Military Bases are Destination for Migrant Insurgency

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The United Sates is not dealing with this issue and frankly is not even managing it. When a Mexican presidential candidate calls for a mass exodus TO the United States, we know the mission to flood the United States is a well known doctrine in Mexico.

Oh and by the way, in case you missed former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, make sure you tell the pro-immigrant activists that Johnson admitted the Obama administration also detained children without parents or guardians, citing it was necessary at the time. He further admitted he expanded it even though it was controversial.

So, let’s dump on the military bases to deal with the volume shall we? Sigh Does that mean that all weapons and or live fire training and exercises will have to stop to keep from making the migrants fearful?

Camp Pendleton California Marine Base. | Places I've been ...

San Diego County could become a destination for tens of thousands of unauthorized immigrants to be housed indefinitely by the U.S. Government, under the zero-tolerance policy implemented by President Donald Trump.

According to a report published Friday afternoon by Time magazine, military leaders are drawing up plans to create a tent city at Camp Pendleton to detain as many as 47,000 illegal immigrants from Central America and other locations over the coming months.

The facility at Camp Pendleton would be one of multiple temporary detention centers designated to house immigrants making their way into the United States.

According to an internal memo obtained by Time magazine, the U.S. Navy has been directed to establish “temporary and austere” encampments on military installations in Alabama, Arizona, and California that each could host tens of thousands of detainees.

The document, prepared by an assistant secretary for approval by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, suggests construction could begin at one site within 60 days. The structures would be designed to last for six months to one year, Time magazine reported.

The memo has not yet been approved by Spencer or Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the report said.

The plans detailed in the internal document match the executive order Trump signed earlier this week in response to growing political pressure to halt the separation of parents and children crossing the southern border illegally.

The order does not end the Trump administration zero-tolerance program that aims to prosecute all illegal border crossings. Rather, it calls for families to be housed together in detention facilities instead of separated while parents go through both the criminal court system for illegal entry and then immigration proceedings after that.

The order says immigration courts should prioritize detained-family cases, but it will still likely take longer than the 20 days the government is currently allowed to hold children in detention, even if they are held with their families.

Officials at Camp Pendleton said they know nothing about a temporary immigrant-housing project.

“Camp Pendleton is unaware of any plan to house detainees on our base at this time,” Capt Luke Weaver said in a statement. “Contact DoD Office of the Secretary of Defense public affairs for information on this subject.”

The Time magazine report quoted a U.S. Navy spokesman saying it would be inappropriate to discuss internal deliberative planning documents.

The detainment plan estimates the Navy would spend more than $230 million to build and run a single facility serving 25,000 people for a six-month term.

According to a Government Accountability Office report published in April, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office requested $3.6 billion in 2018 funding to pay for immigrant housing — $1 billion more than the amount of funds requested the prior year.

The GAO report recommended several recommendations aimed at improving ICE’s cost estimates and making sure the budget documents are accurate.

The ICE budget for 2019 proposes a nearly 33 percent increase in the average daily count for unauthorized immigrants, from about 38,000 in 2017 to more than 51,000 this year.

Advocates who work with San Diego immigrant communities were stunned by the Time magazine report.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee San Diego office, said he had been hearing rumblings about new detention centers but never expected Camp Pendleton to be selected.

“I think it’s a mistake to suggest that housing families in austere temporary Navy bases is a solution to the humanitarian needs of people seeking asylum,” he said Friday. “The possibility that families will be held indefinitely is a clear violation of human rights standards.”

Elizabeth Lopez, an immigration attorney with the Southern California Immigration Project, worried about what this might mean for court hearings and what services the detention facilities would have.

“First off, I doubt the government is going to transport them to court, so they will have to build video conference rooms to be able to have hearings,” she said. “Secondly, it is going to be a nightmare to allow the attorneys on to Pendleton to visit our clients.”

Lopez also said she was concerned about the level of medical care migrants would receive while being detained.

Immigration attorney Ginger Jacobs said, “I am also concerned about the extremely high expense of these camps. It looks like it would take approximately $500 million to house people at Camp Pendleton for only a six month time period. That is an enormous waste of government resources. It would be far less expensive to allow the asylum-seekers to live in their own communities with GPS monitor ankle bracelets on, so ICE can keep track of their whereabouts.”

Peter K. Nunez, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California and board chair of a conservative think tank, said he favors erecting as many different detention spaces in as many different places as needed in order to enforce the law.

“There was a time back in the Clinton administration when they started using military facilities to detain people, so it’s not a new idea,” he said. “They have to be treated humanely, but that doesn’t mean they have to be put up in a five-star hotel.

“If they can create temporary detention facilities at Camp Pendleton or any other military base that are adequate to the housing needs, then certainly we can do that,” he said.

According to the Time report, a similar tent city would be established at the former Naval Weapons Station Concord, east of San Francisco. It too would be constructed to hold as many as 47,000 people.

Other facilities that are expected to house 25,000 immigrants would be established at abandoned airfields outside Mobile, Alabama. The memo also proposes studying the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona. as a possible site for an additional immigrant detention center.

The arrival and housing of tens of thousands of immigrants at Camp Pendleton would not be a first for the military base that buffers between San Diego and the Greater Los Angeles area.

In April 1975, after the fall of Saigon, the first of 50,000 or more refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos began arriving at Camp Pendleton for processing before they were resettled to other parts of Southern California and beyond.

The temporary quarters closed by November of the same year.

Where is the Congressional Black Caucus on THIS Issue?

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It is not really a new phenomenon, actually there is slavery going on too. Hello, Kamala Harris, you out there? Hey Corey Booker? Wasn’t it Senator Booker that claimed we don’t love enough? Never mind, he was just referring to America. Anyone on the Senate side? What about that famous United Nations Human Rights  Council?

We are in a full modern day humanitarian crisis and where is the United Nations? Ever notice that no other countries step up either when it comes to failed nations? The key is preventing failed nations, then there would be no migrant/illegal immigration insurgency.

Related reading: African Migrants Report Torture, Slavery in Algeria

Algeria expels thousands of migrants in forced Sahara march

ASSAMAKA, Niger (AP) — From this isolated frontier post deep in the sands of the Sahara, the expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds. They look like specks in the distance, trudging miserably across some of the world’s most unforgiving terrain in the blistering sun.

They are the ones who made it out alive.

Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit).

In Niger, where the majority head, the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15-kilometer (9-mile) no-man’s-land to Assamaka, less a town than a collection of unsteady buildings sinking into drifts of sand. Others, disoriented and dehydrated, wander for days before a U.N. rescue squad can find them. Untold numbers perish along the way; nearly all the more than two dozen survivors interviewed by The Associated Press told of people in their groups who simply could not go on and vanished into the Sahara.

“Women were lying dead, men….. Other people got missing in the desert because they didn’t know the way,” said Janet Kamara, who was pregnant at the time. “Everybody was just on their own.”

Her body still aches from the dead baby she gave birth to during the trek and left behind in the Sahara, buried in a shallow grave in the molten sand. Blood streaked her legs for days afterward, and weeks later, her ankles are still swollen. Now in Arlit, Niger, she is reeling from the time she spent in what she calls “the wilderness,” sleeping in the sand.

Quietly, in a voice almost devoid of feeling, she recalled at least two nights in the open before her group was finally rescued, but said she lost track of time.

“I lost my son, my child,” said Kamara, a Liberian who ran her own home business selling drinks and food in Algeria and was expelled in May.

Another woman in her early twenties, who was expelled at the same time, also went into labor, she said. That baby didn’t make it either.

Algeria’s mass expulsions have picked up since October 2017, as the European Union renewed pressure on North African countries to head off migrants going north to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea or the barrier fences with Spain. These migrants from across sub-Saharan Africa — Mali, the Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and more — are part of the mass migration toward Europe, some fleeing violence, others just hoping to make a living.

A European Union spokesperson said the EU was aware of what Algeria was doing, but that “sovereign countries” can expel migrants as long as they comply with international law. Unlike Niger, Algeria takes none of the EU money intended to help with the migration crisis, although it did receive $111.3 million in aid from Europe between 2014 and 2017.

Algeria provides no figures for the expulsions. But the number of people crossing on foot to Niger has been increasing steadily since the International Organization for Migration started counting in May 2017, when 135 people were dropped at the crossing, to as high as 2,888 in April 2018. In all, according to the IOM, a total of 11,276 men, women and children survived the march.

Map depicts the paths that migrants take after they’ve been expelled from Algeria. (AP Animation/Peter Hamlin)

At least another 2,500 were forced on a similar trek this year through the Sahara into neighboring Mali, with an unknown number succumbing along the way.

The migrants the AP talked to described being rounded up hundreds at a time, crammed into open trucks headed southward for six to eight hours to what is known as Point Zero, then dropped in the desert and pointed in the direction of Niger. They are told to walk, sometimes at gunpoint. In early June, 217 men, women and children were dropped well before reaching Point Zero, fully 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the nearest source of water, according to the IOM.

Within seconds of setting foot on the sand, the heat pierces even the thickest shoes. Sweat dries upon the first touch of air, providing little relief from the beating sun overhead. Each inhalation is like breathing in an oven.

But there is no turning back.

“There were people who couldn’t take it. They sat down and we left them. They were suffering too much,” said Aliou Kande, an 18-year-old from Senegal.

Kande said nearly a dozen people simply gave up, collapsing in the sand. His group of 1,000 got lost and wandered from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m., he said. He never saw the missing people again. The word he returned to, over and over, was “suffering.”

Kande said the Algerian police stole everything he had earned when he was first detained — 40,000 dinars ($340) and a Samsung cell phone.

“They tossed us into the desert, without our telephones, without money. I couldn’t even describe it to you,” he said, still livid at the memory.

Aliou Kande, who has been on the move from his home in Dakar, Senegal, since he was 15, was expelled from Algeria. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

The migrants’ accounts are confirmed by multiple videos collected by the AP over months, which show hundreds of people stumbling away from lines of trucks and buses, spreading wider and wider through the desert. Two migrants told the AP gendarmes fired on the groups to force them to walk, and multiple videos seen by the AP showed armed, uniformed men standing guard near the trucks.

“They bring you to the end of Algeria, to the end in the middle of the desert, and they show you that this is Niger,” said Tamba Dennis, another Liberian who was in Algeria on an expired work visa. “If you can’t bring water, some people die on the road.” He said not everyone in his group made it, but couldn’t say how many fell behind.

Ju Dennis, another Liberian who is not related to Tamba, filmed his deportation with a cell phone he kept hidden on his body. It shows people crammed on the floor of an open truck, vainly trying to shade their bodies from the sun and hide from the gendarmes. He narrated every step of the way in a hushed voice.

Even as he filmed, Ju Dennis knew what he wanted to tell the world what was happening.

“You’re facing deportation in Algeria — there is no mercy,” he said. “I want to expose them now…We are here, and we saw what they did. And we got proof.”

Algerian authorities refused to comment on the allegations raised by the AP. Algeria has denied criticism from the IOM and other organizations that it is committing human rights abuses by abandoning migrants in the desert, calling the allegations a “malicious campaign” intended to inflame neighboring countries.

Along with the migrants who make their way from Algeria to Niger on foot, thousands more Nigerien migrants are expelled directly home in convoys of trucks and buses. That’s because of a 2015 agreement between Niger and Algeria to deal with Nigeriens living illegally in their neighbor to the north.

***

Even then, there are reports of deaths, including one mother whose body was found inside the jammed bus at the end of the 450-kilometer (280-mile) journey from the border. Her two children, both sick with tuberculosis, were taken into custody, according to both the IOM and Ibrahim Diallo, a local journalist and activist.

The number of migrants sent home in convoys — nearly all of them Nigerien — has also shot up, to at least 14,446 since August 2017, compared with 9,290 for all of 2016.

The journey from Algeria to Niger is essentially the reverse of the path many in Africa took north — expecting work in Algeria or Libya or hoping to make it to Europe. They bumped across the desert in Toyota Hilux pickups, 15 to 20 in the flatbed, grasping gnarled sticks for balance and praying the jugs of water they sat upon would last the trip.

The number of migrants going to Algeria may be increasing as an unintended side effect of Europe’s successful blocking of the Libyan crossing, said Camille Le Coz, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Brussels.

But people die going both ways; the Sahara is a swift killer that leaves little evidence behind. The arid heat shrivels bodies, and blowing sand envelops the remains. The IOM has estimated that for every migrant known to have died crossing the Mediterranean, as many as two are lost in the desert — potentially upwards of 30,000 people since 2014.

The vast flow of migrants puts an enormous strain on all the points along the route. The first stop south is Assamaka, the only official border post in the 950-kilometer (590 mile) border Algeria shares with Niger.

Even in Assamaka, there are just two water wells — one that pumps only at night and the other, dating to French colonial times, that gives rusty water. The needs of each wave of expelled migrants overwhelm the village — food, water, medicine.

“They come by the thousands….I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Alhoussan Adouwal, an IOM official who has taken up residence in the village to send out the alert when a new group arrives. He then tries to arrange rescue for those still in the desert. “It’s a catastrophe.”

In Assamaka, the migrants settle into a depression in the dunes behind the border post until the IOM can get enough buses to fetch them. The IOM offers them a choice: Register with IOM to return eventually to their home countries or fend for themselves at the border.

Some decide to take their chances on another trip north, moving to The Dune, an otherworldly open-air market a few kilometers away, where macaroni and gasoline from Algeria are sold out of the back of pickups and donkey carts. From there, they will try again to return to Algeria, in hopes of regaining the lives and jobs they left behind. Trucks are leaving all the time, and they take their fare in Algerian dinars.

Migrants pay to head north into Algeria at the Assamaka border post in northern Niger. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

The rest will leave by bus for the town of Arlit, about 6 hours to the south through soft sand.

In Arlit, a sweltering transit center designed for a few hundred people lately has held upwards of 1,000 at a time for weeks on end.

“Our geographical position is such that today, we are directly in the path of all the expulsions of migrants,” said Arlit Mayor Abdourahman Mawli. Mawli said he had heard of deaths along the way from the migrants and also from the IOM. Others, he said, simply turned right round and tried to return to Algeria.

“So it becomes an endless cycle,” he said wearily.

One man at the center with scars on his hands and arms was so traumatized that he never spoke and didn’t leave. The other migrants assumed he had endured the unspeakable in Algeria, a place where many said they had been robbed and beaten by authorities. Despite knowing nothing about him, they washed and dressed him tenderly in clean clothes, and laid out food so he could eat. He embarked on an endless loop of the yard in the midday sun.

A young migrant who has been expelled from Algeria paces in a transit center in Arlit, Niger. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

With no name, no confirmed nationality and no one to claim him, the man had been in Arlit for more than a month. Nearly all of the rest would continue south mostly off-road to Agadez, the Nigerien city that has been a crossroads for African trade and migration for generations. Ultimately, they will return to their home countries on IOM-sponsored flights.

In Agadez, the IOM camps are also filling up with those expelled from Algeria. Both they and the mayor of Agadez are growing increasingly impatient with their fate.

“We want to keep our little bit of tranquility,” said the mayor, Rhissa Feltou. “Our hospitality is a threat to us.”

Even as these migrants move south, they cross paths with some who are making the trip north through Agadez.

Every Monday evening, dozens of pickup trucks filled with the hopeful pass through a military checkpoint at the edge of the city. They are fully loaded with water and people gripping sticks, their eyes firmly fixed on the future.

Hey China, the U.S. Should Include the Cost of Espionage in Trade Deficit

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Let’s begin here: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, June 21, 2018

Chinese National Arrested for Conspiring to Illegally Export U.S. Origin Goods Used in Anti-Submarine Warfare to China

Defendant allegedly illegally exported devices used to detect and monitor sound underwater

BOSTON – A Chinese national was arrested today and charged in connection with violating export laws by conspiring with employees of an entity affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to illegally export U.S. origin goods to China, as well as making false statements to obtain a visa to enter the United States and to become a lawful permanent resident under the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program.

Shuren Qin, 41, a Chinese national residing in Wellesley, Mass., was charged in a criminal complaint with one count of visa fraud and one count of conspiring to commit violations of U.S. export regulations. Qin was arrested today and will appear in federal court in Boston on June 22, 2018.

According to charging documents, Qin was born in the People’s Republic of China and became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in 2014. Qin operates several companies in China, which purport to import U.S. and European goods with applications in underwater or marine technologies into China.  It is alleged that Qin was in communication with and/or receiving taskings from entities affiliated with the PLA, including the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU), a Chinese military research institute, to obtain items used for anti-submarine warfare. (..)

LCS Mission Packages: The Basics - USNI News photo

Okay, how about this one?

The submarine contractor breach, recently reported by the Washington Post, reflects this intense focus on bridging any technological advantage the US may have. It involved attacks in January and February that nabbed important data, albeit from an unclassified network. When taken together, though, the information would have amounted to a valuable snapshot of US cutting edge underwater weapons development, plus details on a number of related digital and mechanical systems.

The attack fits into a known pattern of Chinese hacking initiatives. “China will continue to use cyberespionage and bolster cyberattack capabilities to support [its] national security priorities,” US director of national intelligence Daniel Coats wrote in a February threat report. “The [Intelligence Community] and private-sector security experts continue to identify ongoing cyberactivity from China…Most detected Chinese cyberoperations against US private industry are focused on cleared defense contractors or IT and communications firms.”

This week, analysts from Symantec also published research on a series of attacks in the same category from November 2017 to April from a hacking group dubbed Thrip. Though Symantec does not go so far as to identify Thrip as Chinese state-sponsored hackers, it reports “with high confidence” that Thrip attacks trace back to computers inside the country. The group, which Symantec has tracked since 2013, has evolved to hide in plain site by mostly using prefab malware to infiltrate networks and then manipulating administrative controls and other legitimate system tools to bore deeper without setting off alarms. All of these off-the-shelf hacking tools and techniques have made Thrip harder to identify and track—which is likely the idea—but Symantec started to notice patterns in their anomaly detection scanners that ultimately gave these attacks away, and led the researchers to a unique backdoor that implicated Thrip.

The researchers found evidence of intrusions at some southeast Asian telecom firms, a US geospatial imagery company, a couple of private satellite companies including one from the US, and a US defense contractor. The breaches were all deliberate and targeted, and in the case of the satellite firms the hackers moved all the way through to reach the control systems of actual orbiting satellites, where they could have impacted a satellite’s trajectory or disrupted data flow. More here from Wired.

As if that is not enough to begin charging China, how about this?

U.S. military pilots flying aircraft over the East China Sea have been targeted by blinding laser attacks more than 20 times over the last 10 months, U.S. officials told The Japan Times, after a number of similar attacks in East Africa that the Pentagon has said Chinese military personnel were behind.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the attacks in the waterway, where the Chinese military has bolstered its operations, were first reported last September. The incidents were believed to have come from a range of sources, “both ashore and from fishing vessels,” spokeswoman Maj. Cassandra Gesecki said.

Indo-Pacific Command said it would not go into specifics about the incidents, but media reports quoting unidentified U.S. officials said some of the fishing boats were Chinese-flagged vessels. Officials wouldn’t definitively confirm that Chinese personnel were behind all of the incidents.

Beijing operates a “maritime militia” of Chinese fishing boats, which it trains and subsidizes with sophisticated gear such as GPS equipment. Such vessels have played an important role in China asserting its various territorial claims in the East and South China Seas.

Chinese personnel at the country’s first overseas military base in Djibouti had been using lasers to interfere with U.S. military aircraft at a nearby American base, activity that has resulted in injuries to U.S. pilots and prompted the U.S. to launch a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing.

However, unlike the Djibouti incidents, where military-grade lasers had been employed in some cases, the East China Sea incidents involved smaller, commercial-grade laser pointers popularly known as “cat grade” lasers because pet owners have known to use to play with their animals. Even so, these types of lasers have been known to temporarily blind pilots and, in some cases, cause eye damage.

“In light of these recent incidents, units operating in the area are conducting an assessment of their laser eye protection equipment,” Gesecki said.

While Chinese fishing vessels have long operated in the East China Sea, the country’s military has embarked on a military modernization program heavily promoted by President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a shift in focus toward creating a more potent fighting force. This has included projects such as building a second aircraft carrier, integrating stealth fighters into the air force and fielding an array of advanced missiles that can strike air and sea targets from long distances.

In a demonstration of its continued push to refine its power-projection capabilities and push further into the Western Pacific Ocean, the Chinese military in April conducted drills in the Pacific with its sole operating aircraft carrier.

The East China Sea is home to a long-running dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands, which are controlled by Japan but also claimed by China, which calls them the Diaoyu. Japanese defense chief Itsunori Onodera said in April that Chinese activity — including naval and coast guard patrols in the waters — “has expanded and accelerated” in recent years as it seeks to assert its territorial claims.

But the activity goes beyond military.

Beijing has also used its maritime militia to hassle Japanese fishermen and the Japan Coast Guard in a bid to better enforce its claims in the East China Sea, experts say.

If the Chinese military is not directly involved in the laser incidents, it could be directing — at some level — the maritime militia to target U.S. pilots.

Although the U.S. has not taking a position on the sovereignty of the Senkakus, it has repeatedly said that they fall under its treaty obligations to defend Japan’s territory if it is attacked.

In closing, remember:

On May 23, the US State Department announced that one embassy worker in Guangzhou experienced “subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure” before being diagnosed with symptoms similar to those found in the diplomatic personnel that were in Cuba, including mild traumatic brain injury.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that at least two more Americans in Guangzhou have experienced similar phenomena and also fallen ill. One of those embassy workers told the Times that he and his wife had heard mysterious sounds and experienced strange headaches and sleeplessness while in their apartment.

After the evacuation of the first diplomatic employee from Guangzhou was announced, the State Department issued a health alert via the US Consulate in Guangzhou telling people that “if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attempt to locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds are not present.”

On June 5, the office of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the establishment of a task force meant to respond to these mysterious incidents, which some have called “sonic attacks.” More here.

Introducing Southwest Key Programs, Housing Illegals

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Primer:

Texas-based Southwest Key Programs has taken in roughly $1 billion in federal contracts since the Obama administration, and is expected to receive about $500 million this year to house and provide services for immigrant children, according to reports.

And Southwest officials receive significant compensation for their efforts. WQAD reported tax filings show Juan Sanchez, the group’s founder and CEO, received nearly $1.5 million in 2016 – nearly twice the previous year’s salary, of $786,822. His wife, Jennifer, vice president of Southwest Key, received about $280,000 in 2015 in total compensation, WQAD reported.

Three Flee Tucson’s Southwest Key Unaccompanied Alien ... photo

But let’s go back to 2015 shall we?

There was this Department of Justice slush fund, you may remember. When big banks were found guilty of mortgage fraud like Citigroup or Bank of America, no one went to jail. They just paid fines. Well, those fines were quite substantial, as much as a total of $36 billion. So, there were actually a few slush funds of a quasi nature. You see, some banks rather than go through Treasury or to the Justice Department’s slush fund, they are told to pay some radical/activist groups directly, specifically designated by the Justice Department. The Justice Department’s division is known as The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), which coordinated and managed all of this.  Oh, and for each dollar they did pay, they got credit for two dollars. How does that accounting work?

So, far left even Marxist organizations such as La Raza, National Urban League and Southwest Key Programs were just some of the beneficiaries.  More here.

Then came other law enforcement operations also kicking in dollars and then a training program was created.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), a national nonprofit organization that promotes just and equitable social systems for individuals, families, and communities through research, public policy, and practice, developed the Immigrant Parents and Law Enforcement Promoting Community Safety Project curriculum
with the support of key partners.
NCCD would like to thank its law enforcement and community partners in Austin, Texas, and Oakland, California: La Clinica de la Raza, Southwest Key Programs, the Oakland Police Department, the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department, the Austin Police Department, the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, and the Travis County Constables. NCCD’s partners played a crucial role in the development and piloting of the curriculum.
NCCD would also like to thank the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) for funding the development of the Immigrant Parents and Law Enforcement Promoting Community Safety Project. The BJA, a component of the US Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs (OJP), disseminates state-of-the-art knowledge and practices across US
justice systems and provides grants at the national, state, local, and tribal level
s to fund the implementation of these crime-fighting strategies. BJA provides
proven leadership and services in grant administration and criminal justice policy development to make our nation’s communities safer. This project was supported by Grant No. 2010-DB-BX-K064 awarded by the BJA. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the author and do not represent the official position or policies of the US
Department of Justice. You can read that trainers guide here in full.

Related reading: Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the National Council of La Raza Annual Conference July 7, 2012

Even The Boston Globe is attempting to tell the truth about Southwest Key Program. Hello CNN?

WASHINGTON — The outrage generated by President Trump’s forced separations of immigrant children from their parents at the Mexican border would seem to leave little room for middle ground. Advocates including Latino groups, Catholic bishops, the United Nations, and members of Congress are condemning the practice as inhumane.

But one major Latino charity is trying to occupy a gray area in the midst of the firestorm, with limited success at escaping controversy: Texas-based Southwest Key Programs Inc., a pillar of the Hispanic nonprofit world with deep respect across the country.

It now finds itself accused of complicity in Trump’s separations policy, raising broader questions about how much moral responsibility is borne by the thousands of people who are working to carry out that policy, even when the job includes taking care of the children themselves.

The $240 million-a-year Southwest Key organization has big contracts with the government to house immigrant minors in its two dozen low-security shelters in Texas, Arizona, and California, a population that in recent weeks has exploded with infants and children removed from their parents.

The Associated Press reported Friday that 2,000 children have been removed from their parents since April. Southwest Key estimates it has roughly 500 of those children in its facilities. It also is the only Hispanic-run organization with federal Department of Health and Human Services contracts to house the children en masse.

That has thrust Southwest Key into the middle of a burning human rights controversy and into what its chief executive described in an interview as a “dilemma.’’ A spokesman for the group said it has been deluged with angry calls and e-mails, including one person who called Southwest Key “the nonprofit wing of the Nazi party.”

There’s even been an internal debate within Southwest Key’s board of directors.

“It’s inhumane to me,” said Rosa Santis, the treasurer of the board for Southwest Key, which is based in Austin. “I think it’s horrible that they’re really separating kids from their parents.”

Now Southwest is risking that reputation as it participates in the Trump crackdown.

“This is raising issues about whether you are complicit at some level in a process and a procedure that has moral questions,” said Robert Carey, who oversaw Southwest Key’s contracts when he was the director of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement from 2015 to 2017 during the Obama administration. “They are, in some way, part of a system that is not serving children and not protecting children. . . . It is immoral to tear children out of the arms of their parents.”

On the other hand, said Carey, who is now a fellow at the Open Society Foundations, “By being there, are they preventing further harm?” Read the full story here from the Boston Globe.

How about a couple of sample other states? Like Illinois? Check out how that is being funded.

Beyond the normal Catholic charities that have made a full business out of all of this, not to be overlooked is the Islamic Society, say in Tampa. They want a piece of the action.

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – Members of Tampa Bay area religious communities have offered to host the 2,300 children who have been separated from their parents by President Trump’s border policy.

The Islamic Society of Tampa Bay and other religious leaders made the announcement about their humanitarian program at a news conference on Friday.

The leaders said that so far, there are more than 100 families in the Tampa Bay area who would like to host the migrant children until they are reunited with their parents.

“It will be very much like the foster care system per say.. without the financial help from the government. this will be competely self funded,” said Ahmen Bedier who is president of United Voices of America.

The families have offered to host the children at no cost. The program would also pay for the children’s transportation to the Tampa Bay area.

The faith leaders say they have received more than $1 million in pledges to pay for the children’s transportation.

“Our ultimate goal is to protect the children,” said Bedier.

He said the faith communities do not want to play the blame game when it comes to the crisis involving migrant children who have been separated from their parents.

“How did we get here? It doesn’t matter,” he said.

Bedier said he hopes the U.S. government will respond to the offer.

“We hope that the government responds well to our offer and takes us up on it.”

Nyla Hazrajee is one of the people stepping forward to host. She said, she would want someone to do the same for her child.

“This is not supposed to happen and it’s our job to make sure that it doesn’t happen,” she said.

He also said that local families who are interested in hosting migrant children can learn more by calling the Islamic Society of Tampa Bay at (813) 628-0007.

 

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Kamala, Nancy, Chuck Hiding Behind the Flores Dissent Decree?

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(CNSNews.com) – Happy to have found an issue that may hurt President Donald Trump politically, Democrats insist there is no need for legislation to fix the badly broken immigration system that allows tens of thousands of people, adults and children alike, to pour into this country illegally, without vetting.

“There’s no need for legislation, there’s no need for anything else,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told a news conference on Tuesday. “You can do it, Mr. President. You started it, you can stop it, plain and simple. So, again, if the president’s ashamed at what’s happening at the border, he can change it.”

Schumer said Trump can “undo this shameful policy immediately…with a flick of the pen.”

“Mr. President, I’ll lend you my pen, any pen,” Schumer said. “You can fix it yourself, so we’re here today to say, Mr. President, you should and you must fix this problem. But if you don’t want to change this cruel policy, at least admit it is your decision.”

A reporter asked Schumer, “Why not just enact a law that stops them from ever from doing this again?”

“Well there are so many obstacles to legislation, and when the president can do it with his own pen, it makes no sense,” Schumer said. “(House Speaker Paul) Ryan, the president signing it, attaching it to things that are unacceptable. Legislation is not the way to go here when it’s so easy for the president to sign it. It’s an excuse.”

Another reporter asked Schumer if the time might come when “Democrats would be willing to work with the Republicans” on a “narrow” immigration bill:

“Let’s hope we never get to that,” Schumer responded. “Let’s hope the president does the right thing and solves the problem, which he can do. That’s the simple, easiest and most likely way this will happen. How many times has immigration legislation passed in this Congress? How many times? Zero. More here.

Trump Could Simply Ignore Court’s Order Halting Travel Ban ...

*** Now for the Flores Dissent Decree and that pesky 9th Circuit Court.

TWS: During an interview on Friday, Trump stated that a law passed by Democrats was the reason illegal immigrants were being separated from the children they brought across the border.

“The Democrats forced that law upon our nation. I hate it. I hate to see separation of parents and children,” the president told reporters.

This came after Trump told Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in May, “I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough, but those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us. We have to break up families.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley also weighed in on the predicament, citing a need to repeal “the Flores 1997 court decision” in order to stop the separation of families at the border.

What’s the truth?

In April, the Trump administration issued a “zero tolerance” policy at the border, a policy responsible for separating some 2,000 children from the adults they crossed over with. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in May that “if you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law.”

But current law does not mandate family separation at the border — there is simply no federal statute that requires such activity, which is made obvious by the lack of enforcement of this policy prior to April. The Trump administration’s policy was not dictated to it by Congress, past or present, by Republicans or by Democrats. However, current law does not prevent these adults from being separated from the children they brought, either.

Much of the argument comes down to the 1997 Flores settlement to a class-action lawsuit from the 1980s surrounding the “detention and release” of minors taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The settlement demands the release of children to their parents, relatives, etc. without unnecessary delay. If this placement is unavailable — e.g., if the child’s parent is a threat to them or is placed in criminal proceedings, or the supposed parent is only posing as one — the government must put the child in the “least restrictive” accommodations that are appropriate for their needs.

Before the “zero tolerance” policy, illegal immigrants who had crossed the border with children were not often prosecuted but placed in family detention centers (or released) with the order to attend a future court date or await deportation. Now that the adults are being prosecuted and held for their criminal proceedings, the children are subsequently separated and detained in appropriate accommodations outlined by the Flores settlement.

As noted by a fact-check from the New York Times, the Obama administration, during a sharp increase in family migration from South America, utilized family detention centers, which attracted lawsuits claiming “that doing so had breached the Flores settlement by not releasing children swiftly.”

Rich Lowry argues in National Review that if the Flores settlement were reversed there would be no direct need to separate families. “Congress can change the rules so the Flores consent decree will no longer apply,” he notes, “and it can appropriate more money for family shelters at the border.” Current law does not demand that parents be separated from their children but makes prosecuting these adults nigh impossible without separation.

As long as the “zero tolerance” policy set forth from the Trump administration is in operation under current law, adults will be separated from the children they bring while crossing the border, either illegally or to seek asylum. It is incorrect to place the blame on a law passed by Democrats, as it is the “zero tolerance” policy from the current administration that began, through prosecution, separating children and adults who illegally crossed the border together.