Back to Basics

Continuing her full-court press for her boss’ immigration agenda — including the “gang of eight” immigration bill — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Friday visited New York City where she held a meeting with selected members of businesses and community groups in order to sell the proposed immigration reform, which the Obama administration is anxious to pass as part of President Barack Obama’s legacy, according to a former NYPD detective.

Retired detective and now a security supervisor Iris Aquino said that attendees believed the meeting with Napolitano would encourage constructive discussion. “Unfortunately, all those attending the highly-anticipated get together received a mere rehash of the talking points so often heard from Democrat and Republican supporters of amnesty,” said Aquino, a Hispanic New Yorker.

“Over the past few months, I have heard from many business leaders about how critical immigration is to businesses. We all recognize our current immigration system is broken — it isn’t working for businesses, workers, or our economy — and we all agree that it is time to fix it,” said Secretary Napolitano.

“We need a 21st century immigration system — one that helps businesses continue to grow our economy,” she added.

“I’m shocked…flabbergasted that not one attendee jumped up and reminded Napolitano about the already high number of unemployed American citizens,” said political strategist Mike Baker.

“The unemployment rate for legal American residents is hovering at about 7.6 percent in Obama’s fifth year as president. And he wants to have citizens compete with cheap labor for jobs? It’s a sham,” said an angry union construction worker, Dom Pagona, who claims illegal aliens have caused widespread unemployment in the construction industry.

During Napolitano’s meeting with leaders from the Big Apple’s businesses, the DHS chief discussed “the need for critical changes to the legal immigration in order to help business grow our economy by providing the skilled workers this country needs.”

Then Secretary Napolitano highlighted the Obama Administration’s “dedication of historic levels” of human and technological resources devoted to securing the Southwest border.

She told the participants that challenges will always remain, but that “every metric used to measure border security shows significant progress and improved quality of life in border communities.”

Commonsense immigration reform will build on this historic progress, enhancing border security, facilitating lawful trade and travel, reuniting families and promoting economic growth, she claimed.

However, the National Border Patrol Council has noted that President Obama’s 2014 budget request, which was submitted to Congress in April, proposes to cut Border Patrol agents’ overtime by $46 million from the current 2013 allocation. www.nbpc.net/index.php

“This proposal would guarantee that we would never again see [administratively uncontrollable overtime] AUO at the 25% level despite the fact that proper border security mandates this level of overtime,” said the NBPC Local 2544 officials.

The Border Patrol union also stated:

“When the President’s proposal is combined with the Budget Control Act of 2011 (“Sequestration”), the FY14 overtime cuts would jump – in the best case scenario – from $46 million to $65 million or – in the worst case scenario – to $90 million. A $65 million cut could decrease AUO to 15%, which would be disastrous on our personal family budgets and border security.

Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano has repeatedly advised the US Congress and the American people that the US-Mexico border is “more secure now than ever.” Her operating philosophy has been that illegal aliens are not criminal invaders, but rather are “newly arrived refugees.”

Napolitano has worked hand-in-hand with Barack Obama to subvert the law by refusing to deport illegal aliens as part of a concocted deferment which rewards illegal aliens for being criminals.

Bottom line: Napolitano is, and has been, in charge of recruitment for the Democrat Party and, as such, has never taken enforcement of the border and law seriously.

The truth about border security and Napolitano’s big lie was unwittingly exposed recently by Senator Charles Schumer of New York who opposed an Amendment to the Senate Immigration Bill that would make border security a priority, before legalization. The senator made the argument that border security could take “years and years” to fully implement!

Excuse me, Senator. Have you not heard Napolitano’s claim that the border IS secure and has never been more so?

As reported, Schumer said the following:

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the lead Democratic sponsor of the Senate immigration bill, warned it could take “years and years and years” to fully secure the border and implement reforms that would put the estimated 11 immigrants in the country illegally on a path to citizenship.

Schumer’s comments came as the Senate voted Thursday morning — 57 to 43 — to defeat an amendment sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to prohibit immigrants from receiving provisional immigrant status until the secretary of Homeland Security has maintained effective control of the borders for six months.

“It says that the 11 million people living in the shadows cannot even get RPI [Registered Provisional Immigrant] status, the provisional status by which they can work and travel, until the secretary of Homeland security says the border is fully secure,” Schumer said of the amendment. “Now, we all know that that will take years and years and years.”

Schumer noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee defeated Grassley’s proposal during a markup and that Republican members of the Gang of Eight — Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) — voted against it.

Schumer said the border would eventually be made secure but that it will take years and billions of dollars to build fences, watch towers and deploy drones and sensors.

He argued that it would be unreasonable to delay for years provisional legal status for millions of people.

“So what are we telling those 11 million? If you hide successfully from the police, then maybe five years from now you can stay here and get the right to work and the right to travel?”

Why not tell the invading illegals that America operates in accordance with rule of law and that being in America illegally is—-well, illegal?

Tell them that any shadows they encounter are of their own making, and can be avoided by heading south past the US border?

Why in the hell is Schumer and his lunatic leftist comrades so damned concerned about illegal aliens and the inconvenience of shadows when the safety of American citizens is at peril?

Chuck Schumer has unwittingly made a perfect case for dumping the amnesty bill in the dumpster until border security is made the top priority.

When President Barack Obama began stumping for his amnesty for illegal aliens and the so-called “gang of eight” reform bill on Tuesday, his Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano prepared the way with a telephone conference with sheriffs and police chiefs serving near the U.S.-Mexican border on Monday, according to officials with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) directorate.

But the majority of the time spent discussing her agenda items made no mention of security deficiencies, according to a participant.

Napolitano stated the purpose of the conference call was to personally discuss the need for commonsense reform to strengthen border security. But many believe her words to be empty since her department ended the federal program called 287G in last July. The program allowed local law enforcement agencies to take on the role of federal immigration officers, to demand people prove their citizenship status and start deportation proceedings.

“Instead of discussing the 287G program, Napolitano gave law enforcement executive talking points about the Obama administration’s so-called ‘historic gains’ achieved over the past four years. It was hogwash, plain and simple,” said Undersheriff Joseph L., who did not want his department named.

Napolitano boasted that “The administration has made increasing border security a clear priority, and the most important thing we can do to build on this historic progress is to pass commonsense immigration reform,” said Secretary Napolitano.

“Under this administration, we’ve put more boots on the border than any time in history, and deployed historic levels of technology. There is more we can do, and the bill under discussion in the Senate would invest billions of additional dollars into this already unprecedented effort, and assist in our efforts to focus enforcement resources on individuals who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety and other enforcement priorities,” she claims.

However, Napolitano failed to discuss the postponement of building a fence or of her canceling a contract for security devices that failed to function after paying $1 billion dollars, according to the Government Accountability Office.

According to an April 3 Examiner.com news story by Kimberly Dvorak, the cameras purchased for use on the U.S.-Mexican border were up-for-sale on Ebay.

“Secretary Napolitano spent most of the time addressing the nation’s broken immigration system. But she then said she wished to sustain the progress DHS, and its state and local partners, have made in the past four years,” said Undersheriff Joseph L.

“Secretary Napolitano claims the bill being debated in the Senate will strengthen security at our borders by investing in additional manpower, infrastructure, aviation assets, and it funds the procurement of proven, effective surveillance technology along the Southwest border. She must have thought she was speaking to a group of police academy recruits instead of professional cops, which she it wasn’t,” stated a former detective squad commander, Louis Wallner.

In January, President Obama announced his “key principles for commonsense immigration reform” that would invest in the ports of entry, and help officers and agents focus on public safety threats; make it harder for transnational criminal organizations to operate, while encouraging immigrants to pursue a pathway to earned citizenship; hold employers accountable and strengthen the integrity of the immigration system overall.

On the same day that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced that she will travel to San Francisco and Los Angeles, Calif., on Friday to meet with technology and business leaders to discuss the need for commonsense immigration reform, a report was released on Thursday that revealed hundreds of criminal aliens were surreptitiously released from detention.

According to officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), hundreds of illegal aliens with criminal records for offenses committed in the U.S. were secretly released earlier this year with the rationale that the Obama DHS is preparing to cut ICE’s budget, according to ICE data released on Thursday in the midst of three scandals that were “sucking up the oxygen” in most newsrooms.

The ICE data reveals that Secretary Napolitano’s claim that the releases involved detainees who committed non-violent crimes is just not accurate, said former NYPD detective Manuel Ortega-Sanchez.

According to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ICE released the figures to him only after officials there were threatened with subpoenas and other legal action.

According to ICE, 2,226 detainees were released in Februrary and more than 620 of them had criminal convictions.

A statement from Sen. McCain’s and Sen. Carl Levin, D-MI, said that at lease 32 of illegal aliens released had committed multiple felonies. McCain reported that ICE agents captured 24 of those released after realizing the severity of their criminal offenses.

At the time, Homeland Security Department officials said the decision was made in order to stay within budget. Those detainees released were still said to face deportation and be under supervision. But administration officials downplayed the threat they might pose after leaving the local immigration jails.

In late February, Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney made a statement that turns out to be untrue: “As ICE made clear, the agency released these low-risk, non-criminal detainees under a less expensive form of monitoring to ensure detention levels stayed within ICE’s overall budget.” [Emphasis added]

“Carney has always been truth-challenged in his capacity as President Obama’s mouthpiece. The man should be ashamed of himself,” said Det. Ortega-Sanchez.

The offenses committed by the released criminal aliens includes driving under the influence, menacing, and vandalism of private property. Others were convicted of illegal possess of a firearm, possession of drugs with the intent to sell, burglary, robbery and grand larceny.

The possible involvement of a Saudi in the Boston terror attacks is being curiously ignored or downplayed by most of the mainstream media. Steve Emerson, Glenn Beck, and others have pressed for answers, however. Beck has issued a full report with updates on the controversy.

When Rep. Jeff Duncan, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, questioned Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano on the matter, she claimed his questions were “not worthy of an answer” and that much of the reporting has been “wrong.” She later said the Saudi was on a watch list but had no involvement.

Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir issued a statement condemning the bombings in Boston and offering his condolences to the families of the victims.

On Twitter, according to one report from Ahmed Al Omran, a Saudi blogger and journalist, “many Saudis expressed their fear that one of their countrymen could be involved in the bombings. According to the Saudi cultural attaché in the US, there are more than 1,000 Saudi students going to school in Boston.” Al Omran graduated with a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

The reason for the sensitivity may be that the Obama Administration has been working with Saudi Arabia in “counterterrorism,” and that the country has served as a base for Obama’s drone attacks on al-Qaeda leaders he wants eliminated. This fact was covered up by our major newspapers, including The Washington Post and New York Times, for over a year.

The Post finally blew the whistle on its own cover-up, acknowledging that “an informal arrangement among several news organizations” had been in existence to protect the Saudi role in the drone attacks.

The paper said that it “had refrained from disclosing the location at the request of the administration, which cited concern that exposing the facility would undermine operations against an al-Qaeda affiliate regarded as the network’s most potent threat to the United States, as well as potentially damage counterterrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.”

Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, an American citizen, was said to be the first target of a Saudi-based American drone strike. His son, also an American citizen, was later killed in a drone attack.

The Saudis claim they are cooperating with the U.S. They say that in October 2010, Saudi intelligence officials provided key information to American officials that foiled an attempted terrorist plot involving bombs heading to the United States that originated in Yemen.

But the Saudi role in the drone attacks gives the Saudi regime leverage over the Obama Administration. It might come in handy if Saudis were implicated and detained in terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Saudis and their U.S. allies, especially in the oil business, are heavy hitters in Washington, D.C.

Last October we reported on the Arab-US Policymakers Conference, or AUSPC, sponsored by various American Big Oil companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and U.S. corporations such as Boeing. The government of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states were also major sponsors.

On April 20, just five days after the Boston bombings, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel left Washington for the Middle East where, among other things, he was going to discuss a $10 billion package of arms to Saudi Arabia.

If you should suddenly cease to find my commentaries, I will either have passed away or have been detained by agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or the Defense Department and taken to an undisclosed location for the crime of having been an “extremist” and a danger to the nation.

The April 2009 nine-page DHS report was titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” It defined extremism “as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.”

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.

Dumb and Dangerous: America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2013

It’s business as usual in the post-9/11 world. Your federal government is back to pandering to wealthy travelers from Saudi Arabia. In the eyes of our massive homeland security apparatus, the comfort of Saudis is a higher priority than the safety of American citizens.

And thanks to reckless, feckless bureaucrats who fear being labeled “racists,” “xenophobes” and “Islamophobes,” political correctness remains the handmaiden of terror.

According to a new report released this week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security plans to bestow “trusted traveler” status to travelers from Saudi Arabia. Yes, the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers will soon enjoy the exclusive privilege of new entry shortcuts into the U.S.

Fox News points out: “Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program: Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. According to the IPT, some officials are questioning why Saudi Arabia gets to reap the benefits of the program, when key U.S. allies like Germany and France are not enrolled.”

Saudi suck-up Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, hailed “the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and pledged to work with the government to facilitate “legitimate trade and travel.”

This foolish move is astonishing but not unprecedented. As I noted in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had created its own fast-pass system for Saudi elites called “Visa Express.” Thanks to this GOP idiocy, three of the 9/11 hijackers skipped the usual consular interview process and bypassed long lines in the hot Saudi sun.

Throughout the jihadist-coddling Saudi kingdom, applicants could simply file their visa paperwork through travel agencies and courier companies for a small fee — without having to appear in person or submit to extensive background checks. The U.S. embassy in Riyadh bragged before 9/11: “Applicants will no longer have to take time off from work, no longer have to wait in long lines under the hot sun and in crowded waiting rooms, and no longer be limited by any time constraints.”

Investigative reporter Joel Mowbray obtained the shocking, shoddy applications filed by the hijackers — whose omissions about where, when and what they planned to do when they arrived in the U.S. should have raised blood-red flags. But after the Saudi-dominated 9/11 jihad crew murdered nearly 3,000 innocent men, women and children on our soil, Bush administration officials bent over backward to assure touchy Saudis that no changes would be made “in determining visa eligibility as a result of the (9/11) attacks.” Visa Express was expanded.

Moreover, State Department employees were banned from communicating with foreign governments about their citizens’ visa applications, making it virtually impossible to verify vital information. The Bush State Department official in charge of implementing the “Visa Express” program that helped enable 9/11 hijackers and their colleagues was not punished.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appears to be changing her story when she claimed on Monday that the release of 2,000 illegal aliens released from detention facilities is a normal process and has nothing to do with sequestration or the budget.

What started out as an allegation by Judicial Watch, a public-interest NGO (non-governmental organization), has now been confirmed: thousands of illegal aliens awaiting deportation were released from federal detention centers in recent weeks. However, President Barack Obama’s White House staff denied any involvement in the policy when reporters questioned officials throughout the weekend.

But on Friday, Napolitano, whose agency oversaw the move, claimed the decision to release illegal immigrants was made in the field and without her knowledge.

“We are constantly … moving people in and out of detention,” she said, according to Fox News Channel.

The possible release of illegal aliens as a result of the sequestration budget cuts was announced earlier this week, but a report by the Law Enforcement Examiner alleged that the release policy had already gone into effect. Citing federal documents, the Homeland Security Department claims more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation have been released from immigration detention centers and another 3,000 people will be released by the end of March.

“The newly disclosed figures are significantly higher than what the Obama administration acknowledged this week as a few hundred who were released without the White House’s direct knowledge. And on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agency oversaw the move, said the decision to release illegal immigrants was made in the field, and without her knowledge,” according to a Fox News report on Friday.

A number of illegal aliens were surreptitiously freed from federal immigration detention facilities in Texas, Florida and Louisiana, Judicial Watch reported Tuesday, pointing to a newspaper story that quotes advocates reporting illegals being released.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials confirmed the low-key release program, but refused to say how many illegal aliens were released.

Judicial Watch quotes an illegal alien who had been locked up for a violation. Manuel Perez, issued a statement after being released from a detention facility in Texas this week: “Lots of us are getting out who were brought in for driving without a license or other small things,” Perez wrote. “I hope more of us are able to get out soon.”

This latest de facto “get out of jail free card” is part of the president’s campaign to convince the nation that impeding budget cuts will harm national security, specifically border protection and the enforcement of federal immigration laws, according to Judicial Watch’s blog.

“Ironically, releasing incarcerated illegal immigrants into the general population can certainly threaten the security of the communities where they are freed,” states the JW blog.

However, according to economist Jorge Estaban-Cruz, an associate professor at SCI Technical College, “The President is being deceptive on all fronts. The so-called sequestration is a two-percent cut of any additional money added to the budget. In other words, instead of increasing spending by 20 percent, we’ll only increase spending by 18 percent.

Post-sequester TSA: You’re gonna like the way we look

*****Timing is everything:

The impending sequester did not prevent the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from acting in late February to seal a $50-million deal to purchase new uniforms for its agents — uniforms that will be partly manufactured in Mexico.

Soon after this new investment in TSA uniforms, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned Americans that the lines are already lengthening at airports due to the sequester.
[...]
On Feb. 27, the agency announced that on Feb. 22 it had awarded a one-year contract to VF Imagewear, Inc., which owns the Lee brand and Wrangler Hero, to provide the uniforms. “This contract will address the requirements of the TSA, Office of Security Operations, TSA Uniform Program,” the award states.

The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA agent over the course of the year.
[...]
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the TSA is required to procure uniforms made in the United States. However, uniform products made in Mexico, Canada or Chile must also be considered due to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.S.-Chilean Free Trade Agreement.

“TSA’s contract with VF Imagewear for TSO uniforms, which has some manufacturing facilities in Mexico, complies with the law,” the TSA said.

Full story here.

J-Nap must have figured that if air travelers will be increasingly delayed as she has repeatedly warned (which is not the case so far), their moods can be enhanced if the person patting them down is wearing a snappy new blue uniform that also plays La Cucaracha on Cinco de Mayo.

And with all of President Obama’s promises to do away with no-bid contracts in mind, there’s this:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) intends to contract using other than full and open competition for the acquisition of TSA uniform items, inclusive of an online ordering system, for a period of one year with a one year optional transition period pending award of the mandatory DHS-wide uniform contract, which is currently being competed by the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Accordingly, the TSA intends to award a contract to VF Imagewear Inc.

In other “budget cuts” news, federal agencies posted over 400 job openings on the day the sequester kicked in, including three for “insect production workers.”

Update: TSA uniform perks more expensive than the Marine Corps.

(h/t Respublica and Kristina)