Justice Dept. $75K to Hillary Campaign

Posted on May 10, 2016May 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Ah…exactly how does conflict of interest not become part of this discussion? At this point, when evidence and testimony piles up against Hillary, which it has for years going back to Arkansas, she has built her own Teflon wall. It is becoming clear that Hillary has with great effort and favors made an end run around the FBI investigation. Your thoughts? You gotta begin to wonder how come Bernie is not using this ammo on her campaign.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination on Wednesday, praising his former administration colleague’s plans to tackle a wide range of issues, from gun violence to college affordability.

“Our next president can’t shy away from building on the progress of President Obama, which is why Hillary Clinton is the candidate that we need in the White House,” Holder said, according to The Associated Press.More from Politico.

By the way, it has been suggested often that one of the San Antonion, Texas version of the Castro brothers could be on the short list for her VP….imagine if she chose Eric Holder, Tom Perez, Xavier Becerra, Deval Patrick, Corey Booker, Bill Richardson, Kamala Harris or Susan Rice?

Terrifying isn’t it? Tim Kaine maybe?

or John Podesta? George Clooney?

Or maybe Valerie Jarrett in exchange for Obama’s added protection for her Clinton Foundation and email-gate crimes.

Yikes…..

Hillary Rakes in Nearly $75,000 From Justice Department Employees

Calls continue for appointment of a special counsel

FreeBeacon: Hillary Clinton has received nearly $75,000 in political contributions from employees at the Department of Justice, the agency that would decide whether or not to act if the FBI recommended charges against Clinton or her aides following its investigation into her private email server.

Justice Department employees have given Clinton far more money than her rivals, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Donald Trump, according to a review of federal campaign contributions for the 2016 presidential cycle.

Clinton collected $73,437 from individuals who listed the “Department of Justice” as their employer. Twelve of the 228 contributions were for $2,700, the maximum individual amount allowed by law.

The fundraising haul marks a dramatic increase over Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential run in 2008, when she took in 23 contributions totaling $15,930 from employees at the agency, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Trump, by comparison, has received little help from Justice Department employees, recording just two contributions for a total of $381.

Sanders has taken 51 donations totaling $8,900 from Justice Department employees.

David Bossie, president of the watchdog group Citizens United, told the Washington Free Beacon he is not surprised by the donations, and renewed his call for Attorney General Loretta Lynch to appoint a special counsel to handle Clinton’s case.

“I’m not surprised in the least to see more evidence that shows the politicization of the Justice Department,” Bossie said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “How can Democrat political appointees fairly investigate someone who is about to become their nominee for president? That’s why last July I called on Attorney General Lynch to appoint an impartial special counsel to investigate the private Clinton email server.”

“Today, I renew my call that Attorney General Lynch must appoint a special counsel to determine if Hillary Clinton or her agents broke the law and compromised our national security,” he continued. “This investigation needs to be conducted free of political influence once and for all.”

Bossie has questioned whether Lynch could remain impartial due to her past political donations. Lynch gave $10,700 in contributions to Democratic candidates between 2004 and 2008.

Howard Krongard, who was inspector general for the State Department from 2005 to 2008, predicted earlier this year that even if the FBI referred Clinton’s case to the Justice Department for prosecution it would “never get to an indictment.”

Krongard said the case would have to go through “four loyal Democratic women,” including Lynch, top White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell, who heads the department’s criminal division.

The FBI is expected to interview Clinton in the coming weeks about her email practices. Clinton maintains that she has not been contacted by the FBI about an interview. However, the FBI has interviewed Clinton’s aides, including top adviser Huma Abedin.

The Justice Department did not return a request for comment.

Update 05/10/16: After publication, former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker, who directs the watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, called for a special counsel to investigate Hillary Clinton.

“The report out today that Hillary Clinton received almost $75,000 in political contributions from Justice Department employees is yet another reason why the Justice Department cannot and should not decide whether to bring a case against Hillary Clinton for her reckless handling of classified information while Secretary of State,” Whitaker said in a statement. “The decision of whether or not to bring a case against Clinton will be a difficult one for Attorney General Loretta Lynch, as I don’t believe she has the fortitude to oppose President Obama, who has publicly said Clinton’s behavior didn’t put our national security at risk. Since this Administration has shown no ability to be impartial, looking the other way at every turn of this investigation, I’m renewing an urgent call for the appointment of a special counsel in this case.”

China, Unfettered Espionage Against U.S.

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

Did China Just Steal $360 Billion From America?

Gordon G. Chang/Forbes:

“The FBI has obtained information regarding multiple malicious cyber actor groups that have compromised sensitive business information from U.S. commercial and government networks through cyber espionage,” warned the law enforcement agency on the 2nd of this month. At about the same time, the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Security Service of the Department of Defense issued similar alerts.

The principal group in question is believed to be the one codenamed APT6. The three letters stand for Advanced Persistent Threat, and this group appears to be among the first tagged as an “APT.”

Kurt Baumgartner of Russian firm Kaspersky Lab suggests APT6 is state-sponsored.That sounds correct because as Craig Williams WMB -4.47% at Talos, a part of Cisco, notes, it is “an advanced, well-funded actor.”

Baumgartner declined to identify APT6’s nationality, but others have. Vice Media’s Motherboard reports that experts think the group is Chinese. As the FireEye security firm notes, APT6 is “likely a nation-state sponsored group based in China.”

In any event, APT6 has caught the attention of the FBI. The group also appears to be the subject of the Bureau’s February 12 alert.

Related reading from the FBI

The February 12 alert says the group in question was attacking U.S. networks “since at least 2011,” but Baumgartner thinks it was active as early as 2008.

In September of last year during Xi Jinping’s state visit, President Obama said the U.S. and China had reached “a common understanding on the way forward” on cybertheft. Washington and Beijing, he said, had affirmed the principle that neither government would use cyber means for commercial purposes.

China indeed affirmed that principle, and the agreement was, as Adam Segal and Tang Lan write, “a significant symbolic step forward.” The pair correctly note that “trust will be built and sustained through implementation.”

As might be expected, there was little implementation on the Chinese side at first. CrowdStrike , the cyber security firm, for instance, in October reported no letup in China’s cyber intrusions into the networks of American corporates.

Related: Economic Terrorism

Beijing, according to the Financial Times, has since reduced its cyber spying against American companies. As Justin Harvey of Fidelis Cybersecurity told the paper, “What we are seeing can only be characterized as a material downtick in what can be considered cyber espionage.”

And FireEye noted that all 22 Chinese hacking units identified by the firm as attacking American networks discontinued operations.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration is not declaring victory quite yet, and for good reason. “The days of widespread Chinese smash-and-grab activity, get in, get out, don’t care if you’re caught, seem to be over,”says Rob Knake, who once directed cyber security policy at the National Security Council and is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a consensus that activity is still ongoing, but narrower in scope and with better tradecraft.”

Whether espionage is overt or not, the damage to American business is still large. According to the May 2013 report of the Blair-Huntsman Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, “The scale of international theft of American intellectual property is unprecedented—hundreds of billions of dollars per year, on the order of the size of U.S. exports to Asia.”

William Evanina, America’s chief counterintelligence official, told reporters in November that hacking espionage costs U.S. companies $400 billion each year and that China is responsible for about 90% of the attacks. Beijing’s haul, therefore, looks like something on the order of $360 billion.

And how do we know the Chinese are culprits? For one thing, bold Chinese cyber thieves like to show their victims the information they have stolen.

Moreover, the U.S. government has gotten better at attribution, going from being able to attribute one-third of the attacks to more than two-thirds. The improvement is largely due to the government’s partnership with the private sector. Microsoft, Google, and Twitter, for example, will share information if they detect attacks on their customers.

And their customers are still getting attacked. “We continue to see them engage in activity directed against U.S. companies,” said Admiral Mike Rogers, the head of U.S. Cyber Command, in early April in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The questions I think that we still need to ask is, is that activity then, in turn, shared with the Chinese private industry?”

It’s right for Rogers to be cautious, but it would be strange for Chinese hackers not to share as they have done in the past. At the moment, there is little reason for Beijing to stop hacking, because Washington is not willing to impose costs on China for its “21st century burglary.”

There was the May 2014 indictment of five officers of the People’s Liberation Army for cyberattacking American businesses, like Alcoa and U.S. Steel, and the United Steelworkers union. That move, while welcome, was overdue and only symbolic. The Blair-Huntsman Commission suggested an across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods, but the imposition of a penalty of that sort is unlikely without a radical change of thinking in Washington.

Therefore, the FBI, even after all these years, is just playing catch up. The February alert is a tacit admission that the U.S. government is not in control of its own networks said Michael Adams, who served in U.S. Special Operations Command. “It’s just flabbergasting,” Adams told Motherboard. “How many times can this keep happening before we finally realize we’re screwed?”

The People’s Republic of China is still committing monumental thefts in large part because successive American governments cannot get beyond half-measures.

Beijing may be an intruder, but Washington somehow finds it unseemly to lock the door and punish the thief.

Drudge and Breitbart Wont Tell You this on Trump

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

Mnuchin’s had a hand in the Southern California regional bank that was drowning in bad mortgages after the financial crisis of 2008. Mnuchin and a group of investors, including John Paulson and George Soros, bought the bank for $1.55 billion and turned it around changing the name in the process. OneWest now has assets of $25 billion and $14 billion in deposits.

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Trump’s new finance chair Steven Mnuchin was sued over Madoff fraud profit

Donald Trump’s new national finance chairman was sued in 2010 for the return of $US3.2 million ($4.3 million) in fake profit from his mother’s account with Bernard Madoff, the mastermind of a $US17.5 billion Ponzi scheme. More here.

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Trump Finance Chair Ran a Bank That Cashed in on Taxpayer Bailouts

FreeBeacon: Donald Trump’s newly-appointed national finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, ran a bank that made billions of dollars off of taxpayer bailouts and cost the federal government an estimated $13 billion.

Mnuchin, a hedge-fund manager, worked as a partner for Goldman Sachs before assembling a group of billionaires to take over IndyMac Bank, based in California, after its subprime mortgage business collapsed in 2008.

Mother Jones reported:

Mnuchin’s group paid roughly $1.55 billion and received a promise from the [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] FDIC to cover a portion of the losses on bad loans within the IndyMac pool. The FDIC’s losses on these assets have since ballooned to an estimated $13 billion. The FDIC took on most of the risk, but Mnuchin and his partners, who named their new bank OneWest, ended up doing spectacularly well. They parlayed their $1.55 billion investment into a $3.4 billion payday last year, when Mnuchin engineered the sale of OneWest to another California bank, CIT. Along the way, OneWest issued more than $2 billion worth of dividends to shareholders. The tremendous profits the bank made, with taxpayers on the hook for IndyMac’s bad bets, raised eyebrows across the industry.

Furthermore, OneWest has been accused of risky and predatory loan practices, which prompted California community groups and a legal aid agency to ask Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to halt the sale of OneWest to CIT last year before the bank paid reparations.

Trump’s criticism of big banks, Wall Street, and hedge-fund managers appears to conflict with his appointment of Mnuchin to a top post in his campaign.

Last year, Trump characterized hedge fund managers as “paper pushers” who are “getting away with murder” by not paying their fair share of taxes under the current tax code.

“The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky,” Trump said during a phone interview televised on CBS News. “They are energetic. They are very smart. But a lot of them–they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It’s ridiculous, OK?”

Mnuchin’s contributions to Democrats further complicate his position on the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign. Mnuchin has contributed thousands to committees supporting Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other Democratic politicians, the Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday.

“Steven is a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background,” Trump said in a statement announcing Mnuchin as his finance chair. “He brings unprecedented experience and expertise to a fundraising operation that will benefit the Republican Party and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton.”

**** Deeper dive from Heavy.com

Steven Mnuchin: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

A Wall Street banker and Hollywood movie producer, who has contributed to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats in the past, has been named as Donald Trump’s national finance chairman.

Steven Mnuchin, 53, was added to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s team on Thursday, Trump’s campaign announced in a press release.

“It’s a great privilege to be working with Mr. Trump to create a world class finance organization to support the campaign in the general election,” Mnuchin said in a statement.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. He Contributed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate Campaigns & 2008 Democratic Presidential Campaign but Has Also Supported Republicans

Steven Mnuchin has contributed more than $120,000 to both Democrats and Republicans over the past two decades, Politico reports. About $64,000 of those contributions went to Democratic candidates and $40,000 to Republicans, according to Politico.

He gave $7,000 to Clinton’s 200 and 2006 Senate bids, and also contributed to her 2008 Democratic presidential campaign. He contributed $2,300 to President Barack Obama’s 2007 presidential campaign.

In 2011 he contributed $2,500 on two occasions to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and gave $20,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2012. He has also contributed to John Edwards, Chuck Schumer, Rudy Giuliani, Al Gore and John Kerry, Politico reports.

Mnuchin’s political past does not differ much from that of his new boss.

Trump has also contributed to Clinton’s campaigns in the past. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has said it was important for his business interests to support political candidates on both sides.

2. He Began His Career at Goldman Sachs Before Working for the George Soros-Funded OneWest Bank Group LLC

Mnuchin, a Yale University graduate, began his career at Goldman Sachs, rising to become a partner, according to the press release from Trump’s campaign.

After working at Goldman Sachs for 17 years, Mnuchin became the chairman and CEO of OneWest Bank Group LLC, a bank holding company, from 2009 to 2015. According to Politico, OneWest Bank Group was funded partly by George Soros, a major Democratic donor who has given millions to Hillary Clintons super PAC.

He is currently the chairman and CEO of Dune Capital Management LP, a private investment firm.

3. Trump Says Mnuchin Brings ‘Unprecedented Experience & Expertise’ to the Campaign

Trump praised Mnuchin in a statement announcing his new role with the campaign.

“Steven is a professional at the highest level with an extensive and very successful financial background. He brings unprecedented experience and expertise to a fundraising operation that will benefit the Republican Party and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton,” Trump said.

The campaign said, “Mr. Trump is the presumptive Republican Nomination for President of the United States and is taking steps to gear up for a General Election against Democratic Nominee Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump has self-funded his successful primary battle and will likewise be putting up substantial money toward the general election.”

4. He Was an Executive Producer for ‘American Sniper,’ ‘The Lego Movie,’ & ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

In addition to his extensive ties to Wall Street, Mnuchin is also connected to Hollywood.

Mnuchin has been an executive producer on several films since 2014, including “American Sniper,” “The Lego Movie,” “Mad Max:Fury Road,” “Black Mass,” “The Intern” and “Entourage,” according to his IMDB.com page.

5. He Is Divorced & Has 3 Children

Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Heather Crosby, divorced in 2014.

They have three children together. The couple married in 1999, according to their New York Times wedding announcement.

There Goes Afghanistan

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

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

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

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

Taliban Gets ‘Windfall’ from Poppy Harvest to Fund Offensives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Al-Qaeda Said To Boost Taliban Fight Against Afghan Government

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OPINION: Why Obama can’t turn back on Afghans

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

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

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

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

Illegal Border Crossings v. Visa Overstays

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andorra Hungary Norway

Australia Iceland Portugal

Austria Ireland San Marino

Belgium Italy Singapore

Brunei Japan Slovakia

Chile Latvia Slovenia

Czech Republic Liechtenstein South Korea

Denmark Lithuania Spain

Estonia Luxembourg Sweden

Finland Malta Switzerland

France Monaco Taiwan*

Germany Netherlands United Kingdom**

Greece New Zealand

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

Obama Admin Deported Less Than One Percent of Visa Overstays

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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