Free Republic

Governor Paterson has made one more major policy decision before he leaves office tonight. The Democrat is announcing a deal with the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to take a hands-off approach to illegal aliens without serious criminal records. The agreement calls for ICE to move to deport illegal immigrants charged with felonies--instead of those whose only crime is illegally crossing the border.

Among those who said they did see celebrations in New Jersey firsthand were the following (minor edits have been made for punctuation, capitalization or spelling). Many describe the celebrants as Muslims, though it is not clear in all some how the poster would know that to be true: Tom Penicaro: "I worked for PSEG in Clifton on the Paterson boarder and I witnessed it firsthand. They were celebrating in the streets cheering and stomping on the flag. I am a Marine and I remember very very clearly because I was so passed I wanted to engage them with a bat...

The Masjid Omar Mosque was probed by a program that drew criticism from civil liberties advocates and was the subject of two federal lawsuits. The Paterson mosque that some neighbors said the suspect in Tuesday's deadly terror attack in New York City attended was among several in New Jersey that the New York Police Department targeted as part of a broad surveillance program that was intended to identify "budding terrorist conspiracies." The Masjid Omar Mosque is on Getty Avenue, around the corner from the apartment where the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, lived with his family. Wednesday morning, the mosque was within...

The NYPD had suspected New Jersey’s Masjid Omar Mosque, where jihadist Sayfullo Saipov reportedly worshipped, of having radical ties for over 10 years, allegedly keeping all its worshippers under watch. Moreover, the FBI, which claims it had nothing to do with monitoring the mosque, interviewed Saipov as a potential Islamic terrorist in 2015, but ultimately let him go. On Tuesday, Uzbek national Saipov killed eight people and injured at least 11 in a vehicle attack on the West Side of Manhattan on Tuesday. “The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows...

Sayfullo Saipov’s neighbors and acquaintances have been coming forward to paint a portrait of the suspected New York City terrorist. One Tampa neighbor casually dropped a remarkable detail deep in a Washington Post story on Wednesday: a group of “about 30 men, young and old, gathered at Saipov’s house to pray” on “most weekends.”

Back in 2014 the New York Police Department dropped a program that monitored potential suspects of Islamic extremism. Created in 2005, the program was pretty cut and dry: plain clothed detectives were sent out to mosques and gathering places for Muslims to see if anyone was pushing extremist rhetoric on the community. While it might seem a bit intrusive, this happened in a city of 8.5 million people with as many as 800,000 Muslim residents in the greater metro area, many of whom are foreign born nationals. It's also the same geographic location as the biggest Islamic terror attack in...

NEW YORK (AP) — Lawyers for a man charged with killing eight people when he drove his truck onto a New York City bike path say the death penalty should be ruled out because President Donald Trump was “uninformed and full or rage” when he called for it. The lawyers filed papers Tuesday in federal court on behalf of Sayfullo Saipov (sy-foo-LOH’ sah-YEE’-pawf).

The wife of the Uzbeki national accused of murdering eight people in Manhattan denied any knowledge of her husband’s carefully planned rampage, according to a report. A person who spoke to Sayfullo Saipov’s 24-year-old wife, Nozima Odilova, on Tuesday evening said she seemed “shocked and horrified and scared and sad” after being grilled by the FBI, a source told the Washington Post. At the time, the feds were at her Paterson, NJ, house, where they encouraged her to cooperate to make sure no one else was harmed. Meanwhile, neighbor Carlos Batista recounted that Saipov had occasionally driven a Home Depot...

Investigators descended overnight on the New Jersey neighborhood of the terrorist who went on a rampage in a rental truck along a riverfront bike path near the World Trade Center, killing eight people and injuring 11 others. Cops surrounded a block in Paterson, the hometown of Sayfullo Saipov, 29, an Uzbek immigrant who was shot by a cop when he jumped out of the truck brandishing fake but realistic-looking pistols and shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Authorities in Passaic County also cordoned off an area that includes a mosque, some storefronts and several other residences, as well as a parking lot at...

Was his request refused, or would that have been “Islamophobic”?In any case, despite Saipov’s note containing “Islamic religious references,” this is not about Islam. The NYPD assures us that is the case. And they wouldn’t lie to us, now, would they? “New York attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov charged with terrorism,” by Jamiles Lartey and Ed Pilkington, Guardian, November 1, 2017: The suspect in Tuesday’s deadly New York City truck attack appears to have been inspired by violent Isis videos depicting beheadings and shootings, according to prosecutors.Sayfullo Saipov was taken to the New York federal courthouse in a wheelchair, handcuffed and...

“Because of our unity, we have three Muslim councilmembers sitting on the council at the same time. And because of our unity, one of our brothers, who was the councilman of the Sixth Ward, is now representing us in the 35th legislative district.” — Councilman Shahin Khalique A shocking transformation is unfolding in Paterson, New Jersey, where local officials are rapidly reshaping the city into an Islamic stronghold. Once a beacon of American industry and blue-collar resilience, Paterson has become a case study in how unchecked Islamic immigration, demographic shifts, and political pandering can erode a city’s original identity....