Category Archives: Insurgency

Declining Deportations and Increasing Criminal Alien Releases

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Declining Deportations and Increasing Criminal Alien Releases –

The Lawless Immigration Policies of the Obama Administration

Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest

May 19, 2016

Statement of Mark Krikorian

Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies

Hearing May 19, 2016

Deportation is crucial. Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.

– Barbara Jordan

CIS: The Obama administration has embraced a radical new approach to immigration law. It has, without the consent of Congress, transformed violation of immigration law into a “secondary offense.” That is to say, the goal is to ensure that an alien faces consequences for breaking immigration law only if he also breaks some other, “real,” law involving, say, violence or drug dealing. And even then, the primary violation has to be quite severe to warrant deportation for the (secondary) immigration offense.

This is comparable to the seat belt laws in many states; in places where failing to wear a seat belt is a secondary offense, a police officer cannot pull you over just for that, but if he pulls you over for speeding or some other primary offense, he can then also write a seat belt citation.

The administration’s November 2014 deportation priorities memo pretends this is not so; it includes ordinary violations of immigration law, but only as the lowest priority for deportation. And the collapse in interior removals of immigration violators shows that this third priority category is just for show.

John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, stated the Obama administration position succinctly: “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”

This extra-legal shift in the conception of the immigration statute has been misleadingly packaged as “prosecutorial discretion.” True prosecutorial discretion is exercised by individual law enforcement officers in ways that do not undermine the agency’s mission. For instance, if a state trooper stops you for speeding and your documents are in order, you’ve interacted with him in a respectful manner, and your toddler in the back seat is crying because she needs her diaper changed — and he lets you off with a warning rather than a fine, that is prosecutorial discretion.

What the Obama administration has done is use discretion as a pretext for simply exempting the vast majority of immigration violators from any possibility of legal consequences.

The results of this transformation of immigration law are clear in the data. ICE statistics show that deportations from the interior (aliens arrested by ICE deportation officers and special agents, as opposed to the Border Patrol) have collapsed, from 236,000 in President Obama’s first year in office to 72,000 last year, a decline of 70 percent over the course of this administration:

Not only have total interior deportations collapsed, but even the removal of criminals has declined by more than half, from about 150,000 in 2010 and 2011 to about 63,000 last year — this despite the Obama administration’s claim of prioritizing such removals:

This decline has occurred despite increases in the number of criminal aliens identified by ICE, largely from the nationwide implementation of the Secure Communities program, which screened the fingerprints of aliens arrested by local law enforcement agencies. This successful program, which was tremendously popular with local law enforcement agencies, was dismantled by the president’s November 2014 executive actions, and replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). ICE removal officers are still alerted to the arrest of criminal aliens by local police, but are prohibited by the White House and subservient ICE political leadership from acting on that information.

This collapse in deportations is not because we’ve run out of illegal aliens. After declining in 2007-2009 because of new enforcement efforts at the end of the Bush administration, followed by the recession, the number of illegal aliens has remained essentially constant at between 11 and 12 million. Many of these are new illegal arrivals — we estimate that some 2.5 million new illegal immigrants settled here during the first six years of the Obama administration, offset mainly by departures and legalizations.

Nor is the steep drop in deportations due to a lack of resources. Last year the Obama administration re-programmed $113 million that Congress had provided to ICE/ERO for enforcement and gave it to other agencies within DHS. The White House 2017 budget request actually seeks a decrease in funding for immigration enforcement, most notably a decrease of $100 million in funding for detention beds — from 34,000 beds to 30,900 — and a 15 percent decrease in funding for fugitive operations (i.e., the effort to locate the roughly 900,000 people ordered deported who simply ran off).

Rather, the collapse in enforcement is a policy choice of the Obama administration. Its strategic vision is, as I described above, to downgrade the immigration law to a secondary status. Among the tactics that serve this strategy, especially with regard to criminals, is the termination of the successful Secure Communities program and its replacement with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). There are three ways PEP suppresses enforcement:

  1. The new, more restrictive PEP prioritization scheme exempts a larger number of criminal aliens from deportation. Essentially, under PEP the only aliens ICE officers can target for deportation are people convicted of felonies, multiple “serious” misdemeanors, certain gang members, terrorists, and recent deportees. This exempts large numbers of criminal aliens from deportation.
  2. PEP imposes new logistical hurdles for ICE, most notably the requirement that an alien be convicted before ICE takes custody — which can enable a criminal alien to abscond from facing charges, or in some cases walk out of a courthouse or jail before ICE is aware that the offender is being released; and
  3. PEP explicitly allows local governments to impose non-cooperation or sanctuary policies on local law enforcement agencies. In 2014, local sanctuary jurisdictions released more than 10,000 aliens that local ICE field officers were seeking to deport.

As a result of these policies, fewer deportable aliens (and criminal aliens) are being removed from the country and criminal aliens who formerly would have been removed are now being released back to our communities only to commit new crimes.

There is an enormous public safety cost to these enforcement suppression policies. Since 2013 ICE has released approximately 85,000 criminal aliens from its custody. Many of these aliens have gone on to commit additional crimes. More than 125 have since been charged with homicide.

Here are some of the most egregious examples of crimes committed by illegal aliens released from ICE custody because of the president’s prioritization rules:

Sarah Root. In Omaha, Nebraska, on January 31, 2016, an illegal alien named Eswin Mejia, age 19, who had entered illegally as an “unaccompanied minor” but was allowed to stay with his brother, was drag racing while drunk and crashed his pick-up truck into the back of a car driven by Sarah Root, age 21. She died in the hospital soon after, just a day after her graduation from college. Mejia was arrested several days later for felony motor vehicle homicide. He had prior infractions as well. Bail was set at $50,000. Knowing Mejia was an illegal alien, local police contacted ICE five times to urgently request a detainer, fearing he would flee after making bail. ICE refused, saying that Mejia “did not meet ICE’s enforcement priorities.” As the local police feared, Mejia disappeared after posting bail.

Grant Ronnebeck. A 21-year-old man who was murdered while working at a convenience store in Mesa, Arizona. Ronnebeck’s killer was an illegal alien who was released by ICE in 2013 after conviction for a burglary and kidnapping involving drug dealing, to await an immigration hearing years in the future.

Katerin Gomez. This 35-year-old mother of three children under age 13 was killed in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on October 18, 2014, by a stray bullet through her window. The gun was fired during a street brawl allegedly by Hector Ramires, a 21-year old illegal alien member of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang, who was at large awaiting trial for two prior arrests for armed robbery (one with a gun, one with a knife), in which his illegal status and gang membership were noted. The police report also includes mention of prior criminal involvement in his home country of Honduras. ICE did not issue a detainer or initiate deportation proceedings after either prior arrest, nor did it make an effort to charge Ramires as an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, which is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Greg Morton. This Frederick County (Maryland) sheriff’s deputy was attacked last November while sitting in his vehicle by Jose Misael Reyes-Reyes, an 18-year-old illegal alien who had entered as an unaccompanied minor. The attacker was a member of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang and had prior arrests, including one for carrying a dangerous weapon. ICE declined to take him into custody after the prior arrests because he was already awaiting an immigration court hearing.

* * *
Prioritizing enforcement resources is not, in itself, the problem we face in immigration. Applying any body of law requires trade-offs and choices. The Treasury Department, for instance, devotes significant resources to the detection of money-laundering by organized crime or funding for terrorists. But it also has parallel initiatives of routine enforcement, to serve as a deterrent for ordinary taxpayers who might be tempted to cheat. Likewise in traffic enforcement; a driver doing 100 miles per hour through a school zone, firing a gun out the window, will obviously be top priority — but at the same time, there are parallel, routine enforcement efforts — speed traps and the like — to deter ordinary people from endangering others with unsafe driving.

If the IRS were to issue memos exempting anyone who’s not a mobster or terrorist from paying taxes, Congress would be aghast. Yet that is precisely what ICE has been ordered to do in the immigration context.

Some might object that the anticipated “raids” to take Central American illegal aliens into custody prove that the administration has not relegated immigration law to secondary status. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. The first round of “raids,” in January, netted a whopping 121 people — out of thousands of recent Central American illegal aliens — and only 70 of them were actually deported. Even if this next round of apprehensions is several times larger, it still amounts to nothing more than “enforcement theater.” It’s not even good enforcement theater. These Kabuki raids are too small — microscopic would be more accurate — to change the perception in Central America that if you get into the United States it’s unlikely you’ll ever be required to leave.

Despite staged disagreements with the administration over immigration enforcement, Congresswoman Pelosi concisely articulated the view she shares with the White House when she said in 2013 that “Our view of the law is that … if somebody is here without sufficient documentation, that is not reason for deportation.”

This is very different from an earlier Democratic congresswoman, Barbara Jordan, a civil rights pioneer and champion of the rule of law. As head of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, Jordan testified before Congress that “Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.”

Hizbollah is Out of Control

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By New Jersey DHS

Hizballah

Hizballah is an Islamic militant group based in Lebanon and allied with Iran. Its primary goal is the destruction of Israel.

  • Since 2013, Hizballah has plotted attacks against Israeli citizens and institutions in Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In January, five Palestinians were arrested on suspicion of joining a Hizballah cell and planning a suicide bombing and shooting in the West Bank. In June 2015, a Hizballah member pled guilty to acquiring nine tons of ammonium nitrate in Cyprus, which was intended for attacks against Israelis.
  • Although Hizballah possesses the capability to attack the United States and Western interests, the group is focused on supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Hizballah receives training, weaponry, and about $200 million per year from Iran.
  • In 2013, Hizballah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict shifted from an advisory to a combat role. The group’s commitment is demonstrated by the number of personnel it has dispatched to Syria—Western media estimate 6,000 to 8,000 fighters, or roughly one-quarter of its assessed fighting force.

Threat to New Jersey: Low

The terror threat from Hizballah to New Jersey is low because the group’s resources and efforts are focused on supporting the Assad regime in Syria. Nonetheless, group supporters and sympathizers are active in the New Jersey region, primarily in fundraising. 

  • In February, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—to include its Newark office—and international agencies across seven countries uncovered a global Hizballah drug and money-laundering scheme. In October 2015, federal authorities in New York—acting in concert with the Newark DEA office—arrested two Hizballah associates for conspiring to launder narcotics proceeds and international arms trafficking.
  • In July 2013, Moussa Ali Hamdan, a former New Jersey resident, was sentenced in Philadelphia for providing proceeds from counterfeit goods sales to Hizballah.

US Nexus

  • Since 2005, approximately 20 Hizballah-related cases have been prosecuted in the United States. Half of the cases were along the East Coast, including in New York and Pennsylvania. None were in New Jersey.
  • Hizballah has never conducted an attack on US soil, but it has targeted the US military in Lebanon, including the bombing of a US Marine compound in 1983 in Beirut, which killed 241 US personnel.

DEA: Hizballah Drug Trafficking and Money Laundering Arrests

In January, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with its European counterparts, arrested members of Hizballah’s External Security Organization Business Affairs Component in Europe for drug trafficking and money laundering, the proceeds of which transited through Lebanon to support Hizballah operations in Syria. The DEA operation, known as Project Cassandra, involved law enforcement agencies from seven countries and targeted Hizballah’s cocaine trafficking in the United States and Europe.

  • Hizballah developed business relationships with South American drug cartels supplying cocaine to the US and European markets. According to the DEA, Hizballah laundered the drug revenue through the acquisition and sale of high-valued vehicles, sometimes concealing money inside vehicles shipped internationally.
  • In February 2015, European authorities launched an investigation based on DEA leads and discovered a network of couriers collecting and transporting drug proceeds—in the form of euros—from Europe to the Middle East. The revenue was then transferred to Colombian cartels using the hawala disbursement system, a payment network based on trust and the use of family and regional connections.
  • US agencies participating in Project Cassandra include the Newark DEA office, US Customs and Border Protection, the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control. Officials did not specify the number of individuals arrested nor the location of arrests in Europe. The investigation is ongoing.

Exploiting Outbound Cargo Vulnerabilities

Hizballah continues to launder narcotics proceeds through US maritime ports by leveraging the inundated outbound cargo shipment process and concealing contraband in otherwise legal outbound vehicle shipments. Since October 2015, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Port of New York and New Jersey has processed more than 25,000 export vehicle titles per month in accordance with current regulations and performed, on average, more than 500 physical vehicle examinations per month.

  • This year, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Project Cassandra targeted a Hizballah network selling narcotics in the United States and Europe and laundering the proceeds through the acquisition and sale of high-end vehicles, sometimes concealing money inside vehicles shipped internationally.
  • In 2011, US authorities filed a civil money-laundering suit against three Lebanese financial organizations and two Beirut-based money exchange houses, accusing them of wiring at least $329 million in drug proceeds to 30 used car dealerships in the United States—one located in North Arlington (Bergen County).
  • In 2010, the FBI disrupted two Hizballah-linked schemes—one in Virginia where money was hidden in tires of used vehicles being shipped via maritime vessels to Lebanon, and another in Ohio where authorities arrested a couple for attempting to conceal $200,000 in a vehicle they planned to ship to Lebanon.

The Port of New York and New Jersey has implemented mitigation strategies to stop the movement of contraband through outbound cargo in New Jersey. For example, in 2005, CBP, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, and other federal, state, local, and international law enforcement agencies created the Border Enforcement Security Task Force—more commonly known as BEST—to coordinate information sharing between agencies. In addition, CBP’s Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism encourages private-sector companies to provide information about suspicious activity related to cargo shipments.

Interwoven Money Laundering and Smuggling Systems

Hizballah’s profits from narcotics and other criminal activity are transferred via multiple forms of money laundering and illicit enterprises, including hawala money exchanges, the Black Market Peso Exchange (BMPE), and bulk cash smuggling. In March, the Director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy reported to Congress that despite receiving up to $200 million from Iran each year, Hizballah uses various criminal methods to generate additional revenue and fund its involvement in Syria.

  • Hizballah operatives can transfer cash quickly and without an audit trail by using the hawala remittance system, an informal currency transfer system operating outside or parallel to traditional banking and financial channels.
  • In February, the Drug Enforcement Administration revealed—as part of its Project Cassandra investigation—Hizballah leverages the BMPE, which uses trade-based money laundering to disguise proceeds from illegal activity.
  • Hizballah smuggles large sums of money from the United States, South America, and Europe via couriers and airport employees. The arrest of a ground services coordinator at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in 2007 demonstrates Hizballah supporters have bypassed airport security to transport packages of cash—in this case up to $100,000—intended to finance Hizballah operations in Lebanon.

Judge Orders DoJ to Take Ethics Class

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He should have suspended their law licenses.

Hanen also ordered Attorney General Loretta Lynch to present a “comprehensive plan” to the court within 60 days about how to prevent future “unethical conduct.” And he ordered Lynch to notify the court within 60 days about steps she was taking to ensure the Office of Professional Responsibility—the DOJ office that oversees attorney conduct—was effectively policing lawyers within the department. “The court cannot help but hope that the new Attorney General, being a former United States Attorney, would also believe strongly that it is the duty of DOJ attorneys to act honestly in all of their dealings with a court, with opposing counsel and with the American people,” Hanen wrote. More at National Law Journal including the text of the Judge’s order.

Judge orders ethics classes for ‘deceptive’ DOJ attorneys

Examiner: A federal judge has ordered annual ethics classes for Justice Department attorneys as a punishment for being “intentionally deceptive” during litigation over President Obama’s executive immigration orders.

“Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word ‘Justice,'” U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen wrote in a withering order released Thursday.

Justice Department attorneys misled the court about when the Department of Homeland Security would begin implementing President Obama’s executive order granting “deferred action” to illegal immigrants whose children are citizens. In doing so, they tricked the 26 states who filed a lawsuit into “foregoing a request for a temporary restraining order,” according to the judge.

The facts of the deception are not in doubt, Hanen emphasized. “[DOJ] has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts,” he said in the May 19 opinion, first noted by the National Law Journal. “It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements … This court would be remiss if it left such unseemly and unprofessional conduct unaddressed.”

As punishment, Justice Department attorneys who wish to appear in any state or federal court within the 26 states that brought the lawsuit have to undergo annual ethics training. “At a minimum, this course (or courses) shall total at least three hours of ethics training per year,” he wrote.

In another case, such “egregious conduct” would lead him to strike the government’s pleadings, but Hanen decided not to take that step because the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in April.

“The national importance of the outcome of this litigation outweighs the benefits to be gained by implementing the ultimate sanction,” Hanen wrote. “Striking the government’s pleadings would not only be unfair to the litigants, but also unfair, and perhaps even disrespectful, to the Supreme Court as it would deprive that Court of the ability to thrash out the legal issues in this case.”

Hanen cited multiple instances in which Justice Department attorneys claimed that Department of Homeland Security directive announced in November of 2014 would not be implemented until February 18, 2015, even though they knew that DHS had begun implementing a portion of the order that pertained to the original “deferred action for childhood arrivals” policy announced in 2012.

“Apparently, lawyers, somewhere in the halls of the Justice Department whose identities are unknown to this court, decided unilaterally that the conduct of the DHS in granting three-year DACA renewals using the 2014 DHS directive was immaterial and irrelevant to this lawsuit and that the DOJ could therefore just ignore it,” Hanen wrote. “Then, for whatever reason, the Justice Department trial lawyers appearing in this Court chose not to tell the truth about this DHS activity. The first decision was certainly unsupportable, but the subsequent decision to hide it from the Court was unethical.”

Hanen seemed to lament that he couldn’t disbar the attorneys involved, but he barred the out-of-state attorneys from enjoying the right to practice law in Texas.

“The court does not have the power to disbar the counsel in this case, but it does have the power to revoke the pro hac vice status of out-of-state lawyers who act unethically in court,” he wrote. “By a separate sealed order that it is simultaneously issuing, that is being done.”

Hey State Dept. What’s the Hurry?

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Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
May 19, 2016

Terrorist Designations of ISIL-Yemen, ISIL-Saudi Arabia, and ISIL-Libya

U.S. State Department: The Department of State has announced the designation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL’s) branch in Libya (ISIL-Libya) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Today, the Department is also simultaneously designating ISIL-Libya, along with the ISIL branches in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Section 1(b) of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which imposes sanctions and penalties on foreign persons that have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

The consequences of the FTO and E.O. 13224 designations include a prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, these organizations, and the freezing of all property and interests in property of these organizations that is in the United States, or come within the United States or the control of U.S. persons. The Department of State took these actions in consultation with the Departments of Justice and the Treasury.

ISIL-Yemen, ISIL-Saudi Arabia, and ISIL-Libya all emerged as official ISIL branches in November 2014 when U.S. Department of State-designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist and ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that he had accepted the oaths of allegiance from fighters in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and was thereby creating ISIL “branches” in those countries.

While ISIL’s presence is limited to specific geographic locations in each country, all three ISIL branches have carried out numerous deadly attacks since their formation. Among ISIL-Yemen’s attacks, the group claimed responsibility for a pair of March 2015 suicide bombings targeting two separate mosques in Sana’a, Yemen, that killed more than 120 and wounded over 300. Separately, ISIL-Saudi Arabia has carried out numerous attacks targeting Shia mosques in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, leaving over 50 people dead. Finally, ISIL-Libya’s attacks have included the kidnapping and execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, as well as numerous attacks targeting both government and civilian targets that have killed scores of people.

After today’s action, the U.S. Department of State has now sanctioned eight ISIL branches, having previously designated ISIL-Khorasan, ISIL-Sinai, Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria, Boko Haram, and ISIL-North Caucasus. Terrorism designations are one of the ways the United States can expose and isolate organizations and individuals engaged in terrorism, impose serious sanctions on them, and enable coordinated action across the U.S. Government and with our international partners to disrupt the activities of terrorists. This includes denying them access to the U.S. financial system and enabling U.S. law enforcement actions.

About that Prison in the Heart of London

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Belmarsh prison: ‘The jihadi training camp right in the heart of London’

Jamal, 27, a Muslim university graduate, served part of his sentence for bank fraud in Belmarsh maximum-security prison. He was released two weeks ago and turned whistleblower. This is his shocking testimony, as told to David Cohen

StandardUK: Soon after I arrived in Belmarsh in 2014, news came through that Mosul in Iraq had fallen to Islamic State and the prison erupted. There were chants of “Allahu Akbar”, wild banging on the doors and joyous shouting of “we are going to take over” throughout the wing. It was like a big party that went on unchecked for several hours.

 belmarsh13.jpg

I was devastated because I watched how prison officers seemingly took no action, leaving new inmates like myself with the impression that the real people in charge were not the warders, but a terrifying group of radical Islamists known as “the Brothers” or “the Akhi”, which is Arabic for brother.

Related reading: List of most notorious prisoners at Belmarsh

We had around 200 people on our wing, about half of them Muslim, but there was a hard core of 20 “brothers” in for terrorism or terror-related of-fences who were very popular and had enormous influence. They were treated like celebrities by the other inmates and included the guy who in 2007 tried to blow up Glasgow airport.

Former inmate: Belmarsh prison ‘is like a jihadi training camp’

They were intelligent, well read and soft-spoken and they welcomed me with open arms because, as a fellow Muslim, they thought they could turn me into one of them. They would drape their arm around me, call me “my brother”, offer me cigarettes, food and any support I needed.

Their next step was to drum home their message about Islam and to tell us that we were inside because of the evil system. They would say that the kuffar [a derogatory term for non- Muslims] had been killing our women and children and that our calling was to become “a soldier of peace”. They talked about going to fight in Syria and Iraq when they got out and joining the war for a Muslim caliphate.

I was brought up the son of a bookkeeper in a mainstream Muslim household that mixed with Jewish and Christian people and respected all religions. I was in prison because of what I had done as a stupid young bank clerk signing off documents at the request of others. I had not benefited by one penny financially and naively thought my reward would be fast promotion, but I was balanced enough to know that I was in the wrong, not the system.

In my second week, on the way to Friday prayers, I said something about showing tolerance to other religions and one of the Akhi, who was in for terrorism, turned to me and said emphatically: “No, there is zero tolerance, they are all kuffar and we have to destroy them.” After that he let it be known that I was kuffar and that nobody should greet me or associate with me.

I felt vulnerable because I saw what happened to people branded kuffar. In the cell be-side mine, there were two black Muslims and a Christian and one day there was a lot of petty arguing over a kettle. The next day, the Muslims made up a story about the Christian disrespecting Islam and next thing 25 prisoners stormed his cell and beat him up. He got moved after that. In my cell there were also two black guys who had converted to Islam, and when I was made kuffar, they let it be known that if anybody stormed our cell, they would not protect me. I was scared so I asked to see the imam, but that was another mistake.

There are about six imams in Belmarsh and apart from one, who was supportive, the other imams either ignored me or appeared to be sympathetic to the extremists. It was shocking. After that I kept my head down and only left my cell if I had to. All around I witnessed people being radicalised. Instantly you could see the change. They would start to wear their trousers rolled below the knee, something Prophet Muhammad did, they would grow facial hair, they would call each other “Akhi” and they became hyper-aggressive towards anybody not into radical Islam.

Three quarters of those being radicalised had been involved in gangs  and were in for violent crime or drugs. They understood that the biggest gang inside Belmarsh was the Brothers and that they needed them for their protection. But it also gave them a sense of identity.

People would boast that as soon as they got out, they were going out to Syria. They were young and impressionable. There were so many would-be jihadists in there I felt like an intruder at a jihadi training camp. There were also plenty of moderate Muslim inmates like myself who suffered because we couldn’t speak out. I couldn’t believe how the flaws in the system effectively support the extremists.

After five months I got moved to Highpoint, a category C men’s prison in Suffolk. I was there for the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015 and again there were prisoners openly praising the attackers and embracing one an-other, although not as many as in Belmarsh. I complained to a chief prison officer who said: “We know what’s going on but we don’t have the funding or staff to do anything about it.” Again, the imams were useless. When I told one imam that we were being asked to take on jihad and sought guidance as to what our duties were, he said: “It’s not clear-cut. Do whatever you think is right.” People took their passivity as a licence to follow jihadism.

Because there was no challenge to this from the authorities, you are left to your own devices. Later I was transferred to Brixton prison where the imam was excellent, but he was seen as “a weak imam” by many inmates because they associate moderateness with weakness. The higher the category of prison, the more the Brothers have impact. The prisons need to isolate the extremists from impressionable young prisoners under the age of 30. The imams could be playing a huge role as they are the ones who can identify them.

I’ve decided to speak out, at some danger to myself, because I want to expose the reality of what’s going on. The Government has sunk cash into their Prevent programme to tackle radicalisation in the community, but ignored the fact that the biggest jihadi training camp in the UK is right here in Belmarsh in the heart of London. It’s beyond belief. We need the counter-terrorism budget to extend to prisons, otherwise it’s useless.

Since I’ve come out, I have been working with my mentor, Sab Bahm, founder of the Salaam Peace charity in east London. I have been reminding myself that I was once “gifted and talented” at school, captain of the football team, a straight-A star student. I have to pick myself up and start again. But before I do, I feel a responsibility to pass this on. Somebody in power needs to do something about it. It is appalling and outrageous what they are being allowed to get away with.

  • Jamal’s name has been changed