Free Republic

More than 100 immigrants the Obama administration released back into the community went on to be charged with subsequent murders, according to government data released Monday that raises new questions about whether immigration authorities are doing enough to detail illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) admitted its agents didn’t find out about an illegal immigrant’s death threats and court injunctions against him until — which should have put him back in detention — until after the man was accused of a new murder. That case, involving Apolinar Altamirano, is the latest instance of...

CAIR files lawsuit to prevent ICE from asking Muslims entering US about jihad-related activities, relatives U.S. border officials are using a questionnaire about religion to harass Muslim travelers, a Muslim advocacy group charges. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement questionnaire was released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a lawsuit by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Intercept reports. The questions that were revealed — the document was heavily redacted — include “Have you participated in any formal religious training or schooling?” “What house of worship do you attend?” and “Do you have any relatives or friends...

Thick Ice Sheets: How Old Are They Really? by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. * Secular scientists claim that ice in deep cores extracted from the thick Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is hundreds of thousands of years old. Do these ice cores prove an old earth? Although these scientists believe the ice sheets to be millions of years old, vast amounts of time are not necessarily required for their formation. “Back of the envelope” calculations show that if current average snowfall rates have always been the norm, then the Greenland ice sheet could form in about 5,000 years and the Antarctic...

Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress. Some of those released were the worst of the worst — more than 3,700 “Threat Level 1” criminals, who are deemed the top priority for deportation, were still released out into the community even as they waited for their immigration cases to be heard. Homeland Security officials have implied their hands are...

The monstrous agency created after 9/11 to protect the United States from more terrorist attacks instead compromises national security by failing to track how many unauthorized foreigners—some felons in their native country—it refuses to prosecute under President Obama’s broad amnesty initiative. One of the president’s many tools to reward illegal immigrants with amnesty is a measure known as prosecutorial discretion, which allows federal agencies to decide to what degree they enforce certain laws against particular individuals. For years the system has spared a myriad of illegal aliens from removal by authorizing—and encouraging—low-level field officers to block deportations by using an...

you can see the best-ever images of Pluto, our solar system's most distant (dwarf) planet. The animation is made up of images taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft between April 12 and 18 from a distance of 69 to 64 million miles from Pluto. They capture one complete rotation of Pluto and its moon Charon... The images have already surpassed the Hubble's resolution, but there are plenty of features too subtle for the spacecraft to pick up. In fact, the images don't even show all of Pluto's known moons yet -- let alone any smaller ones we've yet to discover...

ICE Director Sarah Saldana told a subcommittee of the House Budget Committee that a directive from Barack Obama trumps congressionally passed laws. As a law enforcement officer, she has a duty to uphold US immigration law as well as the constitution, which says in no uncertain terms that congress has the sole responsibility to pass laws. Rep Don Young (R) Iowa took exception to her statement and sought to establish that she was actually saying that Obama and not the law decides what he job is

Those following the Obama Immigration Executive Action legal battles will note yesterday Congressman Young was asking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Saldana the exact same point outlined in Judge Hanen’s rebuke of the White House. So yesterday ICE Director Saldana is on Capitol Hill answering questions when Republican David Young asks Mrs. Saldana about the conflict between the law, and the rules imposed by President Obama that force border patrol agents to: a.) break the law, or b.) break Obama’s executive action rules. How Saldana replies is, well, JAW DROPPING.

The director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement clashed with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) over the Obama administration’s immigration policies during a Tuesday House Judiciary Committee hearing. Things eventually got so tense that ICE Director Sarah Saldana actually had to ask Gohmert to stop “yelling.” Gohmert noted that Judge Andrew Hanen has temporarily halted President Barack Obama’s executive actions to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportations — and then accused the administration of misleading the judge in its past approval of benefits for eligible immigrants.

(CNSNews.com) - There was a bit of show and tell Tuesday on Capitol Hill, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana told the House Judiciary Committee about her department’s efforts to enforce immigration law while also following the more lenient policies outlined by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last November. "We have actually put out real substantial training on this, sir," Saldana told Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). "And every officer uses one of these cards, which clearly outlines those priorities." Saldana held up one of the cards. "And quite frankly, I carry it myself -- and try to make...

The federal government’s chief deportation agency has seen its success plummet under President Obama, and its chief, Sarah R. Saldana, will tell Congress on Tuesday that they’ve had trouble adapting to the changing face of illegal immigration and a lack of cooperation from both American cities and from foreign countries. Ms. Saldana, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), says in testimony prepared for the House Judiciary Committee that the dramatic drop in deportations is a reflection of a trickier set of circumstances and pressures from all sides. She said she had to pull agents off their regular duties...

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to President Barack Obama's 2012 executive action granting deportation relief to immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, upholding a lower court's earlier ruling. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the plaintiffs in the case - the state of Mississippi and a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers upset by White House directives - had not shown they had been sufficiently harmed by the rule to keep the case alive. "We conclude that neither the agents nor the state of...

Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration plans to ask for federal disaster assistance for the record-setting snowstorms that wreaked havoc on Massachusetts and piled up about $400 million in snow removal costs. An administration official tells The Associated Press the governor will be sending a letter to President Barack Obama by the end of this week asking for a disaster declaration for 10 Massachusetts counties. …

Hear the veterans and active duty serviceman of the US Paralympic sled hockey team describe what it means to them to be part of Team USA. ICE WARRIORS premieres November 10 at 10/9C (check local listings).

(CNSNews.com) -- An illegal alien and known gang member who has been charged with first-degree murder in North Carolina was granted deferred deportation under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA), despite having been placed in removal proceedings for drug charges in 2012, according to a press release from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez. (Police mugshot.) Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, 19, was charged in February with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three people in Charlotte, N.C, including a 19-year-old former America’s Next Top Model...

The administration’s deportation chief backtracked Friday, just a day after she pleaded with Congress to pass laws cracking down on so-called “sanctuary” cities and states — a stance that appeared to put her at odds with her boss, President Obama. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana, who has been on the job less than 90 days, told Congress she would welcome new laws to crack down on states and localities that refuse to cooperate with her agents who are trying to apprehend and deport illegal immigrants. “Thank you, Amen,” she said Thursday when asked if she would support Congress...

Federal immigration officers released another 30,000 immigrants with criminal records last year, following the 36,000 it released in 2013, the government announced Wednesday — though it promised to take steps to cut down on the problem. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles detention and removal of illegal immigrants, said it will no longer allow overcrowding to be the main reason a dangerous illegal immigrant is released, and will require a top supervisor to approve the cases of any serious criminals that officers want to release. Overall, ICE released 30,558 criminal aliens in fiscal 2014, which is down...

"But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact," said President Barack Obama in his 2014 State of the Union address. Saying the debate is settled is nonsense, but the president is right about climate change. GlobalChange.gov gives the definition of climate change: "Changes in average weather conditions that persist over multiple decades or longer. Climate change encompasses both increases and decreases in temperature, as well as shifts in precipitation, changing risk of certain types of severe weather events, and changes to other features of the climate system." That definition covers all weather phenomena throughout all 4.54 billion years...

We finally got a great look at the freezing Great Lakes in the last two days. The high resolution satellites give us images of the Great Lakes during the day, once a day. Saturday, Feb. 28, 2015, Michigan had clear skies when the satellite took the latest pictures. So it yielded the best look from high in space so far this winter. Friday's sunny sky also was a great day for MLive photographers to take to the sky and give us an up-close look at ice on Lakes Huron and Michigan. With the very cold weather Friday and Saturday, the...

Edmonton, Alberta, spends five months a year below freezing. Now, the Canadian city is considering a proposal to create a 7-mile skating trail for Edmontonians to use during their winter commutes.