By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the Administration is needlessly endangering American lives. It also undermines our efforts to come together with the Administration and reform our nation's immigration laws."
The administration asked for about $1.96 billion for immigration jail operations in the last budget. It amounts to about $5.4 million a day, according to the National Immigration Forum's report.
Christensen said Tuesday that released immigrants will still face deportation proceedings.
http://standwitharizona.com/blog/2013/02/26/outrage-dhs-releases-thousands-of-illegal-aliens-from-prison-citing-budget-cuts/
Despite potential budget cuts being 4 days away and with Congress and the Administration negotiating to avoid them, the Department of Homeland Security has already started releasing hundreds of illegal aliens held in local jails in anticipation of automatic “sequestration” cuts – out of a planned total of more than 10,000 aliens to be released.
Sources tell Stand With Arizona that DHS has “34,000 beds” for illegal aliens, meaning that Secretary Janet Napolitano is releasing nearly 1/3 of all DHS-detained illegal aliens in the United States – despite the fact that no actual cuts have even begun, and despite a record of massive wasteful spending by DHS over the past 3 years.
Napolitano had been warning of potential impact to DHS after impending cuts, but now she has jumped the gun by enacting a “budgetary amnesty” by fiat – releasing thousands of criminal aliens amongst communities and families across the nation.
The New York Times reports that the aliens are being ”freed on supervised release while their cases continue in court”. But as SWA has reported in the past, many aliens facing deportation or prosecution on immigration holds never show up for those hearings, and remain in the country.
One Arizona Sheriff called the DHS action politically motivated — and dangerous.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released more than 500 detainees in his county alone over the weekend. ICE officials told Babeu that they plan to release a total of nearly 10,000 illegal aliens.
Babeu described the move as a “mass budget pardon” and suggested the administration was going to unnecessary lengths to demonstrate the impact of the so-called sequester.
“President Obama would never release 500 criminal illegals to the streets of his hometown, yet he has no problem with releasing them in Arizona. The safety of the public is threatened and the rule of law discarded as a political tactic in this sequester battle,” he said.
An ICE official confirmed the plans without specifying how many illegal aliens might be released.
Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said ICE had directed field offices to make sure the “detained population” is “in line with available funding.” She stressed that ICE would continue to prosecute the cases while keeping them “under supervision”.
The announcement comes after DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday warned about the potential impact of the cuts. She said the department “would not be able to maintain the detention beds as required by Congress.”
“We’re doing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester. But there’s only so much I can do,” she said. “I’m supposed to have (thousands of) detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., called the move to release illegal immigrants “abhorrent.”
“By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the administration is needlessly endangering American lives,” he said in a statement.
In Arizona, Babeu slammed the move, painting his community as a victim of gridlock in Washington.
“Clearly, serious criminals are being released to the streets of our local communities by this mass budget pardon. This is insane that public safety is sacrificed when it should be the budget priority that’s safeguarded,” he said.
As Arizona, and other states brace for the impact of this disgraceful and lawless action, we call on Sheriffs across America to defy this corrupt DHS Secretary, and detain as many illegal aliens as possible. We know that Sheriff Joe and his deputies are on high alert today as these alien criminals are being set loose in our communities.
Just when you think the shameful pandering and legal anarchy of this Administration can’t get any worse, it does…in spades.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/homeland-deportation-czar-resigns-budget-cutst-cuts-article-1.1275230
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/59716/gary-mead-a-mensch-at-homeland-security-takes-the-fall-for-obama-the-end-of-ice/
The Associated Press has learned that the Homeland Security Department official in charge of the agency’s immigration enforcement and removal operations has resigned after hundreds of illegal immigrants were released from jails because of government spending cuts.
In an email obtained Wednesday by the AP, Gary Mead told coworkers that he was leaving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the end of April. Mead is the head of enforcement and removal operations at ICE.
So, even though releasing the detainees very conveniently served Obama’s goal of increasing the pants-wetting over sequester cuts while also very conveniently making the amnesty fans in his base happy, this was just Gary Mead going rogue without any direction from the White House. And Obama’s so mad about it that Mead has to clear out his desk immediately two months from now. Let me gently suggest that in the unlikely event Mead really did order this on his own, perhaps he was just acting in the spirit of his boss, who not so subtly suggested a few days ago that if a deal wasn’t reached on cuts ASAP then border security might have to go bye-bye for awhile.
But let’s not join in the scapegoating. Is there any reason why the White House, having quietly ordered Mead to turn up the pressure on Republicans by releasing a few illegals yesterday, would suddenly reverse course and pull the plug on him today? Yes, actually. Check out who the paper of record used as an example in its story yesterday about the illegals who were released:
Among those released in the past week was Anthony Orlando Williams, 52, a Jamaican immigrant who spent nearly three years in a detention center in Georgia. “I’m good, man,” he said. “I’m free.”
Mr. Williams, in a telephone interview from Stone Mountain, Ga., said he became an illegal immigrant when he overstayed a visa in 1991. He was detained in 2010 by a sheriff’s deputy in Gwinnett County, Ga., when it was discovered that he had violated probation for a conviction in 2005 of simple assault, simple battery and child abuse, charges that sprung from a domestic dispute with his wife at the time. He was transferred to ICE custody and has been fighting a deportation order with the help of Families for Freedom, an immigrant support group in New York.
Obama’s willing to take a political risk in releasing nonviolent illegals. He’s not willing to take the risk of releasing child abusers. The public might blame the GOP for the former vis-a-vis putting budget pressure on DHS, but they won’t give the chief executive a pass for not being more discriminating in choosing which illegals go free. Somebody had to pay. Congrats, Gary Mead.
Oh, incidentally, this isn’t the only lie the White House is telling about sequester cuts. Read WaPo’s fact-check of Arne Duncan claiming that teachers are already getting pink slips.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2992002/posts
Obama's Dangerous Illegal Alien Exodus: Past Released Detainees Murdered 19; Raped 142
A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, said the thousands of detainees selected for release over the past week - among an estimated 8,000 - 10,000 scheduled for release - were “noncriminals and other low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal histories.”
This is a blatant lie. The aliens released by DHS are criminals, who will put families and communities at greater risk from coast-to-coast.
According to Jessica Vaughan of CIS, here are some categories of detainees who were released from ICE detention over the last week:
Aliens convicted of drug offenses, theft, identity theft, forgery, and simple assault;
Aliens who were arrested and charged with local crimes, but turned over to ICE for deportation in lieu of prosecution;
Aliens who were bonded out on local criminal charges and were placed in ICE custody as a result of a detainer (typically a public safety or flight risk); under new ICE detention priority purposes, these are "non-mandatory, non-criminal detainees", because aliens are not considered to be dangerous or criminal until they have been convicted;
Repeat immigration offenders (despite ICE leadership claims that these are "enforcement priorities"); and
Recent border crossers (also supposedly an "enforcement priority").
And DHS just released "thousands" of them, including 500 in a single weekend in a single Arizona county - without even informing the Sheriff.
So what can we expect from the criminal aliens Obama released this past week? Well unfortunately the statistics over Obama's first term do not paint a pretty picture.
According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, nearly 47,000 illegal aliens flagged for deportation between 2009 and 2011 were instead released by the Obama Administration, and 16% of them went on to commit further crimes, including 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes, according to CRS and the House Judiciary Committee.
“The Obama administration could have prevented these senseless crimes by enforcing our immigration laws,” said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). “But President Obama continues to further his anti-enforcement agenda while innocent Americans suffer the consequences. His unwillingness to enforce immigration laws puts our communities at risk and costs American lives.”
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/feb/26/dhs-releasing-illegal-immigrants-before/
WASHINGTON (AP) — A week before mandatory budget cuts go into effect across the government, the Department of Homeland Security has started releasing illegal immigrants being held in immigration jails across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday.
Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed "several hundred cases" of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release," she said.
Christensen said the agency's "priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety." She did not say how released immigrants were selected or what jails they were released from.
Tuesday's announcement of jail releases is the first tangible impact of the looming budget cuts for DHS.
The Obama administration has been issuing dire warnings about the impact of the sequestration and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters at the White House Monday that across-the-board cuts would impact the department's core operations, including border security and airport screening operations.
She also warned that DHS might not be able to afford to keep the 34,000 immigration jail beds mandated by Congress. On average last week, there were 30,773 people being held in ICE jails.
"I don't think we can maintain the same level of security at all places around the country with sequester as without sequester," said Napolitano, adding that the impact would be "'like a rolling ball. It will keep growing."
According to the National Immigration Forum, it costs the government about $164 a day to keep an illegal immigrant facing deportation jailed. In a report on immigration detention costs last year the advocacy group said costs for supervised release can range from about 30 cents to $14 a day.
Republicans lawmakers decried the releases Tuesday.
"It's abhorrent that President (Barack) Obama is releasing criminals into our communities to promote his political agenda on sequestration," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte. "By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the Administration is needlessly endangering American lives. It also undermines our efforts to come together with the Administration and reform our nation's immigration laws."
The administration asked for about $1.96 billion for immigration jail operations in the last budget. It amounts to about $5.4 million a day, according to the National Immigration Forum's report.
Christensen said Tuesday that released immigrants will still face deportation proceedings.
http://standwitharizona.com/blog/2013/02/26/outrage-dhs-releases-thousands-of-illegal-aliens-from-prison-citing-budget-cuts/
Despite potential budget cuts being 4 days away and with Congress and the Administration negotiating to avoid them, the Department of Homeland Security has already started releasing hundreds of illegal aliens held in local jails in anticipation of automatic “sequestration” cuts – out of a planned total of more than 10,000 aliens to be released.
Sources tell Stand With Arizona that DHS has “34,000 beds” for illegal aliens, meaning that Secretary Janet Napolitano is releasing nearly 1/3 of all DHS-detained illegal aliens in the United States – despite the fact that no actual cuts have even begun, and despite a record of massive wasteful spending by DHS over the past 3 years.
Napolitano had been warning of potential impact to DHS after impending cuts, but now she has jumped the gun by enacting a “budgetary amnesty” by fiat – releasing thousands of criminal aliens amongst communities and families across the nation.
The New York Times reports that the aliens are being ”freed on supervised release while their cases continue in court”. But as SWA has reported in the past, many aliens facing deportation or prosecution on immigration holds never show up for those hearings, and remain in the country.
One Arizona Sheriff called the DHS action politically motivated — and dangerous.
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released more than 500 detainees in his county alone over the weekend. ICE officials told Babeu that they plan to release a total of nearly 10,000 illegal aliens.
Babeu described the move as a “mass budget pardon” and suggested the administration was going to unnecessary lengths to demonstrate the impact of the so-called sequester.
“President Obama would never release 500 criminal illegals to the streets of his hometown, yet he has no problem with releasing them in Arizona. The safety of the public is threatened and the rule of law discarded as a political tactic in this sequester battle,” he said.
An ICE official confirmed the plans without specifying how many illegal aliens might be released.
Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said ICE had directed field offices to make sure the “detained population” is “in line with available funding.” She stressed that ICE would continue to prosecute the cases while keeping them “under supervision”.
The announcement comes after DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday warned about the potential impact of the cuts. She said the department “would not be able to maintain the detention beds as required by Congress.”
“We’re doing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester. But there’s only so much I can do,” she said. “I’m supposed to have (thousands of) detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., called the move to release illegal immigrants “abhorrent.”
“By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the administration is needlessly endangering American lives,” he said in a statement.
In Arizona, Babeu slammed the move, painting his community as a victim of gridlock in Washington.
“Clearly, serious criminals are being released to the streets of our local communities by this mass budget pardon. This is insane that public safety is sacrificed when it should be the budget priority that’s safeguarded,” he said.
As Arizona, and other states brace for the impact of this disgraceful and lawless action, we call on Sheriffs across America to defy this corrupt DHS Secretary, and detain as many illegal aliens as possible. We know that Sheriff Joe and his deputies are on high alert today as these alien criminals are being set loose in our communities.
Just when you think the shameful pandering and legal anarchy of this Administration can’t get any worse, it does…in spades.