Free Republic

... In a statement on Wednesday, officials from the Justice Department said they would not ask the Supreme Court to reverse this week’s decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that continues to block the president’s immigration actions. “The department believes the best way to achieve this goal is to focus on the ongoing appeal on the merits of the preliminary injunction itself,” said Patrick Rodenbush, a spokesman for the Justice Department. “Although the department continues to disagree with the Fifth Circuit’s refusal to stay the district court’s preliminary injunction, the department has determined that...

For five weeks this summer, Napa County children can get a free lunch at one of five school sites in Napa. “More than 49 percent of our students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch during the school year,” said Sunita Dutt-Ellenby, food services coordinator. The free lunch program dovetails with the Migrant Education program, the federally funded program designed to provide supplementary educational and support services to children and youth of migrant families, ages 3-21. Because school district staff will already be working in District kitchens making breakfast, lunch and snacks for Migrant Education recipients, Dutt-Ellenby decided to expand...

America’s most powerful former law professor is getting a re-education in the Constitution, and on present course President Obama might flunk out. Witness Tuesday’s federal appeals-court rebuke of his 2014 immigration order, including language that suggests the Administration will also lose on the legal and policy merits. Mr. Obama caused a furor in November when he suddenly claimed powers he had previously said he didn’t have to award legal status and work permits to millions of illegal immigrants. The Administration claims it is merely allowing immigration officers to apply routine “prosecutorial discretion” on a case by case basis not to...

Ann Coulter is back, more fearless than ever. In Adios, America she touches the third rail in American politics, attacking the immigration issue head-on and flying in the face of La Raza, the Democrats, a media determined to cover up immigrants' crimes, churches that get paid by the government for their "charity," and greedy Republican businessmen and campaign consultants—all of whom are profiting handsomely from mass immigration that's tearing the country apart. Applying her trademark biting humor to the disaster that is U.S. immigration policy, Coulter proves that immigration is the most important issue facing America today.

A pack of Democratic congressional leaders lined up on Capital Hill on Thursday to condemn the Obama administration for “jailing” migrant mothers and children in family detention centers across the country. Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Lucille Roybal-Allard of California and Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois led a group of nearly a dozen Democrats, who warned the Obama administration that it was fighting a losing battle after a California court concluded in a draft ruling that the president’s policies violated a decades-old agreement on migration. It’s time, they said, to stop the “violent” and “unconscionable” practice that is also an embarrassment to...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign has hired an illegal immigrant “Dreamer” to work on her 2016 bid, activists said Wednesday, in a move that sees the Democratic front-runner check off yet another wish-list item for Hispanic voters. Lorella Praeli is here under President Obama’s 2012 deportation amnesty for Dreamers, or young adult illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. As part of that amnesty, she has tentative legal status and a work permit, so it is legal to hire her — but she is still not in lawful presence. Immigrant-right advocates cheered the move as historic, though they...

Chicago has become the promised land for undocumented migrants with kidney problems, people who in other states receive no medical care due to their immigration status although here they can get free dialysis and kidney transplants. The Illinois legislature last October passed a law that provides funds for kidney transplants for undocumented migrants, the first such legislation in the United States. Religious and community organizations such as Latinos por la Salud and the Mision de Vida, Fe y Esperanza have received requests for help from people arriving from the neighboring states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, while others have traveled much...

We not only expected our freedoms we came to take our heritage for granted. It used to be that as one grew older their experience developed wisdom that could help guide succeeding generations. Today the world moves too fast. In some ways my 10 year old granddaughter knows more intuitively about computers than I do after working online since there was an online. My father grew up plowing with mules as had his father and his grandfather and so on back to houses with no floors, no running water and no electricity. While they had passed wisdom down for uncounted...

Governor Jerry Brown announced May budget revisions today that added $38 million in funding for the Long Beach-headquartered California State University (CSU) system, boosted community college funding by $600 million and provided $5 million in funding for application assistance for undocumented immigrants statewide.State Senator Ricardo Lara said Brown’s additional funding was a good start, but more needs to be done to help undocumented immigrants. Local officials responded to the news with measured enthusiasm. State Senator Ricardo Lara said Brown’s additional funding was a good start, but more needs to be done to help undocumented immigrants. “I applaud Governor Brown for...

Students in a program that provides otherwise unavailable funding to undocumented students will present their research findings Thursday afternoon in Powell Library. Ruth Batres said she discovered the UndocuBruins Research Program at UCLA and realized it was an opportunity for her to conduct research and spread awareness about violence against women in her hometown, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. “I wanted to do something to help my aunt and my cousin and others like them,” said Batres, an undocumented fourth-year Latin American studies student. Students receive a $1,000 stipend each quarter from the UndocuBruins Research Program which is funded by the UC...

The Department of Homeland Security does not maintain data on how many illegal immigrants it allows to stay in the U.S. through prosecutorial discretion — a failure that could have national security implications — the agency’s inspector general reported Wednesday. “The Department’s ability to accurately assess the results of policy decisions and make needed changes is important given its modified approach to immigration enforcement,” wrote inspector general John Roth. Though the Obama administration has implemented new policies that rolled back immigration enforcement through executive action and expanded the use of prosecutorial discretion, “the policies did not include a requirement to...

Federal officials are threatening to split up mothers and children if they’re forced to dismantle three family detention centers holding nearly 1,000 migrant women and children, most of whom said they fled violence in Central America. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers will try to negotiate a way to keep the facilities open after a federal court in California concluded that the Obama administration’s use of family detention centers violates an 18-year-old court settlement regarding the detention of migrant children. Federal attorneys acknowledged the family detention system could collapse if the ruling stands. The practice of family detention has reached a...

Just when you think the GOP might modernize, the knuckles start dragging again, this time on immigration and trade. It’s political suicide. If you want to see where the impulse to reform the Republican Party in a more libertarian direction of limited government, social tolerance, and free markets goes to die, look no further than the recent attacks on immigration and freer trade by Jeff Sessions, the influential senator from Alabama. Every time the GOP seems finally ready to orient itself in a forward-looking, post-culture-war direction, some holdover from an America that never quite existed to begin with blows his...

A wrong-way driver on State Road 60 in Plant City triggered a four-vehicle crash that led to the death of a Lakeland man late Friday, authorities said. Jonathan Molina, 24, was taken to Tampa General Hospital, where he died from his injuries, authorities said. Charges are pending against Avimael Hernandez-Sargento, 37, of Lake Worth, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. He and his passenger, Omar I. Hernandez, 26, of Lake Worth, sustained serious injuries and were taken to TGH, troopers said. Hernandez-Sargento was tested for alcohol use, troopers said. At 11:04 p.m., Hernandez-Sargento was driving his 2000 GMC Sierra pickup...

Speaking at a forum at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, Nev., on Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answered questions about how she thinks the government should deal with the LGBT illegal aliens in the United States. [Snip] I think that we have to do more to provide safe environments for vulnerable populations. And that certainly includes the LGBT community, also includes children, and it includes unaccompanied children. There are just--there are groups of people who I think we deserve a higher level of care, because of the situations that they are finding themselves in.

Two illegal aliens in Walker County, Texas, have pleaded guilty to murdering and dismembering a 16-year-old high school student with a baseball bat and a machete in a national park nearly two years ago. According to investigators, the crime was a revenge killing ordered by the infamously violent Latin American gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Cristian Zamora, 22, and Ricardo Leonel Campos Lara, 19, both from El Salvador, pleaded guilty on April 17 to aiding and abetting each other and others with the murder of 16-year-old Josael Guevara on Sept. 23, 2013, the Houston Chronicle reported.

To U.S. citizens, state and federal laws can be dizzying. To someone here without legal documentation, it can be far worse: intimidating, frightening and limiting. Santa Rosa Junior College’s new Dream Center, which marked its grand opening Monday, aims to become a safe, supportive, one-stop shop for undocumented students and potential students as they explore their educational future. There are more than 900 undocumented students at SRJC, some of whom didn’t know they weren’t American citizens until they began to think about higher education. They hail from Mexico, Canada, China and even Russia, school officials said. Enrollment at the college...

A battle is brewing in the Republican Party over whether illegal immigrants granted deferred deportation by President Obama should be eligible to serve in the military. Anti-immigration hard-liners and vulnerable Republicans who represent districts with large Hispanic populations are battling over provisions in the annual Defense authorization bill, which is set to come to the House floor next week. The fight underscores the GOP’s difficulty in wrestling with Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows qualified illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to obtain temporary work permits. GOP presidential candidates are split over the...

Washington -- Kevin faced a traumatic journey to the United States in search of a better life. The 19-year-old undocumented immigrant from El Salvador faced yet another set of challenges when he arrived in the United States last year and enrolled in school. The teenager is one of 200 students enrolled in the first-year International Academy for English-language learners at the District of Columbia's Cardozo Education Campus, a school-within-a-school for students who arrived in the United States within the past 18 months. The struggles and successes of Cardozo's recently arrived students and English-learners provide a peek into the experiences of...

UC President Janet Napolitano and the President’s Advisory Council on Undocumented Students will host a national summit on undocumented students from May 7-8. The invitation-only conference, which aims to discuss the needs and challenges that undocumented students face in higher education, will bring together undocumented youth leaders, immigration advocates, researchers, government officials, artists and funders from across the country. This is the first time the university is hosting a summit on undocumented students, according to UC Office of the President spokesperson Shelly Moron. Moron added that the summit expands upon Napolitano’s previous work, such as her distribution of $5 million...