Heartless, Biden Admin Closes Office that Helps Victims of Crimes

In full disclosure, I personally have met several of the victims in recent years in Washington DC.

Biden admin closes office that helps victims of crimes committed by immigrants, opens immigrant services center

On Friday, the Biden administration announced that it would be closing a government office set up to help victims of crimes committed by immigrants, to be replaced with an office aiding in immigration services, according to the Associated Press.

Created by the Trump administration during his first week in office, the Victim Of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, or VOICE, would be replaced with what the US Immigration and Customs enforcement called a “more comprehensive and inclusive victim support system.”
Replacing VOICE is the The Victims Engagement and Services Line, “which will combine longstanding existing services, such as methods for people to report abuse and mistreatment in immigration detention centers and a notification system for lawyers and others with a vested interest in immigration cases,” writes AP.
(the website of VOICE before it was closed)
“The new office will add a service for potential recipients of visas designated for victims of human trafficking or violent crimes in the United States,” they continue

“Providing assistance to society’s most vulnerable is a core American value. All people, regardless of their immigration status, should be able to access victim services without fear,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
On Twitter Friday, Stephen Miller slammed the decision to close the office, stating “law enforcement is now forced to aid lawmakers.”** 

 

“This is in addition to all of the free help illegal aliens already get from mega-billionaires, the ACLU & powerful special interests. Americans have become second-class citizens in their own country. And grief-stricken families, mourning loved ones, are the collateral damage,” Miller continued.
According to the Associated Press, Miller stating that opening the new office would be like the DEA opening “a call center to help drug dealers get lawyers and amnesty for their crimes.” The Department of Homeland Security “is a law enforcement agency, not a legal help center for criminals and lawbreakers.”

Half of Pandemic Money Stolen, Just $400 Billion

At least 30% of unemployment claims are fraudulent. 70% of the money has left our shores…oh don’t worry…the Biden administration has set aside $2 billion to stop this. What?

Beware of increased unemployment fraud due to identity theft

Axios:

Criminals may have stolen as much as half of the unemployment benefits the U.S. has been pumping out over the past year, some experts say.

Why it matters: Unemployment fraud during the pandemic could easily reach $400 billion, according to some estimates, and the bulk of the money likely ended in the hands of foreign crime syndicates — making this not just theft, but a matter of national security.

Catch up quick: When the pandemic hit, states weren’t prepared for the unprecedented wave of unemployment claims they were about to face.

  • They all knew fraud was inevitable, but decided getting the money out to people who desperately needed it was more important than laboriously making sure all of them were genuine.

By the numbers: Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me, a service that tries to prevent this kind of fraud, tells Axios that America has lost more than $400 billion to fraudulent claims. As much as 50% of all unemployment monies might have been stolen, he says.

  • Haywood Talcove, the CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, estimates that at least 70% of the money stolen by impostors ultimately left the country, much of it ending up in the hands of criminal syndicates in China, Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere.
  • “These groups are definitely backed by the state,” Talcove tells Axios.
  • Much of the rest of the money was stolen by street gangs domestically, who have made up a greater share of the fraudsters in recent months.

What they’re saying: “Widespread fraud at the state level in pandemic unemployment insurance during the previous Administration is one of the most serious challenges we inherited,” said White House economist Gene Sperling.

  • President Biden has been clear that this type of activity from criminal syndicates is despicable and unacceptable. It is why we passed $2 billion for UI modernizations in the American Rescue Plan, instituted a Department of Justice Anti-Fraud Task Force and an all-of-government Identity Theft and Public Benefits Initiative.”

How it works: Scammers often steal personal information and use it to impersonate claimants. Other groups trick individuals into voluntarily handing over their personal information.

  • “Mules” — low-level criminals — are given debit cards and asked to withdraw money from ATMs. That money then gets transferred abroad, often via bitcoin.

The big picture: Before the pandemic, unemployment claims were relatively rare, and generally lasted for such short amounts of time that international criminal syndicates didn’t view them as a lucrative target.

  • After unemployment insurance became the primary vehicle by which the U.S. government tried to keep the economy afloat, however, all that changed.
  • Unemployment became where the big money was — and was also being run by bureaucrats who weren’t as quick to crack down on criminals as private companies normally are.
  • Unemployment fraud is now offered on the dark web on a software-as-a-service basis, much like ransomware. States without fraud-detection services are naturally targeted the most.

The bottom line: Many states are now getting more sophisticated about preventing this kind of fraud. But it’s far too late.

*** What Is Unemployment Insurance Fraud? | does

Consequences should also be on the states and we don’t spend anything more in unemployment until at least 50% is recovered…..billions of dollars likely ending up in the hands of foreign crime syndicates based in China, Russia and other countries, experts say.

“Fraud is being perpetrated by domestic and foreign actors,” Blake Hall, CEO and founder of ID.ME, told FOX Business. “We are successfully disrupting attempted fraud from international organized crime rings, including Russia, China, Nigeria and Ghana, as well as U.S. street gangs.”

Haywood Talcove, the CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solution, suggested the bulk of the money – about $250 billion – went to international criminal groups, most of which are backed by the state. The money is essentially being used as their slush fund for “nefarious purposes,” such as terrorism, illegal drugs and child trafficking, Talcove said.

The criminals have been able to access the money by stealing personal information and using it to impersonate claimants or buying it on the dark web. The groups also use an army of internet thieves to submit fraudulent claims. States, which administer the aid, may be prepared to combat fraud from individuals who are trying double-dip or cash in on benefits they don’t need, but not international criminals using the dark web to exploit the system.

But What is NOT in Fauci’s Emails?

That is the question(s)…

While many are calling for the resignation of Dr. Anthony Fauci, I say hold on. Why? Often, in fact most often, former government employees rarely are investigated, charged or prosecuted. I say just suspend him without pay until a full commission is launched.

There are all kinds of people reading through all the released Fauci emails and rightly so. While reading through many articles and posts relating to the emails where so appear to be smoking guns…we must consider what is not in the emails.

As Joe Biden has ordered the intelligence agencies to go through a full review and report back, a long application of strategic thinking is also in order. The reader is invited to ask their own questions in the comments section of this post.

For some context and courtesy of Bloomberg News in part:

No matter where the inquiry leads, the history of lab safety shows, at the very least, that leaks of pathogens have happened in the past — sometimes with deadly consequences. It also shows that even transparent, thorough investigations into the origins of an outbreak can end in uncertainty.

By the late 1970s, smallpox had been eradicated in nature, but work on it continued in a handful of labs around the world, including a facility in Birmingham, England, which had access to a particularly virulent strain. In the summer of 1978, a medical photographer working there named Janet Parker fell ill. When pustules spread across her upper body, a local doctor diagnosed it as a bad case of chickenpox.

It was the third leak of smallpox that decade from a British lab. The British government moved aggressively to contain the outbreak, quarantining hundreds of people and vaccinating many more. Thanks to their efforts, only one other person — Parker’s mother — developed the disease. But Parker died an excruciating, lonely death in an isolation ward — the last known victim of smallpox.

But there were other victims. At the time, the newspapers covering the episode fixated on the director of the laboratory, an expert on pox viruses named Henry Bedson. Despite an absence of evidence, the press blamed him for the outbreak. Quarantined at home and despondent, Bedson went out to his garden shed and slit his own throat; he died soon afterward.

The British government commissioned a thorough investigation into the outbreak. It turned up evidence that Bedson may not have observed sufficient safety protocols and speculated that Parker must have somehow contracted smallpox through contamination in the air ducts. Later, a lawsuit effectively refuted this explanation, leading to the unsettling possibility that Parker herself may have entered one of the work spaces without proper protection. The debate continues to this day.

When lab leaks take place in a secretive society, the difficult job of confirming the source of an outbreak gets much harder. A good case in point was the infamous anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, an isolated city in the Soviet Union.

In 1979, rumors of anthrax killing dozens — or even thousands — began trickling out to the West. Later that year, Soviet journals confirmed some of these reports, noting that upward of a hundred people had contracted anthrax after ingesting contaminated meat; over 60 had died. A tragedy, yes, but perhaps inevitable: Anthrax was endemic in local animal populations.

Intelligence officials in the U.S. weren’t convinced. Satellite imagery showed what looked like decontamination trucks around the city, with considerable activity focused on a mysterious military facility known as Compound 19. CIA analysts hypothesized that the Soviets had mistakenly released a weaponized form of anthrax. More here.

***

Remember, Dr. Fauci has the Director of the NIAID since 1984. He not only knows the history of super bugs and pandemics but he also has access to the files and documentation of global laboratories and scientists.

Can we quit saying ‘lab leaks’, which infers an accident? Perhaps ‘released’ should replace ‘leak’. Anyway, moving on.

Exactly why was the CIA not called in by Fauci or the suggestion of that in 2019 or earlier like around the time of the warning cables that were sent by U.S. Embassy officials back to the State Department in 2018?

How come Dr. Fauci’s emails did not include communication exchanges with other countries that provided big financial aid to the Wuhan Lab like France and Canada?

As the Public Health Agency of Canada refuses to release uncensored internal documents, a Conservative MP says he wants to know how far Canada’s collaboration with China on Level-4 pathogens went — and why two federal scientists were let go by the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg in January.

“We need these documents. We need to know what the Government of Canada was doing through the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg with respect to cooperating with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China,” Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said during a special parliamentary committee hearing on Canada-China relations Monday night.

The special committee has demanded to know why two federal government scientists were escorted out of Canada’s only Level 4 Lab in July 2019, just four months after one of them shipped samples of the Ebola and Henipah viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China — stories first published by CBC News.

Two months after that shipment, on May 24, 2019, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) referred an “administrative matter” to RCMP that resulted in the removal of two Chinese research scientists — Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng — and several international students on July 5.

No where in the Fauci emails is the request for the medical files of ‘patient zero’ or of any Chinese scientists that fell ill or died. Why?

Did Dr. Fauci reach out to the Galveston National Laboratory which is part of the University of Texas for any pandemic details? Not so much, why?

Galveston bio lab explains connections to Wuhan | Local ...

How come Dr. Fauci only had Dr. Deborah Birx as an addition to the White House Virus Task Force and other virology experts were not called on like other world health leaders?

How about any references to expert white papers that Dr. Fauci made? He only said data…what data?

There are hundreds of questions and standing up a full commission is past due. Meanwhile, suspect the doctor and start the real interviews and subpoenas. There are likely hundreds if not thousands more across the world that know more with evidence….Dr. Fauci makes no email inquiries and the same goes for the intelligence agencies, unless they have and that is being embargoed too.

SCOTUS Unanimous Decision on Temporary Protective Status

There have been several unanimous decisions out of the Supreme Court lately and this one is curious. The progressive Jurist Elena Kagan wrote this on regarding immigrants obtaining a green cards status….simple description….NO, they can’t have one.

Sounds good…but hold on.

And remember –> The Trump administration has ordered an end to TPS benefits for nearly all immigrants who had them, stating that the program is meant to provide temporary rather than long-term relief. But a series of lawsuits challenging the administration’s decision have blocked those orders from taking effect, giving the vast majority of these immigrants a reprieve until early 2021.

Immigrants from 10 nations have Temporary Protected Status

LATimes:

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have so-called temporary protected status, ruling they can’t have a green card if they entered the country illegally.

That means TPS recipients who entered the county legally as students or tourists, and stayed under TPS may obtain a green card, said Justice Elena Kagan. But the same is not true of those who entered illegally.

“Because a grant of TPS does not come with a ticket of admission,” she wrote in Sanchez vs. Mayorkas, “it does not eliminate the disqualifying effect of an unlawful entry.”

Temporary protected status has been extended to about 320,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan.

But lower courts had been divided over whether these migrants, many of whom have lived here for decades, may apply for and receive lawful permanent status. Four years ago, the 9th Circuit Court in California ruled that TPS recipients were eligible for green cards even if they entered the country illegally.

The case decided by the Supreme Court began when Jose Sanchez and his wife, Sonia Gonzalez, sought green cards. They arrived from El Salvador in the late 1990s, established lives and careers in New Jersey and had four sons. But they were not lawfully admitted.

Kagan said Congress is considering legislation that would allow such TPS recipients to obtain lawful permanent resident status, but only Congress, not the court, can change the law in this respect.

“Sanchez was not lawfully admitted, and his TPS does not alter that fact,” she wrote. “He therefore cannot become a permanent resident of this country.”

***

When can the Secretary designate a country for TPS?

The Secretary can designate a country for TPS due to:

  • Ongoing armed conflict (such as civil war),
  • An environmental disaster (such as earthquake or hurricane), or an epidemic, or
  • Other extraordinary and temporary conditions.

Who is eligible for TPS?

TPS can be granted to an individual who is a national of a designated country, has filed for status during a specified registration period, and who has been continuously physically present in the U.S. since a designated date.

What are the benefits of TPS?

During a designated period, TPS holders are:

  • Not removable from the U.S. and not detainable by DHS on the basis of his or her immigration status,
  • Eligible for an employment authorization document (EAD), and
  • Eligible for travel authorization.

How many individuals are currently granted TPS?

The U.S. currently provides TPS to over 400,000 foreign nationals from the following countries, not including individuals from Venezuela and Burma as they were just recently designated:

Country Estimated Number
Venezuela 323,000 eligible
El Salvador 251,567
Honduras 80,709
Haiti 56,453
Nepal 14,575
Syria 7,010
Nicaragua 4,526
Yemen 1,465
Sudan 805
Somalia 465
South Sudan 83
Burma N/A

Where do TPS holders live?

TPS holders reside all over the United States. The largest populations of TPS holders live in California (17.95%), Florida (13.75%), Texas (12.88%), New York (12.33%), and Virginia (6.75%). Most TPS holders from El Salvador live in the Washington, DC (32,359), Los Angeles (30,415) and New York (23,168) metropolitan areas. Honduran TPS holders live mostly in the New York (8,818), Miami (7,467) and Houston (6,060) metropolitan areas. Haitian TPS holders live mainly in the Miami (16,287), New York (9,402) and Boston (4,302) metropolitan areas. source

We have no idea how many people have been granted TPS, there are only estimates as noted here.

(From uscis.gov website)

Schumer and Dark Money Called Majority Forward Investigation

Points back again to that pesky Marc Elias –>

Majority Forward was incorporated in June by Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias, who represents Senate Majority PAC.

Elias, who is also general counsel for the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, said Friday night he could not immediately comment.

Forward Majority | Millennial Politics

FNC: A dark money group aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is facing an Internal Revenue Service complaint from a liberal watchdog group for concealing their political activity where they attempted to damper GOP election turnout for certain races in 2018.

Recently released tax records from the liberal nonprofit Majority Forward showed the dark money group gave $2.7 million to a different nonprofit, the Coalition for a Safe and Secure America (CSSA), in 2018, according to Axios.

Majority Forward is part of the Senate Majority PAC, serving as its nonprofit arm. The $2.7 million it gave made up the majority of the $4 million raised by CSSA that year.

CSSA converted that money into multiple direct-mailing campaigns and digital advertisements during the 2018 midterm cycle targeting Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Mike Braun, R-Ind.

The ads were deceptive in their nature, claiming the candidates had changed their position on central conservative tenets, and were posted to state-specific Facebook pages.

The ads led to the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to file an IRS complaint against CSSA. Majority Forward also recently admitted it left off legally required disclosures from direct-mail pieces in the 2018 midterm cycle.

“Coalition for a Safe Secure America appears to have falsely told the IRS they were not involved in politics. Dark money groups too often bypass the law in their efforts to secretly and improperly influence who is elected,” CREW president Noah Bookbinder said in a statement published last month. “We urge the IRS to open an investigation into Coalition for a Safe Secure America and take swift and appropriate action for any potential violations.”

CSSA’s ad targeting Hawley accused him of siding “with Washington liberals against gun owners.” Braun was labeled “Tax-Hike-Mike.”

Additionally, former Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., were targeted by its ads during the 2018 cycle. Heller and Rosendale both lost their races.

Heller was charged with allowing “almost 200,000 foreign workers a backdoor entry into our country.” Rosendale was accused of supporting “drone monitoring” while running for a Montana Senate seat.

Some of the ads also promoted Libertarian Party candidates to siphon votes away from the targeted Republicans.

Majority Forward was able to finance the ads while hiding its true reasons behind the ads through loopholes in campaign finance laws that allowed limited political activity from nonprofits.