The Clinton’s and Panama Papers Friends

Posted on May 16, 2016May 16, 2016 by Denise Simon

There has been a constant recent argument that if you are a conservative and don’t vote Trump then you are effectively voting for Hillary. That is a straw man argument when the matter is twofold.

Newt Gingrich argued with Congressman Huelskamp over the weekend and admitted Trump is not a ‘Reagan conservative’ but he is better than Hillary. Of course that statement is true. The other matter is why are the Trump fans so fearful that Hillary will get the nomination? Of course she will. Are Republicans so terrified that Hillary cannot be defeated in the general election? If so, then where is the mettle and fire in the belly and force multiplier and a voting army defeat Hillary? If the will is there, the achievement can be so great such that no Democrat will successfully take over the Oval Office for perhaps up to 3 election cycles and it should that way given the last 8 years.

In case this argument needs more ammunition, here are some more political arrows for the quiver relating to the elitist circle of the Clintons. This demonstrates the alternate universe of collusion, money and favors.

Inside Panama Papers: Multiple Clinton connections

Washington/McClatchy:

Hillary Clinton recently blasted the hidden financial dealings exposed in the Panama Papers, but she and her husband have multiple connections with people who have used the besieged law firm Mossack Fonseca to establish offshore entities.

Among them are Gabrielle Fialkoff, finance director for Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate; Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining magnate who has traveled the globe with Bill Clinton; the Chagoury family, which pledged $1 billion in projects to the Clinton Global Initiative; and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, who was at the center of a Democratic fund-raising scandal when Bill Clinton was president. Also using the Panamanian law firm was the company founded by the late billionaire investor Marc Rich, an international fugitive when Bill Clinton pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency.

The ties are both recent and decades old, not surprising

for the Democratic presidential front-runner and her husband, who have been in public life since the 1970s.

Each is listed in the massive leak of data from Mossack Fonseca, a law firm with expertise in registering offshore companies, which can have legitimate business purposes, but can also be used to evade taxes and launder money. Several heads of state were found in the leak, leading to the departure of the leader of Iceland and investigations in several other countries.

McClatchy Newspapers and about 350 other journalists working under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists have searched an archive containing more than 11.5 million Mossack Fonseca documents, including passports, financial records and emails. After a series of articles earlier this month revealed how business owners and politicians used offshores, authorities raided the law firm’s offices in Panama. The law firm has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.

Hillary Clinton condemned what she called “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting.”

“Now, some of this behavior is clearly against the law, and everyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable,” she said, speaking at the AFL-CIO convention recently. “But it’s also scandalous how much is actually legal.”

The Clintons themselves do not appear to be in Mossack Fonseca’s database, nor does it appear that their daughter, Chelsea, or her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, who co-founded a hedge fund, are listed. But Bill and Hillary Clinton’s connections to people who have used offshores is fuel for her Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders.

Clinton has struggled throughout her campaign to show that she can relate to working Americans, while Sanders has cast her as a wealthy out-of-touch Washington insider who has accepted hefty paychecks for speeches and received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from those tied to big businesses. Her connection to the Panama Papers, even if indirect, could magnify that perception.

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, said it would draw voters’ attention once again to Clinton’s ties to big money. “It certainly would play into Sanders’ narrative,” he said.

Sanders said Clinton’s support of a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Panama – one that he claims has allowed the wealthy to avoid paying taxes – should disqualify her from being the Democratic nominee for president.

“I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed, which has made it easier for wealthy people and corporations all over the world to avoid paying taxes owed to their countries,” Sanders said recently.

To be sure, a long life in politics has allowed the Clintons to accumulate relationships to wealthy people and businesses across the globe.

One such connection is to Jean-Raymond Boulle, a one-time diamond miner from the volcanic island nation of Mauritius whose company was once based in Bill Clinton’s hometown of Hope, Ark. In the mid 1990s, Boulle was listed as a director of Auk Limited, a British Virgin Islands offshore company, and Gridco Limited, a Bahamas offshore company.

After two meetings with Boulle, Bill Clinton, then-governor of Arkansas, signed legislation allowing his company to engage in exploratory mining in the state. Later, Boulle and his wife attended Clinton’s first inauguration. Boulle’s company did not respond to a message.

“Obviously there’s no wrongdoing – it’s a question of perception and values,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “They’ve been in public life so long; when you enter that sphere you have these connections.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon declined to answer specific questions about her connections but referred to Clinton’s earlier comments that criticized the behavior last week. Bill Clinton’s office and the Clinton Foundation declined to comment.

Also among the Clinton connections is Fialkoff, now a senior adviser to New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and director of the city’s Office of Strategic Partnerships. She, her brother, Brett, and her late father, Frank, are listed as shareholders of UPAC Holdings Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company incorporated in June 2012.

Gabrielle Fialkoff said in an email that she has “no knowledge” of the company and referred questions to her brother.

Brett Fialkoff, who serves as chief operating officer at his family’s business, Haskell Jewels, a New York-based designer, marketer and distributor of costume jewelry, initially told McClatchy he didn’t know why his family would be in the documents. Later, he said that someone must have opened an account in their names.

Still, later, he said he set up an offshore company to export accessories from China to the United States. The documents indicate the company’s files are registered in Beijing.

But, he said, he abandoned the new business to give more attention to his family’s jewelry company. He said there’s no money in any bank account overseas and declined to provide details about his compliance with U.S. tax laws.

“I have news for you: There is no money,” he said in a phone interview. “We’re not like Vladimir Putin, trying to hide money.”

The most recent Mossack Fonseca information of December 2015 shows the company remains active, registered on behalf of the Fialkoffs in the British Virgin Islands by a Hong Kong-based consulting company on June 6, 2012. Brett Failkoff acknowledged the company is still “legally alive” but said it does not – nor has it ever – conducted any business.

Gabrielle Fialkoff, a longtime friend of de Blasio, was finance director for Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, which de Blasio managed. After serving as Haskell’s president and chief operating officer, she chaired de Blasio’s inauguration and led New York’s unsuccessful bid to host the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

She has been a regular donor to Democratic candidates, including Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. She also donated between $250 and $1,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Her father donated to Clinton as well. Her brother contributed money to Republicans, including presidential candidates Ben Carson and Rand Paul.

Another connection is Giustra, the director of UrAsia Energy Ltd, a British Virgin Islands offshore company registered in May 2005.

The company wanted to “conduct uranium exploration, development, production and marketing operations and related activities in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,” according to a draft of the shareholders’ agreement.

UrAsia, based in British Columbia, Canada, finalized a deal in September 2005 to buy uranium mines for $500 million in Kazakhstan, according to published reports.

The deal came after Giustra joined Bill Clinton in Kazakhstan for the launch of a Clinton Foundation health initiative and dined with him and Kazakhstan’s president, among others. The timing prompted questions about whether Bill Clinton played any role in the agreement. Giustra denied that, saying it came after months of negotiations.

The following year, Giustra, who is also involved in filmmaking and founded Lionsgate Entertainment, made a donation of more than $30 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to published reports.

In total, Giustra has committed $100 million to the foundation, according to at least one report, though foundation records don’t give an exact amount, saying only that he is one of the largest individual donors giving more than $25 million. In 2007, he started an affiliated charity that bears his name and initially kept its donors secret despite a 2008 agreement between the Clintons and the Obama administration to make public foundation contributors.

Bill Clinton has flown around the globe on Giustra’s plane, sometimes with him, including to Kazakhstan.

Giustra’s attorney David S. Brown wrote in a letter to McClatchy that his client “had no dealing with the law firm of Mossack Fonseca.”

He also said the use of a company such as UrAsia Energy Ltd. is common in international mining transactions and was used at the direction of an international accounting firm.

“Far from being secretive, opaque or clandestine, UrAsia Energy Ltd. BVI was fully disclosed to the public and to the applicable regulators in 2005 _ to be clear, there was absolutely nothing untoward in the use of this entity,” he wrote.

He declined to answer additional questions.

Former fugitive billionaire Marc Rich’s name doesn’t appear in the Panama Papers, but his company does. The Bahamas offshore Industrial Petroleum Limited was registered in 1992, established by the commodities firm Glencore International in Switzerland, inactivated in 2001.

The allegations against Rich, who died in 2013, ranged from tax evasion to trading with Iran despite bans to selling oil to South Africa’s apartheid government. He fled to Switzerland in 1983, but before the pardon, his ex-wife Denise made a $450,000 donation to Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock.

Rich’s business partners appear in the data too. And they also give generously to the Clinton Foundation.

Sergei Kurzin, a Russian engineer and investor, appears in a draft shareholders agreement in partnership with Giustra in the British Virgin Islands offshore UrAsia Energy Ltd. Kurzin worked closely with Rich in the 1990s looking for opportunities in the former Soviet Union when it was opened to mining and oil investment.

Kurzin, who has given the Clinton Foundation between $50,000 and $100,000, appears in the Panama Papers as the director and chairman of various oil companies. Kurzin was also a partner in the uranium deal involving Giustra.

In a 2009 interview with Forbes, the British-Russian dual citizen boasted of giving generously to a Clinton-Giustra initiative, noting: “I wrote a check for a million dollars. I don’t think you can call it a small amount.”

Messages left for Kurzin were not returned this weekend.

Also in the Panama Papers is Ronald Chagoury, who along with brother Gilbert leads the Chagoury Group, a Nigerian family-run construction business. The brothers were associated with Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, who died in 1998, and did business with Glencore and Rich, according to news reports.

Ronald Chagoury appears in the Panama Papers as the main shareholder of Echo Art Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands.

In 2009, the Chagoury Group pledged $1 billion in coastal erosion projects to the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the foundation, according to the initiative’s website.

The Chagoury Group is building Eko Atlantic, a peninsula city adjacent to Lagos that will be reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. The company’s website cites the Clinton Global Initiative’s praise for it as an “environmentally conscious city” under construction.

Gilbert Chagoury’s ties to the Clintons stretch back years. He has given to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns and has donated between $1 million to $5 million to Clinton Foundation, foundation records show. In 2003 he organized a trip to the Caribbean where Bill Clinton was paid $100,000 for a speech.

Messages left for the Chagourys were not returned this weekend.

Another businessman in the Panama papers, Ng, is listed as a shareholder of two British Virgin Islands companies – South South News International Group Ltd in May 2010 and GOLUCK Ltd. in 2004.

He leads a real estate development company in Macau, China, and is one of the world’s wealthiest people. He was accused in 1996 of sending more than $1.1 million to a Little Rock restaurant owner who then contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee, according to a 1998 Senate committee investigation.

The restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws. Ng was not charged. Another congressional report criticized Ng and others for failing to cooperate during the investigation.

Published reports say Ng visited the White House 10 times from 1994 to 1996, had his photograph taken with Bill and Hillary Clinton, sat beside Bill Clinton at an event at a Washington hotel, and rode in an elevator with Hillary Clinton.

Last year, Ng was charged with bribing a United Nations official and lying about what he was doing with $4.5 million in cash he brought into the U.S. over two years. Investigators say instead of spending it at casinos or on art, antiques or real estate, he used the money for bribes as he sought investments in Antigua and China. Another man listed in the same criminal complaint is president of the New York-based South South News, the same name of the British Virgin Islands company.

Ng’s lawyer, Kevin Tung, has said that his charges are based on a misunderstanding. Tung, Benjamin Brafman and Hugh Mo, two others who are or have represented Ng, did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2011, Sanders predicted in a Senate speech that the Panama trade deal would make it easier for the wealthy to hide their cash in Panama.

“I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared,” he said in a statement earlier this month.

Hillary Clinton had opposed the deal in 2008 when she was running for president. But later, as secretary of state, she helped push the agreement through Congress. Her supporters, however, say that the trade pact did not open the door to additional tax evasion.

A Democrat-controlled Senate approved the trade deal. In October 2012, then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., lauded the deal’s “strong language to crack down on tax evasion and money-laundering in Panama.”

Both Clinton and Sanders have vowed to go after Americans who try to hide their wealth.

Clinton said she would shut down what she called the private tax system for the wealthy while Sanders has said he would end the trade deal with Panama within six months and investigate U.S. banks, corporations and individuals stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes.

“We’re going after all these scams and make sure that everyone pays their fair share here in America,” she said. “I’m going to hold them accountable, and we’re going to have a special effort to track all these resources wherever they might lead.”

McClatchy has much more here and it is worth the long read to understand more not only on the Clintons but of the elites around the world that our own elites entertained, manipulated, approved of and how some laws and sanctions were waived.

Questions and Anger on Transfer of El Chapo

Posted on May 9, 2016May 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

The Transfer of Mexican Drug Boss ‘El Chapo’ to a Less-Secure Prison Raises Concerns
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” says the former head of the DEA

Time: (MEXICO CITY) — Questions arose on both sides of the border about the decision to relocate convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to a region that is one of his cartel’s strongholds, and a Mexican security official acknowledged Sunday that the sudden transfer was to a less-secure prison.

The official said that in general the Cefereso No. 9 prison on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, is not as impregnable as the maximum-security Altiplano facility near Mexico City where he had been held. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss Guzman’s case publicly and agreed to do so only if not quoted by name.

The official said, however, that Guzman is being held in a maximum-security wing where the same protocols are being enforced as in Altiplano, including 24-hour monitoring via a camera in his cell.

Multiple analysts told The Associated Press that there was no sign of a link between the prison switch and extradition.
There will be no escape, ” Duarte told local media. “If he was brought here from Altiplano it’s because the security conditions are way above those of Altiplano, that’s what the federal government settled on.”

There Goes Afghanistan

Posted on May 6, 2016May 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

While we have been at war, or maybe not so much lately in Afghanistan, the forgotten war, the Taliban and al Qaeda have partnered once again in earnest. Further, al Qaeda is successfully competing for fighters, those leaving Islamic State. The reemergence of al Qaeda will likely go well in collaboration with the Taliban due in part to the Taliban’s increased revenue sources.

There are about 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan; about 8,500 of them are soldiers.

Current plans call for that number to drop to about 5,000 in 2016, but the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Campbell, testified on Capitol Hill earlier this month that he wants “greater flexibility” to potentially keep more troops in-country. More from ArmyTimes.

Taliban Gets ‘Windfall’ from Poppy Harvest to Fund Offensives

The Taliban will reap “windfall” profits from a bumper poppy harvest in Afghanistan this spring to fund coming offensives, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said Thursday.

“The poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban,” and the insurgents were expected to benefit from “this very good poppy crop that they had this year,” said Army Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland.

“As a result, we do expect an uptick in Taliban efforts to attack” when the harvest is completed later this month, with offensives focused on southwestern Helmand province, the center of the Afghan narcotics trade, Cleveland, the deputy chief for communications of the Resolute Support mission, said in a video briefing from Kabul to the Pentagon.

Taliban fighters in recent weeks essentially dropped the fight to assist in the harvest, giving respite to the struggling 215th Division of the Afghan National Security Forces in Helmand province, Cleveland said.

“A lot of the Taliban fighters have been out harvesting the poppy,” he said. Once the harvest is complete later this month, “We think that will be the next big Taliban push,” he said. “We think it will come in Helmand.”

The poppy trade in in Afghanistan supplies about 90 percent of the world’s heroin and is estimated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to be worth about $3 billion annually to the Afghan economy.

Narcotics trafficking goes virtually unimpeded in Afghanistan. The U.S. has dropped its eradication and crop substitution efforts. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration still has an office in Kabul but no longer conducts field operations.

The United Nations estimated that the poppy crop fell by about 19 percent last year mostly due to poor weather, but plentiful rain this year was expected to produce a bumper crop.

“We are happy that we had a good harvest this year compared with previous years,” Abdul Rahim Mutmain, a farmer in Helmand, told The New York Times.

“There is no security concern for a single laborer being checked or robbed by the police,” he said. “The entire district is under Taliban control and the bulk of the harvesters are Taliban.”

A typical Afghan farmer can get $200 for a kilogram of opium produced from poppy, according to the United Nations. The same amount of green beans will fetch $1.

Cleveland said the U.S. has 700 to 800 troops in Helmand now to advise and assist the 215th Division in preparing for the expected Taliban offensive. The troops, including Special Forces and Army 10th Mountain Division troops, mostly work out of the grounds of the old Camp Leatherneck, the former headquarters for the U.S. Marine presence in Afghanistan, Cleveland said.

The Taliban’s strength and funding will be factors in the recommendations to higher command and President Barack Obama of Army Gen. John Nicholson, the new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, on whether to continue with the planned U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Cleveland said Nicholson was expected to complete his assessment later this month. The U.S. currently has about 9,800 troops in Afghanistan and the current plan calls for that number to be reduced to about 5,500 by the end of this year.

Al-Qaeda Said To Boost Taliban Fight Against Afghan Government

al-Qaeda is working more closely with the Taliban in Afghanistan and could bolster the militant group’s fight against government forces, a NATO spokesman says.

“By themselves, we don’t think that they pose…a real significant threat, to the government of Afghanistan,” spokesman Brigadier General Charles Cleveland said on May 5.

“But because we think that Al-Qaeda is…beginning to work more with Taliban, they can present a bit of an accelerant for the Taliban. They can provide capabilities and skills and those types of things.”

Last fall, the head of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced his backing for the new Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansur.

“Since that time, we have seen more interaction” between the two groups, Cleveland said.

He estimated that there are 100 to 300 Al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan.

“Although they have been significantly diminished, they do have the ability to regenerate very quickly, and they still do have the ability to pose a threat,” he said.

Cleveland said the Taliban will also get a boost this year from a bumper crop for poppies, its main source of funding.

***** The Afghanistan Failing Economy aids the Taliban

CNN: Several would-be recruits who talked to a local freelance cameraman working for CNN said the only reason they joined the Taliban was because they couldn’t put food on the table.

“I want to join them because of the lack of jobs and my other economic problems,” the first recruit told us.

OPINION: Why Obama can’t turn back on Afghans

The second man, who showed us his high school diploma, told us he’d been to university and still couldn’t find a job. The Taliban offered him more than he could earn in the army, he claimed.

“I don’t have anything to do with their viewpoints. My only reason to join them is my economical problems and unemployment,” he added.

A seven-month Taliban veteran who was trying to convince the pair to join their fight told us he’d been working for a foreign company who let him go when they ran out of contracts. It wasn’t long before he realized the Taliban were the only game in town, he said.

“I spent all my savings to feed my family and didn’t have another source of income, so I joined them.” More from CNN.

Illegal Border Crossings v. Visa Overstays

Posted on May 6, 2016May 6, 2016 by Denise Simon

No one can get the image of the train carrying illegals out of their memory and with good reason. When anyone does a search on the internet to determine the actual and factual numbers of immigrants coming across the southern border by year, you will be disappointed, the charts and records are not there. Countless outlets and agencies report but with caveats and obscure labels. Still we are told the border is as secure as it has ever been.

What is more chilling, are the reports that once again we are in a spike season of illegal entry due in part to threats of presidential candidates. Further, those already here are filing at an accelerated rate for citizenship for the exact same reason.

There is a clash however in the facts over which is worse, those coming across the border versus those coming in by air or other means possessing a v The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables most citizens or nationals of participating countries* to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without first obtaining a visa, when they meet all requirements explained below. Travelers must have a valid Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) approval prior to travel. If you prefer to have a visa in your passport, you may still apply for a visitor (B) visa.isa that has an expiration date. Take note that any international airport across the United States is a port of entry. Once a visa is issued by State Department contractors, it becomes the burden of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance to dates. This is where the problem, yet another lays with fault.

One cannot overlook the Visa Waiver Program concocted by the U.S. State Department of which several in Congress are calling for a suspension.

Citizens or nationals of the following countries* are currently eligible to travel to the United States under the VWP, unless citizens of one of these countries are also a national of Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Sudan.

Andorra Hungary Norway

Australia Iceland Portugal

Austria Ireland San Marino

Belgium Italy Singapore

Brunei Japan Slovakia

Chile Latvia Slovenia

Czech Republic Liechtenstein South Korea

Denmark Lithuania Spain

Estonia Luxembourg Sweden

Finland Malta Switzerland

France Monaco Taiwan*

Germany Netherlands United Kingdom**

Greece New Zealand

There are an estimated 35 unique types of visa classifications under the management of the U.S. State Department.

Obama Admin Deported Less Than One Percent of Visa Overstays

Nearly half a million individuals overstayed visas in 2015, fewer than 2,500 deported

Kredo/FreeBeacon: The Obama administration deported less than one percent of the nearly half a million foreign nationals who illegally overstayed their visas in 2015, according to new statistics published by the Department of Homeland Security.

Of the 482,781 aliens who were recorded to have overstayed temporary U.S. visas in fiscal year 2015, just 2,456 were successfully deported from the United States during the same period, according to DHS’s figures, which amounts to a deportation rate of around 0.5 percent.

The sinking rate of deportations by the Obama administration is drawing criticism from Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are warning that the administration is ignoring illegal overstays and potentially opening the United States to terrorist threats.

The 482,781 figure accounts for aliens who entered the United States on a nonimmigrant visitor visa or through the Visa Waiver Program, which streamlines travel between the United States and certain other countries. The figure encompasses foreign nationals who were found to have remained in the United States after their visas expired or after the 90-day window allowed by the Visa Waiver Program.

The actual number of overstays could be higher. The latest figures published by DHS do not include overstays from other visa categories or overstays by individuals who entered the United States through land ports, such as those along the Mexican border.

Deportations by the Obama administration have decreased steadily since 2009, according to figures codified by the Senate’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest and provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

Since 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expelled 51,704 individuals who overstayed their visas. The total number of those expelled has decreased every fiscal year.

At least 12,538 illegal overstays were deported in fiscal 2009, while 11,259 were removed in 2010, 10,426 in 2011, 6,856 in 2012, 4,240 in 2013, 3,564 in 2014, and 2,456 in 2015, according to the committee.

The drop is being attributed by sources to an Obama administration policy directing DHS and ICE not to pursue visa overstays unless the offender has been convicted of major crimes or terrorism.

“The decision by the Obama administration not to enforce immigration laws by allowing those who have overstayed their visas to remain in the country has not gone unnoticed by the American people,” sources on the Senate subcommittee told the Free Beacon. “A Rasmussen Reports poll released earlier this year indicates that approximately 3 out of 4 Americans not only want the Obama administration to find these aliens who overstay their visas, but also to deport them.”

“The same poll indicates that 68 percent of Americans consider visa overstays a ‘serious national security risk,’ and 31 percent consider visa overstays a ‘very serious’ national security risk,” according to the sources.

Congress has long mandated the implementation of a biometric entry-exit system to track individuals who overstay their visas and ensure they leave the United States.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), chair of the Senate’s immigration subcommittee, recently proposed an amendment aimed at speeding up implementation of this system. Senate Democrats blocked the amendment.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has received substantially more taxpayer money in recent years despite the plummeting rate of deportations. At least 43 percent fewer aliens were removed from the United States from 2012 to 2015, according to DHS statistics.

History and Money, Immigrants into the U.S.

Posted on May 4, 2016May 4, 2016 by Denise Simon

Drug traffic route in the region

by: Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens

The porous 600-mile border between Guatemala and Mexico offers Central American immigrants a ready passage to “el norte“—the United States. It includes 63 uncontrolled transit points, 44 of which can be passed in a vehicle.

The same conditions attracting Central American immigrants also make the Guatemala-Mexico border region home to a thriving drug trade. Guatemala’s Prensa Libre, recently reported that Guatemala’s three departments (or states) bordering Mexico—San Marcos, Huehuetenango, and the Petén—have come under the direct control of violent drug cartels.

In San Marcos, a single drug lord, Juan Ortiz Chamalé, owns virtually all of the properties on the frontier. Huehuetenango is the site of an increasingly violent conflict between Mexican and Guatemalan drug lords. The latest incident there involved a wholesale massacre of 17 to 40 people (estimates vary) at a horserace organized by narcos. While in the Petén, drug mafias, supported by the police, have forced small and large landowners to sell their lands.

Violence, promoted by the drug trade, delinquency, and death squads has become a part of daily life in these Guatemalan departments. Bodies riddled with bullet holes regularly appear by the sides of roads, along riverbeds, and in open fields. Well-documented evidence demonstrates that police and military forces are directly engaged in this violence through their links to drug cartels, the maras (gangs), and death squads.

Undocumented Central American immigrants, fleeing the struggling economies of their respective countries, are often victimized by this violence. And their plight is about to get worse. The recently implemented U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will surely devastate what is left of rural livelihoods. And, what’s more, the conditions that make the Guatemala-Mexico border an immigrant corridor and a Mecca for drug trafficking also make it a central target of Plan Mexico, the U.S.-financed anti-drug militarization program, pushed through the U.S. Congress by President George Bush in June 2008.

Undocumented Central American immigrants, already subjected to subhuman conditions in their search for viable livelihoods, now face the oppressive confluence of these powerful transnational forces—the drug trade, militarization, and free trade.

Plan Mexico

The U.S.-backed Plan Mexico, known as the “Mérida Initiative” in policy circles, provides $1.6 billion of U.S. taxpayer money to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The stated intention of the program involves “security aid to design and carry out counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, and border security measures.”

U.S. Congressional leaders complained about the secrecy of negotiations for Plan Mexico and the absence of human rights guarantees, but they did nothing more than demand the paltry sum of $1 million in additional funding to support human rights groups in Mexico.

Researcher Laura Carlsen has noted that Plan Mexico is the “securitized” extension of trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and CAFTA. Indeed, Plan Mexico is the successor project to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a post-9/11 initiative negotiated by the NAFTA countries. The State Department’s Thomas Shannon made the link between free trade and security explicit: “We have worked through the Security and Prosperity Partnership to improve our commercial and trading relationship, we have also worked to improve our security cooperation. To a certain extent, we’re armoring NAFTA.”

Evidently, neoconservative policy framers have purposefully coupled free trade and security. Free trade agreements promote the free circulation of goods, while prohibiting the same circulation by workers. Since neoliberal trade deals eliminate agricultural subsidies and open poor countries to a flood of cheap imported goods, economically displaced workers will naturally seek new sources of income—even if that means crossing borders.

Militarizing borders and identifying undocumented workers who cross them as criminals (“illegal”) are the logical—though sordid—next steps in anticipating and “guarding against” the effects of free trade. The militarization of borders has done nothing to stop immigration, which provides an essential labor force to the United States. But the criminalization of undocumented mobile immigrant workers has deprived them of basic rights of citizenship, thereby making them vulnerable to increasing levels of violence and human rights violations.

The U.S.-driven designation of “internal enemies”—in this case immigrants—as a rationale for building an already mushrooming security apparatus and militarizing societies is, of course, nothing new, especially in Latin America. What is new is that this militarization has become nearly void of any social content. Even during the Cold War, U.S. “national security” doctrines were generally accompanied by social programs, such as the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, which in small measure alleviated poverty and explicitly recognized economic conditions as a root of “the problem.”

The end of the Cold War eliminated an even token emphasis on poverty and with it, all but the most minimal efforts to offer social assistance. The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) found that the Bush administration granted $874 million in military and police assistance to Latin America in 2004 an amount almost equal to the $946 million provided in economic and social programs. WOLA reported that with the exception of Colombia, military and police aid has historically been less than half of the total provided for economic and social aid. Moreover, military and police aid used to be directed by the U.S. State Department, assuring a degree of congressional oversight. Now, this aid is increasingly managed by the Department of Defense, thereby eliminating this oversight and effectively making militarization the predominant rationale of U.S. foreign policy.

Living on the Border

The situation of Central American immigrants on Mexico’s southern border illustrates the central problems and contradictions of Washington’s emphasis on free trade and militarization. And the situation is certain to get worse as thousands of immigrants are deported by the United States to their countries of origin in Central America.

Immigrants are fully aware of the risks they take, but economic conditions leave them few alternatives. With a look of desperation following a three-day journey from his home, one Honduran immigrant in the Mexican border town of Tapachula explained, “We don’t do this by choice. We don’t want to leave our families. But imagine a man looking at his children and seeing them hungry.” Back home, he faces wages averaging $6 per day in Honduras and a scarcity of opportunities.

When asked about the dangers they anticipate on their journey north, Central American immigrants offer a catalog of terrors: beatings, sexual assaults, robberies, kidnappings, and murders. Ademar Barilli, a Catholic priest and director of the Casa del Migrante in Guatemala’s border town of Tecún Umán, observed, “Immigrants almost expect that their rights will be violated in every sense because they are from another country and are undocumented.”

Heyman Vasquez, a Catholic priest who directs a shelter for migrants in the town of Arriaga in Chiapas, Mexico, maintains detailed records of the violations suffered by migrants passing through his shelter. In a five-month period in 2008, a third of the men and 40% of the women he serves reported assault or some other form of abuse in their 160-mile journey from the Mexico-Guatemala region to Arriaga.

Police are often the perpetrators of these violations. In Guatemala, Father Barilli and others described cases of police forcing Salvadoran and Honduran immigrants to disembark from buses, where they take their documents and demand money. Once they make it into Mexico, immigrants are subject to abuse by Los Zetas, a notorious drug-trafficking network composed of former law enforcement and military agents linked with the Gulf Cartel.

Los Zetas are known to work with Mexican police in the kidnapping of immigrants to demand money from their family members in the United States. Immigrants also report robberies, beatings, and rapes at the hands of Los Zetas. Recently, in Puebla, Mexico, 32 undocumented Central Americans were kidnapped and tortured by the Zetas with the support of municipal police. In this case, after the migrants escaped, local community members captured a number of the responsible police agents and held them until Federal authorities arrived.

A U.S. State Department report on human rights in Mexico from 2007 concluded, “Many police were involved in kidnapping, extortion, or providing protection for, or acting directly on behalf of organized crime and drug traffickers. Impunity was pervasive to an extent that victims often refused to file complaints.”

That impunity means abused migrants have few places to turn is painfully obvious to one Salvadoran immigrant in the Mexican border town of Tapachula. He had just been deported from the United States, where his wife, a legal resident, and two U.S.-born children live in Los Angeles. “The police are involved. You can’t file complaints,” he said. Besides, the wheels of Mexican justice turn notoriously slow—if at all.

Despite the dire scenario, it is not uncommon for many Central American immigrants to receive a helping hand along the way in their journey to El Norte, whether its food, water, money, or shelter. As one undocumented Honduran explained in Tapachula, “Almost everyone has someone in their family who has migrated. Most understand the need.”

“Security” and Violence

Security initiatives in Central America are notoriously violent and further militarize societies still recovering from decades of brutal civil wars. And, historically, when the Pentagon gets involved, repressive tactics increase.

The Bush administration’s principle security concerns in Central America of drug trafficking and “transnational gangs” have led to a series of “security cooperation” agreements. The first regional conference on “joint security” was chaired by El Salvador’s president, Tony Saca, who first introduced the “Mano Dura” (Iron Fist) initiative—a package of authoritarian militarized policing methods aimed at youth gangs adopted throughout the region. In attendance was then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, responsible for advocating torture of prisoners in Guantánamo.

The conference took place in El Salvador in February 2007 and resulted in the creation of a transnational anti-gang unit (TAG), which El Salvador’s justice and security minister, René Figueroa described as “an organized offensive at a regional level,” with the US State Department and the FBI coordinating with national police forces. Gonzales, promised Washington would finance a new program to train regional police forces and this promise has been fulfilled partially with the establishment of a highly controversial police-training academy in El Salvador, which is closed to public scrutiny and includes little support for human rights.

In many ways, Plan Mexico, is a mano dura campaign writ large. For 2008, Plan Mexico will provide $400 million to Mexico and $65 million to Central America. More than half of the total funds will go directly to providing police and military weapons and training, even though the police and military in these countries have been implicated in crime and human rights violations.

As Plan Mexico arms and trains military and police forces implicated in violent crime, it also provides millions of dollars for an immigration institute responsible for tightening Mexico’s southern borders through monitoring, bio-data collection, a Guatemalan guest-worker program, and border control.

Undocumented immigrants will be caught in the web of this violence, particularly since Plan Mexico also continues the trend toward the criminalization of migrants. As Laura Carlsen, observes, “By including ‘border security’ and explicitly targeting ‘flows of illicit goods and persons,’ the initiative equates migrant workers with illegal contraband and terrorist threats.”

The dehumanization of undocumented immigrants in the United States, and elsewhere, and the growing infringement of their basic rights should serve as a dire warning to all “citizens.” The undocumented are the canaries in the coalmine: the violation of their rights signals a growing repressive climate that jeopardizes everyone’s liberties.

Fire on the Border

Free trade agreements create the conditions that force people to migrate to the United States as an underpaid, politically disenfranchised, and therefore unprotected labor force. Now the economic crisis in the United States has increased pressure to expel undocumented workers, violating a host of human rights standards in the process. Deportations also increase labor pressure in immigrants’ countries of origin, where the global economic crisis stands to further decrease the already limited opportunities for work in “legitimate” industries.

From a purely humanitarian perspective, the governments of the United States, Mexico, and Central America need to address this crisis by developing policies that improve the conditions of poverty that cause immigration. Throwing guns at the problem will only make things worse.

Sure, drug lords are firmly entrenched in the Guatemala-Mexico border region. But Plan Mexico will no more eliminate their presence, than the Mano Dura campaigns eliminated the gangs. Or, for that matter, any more than the militarization of borders has eliminated immigration. Instead, Plan Mexico, like its predecessors, will increase the level of violence in the region by providing more weapons to corrupt police and military forces.

As more and more resources shift toward militarization, policing and surveillance, fewer resources are available for programs that ease pressure to emigrate—namely, education, jobs, medical care, food subsidies, housing, and legal recourse. Meanwhile, governments are increasingly ceding responsibility for protection of even narrowly defined human rights to under-funded non-governmental organizations.

Repressive immigration policies, narcotrafficking, and free trade all combined to form a combustible situation along the Mexico-Guatemala border. Plan Mexico is the spark, and once the flames start, no one will be able to put out the fire. And it’s the undocumented migrants who will continue to get burned.