DOJ Moves to Remove U.S. Citizenship of AQ Operative

Posted on March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 by Denise Simon

Department of Justice The official criminal complaint is here.

Office of Public Affairs

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, March 20, 2017

Denaturalization Lawsuit Filed Against Convicted Al Qaeda Conspirator Residing In Illinois

The United States has filed a civil action in the Southern District of Illinois against a 47-year-old naturalized citizen, formerly of Cleveland, Ohio, accused of unlawfully procuring his U.S. citizenship, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Chad A. Readler of the Justice Department’s Civil Division and U.S. Attorney Donald S. Boyce for the Southern District of Illinois.

Image result for Iyman Faris

Iyman Faris, a native of Pakistan, is currently serving a criminal sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois for conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, namely, al Qaeda, and for providing material support to al Qaeda. In October 2003, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia sentenced Faris to 20 years in prison. The civil complaint alleges that Faris entered the United States fraudulently by using another’s passport that he willfully misrepresented the circumstances under which he entered the United States on subsequent applications for immigration benefits, and that he twice testified falsely to obtain immigration benefits. Additionally, the complaint alleges Faris lacked the required attachment to the principles of the U.S. Constitution at the time of his naturalization, as proven by his 2003 federal conviction for providing material support to al Qaeda, a designated terrorist organization. Faris was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on Dec. 16, 1999.

“The Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation will continue to pursue denaturalization proceedings against known or suspected terrorists who procured their citizenship by fraud,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Readler. “The U.S. government is dedicated to strengthening the security of our nation and preventing the exploitation of our nation’s immigration system by those who would do harm to our country.”

“The prosecution of this case demonstrates the commitment of the Department of Justice to preventing immigration fraud,” said U.S. Attorney Boyce. “It is important to ensure the path to legal naturalization remains secure and free of fraud. When people enter the United States, immigrate, and later become citizens, all done through fraud and misrepresentation, their unlawful actions harm the integrity of our immigration system.”

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized U.S. citizen’s citizenship may be revoked, and his certificate of naturalization canceled, if the naturalization was illegally procured or procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.

This case was investigated by the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation, District Court Section and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The litigation is being handled by Trial Attorney Edward S. White of the Office of Immigration Litigation and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas J. Biersbach of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois.

The claims made in the complaint are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.

*** On background, here is the basis of the case from 2003:

IYMAN FARIS SENTENCED FOR PROVIDING MATERIAL SUPPORT
TO AL QAEDA

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General Christopher A. Wray of the Criminal Division, and U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty of the Eastern District of Virginia announced today that Iyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support and resources to al Qaeda and conspiracy for providing the terrorist organization with information about possible U.S. targets for attack.

Faris, a/k/a Mohammad Rauf, 34, of Columbus, Ohio, was sentenced this afternoon by U.S. District Court Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, at federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Before sentencing Faris, Judge Brinkema denied Faris’ request that he be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea.

Faris, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kashmir, pleaded guilty on May 1, 2003, to casing a New York City bridge for al Qaeda, and researching and providing information to al Qaeda regarding the tools necessary for possible attacks on U.S. targets. More here.

Government ‘Dark’ Regulations Mapped Out

Posted on March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 by Denise Simon

Read the report in .pdf form here.

One of the first Executive Orders signed by President Trump was on Regulations. Read that text here from the White House.

2015

Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness: CEI Releases Updated Inventory of “Regulatory Dark Matter”

The Competitive Enterprise (CEI) released the 2017 update to its comprehensive report Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness: An Inventory of “Regulatory Dark Matter.” This analysis covers how, in addition to Congress’s own laws and the many thousands of rules issued by unelected regulators, regulatory dark matter exists in the form of thousands of additional issuances from executive and independent agencies. This dark matter goes around Congress, the Administrative Procedure Act’s (APA) public notice and comment requirements, and the American people themselves.

Examples include presidential and agency memoranda, guidance documents, bulletins, and public notices. These directives interject the federal government into our businesses, our communities, and our personal lives on matters such as healthcare, retirement, labor policy, education policy, and more.

President Trump is already taking certain steps to “deconstruct” the administrative state’s excesses, starting with a temporary regulatory freeze that includes agency guidance documents and rules. His executive orders concerning deregulation are helping, but a regulatory hangover from the Obama administration still lingers.

CEI’s Vice President for Policy Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr., the author of the report, calls on Congress to remedy the problem:

“Congress needs to take back its authority over federal agencies. The problem with regulatory dark matter is that it allows the executive branch of our government to rule sectors of our economy through mere announcements, rather than actual lawmaking or even proper rulemaking. This allows the government to interfere in many aspects of Americans’ lives without our input or that of Congress.

“We’ve been pleased to see the president’s aggressive out-of-the-gate actions to free up the economy, but agencies under President Trump could still create new dark matter behind the scenes. That is why Congress must tackle regulatory reform legislation to ensure an end to this problem.”

Some quick takeaways on regulatory dark matter:

Regulatory dark matter has accompanied the rollout of programs ranging from Obamacare to Dodd Frank to drone regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Recent major Labor Department mandates like the franchising and independent contracting rules were dark matter, not formal regulations as they should have been.

No one really knows for certain how many federal regulatory agencies there are:

The Unified Agenda lists 61 agencies

The Administrative Conference of the United States lists 115

The Federal Register office 440 agencies

The Obama administration issued 3853 rules in 2016, while Congress passed and the president signed 214 bills into law – a ratio of 18 rules for every enacted law.

The report’s conclusion lists specific ways the Trump administration, either alone or with Congress, can tackle regulatory dark matter so that agencies are not incentivized to use it.

APA “notice and comment” provisions should apply to any proposed rule

Each piece of regulatory reform legislation passed in the 115^th Congress and beyond needs to incorporate language to address dark matter, not just rules

*** A weekday never passes without new regulations being issued or proposed. Yet beyond those rules, Congress lacks a clear grasp of the amount and cost of the thousands of executive branch and federal agency proclamations and issuances, including guidance documents, memoranda, bulletins, circulars, and letters that carry practical (if not always technically legally) binding regulatory effect. There are hundreds of “significant” agency guidance documents now in effect, plus many thousands of other such documents that are subject to little scrutiny or democratic accountability.

It has long been the case that there are far more regulations than laws. That is troublesome enough. But with tens of thousands of agency proclamations annually, agencies may articulate interpretations and pressure regulated parties to comply without an actual formal regulation or understanding of costs, generally with judicial deference to what agencies contend, an issue of increasing concern to Congress. The result is that no one knows how much the regulatory state “weighs,” or even the number of agencies. The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) of 1946 established the process of public notice for proposed rulemakings, providing the opportunity for public input and comment before a final rule is published in the Federal Register, and a 30-day period before the rule becomes effective. But the APA’s requirement of publishing a notice of proposed rulemaking and allowing public comment does not apply to “interpretative rules, general statements of policy, or rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice.”

Obama Hid Climate Change Money in all Agencies

Posted on March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: Even the Pentagon and General Mattis are part of the Climate Change supporters.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has asserted that climate change is real, and a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere, a position that appears at odds with the views of the president who appointed him and many in the administration in which he serves.

In unpublished written testimony provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Mattis said it was incumbent on the U.S. military to consider how changes like open-water routes in the thawing Arctic and drought in global trouble spots can pose challenges for troops and defense planners. He also stressed this is a real-time issue, not some distant what-if.

“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,” Mattis said in written answers to questions posed after the public hearing by Democratic members of the committee. “It is appropriate for the Combatant Commands to incorporate drivers of instability that impact the security environment in their areas into their planning.” More here from ProPublica.

*** Obama’s Climate Change policy is here.

In November 2014, President Obama announced the United States’ intention to contribute $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to reduce carbon pollution and strengthen resilience in developing countries. The U.S. contribution builds on a bipartisan history of U.S. leadership to support climate action and will leverage public and private finance to avoid some of the most catastrophic risks of climate change. The strong U.S. pledge helped increase the number and ambition of other countries’ contributions and our leadership helped propel initial capitalization of the fund to over $10 billion, a threshold seen by stakeholders as demonstrating serious donor commitment.

*** Image result for obama white house climate change

To Protect Climate Money, Obama Stashed It Where It’s Hard to Find

Bloomberg: President Donald Trump will find the job of reining in spending on climate initiatives made harder by an Obama-era policy of dispersing billions of dollars in programs across dozens of agencies — in part so they couldn’t easily be cut.

There is no single list of those programs or their cost, because President Barack Obama sought to integrate climate programs into everything the federal government did. The goal was to get all agencies to take climate into account, and also make those programs hard to disentangle, according to former members of the administration. In some cases, the idea was to make climate programs hard for Republicans in Congress to even find.

“Much of the effort in the Obama administration was to mainstream climate change,” said Jesse Keenan, who worked on climate issues with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and now teaches at Harvard University. He said all federal agencies were required to incorporate climate-change plans into their operations.

The Obama administration’s approach will be tested by Trump’s first budget request to Congress, an outline of which is due to be released Thursday. Trump has called climate change a hoax; last November he promised to save $100 billion over eight years by cutting all federal climate spending. His budget will offer an early indication of the seriousness of that pledge — and whether his administration is able to identify programs that may have intentionally been called anything but climate-related.

Read more: Trump Said to Drop Climate Change From Environmental Reviews

The last time the Congressional Research Service estimated total federal spending on climate was in 2013. It concluded 18 agencies had climate-related activities, and calculated $77 billion in spending from fiscal 2008 through 2013 alone.

But that figure could well be too low. The Obama administration didn’t always include “climate” in program names, said Alice Hill, director for resilience policy on Obama’s National Security Council.

“Given the relationship that existed with Congress on the issue of climate change, you will not readily find many programs that are entitled ‘climate change,’” Hill, who is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, said in an interview. At the Department of Defense, for example, anything with the word climate would have been “a target in the budget process,” she said.

The range of climate programs is vast, stretching across the entire government.

The Department of Agriculture created “climate hubs” to help farmers and ranchers cope with extreme weather. The Department of Health and Human Services began analyzing the effects of climate change on occupational safety. The Bureau of Reclamation started a program called “West-Wide Climate Risk Assessments,” measuring changes to water supply and demand. The Bureau of Indian Affairs created the Tribal Climate Resilience Program. The Agency for International Development created a program to help “glacier-dependent mountain areas” deal with the risk of those glaciers melting.

In other cases, agencies expanded existing programs to account for global warming. In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration made climate-adaptation projects eligible for federal aid. Last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $1 billion through its Community Development Block Grant program to projects protecting against climate change-related natural disasters.

Meanwhile, a handful of lesser-known offices saw their funding increase while Obama was in office. The budget for NASA’s Earth Science program increased 50 percent, to $1.8 billion. Funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which is mandated by Congress to report every four years on the state of climate change, rose 45 percent to $2.6 billion. At the National Science Foundation, the geosciences program almost doubled to $1.3 billion.

Republican Demands

Republicans noticed, and tried to force the administration to offer a tally of climate funding. Last December, senior House Republicans sent a letter to Obama’s budget director, demanding that his office report how much federal money had gone toward climate programs in fiscal years 2015 and 2016.

Any cuts may face opposition in Congress, as Democrats and some Republicans support the spending, especially that to help communities withstand floods, hurricanes or droughts associated with climate change. Wednesday, a group of 17 Republicans announced their support for climate science — and policy measures to address it.

“Budget cuts to programs — or elimination of entire agencies — designed to help stem the costs of climate change will only hurt ranchers, agriculture producers, and coastal communities already experiencing the impacts of this global challenge,” Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the Council on Environmental Quality in Obama’s White House, said by email.

‘Gravy Train’

Some in Trump’s party now urge him to use his authority to find those programs, and take them apart.

“The Trump Administration needs to defund the entire apparatus of the climate change federal funding gravy train,” said Marc Morano, a former Republican staffer for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “In order to dismantle the climate establishment, agencies and programs throughout the federal government need to be targeted.”

“The climate funding has spread to almost every aspect of the federal government with sometimes wacky results,” said Morano, who doubts global warming and runs the website climatedepot.com. He cited one example of a Department of Transportation query about the link between climate change and fatal car crashes.

Others argue that the spread of climate programs throughout the federal government simply reflects the evolving nature of the risk.

“It is irresponsible not to examine the possibilities and understand our sensitivity to them,” said Ed Link, a former director of research and development for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who led the forensic analysis of Hurricane Katrina’s effect on New Orleans. If federal agencies stop doing that work, he said by email, “shame on them.”

America First – A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again

Posted on March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 by Denise Simon

Read the proposed budget here from the White House.

CrayNews

Reuters: President Donald Trump will ask the U.S. Congress for dramatic cuts to many federal programs as he seeks to bulk up defense spending, start building a wall on the border with Mexico and spend more money deporting illegal immigrants.

In a federal budget proposal with many losers, the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department stand out as targets for the biggest spending reductions. Funding would disappear altogether for 19 independent bodies that count on federal money for public broadcasting, the arts and regional issues from Alaska to Appalachia.

BusinessInsider

Trump’s budget outline is a bare-bones plan covering just “discretionary” spending for the 2018 fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. It is the first volley in what is expected to be an intense battle over spending in coming months in Congress, which holds the federal purse strings and seldom approves presidents’ budget plans.

Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, may reject some or many of his proposed cuts. Some of the proposed changes, which Democrats will broadly oppose, have been targeted for decades by conservative Republicans.

In addition to the fiscal year 2018 request, a copy of a supplemental budget for fiscal year 2017 obtained by Reuters shows the administration plans to ask for $30 billion for the Department of Defense and $3 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.

The funds would be allocated this year to cover procurement of military technology such as F-35 fighter aircraft and drone systems, begin construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall and increase detention space for migrants. Congress likely will consider the supplemental request by April 28, when the current regular funding expires.

Moderate Republicans already have expressed unease with potential cuts to popular domestic programs such as home-heating subsidies, clean-water projects and job training.

OPEN FOR DISCUSSION

Trump is willing to discuss priorities, said White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina congressman who made a name for himself as a spending hawk before Trump plucked him for his Cabinet.

“The president wants to spend more money on defense, more money securing the border, more money enforcing the laws, and more money on school choice, without adding to the deficit,” Mulvaney told a small group of reporters during a preview on Wednesday.

“If they have a different way to accomplish that, we are more than interested in talking to them,” Mulvaney said.

Democrats criticized the proposal as lacking in detail and said it would be devastating to American families.

“President Trump is not making anyone more secure with a budget that hollows out our economy and endangers working families,” said House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. “Throwing billions at defense while ransacking America’s investments in jobs, education, clean energy and lifesaving medical research will leave our nation weakened.”

Trump wants to spend $54 billion more on defense, put a down payment on his border wall, and breathe life into a few other campaign promises. His initial budget outline does not incorporate his promise to pour $1 trillion into roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects. The White House has said the infrastructure plan is still to come.

The defense increases are matched by cuts to other programs so as to not increase the $488 billion federal deficit. Mulvaney acknowledged the proposal would likely result in significant cuts to the federal workforce.

“You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it,” Mulvaney said.

The Department of Homeland Security would get a 6.8 percent increase, with more money for extra staff needed to catch, detain and deport illegal immigrants.

WALL MONEY

Trump wants Congress to shell out $1.5 billion for the border wall with Mexico in the current fiscal year – enough for pilot projects to determine the best way to build it – and a further $2.6 billion in fiscal 2018, Mulvaney said.

The estimate of the full cost of the wall will be included in the full budget, expected in mid-May, which will project spending and revenues over 10 years.

Trump has vowed Mexico will pay for the border wall, which the Mexican government has flatly said it will not do. The White House has said recently that funding would be kick-started in the United States.

The voluminous budget document will include economic forecasts and Trump’s views on “mandatory entitlements” – big-ticket programs like Social Security and Medicare, which Trump vowed to protect on the campaign trail.

Trump asked Congress to slash the EPA by $2.6 billion or more than 31 percent, and the State Department by more than 28 percent or $10.9 billion.

Mulvaney said the “core functions” of those agencies would be preserved. Hit hard would be foreign aid, grants to multilateral development agencies like the World Bank and climate change programs at the United Nations.

Trump wants to get rid of more than 50 EPA programs, end funding for former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and cut renewable energy research programs at the Energy Department.

Regional programs to clean up the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would be sent to the chopping block.

Community development grants at the Housing Department – around since 1974 – were cut in Trump’s budget, along with more than 20 Education Department programs, including some funding program for before- and after- school programs.

Anti-poverty grants and a program that helps poor people pay their energy bills would be slashed, as well as a Labor Department program that helps low-income seniors find work.

Trump’s rural base did not escape cuts. The White House proposed a 21 percent reduction to the Agriculture Department, cutting loans and grants for wastewater, reducing staff in county offices and ending a popular program that helps U.S. farmers donate crops for overseas food aid.

$2900.00 per Acre or Condemned, Border Wall Order

Posted on March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 by Denise Simon

Primer: This notice did not come from the new Trump administration, it was generated by the Loretta Lynch Department of Justice on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security. This is known as a ‘Declaration of Taking Notice.

The nearly 2,000-mile southern border is composed of federal, state, tribal and private lands. There are 632 miles of federal or tribal land — 33 percent — and the other 67 percent, most of which is in Texas, is private or state-owned, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Washington Post points out that the president would need Congress to pass a bill to acquire the tribal lands for his wall. More here.

Texans Receive First Notices of Land Condemnation for Trump’s Border Wall

The government offered $2,900 for 1.2 acres near the Rio Grande. If Flores chooses not to accept the offer, the land could be seized through eminent domain.

Observer: The week before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Yvette Salinas received a letter she had been dreading for years: legal notice that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to build a border wall on her family’s land in Los Ebanos. The 21-page document, entitled a “Declaration of Taking,” is addressed to her ailing mother, Maria Flores, who owns the property with her siblings. The letter offers Flores $2,900 for 1.2 acres near the Rio Grande. If she chooses not to accept the offer, the land could be seized through eminent domain. “It’s scary when you read it,” Salinas says. “You feel like you have to sign.”

Jen Reel The ribbon left by the DHS in 2008 to note where the border wall would enter on Aleida Flores’ land still remains.

The 16-acre property has been in the family for so long that none of them can remember the year it was acquired. Salinas only knows they’ve had it for five generations. Her uncle runs a few head of cattle on the property, which lies not far from Los Ebanos’ most famous attraction, a hand-drawn ferry that shuttles cars and their passengers across the river to Mexico.

This is not the first time the federal government has wanted to seize the land for a border wall. In the wake of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, the Bush administration put up 110 miles of border fencing, much of it on private land in Texas. In 2008, Salinas’ family received a condemnation notice offering them the same low, low price of $2,900. Others in Los Ebanos were mailed similar notices.

***

But nature and time were on their side. Los Ebanos is squeezed into a bend in the Rio Grande, and lies entirely in the river’s floodplain. A treaty between the United States and Mexico forbids building any structures in the floodplain that could push floodwaters into surrounding communities.

***

Jen Reel The map given to Flores in 2008 by the DHS showing their proposed fence acquisition tract on Flores’ land.

Salinas’ family held off on signing the condemnation letter. As time passed, building a wall in Los Ebanos seemed less likely, because of the treaty and because the Obama administration made wall-building less of a priority. In the meantime, Aleida Garcia, Salinas’ cousin, said the government has increased security in the area by adding more surveillance, which she prefers to Trump’s proposed 30-foot wall. “Even if they build a wall, people will still come,” said Garcia. “What’s helped us tremendously and is less expensive is the technology — the aerostat balloons, the ground sensors and even boots on the ground.”

But Los Ebanos appears to be a prime target for the Trump administration. The surveying and planning work has already been done, and the Secure Fence Act authorizes more border fencing to be built. And in 2012, the United States half of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational organization tasked with managing the U.S.-Mexico water treaty, capitulated to lobbying by DHS and agreed to a wall in the floodplain.

Salinas says her family doesn’t want to give up their land, and they are consulting with lawyers to decide what to do next. But fighting the federal government could mean spending years in court. If they lose, DHS could take their land. Salinas, who is 29, says it makes her sad that the family’s legacy could be divided by an ugly wall that will cause problems for Los Ebanos. “We don’t want this wall — the town is pretty much united on that,” says Salinas. “But we don’t want to get sued by the U.S. government either.”