Free Republic

More than 1,000 illegal immigrants awaiting trial for serious crimes in one major U.S. county were instead deported by federal immigration authorities and freed in their home countries. The released offenders include at least 128 murderers, more than 400 child rapists and molesters, some 300 charged with aggravated assault and dozens more accused of sexual assault, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and other grave felonies. The offenders’ newfound freedom came courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that provided a one-way ticket home after bail was posted in their state criminal case. This sort of voluntary deportation to...

Immigration: For illegal immigrants, the good times are back. Workplace raids have been halved, and easily fudged paperwork audits are up. Make no mistake, this is a politically driven precursor to amnesty. How times change. In 2007, an outraged public made itself heard to politicians by saying "enough" to policies that produced 12 million illegals in the U.S. It sank the bipartisan 2007 immigration bill, dismissing it as "amnesty," and demanded enforcement of the law. The result rocked the country. Arrests picked up, and President Bush took on the politically tough task of telling immigrants that reform was off the...

The day started just like any other for life-time dairy farmer Clement Gervais. But that all changed at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, when an immigration official and two state troopers walked into his barn and handed him a subpoena. "I've read about it in magazines in different parts of the country but I didn't really expect them to pull into my yard," Gervais said. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency-- otherwise known as ICE-- is now asking him to hand over documents and financial records proving all his workers are here legally. Gervais has 22 workers-- nine of them are Mexican....

A teenage boy pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to fatally shooting Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas during a robbery attempt at the U.S.-Mexico border. Christian Daniel Castro-Alvarez, 17, admitted to illegally crossing into the United States near Campo with a group of others July 23 and luring Rosas from his patrol vehicle to rob him, according to the plea agreement.

Few issues have caused as much of a stir this year as the question of whether illegal immigrants will be included in the Democratic healthcare bill. Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst after President Obama stated in September that illegal immigrants wouldn't be covered is one example of the tension. Eighty percent of Americans are loath to subsidize illegal immigrants according to a June 2009 Rasmussen poll. But there's something that might help solve part of the problem, a campaign by Mexican officials to improve the state of healthcare in their own country. Mexico's healthcare system is corrupt, unwieldy, and...

November 20, 2009 -- Chicago-Rosanna Pulido, staunch defender for unemployed American citizens in her district, expressed outrage this afternoon at Luis Guterriez's Amnesty reform bill, to be introduced some time this month. "With unemployment in Illinois at 10% and rising, our nation's legal law abiding citizens do not need more competition for jobs", Rosanna said. "It is irresponsible public policy". 53 rallies have been held across the country this week protesting the Obama administration's amnesty for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, along with a promise of tougher enforcement and a streamlined legal immigration system. In other countries,...

A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Tuesday sentenced an illegal immigrant to time served in jail for his 10th illegal entry into the country. Uziel Jesus Lopez-Jiminez, 28, of Mexico has been deported nine other times between 1998 and 2007, prosecutors said. He was last deported in March, re-entered the country in May or June and was arrested in Beaver County on Aug. 16.

The FBI is worried a group linked to al-Qaeda is training up a new generation of terrorists. They're thought to be targeting young Somali immigrants, radicalising them to carry out attacks on their home country and possibly the US in the future. The grey high rise flats in Cedar-Riverside, Minneapolis, are clustered together and are home to hundreds of Somali immigrants. It's not clear why teenagers like these are giving up their comfortable lives in America and returning to their war torn homeland. But over the past three years, authorities believe 20 young Somali men have gone back to fight...

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009. The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith,...

Marine Corporal Brian Mathews was home on a three-day leave for the 2006 Thanksgiving holiday. He had finished an eight-month tour of duty in Iraq and was planning to leave the military in June, 2007. Corporal Mathews, 21 years old, had enlisted in the Marines on his 17th birthday. Brian’s mom, Trudy, had been worried about her son’s decision to enlist. This trip home was a rare moment of peace for her. “He felt on top of his world,” Mrs. Mathews said. “He was real happy. Very, very happy.” Brian told his mom how Southwest Airlines had let him board...

A story was just released by 10News.com that really upset me. It concerns "a desolate corner of San Diego County" that is "so dangerous 10News crews had to put on bulletproof vests before entering the area." "The violence in this area is so bad that a 12-year-old was raped to death." This kind of news make me sick. It makes me angry. And makes me wonder what can we do to stop it. News10 reports "They're ruthless; they'll come over here, they'll pick one out that they want, they drag her off onto the rocks, they'll rape her and they...

PHOENIX - Three Army soldiers were among those arrested during Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's most recent crime sweep. In all 51 suspects were arrested, including 37 illegal aliens. Deputies arrested the three soldiers on drug, money laundering and conspiracy charges. The soldiers, Dwayne Campbell, Llewellyn Stamoulis and Romaine May were discovered to have 680 pounds of marijuana and $10,000 in cash during a traffic stop in north Phoenix. They were wearing military clothing and identified themselves with U.S. Government issued military identification. The driver of that vehicle was also charged with driving on a suspended driver's license. "It is...

From a group calling themselves Electronic Civil Disobedience comes the Transborder Immigrant Tool, a simple mobile application intended to aid and abet border-crossers from Mexico to the United States by mapping the safest routes to take. This GPS app is built to work on the cheapest cell phones available. It brings to mind every petty-but-illegal transgression the casual user could commit and stretches the boundaries of the permissibility of tech's uses for plausibly illegal means. The next time you use P2P or bit torrent clients to download media or use an iPhone app to detect police radars, think about this...

Over the past two decades, Ricardo Dominguez has been utilizing electronics and the internet to piss off just about every high-level administrative authority in the US. In the late 90s, his performance-art-cum-activist organization the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) set up a participatory website-jamming network called the FloodNet system, which allowed anyone with an internet connection to gum up the official sites of the US Border Patrol, White House, G8, Mexican embassy, and others, rendering them inaccessible. The Department of Justice retaliated with an electronic attack on the EDT that aimed to destabilize the group and interrupt their online meddling. As...

EDITORIAL November 16, 2009 There are 16 million children in immigrant families in the United States, one of the fastest-growing segments of the population. It’s an old American story made new (snip) when waves of human displacement in recent decades have led to immigration on a scale not seen since Ellis Island. But a country that has been so good for so long at integrating new Americans is stumbling under the challenge. That is the conclusion of Professors Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, fellows at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and co-directors of immigration studies at New York University....

<p>Even with everything else on its agenda, the Obama administration has declared itself ready to plunge forward on an issue likely to be as contentious and exhausting to the nation as health care reform, namely a new effort to restructure our immigration laws. Last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano laid the groundwork when she labeled our current immigration system "unacceptable" and said that the Obama administration is committed to reform as a crucial component of the future health of our economy.</p>

More than 50 Anti-Amnesty tea party rallies were held across the nation this past weekend. The events were put together by Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC), but NumbersUSA played a role in the events held in Alexandria, Va. and Pasadena, Calif. High unemployment rates, overpopulation, and declining public services motivated grassroots activists to attend one of the many tea parties. In Alexandria, protesters stood outside of Rep. Jim Moran's (D-Va.) district office, fighting against any amnesty plans from Congress. "If the situation continues as it is, we are powerless unless we speak out like this," an attendee said. "Cut off...

Supporters of President Obama's Amnesty plans attacked Tea Party Against Amnesty & Illegal Immigration demonstrators in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on Sat. November 14, 2009. One of the men attacked is 62 years old. Dave Caulkett of FLIMEN (Floridians for Immigration Enforcement) is assaulted and then kicked in the face while he is down. The other camera man from the Tea Party is hit with several signs. Those attacking the Americans that oppose Amnesty for illegal aliens were organized by ANSWER Florida.

The writer of a letter to the editor recently asked: Whose side is the Chamber [of Commerce] on – American citizens or illegal immigrants? That's actually a very good question. For example, if the U.S., state and local Chambers of Commerce were on the side of American citizens they would protect Americans from job related felonies, including illegal alien driven identity theft, which accounts for 15 percent of total identity theft and directly impacts over a million kids in Arizona and 50,000 more in Utah. They would do everything possible to ensure that unemployed American workers are given priority for...

Rosanna Pulido Fires Back At David Ratowitz’s Immigration Proposals Rosanna Pulido: First off, let’s remember how immigration lawyers make their living. When you take it under consideration that David Ratowitz is an immigration lawyer, it’s no wonder that David wants even higher levels of legal immigration and would support legalization of the 12-20 million already here. Actually, what this government needs to do at this moment is suspend ALL UNNECESSARY IMMIGRATION until our economy recovers and the unemployment rate drops to below 5 percent. How can the government continue to bring in 125,000 foreign workers EVERY MONTH when 15 million...

BOSTON — Immigration activists say they are hopeful that Gov. Deval Patrick will support proposals in an advisory report calling for more English classes for the state's immigrants and in-state tuition for undocumented college students. Patrick release the report, which contains 131 recommendations, at a lunch for immigrant advocates today. Since July 2008, resident immigrants and activists have crowded meetings around the state pressing for those programs and others, including allowing immigrants to get driver's licenses and granting them more civil rights protections. Eva Millona, the report's author and the executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition,...

In the battle on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fight against illegal immigration often loses out to environmental laws that have blocked construction of parts of the "virtual fence" and that threaten to create places where agents can't easily track illegal immigrants. Documents obtained by Rep. Rob Bishop and shared with The Washington Times show National Park Service staffers have tried to stop the U.S. Border Patrol from placing some towers associated with the virtual fence, known as the Secure Border Initiative or SBInet, on wilderness lands in parks along the border. In a remarkably candid letter to members of Congress,...

The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents across the state that violent Mexican cartels and transnational gangs are actively recruiting Texas youngsters in schools and communities. These criminal organizations are luring teens with the prospect of cars, money and notoriety, and promise them that if they are arrested, they will receive light sentences. The gangs are responsible for massive drug deals and related slayings, and authorities say that they will often use youths in their crimes because juveniles are typically treated with more leniency by the criminal justice system.

On April 16 in NRO, Daniel T. Griswold, the head of immigration policy for the libertarian Cato Institute attacked National Review complaining that in three "consecutive" issues, "anti-immigrant crusaders," including John O'Sullivan and Mark Krikorian, have "pushed every button to whip up hostility to immigration." Let us ignore the nasty smears....focus on Griswold's substantive position. Near the end of the NRO article Griswold insists that he is not for "open borders," but his record suggests otherwise. A story in the Christian Science Monitor (August 30, 2000) by Scott Baldauf is particularly revealing. Baldauf describes a new project of the Immigration...

In an "ANSWER TO AMENDED COMPLAINT BY DEFENDANT MINUTEMAN CIVIL DEFENSE CORPS, INC." dated July 6, 2007, the MCDC's attorney responded to Campbell's May 22nd AMENDED COMPLAINT by asserting a "qualified denial" of virtually every general allegation (numbers 13 through 45) and an "unqualified denial" of every allegation contained in the three Counts (numbers 47 through 72). The last page of this document was entitled "VERIFICATION", and in it Simcox acknowledged that he: ". . . is President of the MCDC, and being first duly sworn upon my oath, depose and say that I am an officer of Defendant Minuteman...

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that providing some kind of legal citizenship pathway and status to illegal immigrants -- which critics say is amnesty -- is key to U.S. national security. “We will never have fully effective law enforcement or national security as long as so many millions remain in the shadows,” Napolitano said in a speech Friday to the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress. Napolitano said the Obama administration favors immigration reforms that include pathways for the 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. to gain legal status. That includes paying back...

Hundreds of defendants awaiting trial for violent crimes in Dallas County have been deported by federal immigration officials and then set free in their home countries. The practice goes back to at least 1991 and includes the release of murder, kidnapping and child rape suspects. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they're required to deport illegal immigrants quickly but are now in talks with local agencies who are trying to resolve the problem. Across Texas and the nation, defendants post bail and are immediately taken to immigration facilities, where they volunteer to be deported. Just how often this happens...

he fence was sabotaged a few days ago with a pole removed near the place of the assassination of Agent Rosas. This is usually an indication of an impending drug smuggling. The fence was repaired, and the Border Patrol remains on heightened alert with increased patrols, scope trucks and a Border Patrol vehicle at Kingfish's high point. Gadget Dan reports we have completed (in November), our 40Th. month for litter removal. Over the past 40 months, we have removed over 42,000 pounds of litter from public lands. Monthly totals for litter removal have ranged from 700 pounds in earlier months,...

From the WSJ: "Immigrant Bill Is Back on Table Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called Friday for Congress to consider an overhaul of immigration law early next year, a move that could rekindle a divisive debate during an election year. Ms. Napolitano said the immigration landscape has changed sharply since 2007, when attempts at a comprehensive overhaul failed because many members of Congress lacked confidence in the government's ability to enforce existing laws, she said. Immigration overhauls backed by the Bush administration and some congressional leaders from both parties foundered in part because critics portrayed them as rewarding illegal immigrants...

Obama's senior advisor said today that a plan to grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is in the works and could be made law as early as next year. On CNN's "State of the Union" with John King, the White House's David Axelrod dodged a question asking him to commit to pushing immigration reform regardless of the political climate, but nonetheless confirmed earlier hints by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that Democrats and Republicans are working behind the scenes to pass major new legislation. "I think some good work is being done on both sides...

The TERRY ANDERSON SHOW.. Articulating the Popular Rage! A warrior in the fight against illegal immigration and those who promote it for over a decade! From the streets of Los Angeles to the halls of congress, Terry has been there. No one has the passion and common sense of Terry Anderson...He is A MUST listen! The BEST one hour of radio you'll find anywhere. Sunday Nights- Listen on the radio! 12-1 AM EDT, 11-12 PM CDT, 10-11 PM MDT, 9-10 PM PDT KRLA - 870 AM - Los Angeles -- KDWN - 720 - Las Vegas -- KFNX - 1100...

On Wednesday, police in Brewster, New York arrested a 24-year-old illegal alien for molesting an 8-year-old boy. The abuse was discovered during an October 30 medical exam by the boy’s pediatrician. The little boy told his doctor that Mendez-Depaz was responsible. Nelson Mendez-Depaz has been charged with first-degree sexual abuse, and is being held in the Putnam County Jail without bail. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has also placed a retainer on the suspect. The following facts help illustrate the growing epidemic of child molestation being committed by illegal aliens: -Deborah Schurman-Kauflin Ph.D. of the Violent Crimes Institute reports that the...

Thursday, 11/12/09 La Hora (Quito, Ecuador) 11/11/09 Ecuador asks U.S. for immigration reform The issues of security, commerce and immigration between the United States and Ecuador were dealt with at the U.S. Department of State when a 25 person delegation, including Luis Gallegos, the Ecuadoran Ambassador to the U.S., met with Thomas Shannon, U.S. Undersecretary for Latin America. The Ecuadoran delegation, headed by Jorge Orbe, the Sub-Secretary for Bilateral Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, Commerce and Integration, also brought out the problems which concern the two million Ecuadorans estimated to be residing in the United States. Ambassador Gallegos...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the White House point person on immigration, said Friday that Congress must provide temporary worker programs and a path to citizenship for 12 million undocumented workers when it takes up reform legislation next year. Napolitano was optimistic a reform bill could pass in an election year because border security goals have been met and the economic downturn has decreased illegal immigration significantly since a bipartisan bill died in the Senate two years ago. "I know a major shift when I see one, and what I have seen makes reform far more attainable this time around,"...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that the Obama administration will push for “immigration reform” by giving the estimated 14 million people who are in the United States illegally “fair pathway to earned legal status.” “A tough and fair pathway to earned legal status will mandate that illegal immigrants meet a number of requirements—including registering, paying a fine, passing a criminal background check, fully paying all taxes and learning English,” Napolitano said Friday at a panel discussion at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. “These are substantial requirements that will make sure this population gets right...

More than 22,000 illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions have been arrested in Texas through a 1-year-old program that links FBI and federal immigration databases, Homeland Security officials said Thursday. About 12 percent of them, or 2,700 people, were charged or convicted of what authorities call "level one" crimes such as murder, rape, kidnapping or narcotics violations with a sentence of more than one year. (snip) Under the new system, fingerprints are run simultaneously through a national database to check criminal history and through a Homeland Security database to check the person's immigration status. All those arrested in jurisdictions...

The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in legislation to overhaul the immigration system that it will begin to push early next year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday. In an address at the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group in Washington, Ms. Napolitano sought to dispel any notion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — might postpone the most contentious piece of an immigration overhaul until after midterm elections next November. Laying out the administration’s...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration has met many of the border security benchmarks Congress set in 2007 as a prerequisite to immigration reform and now it's time to change the law, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday. Napolitano, designated by President Barack Obama to lead the administration's immigration reform efforts, said many members of Congress had said they could support immigration reform, but only after border security improved, Napolitano said. "Fast forward to today, and many of the benchmarks these members of Congress set in 2007 have been met," she said in a speech to the Center for...

Federal program checks fingerprints of local crime suspects D.C. police will be the next department to take part in a federal program whose ultimate aim is to check the immigration status of every person booked into a local jail, homeland security officials announced Thursday. The program, known as Secure Communities, matches inmates' fingerprints against a federal database so that federal authorities can identify and possibly remove deportable illegal immigrants before they are released from custody. Similar checks are done at all 1,200 federal and state prisons. But authorities have lacked the ability to do them across the nation's 3,100 local...

The Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force just released a report which claims that due to tougher laws and a concerted effort by law enforcement, many illegal alien gangs are leaving Virginia for the safe havens of Maryland. The report said: "Many gang members from Northern Virginia are moving or driving to Prince George's and other Maryland counties, into the District of Columbia or further south and west into Virginia to avoid dealing with police departments that are unrelenting in their efforts to keep gangs under control.” The report also found that there are 5,000 gang members in Northern Va.,...

Perry: Obama 'hell-bent' on socialism By: Andy Barr November 11, 2009 07:08 PM EST Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of “punishing” Texas and being “hell-bent” on turning the United States into a socialist country. Speaking at a luncheon for a Midland County Republican Women’s group, Perry said that “this is an administration hell-bent toward taking American towards a socialist country. And we all don’t need to be afraid to say that because that’s what it is.” Perry praised the tea party movement to the Republican activists in attendance, crediting the grassroots groups with discouraging...

Please join us by attending or organizing a Tea Parties Against Amnesty and Illegal Immigration rallies on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 and in the Spring of 2010 (Date TBA)! ** Check www.againstamnesty.com daily for new event locations and details latest news added every day! We hope to have an event near you soon! *** President Obama along with Republican and Democrat DC insiders are preparing a mass 'Comprehensive' Amnesty for illegal immigrants in America that will provide a path to citizenship and turn illegal aliens into voters even though a vast majority of Americans oppose this. This will only bring...

Sudhir Kapoor, 25, got the call from his employer late last year. It was bad news: The economic downturn meant the technology company had to let him go. Laxmi Aiyar, who is returning to India after she was laid off by her company, says, "It is Indian talents who made America rich and prosperous. Now, they are throwing us out like a can of Pepsi." Since nearly 40 percent of all H-1B visa holders are from India , the mounting layoffs are hitting Indian professionals particularly hard. ....Lives have been disrupted, and some said they were under tremendous stress to...

The DHS's Janet Napolitano will be speaking and taking questions in Washington DC this Friday 11/13. I need others to organize efforts to go ask her this question: "A company in Minneapolis recently fired hundreds of illegal alien janitors, and Americans rushed in to take those jobs [illustrate with hand gesture]. However, DHS didn't try to deport the illegal aliens who'd been fired, and hundreds of them are probably now working at different companies in Minneapolis. My question to you is this: if you had sought to deport those illegal aliens rather than simply letting them back into the labor...

In a blatant display of the partisan card stacking which routinely debases the intellectual and ethical currency of Congressional hearings on "immigration reform," Sen. Charles Schumer (D, NY) last month chaired a session of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and Border Security titled "Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Faith-Based Perspectives." Even a fig leaf of balance was missing; the minority wasn't allowed its fractional quotient of witnesses. Only supporters of "comprehensive immigration reform" were invited to testify. The hearing violated the spirit of open, oppositional discourse essential to the functioning and preservation of democratic institutions. The farce was also...

At a meeting last month, LGBT and immigration activists urged U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez to include protections for same-sex partners in immigration reform legislation he plans to introduce in the House of Representatives. Although no promises were made at the meeting, according to Association of Latino Men for Action ( ALMA ) President Julio Rodriguez, community members plan to "continue to dialogue" with the congressman regarding the issue. Gutierrez represents Illinois' 4th District, which includes portions of Chicago's North and South sides. President Barack Obama signaled his intention to tackle major immigration reform as part of his first-term agenda; as...

McALLEN(Texas) — Immigration advocates shouted support for health care reform Monday afternoon as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was ushered away from the airport during a campaign stop in the Rio Grande Valley. As health care reform takes center stage in the U.S. Senate, the shouting over one divisive and complicated issue won’t stop soon. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are grappling with how to handle illegal immigrants — an issue, along with abortion, that at times threatened to derail reform efforts in the House — in the health care bill. While both chambers seem to agree that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize health...

Quietly slipping through the legislative process, at least until lately, is the latest incarnation of the Immigration Reform Bill, called Immigration Legislation S-9. This is still nothing but an amnesty plan and a give away of America. This plan cheapens citizen ship by giving it to virtually anyone who can get to U.S. Soil and seek it. Senate Minority Leader John Boehner has called this bill a "piece of shit" and while the words are strong, they re descriptive. This more than can be said of the full name of S-9 as sponsored by Senator Harry Reid. It is called...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A gang of gunmen killed an off-duty U.S. airman and five other people early today at a bar in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Authorities say four other men were killed outside an elementary school in another part of town. That raises to 30 the number of homicides in Ciudad Juarez in just four days. There was no immediate information on a motive for the early morning attack at the Amadeus bar, which also left a seventh person wounded. But Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for prosecutors in northern Chihuahua state, says the methods bore...

Settlement Opens Door For Hundreds Of Legal Immigrants To Become U.S. Citizens November 9, 2009 Hundreds of legal immigrants in Southern California who have been waiting years for citizenship will have their cases resolved as a result of a settlement with the federal government, attorneys announced today. The immigrants were stuck in lengthy delays as they waited for the FBI to complete their security name checks and for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to approve their citizenship applications. The settlement, approved Friday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, sets a six-month deadline for the government to decide on hundreds...