Category Archives: Gangs and Crimes

Here Comes Another Obama Prison Break

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Just consider, that giving a pass to drug and narcotic offenders, promotes more lawlessness and the laws on the books become inert. Further, what are the prospects for the business and economic outlook for America and compare that to other competitive countries. The implications are surfacing. Of particular note, we cannot begin to estimate how many of those being released are illegal aliens.

How to Deal With the Retroactive Drugs Minus Two AmendmentThe Sentencing Commission voted to reduce by two levels the base offense levels for drug offenses subject to the Drug Quantity Table at USSG § 2D1.1(c), and to make parallel changes to the quantity tables at § 2D1.11 for chemical precursors. See Amendment 3, Reader Friendly Amendments to the Sentencing Guidelines (eff. Nov. 1, 2014).1 The amendment will take effect November 1, 2014 unless disapproved by act of Congress.2 This two-level reduction in the base offense level is one reason that the sentences of many (though not all) drug offenders would be lower if imposed today. See How a Sentence for a Drug Offender May Be Lower if Imposed Today.

On July 18, 2014, the Commission voted to make this “drugs minus two” amendment retroactive. Unless Congress disapproves it, beginning November 1, 2014, inmates who were already sentenced can ask courts to retroactively reduce their sentences, and courts can rule on those requests, but no one can be released before November 1, 2015.3 The Commission estimates that 46,376 inmates could benefit from the retroactive amendment, and that the average reduction will be 25 months.4 Thus, your clemency client may be eligible for a retroactive sentence reduction under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(2), which provides that when a defendant was “sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission,” “the court may reduce the term of imprisonment, after considering the factors set forth in section 3553(a) to the extent that they are applicable, if such a reduction is consistent with applicable policy statements issued by the Sentencing Commission.”

Justice Department about to free 6,000 prisoners, largest one-time release

WaPo: The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison — the largest ever one-time release of federal prisoners — in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades.

The inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department’s Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. Most of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release.

The early release follows action by the U.S. Sentencing Commission — an independent agency that sets sentencing policies for federal crimes — which reduced the potential punishment for future drug offenders last year and then made that change retroactive.

The commission’s action is separate from an effort by President Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, an initiative that has resulted in 89 inmates being released early.

The panel estimated that its change in sentencing guidelines eventually could result in 46,000 of the nation’s approximately 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison qualifying for early release. The 6,000 figure, which has not been reported previously, is the first tranche in that process.

“The number of people who will be affected is quite exceptional,” said Mary Price, general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group that supports sentencing reform.

The Sentencing Commission estimated that an additional 8,550 inmates will be eligible for release between this Nov. 1 and Nov. 1, 2016.

The releases are part of a shift in the nation’s approach to criminal justice and drug sentencing. Along with the commission’s action, the Justice Department has instructed its prosecutors not to charge low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations with offenses that carry severe mandatory sentences.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously for the reduction last year after holding two public hearings in which they heard testimony from former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr., federal judges, federal public defenders, state and local law enforcement officials, and sentencing advocates. The panel also received more than 80,000 public comment letters with the overwhelming majority favoring the change.

Congress did not act to disapprove the change to the sentencing guidelines, so it became effective on Nov. 1, 2014. The commission then gave the Justice Department a year to prepare for the huge release of inmates.

The policy change is referred to as “Drugs Minus Two.” Federal sentencing guidelines rely on a numeric system based on different factors, including the defendant’s criminal history, the type of crime, whether a gun was involved and whether the defendant was a leader in a drug group.

The sentencing panel’s change decreased the value attached to most drug-trafficking offenses by two levels, regardless of the type of drug or the amount.

An average of about two years is being shaved off eligible prisoners’ sentences under the change. Although some of the inmates who will be released have served decades, on average they will have served 8 1/2 years instead of 10 1/2 , according to a Justice Department official.

“Even with the Sentencing Commission’s reductions, drug offenders will have served substantial prison sentences,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. “Moreover, these reductions are not automatic. Under the commission’s directive, federal judges are required to carefully consider public safety in deciding whether to reduce an inmate’s sentence.”

In each case, inmates must petition a judge who decides whether to grant the sentencing reduction. Judges nationwide are granting about 70 sentence reductions per week, Justice officials said. Some of the inmates already have been sent to halfway houses.

In some cases, federal judges have denied inmates’ requests for early release. For example, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth recently denied requests from two top associates of Rayful Edmond III, one of the District’s most notorious drug kingpins.

Federal prosecutors did not oppose a request by defense lawyers to have the associates, Melvin D. Butler and James Antonio Jones, released early in November. But last month Lamberth denied the request, which would have cut about two years from each man’s projected 28 1/2 -year sentence.

“The court struggles to understand how the government could condone the release of Butler and Jones, each convicted of high-level, sophisticated and violent drug-trafficking offenses,” Lamberth wrote. The Edmond group imported as much as 1,700 pounds of Colombian cocaine a month into the city in the 1980s, according to court papers.

Critics, including some federal prosecutors, judges and police officials, have raised concerns that allowing so many inmates to be released at the same time could cause crime to increase.

But Justice officials said that about one-third of the inmates who will be released in a few weeks are foreign citizens who will be quickly deported.

They also pointed to a study last year that found that the recidivism rate for offenders who were released early after changes in crack-cocaine sentencing guidelines in 2007 was not significantly different from offenders who completed their sentences.

“Prison officials and probation officers are working hard to ensure that returning offenders are adequately supervised and monitored,” Yates said.

Federal prison costs represent about one-third of the Justice Department’s $27 billion budget. The U.S. population has grown by about a third since 1980, but the federal prison population has increased by about 800 percent and federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity, Justice officials said.

Last week, a group of senators introduced a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill, the first such legislation in decades. Although some advocates say it doesn’t go far enough, the measure, which is supported by a coalition that includes the Koch brothers and the American Civil Liberties Union, would shorten the length of mandatory-minimum drug sentences that were part of the tough-on-crime laws passed during the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s.

If passed by Congress and signed by Obama, the reforms would apply retroactively, allowing inmates who were previously incarcerated under mandatory minimums an opportunity for release.

“It’s a remarkable moment,” Price said. “Over the past several years, the tone of the discussion about incarceration has changed dramatically. We have come to the realization that our punitive approach to drug crimes is not working and has produced significant injustices.”

 

Doctor Without Borders, Not What you Think

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Doctors Without Borders, known internationally by Médecins Sans Frontières, is a wing of consultation for the United Nations. The medical and humanitarian organization is not without its own controversy. It was expelled from Myanmar.

As written previously on this site in March of 2015, Kayla Mueller from Arizona was working with Doctors Without Borders while both were supporting the International Solidarity Movement currently behind the fresh hostilities in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. After relocating to Syria, Kayla was in Raqqah, taken as a sex slave by ISIS and later killed.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is in Spain and was asked about a hospital facility hit by a U.S. airstrike, leaving several dead and others wounded along with a burning building. His responses are here.

A senior defense official said US special operations forces in an “advise and assist” role in Kunduz had been taking fire and called in air support from an AC-130. The plane opened fire but the military wasn’t “positively certain” it hit the hospital, the official said.

Several facts need to be noted. Kunduz is a region where the Taliban had not previously been in control until that is the new leader of the Taliban Mullah Mansour, who rose to power after the secret was telegraphed that Mullah Omar had been dead for two years.

Mullah Mansour is an opportunist and takes the inch of a given order beyond the mile and he has something to prove and did so by taking over the Kunduz region which the Afghan forces with the assistance of the NATO forces took back in a matter of 2 days, yet it remains contested.

From the LWJ in part: While fighting for control of the provincial capital of Kunduz, the Taliban launched a wider offensive in the Afghan north aimed at seizing control of districts in four provinces: Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kunduz, and Takhar. Since Sept. 28, the Taliban has taken control of nine districts in these four provinces and another in the western province of Farah. “Control” means the Taliban is openly administering a province, providing services and security, and also running the local courts. Often, the district centers are under Taliban occupation or have been destroyed entirely. The Taliban does not always hold the districts it takes. It occasionally will seize a district or the district center, occupy it and fly the flag, leave after a few days, then return at a later date. These districts are considered contested at best.

Mansour has a nasty and long history with the Taliban, the Haqqani and the Pakistan intelligence wing known as the ISI. The ISI allowed much of the Taliban and Mansour himself to live and operate with impunity. He is the terror list but travels freely to Dubai where he owns a home as he also does in a Taliban enclave in Pakistan.

Further, when it comes to U.S. air operations in Afghanistan, there are no ground controllers, meaning any coordinates or airstrikes are called in by Afghan forces. Doctors Without Borders tells the story that they provided exact location coordinates to NATO and to Centcom to keep them from being bombed. Logical decision except were those coordinates accurate, later distorted or altered by the Taliban or moles in the Afghan forces in the area? Further, the pilot in not culpable and in a region of hostilities, the U.S. is immune from hitting wrong targets due to responsibility placed on home military unites because of insecure data, insecure Afghan personnel and because the Taliban follow the same terror model of placing weapons, people and sensitive material in hospitals, schools, mosques as other terror networks.

When the investigation is complete, it may omit these details posted below.

It’s Time to Treat Doctors Without Borders as a Terrorist Organization

End non-profit status for them and for any organization that funds them

“Doctors Without Borders has a long history of collaborating with and defending terrorists. And even being terrorists. The issue came up just last month in relation to Hamas.

Its current attacks on America and collaboration with the Taliban are completely unacceptable. Doctors Without Borders’ personnel are once again lying through their teeth, denying the facts put forward by US and Afghan personnel and covering up the use of medical facilities by the Taliban Jihadists as human shields.

This is the same tactic that we’ve seen with Hamas.

It’s time to deal with Doctors Without Borders, a cynical name for an organization in bed with Islamic terrorists.

The acting governor of Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province said Sunday that Taliban fighters had been routinely firing “small and heavy” weapons from the grounds of a local hospital before it was apparently hit by a U.S. airstrike over the weekend.

In an interview, Hamdullah Danishi said the Doctors Without Borders compound was “a Taliban base” that was being used to plot and carry out attacks across the provincial capital, Kunduz city.

“The hospital campus was 100 percent used by the Taliban,” Danishi said. “The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there. We tolerated their firing for some time” before responding.

Doctors Without Borders is lying and denying everything. The media is predictably taking the side of the extremist left-wing group. But the solution is obvious.

1. Treat Doctors Without Borders members just like ISIS recruits when it comes to international travel. At no point in time should they be allowed to travel to conflict zones since it is manifestly clear that they do so to aid terrorists. If they lie about their travel plans, they should go to jail.

2. End non-profit status for them and for any organization that funds them.

3. End any special status that they have when operating in conflict zones since they aren’t medical personnel, just terrorist auxiliaries who were aiding the Taliban takeover of Kunduz.”

 

United States Becoming Refugee’stan

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There is 1…ONE champion in Washington DC that is leading the charge to stop the reckless Obama/Kerry refugee program threatening our national security at least for two years, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions:

WASHINGTON— Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee’s hearing to investigate the Administration’s controversial plan to admit nearly 200,000 refugees over the next two fiscal years, including a large increase in Syrian refugees, on top of the existing annual admittance of 1 million permanent residents.

  • In the last five decades, 59 million immigrants have entered the United States.
  • Immigration, including the children of post-1965 immigrants, added 72 million people to the U.S. population.
  • One-fifth of the world’s immigrants live in the United States.  No other country has taken in more than 1 in 20.  We have taken in 6 times more immigrants than all of Latin America, and 10 million more immigrants than the European Union.
  • We have permanently resettled 1.5 million immigrants from Muslim countries in the United States since 9/11.
  • In 1970, fewer than 1 in 21 Americans was foreign-born, today it is approaching 1 in 7 and will soon eclipse the highest levels ever recorded.
  • Pew projects new immigrants and their children will add another 103 million individuals to our resident population over the next five decades.  That means for every one new resident produced by our existing population, immigration will add another 7 new residents.
  • Six of the ten decades of the 20th century witnessed immigration declines.  Every decade of the 21st century will see rapidly-rising immigration, with each decade setting a new all-time record.
  • After four decades of large-scale immigration, Pew shows that – by more than a 3:1 margin – the public would like to see immigration reduced, not increased.  According to Rasmussen, only 7% of Americans support resettling 100,000 Middle Eastern refugees in the United States.
  • Meanwhile, recent studies from Georgetown Professor Eric Gould and Harvard Professor George Borjas, have linked this huge increase in the foreign labor supply to the crippling wage stagnation and joblessness afflicting our workers.

 

With that context in mind, we must consider what our economic, social and security infrastructure can responsibly handle.  Let us not also forget that we are presently dealing with our hemisphere’s immigration crisis.

The situation in Syria and throughout the Middle East is not a problem that can be solved with immigration.  While the United States may have a role to play – such as establishing “safe zones” in Syria, as recommended by General Petraeus – it would be more cost-effective to support refugees in locations closer to their homes with the long-term goal of returning them home instead of permanent resettlement elsewhere in the world.  That is why Middle Eastern nations must take the lead in resettling their region’s refugees. It is not a sound policy to respond to the myriad problems in the region by encouraging millions to abandon their home.  Resettling the region’s refugees within the region is the course likeliest to produce long-term political reforms and stabilization. More here.

How bad can it really be?

U.S. Refugee Chief Didn’t Know Boston Bombers Were Refugees

Blake Neff/DailyCaller: At a Thursday Congressional hearing regarding the Obama administration’s plan to welcome tens of thousands of additional refugees into the United States, the administration’s top refugees official revealed that she had no idea whether the Tsarnaev brothers who carried out the Boston bombing arrived in the U.S. as refugees.

Barbara Strack, who serves as the chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service of the Department of Homeland Security, was grilled by the subcommittee’s chairman, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Sessions asked Strack whether it was accurate that the two Boston bombers, Dzhokhar and Tamerian Tsarnaev, had entered the U.S. as refugees from Chechnya.

 

“I would need to check with my colleagues, sir,” Strack replied.

The exchange can be seen at about 1:48:42 in C-SPAN’s recording of the hearing.

Needless to say, the Boston bombers actually were refugees, with their parents arriving in the U.S. on tourist visas in 2002 and then claiming asylum on the basis that their ties to Chechnya could expose them to persecution back in Russia. Once their parents were given asylum, the two boys and their sisters were able to also receive asylum by extension.

That asylum was upgraded to legal permanent residency in 2007. In 2013, the brothers bombed the Boston Marathon, throwing the city into panic and ultimately killing five people. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed by police during the chase to apprehend the brothers, while Dzhokhar was arrested and recently sentenced to death for his role in the attack.

The Obama administration recently announced plans to settle about 200,000 refugees in the U.S. over the next two years, including about 10,000 from Syria. On Thursday, the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest called a hearing to discuss the plan and whether it exposed the U.S. to unnecessary risks.

The experience of the Tsarnaevs is relevant, as critics of Obama’s refugee plan argue that importing thousands of Syrian refugees could essentially import Syria’s problems into the United States, exposing the country to more terrorist attacks motivated by radical Islam.

 

 

 

Veterans Ran to the Sounds of Bullets, Oregon

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We heard from John Parker, a 4 year Air Force veteran, who was exercising his 2nd Amendment right and is a lawful conceal carry patriot. Mr. Parker attempted to run to the sound of the weapons fired by the Oregon shooter.

The school officials stopped Mr. Parker from advancing, where some lives could have been saved. Mr. Parker is well aware of conditions where earlier on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly, he said he carries a weapon that is permitted if for no other reason than that of the murder rate in Chicago.

Next comes a hero who was able to save lives while taking on wounds himself. Meet Chris Mintz. In every disaster or mass shooting, heroes are out there, Chris is one great hero.

via Leah Jessen: North Carolina native Chris Mintz has emerged as a hero after yesterday’s tragic shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

Mintz, who spent ten years with the U.S. Army including an overseas deployment, reportedly ran towards the gunfire to help other students get to safety.

Mintz, 30, then allegedly stood up to shooter Chris Harper Mercer as he made his way through a building on Umpqua’s Roseburg, Oregon campus.

“He ran to the library and pulled the alarms and he was telling people to run, grabbing people, telling them, ‘You just have to go,’” witness Hannah Miles told ABC News.

“He actually ran back towards the building where the shooting was and he ran back into the building, and I don’t know what happened to him,” Miles continued.

Mintz, who had just started taking classes at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College this week, then reportedly tried to physically shield his classmates from the danger.

An aerial view of Umpqua Community College in Oregon. (Photo: Thomas Boyd/ZUMA Press/Newscom)

According to The Daily Beast, Mintz charged right at the shooter–in the same classroom where nine victims were killed–after trying to hold him off by blocking the room’s door.

In the process, he took seven bullets to his torso and broke both of his legs.

“We were told he did heroic things to protect some people,” Mintz’s aunt Sheila Brown told NBC News. “We’ve all been sitting on pins and needles and praying very hard [for him].”

After Mercer shot Mintz, who was attending the school to become a fitness trainer, he reportedly told the gunman that it was his son Tyrik’s birthday. According to reports, Mercer then shot him two more times.

“I really think that if he wasn’t such a strong, young guy, he may have died,” another aunt, Wanda Mintz, told QFox13.

In total, Mintz was shot in the back, abdomen, and hands. It is not clear how his legs were broken. Miraculously, none of his vital organs were hit throughout the onslaught of bullets.

“He was on the wrestling team and he’s done cage-fighting, so it does not surprise me that he would act heroically,” Brown said.

After police gained control of the situation, Mintz was taken to a hospital where he underwent surgery.

His family members have given updates on his status.

“From what I’m hearing, he’s fine,” Mintz’s cousin Derek Bourgeouis told The Daily Beast. “But he’s going to have to learn to walk again.”

A GoFundMe page to help with medical expenses was set up by Bourgeouis after the attack. He says Mintz will “have to go through a ton of physical therapy.”

The page raised almost $15,000 in the first hour that it was up.

“I just hope that everyone else is OK,” Mintz told ABC News in an interview Friday morning.

“I’m just worried about everyone else.”

Obama Admin Paying Latin American Juveniles Millions

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$13 Mil to Help Central American Youths That Don’t Make it to U.S.

It’s not enough that the U.S. government is spending enormous sums to care for the recent influx of Central American illegal immigrants, the Obama administration also keeps sending large amounts of taxpayer dollars to the countries they came from to help those who stayed behind.

Judicial Watch first reported on this last year after discovering that the administration dedicated $2.5 million for juvenile justice reform in the Central American nations that had just bombarded the U.S. with tens of thousands of illegal alien minors. Officially coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) by the U.S. government, they came in herds from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala via Mexico. The Obama administration blamed the sudden surge on violence in the three countries even though they have long been plagued by serious crime and rampant bloodshed.

Now American taxpayers are funding the UACs education, housing and medical care in this country as well as programs back home for those who don’t make it north. For instance, the $2.5 million allocated last year will help “improve corrections administration and professionalism” in the Central American countries. It will also create opportunities for “re-socialization” of the offenders through community service, paid work or studies to learn a profession or trade and pay for legal representation. The administration claims the investment will help minimize the impact of international crime and illegal drugs on the United States, its citizens and partner nations.

This month Uncle Sam sent over another $13 million to provide job training to at-risk youth in El Salvador and Honduras. The goal is to help them develop “mark-relevant skills and secure good employment,” according to the official government announcement. It’s part of a four-year project called Youth Pathways-Central America and it’s expected to help 5,100 low-income youth, ages 14 to 20, who reside in areas with high rates of violence. Social services and emergency shelter will also be available and so will training services for 1,900 of the youth’s family members.

This is the same demographic that’s entered the U.S. in droves in the last year, 60,000 by the government’s latest count. They have mostly made their way into the country through the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, brought in dangerous diseases—including swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis— and occupied our military bases as shelters. Many have been disbursed throughout the U.S., igniting a crisis for overwhelmed public school districts nationwide. Last year Judicial Watch reported on a study that revealed states are spending an astounding $761 million a year to educate the UACs in public schools around the country.

This includes special Limited English Proficient (LEP) classes conducted in Spanish or in other indigenous Central American languages as well as free school meals for the new arrivals. In many cases the UACs have very little if any education, making the task all the more difficult. Texas and New York will get hit the hardest, the study reveals. Texas has the most UACs—5,280—and it will cost $78 million a year to educate them, the figures show. New York has less—4,244—but will spend more, $148 million, because evidently it’s more expensive to school kids in the state.

Soon Americans will inevitably get stuck with exorbitant incarceration costs for some of these UACs. Just a few weeks ago JW reported that many have joined the nation’s most violent street gang, Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13. The information comes from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which reveals in a 19-page report that MS-13 has emerged as a top tier gang in the state thanks to the new arrivals. A year earlier JW had already reported that gangs were actively recruiting UACs at shelters immediately after arriving in the U.S. and they were using Red Cross phones to communicate.