Free Republic

AT News Director Ed Lasky has chronicled the shameful problems with Obama administration inspector generals for years, including the political pressures put on IG's in almost every department of the administration. A perfect illustration of this is former DHS IG Charles Edwards, who deliberately slowed investigations into wrongdoing at DHS, including the shredding of dozens of emails - an act that might send him to jail for obstruction of justice. Washington Examiner: The Senate subcommittee began its investigation into Edwards last year when it started looking into complaints that his investigation into the U.S. Secret Service's hiring of prostitutes during...

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...

Along with his more sensationalized executive order granting some illegal immigrants a chance to stay in the U.S. without fear of deportation, President Barack Obama quietly ended a controversial program on Thursday that had deported 283,000 of them after they were arrested for crimes other than border-crossing. The Secure Communities program has been in place in limited form since 2006, and expanded nationwide in 2008. It allowed local law enforcement to hold arrestees and convicts 48 hours after they were officially bailed or released, if they were in the county illegally, so federal agents could pick them up and start...

SACRAMENTO (Reuters) - The California Senate on Thursday passed a bill supporters dub the "anti-Arizona" law, which seeks to shield illegal immigrants from status checks by local police and challenges Republican-backed immigration crackdowns in other U.S. states. The Democrat-led state Senate voted 21 to 13 for the California Trust Act, which blocks local police from referring a detainee to immigration officials for deportation unless that person has been convicted of a violent or serious felony. The bill has the backing of about 100 immigrant rights groups, police chiefs and mayors. It has already passed the state Assembly in a 47-26...

Federal officials on Tuesday launched a controversial program in the District that targets illegal immigration, but not without a fight from some city officials who argue the effort undermines trust between police and local immigrant communities. The program, known as Secure Communities, requires that arrestee fingerprints collected by local governments be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement so the federal government can identify illegal immigrants and potentially move to detain or deport them. All other localities in the metropolitan area have been participating. But the D.C. Council on Tuesday quickly voted to limit the program’s reach, saying it could...

New York City has long been known as a refuge that celebrates immigrants, whether they are here legally or not. But some worry that a new federal policy beginning tomorrow will turn the city's atmosphere from friendly to frightening. The U.S. government is mandating a program called Secure Communities be enforced in the city starting Tuesday, May 15. Secure Communities requires police to send fingerprints of everyone arrested to immigration officials. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents then check to see whether that person should be deported. City officials said yesterday the program threatens New York's immigrant-friendly nature, where police...

A federal program that uses fingerprint analysis to identify illegal immigrants in county jails has been activated in Washington state and Montana ahead of the 2013 nationwide rollout, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said

House Republicans are moving to subpoena a list of all immigrants whom the Obama administration has flagged under its secure communities program but failed to arrest for deportation, after the Homeland Security Department missed a congressionally imposed deadline to produce the information this week. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said he wants the data so he can see who is among the 300,000 people the administration has deemed too low a priority to detain under new deportation guidelines. He has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday for the immigration subcommittee to vote to authorize the subpoena. “Why would DHS...

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown today joined a growing chorus of lawmen openly defying Gov. Deval Patrick, calling on federal Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano to allow Massachusetts to join the Secure Communities program without the governor’s approval. “My constituents have made it abundantly clear to me that they view Secure Communities as an important public safety tool that could have prevented deadly incidents that have rocked their communities,” Brown wrote in a letter to Napolitano today. “I strongly encourage (the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) to swiftly and expeditiously activate the remaining jurisdictions in Massachusetts.” Three sheriffs have made...

Scituate police arrested an illegal immigrant from Brazil for motor-vehicle violations three months before he allegedly stabbed his former girlfriend to death in a brutal attack this week, reigniting debate over whether Massachusetts should participate in the federal Secure Communities program. Police arrested Marcelo Almeida, a 41-year-old laborer, on June 19 on charges of operating without a license and other charges after the black Nissan Maxima he was driving almost collided head on with a police car, according to documents from Hingham District Court. He was later found guilty of unlicensed driving and responsible for other charges. Almeida paid a...

A few months after Massachusetts’s governor rejected a federal program that checks the immigration status of local arrestees, a drunk illegal alien with a criminal history killed a motorcyclist in the state and another who had been deported racked up his sixth drunk- driving charge. Had the state participated in the federal Secure Communities program, both men would have been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation long ago. Instead, they were released by local police and allowed to continue committing crimes in their respective communities. That’s because the state’s governor, renowned open borders advocate Deval Patrick,...

Three defiant Bay State sheriffs hell-bent on tougher immigration enforcement have taken an end run around Gov. Deval Patrick, traveling to Washington, D.C., to hammer out their own version of the Secure Communities program in a stinging rejection of the administration’s stand on illegals. “The governor is out of touch on this issue, and he really and truly does not represent the interest of the people of Massachusetts on this issue,” Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said. “We’re basically saying to the governor, ‘Look. You’re entitled to your position.’ But the governor doesn’t elect us. We represent the people of...

Opponents of the Secure Communities program like to paint the most sympathetic picture of the “victims” of this immigration enforcement effort — say, for example, the 18-year-old girl brought to the U.S. as a child, arrested for driving without a license and facing deportation to an unfamiliar country. Never, ever do they hold up the Nicolas Guamans of the world as an example of the crying need to identify and deport those illegal immigrants who pose a very real threat to community safety — which is what the program is all about. Guaman, who stands accused of running down a...

President Obama is in a pickle. Immigration enforcement actually is working - or, at least, it was working. Under the Obama administration, the government has removed almost 400,000 illegal immigrants annually. That's 4 percent of the 10 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in America - and it sends a warning to those thinking of illegally entering the United States. Thanks to the Secure Communities program, which requires local law enforcement to share arrestees' fingerprints with Washington, about half of those deported have criminal records. According to the administration, the vast majority of the rest either re-crossed the border...

Controversial Immigration Enforcement Program Is Target Of Lively Protest August 15, 2011 | Hundreds gathered in Los Angeles on Monday night for a chance to address a federal task force that will propose changes to a controversial immigration enforcement program. Speaker after speaker at the lively meeting denounced the Secure Communities program, with most not calling for changes but for the program to end entirely. “I’m here asking the government to end this Secure Communities program,” said Blanca Perez, an undocumented worker who was arrested for selling ice cream from a cart on the street and then placed into deportation...

President Barack Obama’s administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, while aiming to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters, say supporters of stronger immigration law enforcement. The new rules were quietly announced Friday with a new memo from top officials at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The “prosecutorial discretion” memo says officials need not enforce immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or if their relatives have volunteered for the US military. “They’re pushing the [immigration] agents to be even more lax, to...

As Texas moves toward expanding Secure Communities, several northern states are dropping out of the program that matches the fingerprints of those arrested against a U.S. [ICE] database. Last week, before Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that the expansion of Secure Communities would be on the agenda for the Legislature's special session, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick announced his state will not take part in the program. Massachusetts joins New York and Illinois in ditching Secure Communities amid concerns that the program, which ICE says is intended to identify the illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes and ensure they're removed from...

Members of California's congressional delegation called on Gov. Jerry Brown Friday to join three other states in suspending participation in a controversial federal immigration enforcement program. The seven Democratic representatives acted after the Los Angeles City Council voted overwhelmingly this week to support legislation allowing local communities to opt out of the Secure Communities program and Sheriff Lee Baca, a strong proponent, qualified his support in a letter to immigrant activists.In recent weeks, governors in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts have sought to suspend or have declined to enter into Secure Communities participation agreements. When it was launched in 2008,...

Massachusetts announced Monday that it will refuse to join the federal government’s Secure Communities initiative, becoming the latest state to balk at the Obama administration’s key anti-illegal immigration program designed to target gang members and violent felons for deportation. Following on the heels of Illinois and New York, which this year said they would try to opt out of the program, the move signals growing discontent from usually reliable Democratic territory over President Obama’s immigration policy, which is now drawing fire from both sides of the aisle. “The governor and I are dubious of the commonwealth taking on the federal...

The California State Assembly passed a bill that would allow counties to refuse to participate in the Homeland Security Department's controversial Secure Communities program. The program cross checks fingeprints from people who are arrested for crimes with Immigration and Customs records. It's designed to deport dangerous violent offenders who are also illegal residents. Some local sheriffs say the program is getting rid of violent criminals and is making the streets safer. But the State Assembly didn't agree in approving the bill which says counties aren't required to participate in the Secure Communities program unless they specifically chooses to.