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OFIR invites you to pop in regularly and find out what's new, what's pressing and needing action and what other concerned citizens are doing in the fight to stop illegal immigration.
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The Anti-Immigration Activist Who Set The Stage For Donald Trump
Maria Espinoza’s Remembrance Project pioneered the political strategy of using the stories of families of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants to argue for restrictions on immigration.
BuzzFeed News Reporter - posted on Nov. 17, 2015
Robin Hvidston held up an X-ray of a human skull pierced by a metal rod, clear across the eye sockets from temple to temple. Outraged gasps escaped from the small crowd.
“Please take note of this,” Hvidston said. “This picture was taken one day before graduation. One day. This is what happened to him.” She was reading a statement prepared for the occasion by Kathy Woods, mother of Steven Woods, the high school student whose skull was pictured in the X-ray. Steve was killed in 1993 on an Orange County beach after an altercation with another group of teenagers — as he and his friends tried to drive away, the other group pelted their cars with rocks, bottles, wood blocks, and a paint roller that crashed through Woods’ window and speared him through the head.
Kathy Woods learned later that several of the youths behind the attack were living illegally in the United States. “I stridently believed then, and I do to this day, that if the federal government would do their job as they’re mandated to do, and defend our borders, and keep American citizens safe, Steve — along with many, many other victims — would be alive today.”
Maria Espinoza speaks at a news conference hosted by the Tea Party Patriots to oppose the Senate immigration reform bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Jacquelyn Martin / AP
Off to the side, leaning against a wall and listening, stood Maria Espinoza, founder and director of the Remembrance Project, and the person who arranged this late October press conference in Washington, D.C. For six years, Espinoza has been convening testimonies from the family members of people killed by illegal aliens — as they’re referred to in the law and, when they’re feeling polite, by most of the people in this room (other options included “invaders” and “illegals”).
Espinoza is a rising star in a constellation of activists belonging to the once marginalized anti-immigration right. Nativist sentiments have long existed on both the right and the left, based on the perception that undocumented immigrants harm American workers. But the rise of Donald Trump turned a spotlight on ideas that were once confined to the hardline fringe, particularly the conviction that immigrants are violent criminals. And Espinoza, whose group has worked directly with the Trump campaign, is a pioneer in a particularly effective form of advocacy based on that very premise: using the gut-wrenching stories of those whose family members have been killed by undocumented immigrants to push for more restrictions on immigration.
Espinoza is a rising star in a constellation of activists belonging to the once marginalized anti-immigration right.
Although there is no conclusive data on the number of crimes committed by immigrants in the U.S., decades of research in various fields have consistently found that immigrants are less prone to crime than the native-born. But data is often less compelling than the harrowing personal stories Espinoza brings to bear.
“No one is immune to the illegal who drives wildly drunk, or the wanna-be gang-banger who needs to machete innocent citizens to gain entry and respect into the Latino or other gangs,” Espinoza wrote in 2012, in a sort of mission statement published by The Social Contract, a quarterly journal founded by John Tanton, seen as the godfather of the modern anti-immigration movement. “We have uncovered the fact that Americans are under assault.”
After the press conference in Washington, I followed Espinoza and her group to the White House, where they intended to find a spot to camp out with their posters. She was accompanied by her husband, Tim Lyng, who co-founded the Remembrance Project and works as a civil engineer. Espinoza was loath to answer questions about herself. “I want you to talk about them,” she said, referring to the five families the Remembrance Project had flown in from around the country earlier that week. “I’m boring!”
Nevertheless, Espinoza shared that her father immigrated to Texas from Mexico in the 1950s, and that he “did it the right way.”
The Remembrance Project
“He never looked back,” she said. “I never saw a Mexican flag anywhere — not in our home, you know? It was just America and the Bible.” Espinoza is 53, with sharp features and a practiced air of solemnity. The seed of her activist career, she said, was planted some 20 years ago in Houston, when she was working as a paralegal, divorced and raising her daughter alone. “I saw things taking place in the country that I just felt weren’t right,” she said. “I realized that people who weren’t working as hard were having a better life than I was.” She recalled how a relative, a World War II vet, had his monthly pension cut from $240 a month to $200 — “and yet there were people illegally in the country who got everything free.”
“And sadly, shamefully, I never did anything about it,” she said. “For years.”
In 2006, a Houston police officer named Rodney Johnson was shot and killed by Juan Jose Quintero, an immigrant from Mexico with a rap sheet that included a charge of indecency with a 12-year-old girl, for which he had been deported seven years prior. While sitting handcuffed in the back of a squad car, using a pistol the officer had missed in a pat-down, Quintero shot Johnson seven times.
In the ensuing years, conservative media outlets would point to Johnson’s murder as the first in a rash of killings: Four law enforcement officers in Houston died after him in shootings or car accidents involving undocumented immigrants. Espinoza told BuzzFeed News that these deaths are what finally spurred her to found the Remembrance Project in 2009. She made a full-time occupation out of tracking down crime victims, offering to advocate on their behalf, attending murder trials to show them her support, and eventually bringing them along on her travels.
This is how Espinoza amassed the network of grieving families that largely accounts for her current influence. They provided the names, faces, and death dates that Espinoza printed on a series of 3-by-6-foot banners — the “Stolen Lives Quilt,” the Remembrance Project’s signature visual prop. In 2012, Espinoza took the quilt on an inaugural tour of the country that included meetings with government representatives in 20 state capitals. She also helped popularize the idea, started by the Tea Party Immigration Coalition, of a “National Day of Remembrance” held every November to honor people killed by immigrants.
Wayne Lutton and Maria Espinoza hold part of the Stolen Lives Quilt. The Social Contract Press
It was around this time that the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Center for New Community began tracking Espinoza’s connections to organizations they consider part of the white nationalist movement, many of them founded by John Tanton. The Social Contract, the journal that published Espinoza’s manifesto in 2012, is run by Wayne Lutton. According to the SPLC, Lutton has served on the editorial advisory board of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens and regularly speaks at its conferences. (That group’s practice of tallying crimes committed by black people against white people is what, by his own admission, radicalized Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting that killed nine black parishioners.)
In 2014, the Remembrance Project received a $25,000 donation from U.S. Inc., one of Tanton’s groups.
That same year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, Espinoza joined in on a “night watch” on the border organized by the Texas Border Volunteers, an armed vigilante group that splintered from the Minutemen and that, as the Texas Observer reported, based on the testimony of a former member who provided photographic evidence, “engages in aggressive armed interdiction and detention of immigrants using ATVs and trained dogs.” (Espinoza and the Texas Border Volunteers dispute this claim, describing the group’s activities as limited to “observe and report.”)
Asked about her affiliations with white nationalists, Espinoza said in an email: “I don’t consider anyone left or right… just for our families or against our families.” Later, she added: “Neither I nor my organization are ‘tied’ to white nationalist individuals or groups, and, as a Latina by ethnicity, I am not ‘white.’”
Espinoza rejects the term “restrictionist” and says the term “nativist” has been wrongfully appropriated by the “pro-amnesty crowd.” “The left ties these words to racism,” she wrote. “We tie [nativism] to preserving our American heritage, which is made impossible with mass illegal immigration. … All countries are ‘nativistic.’ The American left wants to enforce a standard of behavior that no other country enforces.”
“We are not anti-immigrant,” Espinoza wrote. “We are against illegal aliens trespassing upon our soil.”
Espinoza has found allies among reliable immigration hardliners in political office, such as Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa. (In 2011, King introduced a resolution to officially mark the National Day of Remembrance.) But her work otherwise went little-noticed outside right-wing circles. Her admirers see this as a symptom of the problem at hand: the willful blindness of the American political and media establishment to the ongoing criminal onslaught.
“It’s been a heroic effort on her part,” said Joe Guzzardi of Californians for Population Stabilization, a group that has received Tanton funding, according to the SPLC, and that frames its immigration restrictionism in terms of environmental preservation. “It takes a lot of courage and a lot of time to do these kinds of things. Because, you know, you’re really bucking up against it.”
Early in July, days after Donald Trump announced he was running for president, a 32-year-old woman named Kathryn Steinle was shot and killed while taking an evening walk with her father on a pier in San Francisco. The man who shot her was a convicted felon and five-time deportee from Mexico. Trump, having refused repeatedly to apologize for his comments referring to Mexican immigrants as criminals and “rapists,” was emboldened by Steinle’s murder. “This man — or this animal — that shot that wonderful, that beautiful woman in San Francisco, this guy was pushed back by Mexico,” Trump told CNN on July 9.
Limits to Growth
Seeing her cause abruptly in the spotlight, Espinoza mobilized. Wearing a bulletproof vest, she staged a protest on the pier where Steinle was shot. The Remembrance Project began working directly with the Trump campaign: On July 10, the group helped organize a press conference in Beverly Hills, where Trump met with a handful of people whose loved ones had been killed by immigrants. Espinoza said that the Remembrance Project “sent” five of these families to “help educate Mr. Trump.”
“I can’t imagine how everybody in this room doesn’t agree on this subject,” Trump said at the event, speaking to a much larger and more high-profile scrum of reporters than usual for an event involving the Remembrance Project. Behind him, the families held up banners from the Stolen Lives Quilt. “People come in illegally and, in this case, they’ve killed their children! And they wouldn’t have been here. If they weren’t here, their children would be alive. Kate would be alive.”
On July 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the subject of immigration and crime. Five family members of people killed by immigrants testified, including Kate Steinle’s father. Mark Krikorian, writing about the hearing for the National Review, noted that “several family members thanked the Remembrance Project, directed by the indefatigable Maria Espinoza, which for years has been the only forum for people like this to tell their stories of Americans killed because of lax immigration policies.”
Donald Trump, surrounded by people whose family members were killed by undocumented immigrants, on July 10 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images
In the meantime, Trump developed what he calls his “immigration reform” platform, the centerpiece of which is the promise to round up and deport not only the entire population of undocumented immigrants — estimated at more than 11 million — but also their American-born, U.S.-citizen children. In doing so, Trump brought to the center of the American political discussion what had, until then, been a fantasy of the nativist fringe. And, consistent with his inaugural message, Trump justified this position largely on the premise that immigrants cause crime.
Members of the Remembrance Project were thrilled by the way the Trump campaign legitimized the message they had been articulating for years. One of the speakers at the press conference in Washington was Sabine Durden, who had met Trump at the event in Beverly Hills. Durden spoke about her son, Dominic, killed by a drunk driver in 2012. She began her speech by placing an item on the lectern: a black urn, small enough to fit in her palm, embossed with an image of hands clasped in prayer.
“I brought Dominic with me,” she said. “That’s what I have left of my son. His ashes.”
Durden, a naturalized American citizen from Germany, told the story of her son’s death and her subsequent political awakening. Finishing up, she said, “I gotta thank my personal hero, Mr. Donald Trump. When he spoke up against illegal immigration and what it does to our country, he caught a lot of heat, but it opened a door for us. … He accomplished in a few minutes what we tried to do — so many tried to do for years and years.”
“We’re being heard now.”
Fear of the criminal alien has existed for about as long as America has had immigrants. In 1920, speaking before a House committee on immigration, the American eugenicist Harry Laughlin explained that Italians, Russians, and Poles were disproportionately likely to end up in asylums for the criminally insane, describing them as a potential “national menace.” Laughlin, whose work would inform the early scientific experiments of the Nazis, was also fond of describing immigration in martial terms: “Immigration is an insidious invasion just as clearly as, and works more certainly in national conquest than, the invading army,” he told Congress in 1924.
Harry Laughlin circa 1929. Wikimedia Commons
Laughlin, who backed up his claims of immigrant criminality with what he called “scientific” data, went on to start the Pioneer Fund, a group dedicated to studying “human nature, heredity, and eugenics.” In the 1980s, Pioneer donated $1.5 million in early financing to John Tanton’s FAIR, the group behind nearly every significant restrictionist organization in the U.S. today. Trump’s campaign announcement struck a chord that FAIR and its affiliated groups had been sounding for years.
Take Steve Salvi, who, under the aegis of the Ohio Jobs and Justice PAC, has maintained a website memorializing people killed by undocumented immigrants since 2006. “Around, I believe, 5,000 Americans are killed every year,” Salvi told me at Espinoza’s event in Washington. “So multiply that by 10 years, you’ve got 50,000 people. Nine-eleven? Three thousand people killed. And we went to war.”
“This deserves more attention,” he continued. “Because it’s preventable. It’s just a matter of enforcing the law.”
When people use statistics to argue that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than the native-born, the numbers often lead to one of two places. Salvi got his numbers from the office of Rep. King, who frequently says that between 12 and 25 Americans are killed by illegal aliens every day. King says that he “extrapolated” these numbers from a report prepared by the Government Accountability Office in 2011, which concluded that an unspecified number of criminal aliens in federal, state, and local prisons accounted for 25,060 homicide arrests. But that number is often misinterpreted to mean the number of immigrant murderers (rather than the number of offenses), and is itself based on a tiny sample of a larger population that includes arrests dating back to 1955.
“There’s so much bizarre stuff in there,” said Ramiro Martinez, a criminologist at Northeastern University who studies patterns of violent crime in relation to race, ethnicity, and immigration status. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I never saw a Mexican flag anywhere — not in our home, you know? It was just America and the Bible.”
The other oft-cited source is the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which has data showing that a large percentage of federal prisoners are noncitizens, whether with or without legal status. But federal prisons house a small fraction of the incarcerated population, as well as the entirety of people imprisoned for immigration offenses, which are exclusively federal. That means federal prisoners cannot be considered representative of the criminal population at large.
Supporting the exact opposite conclusion — that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born population, in some cases by large margins — there are dozens of studies conducted over a hundred years. They vary widely in their methodologies and sources of data, from analyses of census figures on institutionalized populations, to local assessments of neighborhoods and cities, to psychiatric and longitudinal studies of immigrant youths.
Nevertheless, the government does not directly count the number of crimes committed specifically by immigrants, be they legal or illegal; on some level, every analysis involves extrapolation. It is impossible to know whether the murder rate is rising or falling among immigrants in any given year in the same way one could answer the same question about, say, white people or young people. And yet, as Ramirez, the criminologist at Northeastern, writes, “the major finding of a century of research on immigration and crime is that immigrants display tremendous variations over time and space in their criminal involvement and, contrary to popular opinion, nearly always exhibit lower crime rates than native groups.”
Lack of data leads the Center for Immigration Studies, the most prominent think tank focused on supporting immigration restrictions, to argue that solid empirical conclusions on immigration and crime are impossible in either direction. CIS and others with comparatively moderate restrictionist views often contend that the larger question, in any case, is irrelevant, because any number of murders by undocumented immigrants is unacceptable and a sign of ineffective immigration policies. Either way, the absence of direct data leaves an immediate void that can be filled with disquieting anecdotes about murderous immigrants.
That is why Espinoza’s aggressive focus on personal grief is so useful to the nativist cause, says Terri Johnson, the executive director of Center for New Community, a group that tracks what it calls “organized bigotry.” It is true that undocumented people commit crimes, sometimes horrible ones, and that these crimes leave people reeling and aggrieved. “That makes it harder to critique the hate strain in it, because there is real pain there,” Johnson said. “But some of that is a little foggy. Where does the real pain end, and where is it getting manipulated?”
The Remembrance Project’s speakers range from the well-rehearsed to the rough-edged. In Washington, Dan Golvach was among the latter. In January, his son Spencer was shot in the head by a man named Victor Rodriguez Reyes, who was on a spree in Houston: He shot into Spencer’s car at a stoplight, shot and killed a 28-year-old named Juan Garcia the same way, and was killed by police. Golvach says he later learned from a police investigator that Rodriguez had been deported four times.
Golvach has stubble and longish, straight hair parted down the middle. He’s a professional musician who plays four nights a week and runs a recording studio. Spencer, his son, played bass in a prog rock trio with his younger brother on drums; they had started to gain recognition in Houston by the time Spencer died, at 25. “They always joked that I breeded a rhythm section,” Golvach said. “We’re all three massive Led Zeppelin fans.”
“Where does the real pain end, and where is it getting manipulated?”
After Spencer’s death, Golvach got a few calls from politicians, and one from Maria Espinoza. “The only one that I felt was sincere was Maria,” he said. “Because, you know, Maria and Tim could be going fishing if they wanted … but instead she does this.”
Espinoza regards her cause as apolitical, arguing that she calls not for changes to the existing laws but merely for their enforcement. Of the cliché that the immigration system is broken, she says: “I have my vacuum cleaner at home, and if I don’t plug it in or turn it on, it won’t work. That doesn’t mean it’s broken.”
Donald Trump at the press conference with members of the Remembrance Project in Beverly Hills. Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images
This resonated with Golvach, who sees the political implications of his son’s death not as a matter of “ideological debate” but as common sense: “You don’t leave your door open all night. And if someone comes into your house, you don’t ignore it.” Golvach takes pride in not identifying as a Republican, not only because the party is beholden to corporate interests that benefit from undocumented labor, but also because he doesn’t care “what grown-ups do with themselves.” “I’m just a pissed-off dad,” he said. “It wasn’t a gay person that came in and shot my kid.”
It was Golvach who had the biggest applause lines earlier in the day. He and Spencer’s mother, he explained, consider their son’s killer nothing more than a “foot soldier.” He has a problem with the way people “frame this as a debate on immigration. I refuse to call this immigration. An immigrant is one who comes into your country on your terms and obeys your laws. Someone that comes into your country on their terms and disregards your laws is an invader.”
And who is left to react to this invasion, if the media and the corrupt political class won’t acknowledge it? “To honor the memory of all these young Americans, all good people, and to protect other Americans,” Golvach said, “we have to fight this war.”
Standing up to La Raza Racists in Los Angeles
Los Angeles County was once a red area.
Ronald Reagan won LA in 1980—but it was a squeaker. 1984 was better. Of course, Reagan wiped the floor with Mondale across the country.
The last time a Republican Governor won LA? Pete Wilson, 1994, running on a platform of stopping illegal immigration.
The 2003 recall didn’t do much for GOP chances in Los Angeles. The majority voted “No!” to the recall, but wanted Schwarzenegger to be the next Governor.
Now, Los Angeles County has turned into a cesspool of illegal immigration, the lynchpin for Democratic dominance (besides the Bay Area). Poverty is the norm, with studded concentrations of extreme wealth dotting the rotten landscape.
Fifty years ago, Americans were flocking to the Golden State. Now, working families and small businesses can’t wait to leave. The state has turned into a sanctuary for criminals, and not just the ones who get elected in unopposed contests in election cycle after cycle. Felons can now vote … in prison!
The forces taking over Los Angeles are particularly violent and cruel.
The illegal alien amnesty panderers want open borders. They want immediate citizenship. They want the taxpayer-funded entitlement programs, because “we owe them.”
What drives this rabid—racist—crowd of activists?
For three decades, Chicano studies college courses in the Los Angeles area have indoctrinated Hispanic youth to believe that the United States of America stole territory from Mexico. Dave Hernandez, a full-on conservative Republican Angeleno, intimated to me how undergraduate ethnic “curricula” drive the harsh demand from a younger generation of Hispanics to take back California and bring it under Mexican auspices.
They need to revisit their history, much of which has been sadly “Brown-washed,” cloaked in ethnic hatred, rather than illuminated with truth. History lesson: during the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, the majority of Mexican nationals wanted to become … Americans! They were hoping for the legal and cultural stability which the United States was developing. All of this, once again, comes back to culture. The American Revolution was an affirmation of right under Common Law. The French, Mexican, and Soviet Revolutions proceeded from a radical and fundamentally flawed view of human nature, i.e. that man is basically good, that power in the hands of the right people will make all things right.
Today’s progenitors of this political terrorism swarm the streets of Los Angeles County.
They are La Raza, or specifically known as “National Council of La Raza.” Also located in major urban (read, Democratic) areas like Chicago and New York City, they push an agenda for immigration “reform.”
They currently receive 15% of their funding from … the government. In effect, we are paying for foreign nationals and their abusive enablers to detract and demean this country. Check out this video by Grindall61, and you will see how brazen and contemptible these racist activists have become.
They fly the Mexican flag on American soil.
They rally to protect criminal illegal aliens, incarcerated in American jails, while American citizens are subject to their crimes and antics on our streets. They exalt illegal aliens and Muslim refugees above American citizens.
They take over city council meetings with raucous chants. They have stormed the streets in urban areas, especially Los Angeles, as they claim that unfettered illegal immigration is a human right, rather than an inhuman misdeed. Sadly, elected officials whom La Raza has bought and controlled are expanding their influence in Southern California, but not without a fight from the lawful American citizens, born and raised, who are helping to rebuild this country.
La Raza’s political allies include the corrupt, rogue city council of Huntington Park, which appointed two illegal aliens—yes, illegals—instead of two out of the many thousands of legal residents who live in the city. Did I forget to mention that they dismissed all the previous commissioners, all legal and law-abiding citizens in the city?
Their agenda is spreading like a corrosive cancer. Cudahy, Bell, Maywood—all sanctuary cities—invite the lawlessness which accompanies illegal immigration. Los Angeles, the Queen of ethnocentric crime and corruption, has turned into a warzone on the rule of law. US Senator Chuck Grassley is one of few statesmen demanding an investigation into why an illegal alien named Johnny Sanchez was able to set fire to an abandoned warehouse in Los Angeles … which claimed five American lives.
I have written before about the wild, destructive antics of La Raza against veterans, against conservatives. Their desperate antics are on full display here. Now, I have exposed their hateful agenda to my own city council, and they in turn have gotten fearful. Instead of running away or staying quiet, we California conservatives are standing up to these racist bullies. We have called out their antics, including their enablers. Check out this video for my full comments to the Torrance City Council.
One La Raza activist has (petulantly) threatened to shut down an upcoming local meeting in my city, where Latinos Por Trump will gather to signal their support for a candidate who will enforce the law, secure the border, and protect the citizenry. Learn more about these brave patriots who identify with their country, and not their skin color or their parents’ country of origin.
Even before I got on the Trump Train, I welcomed the Donald’s anti-PC rhetoric, and his stern capacity to tell the truth. The media lambastes Trump and Pence because they paint a dire picture of our country’s current state.
Domestic terrorists like these La Raza activists attack private property and reject the national integrity of the greatest nation on earth. These attacks should alarm us, awaken us to our need to step up, stand for what is right, and fight when necessary.
It’s about time that We the People took the threats to our sovereignty and national security seriously. Let’s push back against every enemy, foreign or domestic, who thinks anything less of the United States of America.
Let’s claim our true raza: American. Let’s Make America Great Again.
To read the original article - and read comments related to the story click here.
Tribute to Dr. John Tanton
John H. Tanton, M.D. - retired ophthalmologist and eye surgeon is recognized as the founder of the modern immigration immigration reform movement. A video tribute to John H. Tanton, M.D. is now available. Tanton is also publisher and former editor of The Social Contract.
As a strong conservationist and leading advocate for the environment, Dr. John Tanton founded the Petoskey, Michigan regional Audubon Society. He has been active in a number of environmental organizations, both locally and nationally. Dr. Tanton recognized that continued human population growth is a significant contributor to environmental problems and he therefore became involved with the Sierra Club Population Committee and became President and board member of Zero Population Growth.
As immigration became the driving force behind unending U.S. population growth, John Tanton founded FAIR - the Federation for American Immigration Reform. John Tanton is pro-immigrant and pro-legal immigration, but at reduced, sustainable numbers. He states:
"The stresses caused by population growth cannot be solved by international migration. They must be confronted by and within each individual nation. Fundamental to the concept of national rights and responsibilities is the duty of each nation to match its population with its political, social, and environmental resources, in both the short and the long term. No nation should exceed what the biologists call its 'carrying capacity.'"
This video is a tribute to the life and accomplishments of Dr. John Tanton. For more information, see:
The John Tanton website
http://johntanton.org/
The Social Contract
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/
Suspicious activity at the DHS shows need for change
Clinton knew thousands of criminal aliens were being released, did nothing
September 14, 2016
Federal records show that from 2008 to 2014, nearly 13,000 criminal aliens who had been ordered deported were released back onto our streets because their home countries refused to take them back. This unacceptable practice has allowed many of these criminal aliens to commit new and serious crimes after their release, including rape, assault, child molestation, drug dealing, and murder. This serious problem was well known to Hillary Clinton the entire time she was Secretary of State. Yet she failed to stop this practice when she had the duty and responsibility do so as Secretary of State, failing to follow clear legal requirement passed by Congress.
Section 243(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act commands that when a foreign nation refuses or “unreasonably” delays the return of one of their nationals, the Secretary of State shall order our consular officials to stop issuing visas to persons from that country. As Secretary, she clearly had both actual and constructive notice about these practices from many nations. Yet, Hillary Clinton failed to fulfill her duty to use this authority and stop this practice, even once. For most nations, using this authority will get compliance in short order. Of course, there are many other diplomatic and financial actions the United States can take to promptly end the refusals and delays.
While the full scope of this problem and all of the crimes may not be known to the public, the available information is disturbing.
The Boston Globe has reported that between 2008 and 2014, almost 13,000 convicted aliens that should have been detained until deported, were released onto our streets, resulting in numerous totally preventable rapes, assaults and murders, among other crimes. For example, a convicted criminal alien who should have been deported to Haiti in 2012 was instead released, and murdered 25-year-old Casey Chadwick just last year. The Boston Globe further reported that, out of the data it analyzed, there were more convicted killers released from 2008 to 2012 than traffic violators.
Hillary Clinton must explain to the American people, and especially to the victims of these criminal aliens who were not deported, why she did not act to prevent these tragic events.
Jeff Sessions represents Alabama in the United States Senate, where he is chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest.
A peek behind the curtains at ICE
OFIR VP lays out Trump's path to victory in Oregon
OFIR Vice President Richard LaMountain has clearly laid out a reasonable path to an Oregon win for Donald Trump's bid for the Presidency.
Oregon has a blue reputation, but, in this particular case, it may be tenuous at best.
Read LaMountain's VDare article and then consider helping the first presidential candidate, in decades, that has openly and meaningfully addressed the problems surrounding illegal immigration.
Suspect in Woodburn triple homicide deported SIX times
The suspect arrested for the triple homicide and attempted murder near Woodburn has been deported SIX times!
Just released by ICE:
After conducting a comprehensive review of Mr. Oseguera’s immigration and criminal history, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has designated this as a federal interest case. To that end, the agency filed a notice of action (Form I-247-X – Request for Voluntary Transfer) with the Marion County Jail asking to be alerted if or when Mr. Oseguera is slated for release so the agency can take custody to pursue further administrative enforcement action. Relevant databases indicate Mr. Oseguera has no significant prior criminal convictions. However, he has been repatriated to Mexico six times since 2003, most recently in 2013.
How many more people must be murdered before our elected officials ENFORCE our immigration laws?
Read more: http://stjr.nl/296WJsk
Skewed perspective doesn't tell the whole story
It seems that reporter April Ehrlich might be a bit off center in Worker shortage coincides with immigration decline in her article published in the Argus Observer.
First of all, and not mentioned in the article is that Oregon law that makes it illegal for anyone under the age of 16 to work in the fields like many of us remember doing. We worked to earn money for school clothes, rides at the State Fair or saving for college. It was hot, dirty and most important, a valuable life lesson that I still treasure.
The reporter states that nationwide only 26% of ag workers are illegal aliens. That means that the remainder are US citizens or approved VISA workers who are willing to do the work.
Perhaps even more disturbing is the false wailing that illegal alien laborers only take the jobs Americans won't do - like picking our fruit and vegetables or working in the fields. The fact is, numerous studies show that less than 5% of laborers in the US illegally, are actually working in the fields. They, like most workers, want better jobs and move easily on to employment in construction, drywall, hotels and restaurants etc., pushing American workers and legal immigrants out of those very jobs.
The successful acquisition of employees can be described quite simply.
Adequate, competitive wages for the work being done, safe, decent working conditions, attractive benefits and, as most industrialized nations do, mechanize when possible to streamline and reduce the tedious, dirty jobs often associated with farm or factory work.
The alternative, which is practiced by many seeking to avoid the above, is to hire illegal labor. The fact is that it's against Federal Law to hire workers that are in the country illegally. There are VISA's available for ag labor, if only employers would do the paper work and be responsible. But, that's too much work and expense, apparently, when they can more easily hire illegal workers. After all, there are no real consequences for hiring illegal aliens - right?
Instead, those working here illegally are more easily cheated and abused as employees. Those working here illegally are often being paid under the table, or using a fake or stolen ID to get a job. Employers know they are hiring illegal workers, they know they are breaking the law and they know that it's likely an illegal alien worker won't complain about long hours, no breaks, unsafe working conditions or worse.
What kind of business model is this for the United States? We aren't some 3rd world country taking advantage of the poor with no other options - or, are we?
Why don't we have a real conversation about what needs to be done to make Oregon's farmers more competitive in world markets in a way that does not involve encouraging more illegal aliens to come here for those jobs. Why don't we invest in research to improve mechanization to make our farmers more competitive? I think we're smart enough to do that - don't you?
A letter from The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers to the American People
The appointment of Mark Morgan as Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol is the same as President Obama sitting in that chair.
By now Americans that are paying attention realize that our way of life is under attack by this administration and our institutions have been systematically corrupted by their influence. This message to the American people is to assist those that do care and are paying attention to connect the dots about how this administration is proceeding with their anti-American agenda to further corrupt border security. These similarly embedded corruptive agents that remain throughout government after this administration expires will continue their agenda if permitted to do so.
We watched in disgust as the ACLU, SPLC and the Department of Justice joined hands to attack the U.S. Border Patrol for unnecessary violence which was a bogus claim. We understood at the time those were the first major shots fired by this administration to fundamentally transform and cut the effectiveness of the U.S. Border Patrol to zero when it began.
Unfortunately, few in Washington D.C. care about National Security and Public Safety and gleefully go along with the administrations attack program that coincides with the Central American surge and the vast un-vetted numbers coming in under the guise of Refugee Resettlement. Silence is as effective an assent as a yea vote to these plans.
Such official D.C. chicanery gives credence to those doubting any actions by this government consider what is best for the American people.
This "appointment" is quite obviously another glaring example at first glance.
Zack Taylor, Chairman and Border Security Expert
NAFBPO.org
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From: COMMISSIONER KERLIKOWSKE
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2016 7:57 AM
Subject: Commissioner's Message: Commissioner Kerlikowske Announces Border Patrol Chief (Kerlikowske reports to Jeh Johnson who reports to President Obama.)
This morning I will be announcing that I have selected Mark Morgan as chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. You will see from Mark's long career in law enforcement and the leadership positions he has held that he will fulfill at the highest level the obligations and responsibilities of leading the outstanding law enforcement organization that is the Border Patrol. There was a national search for a chief and a professional and objective process used to select Mr. Morgan. The pool of candidates who applied yielded an array of extremely experienced, dedicated, and professional law enforcement executives in federal law enforcement and within the Border Patrol who sought this critical position.
I also want to address very directly the selection of someone who is not a part of the Border Patrol, (which is obviously part of the objective criteria?) The position of a law enforcement chief at the local, state, or federal level is one that demands an exhausting commitment of time; time that must be spent analyzing its future in light of rapid changes and time charting a course from a variety of perspectives. (NAFBPO comment, based on political objectives not related to enforcing existing law which constitutes a fundamental transformation.) That is why almost all federal law enforcement agencies have at various times chosen someone from outside their ranks to make that assessment and chart that course. (The border patrol did not make this choice, the Obama Administration made the choice which is the same as President Obama filling the position in person.) The U.S. Capitol Police (Vince Foster), U.S. Park Police, Coast Guard CID, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, ATF (fast & furious), and DEA among others have done the same in addition to large local and state law enforcement organizations across the country. None of those decisions to have a leader from outside the organization (officially) reflected negatively on the current leadership of those agencies. In the case of the Border Patrol, the current leadership across the top, from Headquarters to the field, consists of the finest group of men and women that I have worked with in my more than 40 years in law enforcement.
I welcome Mark as an important member of President Obama's leadership team at CBP and DHS and firmly believe that his experience listed below and long and successful career in law enforcement will be of great value to the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol. (We doubt very seriously that Mark Morgan will benefit the National Security and Public Safety of America or the American people.)
R. Gil Kerlikowske Commissioner
_________________________________________________
Mark Morgan
Mark Morgan joins U.S. Customs and Border Protection with a 30-year career in the military and law enforcement related to anti-terrorism and border security operations. (Specifically, what were each and all of his contributions in fact, not in vague undefined terms?)
Mr. Morgan has a 20-year career at the Federal Bureau of Investigation where he is an Assistant Director. During his time at the FBI, which began as a special agent in 1996 assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office, Mr. Morgan served in multiple leadership positions.
In 2008, Mr. Morgan served as the Deputy On-Scene in Baghdad, Iraq where he was responsible for all FBI personnel and operations within the Iraq Theater of Operations within the Counterterrorism Division. (Specifically, what did he do? Did he assist in drafting the rules of engagement for U.S. Military there? Perhaps screening information deemed not appropriate for the American public? )
In 2010, he was named the Section Chief of the Strategic Information and Operations Center, with responsibility for leading the FBI’s global command and strategic intelligence center. (During the phase of the rise of ISIS what specifically were all of his recommendations, published and unpublished?)
The following year, 2011, Mr. Morgan was appointed as the Special Agent in Charge of the El Paso Division, where he was responsible for leading all threat-based and intelligence driven counterterrorism, criminal, cyber, and counterintelligence operations extending from the western tip of Texas to the City of Midland. (Was he involved in ensuring final development of the Transnational Crime Corridor from Juarez, CHIH, Mexico, into the United States by Wilderness Designations created by an Obama Executive Order in the Potrillo Mountains over the will of the people in the Southwest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7PiDPbV0z0&index=5&list=PLZgh-ICwJq-sI5BipuSRUTFqmCMPqUgGY
From 3 minutes 58 seconds to 14 minutes 8 seconds.
In 2013, as the Deputy Assistant Director, Inspection Division, Mr. Morgan directed day to day operations to ensure compliance and facilitate the improvement of performance by providing independent, evaluative oversight of all FBI investigative and administrative operations. (Specifically, did this include removing all training references to radical islamic jihad, Muslim Brotherhood and similar material from training texts and existing investigators guides ?)
In, 2014, Mr. Morgan served in a detail assignment with CBP as the Acting Assistant Commissioner for Internal Affairs where he planned, organized, and coordinated the complete re-design of CBP’s Use of Force Incident Response protocols. He directed operations related to the screening of potential employees for suitability, implemented internal security measures, and launched CBP’s criminal and serious administrative misconduct investigative unit. In this position, he was responsible for obtaining CBP’s new authority to investigate allegations of misconduct against CBP employees. (Specifically, did this include commendation medals for Agents engaged in deadly force situations wherein they did not use deadly force? Objectively speaking, what exactly did he cause to be implemented ?)
In 2015, he was appointed as Assistant Director of the FBI’s Training Division, in Quantico, Virginia, with responsibility for overseeing the delivery of training, professional development and defensive systems to the FBI workforce, and domestic national security, law enforcement, and international partners throughout the world. (Specifically, did part of this training serve as a policy blindfold to investigators for incidents like Fort Hood, San Jose and Orlando?)
Mr. Morgan was an active-duty member and reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps. Before joining the FBI, he served as a deputy sheriff in Platte County, Missouri and as an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Central Missouri State University and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. (Major Hassan was on active duty with the U.S. Army. Mateen was a security guard for Wackenhut before he became front page in Orlando. Whatever else are Morgan's qualifications we can be assured his main qualification is carrying out the Obama administrations policies as being levied against law enforcement agencies nationwide and further avoids protecting National Security and Public Safety through strict enforcement of existing Immigration Law
David Cross - foreign national crime tracker attends DC conference
You may have heard David Cross on the Lars Larson Show each Thursday afternoon, reporting about the foreign national criminal of the week. You may have read David's detailed Guest Opinion pieces in newspapers across the state. You may have received or seen posted on our OFIR website, his reports on foreign national criminals held in the Oregon prison system.
David Cross is well known for his accurate, detailed research about foreign national crime and it hasn't gone unnoticed. The Center for Immigration Studies invited David to attend an immigration briefing at the National Press Club in Washington DC. this past weekend.
Read more about Breitbart's interviews at the event.
