Back to Basics

Mexico’s human rights officials reported on Friday that 84 print and broadcast reporters and commentators have been murdered in Mexico since 2000, with 20 more Mexican journalists missing since 2005.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission reports that there have been about 40 attacks on news offices or equipment since 2005. Sadly, only 12 cases saw the perpetrators tried and convicted, leaving 91 percent of the perpetrators remaining unpunished.

The Mexican commission claimed on Friday that 15 other perpetrators are known to police, but their cases were either dismissed or are still being prosecuted.

Mexico’s Attorney General Marisela Morales Ibáñez was angry over what she believes is President Barack Obama’s harebrained scheme known as Fast & Furious. She is vocal about her suspicion that Obama ordered the secret operation.
Photo credit:
Police and Security News

The commission said most of the attacks occurred in Mexico City, Veracruz, Chiapas, and Chihuahua.

Southwest border violence has reached such a dangerous boiling point that several Mexican and American journalists have forsaken their reporting about the heinous crimes due to their legitimate fear that the drug cartels will retaliate against them and their families, according to public-interest, watchdog group Judicial Watch on Wednesday.

This fear of retaliation by reporters is leading to a situation in which Americans will be kept in the dark about the crisis along the porous and increasingly dangerous Mexican border since the Obama administration is telling Americans that the border with Mexico is becoming more peaceful, according to narco-terrorism expert and drug enforcement official Donald Kubisty.

Upon receiving the latest homicide statistics that revealed over 70,000 Mexicans were killed since 2006, Mexico’s new leader, President Enrique Pena Nieto, announced on Mexican television that a brand new national police agency will be fully deployed by December 2013 and will be comprised of at least 10,000 officers when they kickoff operations. law enforcement operations.

“If the media are too scared to cover the violence and bloodshed on both sides of the southwest border, then who can we rely on for full disclosure. If Border Patrol agents speak to the media — or anyone else for that matter — about the true conditions, they stand a good chance of being harassed at best, or fired at worst by their superiors,” said Kubisty.

“We certainly can’t expect the truth from the government. Remember that the nation’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, insists that the region is ‘as secure as it has ever been.’ This delusional assessment has been repeated by Napolitano over and over again in a seemingly desperate effort to make people believe it,” claims Judicial Watch.

According to Judicial Watch’s Corruption Chronicles, without truthful and accurate information from the media to counter Obama’s and his minion’s version, “the public is likely to swallow the government’s less than accurate assessment.

Originally it was Mexican journalists, who were either victims of drug-cartel violence or frightened, and therefore stopped reporting crime in the region. But now, according to J.W., American journalists located in U.S. border cities allegedly followed suit and now appear to have stopped reporting on drug-related violence, at least from the scenes of the crimes and mass graves.

A National Security History Lesson for Marco Rubio
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio seems well meaning enough. As second-generation conservative Americans, I know we both share a common passion for this great land of opportunity. But when it comes to comprehending the real agenda of the open-borders zealots he’s allied himself with, Rubio doesn’t have a clue.

And his abject ignorance threatens all of us who cherish American sovereignty and exceptionalism.

On Fox News’ “The Sean Hannity Show” Tuesday night, Rubio defended his Gang of Eight “immigration reform” bill and insisted that we could and should have a system in place that vets foreign tourists and short-term visa holders based on their “national security” profiles.

“In essence, we should be able to analyze (whether) these are individuals coming from a part of the world that keeps feeding into the terrorist network,” Rubio earnestly explained. “(W)e should be very careful about who we allow in and take into account every single measure or every single factor that we think could lead to somebody being more likely possibly a member of a terrorist organization or involved in terror.”

Great idea, Rubio! Newsflash: The concept of a national security entry-exit screening database is at least 10 years old. It’s an idea that was sabotaged by the progressive soft-on-security ideologues with whom Rubio has recklessly partnered.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration created NSEERS, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. Administered and championed by Justice Department constitutional lawyer, immigration enforcement expert and now-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, NSEERS stopped at least 330 known foreign criminals and three known terrorists who had attempted to come into the country at certain official ports of entry.

NSEERS required higher scrutiny and common-sense registration requirements for individuals from jihad-friendly countries including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as other at-risk countries. The basic components included a more rigorous application process in light of the shoddy visa questionnaires and undetected overstays of the 9/11 hijackers; 30 extra minutes of interviewing at ports of entry; a digital fingerprint check and in-person registration after they arrived in the interior of the country; and verification of departure once they exited.

The targeted registration of certain foreign nationals already in the country (temporary visa holders including students, tourists and businesspeople) resulted in the apprehension of dozens of illegal alien felons. As I reported at the time, these scumbags included:

–a Tunisian convicted of multiple drug-trafficking offenses, in addition to previous violations of immigration law.

–an Iranian who had been convicted three times of assault with a deadly weapon and had been convicted twice of grand theft in addition to immigration violations.

–an Iranian twice convicted of child molestation.

–two suspected al-Qaida operatives who were caught trying to enter the U.S. after their fingerprints matched ones lifted by our military officials from papers found in Afghanistan caves.

But grievance-mongering identity groups and the American Civil Liberties Union could not stand the idea of an effective national security profiling database. For one thing, a successful program would have laid the groundwork for a broader nationwide entry-exit system affecting all foreign visitors. Congress mandated that system six times over the past 17 years.

I’ve read through the nearly 900-page “immigration reform” bill released by the Senate’s so-called Gang of 8 last week. Anyone can read it here. The question, of course, is whether non-deluded conservatives can read right through the phony promises, false triggers, and open-borders illusions. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly over the past two decades, the federal government, under both GOP and Democrat majorities, has never bothered to fulfill its legislative mandate to create a functioning entry-exit system — something Congress has promised to do six times over the past 17 years. (Grievance groups helped kill even a limited entry-exit registration system under the Bush administration called NSEERS that specifically targeted terror-friendly countries.)

Here’s an idea: Let’s see Washington and its bipartisan Gang of 8 brigade pass the entry-exit system they all say they support as a stand-alone first. Let’s see Washington actually build and operate that entry-exist system as a stand-alone first and make them prove they can keep even a single one of their promises before entertaining 900 more pages of them.

Prove. It.

As for all those illegal alien lobbying groups demanding “justice” and “pathways” and “processes” now, now, now, it’s time for politicians to tell them that their comfort and security are not America’s number one concern. There are 23 million law-abiding Americans out of work. They come before the “11 million” illegal immigrants “in the shadows.” There are 4.6 million legal immigrant applicants to America waiting to get in the right way. They deserve priority over the “11 million” who bypassed the “pathways” and “processes” that already exist.

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, immigration enforcement lawyer, NSEERS expert, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach provided a thorough dissection of the Gang of 8′s enforcement sham. I’m reprinting it in full below. See also Paul Mirengoff at Power Line for a good recap.

Oh, and in case you missed it, according to GOP Sen. Marco Rubio’s staff, if you believe in strict enforcement of immigration laws, you’re just like a slaveholder.

***

Testimony of Kris W. Kobach
Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Hearing on Comprehensive Immigration Reform Legislation
April 22, 2013

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, although I serve as Kansas Secretary of State, I come before you today chiefly in my capacity as former Counsel to United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, and as an attorney representing cities and states that have successfully reduced illegal immigration within their jurisdictions. I also represent the ten ICE agents who are suing Secretary Napolitano for the reason that her directive of June 2012 directly orders the agents to violate federal law. That case is Crane v. Napolitano, No. 3:12-cv-03247-O (N.D. Tex.).

The legislation pending before this committee has been portrayed as a balanced bill that combines an amnesty with significant enforcement measures. That portrayal is completely inaccurate. In the testimony that follows I will offer three significant vulnerabilities created by the amnesty provisions and six reasons why the enforcement components of this bill are illusory.

Three Flaws in the The Bill’s Amnesty Provisions.

(1) The Background Checks Are Insufficient to Prevent Terrorists from Gaining Amnesty.

The background check provisions of the bill in Section 2101(b)(8) contain no requirement that amnesty applicants actually provide government-issued documentation proving who they say they are.

Senator Jeff Sessions appears to be one of the very few members of the US Congress who actually has the interests of the American people in mind when it comes to the issue of illegal aliens and immigration reform.

In keeping with his reputation as a solid “America First” patriot, Sessions has made public a list of 10 questions which he believes must be answered before immigration reform is codified.

Given the nightmare that is currently unfolding with respect to ObamaCare, Sessions’ questions must be taken seriously to avoid another “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” moment brought to the American people by the looney Nancy Pelosi.

Sessions demands answers to the following questions:

1. Is this bill enforcement first or legalization first?
2.What are the concrete metrics used to measure border security?
3. Does the bill complete the border fence and secure all ports of entry?
4. Who gets amnesty and how many?
5. How will the bill impact American workers and wages?
6. Is the guest worker program truly temporary?
7. Does the bill put a stop to sanctuary cities and resume cooperation with local law enforcement?
8. How does the bill guarantee that the Administration will not ignore future laws as it has with the laws already on the books?
9. How does the bill ensure that federal public charge law is enforced and that illegal immigrants do not access the welfare state through the granting of green cards and citizenship?
10. What is the long-term cost of the bill?
The details behind each question are provided at the reference. The Obama Administration and the Democrat Party must be forced to provide comprehensive, acceptable answers to these questions before any bill is actually written.

An unknown bomb maker on Thursday allegedly targeted a controversial law enforcement commander who is vocal in his opposition to President Barack Obama’s immigration policies and whose department investigated claims that Obama’s birth record and social security number are forgeries.

A package addressed to Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio containing an improvised explosive device (IED) was intercepted by law enforcement in Flagstaff, Ariz., on Thursday.

The box was addressed to Arpaio at his Phoenix headquarters, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office officials said in a statement obtained by Fox News.

Bomb technicians in Flagstaff, a city in Northern Arizona, x-rayed the package and confirmed that it contained an IED. A fully-equipped bomb squad was immediately deployed to the location and neutralized what was described as a deadly and destructive bomb.

State police, Flagstaff cops and Maricopa County detectives are conducting an investigation which so far has not identified any suspects.

“Sheriff Arpaio’s capture and jailing of illegal aliens has made him a target of Mexican gangs, immigration activists and even Democratic politicians, while the people he serves love him and are loyal to him and his deputies,” said a former NYPD police detective, Iris Aquino.

Within the last few weeks, Arpaio’s deputies have been assaulted by human smugglers (“coyotes”) leading the man known as America’s toughest sheriff to take action.

“Human smuggling is a violent enterprise that is now involving assaults on my officers,” said Sheriff Joe Arpaio. “My office has arrested thousands of human smugglers over the past several years where very seldom were my deputies assaulted during those arrests. In recent times, these human smugglers are becoming more aggressive and attempting to escape and assaulting my deputies. I will ensure my deputy sheriffs are prepared to take appropriate action.”

Foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States illegally have been known to avoid Border Patrol screening procedures by surreptitiously crossing into areas between these ports of entry, including Indian reservations, many of which have been vulnerable to illicit cross-border threat activity, such as drug smuggling, according to the Department of Homeland Security officials in a report released on Friday.

The Government Accountability Office was requested by U.S. lawmakers to investigate DHS’s efforts to coordinate border security activities on Indian reservations.

In complying with Congress’ request, GAO researchers examined DHS’s efforts to coordinate with tribal governments to address border security threats and vulnerabilities on Indian reservations. GAO investigators reported that they interviewed DHS officials at headquarters and conducted interviews with eight tribes, selected based on factors such as proximity to the border, and the corresponding DHS field offices that have a role in border security for these Indian reservations.

While GAO cannot generalize its results from these interviews to all Indian reservations and field offices along the border, they provide examples of border security coordination issues.

On April 5, the GAO released a public version of what officials termed “a sensitive report” that GAO issued. Information that DHS, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of the Interior (DOI) deemed sensitive was redacted, according to GAO officials.

According to the redacted report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is coordinating in a variety of ways with Indian tribes, “such as through joint operations and shared facilities and Operation Stonegarden –a DHS grant program intended to enhance coordination among local, tribal, territorial, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in securing United States borders.

However, the U.S. Border Patrol and the Indian tribes face coordination challenges. For example, officials from five tribes reported information-sharing problems with Border Patrol agents, such as not receiving notification of federal activity on their lands. But in response, Border Patrol officials reported challenges “navigating tribal rules and decisions.”

The U.S. Border Patrol and DHS have existing agreements with some, but not all, tribes to address specific border security issues, such as for the establishment of a law enforcement center on tribal lands. These agreements could serve as models for developing additional agreements between the Border Patrol and other tribes on their specific border security coordination challenges, the report suggests.

GAO researchers suggested that written government-to-government agreements could assist Border Patrol and tribal officials with enhancing their coordination, consistent with practices for sustaining effective coordination. DHS established an office to coordinate their Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement tribal outreach efforts, which has taken actions such as monthly teleconferences with DHS tribal liaisons to discuss tribal issues and programs, but does not have a mechanism for monitoring and overseeing outreach efforts, consistent with internal control standards.

GAO officials suggested that such monitoring should be performed continually; ingrained in the agency’s operations; and clearly documented in directives, policies, or manuals to help ensure operations are carried out as intended.

Implementing an oversight mechanism could help enhance DHS’s department-wide awareness of and accountability for border security coordination efforts with the tribes while identifying those areas that work well and any needing improvement, the report to Congress recommended.

While President Barack Obama and the upper-echelon members of the U.S. Homeland Security Department continue to claim that the U.S.-Mexico border is as “secure as it’s ever been,” this week the DHS’ Customs and Border Protection directorate cut about 4,000 agents from its force due to budget cuts — 20 percent of its total manpower — according to the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing rank-and-file agents and Federal News Radio on Friday.

The cuts, a part of the overall Obama sequestration plan, have creating a perplexing problem for CBP commanders who must work harder with fewer resources.One option included putting agents on furlough two days a month — but agency administrators instead opted to eliminate overtime, according to Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council.

According to law enforcement officials, such as Detective Lt. Stephen Rodgers, this latest development leaves the U.S. and the American people more vulnerable to terrorists, narco-terrorists, crime gangs and other threats.

In the past, officials from the Government Accountability Office testified before members of the U,S. Congress on at least three separate occasions in order to describe security vulnerabilities that terrorists could exploit to enter the country. Yet, even with reports of border security deficiencies, President Barack Obama cut the work hours of Border Patrol agents.

According to a report obtained by the Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, the GAO’s first two testimonies focused on covert testing at ports of entry — the air, sea, and land locations where international travelers can legally enter the United States.

In its third testimony, the GAO focused on limited security assessments of unmanned and unmonitored border areas between land ports of entry.

GAO officials were asked to summarize the results of covert testing and assessment work for these three testimonies. This report discusses the results of testing at land, sea, and air ports of entry; however, the majority of GAO’s work was focused on land ports of entry. The unmanned and unmonitored border areas GAO assessed were defined as locations where the government does not maintain a manned presence 24 hours per day or where there was no apparent monitoring equipment in place.

“The government has conducted numerous vulnerability tests and they all appear to highlight the fact that our borders are porous not only to illegal aliens but also to terrorists, weapons of mass destruction and other contraband. Maybe Secretary [Janet] Napolitano [of the Homeland Security Department] should worry more about that than about guns being smuggled into Mexico,” said political strategist Mike Baker.

GAO investigators identified numerous border security vulnerabilities, both at ports of entry and at unmanned and unmonitored land border locations between the ports of entry. In testing ports of entry, undercover investigators carried counterfeit drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, employee identification cards, and other documents, presented themselves at ports of entry and sought admittance to the United States dozens of times.

They arrived in rental cars, on foot, by boat, and by airplane. They attempted to enter four states on the northern border (Washington, New York, Michigan, and Idaho), three states on the southern border (California, Arizona, and Texas), and two other states requiring international air travel (Florida and Virginia).

According to progressive thought, as articulated by President Obama, High Priest of Liberal Logic, the fix to the illegal aliens mess is really quite elementary: Grant all 12 million or so amnesty.

By doing just that, there would no longer be any illegal aliens to deal with, at least according to the best and brightest liberal minds.

Technically speaking, the left is right: Make that which is currently illegal, legal, and you have fixed the problem.

At least until the next wave of 12 million heads north with the glory of amnesty on their minds!

Another amnesty bail out would include an added bonus for progressives: Democrat party rolls would be replenished with millions of grateful voters for decades.

Mind you, that politics has absolutely nothing to do with the universal support for amnesty among Democrat politicians.

Wink, wink!

However, does anyone remember that America dabbled in amnesty in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)?

President Reagan signed IRCA into law based on the promise that it would solve the illegal immigration problem, once and for all.

The IRCA granted amnesty to 3-4 million illegal aliens.

Significantly, it also mandated that the government take actions against employers who hire illegal aliens, and against illegal aliens themselves.

The later is called deportation, an old English term hardly ever used in modern America, except to identify bigoted racists, tea party nut balls, and right-wing terrorists.

Unfortunately, instead of ending illegal migration as intended, the amnesty set forth in IRCA has attracted at least an additional 12 million illegal aliens, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars a year to taxpayers.

Given the liberal obsession with trillion dollar solutions these days, hundreds of billions seems but a mere pittance, a small price to pay for the allegiance of millions of future Democrats.

Nonetheless, it is obvious that the amnesty of 1986 has been more of a carrot than a stick to scores of millions of people living south of our borders.

The tragic fact is that the federal government, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, has blatantly refused to enforce those provisions of IRCA designed to prevent and reverse illegal immigration.

This political malpractice has been the norm, even during time of war!

Remember 9/11? That grim day in American history should have caused our government to seal off the borders permanently.

Instead, government has done nothing to control our borders even as Mexico continues to decline into a failed state of violence where drug cartels appear smarter and stronger than Felipe Calderon and his corrupt Mexican government.

Adding to our misery is this awful truth: America is now controlled by a president who recently CUT the border security budget and by a liberal Secretary of Homeland Security who regards illegal aliens as newly arrived refugees!

Those who really care about America need to remember those facts when considering yet another amnesty bail out!

John Lillpop
San Jose, California

Southwest border violence has reached such a dangerous boiling point that both Mexican and American journalists forsaken their reporting about the heinous crimes due to their legitimate fear that the drug cartels will retaliate against them and their families, according to a public-interest, watchdog group on Wednesday.

This fear of retaliation by reporters is leading to a situation in which Americans will be kept in the dark about the crisis along the porous and increasingly dangerous Mexican border since the Obama administration is telling Americans the border with Mexico is becoming more peaceful, according to narco-terrorism expert and drug enforcement official Donald Kubisty.

Upon receiving the latest homicide statistics that revealed over 70,000 Mexicans were killed since 2006, Mexico’s new leader, President Enrique Pena Nieto, announced on Mexican television that a brand new national police agency will be fully deployed by December 2013 and will be comprised of at least 10,000 officers when they kickoff law enforcement operations.

“If the media are too scared to cover the violence and bloodshed on both sides of the southwest border, then who can we rely on for full disclosure. If Border Patrol agents speak to the media — or anyone else for that matter — about the true conditions, they stand a good chance of being harassed at best, or fired at worst by their superiors,” said Kubisty.

“We certainly can’t expect the truth from the government. Remember that the nation’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, insists that the region is ‘as secure as it has ever been.’ This delusional assessment has been repeated by Napolitano over and over again in a seemingly desperate effort to make people believe it,” claims Judicial Watch.

According to Judicial Watch’s Corruption Chronicles, without truthful and accurate information from the media to counter Obama’s and his minion’s version, “the public is likely to swallow the government’s less than accurate assessment.

Originally it was Mexican journalists, who were either victims of drug-cartel violence or frightened, and therefore stopped reporting crime in the region. But now, according to J.W., American journalists located in U.S. border cities allegedly followed suit and now appear to have stopped reporting on drug-related violence, at least from the scenes of the crimes and mass graves.

“Mexican journalists, because of fear for their own lives and the safety of their families, are increasingly reluctant to cover drug cartels’ violence and mayhem,” according to Lee Maril, the director of the Center for Diversity and Inequality Research (CDIR), a university group that studies human diversity and social inequality. Maril recently published a piece on the topic in a Homeland Security news site.

“What has occurred in recent months is that American reporters located in American border cities also have stopped reporting on drug-related violence across the border for the same reasons as their Mexican counterparts,” Maril noted.

That means no one really knows the true magnitude of the violence, though it’s apparent that the U.S. government is downplaying it. “It would seem that drug violence only stops at the Mexican border in the imaginations of Washington politicians,” Maril says, offering a recent example in Reynosa, the twin border city of McAllen in south Texas.

The old paradigm that a country has the right to decide who enters it has been decisively overturned in Europe, it’s under siege in such first world countries as America, Canada, Australia and Israel by the creed that says it’s the human rights obligation of every nation to accept every refugee.

Given a chance a sizable portion of the third world would move to the first, a minority because of oppression and a majority because the opportunities and freebies are much better there. Even low ranked first world nations still find themselves swamped with refugees looking to move in.

International law does not assign any priority to a nation’s citizens over any person who happens to stray across the border. At the ground level that means the end of borders and the end of citizenship which is why immigration isn’t just a touchy issue in Arizona, it’s a touchy issue in Sydney, Tel Aviv and Birmingham. You can hardly open a newspaper of the liberal persuasion without being treated to another group of refugees in some troubled part of the world walled up behind fences and trying to get over to London, Sydney or New York.

This sort of thing can’t be called immigration anymore, it’s a straightforward migration and it has no apparent limits. However many you take in, there will be more waiting and always burdening you with an unsolvable crisis.

One approach is to try and stabilize whatever crisis they are supposedly escaping from. Too many Libyans running away to Italy? Just bomb their dictator and they’ll go home again. At least that’s the theory, it doesn’t work too well in practice. For one thing Libya is more dangerous and unstable than it was under Gaddafi. Stabilizing it would require an Iraq level investment of money and manpower, and Iraq isn’t stable either. And London is still full of Iraqi refugees dating back to the 1980′s.

The disparities that make migration aren’t fixable, but nor is mass migration a viable option. There’s a reason that the refugees are running away and they are often part of the problem. Every nation is troubled in its own way and mass migration imports those troubles. It’s why beheadings have come north of the border and the Jihad has set up shop in countless Western cities.

The melting pot myth was that people leave their identities behind to join in a mass identity. That worked only marginally back in the day, it doesn’t work at all today when the refugees are immersed in their Little Mogadishus, which have popped up in a frightening amount of American cities foretelling the day when those cities will become as violent and broken as the original Mogadishu.

In place of the melting pot is the No Go Zone, which is the inverse of integration, it sets up tribal encampments in major cities which run on the laws of the tribe. That sort of thing has always been around in one form or another and it is survivable in limited numbers so long as those zones don’t also become factories of violence. That’s the difference between Amish Country and a Muslim banlieue, it’s also the difference between separatism and supremacism.