Free Republic

SAN JOSE -- After listening Tuesday to more than 60 impassioned activists, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted to stick to the status quo on immigration, rejecting a proposal to turn over jailed illegal immigrants with a history of serious or violent crime to federal agents for possible deportation. The proposal by Supervisor Joe Simitian to change the current policy and hold "the worst of the worst" inmates for 24 hours past their release date failed on a 3-2 vote. Only Supervisor Mike Wasserman, who opposed the no-holds policy two years ago on the grounds that public safety...

Illegal immigrants, driving legally on the road. Next month, non-visa status people in Illinois can begin the process of obtaining a temporary driver's license. Despite the controversial law being on the books since January, many questions remain. "Public safety." "But they're here illegally." Those are the main arguments for and against a law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain a temporary drivers license for three years. "This means freedom," Claudia Fabian, who came to the U.S. from Argentina, said. "It means being not scared anymore of maybe you are not going to be stopped that day and put in jail...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi cheerfully led Spanish-language chants of “Si se puede” — or “Yes we can” — at a rally Tuesday for amnesty and immigration, but turnout for the event at the National Mall was far below the organizers’ predictions of 100,000 attendees. The barriers at the event were set to accommodate 35,000 people, but less than half the area was occupied. Loudspeakers and a large display screen at the rear of the area were almost devoid of listeners or viewers. The rally was held on public land during a widely hyped government shutdown that has seen the...

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, told a rally in Omaha last week that illegal immigration has killed more Americans than the attacks on September 11th. King spoke an event Friday held for victims of crimes committed by people who are in the U.S. illegally. Recalling a conversation he had with a former INS agent, Mike Cutler, during a congressional hearing, King said he asked Cutler, “How many Americans have died at the hands of [illegal immigrants] who did make it into America? What’s the price Americans are paying for an open door policy?” King claims that Cutler responded, “‘I don’t know...

An illegal alien brutally murdered Laura Wilkerson's 18-year-old son in Texas, tied his body up, and then doused him with gasoline before burning him. Wilkerson recalled the harrowing details on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, yet her story has gone unheard in the broader press. Maria Espinoza, the director of the Remembrance project that memorializes Americans who were killed by illegal immigrants, told host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon that such crimes "happen every day" in America, even in states far from the border. But the mainstream media, Espinoza said, often do not...

KNOXVILLE — Knox County Sheriff Jimmy “J.J.” Jones on Wednesday denounced “an inept administration” that has declined his proposal to train local officers on enforcing federal immigration laws. “An inept administration is clearing the way for law breaking illegal immigrants to continue to thrive in our community and ultimately be allowed to reside in the United States. “I will continue to enforce these federal immigration violations with or without the help of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” Jones said. “If need be, I will stack these violators like cordwood in the Knox County Jail until the appropriate federal agency...

Patrol agents say they have detained an illegal alien who's racked up 37 criminal convictions in the United States. - See more at: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-border-patrol-deporting-illegal-alien-37-criminal-convictions-usa#sthash.PH4jCEOd.dpuf

According to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Malta, which gave me a leaflet about what words to use when discussing this issue, it's wrong to use the term "illegal". The reason is that most of those who arrive in Malta claim asylum, and even though they are locked up while their claims are processed, that detention is "administrative and not criminal". Also frowned upon is the word "clandestine", which has a "strong negative connection, invoking a sense of criminality". Instead, it recommends the phrase "irregular migrants".

It seems we are destined to have immigration reform at the forefront of the political discussion in America. What we should be doing is enforcing our current immigration laws, but that doesn't seem to be in the works. Many of our politicians believe we need a massive piece of legislation to overhaul the entire system. President Obama believes he can use executive orders to rewrite the way the system works. Consequently, he has already ordered DREAMER status to be given to any illegal immigrant claiming to be brought to America when they were a child. According to Chris Cane, President...

The immigration bill passed by the Senate Thursday afternoon would give some employers a financial incentive to employ "registered provisional immigrants" (illegal immigrants granted legal status) instead of U.S. citizens. As the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein recently reported: "Under Obamacare, businesses with over 50 workers that employ American citizens without offering them qualifying health insurance could be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per worker. But because newly legalized immigrants wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges until after they become citizens – at least 13 years under the Senate bill – businesses could avoid such fines...

Hundreds of pro-immigration goons stormed Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s home this past weekend. The mob brought megaphones and rallied on his front porch. And they hurled threats at his family. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) The leftists dared the Secretary of State to come outside. Todd Starnes at Townhall reported: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is calling for a criminal investigation after a huge mob of illegal alien supporters surrounded his private home Saturday and held a rally on his front porch. At least 200 members of Sunflower Community Action were bussed into Kobach’s Kansas City-area neighborhood on Saturday – to...

The Senate voted overwhelmingly today [6/11] to move debate forward on the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill. Only 15 Republicans voted No. Not all the Republicans who voted to move the bill forward today will necessarily vote for its passage, but it appears to be a foregone conclusion that the bill will indeed make it out of the Senate in more or less its current form. This is, I think, mystifying. I can understand why Democrats would vote for the bill: over the next ten years, it will result in somewhere between 30 million and 57 million new legal immigrants,...

After sending a subtantial volume of email in last few weeks to Sens. Chambliss and Isakson, I was unable to get through on any of their phone comment/contact lines this morning. And I will keep trying. I hope this means we are frying the phone lines in opposition to the cloture vote on S.B. 744 early this afternoon. Today is the day when your activism and loud(er) voice can make the difference. Please take a moment... Spend a dime.

One of the Chechen terrorists who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings should have been deported years ago after a criminal conviction, as called for by U.S. immigration law. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless should have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration’s DHS division missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev, but did not abide by Federal immigration law and let him stay. Tsarnaev was given this special treatment, despite not having...

On Friday, Los Angeles police arrested Luis Bucio-Cedeno, 24, after two years of chasing the man known as the "red car flasher." An LAPD press release stated: After two years, dozens of sightings, several composite sketches, we got a break in February when a female jogger wrote down a license plate for the van of a man who had exposed himself to her. During that same exposure incident, a red Toyota was parked in front of the van. The victim remembered seeing the Toyota’s driver speaking to the van’s driver, but when the van left, she was astounded to see...

File this in the overflowing cabinet labeled: No Wonder the Mainstream Media Is Dying. On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced that it is banishing the phrase "illegal immigrant" from its famous stylebook. The world's largest newsgathering outlet now advises reporters that "illegal" will "only refer to an action, not a person." AP directs writers not to use the terms "illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented" anymore, except "in direct quotations." It won't be long before illegal border crossers, illegal visa overstayers, illegal deportation evaders, document fraudsters and illegal alien traffickers are all referred to as "our fellow Americans." Without...

According to the Communist Party USA, “the struggle for immigrant rights is a key component of the struggle for working class unity in our country today”. The Communists believe that the months ahead provide a great opportunity to extract big immigration changes from the Party’s “friend” Barack Obama. The coming months are crucial. This is a call for all progressive forces to become fully engaged at every level…The overwhelming Latino vote for President Obama has pushed the need for legislation forward, but there is a hard fight still ahead. As Congress begins to draft legislation, immigrant rights groups and the...

The Associated Press is out with an extensive piece today showing just how far Mexican drug cartels have infiltrated American society. The cartel problem is no longer a border problem, it's a problem for the entire country. Violent cartel members are carrying out crimes in our backyards with the potential to develop into something much worse. Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the...

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — For almost 12 years, a Houston elementary school teacher and an illegal immigrant living in Topeka have engaged in a tug of war to claim the identity of Candida L. Gutierrez in a case that has put a face on the growing crime of "total identity theft" in the United States. On Monday, the real Candida L. Gutierrez saw her identity thief, Benita Cardona-Gonzalez, for the first time. Their encounter came inside a federal courtroom in Wichita, where Cardona-Gonzalez, a Mexican national, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for possessing fraudulent identification documents. The plea...

A follow up to this story, in which it was reported that “waves” of illegal immigrants were being released from jail buoyed by the excuse of budget cuts via the sequestration. After that news came to light, an official from the Department of Homeland Security ‘resigned’, and the White House started claiming that it wasn’t waves of criminals being released, but rather “a few hundred”.