Free Republic

Facing a public backlash, officials in Southern California's Orange County rescinded their plan Tuesday for emergency homeless shelters in three cities. The homeless shelters in Irvine, Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel were to house up to 400 people, the Orange County Register reported. Laguna Niguel ranks seventh among the nation’s wealthiest cities, according to a 2016 Register report. "They're just dumping these poor people in our neighborhoods and communities where there are like six schools and, you know, little children walking to school," Irvine resident Radhika Athlaye told ABC7. "Just a general area where it's not right for either the...

SAN FRANCISCO — Texas and more than a dozen other states led by Republican governors are supporting the Trump administration in its lawsuit over California’s so-called sanctuary laws that protect people in the U.S. illegally. In a court filing Monday, the states say the laws are designed to interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement, and California doesn’t have that authority.

The mayor of Aliso Viejo, California is joining leaders of other cities looking to opt out of state's "sanctuary" law, which allows for less cooperation on the local level with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Mayor David Harrington (R) expressed his disagreement with the designation on "Cavuto Live," calling it "unconstitutional" and saying it makes residents less safe. [The sanctuary state law] is about letting criminals out of jail, period," Harrington said. A proposal by Los Alamitos Rep. Warren Kusumoto to opt his city out of the law was met with overwhelming support. Harrington said the reaction in his city...

A California sheriff’s office announced Monday that it will provide public information on when inmates are released from jail -- a move coming amid a growing backlash against the liberal state’s “sanctuary” laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The Orange County Register reported that the county’s sheriff’s department will publish a “Who’s in Jail” online database, including the date and time of inmates’ release, to help cooperate with other law enforcement agencies including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE.) Undersheriff Don Barnes cited California’s sanctuary legislation, which limits the instances when state and local police agencies can inform federal...

The Trump administration announced Monday night it will be reinstating a citizenship question to the decennial census in 2020, prompting threats of lawsuits by prominent Democrats. Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra separately announced they will file respective lawsuits to stop the citizenship question from being asked during the census. Holder’s statement called the move by the Trump administration a “direct attack on our representative democracy.” Becerra called the decision, “illegal.” The Commerce Department, which oversees the census, issued a statement announcing the decision: Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that a question...

When President Trump recently visited California, he came away with the sense that it “is totally out of control.” If he arrived at that conclusion from just a single visit, imagine how many who live in the state feel. To be fair, California itself isn’t out of control. There are many among the 40 million who honorably and honestly go about their daily business. Outside of Antifa riots and some infantile behavior on college campuses, there are no mobs in the streets; crime is up but not unrestrained; there are multiple efforts brewing to break up the state, but none...

Amparo Cid traces her work as an attorney helping recent immigrants and their families in the Central Valley fight injustices and potential deportation to her experience as a child in 1994. That was when California voters passed Proposition 187, an initiative that denied undocumented immigrants access to publicly funded services. Back then, many California officials blamed the federal government for not doing more to keep people from crossing the border illegally. Today, the roles are reversed.

The sheriff's department in a major Los Angeles metro area county announced Monday that it will begin publishing a list of inmate release dates, spurning a provision of California's sanctuary state law that limits communication between local officials and immigration authorities. As of Monday, the Orange County Sheriff's Department's online inmate database includes the date and time of a prisoner's release, a change that agency officials say will improve communication with federal law enforcement partners. While the database will include release dates for all inmates, not just illegal immigrants, the newly public information is aimed at helping Immigration and Customs...

Leaders in Orange County, California, have voted to join a U.S. government lawsuit against the state over its so-called sanctuary law for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Support for the Flat Earth movement has been exploding in popularity, with millions believing NASA is trying to dupe us about the shape of our planet. Google Trends data reveals searches for “flat earth” in the past two years have tripled, with a 90 percent surge in interest in the cranky conspiracy theory. High-profile celebrity endorsements have helped grow a community of people who reject “globehead” thinking and insist that the world is in fact flat. Those coming out about their belief include NBA player Kyrie Irving, who said in a podcast that he believed the Earth is not the...

More California cities may consider defying the state’s “sanctuary state” laws, after the city council of Los Alamitos passed an ordinance defying the state’s controversial new legislation preventing cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Leaders of Los Alamitos, in Orange County, passed the ordinance 4-1 and instructed the city attorney to file an amicus brief in the ongoing Department of Justice lawsuit against the State of California. The lawsuit challenges the Immigrant Worker Protection Act (HB 450), the Inspection and Review of Facilities Housing Federal Detainees law (AB 103); and the California Values Act (SB 54). The Orange County Register reports...

Supervisors voted Monday for Orange County to spend $70.5 million on permanent housing for the homeless, and to create temporary homeless camps in Irvine, and possibly in Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel. The vote comes a week after supervisors committed $20 million toward permanent housing for the homeless. The combined $90 million is likely the single largest appropriation ever committed by the county to fight homelessness, and signals a shift in the county’s strategy to solve the growing issue. The decision came as supervisors admitted that they’ve failed to spend money that’s been available for homeless housing – tens of...

Thousands of pounds of human waste, close to 14,000 hypodermic needles cleaned out from Santa Ana River homeless encampments Orange County Public Works released eye-popping figures Thursday, March 8, on the total amount of debris, needles and hazardous waste removed when crews cleaned up the area along the Santa Ana River Trail once populated by the encampments of homeless people. Here’s what was collected between Jan. 22 and March 3 from a more than two-mile stretch of bike trail roughly from I-5 in Orange to Ball Road in Anaheim, according to OC Public Works spokesman Shannon Widor: 404 tons of...

The last of more than 700 homeless people living in the tent encampments at the Santa Ana River Trail left on Monday — 697 of them gone to motels. In the days since, Orange County Public Works crews have cleared away most of the debris left behind on a roughly two-mile stretch from I-5 in Orange to Ball Road/Taft Avenue in Anaheim. It won’t be known until next week just how much trash, feces, discarded syringes and other hazardous waste was collected, said OC Public Works spokesman Shannon Widor. The last official tally from the county was on Feb. 9,...

What happens when homeless people are sent to motels? Some are welcomed, some treated warily, some kicked out Erik Teasley was happy to leave behind the ragtag encampments at the Santa Ana River Trail where he and hundreds of other homeless people had lived until last week, when the county resumed its mass dispersal of an entrenched tent-city community. A comfortable motel sounded good to Teasley, 47. A homeless man from Santa Ana, he’d spent two years sleeping in different spots on the banks of the flood-control channel. But, last week, when he initially was moved away from the riverbed,...

Orange County’s largest homeless encampment is no more. On Monday, following a six-day blitz during which county officials moved 732 homeless people into local motels and shelters, the once-bustling tent encampment sat unoccupied. The last few occupants packed their belongings and left. Sheriff’s deputies guarded locked gates to the flood control channel, preventing people from reentering. -snip- The county attempted to clear the Santa Ana River encampment beginning Jan. 22 so it could conduct an environmental cleanup of the flood control channel. But U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter suspended that process by granting a temporary restraining order in...

Click on the link above. The video actually goes on for 10 minutes, but Twitter only allows 2:20 of it to be posted. Beyond disgusting. We spend 125 billion a year on illegal aliens and allow this tragedy in our country. (I suspect that there are illegals among them but how many I have no idea.)

It was bingo night at Main Street Bar & Cabaret, Laguna Beach’s last gay club. Techno music chugged; strobe lights blinked. The game’s caller – a redhead drag queen named Endora – fussed softly over the prizes, like an ikebana master arranging her flowers. But half an hour past the scheduled start time, patrons had yet to arrive. Endora sat at the bar and ordered a cocktail. In walked Craig Cooley, the bar manager for more than a year. “Where is everybody?” he asked, collapsing on a stool next to Endora. As usual, he seemed out of breath. Little wonder....

In what is the first successful prosecution in the scandal involving Planned Parenthood, the abortion industry, and the sale of aborted baby parts, two companies that sold aborted baby parts for the nation’s biggest abortion company have been forced to close down. The two California-based companies reached a settlement with the Orange County District Attorney’s office of almost $8 million dollars. As a result of the settlement the two companies will close up shop over the next couple of months and will no longer be selling parts from babies killed in abortions for Planned Parenthood or anyone else. This is...

Florida lawmakers demonstrated wisdom, foresight and fiscal responsibility in 2014 when they combined county expressway authorities in Central Florida into a single, regional agency. Roads don’t stop at county lines, and it’s inefficient and expensive to maintain multiple bureaucracies to control separate stretches of pavement. It’s also a problem when neighboring toll-road agencies have conflicting policies and plans for the future. Yet the rationale behind that 2014 law hasn’t been completely realized yet. It’s time for lawmakers to step in again. Dueling road agencies The Central Florida Expressway Authority now owns and operates 118 miles of toll roads in Metro...