Free Republic

The Social Security Administration paid $1 billion in benefits to individuals who did not have a Social Security Number (SSN), according to a new audit. The agency’s inspector general found errors in the government’s documentation for representative payees, otherwise known as individuals who receive retirement or disability payments on behalf of another person who is incapable of managing the benefits themselves. The audit released Friday found thousands of cases where there was no SSN on file. Over the last decade, the agency paid $1 billion to 22,426 representative payees who "did not have an SSN, and SSA had not followed...

“Small price to pay to get the problem under control,” he says of amnesty for hundreds of thousands of young illegals, via the Daily Rushbo. Am I awake? I kid. This shouldn’t be shocking — if you’re a pragmatist, not a polemicist. Point one: Trump has been hinting at amnestizing DREAMers for months. Usually that takes the form of gooey pronouncements about having a big heart and how “great people that are here that have done a good job … should be far less worried” about deportation than criminals. Lately, though, the White House has showed its hand more clearly...

Immigration: The deportation rules announced this week by Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly were greeted with the expected outrage from the usual suspects. But since when is enforcing the law a crime? In this case, the law that Kelly plans to enforce is the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which was approved by 52 Democrats in the Senate and 202 Democrats in the House in a Democrat-controlled Congress and was signed into law by President Johnson, a Democrat. That hasn't stopped today's Democrats from decrying the DHS memo as obscene and horribly un-American. New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez...

Top US officials arrived in Mexico Wednesday to find a "defiant, fuming" Mexican government refusing to accept President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration and deportation policies. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon. He was due to be joined by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly later for talks the White House said would "walk through" the implementation of Trump's immigration orders. Kelly signed the guidelines issued by his department on Monday. Mexico's lead negotiator with the Trump administration, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, said there was no way Mexico would accept the new rules, which among...

President Enrique Peña Nieto, of Mexico and his Foreign Minister have said that they will refuse to cooperate with Donald Trump’s immigration reforms. These reforms include deporting illegal Mexican migrants who commit crimes in the U.S. Apparently, to the Mexican government and the U.S’s homegrown “Liberals”, this is beyond the pale. Let’s be very clear. There is a case to be made for allowing illegal migrants to stay in the USA. It may be a case that is incredibly unfair to those who live in the U.S legally, but still, there is a case. However, in what twisted fantasy land...

Activists portray illegal immigration solely as a human story of the desperately poor from south of the border fleeing misery to start new, productive lives in the U.S. -- despite exploitation and America's nativist immigration laws. But the truth is always more complex -- and can reveal self-interested as well as idealistic parties. Employers have long sought to undercut the wages of the American underclass by preference for cheaper imported labor. The upper-middle classes have developed aristocratic ideas of hiring inexpensive "help" to relieve them of domestic chores. The Mexican government keeps taxes low on its elite in part by...

Mexico reacted with anger on Wednesday to what one official called "hostile" new U.S. immigration guidelines hours before senior Trump administration envoys began arriving in Mexico City for talks on the volatile issue. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security unveiled plans on Tuesday to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, and will seek to send many of them to Mexico if they entered the United States from there, regardless of nationality. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Mexico City on Wednesday afternoon. He was due to be joined by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly later for...

Starbucks' brand has taken a beating since the company announced plans to hire 10,000 refugees worldwide in the next five years in response to Donald Trump's executive order intended to prevent refugees from entering the US. The coffee giant's consumer perception levels have fallen by two-thirds since late January, according to YouGov BrandIndex. The perception tracker measures if respondents have "heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative." In Starbucks' case, perception is still overall positive, but significantly lower than it was prior to CEO Howard...

A man booked on suspicion of murder - after he allegedly killed a woman in North Hills while fleeing the scene of another car crash - had been removed from the United States to Mexico five times between 1998 and 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Estuardo Alvardo, 45, was arrested Sunday afternoon after the fatal crash at Sepulveda and Plummer Streets and was being held in lieu of $1,050,00 bail, according to jail records. Prosecutors were expected to consider filing charges Wednesday. The LAPD said Alvarado was initially involved in a minor wreck at Lassen St....

Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper has blamed Gov. Jerry Brown’s controversial early prison release program for the murder of one of his officers on Monday. Officer Keith Boyer, 53, was shot dead when he and his partner, Patrick Hazell, responded to a traffic accident in a tony suburb of Los Angeles known as Whittier’s Friendly Hills on Monday morning. At an emotional news conference later that day, Piper laid the blame squarely on AB 109, which Gov. Brown signed into law in 2011. “We need to wake up. Enough is enough,” Piper said. “This is a senseless, senseless tragedy that...

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) says he came to the United States illegally as a nine-year-old child, eventually returning to the Dominican Republic with his family to follow proper immigration procedures. He is the first member of Congress to have once been an illegal alien, and he told CNN on Wednesday morning that he objects to the Trump administration’s expanded immigration enforcement because it “unleashes the hound dogs,” expedites the removal of illegal aliens and fractures families. He noted that “many people come here” illegally because they aspire for their children to eventually become Americans. […] Espaillat said many of...

A Mexican man who had a few days ago been deported from the U.S. took his life by jumping off a bridge near a border crossing that connects Tijuana and San Diego. Mexican authorities identified the man as Guadalupe Olivas Valencia, 44, and said he had been deported from the U.S. three times.

As the Trump administration expands its deportation policy, Chicago Public Schools told its principals that they should not let any agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into schools without a criminal warrant. “To be very clear, CPS does not provide assistance to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the enforcement of federal civil immigration law,” chief education officer Janice Jackson wrote. The district also distributed palm cards in English and Spanish from the National Immigrant Justice Center containing such legal advice as not opening doors to immigration officials. President Donald Trump campaigned on building a wall to keep...

In a stunning idiotic display of defiance against the federal immigration laws, the city of New York has released a known member of the violent street gang ‘Mara Salvatrucha’ (MS-13), placing innocent citizens at risk instead of simply complying with a ICE petition to hold the prisoner for deportation. The head scratching decision to Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez left many across the country enraged and comes as part of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ‘Sanctuary City‘ law which promises safe harbor to those that have entered the United States illegally. According to reports, Velasquez was serving time at the Rikers...

Mexico will not accept new "unilateral" U.S. immigration proposals, and will not hesitate in approaching the United Nations to defend immigrants, the country's Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Wednesday, ahead of a meeting with senior U.S. officials.

During a town hall meeting in Cudahy, California, a black Trump supporter unleashed her anger on the concept of ‘sanctuary cities’ saying they’re “racist” and praising God for President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end the unlawful practice.

Apparently, according to Rush, there's a price to be paid for following the law. It seems that price is always paid by law-abiding citizens.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Florida State University students and members of community organizations collaborated at FSU to make the school a safe-haven for undocumented students. The demonstrators want the FSU administration to publicly declare the university as a sanctuary campus. By doing so, demonstrators want university agencies to refuse to release the immigration status of undocumented students to Immigration or Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

In Orange County, California, dozens of immigrants have signed powers of attorney authorizing relatives and friends to pick up their children from school and access their bank accounts to pay their bills in the event they are arrested by immigration agents. In Philadelphia, immigrants are carrying around wallet-size "Know Your Rights" guides in Spanish and English that explain what to do if they're rounded up. And in New York, 23-year-old Zuleima Dominguez and other members of her Mexican family are careful about answering the door, and get worried and start making phone calls when someone doesn't come home on time.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) defended himself on Tuesday against President Trump's accusation that Schumer was shedding "fake tears" at a press conference. During an appearance on ABC's "The View," Schumer said Trump doesn't know him, and some topics make him emotional. . . . Who remembers the movie, ‘Free Willy?' When Free Willy escaped, I was taking my daughters to the movie, 8 and 4, and when he escaped I started to cry and they ran out of the theater, they were so embarrassed. Trump’s got it all wrong." Schumer then explained the importance of immigration in...