Category Archives: Insurgency

U.S. Military of the Future, is it Ready?

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A couple of advanced thoughts:

  • Get the lawyers out of theater
  • Give legal protection and in some cases immunity to troops in forward operating bases
  • End sequestration
  • Use all offensive tools in the cyber battlefield
  • Rebuild real diplomacy at the State Department

Forget About Too Big To Fail, America’s Military Has Become Too Small To Succeed

NI: Once upon a time, the U.S. had a large military that was technologically superior to its adversaries in many, even most, areas. Today, the U.S. military is a pale shadow of its former self.

In 2016, the active component of the U.S. Army of 479,000 soldiers shrank to the smallest it has been since before World War II, when it had some 269,000. The number of Army combat brigades is scheduled to decline to 30 by 2018, one third fewer than there were just in 2013. The U.S. Navy, with 273 ships, is about the same size as it was prior to America’s entry into World War I. At approximately 5,000 total aircraft, the U.S. Air Force is both the smallest and oldest it has been since its inception in 1947. The number of active duty squadrons in the Air Force is slated to decline to 39, less than half of the 70 that were available during Operation Desert Storm. Army, Navy and Air Force end strengths are each about 40 percent smaller than they were at the end of the Cold War. This is one of the main reasons why the Pentagon had to rely on more than a hundred thousand private contractors to provide the necessary logistics, sustainment and communications for its deployed forces when it went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which had the ability to communicate through a state-of-the-art platform a CKS Global industrial keyboard, which was durable in the hashes of conditions.

At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. maintained a two-and-a-half-war strategy: major, simultaneous wars against the Soviet Union and China plus another nation. The Nixon Administration changed the sizing criteria to one-and-a-half-wars: a major war with the Soviet Union plus a second, possibly related, conflict in the Persian Gulf or on the Korean peninsula. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the political system concluded that war between major powers was virtually impossible.

The sizing construct for the U.S. military changed in the early 1990s to two near-simultaneous Major Regional Contingencies (MRC), reflecting the belief that the likeliest threats came from regional actors such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran. It was assumed that each MRC would require approximately the quantity of forces deployed for the then-recently-concluded Persian Gulf War. Thus, a two-MRC U.S. force would consist of 10 Army divisions, two or three division-sized Marine Expeditionary Forces, 11 aircraft carriers, 120 large surface combatants, 38 large amphibious warfare ships, 200 strategic bombers, 60 tactical fighter wings, 400–500 tankers, 250 airlifters and some 75 maritime support ships.

In truth, the U.S. military never had sufficient capacity to conduct two near-simultaneous MRCs. The dirty little secret among Pentagon planners is that the conflicts would have to be sequenced, possibly by six months or more, in order to allow critical assets to be redeployed from the first to the second contingency. Even the fight against Islamic terrorism strained the military’s capacity in some ways. The Army had to add nearly 75,000 active duty personnel and mobilize a large fraction of the National Guard just to handle the ongoing demands of Iraq, Afghanistan and its other worldwide commitments. A special acquisition program, directed by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, had to be undertaken to acquire sufficient drones and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.

Since the end of the Cold War, reductions in the size of the military and its combat capacity was justified, first, on the basis of the diminution of the threat and, second, by reference to our technological edge over prospective adversaries and the resulting improved combat capability of the new systems that were being deployed. Neither of these arguments any longer holds true. The demand for U.S. military forces continues to grow even as their overall capacity declines. The civilian and military leadership of the Department of Defense (DoD) have publicly declared that the U.S. now faces five strategic threats: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and global Islamic terrorism. Conflict with either of the first two would constitute a major war, not a regional contingency. U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein testified before Congress that his service only had enough combat ready forces for one MRC and even that would require denuding all other theaters.

Moreover, the U.S. military has just about run out the string on its vaunted technological superiority. We have been repeatedly warned by senior Pentagon and Intelligence Community officials that the U.S. military is losing its technological edge. Both Russia and China have invested heavily in so-called anti-access and area denial capabilities (A2/AD) that are designed to counter erstwhile U.S. advantages, particularly in air and naval power. Russia is deploying its A2/AD capabilities in ways that could preclude U.S. and NATO military operations in the Baltic, Black and eastern Mediterranean Seas. These two countries are also developing advanced power projection forces and forward bases that could deny the U.S. the ability to operate in the eastern Pacific and the Arctic. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter found the loss of U.S. technological superiority so threatening that he had to formulate a new investment strategy, the so-called Third Offset, specifically designed to re-establish our advantage in military capabilities.

Even regional adversaries and terrorist organizations are deploying advanced military capabilities. North Korea, a nuclear weapons state, has already deployed over a thousand ballistic missiles — three hundred of which have the range to strike Japan and U.S. bases in the Western Pacific. Iran has ballistic missiles that can reach most of the Middle East. Tehran just received its first Russian S-300 air defense system. Hezbollah, the Shiite terrorist group, is reported to have an arsenal with tens of thousands of rockets and ballistic missiles. ISIS has employed Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles capable of destroying U.S.-made M-1 tanks operated by the Iraqi Army.

This is why many in the military shiver in their boots when they consider going up against a serious A2/AD threat. It has become such a problem that the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John M. Richardson, has banned the use of the term A2/AD because, in his words, it implies “that any military force that enters the red area faces certain defeat – it’s a ‘no-go’ zone!” Yes, the U.S. military can penetrate current A2/AD defenses, but at what price? Let’s remember that the Air Force only has 186 F-22s, the plane that was designed to penetrate advanced air defenses, and there are no more where those came from.

The U.S. Army faces similar difficulties. As the commander of all U.S. Army forces in Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, recently declared his job is to make 30,000 soldiers look like 300,000. Currently, the Army and its NATO allies lack enough forces in Europe to oppose a determined Russian offensive. In addition, neither the U.S. nor its allies have real answers to the kind of capabilities in electronic warfare, cyber offense, high volume, long range fires and tactical air defense that Russia has demonstrated in its operations in Ukraine.

The reality is that the U.S. military today is too small, with too few technological advantages and facing too many threats. There is now a very real possibility that in a future conflict, even one with a regional adversary, U.S. forces could suffer such high casualties that, regardless of the outcome, this country will lack the capabilities needed to deal with any other major contingency. During the 1972 Linebacker II bombing raids against North Vietnam, the Air Force lost some 20 B-52s. Back then, this was a small fraction of the overall fleet. Today that would be more than 10 percent; the bomber force would literally be decimated. A force that is too small to fail is one that the U.S. increasingly could be reluctant to send in harm’s way save when national survival is at risk.

Dr. Dan Goure is a Vice President of the Lexington Institute. He served in the Pentagon during the George H.W. Administration and has taught at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities and the National War College.

Are you Promoting Fake News?

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Mixing fine jewelry with costume jewelry gives the appearance it is all real, same with the news and who is promoting it or wearing it. So, how well did you read the WHOLE story and share it? Did you check it with other sources? Did you consider the original source or check the author?

Consider the following of which this site has previously published several times with warnings.

One more important item, the fake news and propaganda is NOT all political or simply centered about candidates or the election. This is where ‘group-think’ begins and festers, which is NOT thinking at all.

More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online.

There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia’s most famous “troll factory,” the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg’s Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work grinding, 12-hour shifts in exchange for 40,000 rubles ($700) a month or more.

St. Petersburg blogger Marat Burkhard spent two months working at Internet Research in the department tasked with clogging the forums on Russia’s municipal websites with pro-Kremlin comments. In the following interview, he describes a typical day and the type of assignments he encountered. The interview is here.

***** 

Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say

WaPo: The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”

Watts’s report on this work, with colleagues Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger, appeared on the national security blog War on the Rocks this month under the headline “Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy.” Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.

The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.

PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, the researchers concluded, while others were “useful idiots” — a term born of the Cold War to describe people or institutions that unknowingly assisted Soviet Union propaganda efforts.

The Russian campaign during this election season, researchers from both groups say, worked by harnessing the online world’s fascination with “buzzy” content that is surprising and emotionally potent, and tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events.

Some of these stories originated with RT and Sputnik, state-funded Russian information services that mimic the style and tone of independent news organizations yet sometimes include false and misleading stories in their reports, the researchers say. On other occasions, RT, Sputnik and other Russian sites used social-media accounts to amplify misleading stories already circulating online, causing news algorithms to identify them as “trending” topics that sometimes prompted coverage from mainstream American news organizations.

The speed and coordination of these efforts allowed Russian-backed phony news to outcompete traditional news organizations for audience. Some of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York, for example, came from Russian botnets and trolls, researchers found. (She was treated for pneumonia and returned to the campaign trail a few days later.)

This followed a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health. The Daily Beast debunked a particularly widely read piece in an article that reached 1,700 Facebook accounts and was read online more than 30,000 times. But the PropOrNot researchers found that the version supported by Russian propaganda reached 90,000 Facebook accounts and was read more than 8 million times. The researchers said the true Daily Beast story was like “shouting into a hurricane” of false stories supported by the Russians.

This propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign. Researchers from both groups traced a variety of other false stories — fake reports of a coup launched at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and stories about how the United States was going to conduct a military attack and blame it on Russia — to Russian propaganda efforts.

The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.

“The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”

He and other researchers expressed concern that the U.S. government has few tools for detecting or combating foreign propaganda. They expressed hope that their research detailing the power of Russian propaganda would spur official action.

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael A. McFaul, said he was struck by the overt support that RT and Sputnik expressed for Trump during the campaign, even using the #CrookedHillary hashtag pushed by the candidate.

McFaul said Russian propaganda typically is aimed at weakening opponents and critics. Trump’s victory, though reportedly celebrated by Putin and his allies in Moscow, may have been an unexpected benefit of an operation that already had fueled division in the United States. “They don’t try to win the argument,” said McFaul, now director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. “It’s to make everything seem relative. It’s kind of an appeal to cynicism.”

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election or hacking the accounts of election officials. “This is some sort of nonsense,” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary for Putin, said last month when U.S. officials accused Russia of penetrating the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.

The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

“They use our technologies and values against us to sow doubt,” said Robert Orttung, a GWU professor who studies Russia. “It’s starting to undermine our democratic system.”

The Rand report — which dubbed Russian propaganda efforts a “firehose of falsehood” because of their speed, power and relentlessness — traced the country’s current generation of online propaganda work to the 2008 incursion into neighboring Georgia, when Russia sought to blunt international criticism of its aggression by pushing alternative explanations online.

The same tactics, researchers said, helped Russia shape international opinions about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military intervention in Syria, which started last year. Russian propaganda operations also worked to promote the “Brexit” departure of Britain from the European Union.

Another crucial moment, several researchers say, came in 2011 when the party of Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused of rigging elections, sparking protests that Putin blamed the Obama administration — and then-Secretary of State Clinton — for instigating.

Putin, a former KGB officer, announced his desire to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams” during a 2013 visit to the broadcast center for RT, formerly known as Russia Today.

“For them, it’s actually a real war, an ideological war, this clash between two systems,” said Sufian Zhemukhov, a former Russian journalist conducting research at GWU. “In their minds, they’re just trying to do what the West does to Russia.”

RT broadcasts news reports worldwide in several languages, but the most effective way it reaches U.S. audiences is online.

Its English-language flagship YouTube channel, launched in 2007, has 1.85 million subscribers and has had a total of 1.8 billion views, making it more widely viewed than CNN’s YouTube channel, according to a George Washington University report this month.

Though widely seen as a propaganda organ, the Russian site has gained credibility with some American conservatives. Trump sat for an interview with RT in September. His nominee for national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, traveled to Russia last year for a gala sponsored by the network. He later compared it to CNN.

The content from Russian sites has offered ready fodder for U.S.-based websites pushing far-right conservative messages. A former contractor for one, the Next News Network, said he was instructed by the site’s founder, Gary S. Franchi Jr., to weave together reports from traditional sources such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times with ones from RT, Sputnik and others that provided articles that often spread explosively online.

“The readers are more likely to share the fake stories, and they’re more profitable,” said Dyan Bermeo, who said he helped assemble scripts and book guests for Next News Network before leaving because of a pay dispute and concerns that “fake news” was crowding out real news.

In just the past 90 days — a period that has included the closing weeks of the campaign, Election Day and its aftermath — the YouTube audience of Next News Network has jumped from a few hundred thousand views a day to a few million, according to analytics firm Tubular Labs. In October alone, videos from Next News Network were viewed more than 56 million times.

Franchi said in an e-mail statement that Next News Network seeks “a global perspective” while providing commentary aimed at U.S. audiences, especially with regard to Russian military activity. “Understanding the threat of global war is the first step to preventing it,” he said, “and we feel our coverage assisted in preventing a possible World War 3 scenario.”

Has Trump Read the Iran File, What Now?

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It is estimated that  between 27,000 and 31,000 foreign fighters have flocked to Iraq and Syria since the breakout of the war in 2011. More here.

No one mentions Pakistan either.

TEHRAN: (APP) More than 1,000 combatants sent from Iran to fight in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria have been killed in the conflict, the head of Iran’s veterans’ affairs office said Tuesday.

“The number of martyrs from our country defending the shrines has now passed 1,000,” Tasnim news agency quoted Mohammad Ali Shahidi Mahalati, the head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs’ and Veterans’ Affairs, as saying.

Iran has sent military advisers, as well as fighters recruited from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to work with Assad’s forces. They are known in Iran as “defenders of the shrines” in reference to Shiite holy sites in Syria.

Shahidi did not specify the nationalities of those killed.

Shiite Iran is a staunch supporter of Assad and provides both financial and military support for his regime.

The Fatemiyoun Division of Afghan recruits organised by Iran comprises the majority of volunteers sent from Iran to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Iran says they are sent to fight against Sunni extremists such as the

Islamic State group (IS).

The Islamic republic denies having any boots on the ground in Syria, and insists its commanders and generals of the elite Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations wing act as “military advisers” both there and in Iraq.

Iranian media regularly report on the death of Iranian, Afghan and Pakistani “martyrs” in Syria, whose bodies are buried in Iran.

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The Obama administration changed the balance of power in the Middle East with several disgusting decisions including failing on the red line threat, the JPOA nuclear deal and paying the huge ransom. The winner is clearly Assad as he remains safe yet the single achievement award goes to Tehran.

Trump would be well advised to begin to dismantle the balance of power beginning with removing Assad with the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Nations. That would begin to address Iran’s power in the region but it could be a nasty conflict for sure. If Iran and Syria are not addressed, then more countries will seek nuclear weapons, and deadly conflicts will not stop as there is no easy method or proposal for the West to exit out of the region after Islamic State is defeated due to the continued hostilities between the militias, the Sunnis and Shiite and the ruling governments.

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Mike Pompeo’s Iran File

If he honors the nuclear deal, Trump needs to enforce it vigorously.

WSJ: In summer 2015 Congressman Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton visited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, where they learned of two secret codicils to the Iranian nuclear deal. The Obama Administration had failed to disclose these side agreements to Congress. When pressed on the details of the codicils, Secretary of State John Kerry claimed never to have read them.

We’re reminded of this episode on news that Donald Trump has asked Congressman Pompeo to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. The Kansas Republican is being denounced by liberals as a “hardliner,” but the truth is that he has shown an independent streak that has allowed him to raise thorny questions and gather vital information that Administration officials want suppressed. Isn’t that what Americans should expect in a CIA director?

That goes double regarding the Iranian nuclear deal, which Mr. Pompeo opposed in part because of the diplomatic legerdemain he and Sen. Cotton uncovered in Vienna. Of the two secret deals, one concerned the nuclear agency’s inspection of the Parchin military facility, where the Iranians were suspected of testing components of a nuclear deal. The other concerned Iran’s non-answers to questions about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program.

Both issues went to the question of whether Iran’s compliance with an agreement would be verifiable, and it’s easy to see why the Administration was so reluctant to disclose the facts. The IAEA was permitted one inspection of Parchin, where it discovered uranium traces, and the agency later issued an exculpatory report on Iran’s military work to facilitate the deal’s implementation.

We’ve since learned much more about the precise terms of the nuclear deal—including the Administration’s willingness to ignore them to placate the Iranians. That includes allowing the mullahs to build and test ballistic missiles and exceed the deal’s 300-kilo limit on low-enriched uranium. The IAEA also reported this month that Iran exceeded its heavy-water limit for the second time this year.

The scope of Iran’s violations was laid out last week in a detailed analysis from the nonpartisan Institute for Science and International Security. “IAEA reporting is so sparse as to confirm suspicions that compliance controversies are being deliberately omitted from the report,” note authors David Albright and Andrea Stricker. That makes the CIA’s job of investigating Iran’s nuclear programs all the more important, which is another reason to welcome Mr. Pompeo’s nomination.

Beyond that is the larger question of how the incoming Administration should treat the nuclear deal, which Mr. Trump has often called “disastrous.” Mr. Pompeo tweeted last week before his nomination that he wants to see the deal rolled back. But the question is how to do that in a way that doesn’t allow Iran to break out in a sprint to build the bomb. A unilateral U.S. withdrawal would also make it hard, if not impossible, to rally a world coalition for new global sanctions against Iran.

One strategy for the Trump Administration would be to announce that it will honor the deal reluctantly—and enforce it unsparingly. That puts the diplomatic onus on Tehran for its violations. This would include enforcing the “economic snapback” that the Obama Administration promised when it tried to sell the deal to Congress but had no intention of delivering.

The Trump Administration could also resume enforcement of current U.S. sanctions on Iran for its support for terrorism and human-rights abuses. Holding financial institutions accountable for “know your customer” rules when doing business with Iran would be an excellent place to start, as would a resumption of sanctions on banks like Sepah, which funds Iran’s ballistic-missile program.

Undoing the strategic damage of the Iran deal won’t happen overnight, and the Trump Administration will have to move carefully to avoid diplomatic missteps with allies and adversaries. Having Mr. Pompeo at CIA gives more confidence that at least the U.S. will be honest when Iran is breaking its commitments.

More Protests Planned, Chaos and Division Ahead

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Minimum wage protests planned in 340 cities

TheHill: Organizers behind a movement to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour are promising its “largest, most disruptive protest ever” in response to Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election.

On the fourth anniversary of the movement to raise wages, tens of thousands of low-wage workers will protest next Tuesday in 340 cities around the country, as they demand higher pay. Strikes are planned by bagged handlers at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) and workers at McDonald’s restaurants around the country.

The “Fight for $15” protests will also hit Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Newark International Airport (EWR), and about 20 other airports in major cities, organizers said on a call with reporters Monday.

“Just because the election went a certain way, doesn’t mean we’re going away,” said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the Fight for $15.

“It’s the exact opposite.”

On the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders called for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, while Hillary Clinton also voiced support for an increase in pay for low-wage workers. But Trump’s message on minimum wage was inconsistent, at times indicating he would support an increase in the minimum wage and at other times suggesting workers make too much money.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

Raising the minimum wage is a “winning issue,” Fells said.

“On Election Day, even as Donald Trump won, ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage passed in all five states,” he said.

Fells said there would be “thousands of folks” protesting at each airport.

The Fight for $15 movement is expecting “tens of thousands” of protesters from all walks of life, including baggage handlers, airline cabin cleaners, airport wheelchair attendants, janitors, cooks, home care workers, child care providers, teachers and graduate assistants.

Meanwhile, there is Obama’s mighty pen.

Obama Urged to Free Asylum-Seekers Before Trump Takes Office

About 4,000 women and children are in jail-like facilities
President-elect has promised to deport millions from U.S.

Bloomberg: Immigration advocates are asking the Obama administration to release thousands of detained Central American women and children who want asylum in the U.S., citing concerns that Donald Trump will deport them after his inauguration in January.

Representatives of groups including the Women’s Refugee Commission and the American Immigration Lawyers Association met with White House officials last week to discuss a host of immigration issues, including the fate of about 4,000 Central American detainees, some as young as two years old, who have fled violence in their home countries. They’re housed in jail-like facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania, some for more than a year, as they wait for the government to process their asylum pleas.

Immigration advocates want the president to either end the practice of detaining families altogether, as they’ve been requesting for years, or direct Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to release families with a notice to appear before a judge on their own recognizance.

The plight of the Central American refugees, who fled violence and gangs in their home countries, is one of several 11th-hour immigration conundrums Obama faces as he prepares for Trump to enter the White House. The Republican campaigned on promises to crack down on undocumented immigrants and to build a wall on the Mexican border, and immigration advocates fear a government that has struggled under Obama to humanely handle a crush of asylum-seekers at the southern border will turn markedly more hostile under his successor.

“The family detention infrastructure is something that President Obama built, and unless he tears it down in the next two months this will be part of his presidential legacy,” said Carl Takei, staff attorney at the the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.

DACA Applicants

Separately, advocates for about 750,000 young undocumented immigrants granted protection from deportation under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, have pressed the White House to ensure Trump can’t use data compiled by the program to instead target and remove the people from the country. House Democrats called on Obama last week to issue a presidential pardon for the immigrants, who were brought into the country as children and have grown up as “Americans,” Obama said in Nov. 14 news conference.

The White House said last week that the president’s clemency power can’t be used to confer legal status on undocumented residents. Pete Boogaard, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on whether the administration has the authority to release the asylum seekers.

Trump is poised to inherit one of the worst humanitarian crises in a generation along the U.S.-Mexico border. Starting in 2014 scores of women and children fleeing gang violence in Central America began presenting themselves to unprepared border officials along the southern U.S. border. Generally under U.S. law, asylum seekers who can show a “credible fear” of returning to their home countries are entitled to a removal hearing before a judge.

Facing a lack of beds, the Obama administration raced to open additional family detention centers to house large numbers of children, who are required by law to be held in the least restrictive conditions possible.

Specter of Sessions

Trump has promised to crack down on undocumented border crossers while also restricting refugees from terror-prone countries, but he has yet to articulate a policy for the thousands of asylum seekers who enter the U.S. each year. Trump’s top immigration advisers, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican who Trump plans to nominate as attorney general, have argued that Obama has been too easy on migrants.

“Instead of removing illegal immigrants, the President has expended enormous time, energy, and resources into settling newly arrived illegal immigrants throughout the United States,” Sessions wrote in a January 2015 “immigration handbook” for Republicans.

The crisis shows no sign of abating. In fiscal 2016 the U.S. apprehended a record 78,000 family members, mainly from Central America, on the southwest border, according to government figures. A record 41,000 immigrants are currently detained in U.S. facilities and half are asylum-seekers, said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, an advocacy group that seeks an end to family detention.

The three family-detention facilities have a combined capacity of about 3,600 beds. The Department of Homeland Security is currently evaluating bids to add another 2,500 beds. Southwest Key Programs, an Austin-based nonprofit that operates shelters for unaccompanied migrant children, has looked at turning an abandoned Wal-Mart store along the border into a “humane shelter” for families seeking asylum, according to Cindy Casares, a spokeswoman for the group.

Advocates have long called on Obama to scrap the facilities because of inhumane conditions, including reports of babies being dressed in prison jumpsuits and punishment meted out to children for playing too noisily. The advocates believe the Central American asylum seekers pose a low flight risk and they recommend alternatives to detention, including wearing ankle monitors to ensure they show up for their court dates.

‘Added Urgency’

Under Trump, the advocates fear, the government could broaden the use of expedited removal -– fast-track deportation proceedings that take place without a judge — a practice that is already being used more frequently with asylum seekers.

“There is an added urgency to make sure that the families that are here get an opportunity to be heard in front of a judge,” said Ben Johnson, executive director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There is some concern that those families under the new administration will never have that chance.”

Panic is meanwhile rising along the border as migrants have digested the news of Trump’s election. Immigrants staying in cramped shelters or church basements are trying to leave the border region for cities farther north such as Baltimore or New York, from where they believe it is harder to be deported, said Michael Seifert, an activist with the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

“There’s literally not enough commercial bus space to get the people out,” he said. “They’re all terrified.”

How does this all get packed up and by whom? Soros….

Soros-Funded Group Pushing ‘Sanctuary Campus’ Anti-Trump Protests

The demonstrations are billed as being led by students

FreeBeacon: An organization that has received funding from liberal billionaire George Soros is pushing anti-Donald Trump student protests that call for sanctuary campuses to protect undocumented students.

Thousands of students at more than 80 college campuses have participated in “sanctuary campus” protests, CBS News reported. Students have signed petitions and walked out of classes at their universities “in support of undocumented classmates.”

The protests are billed as though they are being organized by students at the grassroots level, but in fact a D.C.-based immigration activist group is behind them.

United We Dream is the “largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation,” composed of over 100,000 immigrant youth and 55 affiliate organizations in 26 states, according to its website. The group seeks to “organize and advocate for the dignity and fair treatment of immigrant youth and families, regardless of immigration status.”

The group issued a “state of resilience and urgency for immigrants” on Nov. 9, the day after Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

“The most contentious election in a generation is over. Across the country, immigrant youth in orange shirts, and backed by the strength of their convictions, faced the racism of Trump head on in a fight for their lives,” the press release stated.

“Immigrants are declaring a state of urgency and resilience. Over the coming weeks, our families and community members will need to tap into the incredible strength that brought us to this country and which we use to survive,” said Cristina Jimenez, the executive director and co-founder of United We Dream.

“This is a time to mobilize in every city state across our country,” Jimenez later added in the release. “We calling on all people to take action to demand that their mayors and governors declare their cities and states as spaces of safety.”

United We Dream has received tens of thousands of dollars from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Unbound Philanthropy, a private grant-making foundation focusing on migrants and refugees, and a handful of other liberal grant-making organizations have also funded the United We Dream Network since 2009.

Taryn Higashi, the executive director of Unbound Philanthropy, sits on an advisory board of Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

United We Dream has teamed up with Voto Latino, a non-profit organization that “empowers” American latinos, on the campus protests. Actress Rosario Dawson is cofounder and chairwoman of Voto Latino.

“Donald Trump began his campaign disparaging immigrants, calling for mass deportations, and now has confirmed his plans to immediately deport 2-3 million people,” said Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino. “We call on all young people to organize with us in our college campuses and on social media in our community’s fight for justice and dignity, to keep our community informed and to provide immigrant youth and their families protection from deportation and separation.”

Voto Latino tweeted about sanctuary campuses on Nov. 16.

“We look forward to our campus chapters organizing & pushing their schools to become sanctuary campuses! ‪#HereToStay,” the tweet said. The tweet linked to an article about universities facing pressure to become immigrant sanctuaries.

The groups have launched a MoveOn petition calling for sanctuary cities that will be delivered to mayors across the United States. It has garnered more than 100,000 signatures. United We Dream also followed Trump around the campaign trail.

United We Dream did not return a request for comment on its involvement in the campus protests.

 

Edging to 50,000 a Month, Crossing the Southern Border

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It is an invasion.

Just this month:

USCIS Announces Addition of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to Eligible Countries for the H-2A and H-2B Visa Programs
USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in consultation with the Department of State, have added St. Vincent and the Grenadines to the list of countries whose nationals are eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B visa programs for the coming year.
USCIS to Centralize Processing of Special Immigrant Juvenile Cases
Starting on November 1, 2016, USCIS will centralize the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program. This means SIJ-based Form I-360 petitions and Form I-485 applications will primarily be adjudicated at one location, the National Benefits Center (NBC). USCIS will retain discretion to require in-person interviews at local field offices to complete adjudications as needed.
USCIS Reaches CW-1 Cap for Fiscal Year 2017
USCIS has received a sufficient number of petitions to reach the numerical limit (the “cap”) of 12,998 workers who may be issued CNMI-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) visas or otherwise provided with CW-1 status for fiscal year 2017.

Notice how Jeh Johnson says they have been detained? Yeah for a hour or two?

On the heels of a handful of lawmakers having decried the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for having failed to provide Congress with information on its efforts to address the surge of illegal aliens at the Southwest border and demanded DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to “take immediate action to quell the surge at the border and enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” Johnson responded in a statement, saying, “In October, a total of 46,195 individuals were apprehended between ports of entry on our southwest border, compared with 39,501 in September and 37,048 in August.”

“Within these totals,” Johnson said, “we have seen corresponding increases in the numbers of unaccompanied children and individuals in families apprehended.  We’ve also seen increases in the numbers of those who present themselves at ports of entry along the southwest border seeking asylum.”

Previously, House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Immigration and Border Security Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC), and Immigration and The National Interest Subcommittee Chairman Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demanded Johnson “take immediate action to quell the surge at the border and enforce our nation’s immigration laws.”

They also request a briefing to learn about what steps DHS is taking to address this pressing issue. To date, the department has been reluctant to timely provide information to the committees of jurisdiction.

In their letter to Johnsson, the lawmakers stated, “Numerous media reports indicate that this surge is a large-scale effort to enter the United States before this year’s presidential election. The onslaught of illegal immigration reflects continued efforts by aliens from Central America—El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—to overwhelm our limited resources at the border, which inevitably results in the release of tens of thousands of removable aliens within the United States. In addition, thousands of Haitians and Africans are amassing in the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Mexicali for the purpose of presenting themselves to Customs and Border Protection officers asserting dubious claims of asylum, which will practically guarantee their entry. This group of ‘Other Than Mexicans’ at the Southwest border comprises 70-75 percent of all border crossings.”

This group also includes large numbers of “Special Interest Aliens,” individuals from Muslim countries where radical Islamist jihadists are entrenched.

“The numbers are staggering,” the lawmakers stated in their letter to Johnson. They noted that, “In Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the Border Patrol apprehended 408,870 illegal aliens at the southern border, 23 percent more than the preceding fiscal year. Of those apprehended, more than 77,000 were members of so-called ‘family units,’ which represents an increase of 95 percent over FY 2015 figures, and nearly 60,000 were unaccompanied alien minors, which reflects a 49 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. On October 31, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that the daily referrals of unaccompanied illegal alien minors averaged 262 over the last week and approximately 237 in October. By comparison, referrals averaged 148 per day in October of FY 2014, the year of the first surge, and 60 per day in October of FY 2015.  As of October 27, 2016, the number of minors in [the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)] care is approximately 10,700.”

In his response, Johnson stated, “I have told our border security and immigration enforcement personnel that we must keep pace with this increase. As a result, there are currently about 41,000 individuals in our immigration detention facilities — typically, the number in immigration detention fluctuates between 31,000 and 34,000 – and I have authorized U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement to acquire additional detention space for single adults so that those apprehended at the border can be returned to their home countries as soon as possible. We have also engaged with a number of countries to repatriate their citizens more quickly, and they have agreed to do so.”

“Our borders cannot be open to illegal migration,” Johnson said, noting, “We must, therefore, enforce the immigration laws consistent with our priorities. Those priorities are public safety and border security. Specifically, we prioritize the deportation of undocumented immigrants who are convicted of serious crimes and those apprehended at the border attempting to enter the country illegally. Recently, I have reiterated to our Enforcement and Removal personnel that they must continue to pursue these enforcement activities.”

Johnson said, “Those who attempt to enter our country without authorization should know that, consistent with our laws and our values, we must and we will send you back.”

In conclusion, Johnson said, “Once again, I encourage migrants and their families to pursue the various safe and legal paths available for those in need of humanitarian protection in the United States. Earlier this year, the government of Costa Rica announced its agreement to enter into a protection transfer arrangement with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to help address the Central American migration challenge. We’ve also established an in-country referral program in countries of origin in Central America.  This will enable vulnerable residents in the region to be considered for refugee protection in the United States after being screened and interviewed by DHS officers. We have also announced expansion of the categories of individuals eligible for participation in our Central American Minors program when accompanied by a qualified child. We encourage use of these programs.”