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AMMAN/TOKYO - An audio message purportedly from a Japanese journalist being held by Islamic State militants said a Jordanian air force pilot also captured by the group would be killed unless an Iraqi female prisoner in Jordan was released by sunset on Thursday. The message appeared to postpone a previous deadline set on Tuesday in which the journalist, Kenji Goto, said he would be killed within 24 hours if the Iraqi was not freed. The latest audio recording, which could not be verified by Reuters, was posted on YouTube early on Thursday. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a...

That recent poll that showed wide opposition to Obama’s lawless amnesty decrees and support for defunding efforts also asked a third question: “Would you support or oppose Congress passing new legislation that strengthen the rules making it illegal for businesses in the U.S. to hire illegal immigrants?” Support for this was overwhelming, 71–21, far greater than the other questions (strongly support/oppose was 45 percent to 9 percent). (SNIP) So why did the House leadership try to fast-track a border bill (which has been at least temporarily derailed because immigration hawks objected to its phoniness) instead of passing an E-Verify mandate?...

SAN MATEO, California — No more pedaling the bicycle or ridesharing with relatives and friends to work or to bring the children to school. This month, the Department of Motor Vehicles started issuing special licenses to people who cannot prove their legal presence in the country. So-called irregular Filipino immigrants are among the people joining the long lines of applicants for a California driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Immigrant advocates say some applicants who previously held licenses under Social Security numbers that were not their own have been told they will need to meet with a DMV...

House Republican leaders Monday pulled a controversial, party-sponsored border security bill from a vote scheduled later this week, citing poor weather conditions in the Northeast. However, Republican and Democratic opponents of the bill contend that the leadership pulled it for lack of support. House leaders postponed all Monday votes as blizzard conditions socked-in much of the Northeast. The cancellation further truncated a short congressional work week. The House is scheduled to adjourn Wednesday so the chamber’s Democrats can attend a retreat in Philadelphia the rest of the week. A House Republican leadership aide said ‘there are no scheduling announcements at...

PALOMINAS — After a day of round table talks with ranchers and a tour of the U.S./Mexico border in Cochise County on Saturday, a group of 21 congressional representatives have a broader view of border problems. Initiated by newly-elected U.S. Rep. Martha McSally (R-Arizona) and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas,) the largest group to ever come to the local border saw for themselves just what Border Patrol agents and Americans living in this area have to deal with on a daily basis. “To hear from the ranchers first hand about the threats that come from across the border, shows the...

DAVOS -- The crackdown on illegal immigration combined with intensified border security has prompted large numbers of undocumented Mexican laborers to remain in the U.S. permanently -- even as many prefer to go home -- out of fear they will never be able to return, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told International Business Times. “Many of them are currently trapped,” Calderon told IBTimes. “There are a lot of these people [who] want to be in Mexico eight months every year, but they are unable to go there, because if they cross the border, they will never be able to cross...

LINK ONLY:  Two undocumented citizens arrested at Freedom Summit

Scraps Border Fencing, Delays Biometric, Preserves Catch-and-Release, Allows Work Permits for Border-Crossers...The pace at which this bill is being rammed through the House suggests that the leadership is eager to pass a token bill and then inform the public that the border problem has been solved, while leaving the president's executive amnesty intact and his abuse of authority unchallenged.

No political summit involving people who at least claim that they want to run for President would be complete without an appearance by Donald Trump. I’ll give the man one thing… he knows how to put on a show, and I’m not just talking about Celebrity Apprentice. After initially coming out and saying that he would have demolished Barack Obama if he’s stayed with the race the last time he ran, The Donald knew just what sort of red meat to throw to the crowd. Trump told that crowd that if he runs in 2016, his first order of business...

Efforts by several California counties to provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants could serve as a model for other states. As a state, California has taken several steps to provide health coverage to undocumented residents. Immigrants in the state who qualified for Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival initiative are eligible for Medi-Cal coverage. Medi-Cal is California's Medicaid program. In addition, under an executive action by President Obama last year, Medi-Cal coverage could be extended to up to 500,000 undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and who have no record of felony offenses...

The new border bills drafted by Republican leaders require the actual removal of at least 66 miles of weak border fencing between laborers in Mexico and employers in the United States. The border bills also only require for the construction of 27 miles of effective double-layer fencing along the 2,000-mile border. “It is a remarkable that the direction of our progress is going backwards, from a goal of building 700 miles of double-layer border fencing [in 2006] to only 27 miles [in 2015],” said a Hill staffer who opposes the leaders’ bills. “Where the double-layer fence has been put in,...

New GOP Border Security Bill Removes Border Fences The new border bills drafted by Republican leaders require the actual removal of at least 66 miles of weak border fencing between Mexico and the United States. The border bills also only require for the construction of 27 miles of effective double-layer fencing along the 2,000-mile border. “It is a remarkable that the direction of our progress is going backwards, from a goal of building 700 miles of double-layer border fencing [in 2006] to only 27 miles [in 2015],” said a Hill staffer who opposes the leaders’ bills. “Where the double-layer fence...

The Mexican government is asking a U.S. appeals court to let a Mexican teenager's parents sue the U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot and killed their 15-year-old son from across the border. The arguments are in one of three "friend of the court" briefs filed this month with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering the lawsuit filed by Sergio Hernandez's parents for the second time Wednesday. The full 16-judge court heard arguments. All three briefs ask the court to overturn U.S. District Judge David Briones' ruling that the family cannot sue agent Jesus Mesa Jr. over...

In the question and answer portion of one of the many panels at the 2015 Modern Language Association convention in Vancouver, Canada, one professor claimed he was being politically persecuted. David Anshen, who works at Texas Pan American University as an associate professor in English, said, “I believe I’m being politically persecuted, but I cannot prove it.” He claimed that a book he helped co-author, which talked about how the CIA has infiltrated college campuses, put him in a blackbook of sorts with the state of Texas and its provost. The book, entitled, “The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic...

More than half a million undocumented immigrants are living within the five boroughs of New York City, but slightly more than 230,000 are eligible for the deferred action programs created by President Barack Obama. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) released details data on featuring estimates of major U.S. counties and its undocumented immigrants population. MPI's data profiled 94 counties across the U.S. and discovered the five counties with the largest populations potentially eligible for either DACA and DAPA relief are Los Angeles, California; Harris, Texas; Orange, California; Cook, Illinois; and Dallas, Texas, accounting for 1.1 million people, or more than...

The joke’s on them. Don’t the Saudis know that massive border fences do nothing to enhance domestic security and are, in fact, counterproductive? Well, I guess they’ll find out soon enough. According to reports, the Saudi Kingdom is fed up with defending against ISIS raiding parties that routinely cross over the Iraqi border. In order to stave off these assaults, the Saudis are going to build a massive, 600-mile long border fence across the length of the country’s border with Iraq. But that’s not all. The fence will be double layered with a concertina wire barrier in no man’s...

Less than 3 percent of illegal immigrants will ever be deported, and more than 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border remained unsecured as of 2014, according to Sen. Tom Coburn’s final oversight report released Saturday morning, which found the Homeland Security Department failing in several of its top missions. The report also said corruption is a serious problem in the Border Patrol, but said agency officials actually told internal affairs investigators to cut down on the number of cases they were pursuing, according to the former division head. In another finding Mr. Coburn’s staff on the Senate Homeland Security Committee...

Police: Cartel claims they have kidnapped Border Patrol agent by Nadia Galindo A person claiming to be a member of a cartel claims they have kidnapped a border agent and threatened their life, according to police. Border Patrol is making contact with all personnel in the Rio Grande Valley. They have now confirmed that all agents working the day of the threat have been accounted for at this time.

A pregnant woman who had recently traveled to Africa and was exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms prompted authorities at the Otay Mesa border crossing to summon a hazmat team and contact local and federal health officials, who determined she was suffering from influenza, a fire official said. The woman, whose name was withheld, was nauseous, vomiting and had a fever. It was determined that she had visited Nigeria, which is not one of the West African countries that experienced an Ebola outbreak, and that she was suffering from the flu, according to Amador. The woman was taken to a hospital to be...

The migration of undocumented children and adolescents traveling alone EE. UU. does not stop, and only in October and November last -the first two months of fiscal 2015 in that country-, 495 thousand Guatemalan minors were arrested in the southern border of the country by Border Patrol agents. Guatemala tops the list of Central American countries with the largest number of infants captured by entering illegally in the country's north. In the same period 115 thousand were arrested and 506 Hondurans Salvadoran children. Although Foreign Ministry authorities say that migration figures are changing and may decrease in the coming months,...

Illegal immigrant Jose Manuel Marino-Najera is suing the Border Patrol over dog bites he sustained after entering America illegally and carrying drugs into the country. Marino-Najera claims his human rights were violated after United States Border Patrol officers unleashed canine agents on him before he was arrested on a “cartel controlled” section of the Mexican border. Jose Manuel Marino-Najera reportedly became an illegal immigrant after choosing to have coyotes – human smugglers, help him get across the U.S. border with Mexico. To garner the help of the coyotes, Marino-Najera allegedly had to agree to tote a large bag full of...

Sens Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said, “So I have a message today to every leader in Congress, to every official in the White House, and to President Obama: we are going to fight this illegal amnesty and we are not going to stop. We are going to carry out the mission the voters sent us here to do. We are not going to give in. We are not going to yield. We are going to stand strong for the American people.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District is declaring itself a safe haven for unauthorized immigrant students and their families who may qualify for relief under President Barack Obama's executive order. At a press conference Tuesday, district officials and union leaders pledged to work together to help students who qualify access the records they need to file their applications.

A border immigrant rights group is set to launch efforts Wednesday to create a municipal ID for residents who don't have access to current forms of state identification. The standardized ID would not only afford the homeless, indigent and disabled access to essential city services, the El Paso-based Border Network for Human Rights argues, but would help undocumented immigrants prove they qualify for relief from deportation under the president's recently announced executive action. Without some form of ID, “these people may end up being deported even though they qualify for executive action," said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the BNHR....

President Barack Obama was bullish on Tuesday about the future of his deportation relief programs, urging undocumented immigrants to apply despite threats from Republicans that the policies will be dismantled. Obama said future presidents could, of course, try to end the programs. But stripping protections and deporting those who applied is "not politically likely," he said at a town hall meeting at the Casa Azafrán community center in Nashville, Tennessee. "Any future administration that tried to punish people for doing the right thing, I think would not have the support of the American people," the president said.

<p>Starting Jan. 1, unauthorized immigrants can get California driver’s licenses, but before they can register their vehicles they’ll need one more, pricier item -- auto insurance.</p> <p>Another state law is aimed at fixing that. Also starting Jan. 1, unauthorized immigrants for the first time are eligible to buy insurance through California Low Cost Auto Insurance.</p>

New York lawyer Brett Stark, who has worked with dozens of unaccompanied Central American children who crossed into the United States in the past year, says getting the courts to grant these kids asylum is extremely difficult. So he often turns to a special advocate — a doctor. Such medical-legal partnerships have cropped up in New York and California, where thousands of unaccompanied minors have settled with their families or friends who were already in the U.S. For cases involving emotional trauma, the bulk of the evidence may come from a psychologist. The lawyer can try to describe the trauma,...

Fear of being arrested and deported, family separation, and poverty just some of the daily anxieties faced by an estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. The stress can also take a toll on mental health. New Mexico State University Family & Child Science professor Kourtney Vaillancourt says the psychological impact of living undocumented goes even further...and can adversely affect mental health. "There is those additional stressors of being seperated from family, there is the stressors of kind of living in an ambigious state where you are not exactly sure what is going to happen. You may not...

Homeland Security officials wasted little time in ramping up for President Obama’s amnesty, posting 1,000 job openings the day after his announcement and announcing it already has space for hundreds of employees at a new space in Arlington, Virginia — an indication that it had laid its plans well before Mr. Obama said. And even though Mr. Obama said his policy is temporary, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is hiring the employees for permanent positions, at salaries of up to $157,000 a year, according to the job postings listed on the official federal jobs website. A number of the job...

AUSTIN -- Gov.-elect Greg Abbott on Wednesday sued the Obama administration over the executive actions on immigration, saying the president overstepped his power by attempting to rewrite immigration laws. "The president is abdicating his responsibility to faithfully enforce laws that were fully enacted by Congress," Abbott said in a statement before announcing the lawsuit at a press conference.

Border Security: President Obama's executive amnesty doesn't just spare the illegals who "mow our lawns" and "make our beds." It also springs from local jails criminals held for deportation, putting them back on the street. In a just-released fact sheet, the White House describes Obama's "immigration accountability executive action" as "cracking down on illegal immigration." The president's actions, it intones, "will help secure the border" and increase the chances that illegals "will be caught and sent back." In fact, Obamanesty increases the chances they'll commit dangerous crimes in our cities. According to a new memo from Department of Homeland Security...

That’s the title of a new paper by Temple University law professor Jan Ting (who appeared on NRO recently). It is the first extended analysis of the administration’s legal rationales for President Obama’s lawless amnesty decrees. Professor Ting divines “three separate assertions of authority to justify its alternative presidential immigration system,” examining each in turn. He concludes that each legal step — prosecutorial discretion, advance parole, and employment authorization — is being taken illegally and that “the three steps, taken together, amount to an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’s exclusive constitutional authority to formulate immigration policy.”​

I vaguely recall from Gibbon, or maybe it was from a high school class, that the Roman Empire didn’t go out with a bang. With a nod to Alaric and his Visigoths of 410 AD, there really isn’t a singular event to mark the beginning of the long slide. In broad strokes it is fair to say that Roman society declined together, simultaneously with government. For centuries, Roman citizenship was a precious possession, a jewel of unsurpassed value. As such it was held closely and kept in short supply, for among other privileges, the Roman citizen wasn’t taxed. He was...

President Obama traveled to Chicago on Tuesday to sell his executive action on immigration in a speech at a community center in a predominantly Polish-American neighborhood, although his remarks were frequently interrupted by hecklers. Obama listened and asked them to stop yelling. Then when it appeared he'd had enough, the former lawyer and constitutional law professor set about deconstructing their arguments. "What you're not paying attention to is the fact that I just took an action to change the law, so that's point No. 1," Obama said. "Point No. 2, the way the change in the law works is that...

According to the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project, 6.9 percent of K-12 students had parents of illegal immigrants in 2012, while far less — 1.4 percent — of all students were illegal immigrants themselves. Nevada had the biggest percentage of students with parents who were illegal immigrants, followed by California, at 13.2 percent; Texas, at 13.1 percent; and Arizona, at 11 percent. The figures come from a new report that says there were an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2012 (the latest year for which there is data), the same as in 2009. (The...

US President Barack Obama’s immigration plan, unveiled on Thursday November 20th, eases the threat of deportation for some 4.7 million immigrants, many of them Mexican, who are in the United States without legal documents. “I want to publicly recognize the President of the United States for yesterday’s announcement,” Peña Nieto told a conference in Mexico. “These measures bring relief to principally Mexican immigrants.” Peña Nieto said he had instructed Mexico’s consular service to help those Mexicans who wish to take advantage of the reform. “This temporary relief is a great step in the right direction from the United States to...

Stay wide awake in the coming weeks. This is a historic moment when all of the divisions, misunderstandings and hatreds of President Obama’s time in office have come to a head. We are in a different place than we were. We are also in a place we were bound to get to eventually. Obama’s decision to back away from our government’s policy of ripping apart the families of undocumented immigrants has called forth utterly contradictory responses from Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives. It should now be clear that the two sides don’t see the facts, the law or history...

ROMA, Texas — Standing on a cliff looking over the Rio Grande river in this border town, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) notes the buildings behind us on the American side—largely abandoned, run-down houses and a seemingly abandoned local chamber of commerce outpost—look like they’ve been ravaged by war. “This looks like it’s post-World War II, like after a bombing,” Bachmann said while Breitbart News and CNN accompanied her and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to an outpost on the border where illegal immigration and drug cartel crime runs rampant. “We don’t see people living here, but they told us these are...

When 17-year-old Katherine Silva Lopez tried to flee gang members who robbed her daily on her way to school in Honduras, they stabbed her in the arm and threatened to kill her. In San Pedro Sula, one of the world’s most violent cities, it was no idle threat. Were 1,200 ­homicides last year in the city of 437,000, where gangs prey on teens. “They force you to kill, to steal, to sell drugs, to do prostitution,” ­Lopez told The Post in Spanish outside federal court in lower Manhattan. “I was really scared.” Lopez’s parents decided she’d be safer with relatives...

IJReview picked up on one of the funniest SNL sketches in recent (a.k.a. post-original cast) history. It was a Schoolhouse Rock! parody that aired last night, mocking Obama’s latest immigration-related executive order and complete disregard for the constitutional process: It starts out with the familiar boy climbing the steps of Capitol Hill and asking what kind of bill is on the Hill with him. The bill responds with a jingle that he is an “immigration bill” and that he hopes he can be passed into law someday. Cue the President shoving the bill down the stairs before inviting his buddy,...

New York has sent a warning to its schools: Expect more illegal immigrants. The city Department of Education has told principals it plans this year to enroll 2,350 migrant children from Central America who crossed into the United States unaccompanied — with many more to come. “It is expected that children will continue to arrive in large numbers in the coming years,” says a DOE memo to principals obtained by The Post. The notice comes as the city rolls out a $50 million red carpet for 1,662 minors who crossed the border this summer to escape ­violence and gangs in...

Anyone that reads my articles on a regular basis knows that I have documented many times that Obama is lying when he makes the claim that he is concentrating on criminal illegal aliens. He says that is why he doesn’t deport any of the illegals the government catches. (Or possibly professional courtesy?) Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones went onto the social media to make his case against the policies of Emperor Obama the First. Marcelo Marquez, who was later identified by his fingerprints is actually Luis Enrique Monroy-Bracamonte, an illegal alien with a rap sheet of felonies a mile long...

"(3) NOTICE TO CONGRESS BEFORE IMPLEMENTING CHANGES.— "(A) IN GENERAL.—The President may not implement any change under paragraph (1) unless at least— "(i) 60 days, "(ii) one year, in the case of a major change described in subparagraph (D)(iii), or "(iii) two years, in the case of a major change described in clause (i) or (ii) of subparagraph (D), before the date of implementation of the change, the President has prepared and transmitted to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives and to the Committee on the Judiciary of the Senate a written report setting forth the...

Following a backlash from residents, visitors and protests from business leaders in Baja California, the pilot program to charge foreigners to enter Mexico has been suspended. The pilot program, announced on Nov. 13 by the National Institute of Immigration, also known as INAMI, would have required foreigners who enter Mexican territory for more than seven days to pay 306 pesos, or about $28. Initially, the program was only going to charge foreigners who entered Mexico through the pedestrian port of entry at Otay.

The Department of Homeland Security has just released new "Policies for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants." Designed to fill in the details after President Obama's announcement that at least four million currently illegal immigrants will be given work permits, Social Security numbers and protection from deportation, the DHS guidelines are instructions for the nation's immigration and border security officers as they administer the president's directive. The new priorities are striking. On the tough side, the president wants U.S. immigration authorities to go after terrorists, felons, and new illegal border crossers. On the not-so-tough side, the administration views...

The President’s Immigration Accountability Executive actions will help secure the border, hold nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants accountable and ensure that everyone plays by the same rules. Acting within his legal authority, the President is taking an important step to fix our broken immigration system. These executive actions crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay their fair share of taxes as they register to temporarily stay in the US without fear of deportation. These are commonsense steps, but only Congress can...

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: Modernizing and Streamlining the U.S. Immigrant Visa System for the 21st Century Throughout our Nation's history, immigrants have helped the United States build the world's strongest economy. Immigrants represent the majority of our PhDs in math, computer science, and engineering, and over one quarter of all U.S.-based Nobel laureates over the past 50 years were foreign-born. Immigrants are also more than twice as likely as native-born Americans to start a business in the United States. They have started one of every four American small businesses and high-tech startups, and more...

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: Creating Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrating Immigrants and Refugees Our country has long been a beacon of hope and opportunity for people from around the world. Nearly 40 million foreign-born residents nationwide contribute to their communities every day, including 3 million refugees who have resettled here since 1975. These new Americans significantly improve our economy. They make up 13 percent of the population, but are over 16 percent of the labor force and start 28 percent of all new businesses. Moreover, immigrants or their children have founded more than 40...

With so many Jihadist threats metastasizing around the world, it’s getting tough to keep track. There are more Jihadists fighting in more countries than ever before. Not long ago, America’s attention was focused on our porous southern border when thousands of unaccompanied minors were flooding across at an orchestrated invitation signaled by President Obama. That story seems to have been largely forgotten, except by people in border states. Now, however, with President Obama’s unilateral executive action on illegal immigration, the border will likely come back into focus. When the Mexican border was the top of the news, it served as...

Legion: No amnesty for illegal immigrants November 20, 2014 Featured in National Security, Citizenship Legion: No amnesty for illegal immigrants American Legion National Commander Michael D. Helm today questioned the wisdom of the White House putting politics above national security if it carries through with its plan to give amnesty to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants through an executive order. “At a time when ISIS, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are killing innocent Americans, it makes no sense to let our guard down and send a message that the United States is an open, soft target,” Helm...