Border Security Facts or Not

Posted on March 23, 2016March 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

March 23, 2016

National Security and Border Threats

Key word, key term for entry: CREDIBLE FEAR = immediate entry, on the fly on asylum.

Horowitz: What is Homeland Security Hiding Behind Immigration Numbers?

CR: As Americans ominously observe the raging fire of suicidal immigration policies implemented by our European friends across the pond, one of the first questions on their minds is: how many of these Islamic radicals have been admitted to our country? The answer is we don’t even know how many people in total have come to our country since 2013 because the Department of Homeland Security has refused to publish that data or make it available to Congress.

It is already March 2016, yet the public and members of Congress still do not have any of the immigration data for 2014, much less 2015.

Over the past year we’ve been posting data on the number of immigrants, naturalized citizens, and immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries we have accepted in recent years. The immigration and naturalization trends are skyrocketing across the board, particularly from Muslim countries. Roughly 680,000 immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries have been given green cards from 2009-2013. But notice we have no data since 2013.

While data on refugees can be pulled from the State Department’s database (when it is working) and information on some non-immigrant visas can be pulled from the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, the public is in the dark as to the number of people who have been granted green cards in total (and the breakdown by country) without access to the annual “Yearbook on Immigration Statistics” from the Department of Homeland Security.

It is already March 2016, yet the public and members of Congress still do not have any of the immigration data for 2014, much less 2015. Typically, the statistics are published during the spring of the following year. The release of data has gotten progressively slower since the INS was restructured into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, but the Obama administration has consistently stonewalled on publishing data. For example, it wasn’t until last week that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement published its 2014 report on refugees. But even Obama’s DHS had the 2013 data posted by June of 2014. Why is there still no data on 2014 two years later?

With evidence from Census data indicating a surge in immigration overall and a spike in immigration from the Middle East, why is it that in a first world country we don’t even know how many people have come in since the advent of ISIS? Given the terrorism threats and the growing population from the Middle East, wouldn’t it be nice to know how many people from predominantly Muslim countries have been granted green cards over the past two years?

Given the influx of Central American illegal immigrants, shouldn’t we know how many were granted asylum and how many children were granted Special Immigrants Juvenile Status, which leads to a pathway to citizenship?

Given Obama’s unprecedented move of advertising and recruiting immigrants to become naturalized citizens last year, shouldn’t we know how many have signed up and from where they originated?

The notion that even members of Congress don’t know the details of who is being added to our civil society until two years later is patently absurd and dangerous. Congress should have the full reports the following year and topline data every month.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough members of Congress who care enough to exercise proper oversight over this administration’s violation of our sovereignty.

The UK Looks like Belgium, Anyone Notice?

Posted on March 23, 2016March 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

While all attention with good reason has been directed to Brussels, Belgium, it was determined earlier in the week that the UK is working to stop a larger 10 target plot. After reading this piece, it may be prudent to look around your own neighborhood or city and questions may come to mind.

Then earlier this year, this site published an article about SERCO, one of the most powerful companies across the globe, a company no one knows about.

Serco once again comes into focus, this time in the UK.

Outrage as hotel homes 300 asylum seekers – without telling anyone

HUNDREDS of asylum seekers have been housed in a major hotel without informing anyone.

Asylum seekers and the hotel

The Britannia Group has agreed to house 306 immigrants at its hotel near Manchester Airport

City council bosses are embroiled in a war of words after Home Office contractor Serco placed more than 300 migrants into hotels, in what the authorities claim is on the sly.

Officials are now taking action after a “material” change to the hotel’s planning permission.

Currently, 271 asylum seekers are at the Britannia Hotel near Manchester Airport, and another 35 are in the branch in nearby leafy Didsbury.

But now Britannia, in agreement with Serco, want to take people out of Didsbury and into the airport.

Manchester has one of the highest numbers of asylum seekers in the UK, looking after a little under 1,000.

Paul Andrews, the council’s lead member for adult health and wellbeing, admitted his surprise the authority had not been told about the decision.

ZENPIX: Refugees were taken to the hotel as locals voiced their concerns

He said: “Manchester City Council has today been made aware that the Britannia Hotel located at the airport in Northenden have agreed for the Home Office sub-contractor Serco to increase the level of asylum seekers they accommodate there.

We believe that this amounts to a material change of use, and as such we will be taking appropriate action with the Britannia hotel chain, Paul Andrews

“We believe that this amounts to a material change of use, and as such we will be taking appropriate action with the Britannia hotel chain regards to planning restrictions.

“We have also made it clear to Serco that failing to notify the council in advance of this action having been taken is completely unacceptable.

GETTY: The Home Office outsources accommodation for asylum seekers to Serco

“Manchester City Council has had no direct responsibility for providing accommodation and support to asylum seekers living within our communities since 2012.

“The responsibility lies with the Home Office and Serco, their sub-contractor for north west England.”

Jenni Halliday, Serco’s contract director for Compass, said: “Due to the continuing increase in the number of these vulnerable asylum seekers being placed in our care in the North West, over the past few months we have been using several hotels including this one, to accommodate them.”

“The availability of individual hotels changes, sometimes at very short notice and when that happens we work hard to make sure that we can make alternative arrangements to safely accommodate the asylum seekers and keep the local authorities informed.”

*****

Meanwhile in other news regarding the UK:

Pair Face Jail Over Drive-By Terror Plot

Two home-grown terrorists planned to kill soldiers, police officers and civilians in Islamic State-inspired shootings.

A picture of Tarik Hassane with a gun was found on Majeed’s mobile phone

By Mark White, Home Affairs Correspondent

Two men are facing lengthy prison terms over a drive-by gun attack plot to target police and soldiers on the streets of London.

It can be disclosed that the plan to attack officers and soldiers outside a police station and army barracks was both inspired and funded by Islamic State from Syria.

The attack was to be led by Tarik Hassane, a medical student known to his friends as “The Surgeon” and the son of a Saudi diplomat.

Another plotter, student Suhaib Majeed, has now been found guilty by an Old Bailey jury of helping co-ordinate the plan in the UK.

Two others, Nyall Hamlett and Nathan Cuffy, were found not guilty of the main terrorism charge but have already admitted supplying the weapon and ammunition to be used in the attack.

Both men claimed they had no knowledge of the fact the weapon was to be used in a terrorist attack.

Scotland Yard Commanders have described the attack plan as a “significant step-up in complexity and ambition” compared to other recent plots, like the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in southeast London in 2013.

Head of Scotland Yard’s Counter Terror Command, SO15 Commander Dean Haydon, said: “This was a very determined bunch of individuals, they were four very dangerous men.”

He said the plot represented an “elevation in complexity” adding: “This is about acquiring a moped, acquiring a firearm, silencer and ammunition and in broad daylight, targeting police officers, the military and members of the public and making good their escape.

“That is a real concern to me and certainly a real concern to SO15 Counter-terrorism Command. It draws parallels in a way to Paris. The attackers in this case were intent on murder, intent on using a firearm, intent on causing fear, stress, disorder in a particular part of west London.”

The plot, according to the authorities, was not to be a martyrdom operation. The attackers would open fire on an unsuspecting police officer or soldier and drive off, free to scout their next targets. It would have been a cycle of killing which could have claimed many lives.

When MI5 uncovered the plot in early September 2014, they launched the largest surveillance operation since the transatlantic airlines plot to blow up eight aircraft using bombs in soft drinks bottles in 2006.

The main instigator of the plot, Hassane, 22, had failed to get onto a medical course at university in London and instead moved to Sudan to study there.

He masterminded the plot from Sudan and during brief visits back home to London, where he was pictured by undercover officers as he met with his fellow plotters.

Hassane’s father was the Saudi Ambassador to Uzbekistan, it can be revealed, but had left him to grow up on a council estate in the Ladbroke Grove area of west London with his aunt.

His school friend, Majeed, 21, a physics undergraduate at King’s College, London was the main co-ordinator in the UK, organising, researching and acting as the communications expert.

Majeed used an encryption programme called Mujahideen Secrets on his laptop as he passed and received instructions on the ongoing plot.

He was tasked with picking up the firearm, finding a moped for the drive-by and renting a lock-up to store the moped close to the target.

Hamlett, 25, the ‘middleman’ with the gun supplier, lived in the same area of west London and was friends with both Hassane and Majeed.

He was able to put them in touch with the main gun supplier and the man who acted as armourer, Cuffy, 26, who was storing five handguns in his father’s council flat.

The plot is the first example of Islamist terrorists in Britain obtaining a working firearm and sources say the plan has “unnerving echoes” of the Paris plot 16 months later.

It represents a “dangerous cross-over” between Islamist terrorists and the world of gangs and drug dealing which enabled them to get hold of a weapon, according to sources.

They fear that terrorists are now able to get hold of weapons that were previously out of bounds because gangland armourers did not want to be dragged into terrorism.

However, the suppliers in the latest case were all converts who were still involved in drug dealing but also had a large amount of radical material on their phones and computers, including IS recruitment videos.

Officers moved in to arrest the three London-based plotters in September 2014, after Cuffy had handed a self-loading pistol, ammunition and a silencer onto Hamlett and Majeed.

Hassane was still in Sudan at that time, but detectives used the cover of an operation against gangs in London to try to lull him into a false sense of security that he was safe to return to Britain after his friends’ arrest.

When he did return he was put under surveillance as he visited an internet cafe where he was observed looking at articles about kidnapping in the Middle East.

When his home was raided, police discovered he had been using an iPad to research Shepherd’s Bush police station and the Parachute Regiment’s Territorial Army base in White City using Google Street View

Hassane pleaded guilty to masterminding the plot, just before he was due to give evidence in the three-month trial.

All four men will be sentenced at a later date.

2 Days After Benghazi, Back to Fundraising

Posted on March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Judicial Watch: New Clinton Documents Raise Questions on Benghazi, Clinton Foundation

Two days after Benghazi attack, Libyan president sought meeting with Bill Clinton through Clinton Foundation event

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 276 pages of internal State Department documents revealing that within two days of the deadly terrorist attack on Benghazi, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya’s National Congress, asked to participate in a Clinton Global Initiative function and “meet President Clinton.” The meeting between the Libyan president and Bill Clinton had not previously been disclosed. The documents also show Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff coordinated with the Clinton Foundation’s staff to have her thank Clinton Global Initiative project sponsors for their “commitments” during a Foundation speech on September 25, 2009.

The Judicial Watch documents were obtained as a result of a federal court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on May 28, 2013, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)).

In September 13, 2012, al-Magariaf advisor Dr. Fathi Nuah wrote to the Clinton Foundation’s Director of Foreign Policy Amitabh Desai: “Dr. Almagariaf will be addressing the United Nations this September in New York as the Libyan Head of State, and he expressed a wish to meet President Clinton and to participate at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting for New York as well.”

Four hours later, Desai emailed Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills asking, “Would USG [U.S. Government] have concerns about Libyan President being invited to CGI [Clinton Global Initiative]? Odd timing, I know.” Mills emailed back: “We would not have issues.”

Four days later, on September 17, Desai emailed Mills again, saying, The Libyan president is “asking for a meeting with WJC [William Jefferson Clinton] next week.” Desai asked, “Would you recommend accepting or declining the WJC meeting request?”

The State Department apparently had no objection to the meeting, because on September 26, Desai emailed Mills, “He had a v good meeting with Libya …” Hillary Clinton and al-Magariaf did not have a meeting until September 24.

An August 2009 email chain including Hillary Clinton’s then- Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, Mills, then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Jake Sullivan shows that the State Department coordinated with Clinton Foundation staff on how Mrs. Clinton to thank Foundation supporters/partners for their “commitments.” Mills asks Desai for a “list of commitments during whole session so she can reference more than those just around her speech.”

Caitlin Klevorick, Senior Advisor to the Counselor and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State who previously worked at the Foundation, notes: “one question is if we want to see if there is a decent mass of fs [funds] related commitments to announce together at closing as a ‘mega’ commitment.”

The State Department material includes background information made by Clinton Foundation partners, which include Foundation donors Nduna Foundation, Grupo ABCA, and Britannia Industries. Other CGI partners noted in the State Department documents include a federal agency (the Centers for Disease Control) and various United Nations entities, which also receive U.S. taxpayer funds.

The transcript of Hillary Clinton’s speech on the State Department Internet site confirms that then-Secretary of State did thank those making “exceptional commitments” to her husband’s foundation:

And so I congratulate all who helped to put on this (inaudible) CGI [Clinton Global Initiative]. I especially thank you for having a separate track on girls and women, which I think was well received for all the obvious reasons. (Applause.) And this is an exceptional gathering of people who have made exceptional commitments to bettering our world.

The documents also point to a chain of emails that show Haim Saban, a top Clinton donor, sought to entice Bill Clinton into to travelling to Damascus in 2009 to meet with a high-level Syrian delegation. The meetings were part of the Saban Forum. Evidently, the trip never took place.

As previously reported, a June 2012 email chain discusses a “firm invitation for President Clinton” to speak at a Congo conference, hosted in part by the controversial Joseph Kabila. Bill Clinton is offered $650,000 in fees and expenses, concerning which, as Desai emails Mills and others, “WJC wants to know that state [sic] thinks of it if he took it 100% for the foundation.”

This lawsuit had previously forced the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to at least $48 million in speaking fees for the Clintons during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, among others.

Judicial Watch’s litigation to obtain these conflict of interest records is ongoing. The State Department has also yet to explain why it failed to conduct a proper, timely search in the 20 months between when it received Judicial Watch’s request on May 2, 2011, and the February 1, 2013, date Secretary Clinton left office.

“These new State Department documents show Hillary Clinton and her State aides were involved in fundraising for the Clinton Foundation. It is also incredible that the Libyan president would call and meet Bill Clinton through the Clinton Foundation before meeting Hillary Clinton about Benghazi,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked hand in glove with the Clinton Foundation on fundraising and foreign policy. Despite the law and her promises to the contrary, Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into the DC office of the Clinton Foundation.”

Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit has become particularly noteworthy because it has been reported that the Clinton Foundation, now known as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State. The Clinton Foundation has acknowledged that a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration. Some of the foreign governments that have made donations to the Clinton Foundation include Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, have questionable human rights records.

Links to the full production of documents can be found here.

Meanwhile, Back in Cuba

Posted on March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

BREAKING: Group of FARC rebels including top leader was at Cuba-U.S. baseball game attended by Obama: FARC negotiator.

A contingent of 40 members of Colombia’s FARC rebels including their leader Rodrigo Londono were at a baseball game in Havana on Tuesday that was also attended by U.S. President Barack Obama at the end of his historic trip to the Communist-led island.

FARC negotiator Pastor Alape confirmed their attendance and said the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and a Cuban team was a “symbol of peace.” A Reuters witness also spotted the rebels there.

The representatives of the Marxist-led Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are in Cuba for peace talks with the Colombian government.

U.S. Secretary of John Kerry met on Monday with the FARC negotiators and the team representing the Colombian government at the talks.

INJO: During an occasionally awkward press conference this afternoon in Havana, Cuban President Raoul Castro was flummoxed by questions about human rights.

Asked by CNN’s Jim Acosta why Cuba has political prisoners, Castro appeared indignant:

“Give me a list and I’ll release them,” said Castro, adding, “If we have those political prisoners they will be released before tonight ends.”

Many journalists and human rights’ advocates quickly tweeted lists of dozens of prisoner names.

Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation says it has a list of “Forgotten 51” political prisoners in Cuba. pic.twitter.com/xv0B4aY0gz

Later in the press conference, which took place after President Obama met privately with Castro to discuss matters, such as human rights, NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell again took a stab at getting Castro to talk about dissidents.

Castro deflected, pointing instead to issues he feels his country does well, like healthcare and education and equal pay—claiming those were more important than human rights.

He argued that not only does he not know of any political prisoners, he didn’t like the idea that an American journalist would broach the topic:

“It’s not right to ask me about political prisoners in general, please give me the name of a political prisoner.”

Shortly thereafter, the press conference came to an end, with this awkward misstep. Castro went for the hand-hold; Obama went for the the back slap.

ChicagoTribune in part: Capping his remarkable visit to Cuba, President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared an end to the “last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas” and openly urged the Cuban people to pursue a more democratic future for this communist nation 90 miles from Miami.

With Cuban President Raul Castro watching from a balcony, Obama said the government should not fear citizens who speak freely and vote for their own leaders. And with Cubans watching on tightly controlled state television, Obama said they would be the ones to determine their country’s future, not the United States.

“Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down,” Obama said. “But I’m appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new.”

On the streets of Havana, the president’s address sparked extraordinarily rare public discussions about democracy, and some anger with Cuba’s leaders. Cubans are used to complaining bitterly about economic matters but rarely speak publicly about any desire for political change, particularly in conversations with foreign journalists.

Judge to WH: Unseal Records of Trump Business Partner?

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

This site has published articles here and here about Felix Sater, a mafia linked frauster that is/was a partner of Donald Trump. It seems this unsavory character is known to many in New York and Washington DC including Attorney General, Loretta Lynch as well as Senator Jeff Sessions. Seems some interesting powers are working phones to determine future damage to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and others with their fingerprints on the matter.

Judge Wants US to Protect Trump Associate’s Secret History

ABC: A U.S. judge is urging the Obama administration to protect from public disclosure federal court records related to the once-secret criminal history of a former Donald Trump business partner.

In a highly unusual order prompted by The Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan said that unless the Justice Department acts before April 18, he will decide whether to make the court files public under the assumption that federal prosecutors don’t care.

The case involves Felix Sater, a Trump business associate who had pleaded guilty in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme and cooperated with the government. The AP reported in December that, even after learning about Sater’s background, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role in 2010 that included the title of senior adviser to Trump. Sater received Trump Organization business cards and was given an office within the Trump Organization’s headquarters, on the same floor as Trump’s own.

“It seems to me that the government has a unique interest in keeping documents that relate to cooperation agreements under seal,” the judge wrote in his order. “The government should speak and assert its position as to whether the public’s right to access each document in the record is outweighed by a compelling need for secrecy.”

Lawyers for the AP had asked the judge to justify sealing a five-year criminal contempt proceeding in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Not only did Cogan seal all documents in the contempt case, he also initially sealed the AP’s request that he unseal his justification for their sealing. When The New York Times asked the judge to unseal the AP’s request to unseal the sealing order, that request was sealed, too. Late last week, he made the requests by the AP and the newspaper publicly accessible — but ordered that the parties to the case file any response to them under seal.

The defendants in the contempt case, Frederick Oberlander and Richard Lerner, are attorneys whom the government said revealed once-secret court records about Sater’s crimes and cooperation. Sater’s lawyers, who once included Leslie Caldwell, now the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, have said that Sater’s cooperation was vital to national security and disclosures about his past put him in danger.

Oberlander and Lerner said they never revealed sealed records. Some of what they had been ordered not to disclose is already publicly available in the Congressional Record, they said.

“We wish that people could inspect the documents, because it would reveal judicial and prosecutorial misconduct of the highest levels,” Oberlander told the AP.

Also at issue in the case are statements that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch — formerly the top prosecutor in Cogan’s district — made about Sater’s case before the Senate confirmed her last year. Oberlander and Lerner said the government improperly permitted Sater to use his status as a secret cooperator to commit new crimes and avoid paying restitution to past victims, who are owed millions of dollars.

In February 2015, Lynch told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, of the Senate Judiciary Committee that information about Sater’s restitution “remains under seal,” and that the Justice Department would never waive victims’ right to restitution as part of a cooperation agreement. Court records already publicly available at the time showed that Sater was not ordered to pay restitution and the government never requested it. One of Sater’s attorneys said in a statement at the time that the government had waived restitution payments partly out of gratitude to Sater.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Melanie Newman, told the AP that Lynch’s comments were accurate because some documents related to restitution in Sater’s case remain under seal.

Oberlander told the AP that the original cooperation agreement Sater signed in 1998, which has been publicly available since 2013, said Sater acknowledged that the penalty for his crime included roughly $60 million in restitution payments to victims.

The New York judge has twice asked the Justice Department to pursue contempt charges against the two lawyers who revealed Sater’s cooperation. In both cases, local federal prosecutors recused themselves over unspecified conflicts of interest after consulting with Justice Department officials in Washington. They referred the case to federal prosecutors in Albany, New York, who likewise did not act.

In his latest order, Cogan again urged prosecutors to go after Oberlander and Lerner.

“One would think that the desire to ensure that further informants cooperate in government investigations should also motivate the government to take swift action against individuals who seek to expose the identity of informants, their proffered criminal history and the details of their cooperation,” the judge wrote.

Sater’s attorney, Robert Wolf, said the judge was right.

“Mr. Sater shares and supports the court’s frustration and outrage as to why these rogue lawyers have not yet been criminally prosecuted,” Wolf said in a statement. He credited Sater with providing information that “potentially saved tens of thousands, if not millions, of our citizens’ lives.”

Sater pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a broad stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families, according to court records. Five years earlier, a New York State court had sentenced Sater to more than a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass.