Category Archives: Drug Cartels

Obama’ Clemency Project

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Today, Barack Obama freed 46 inmates under his authority to do so. Here is the list.  Here is the letter they receive. with his signature.

From the DoJ’s Deputy Attorney General as published by Washington Post: ‘More than 35,000 inmates are seeking clemency, but a complicated review process has slowed the Obama administration’s initiative. In February, Obama commuted the sentences of 22 drug offenders, the largest batch of prisoners to be granted early release under his administration and the first group of inmates who applied after the new criteria were set.

“Certainly, I don’t think I can ever be accused of being soft on crime,” Yates said. “But we need to be using the limited resources we have to ensure that we are truly doing justice and that the sentences we’re meting out are just and proportional to the crimes that we’re charging.”

“We’re not the Department of Prosecutions or even the Department of Public Safety,” Yates said. “We are the Department of Justice.”

Enter the Clemency Project and Barack Obama having it both ways with a lottery system.

“Obama said that he had “revamped” the Office of the Pardon Attorney, and promised to be “more aggressive” with his clemency powers.

But memos from the White House obtained by USA TODAY revealed a different story. President Obama would “very rarely, if ever grant pardons for major drug offenses and guns crimes,” said one memo, and during his first 18-months in office, the President knowingly and deliberately allowed the Bush Administration’s clemency policies to remain in effect.”

Clemency Project 2014 – a working group composed of lawyers and advocates including the Federal Defenders, the American Civil Liberties Union, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Bar Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as individuals active within those organizations – launched in January after Deputy Attorney General James Cole asked the legal profession to provide pro bono (free) assistance to federal prisoners who would likely have received a shorter sentenced if they had been sentenced today. Clemency Project 2014 members collaborate to recruit and train attorneys on how to screen for prisoners who meet the criteria listed below and assist prisoners who meet the criteria to find lawyers to represent them. Clemency Project 2014 lawyers provide assistance free of charge to applicants. Anyone asking you to pay is not working with Clemency Project 2014.

The ACLU

WASHINGTON – Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced today a new set of criteria the Justice Department and White House will use when considering clemency petitions from federal prisoners. The new criteria will help the Justice Department identify federal prisoners who, if sentenced today under current sentencing laws and policies, would likely have received a substantially lower sentence.

“Our federal sentencing laws have shattered families and wasted millions of dollars,” said Vanita Gupta, ACLU deputy legal director. “Too many people—particularly people of color—have been locked up for far too long for nonviolent offenses. The President now has a momentous opportunity to correct these injustices in individual cases. If we’re ever going to see truly systemic and smart reform of the federal criminal justice, however, we need Congress to step up and pass the Smarter Sentencing Act.”​

Clemency Project 2014, a working group composed of the Federal Defenders, the American Civil Liberties Union, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the American Bar Association, and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as individuals active within those organizations, wholeheartedly supports Cole’s announcement and the Justice Department’s plans to restore the integrity of the clemency process.

Lucrative Lifestyle of El Chapo Guzman, with U.S. Credentials

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Murder, narcotics, trafficking and buying off everyone is lucrative and such is the case with El Chapo Guzman. He traveled freely into the United States often which questions the resolve to stop the insurgency of criminals. For a list of criminals that have entered the United States through the Southern border and the crimes committed in our homeland, Family Security Matters has compiled a terrifying summary.

A full documentary is available here in Guzman, his rise, his fall and will he rise again?

Up to 2013, Guzman lived the life of world elites yet did so in an under world.

From the LA Times: Joaquin Guzman Loera, known as “El Chapo,” the kingpin of the Sinaloa cartel was issued a California Driver’s License according to a report from Univision. The documents obtained by the Hispanic network are from a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) report where it states the drug lord obtained his license in 1988 under one of his aliases, Max Aragon. The document shows “El Chapo’s” face picture, the issue date, his height, age and an alleged address in the city of Los Angeles. According to the report from the DEA, the license was used by Guzman to register two Corvette’s he bought in L.A. to public officials in Mexico.

When “El Chapo” was issued the driver’s license, he was already a wanted man by the DEA. In 1993 the kingpin was captured in Guatemala and extradited to Mexico, being sentenced for over 20 years on charges of drug trafficking, criminal association and bribery. In 1995 he was transferred to Puente Grande, a maximum security prison in the Mexican state of Jalisco. By 2001, Guzman broke out of prison when he escaped in a laundry van, with reports from the Univision report giving a different version of the escape. The Spanish-language network now states that he alleged fled the scene dressed as a woman, with a wig, skirt and heels.

In 2013

Borderland Beat: Mexico, DF. The Ministry of Finance and Credit Secretary (SHCP) have put up for sale two dozen items including residences and aircraft once owned by drug traffickers like Joaquin Guzman Loera, El Chapo, and Ignacio Nacho Coronel, some of which are valued up to 15 million pesos (1.18 million dollars).

La Jornada had access to SAE reports/009/1324-2013 indicating they have have also put up for sale (a dozen) real estate property located in several states, along with jewelry, specialized machinery, vehicles, vans, various merchandise and scrap steel

According to La Jornada,  highlighted property as jewelry-included imported brand gold watches inlaid with precious stones, which were seized from drug traffickers of different cartels between 80 and 90.

During the last eight months, the Department of Administration and Disposal of Assets (SAE) has presented at least ten public auctions online in which they have been placed real estate on the national market for 250 million pesos (over $ 19 million) through their different business processes, according to preliminary figures.

Aircraft include:eight Cessnas Grumman Gulfstream II six different models, plus a Sabreliner and Beechcraft King Air 300, which were manufactured between 1968 and 1986

Two Grumman aircraft, two Cessna and King Air aircraft PGR said were confiscated from drug traffickers in 90s and were later incorporated into PGRs fleet to reinforce operational interception.


The Grumman airplanes are used daily by PGR officials to move in the country, and its sale began in auction with starting price for 202,000 pesos.

The plane that is quoted as the most expensive is Beechcraft King Air 300, with a starting bid price of 2,859,000 pesos.
!0 things you may not have known about El Chapo’s airplane

 1.-The Sinaloa cartel used HSBC Mexico to deposit payments for the purchase of an airplane Super Beechcraft King Air 300 that used for cocaine trafficking.

2.-The DEA announced that the plane was secured in late 2007 by Mexican authorities in Cuernavaca, Morelos.

3.-According to records from the PGR, banking transactions for the acquisition of the Super Beechcraft King Air aircraft, original registration N25MR, deposits were made ​​by dollar accounts into the HSBC bank, domiciled in the Cayman Islands.

4.-The aircraft was carrying a false registration number N14-TF5 and entered on December 28 into Mexican airspace illegally.

5.-On that occasion the plane was persecuted and videotaped by the army until he landed at the airport in Cuernavaca, where they were unloaded nearly two tons of cocaine, without being able to catch the perpetrators.

6.-The aircraft was part of a much broader investigation on the purchase of 13 aircraft by the Sinaloa cartel to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Mexico and the United States , according to reports from the PGR and DEA.

July. – Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, chief of that criminal organization, funded with nearly $13 million to purchase of aircraft.

8.-The multilateral research was conducted simultaneously in Mexico, United States, Colombia, Guatemala and other countries in the region after securing a number of aircraft used in the transfer of drugs.

9.-On Monday December 10th the U.S. government announced that the British bank HSBC accepted responsibility for laundering around 7 billion dollars between 2007 and 2008 from its branches in Mexico.

10.-The bank reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to pay a fine of one 1.9 billion dollars.

Among the confiscated residences listed by the federal Government to auction is a residence located in the state of Jalisco with a value of 4.5 million pesos. According to the the Government sources consulted it was used by the Sinaloa cartel in the 80’s.

In the real estate auction highlights were included two pieces of land of more than 5000 square meters, and various houses located in different states of the country, some built on land near the Pacific Ocean.

Several of the properties to be auctioned are in poor condition due to lack of maintenance, since most of them had to endure a decade of litigation in courts so that the Mexican State could seize the goods with implement the extinction of eminent domain assets.

The auctions are organized by SAE for participation of any person interested parties, who must first acquire the basics, which costs 500 pesos. Once enrolled, participants register their interest in any of the items and the starting price with an ascending bid and is awarded to the bidder who submits the highest bid

In 2010 the SAE held an auction of assets seized from drug traffickers and among the auctioned pieces on the first day was a watch, set in rose gold case of 18 carat, which reached $70 thousand dollars and another for $10,000.

One of the most expensive pieces of jewelry in that auction was a ring with a large 12.25 karat diamond in the center, valued at $112 thousand dollars.

A 2009  Land Rover, model SUV, which had a starting bid of 150,000 pesos approximately $15,000 dollars was also sold for 58,400 Mexican pesos. Also they auctioned Cessna airplanes and Bell helicopters.

Setbacks like these  go with the drug trafficking territory, there is always more “narcobooty” to be had. Even being a rich, powerful drug lord doesn’t mean anyone like their losses being rubbed in their faces by authorities.

 

Sinaloa Leader Escape Prison, 2nd Time Fast and Furious

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From testimony, reported by The Blaze: A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative currently in U.S. custody is making startling allegations that the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious” isn’t what you think it is.

It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.

The explosive allegations are being made by Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator.” He was extradited to the Chicago last year to face federal drug charges.  More here.

The DEA went rogue and made a deal with the Sinaloa cartel to rat out other rival cartels to stem the violence in Mexico. Court testimony is found here.

From the BusinessInsider: Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.
Suspected Mexican drug trafficker Vicente Zambada-Niebla

 

Mexico’s president Nieto said Guzman will never escape again, yet today it is reported that El Chapo Guzman did just that through a tunnel in his cell bathroom. Nieto was in route to a visit to France as this escaped occurred.

NBC left out a few details but here is some background on El Chapo

Who Is ‘El Chapo?’: A Look at the Master of the Underground Tunnel

He’s known as “Shorty,” but perhaps “The Mole” would be more accurate.

That’s because Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman lives by his underground tunnels, frustrating all those who try to catch him.

The secretive and barely literate Mexican drug lord oversaw the explosion of subterranean networks used to smuggle massive amounts of narcotics across the U.S. border. After escaping prison in a laundry cart in 2001, the head of the Sinaloa cartel outfitted many his safe houses with secret doors that opened to tunnels leading to municipal sewer systems. He used one of them, accessed through the bottom of a bathtub, to escape authorities in February 2014.

Guzman was caught a few days later, an arrest that was hailed as a major victory in the international war on drugs. He ended up in a maximum security federal prison in southern Mexico, where he began plotting another underground escape.

 

On Saturday, he disappeared underneath the prison through an elaborate tunnel that must have taken months to build. Equipped with ventilation ducts, stairs and a motorbike on rails, the tunnel was about the same height as Guzman, who stands 5 feet 8 inches tall, and ran for 1,600 yards, emerging in a house under construction in a nearby neighborhood.

Guzman, believed to be about 60, has made a living of dodging death and evading capture while building the multibillion-dollar Sinaloa cartel into the world’s most powerful — and ruthless — drug trafficking organization. Tales of his avoiding bullets and handcuffs burnished a legend that is chronicled in folk song. Young people in his impoverished home state rally in support of him, despite his being responsible for the murders of thousands of Mexicans, including police officers and innocent civilians.

The son of a poor farmer, Guzman was born in Sinaloa and entered the local drug economy in the 1970s, after dropping out of school. He rose gradually within the Sinaloa cartel, and in the early 1990s took control.

In 1993, Guzman was arrested in Guatemala, and extradited to Mexico, where he was put in a maximum security prison. He continued to run the organization behind bars while maintaining a comfortable lifestyle, surrounded by associates and paid-off guards. In January 2001, some of them helped him slip out of the prison while hidden in a laundry cart.

As one of the world’s most sought-after fugitives, Guzman amassed even more power, taking over trade routes in South America and across the globe. He protected himself within a network of loyal workers, paid-off informers and corrupt officials. Despite his secrecy, however, Guzman enjoyed living the high life, including lavish dinners and a coterie of mistresses and prostitutes. He’s reportedly been married multiple times, his current wife being a former teenage beauty queen with American citizenship.

In addition to being wanted for his original 20-year prison sentence, Guzman is under federal indictment for drug trafficking in San Diego, Brooklyn, N.Y., El Paso, Miami and Chicago, which named him the city'[s first “public enemy No. 1” since Al Capone. The DEA announced a $5 million reward for his capture in 2005.

“The U.S. government stands ready to work with our Mexican partners to provide any assistance that may help support his swift recapture,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement Sunday after his escape.

As his power grew, Guzman relied on increasingly ingenious tactics to stay ahead of authorities. That included the use of trains, submarines, and tunnels.

By several accounts, including an examination by The New Yorker, Guzman helped invent the drug tunnel, commissioning his personal architect, Felipe de Jesus Corona-Verbera, to design several that burrowed beneath the U.S. border and emerged in warehouses on the other side. Together, they built dozens, some equipped with mini rail cars.

For years, American investigators tracked Guzman through wiretaps, and fed that information to Mexican officials. But Guzman always slipped their grasp at the last minute, including the Feburary 2014 escape from a home in the Sinaloan town of Culiacan. But authorities tracked him to another home, where they arrested him a few days later.

At the time, authorities boasted that the arrest was a milestone in the cross-border drug war. Then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called Guzman’s capture “a landmark achievement, and a victory for the citizens of both Mexico and the United States.”

Federal prosecutors in several cities said they wanted to have Guzman extradited to the United States to stand trial. But Mexican officials said they were confident they could keep him imprisoned at home.

Now, he’s gone. Again.

 

Illegal Criminal Numbers Obama Goes to Court

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Unpacking The Numbers

From Center for Immigration Studies: In 2013, a sample statistic is ICE is carrying a case load of 1.8 million aliens who are either in removal proceedings or have already been ordered removed. Less than two percent are in detention, which is the only proven way to ensure departure.

Most Wanted

Taking a walk over to the FBI’s 10 most wanted list has 7 foreign national criminals whose rap sheets are so extensive that rewards are offered for their captures.

Illegal Sentencing Statistics

Washington Examiner: Of the more than 2,200 people who received federal sentences for drug possession in fiscal year 2014, almost three-quarters of them were illegal immigrants, according to new data from the United States Sentencing Commission.

Illegal immigrants also made up more than one-third of all federal sentences, that data said.

The commission’s data showed a slight decline in the total number of illegal alien sentences from 2013 to 2014, but still showed that the illegal population is a major contributor to federal crimes in America.

In 2013, illegal immigrants were responsible for 38.6 percent of all federal sentencing, and that dropped to 36.7 percent in 2014.

But the sentencing of illegal immigrants for drug possession jumped significantly. In 2013, 1,123 illegal immigrants were sentenced on convictions of simple possession, and made up 55.8 percent of those cases.

In 2014, 1,681 illegal aliens were sentenced, and they made up 74.1 percent of the total. Illegal immigrants were also 16.9 percent of all federal drug trafficking sentences.

The data became public just as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has pushed for tougher immigration laws, and has cited last week’s shooting death of a California woman at the hands of an illegal immigrant as the latest example of the need for more enforcement.

Illegal immigrants were 20 percent of the kidnapping/hostage taking sentences in 2014, 12 percent of the murder sentences, and 19.4 percent of national-defense related sentences.

As expected, illegal immigrants made up vast majority of sentences for immigration-related crimes — 91.6 percent.

Overall, 27,505 illegal immigrants were sentenced in federal court in 2014, down from 30,144 the prior year.

All the non-citizens are combined — including legal and illegal aliens, extradited aliens and those with unknown status — contributed to 42 percent of all federal sentencing in 2014.

The commission’s statistics only include primary federal offenses, and don’t include local convictions or sentences, which is where most rape and murder cases would appear.

Obama Administration Goes to Court

From The Hill:

The Obama administration faces an uphill battle on Friday when it seeks to convince a panel of federal judges to let the president’s executive actions on immigration take effect.

The same two Republican-appointed judges who denied an earlier administration attempt to lift a hold on Obama’s immigration actions will hear arguments at the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Court watchers expect an unfavorable ruling for Obama from the three-judge panel, which sits on the most conservative circuit in the country.

“It’s likely to be a similar result,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. “It’s unlikely that [the two judges] will change their views.”

The White House is encountering legal roadblocks on immigration after two recent Supreme Court victories on same-sex marriage and healthcare, which gave the president a jolt of momentum late in his second term.

With just 18 months left in Obama’s presidency, the court battle has put his programs in peril. Experts believe the case will eventually end up before the Supreme Court, which could rule on the case as late as June 2016.

If the White House eventually wins, it could leave just a few months to implement the program. But if it loses, it would strip away a major promise Obama made to Latino groups in the run up to the 2014 midterm elections.

The atmosphere surrounding the hearing is certain to be charged. Reps. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), as well as immigrant-rights advocates, plan to demonstrate outside the courthouse to call on the judges to allow Obama’s programs to go into place.

It will also take place against the backdrop of a recent fatal shooting of a California woman, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant, and amid fallout from incendiary remarks on immigration from Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump — both of which have further roiled the debate nationwide.

After Congress failed to pass a sweeping immigration overhaul last year, Obama issued executive orders in November allowing certain immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizen or legal resident children to apply for deportation reprieves and work permits.

They also expanded a 2012 program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), providing similar relief to immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The orders, if fully enacted, could affect as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants.

Led by Texas, 26 mostly Republican-led states sued the administration, arguing the moves overstepped Obama’s executive authority.

They also claimed the programs would harm the states by imposing added costs related to drivers licenses for people who receive deportation referrals.

The White House has steadfastly maintained that the president acted within the law by using “prosecutorial discretion” to exempt non-criminal immigrants from deportation. They also say the states ignored economic benefits, such as added tax revenue.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with the states in February, handing down an injunction blocking the programs from taking effect while the court considers the lawsuit.

In May, circuit Judges Jennifer Elrod and Jerry Smith rejected an emergency request from the Department of Justice to allow the actions to proceed.

They argued the states made a compelling case they would suffer harm if the program was let to move forward, and that the administration’s appeal was unlikely to succeed on the broader legal issues.

The administration also contended the 26 states that brought the suit don’t have standing, though the two judges appeared skeptical of that argument as well.

On Friday, Smith and Elrod will again hear arguments from Obama administration lawyers and attorneys representing the states — this time focusing on whether the Texas judge’s order was legal.

“The two judges were convinced that Texas was likely to prevail on the merits,” said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law, who helped file a legal brief backing the lawsuit against Obama’s programs.

Joining them on the panel will be Judge Carolyn King, who was appointed by Democratic President Jimmy Carter.

King in April ruled in favor of the Obama administration on a separate lawsuit challenging his 2012 immigration action, and advocates hope she will side with the president again.

Obama was set to huddle with Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the White House Thursday afternoon, one day before the arguments.

“The administration continues to have a lot of confidence in the power of [our] legal arguments,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday.

Immigrant rights advocates, meanwhile, have expressed frustration at the delay. While they continue to press for the programs to go into effect, some advocates are turning their attention to other efforts as the lawsuit works its way through the courts.

“I think there is a realization the delay is longer than we have hoped for,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center.

Four different advocacy groups are convening a strategy session in New Orleans to raise awareness of other immigration actions not affected by the lawsuit, Hincapié said, including new guidelines that seek to reduce deportations of immigrants who are not deemed to pose a threat to public safety.

Advocates remain confident the orders will eventually go into place. But until then, they intend to punish Republicans for supporting the lawsuit.

The executive actions are popular with Hispanic voters, who will play an influential role in the 2016 elections. Candidates such as Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) want to end Obama’s programs.

House Republicans introduced a bill this week that would cut off funding for the initiatives if they take effect.

“This might be short term victory for the GOP. But a year from now, they are going to be looking at a much bigger lawsuit before the Supreme Court, which will be magnified by the fact it will take place in an election year,” said David Leopold, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and a backer of Obama’s programs. “In the long term, they are going to be the big losers.”

A victory in court, however, could embolden Republicans who have accused Obama of abusing his executive powers.

“It is inconsistent with the law,” Cruz said during a recent interview with Jorge Ramos. “What Barack Obama is doing is what dictators in other nations have done.”

 

When Ignoring the Enforcement of Law Becomes a Wider Threat

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There are an estimated 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States and some you would never imagine existed. For a sampling click here.

Further, click here for the evidence of organizations, missions and the functional manuals all justice and enforcement components.

If you would like to understand justice and enforcement statistics, click here. Indeed, there is a great argument that should happen that there are too many laws to be enforced much less those that are not prosecuted. All the while, when those that are omitted or discretion is used, the damage which speaks to the psyche of the criminal has yet to be fully understood as a threat to security and lawlessness.

Enter Victor Davis Hanson, where he authored a cogent piece on the threat of more lawlessness and anarchy.

Why disregard of law is America’s greatest threat

Citizens may ask why they should obey the rules when illegals go scot-free

Barbarians at the gate usually don’t bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor does climate change. Even mass epidemics like the plague that decimated sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.

Far more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed government and see corruption as a business model.

Even obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich or London.

Mexico is a naturally richer country than Greece. It is blessed with oil, precious minerals, fertile soils, long coastlines and warm weather. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens should not be voting with their feet to reject their homeland for the United States.

But Mexico also continues to be a mess because police expect bribes, property rights are iffy, and government works only for those who pay kickbacks. The result is that only north, not south, of the U.S.-Mexico border can people expect upward mobility, clean water, adequate public safety and reliable power.

In much of the Middle East and Africa, tribalism and bribery, not meritocracy, determine who gets hired and fired, wins or loses a contract, or receives or goes without public services.

Americans, too, should worry about these age-old symptoms of internal decay.

The frightening thing about disgraced Internal Revenue Service bureaucrat Lois Lerner’s knowledge of selective audits of groups on the basis of their politics is not just that she seemed to ignore it, but that she seemingly assumed no one would find out, or perhaps even mind. And she may well have been right. So far, no one at the IRS has shown much remorse for corrupting an honor-based system of tax compliance.

Illegal immigration has been a prominent subject in the news lately, between Donald Trump’s politically incorrect, imprecise and crass stereotyping of illegal immigrants and the shocking murder of a young San Francisco woman gratuitously gunned down in public by a Mexican citizen who had been convicted of seven felonies in the United States and had been deported five times. But the subject of illegal immigration is, above all, a matter of law enforcement.

Ultimately, no nation can continue to thrive if its government refuses to enforce its own laws. Liberal “sanctuary cities” such as San Francisco choose to ignore immigration laws. Imagine the outcry if a town in Utah or Montana arbitrarily declared that federal affirmative action or gay marriage laws were null and void within its municipal borders.

Once an immigrant has successfully broken the law by entering and residing in the United States illegally, there is little incentive for him to obey other laws. Increasing percentages of unnaturalized immigrants are not showing up for their immigration hearings — and those percentages are higher still for foreign nationals who have been charged with crimes.

The general public wonders why some are selectively exempt from following the law, but others are not. If federal immigration law does not apply to foreign nationals, why should building codes, zoning laws or traffic statutes apply to U.S. citizens?

Consider the immigration activists’ argument that immigration authorities should focus only on known felons and not those who only broke immigration law. This is akin to arguing that the IRS shouldn’t worry about whether everyday Americans pay their income taxes and should enforce the tax laws only against those with past instances of tax avoidance.

But why single out the poor and foreign-born? Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton once pocketed a $100,000 cattle-futures profit from a $1,000 investment, with help from an insider crony. A group of economists calculated the odds of such an unlikely return at one in 31 trillion. Mrs. Clinton then trumped that windfall by failing to fully pay taxes on her commodities profits, only addressing that oversight years later.

Why did Mrs. Clinton, during her tenure as secretary of state, snub government protocols by using a private email account and a private server, and then permanently deleting any emails she felt were not government-related? Mrs. Clinton long ago concluded that laws in her case were to be negotiated, not obeyed.

President Obama called for higher taxes on the wealthy. But before doing so, could he at least have asked his frequent adviser on racial matters, Al Sharpton, to pay millions in back taxes and penalties?

Might the government ask that its own employees pay the more than $3 billion in collective federal back taxes they owe, since they expect other taxpayers to keep paying their salaries?

Civilizations unwind insidiously not with a loud, explosive bang, but with a lawless whimper.