Free Republic

Another scandal for the "scandal-free" Obama administration. Not all ICE targets work construction or smuggle drugs. Some are key figures in the Dem machine. But the era of Obama corruption is over. There's a new sheriff in town. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this week arrested two millionaire fugitives from Ecuador whose family donated heavily to American political campaigns. Roberto and William Isaías, 74 and 75, were detained Wednesday in Miami and taken to a detention facility for undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation, The New York Times reported Friday. ICE told the Times that the brothers were “unlawfully present” in...

A judge is withholding the release of an audit report of Dominion voting machines in Georgia. Now the federal government and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has inserted itself into the case and is asking the judge to delay the report longer.We reported on this case previously. Per our report a week ago:A federal judge is being urged to release a report that, despite the secrecy surrounding it, appears to indicate there are potential flaws in the Dominion Voting Systems’ equipment used in Georgia.“The public deserves to know the context of J. Alex Halderman’s claims and his testimony...

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal cybersecurity agency says a report by an expert who says he’s identified security vulnerabilities in voting machines used by Georgia and other states shouldn’t be made public until it has had time to assess and mitigate potential risks. The report has been under seal since July in federal court in Atlanta, part of a long-running lawsuit challenging Georgia’s voting machines. Its author, J. Alex Halderman, said in sworn declarations filed publicly with the court that he examined the Dominion Voting Systems machines for 12 weeks and identified “multiple severe security flaws” that would allow bad...

It has been two days since the hostage crisis in Texas where a gunman took four hostages at a synagogue. He had demanded the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from a nearby federal prison. The FBI has identified the terrorist as Malik Faisal Akram. Akram, 44, a British subject who hails from Blackburn in the United Kingdom. Akram was shot dead by the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team after the last of the hostages was evacuated from the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue. Federal law enforcement source told CNN that Akram had entered the US on a tourist VISA in...

A new incentive has been announced in an effort to get more children fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in Minnesota. On Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said families who get their 5- to 11-year-old children fully vaccinated in January and February can get a $200 Visa gift card per child. However, in order to be eligible for the gift cards, the first and second doses must be administered between Jan. 1 and Feb. 28. Officials say families are able to receive one gift card for each eligible child who is vaccinated in that time frame.

Australian Immigration Minister Alex Hawke has used his discretionary ministerial power to cancel tennis star Novak Djokovic’s visa on the grounds of health and good order, saying it was in the public interest to do so. “This decision followed orders by the Federal Circuit and Family Court on 10 January 2022, quashing a prior cancellation decision on procedural fairness grounds,” Hawke said in a statement on Jan. 14. "In making this decision, I carefully considered information provided to me by the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Border Force and Mr Djokovic. “The Morrison Government is firmly committed to protecting...

Novak Djokovic had received a medical exemption to compete in the Australian Open without being vaccinated against COVID-19, but that same medical exemption could end up preventing him from entering the country. Djokovic has reportedly been denied entry to Australia due to a visa mixup. According to the Times of London, a member of Djokovic's team applied for the wrong class of visa — one that doesn't apply to people who have gotten a medical exemption — and Djokovic's stuck at the airport without a way to enter the country. VIA THE TIMES But Djokovic is presently unable to proceed...

It did not seem possible for the Steele dossier – the collection of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories funded by the Clinton campaign; hyped by the US media establishment; and tapped by the FBI for surveillance and investigative leads – to get more embarrassing for all of those involved. But the indictment by Special Counsel John Durham of Steele's key source, Igor Danchenko, offers 39 pages of new evidence that Russiagate — after five years of failed innuendo, debunked “bombshells”, and humiliating revelations — has no rock bottom. Danchenko is accused of making false statements to the FBI about his role in...

Longtime field laborers in the Mississippi Delta said in a lawsuit that they were asked to train white guest workers from South Africa before losing their jobs to them. For more than a quarter-century, Richard Strong worked the fertile farmland of the Mississippi Delta, just as his father and his grandfather did, a family lineage of punishing labor and meager earnings that stretched back to his enslaved ancestors brought from Africa. He tilled the soil, fertilized crops and irrigated the fields, nurturing an annual bounty of cotton, soybeans and corn for a prominent farming family. “I’ve been around farming all...

Vulnerabilities in Apple Pay and Visa could enable hackers to bypass an iPhone's Apple Pay lock screen and perform contactless payments, according to research by the University of Birmingham and University of Surrey. Experts in the University of Birmingham's School of Computer Science and the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science found their approach could also be used to bypass the contactless limit allowing transactions of any amount to be performed. Their results will be presented in a paper at the 2022 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. The researchers discovered the vulnerability occurs when Visa cards are set...

he Taliban have called for the resumption of international flights to the Afghan capital Kabul, saying all technical issues at the Hamid Karzai International airport have been resolved, amid some signs of normalcy following the group’s takeover of the country last month. Abdul Qahar Balkhi, Taliban-appointed spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks in a statement on Sunday, expressing hope that proper commercial services would resume shortly. "The airport is fully operational for domestic and international flights," he said, adding that the Taliban interim government “assures all airlines of its full cooperation and expects all airlines and...

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Visa (NYSE: V) today announced a major industry first in bridging the worlds of digital and traditional fiat currencies: the use of USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin backed by the US dollar, to settle a transaction with Visa over Ethereum—one of the most actively used open-source blockchains.1 Visa is piloting the capability with Crypto.com, a Visa partner and one of the world’s largest crypto platforms, and plans to offer the USDC settlement capability to additional partners later this year. “Anchorage’s platform has been purposefully built for institutions like Visa to build new products in crypto. We’ve been with...

China will allow foreigners to enter the country, but it has directed embassies around the world to only issue a visa if the traveler has gotten a COVID-19 vaccine that was made in China.“It’s very much at the sharp end of vaccine diplomacy,” Nicholas Thomas, an associate professor in health security at the City University of Hong Kong, told CNN. “(It’s) essentially saying if you want to visit us, you need to take our vaccine.”There has been no Chinese-made vaccine approved for human use in America, nor is there likely to be one anytime soon. China has created 5 different...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Purpose. One of the fundamental purposes of our Government is to ensure the safety of our citizens. Consistent with the purpose of creating peaceful and prosperous communities, Federal law ensures immigration benefits may be granted only to those individuals who will follow the laws that govern all United States citizens. Accordingly, section 212(a)(3) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3), renders inadmissible aliens who have engaged or who are...

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has slammed Joe Biden's pick to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), arguing that he was caught "selling citizenship" to Chinese elites.Sen. Cotton ripped into Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, for naming Alejandro Mayorkas as his choice to head DHS.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Friday released a letter that he sent to his colleagues in the Senate urging them to oppose the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, saying he “has shown a repeated disregard for the rule of law.” Cruz claims that Mayorkas, the former deputy secretary of DHS who also served as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, committed “a long list of ethical, legal, and policy failures,” during his career, including “abuses of power that provided special government favors to benefit well-connected Democrats, such as securing an EB-5 visa...

Evangelist and church planter Francis Chan revealed that after he planted three churches in Hong Kong, authorities denied his visa, forcing him to leave the country and return to the U.S. According to China Aid, the bestselling author and former California megachurch pastor shared the news in a video sent to friends and fellow pastors on Jan. 5. “Last week, after Hong Kong officials rejected our visas, we (sons-in-law Justin and Peter and I) had to leave the country. We are now back in the U.S. and appealing the decision, however. We want to be in Hong Kong and hopefully,...

Among the hopes: more approvals of H-1B visas, a popular vehicle for staffing IT teams Corporate technology recruiters say rolling back restrictions on immigrant work visas, a move backed by President-elect Joe Biden, will expand the pool of information technology job candidates and help ease a longstanding labor shortage. The restrictions, put in place during the Trump administration, included a clampdown on H-1B visas for foreign workers—a program especially coveted by technology firms, chief information officers and other IT employers. The H-1B visa program provides a limited number of three-year work permits to highly skilled immigrants, typically with graduate-level university...

I received a card in the mail today called an Economic Impact Payment card. It says "Here is your Economic Impact Payment Card enable by Money Network (c). It contains the money you are receiving from the U.S. Department of Treasury under the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020.

A judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s reforms of the H-1B visa worker program that allows Fortune 500 CEOs to sideline many American professionals and new graduates. “Breaking: Judge White, Northern District of California, sets aside both the [Department of Labor] and [Department of Homeland Security] H-1B regulations,” said a tweet by the business groups’ lawyer, Paul Hughes. “These regulations sought to destroy the H-1B program.” “Today’s ruling is great news for Americans, and for the ability of the U.S. to remain the top destination for talented individuals,” said a statement from FWD.us, an advocacy group created by Facebook...