Following Up: Sign the Deal – then Seize the Border Security Initiative

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border security, border wall, Congress, crime, criminal aliens, Defense Department, Democrats, detention, Following Up, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, national emergency, shutdown, Trump

From what’s known of it, I’m as angry about the border security deal reached last night by Congressional negotiators to avert a new partial federal government shutdown as much as any immigration realist and/or supporter of President Trump. Even so, I would urge the President to sign it. (If he can win a few small improvements over the next day or two, as he’s just suggested he’ll seek, fine – but nothing achievable is worth sinking the agreement.) Then I’d recommend that he move to keep his promise that “we’ll be building the wall anyway” by using statutory authority to use Defense Department and other federal assets and resources to engage in barrier construction and secure the border in various other ways. In addition, the Trump administration should redouble efforts to keep his opponents on the defensive politically by shining the spotlight even more brightly on border security gaps left wide open by deal provisions they’ve insisted on.

I know that in yesterday’s post I argued that the Congressional Democrats, who have increasingly made clear their desire to gut meaningful border security completely, would both own a new shutdown morally (in terms of responsibility for government workers and contractors temporarily denied paychecks) and possibly pay a heavy price politically. The trouble is, that contention assumed that the Democrats’ latest cynical gambit, a new, goalpost-moving demand to shrivel (further) the federal government’s ability to detain apprehended illegal aliens – including surging numbers of border crossers – until their status hearings are held, would prevent the negotiators from reaching any agreement.

Consequently, any number of such aliens, including convicted criminals, would be released into American society, with little reason to believe many of them would risk a deportation decision (which would not be first for many). The result, as I wrote yesterday, would be a big victory for the Democrats’ principal goal of maximizing the number of migrants who can set foot on American soil to begin with, who consequently could avail themselves of the full range of legal due process protections to which everyone within U.S. territory is entitled, who would be released before their status hearings, and who would be scot-free to live and work in the United States until the Open Borders crowd could implement yet another amnesty.

Instead, the negotiators came to a conclusion that they, at least – if not necessarily many in their respective parties – could accept. There’s no denying that its threadbare reported barrier appropriation figure ($1.375 billion) would leave the current border security situation just about as unacceptable as it is today. So would the reported new quota on detention beds, which represent a big part of Washington’s ability to ensure that individuals arrested for immigration-law and related transgressions show up for hearings.

Final judgment should be withheld until the official text of the deal is released – especially on the beds issue. But some of the worst possible outcomes – from an immigration realist perspective – appear to have been avoided. In particular, although previous votes by Democrats so far haven’t been enough to prevent closet Open Borders supporters like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from declaring walls to be “immoral,” the new agreement will make this childish position more difficult than ever to take. In addition, the current number of border detention beds is being cut, but not, it seems, by nearly as much as the Democrats recently sought, and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agency apparently will retain flexibility in their location.

Further, as its spokespeople have insisted, there’s a strong argument that President has ample legal authority to build and strengthen more in the way of barriers than the deal approves – even without taking the highly controversial step of declaring a national emergency. For example, as noted by one of my Twitter followers (“TruthHunterMan”), in a variety of circumstances, federal law states that “The Secretary of Defense may provide support for the counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime of any other department or agency of the Federal Government or of any State, local, tribal, or foreign law enforcement agency.”

Moreover, this statute specifies that one of the purposes for which this assistance may be provided include “the transportation of supplies and equipment, for the purpose of facilitating counterdrug activities or activities to counter transnational organized crime within or outside the United States” and, more specifically, “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

In addition, as stated by White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, “We will take as much money as you can give us and then we will go find money someplace else legally in order to secure that southern barrier.” So let the search intensify.

Finally, the Trump administration has done a fair job of publicizing the dangers to public safety posed by inadequate border security, but much more is possible. For instance, couldn’t the administration vividly illustrate how limits on detention are forcing the release of dangerous aliens by publishing on a regular basis the names of these individuals and the charges against them? And maybe some mass releases could be conducted regularly, too – with officials reading this information to broadcast news audiences as the migrants in question are set free? That would sure be Must-See TV. 

This strategy would have the added virtues of freeing federal workers – especially low-wage workers employed both directly and indirectly through contractors – of the threat of real economic hardship; of avoiding the forced labor situation that results from requiring essential workers to report to their jobs even if their departments aren’t funded; and of ensuring that the quality of vital services like air traffic control and Department of Homeland Security missions including Coast Guard patrols isn’t dangerously degraded.

Even passage of the latest full Trump proposal wouldn’t have strengthened border security much in the near future. So signing the Congressional compromise clearly wouldn’t produce a fatal setback. The main challenge now before the President is to flip as much of the script as he can, and capitalize on all the opportunities before him to secure as much of the border as America can ASAP.

Im-Politic: Why Democrats Will Own a Second Shutdown

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barriers, border security, border wall, Congress, crime, Democrats, detention, government shutdown, ICE, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Open Borders, Trump

With Congressional negotiators still racing to reach a deal, it’s unclear whether or not they’ll be able to reach the immigration and border security policy compromise needed to avoid the second partial federal government shutdown in two months. What’s completely clear, however, is that although President Trump declared that he “owned” the first shutdown, Congressional Democrats will deserve the blame this time.

The reason? In recent days, they’ve removed any doubt that their position has nothing to do with their stated belief that border walls are “immoral,” or even that President Trump’s focus on new barriers of any kind is hopelessly out of date. Instead, these Democrats – or at least their leaders – have now disclosed that their real price is a big step toward gutting any meaningful enforcement of immigration law.

Skeptics obviously haven’t paid attention to the course of Congressional negotiations since Friday. At that point, both Republicans and Democrats were expressing guarded optimism that a deal was in sight that involved keeping the entire federal government open in exchange for including actual funding (i.e., appropriations), for more barriers in the Department or Homeland Security (DHS) budget for the current fiscal year – not the kind of unenforceable promise to authorize certain levels of spending over the course of man years that marked previous recent efforts to keep the whole government open.

Hopes for a deal aren’t dead yet, but over the weekend, the Democrats dealt them a major setback by moving the goalposts. Their major new demand was for an unrealistically low (given the great recent increase in would-be border crossers of all kinds) limit in the number of beds maintained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to detain individuals arrested for violations of immigration law.

Congressional Democrats described their stance as an effort to impose sanity on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities. In the words of California Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, “A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritize deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing to our country.”

But no one can seriously doubt that crippling immigration enforcement is the real objective. In the first place, although it’s tempting – at least for argument’s sake – the critics’ charges that the Trump enforcement dragnet is too broad, let’s not forget that a key demand of many Democrats in recent months has not been to reform ICE practices, but to abolish the agency.

Second, there’s every reason to view the Democrats’ definition of “criminals” and “real security threats” as far too narrow. For example, many U.S. illegal aliens who hold a job are committing identity fraud in one form or another – including theft of Social Security cards. Critics of strict enforcement of immigration law tend to belittle these violations, and if you agree, that’s your right – but please spare me your complaints the next time you’re victimized by identity theft, or  become upset that constantly rising Social Security outlays are fueling the national debt.

Moreover, closet Open Borders supporters have a long record of defining down below the “serious” level many crimes that physically harm or endanger individuals – including assault, battery, sex offenses, drunk driving, and gun-related crimes.

And these coddlers of illegal alien crimes aren’t restricted to the Mainstream Media. In Montgomery County, Maryland – a suburb of Washington, D.C. – lawmakers introduced a measure to provide taxpayer-funded legal aid to illegal aliens that originally would have extended such assistance to illegals convicted of offenses such as “fraud, distribution of heroin, second- and third-degree burglary and obstruction of justice….” And let’s not forget the indulgent attitudes and practice of the nation’s many sanctuary jurisdictions.

What the Democrats pushing for fewer beds really want is a de facto (at least at first) U.S. immigration policy that prioritizes maximizing the numbers of foreign migrants able to set foot on U.S. soil, to thereby avail themselves of the wide range of due process protections afforded to anyone within this country’s territorial limits, and to then be released shortly after their initial apprehension.

As a result, these migrants – including declared asylum seekers and would-be refugees – will be completely free to skip their scheduled status hearings, and to become eligible for whatever future amnesties the Open Borders crowd has in mind once it regains enough power in Washington.

Of course, it’s one thing to make the case on the merits that the Democrats will own this shutdown. It’s another entirely for Mr. Trump to convince the public. Making this sale could represent his biggest challenge yet as President.

Im-Politic: Trump Immigration Policy Caught Red-Handed – Working

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asylum seekers, border security, border wall, ICE, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mainstream Media, Michael Miller, MS-13, refugees, Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Washington Post

Mirroring the broader, hysterical Never Trump-ism that’s overcome so much of America’s bipartisan political establishment and its grassroots supporters (along with their foreign counterparts), the Mainstream Media just keeps killing it in the Trump Derangement Syndrome Department. And hot on the heels of that Financial Times editorial I posted on yesterday that faulting a Trump nominee for lacking the leadership and intellectual “heft” of someone who should have been tried as a Vietnam War-related criminal comes a Washington Post article handling the President’s immigration policy record with equally clueless – and equally jaw-dropping – incompetence.

According to Post reporter Michael Miller (and his editors), Mr. Trump is way off-base targeting the murderous Hispanic criminal gang MS-13, and similar networks of thugs, to muster support for his restrictionist immigration policies. The reason? “[E]ven as [the President] warned again and again about the dangers posed by MS-13 members and the need for a wall to keep them out, killings connected to the gang were plummeting in many of the areas where MS-13 has been most active.”

In other words, what could be dumber? And/or more cynical?

But in the very same article, Miller told readers that “federal law enforcement officials say MS-13 violence fell last year as a result of intensified nationwide investigations.”

More specifically, the author writes, “While Trump’s attacks on the gang have been relentless, current and former immigration officials, law enforcement agencies and gang experts attributed the decline in MS-13 murders to an aggressive response by local and federal authorities.”

For good measure, accompanying the article is a photo with this caption: “Northern Virginia Gang Task Force officers partner with ICE [the federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] officers to arrest an alleged MS-13 gang member in Manassas in 2017.”

Maybe Miller thinks the President has nothing to do with ICE and other federal authorities?

The author did present convincing evidence that President Trump has hardly been the first chief executive to crack down on MS-13. But he also presented evidence just as convincing that none of the success achieved by these campaigns has lasted. And if you think that the President’s insistence on more physical border barriers has been irrelevant to this crisis, consider this point made by the author: Following evidence of a reduction in gang activity, after 2014, “a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America helped revitalize MS-13.”

And as made clear by a 2017 Post article linked in Miller’s piece, many of them made their way into the United States because inadequate border security enabled them to sneak in, or because, thanks to permissive federal policies for dealing with arrivals as a whole, “more than 150,000 such teens and children [to that point, two years ago] have been detained at the border, screened and placed in communities through the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).”

And “Follow-up [for these resettlement efforts] is limited, and many youths fail to show up for immigration proceedings, a recent congressional investigation showed. At the same time, there are gaps in local efforts to reach vulnerable children and teens before the gang does.”

These problems could be greatly reduced by (1) better physical barriers that prevent would-be border crossers from setting foot in U.S. territory in the first place, and thereby automatically becoming eligible for the entire range of due-process protections to which citizens and other residents – legal and illegal – are entitled; and (2) related Trump administration proposals that would require refugee applicants and asylum-seekers to stay outside U.S. territory while their claims are examined.

In other words, Miller and his editors clearly thought they were serving up a classic Trump “gotcha” story. But even a minimally careful reading of the piece catches them red-handed in a disgraceful – as well as inept – example of media bias.

Following Up: More Illegal Immigrant Coddling from the Mainstream Media

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crime, deportation, ICE, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mica Rosenberg, Open Borders, Reade Levinson, Reuters, Trump, zero tolerance

Last year, I wrote some posts on how some Mainstream Media journalists and other closet Open Borders backers have taken to minimizing the seriousness of crimes like drunk driving when the perpetrators are illegal immigrants facing deportation. Unfortunately, if a recent Reuters “Special Report” is any indication, a new wave of such pieces could be on the way due to the uproar over the Trump administration’s treatment of Central Americans streaming toward the U.S. border with children in hopes of entering America through grants of asylum.

The main ostensible criticism of the President’s initial “zero tolerance” approach to this latest migrants’ surge is that it indiscriminately applied the practice of “family separation” long used by American law enforcement when dealing with domestic criminal suspects apprehended with minors to foreigners whose only transgression appeared to be attempting to cross the border under false pretenses. But supporters of more lenient immigration policies have also been accusing the administration of treating the illegal immigrants already residing in the United States in unduly harsh ways by seeking to deport unauthorized aliens who have broken no other laws – or at least no other serious laws.

It’s that supposed qualification that’s the problem; as I showed, in one instance, the Washington Post‘s coverage of recent deportation data demonstrated that its reporters and editors don’t consider drunk driving a serious crime. In May, the D.C. metro area was treated to another (non-media) example of such illegal immigrant coddling: An area non-profit that provides legal aid for detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings actually rejected taxpayer funding for such activities offered by a local county government because it would have been prevented from using these resources where the accusations entailed fraud, distribution of heroin, second- and third-degree burglary and obstruction of justice….” Apparently these didn’t make this organization’s “serious crimes” list, either – or that, originally, of Maryland’s Montgomery County.

On June 20, Reuters reporters Mica Rosenberg and Reade Levinson – and their editors – clearly attempted to show in a lengthy piece just how common such alleged abuses of illegals has become. In their words, although the President has claimed that “his strengthened immigration-law enforcement” efforts have targeted violent criminal aliens,

“as his administration has expanded its dragnet under a series of executive orders, ICE has locked up thousands of people…with little or no criminal history, with deep roots in their communities, who present little flight risk.

“In earlier years, ICE [the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency] would have released many of these people on bond soon after their arrest, allowing them to live with their families while awaiting legal proceedings that can take years. Now, ICE is denying bond for many of those people and pushing to keep them in detention for the duration of their cases….”

And as is often the case in journalism, Reuters sought to personalize its story by describing the actual experience of one illegal immigrant whose life in the United States has been disrupted by the new policies.

According to the authors, El Salvador native Morena Vasquez had entered the United States illegally as a teenager, and had lived in Georgia for 23 years before a traffic stop “turned into a nightmarish entanglement in the toughened-up immigration policies of U.S. President Donald Trump – an experience that tore apart the life she had spent more than two decades building for herself and her family.”

Near the beginning of their article, Rosenberg and Levinson described Vasquez in terms that were plainly intended to generate sympathy. She had held “two jobs – teaching Spanish at a preschool, as well as the office-cleaning gig.” She has six children – ages four to 17. “[A]ll of them [are] U.S. citizens, [and] had to relocate in the middle of the school year to live near their ailing grandfather in another town, far from the detention center.”

Yet over the next year, “Vasquez languished in the crowded detention center. She repeatedly asked an immigration judge for bond so she could await her day in court back with her family. And repeatedly, bond was denied as ICE argued that she was a flight risk. Even after a judge ruled that she had the right to stay legally and permanently in the United States, she was kept locked up for five more months as ICE fought the decision.”

It was only much deeper into the story, that the reader learns that when she was arrested last year, Vasquez’ “record showed two convictions in 2014 for driving without a license and other traffic violations. It also showed that in 2004, Vasquez was sentenced to probation for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after a child she was babysitting wandered too close to a highway.”

In addition, “Police records show that because Vasquez had failed to appear in court for one of her traffic tickets, ICE in 2015 had issued a ‘detainer’ for her arrest – a notice to local authorities of her illegal presence in the United States. Cooperating police departments automatically turn over to federal authorities any immigrants with outstanding detainers who are picked up in their jurisdictions.” Indeed, it was precisely because she skipped that court appearance, ICE and a local judge denied her bond request in the belief she was a flight risk.

Now let’s be clear: Vasquez is obviously no hardened criminal. But on top of living in the country illegally, she hasn’t been a model “citizen,” either. And if after a clearly lengthy (and surely expensive) probe aimed at showcasing the supposed injustices of the new Trump policies, Reuters decided to use her as their poster-person, readers are entitled both to ask “Is this the best you got?” — and to wonder how many other allegedly needless victims of the Trump policy shift are in fact eminently deserving of deportation?

Im-Politic: More Illegal Immigration Coddling from the Washington Post

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Associated Press, crime, Darwin Martinez Torres, detainers, Germantown, hate crimes, illegal immigrants, Im-Politic, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Maryland, Montgomery County, Muslims, Nabra Hassanen, Northern Virginia, Rockville, The Washington Post

Hard as it is to believe, The Washington Post news department’s coddling of illegal immigrants looks to have passed a new milestone. On April, I explained how the paper’s news editors and reporters (not the opinion folks) apparently have decided that drunk driving isn’t a serious crime when the guilty are living in the United States illegally.

This past week, the Post has acted conspicuously determined to ignore crucial questions of suspected criminals’ immigration status when they threaten to ruin or even complicate another prized narrative – that Muslim Americans are being victimized by a record surge in hate crimes prompted by irrational fears of Islamic terrorists stoked cynically by politicians like President Trump. Such journalistic selectivity is bound to intensify questions about the legality of any Americans of Hispanic heritage arrested for crimes, both when they’re justified and when they’re not.

There’s an alternative explanation for the paper’s behavior that’s comparably disturbing: In an effort to calm public fears about the public safety risks created by indulgent immigration policies, it’s been trying to sweep such immigration questions under the rug because it did report the status of two Hispanic teenage immigrants just a month before, when they were charged with a rape at a high school in the area. In early May, the charges were dropped, seeming to vindicate allegations that immigration policy critics had been using the case to demagogue their cause.      

The latest crime in question was the abominable killing of an Muslim teenage girl from the Virginia suburbs early last Sunday morning. The story quickly attracted national attention, and the Post‘s early coverage demonstrated the obvious reason: The local police seemed determined to classify the murder as an instance of road rage, while many in the local Islamic community — including the victim’s family — along with others insisted that it amounted to the latest hate crime committed against innocent Muslim Americans.

As the Post pointedly reminded readers in its report on Monday:

“Police said Monday they aren’t investigating the death as a hate crime, but the issue was on the minds of many Muslims on Sunday.

“Last month, two men on a Portland train were stabbed and killed after they intervened to protect two girls who were being harassed with anti-Muslim threats, according to authorities.

“Sunday night, a van struck a crowd of pedestrians, including worshipers leaving a pair of mosques in London. Witnesses said the pedestrians were struck as they departed late-night prayers.

“The ADAMS Center [victim Nabra Hassanen’s mosque] has a paid armed security guard at the Sterling site, according to [Arsalan Iftkhar, an “international human rights lawyer and commentator” who attended services at the mosque]. He said many mosques have increased security since six Muslim worshipers were killed at a mosque in Quebec earlier this year.

“Sunday night, a van struck a crowd of pedestrians, including worshipers leaving a pair of mosques in London. Witnesses said the pedestrians were struck as they departed late-night prayers.

“The ADAMS Center has a paid armed security guard at the Sterling site, according to Iftikhar. He said many mosques have increased security since six Muslim worshipers were killed at a mosque in Quebec earlier this year.”

And this focus on the hate crimes charge continued through the Post‘s last comprehensive coverage of the murder, on Wednesday.

But from the start, one crucial aspect of the murder appeared to be undermining claims that animus against Muslims was the suspect’s motivation – an aspect oddly neglected by the Post. As the paper specified from the outset, he was a young Hispanic-surnamed male – Darwin Martinez Torres. But nothing else about him was reported.

That may not sound suspicious to someone unfamiliar with that part of northern Virginia – or even worth writing about at all. But Sterling and environs have long hosted a large population of illegal immigrants. The offense in question was unmistakably felonious and abhorrent, not some trifle. So there are valid public safety issues involved, with large numbers of Americans understandably wanting to what kinds of individuals their leaders have – knowingly – welcomed into their country and their neighborhoods.

Moreover, a Post update later that day offered evidence suggesting Torres’ illegal status: U.S. immigration authorities had requested that local officials put a “detainer” on him – meaning that they were looking into deportation. Now on the one hand, the federal government can place detainers on and deport legal immigrants as well as illegal. But on the other hand, that decision should have raised a red flag with the Post right away, and the question could have been answered with little effort. But no one on the team of reporters assigned the story by the paper seems to have pursued the matter. The hate crimes issue and related concerns voiced nationally about American Muslims’ safety clearly were their top priorities.

As early as Monday, however, it was clear that Martinez’ immigration status was indeed in doubt with the authorities. The Associated Press reported that day that they determined he is “a citizen of El Salvador and there’s probable cause to believe he lacks permission to be in the U.S.”

But even though this AP report appears on the Post‘s website, it prompted no investigation of Torres’ status by the paper itself, either.

Moreover, on Tuesday, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson announced that Torres is in the United States illegally. Readers of the The New York Times, FoxNews.com, The Daily Caller, and CNN received this information. But nearly a week later, the Post staff itself still has not mentioned it. Neither, weirdly, has the Associated Press – but it’s not the Washington, D.C. area’s leading news organization.

Sadly, this journalistic inevitably raises the question of whether the Post has decided to cover up the legal status of other Hispanic Americans arrested for crimes. For example, also earlier this month, two Germantown, Maryland high school students were murdered on the eve of their graduation. The trio arrested? Jose Canales-Yanez, Edgar Garcia-Gaona, and his brother Roger Garcia. Any mention of their immigration status in the Post coverage? Nope.

But like Sterling, the Germantown area is home to many illegal immigrants, as well as a center of violence from criminal gangs whose crimes are becoming ever more brutal and that are often extensions of similar organizations in Central America. The police force of surrounding Montgomery County has not ruled out a gang angle, and according to Help Save Maryland, an organization favoring stricter immigration controls and enforcement, a photo of one of the suspects reveals a form of tattoo often sported by Central American gang members.  

It’s true that Montgomery police chief Thomas Manger has stated that “to my knowledge, there were no ICE detainers filed in those cases” resulting from some of the suspects’ previous arrests.” But it’s also true that Montgomery County has declared itself to be a safe haven for immigrants – if not an out-and-out sanctuary city – and that Manger has dutifully declared that it’s not his job to determine anyone’s immigration status.

Curiously, moreover, Post reporters and editors were decidedly more aggressive in March, when two Hispanic teenagers, including a minor, were accused of raping a younger schoolmate at Rockville High School in Rockville, Maryland — also in Montgomery County.  The paper’s first article on the incident prominently mentioned that Henry E. Sanchez “a native of Guatemala who arrived in the United States about seven months ago, has a pending ‘alien removal’ case against him, court officials said Friday. ‘He is a substantial flight risk,’ Montgomery County Assistant States Attorney Rebecca MacVittie said in court Friday.

“[Jose O.] Montano has been in the United States for about eight months, MacVittie said. Details about Sanchez’s removal case, or Montano’s immigration status, couldn’t immediately be learned Friday.”

Moreover, the Post‘s own reporting several days later contend that both suspects “were among tens of thousands of young people who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2016.” Prosecutors dropped the rape charges against the pair in early May. Was the paper’s much more restrained coverage of immigration issues in the two, more recent, murder cases an attempt to keep anti-immigration sentiment in the public under control?    

It’s vitally important to be clear here. As suggested immediately above, I believe that many municipalities and states are ignoring their responsibilities to help the federal government enforce immigration law. But insisting that the Post inquire about the immigration status of criminal suspects is completely different from insisting that state and local governments, whose immigration law enforcement responsibilities are limited and reactive, proactively publicize the immigration status of criminal suspects.

It’s also completely different from insisting that the federal government, whose immigration law responsibilities are extensive and often proactive, seek out and publicize this information whenever an arrest is made by any level of government, even for serious infractions (although I’m leaning strongly in this direction, given the nation’s enormous and possibly still growing population of illegals).

Instead, insisting that the Post and the rest of the media at least seek this information simply entails insisting that they play their proper role as watchdogs of democracy – pressing for accountability for wielders of public and private power, and letting the chips fall where they may.

Viewed from a different perspective, the government at all levels enjoys certain established authority to keep information from the public for various, highly specific reasons – e.g., to protect national security or safeguard Constitutionally guaranteed privacy rights. In order to help ensure that this authority is not abused, the media’s job is to release whatever information it can procure, with certain exceptions that it generally has complied with voluntarily (e.g., protecting information whose exposure would immediately threaten national security and/or the lives of military and intelligence personnel whose lives literally are on the line, or the privacy of minors). When disputes arise over where these respective lines should be drawn, the judiciary steps in to try to provide the answer.

At least since the era of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, the Post has epitomized a national media that understands these distinctions and acts accordingly. Does it now believe that, for reasons it has yet to explain, that its coverage of illegal immigration is an exception?

 

Following Up: The Establishment’s Pro-Mass Immigration Bias Goes On and On and…

Tags

crime, deportations, drunk driving, Ed O'Keefe, Following Up, ICE, illegal immigration, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Maria Sacchetti, The Washington Post

Last Thursday, I wrote about how a combination of Trump Derangement Syndrome and a determination to uphold America’s current mass immigration policies had apparently driven no less than the U.S. Supreme Court to equate committing war crimes with speeding tickets. Two days ago, the Washington Post made appallingly clear that its hard news staff, including its editors, also ranks mass immigration – in this case, illegal immigration – uber alles. Specifically, in an article purporting to show how unreasonable the Trump administration’s deportation policies have been, the paper decided that drunk driving should not be considered a serious crime.

The article’s tone was set by the headline: “ICE data shows half of immigrants arrested in raids had traffic convictions or no record.” And in case you doubt that the piece’s aim was to demonstrate that President Trump’s policies are squandering precious immigration enforcement funds on residents of the country who are clearly no danger to their communities, here’s the lead written by reporters Maria Sacchetti and Ed O’Keefe:

“About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes, according to data obtained by The Washington Post.”

Obviously disgraceful, right? Except the Post account could only get even close to this conclusion by belittling the importance of drunk driving. Here’s how. The article analyzes the backgrounds of immigrants rounded up in early February by agents from regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio and New York, and contends that the records reveal 139 to have been convicted of assault or involvement with “dangerous drugs.” That’s over 20 percent of the total. Only about 26 percent of those rounded up (177 individuals) had no criminal convictions on their record, though 66 of them (more than 37 percent) had charges pending (“largely immigration or traffic offenses).

Sacchetti and O’Keefe went on to write that “The largest single group — 163 [were] immigrants convicted of traffic offenses….” Kind of trifling, right? We all speed or something to that effect now and then. But it turns out that more than 90 percent of these traffic convictions were for drunk driving – which outside the Mainstream Media is surely and rightly viewed as anything but trifling.

In fact, just to remind, during the last full year for which data is available (2015), 10,265 Americans died in “alcohol-impaired crashes” – 300 more than in 2014. And from what we already know, 2016 will see an even higher toll.

So of the 675 immigrant pickups analyzed by the Post, it looks like 139 were convicted for crimes that even the Post evidently considers serious, and at least 147 (90 percent of 163) were drunk drivers. So more than 42 percent had been convicted of crimes that any thinking person would consider serious. And then there were 66 more currently being charged with “traffic offenses” (mainly drunk driving?) or immigration offenses (which could well include such unmistakably serious matters as reentering the United States after being deported or lying on an immigration form).

If only half of the 66 belong in the serious crime category (which seems to be low-balling the issue, based on the other data we have), then more than 47 percent of the pickups looked at by the Post were, by any reasonable standard, menaces to public safety.

But the article’s original claim indicates that this number is actually much higher. After all, Sacchetti and O’Keefe contend that “About half of the 675 immigrants picked up in roundups across the United States in the days after President Trump took office either had no criminal convictions or had committed traffic offenses, mostly drunken driving, as their most serious crimes….”

In other words, a substantial share of the immigrants picked up could have been convicted of crimes perhaps less serious than drunk driving, homicide, assault, or dangerous drug involvement, but still legitimately seen as major offenses. Unfortunately, the piece itself was so poorly written (and edited) that it’s simply not possible to tell. But in a tweet on the article, the Post itself cleared up the mystery, stating that the share of the 675 pickups with no criminal convictions at all was only about 25 percent.

So it’s plain as day that this article’s real message is that the great majority of the individuals being picked up by the Trump administration have taken or endangered American lives, and would remain in positions to do so without federal intervention. The rest, even if they’re simply “undocumented,” have violated the nation’s laws. And that’s a record to condemn?

Im-Politic: The New York Times Loses It on Trump and Immigration

Tags

2016 elections, deportation, Donald Trump, E-Verify, H1B, ICE, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jobs, Republicans, September 11, tech workers, The New York Times, visa overstays, visas, wages

The New York Times‘ recent editorial trashing of Donald Trump’s immigration proposals was so over the top and intellectually dishonest that you’d think the paper’s editorial board members and owners’ main worry was losing access to the super-cheap illegal nannies and gardeners that support their one percent-er lifestyles. Certainly nothing else about Trump’s policies can possibly justify the vehemence with which The Times attacked him.

Predictably, the editorial focused on Trump’s position on deporting America’s huge illegal immigrant population, and the related issue of birthright citizenship. Trump does deserve some criticism on this score. As I’ve argued, aside from criminal aliens, he should be focusing not on active deportation but on a policy of attrition – discouraging illegals from remaining in the country by denying them both employment opportunities and government benefits. And although I agree with Trump (and many others) that the anchor babies problem is unacceptable, it does seem that Constitutional issues will prevent any solution for many years.

But as I’ve also pointed out, mass deportation wasn’t even a part of Trump’s plan, although he did endorse the idea in a media interview. Completely indefensible, by contrast, is the paper’s charge that every plank of Trump immigration platform is “despicable,” “cruel,” “racist,” and “xenophobic.” If anything’s despicable, its much of The Times’ own tendentious analysis.

Take the editorial’s treatment of Trump’s call to make mandatory the E-Verify system that was developed to enable employers to check the legal status of job-seekers. It’s currently a crime for businesses to hire applicants residing illegally in the country, but many illegals find work anyway largely because the documents needed to prove legal status are so easy for forge, and because so many businesses simply don’t care and believe that the government really doesn’t, either.

E-Verify is a federally created “internet-based system that compares information from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.” The good news is that it’s free to use, it produces results quickly, and its accuracy rates are not only astronomically high, but improving, according to independent auditors of this program. Moreover, E-Verify enjoys overwhelming bipartisan Congressional support. The only significant problem associated with it is that in most of the country, its use is voluntary.

So here’s how The Times characterizes Trump’s view that every U.S. employer should be brought into E-Verify to ensure that a law that’s on the books, and that the paper apparently does not oppose, is effectively enforced: It would “impose a national job-verification system so that everyone, citizens too, would need federal permission to work.”

Only somewhat less inane is The Times‘ description of Trump’s plan to “triple the number of [immigration enforcement] officers”: It would “flood the country with immigration agents….” What the paper doesn’t tell readers is that this “flood” would amount to 10,000 new employees for the Enforcement and Removal Operations branch of the Homeland Security Department’s bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Talk about crying wolf.

Also falling into The Times‘ category of “despicable” Trump proposals:

>ending the phony “catch-and-release” practice applied to illegals crossing the border and detaining them until they are sent home;

>establishing criminal penalties for legal visitors to the United States who overstay any of the wide variety of visas offered by Washington (a group that has included at least two of the September 11 hijackers);

>stepping up ICE’s cooperation with local law enforcement authorities to increase the chances that illegals belonging to criminal gangs will be deported;

>and addressing employer violations and other abuses of the H-1B visa system for workers supposedly possessing special skills in technology or other areas, practices which needlessly cost American workers both jobs and wages;

The Times of course wasn’t content to savage Trump. It castigated other GOP presidential hopefuls who haven’t repudiated all of his proposals for “racing to the bottom” on immigration. But if the paper’s editorial writers are looking for demagogues on immigration, they should try a mirror instead.