Category Archives: Southern Border War

Southern Poverty Law Center Just Added More Names

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A New Blacklist From the Southern Poverty Law Center Marks the Demise of a Once-Vital Organization

15 prominent writers and thinkers are labeled “anti-Muslim extremists”—Why?

By Lee Smith

Tablet: Late last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which became deservedly famous in the 1980s for combating violent white-power hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, published a list of 15 individuals it labels as particularly threatening anti-Muslim extremists. It is sad but telling that the SPLC’s so-called field guide to Muslim-haters is not a list of violent extremists—who certainly do exist—but is instead a blacklist of prominent writers whose opinions on a range of cultural and political issues are offensive to the SPLC. The SPLC blacklist list contains practicing Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, foreign-policy think-tankers like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, and right-wing firebrands like David Horowitz—none of whom could be reasonably described as anti-Muslim bigots.

I spoke to Nawaz on the phone in London to ask for his reaction. “A bunch of first-world, comfortable liberal Americans who are not Muslims have decided from their comfortable perch to label me, an activist who is working within his Muslim community to push back against extremism, an anti-Muslim extremist.”

On the face of it, it’s difficult to understand why Nawaz was listed as such. As he told me, he’s a proud Muslim. “I learned Arabic in order to read my holy book,” he said. “In an Intelligence Squared debate, I defended the proposition that Islam was a religion of peace. This was the same week that the man who attempted to bomb Times Square was sentenced so it wasn’t the friendliest New York audience. I hosted Morgan Freeman in a mosque for his documentary The Story of God.”

Nawaz takes the SPLC blacklist seriously, he told me, because he believes that it has put his life in danger. “They’ve put a target on my head,” he said. “This is what putting people on lists does. When Theo Van Gogh was killed in the Netherlands, a list was stuck to his body that included Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s name. It was a hit list. When Bangladeshi reformers were hacked to death by jihadist terrorists, they were working off lists. Only fascists produce lists.”

It’s not easy to understand how the SPLC got here. The organization started in 1971 as a civil-rights law firm designed to combat white-supremacist groups. In 1981 it won a civil suit against the Klan for $7 million that bankrupted the United Klans of America. In 1991, it used the same tactics to win a $12 million judgment against the White Aryan Resistance. It won a $6.5 million case against the Aryan Nations in 2001. Co-founder Morris Dees’ career was dramatized in a TV movie, Line of Fire.

For SPLC’s efforts against violent white supremacists, its members were frequently targeted for reprisal. Yet now, the SPLC is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism. Where the SPLC was once able to win legal battles through careful, often dangerous research that could stand up in court, the organization now identifies the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish right-wing think tank, as a hate group, right alongside the Ku Klux Klan. Where the organization once pushed for freedom for all regardless of race or creed, now it aims to silence those whose opinions it finds objectionable. In doing so, it makes it hard for any impartial observer to place much confidence in future claims about groups and individuals that may actually be dangerous.

Related reading: Letter written to the Justice Department about SPLC Listings

Perhaps in spite of the number of white supremacists who have moved into the light with the nomination of Donald Trump, the SPLC no longer has the resources to tackle those who threaten violence and act on it. Instead, it’s spending its time on Google and Twitter—and hoping to raise money by going after writers and intellectuals who get its goat.

What’s more troubling are the suggestions contained in the report that the SPLC no longer thinks that political violence and hate are a bad thing, or even real—as long as the people committing such acts are Muslims. Complaints against radical Islamist violence, the report bizarrely suggests, are

propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.

Sadly, a shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.

Interestingly, the document fails to list the man who, according to this description, is the world’s most influential anti-Muslim extremist—President Barack Obama, who told the Atlantic  that young people in the Middle East are only thinking about how to kill Americans.

Obama isn’t a violent anti-Muslim extremist any more than the 15 people named here. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an outspoken critic of Islam and has a compelling personal narrative that reflects the story of millions of women and men who have suffered in the name of Islam. David Horowitz is a pugnacious right-wing intellectual who often engages in sharp propaganda. Daniel Pipes is a fierce adversary of Islamic extremism and a knowledgeable scholar of the Middle East. There is much to disagree with in what they and others identified in the SPLC write or argue. I find the work of a small number of the people listed in the report to be puerile. But neither they, nor anyone on this list, deserve to be listed alongside white supremacists who threaten or actually employ violence.

In reality, the SPLC’s field guide has little to do with real anti-Muslim extremism, the red-hot center of which these days is not America but Syria—where so-called secular dictator Bashar al-Assad has teamed up with Iran and Russia to slaughter nearly half a million Sunni Arabs. The SPLC document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing. So it’s hardly surprising that the ghost of Stalin makes an appearance. In a paper nominally highlighting anti-Muslim sentiment, David Horowitz is chided for questioning why one professor identifies Paul Robeson as a “model of [American] patriotism.”

That the SPLC document seeks to re-litigate the case of Paul Robeson, who openly admired Stalin, is evidence that the field guide is simply a blunt instrument used to attack the enemies, personal and institutional, of the paper’s four contributing institutions—Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters for America, the Center for New Community, and ReThink Media. (Regarding the Robeson issue, perhaps it’s the pet project of SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok who has contributed to the People’s World, a publication affiliated with the Communist Party of the United States of America.)

Nor does the SPLC hide the fact that the purpose of its publication is to blacklist and silence its enemies. The field guide recommends to its consumers in the media that they, “research the background of extremist spokespeople and consider other sources, and if they do use anti-Muslim spokespeople, point out their extremism.”

Why is a liberal organization like the SPLC now using fascist tactics to blacklist enemies? Maajid Nawaz believes the organization has targeted him for a very specific reason. “The left is no longer about advancing progressive values,” he said. “For them, it’s now about tribal identities, and any internal critique is seen as treachery.” Nawaz also believes there may be another reason—the activists at the SPLC, he suggested, “may be influenced by Islamists themselves.” And there is evidence in the paper to suggest that Nawaz’s contention may have some truth to it.

The field guide attempts to rewrite history of the Muslim Student Association, for one. In its dossier on Horowitz, the SPLC complains that he

placed an ad in an April 2008 issue of a campus news­paper, The Daily Nexus, claiming that the Muslim Student Association was “founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the godfather of Al Qaeda and Hamas, to bring jihad into the heart of American higher education.” In fact, it had worked with Jewish campus groups, according to faculty members.

 Whether or not some chapters of the MSA worked with Jewish campus groups (while the University of California at Irvine chapter shouted down guest speaker Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2011), it’s established that Brotherhood members played a role in founding the MSA.

Even more telling is the rationale for blacklisting Nawaz. Among others, he “tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad—despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad. He said that he wanted ‘to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge.’ ”

That Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in an effort to change the minds of Muslims who might automatically declare such an action to be blasphemy is the act not of an anti-Muslim extremist but a Muslim reformer. That the SPLC itself accuses him of blasphemy belongs not to the tradition of an American Civil Rights organization, but rather to the ideology of a religious fundamentalist organization, of the type that inspired the ISIS cadre that executed the staff of Charlie Hebdo.

The fact is that more than 40 years after its founding, the Southern Poverty Law Center is now aggressively defending the kind of violent supremacists it had once sought to prosecute, and attacking types like Nawaz it had once defended against violence. The suggestion that the organization has in fact switched sides will likely cause violent extremists of all shades and types to breathe a sigh of relief. It is also sign that there is something deeply wrong with our political culture.

****

In 2015:

(CNSNews.com) – John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, announced Wednesday that the Justice Department is creating the new position of domestic terrorism counsel to combat the “real and present threat” of domestic extremism.

Carlin praised groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center “that dedicate themselves to examining what the threat is, observing it, and reporting on it,” adding that the work of the SPLC was “very important.”

The SPLC says it places groups — including conservative, Christian groups — on its “Hate List” based on their beliefs, not their propensity for violence.

“Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on the full spectrum of hate — anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other despicable beliefs,” Carlin told a gathering  at George Washington University. The discussion was co-hosted by SPLC. “When it comes to hate and intolerance, no single ideology governs.”

Carlin was asked about the value of SPLC’s work in helping DOJ deal with the threat of domestic terrorist extremism.

“I can say, based on our briefings, that as I said in my opening remarks, we very much think that the domestic terrorism threat is a real and present threat that demands to be addressed in new, creative ways,” he replied emphasizing that “Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups in this space are very important.”

The SPLC’s website features a “hate map” that lists the conservative. Christian Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group” because of its defense of traditional marriage. The “hate map” was cited by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins in his decision to attack the FRC in 2012 when he shot and wounded a security guard before being subdued. More here from CNS

The New Drug Cartel Generation and Weapons

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Northwest Mexico Erupts in Violence in Next Generation Cartel Wars

InSight: A bloody cartel war raging in the state of Baja California Sur hints at the new strategies and alliances forming as Mexico‘s fragmented underworld reorganizes.

A Zeta magazine investigation into drug war violence in the city of La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur, has revealed how a spate of macabre murders is connected to a campaign waged by a new alliance between the Jalisco Cartel– New Generation (CJNG) and the remnants of the Tijuana Cartel against Los Dámaso, a network connected to the Sinaloa Cartel.

According to Zeta, the CJNG and Tijuana Cartel factions are operating under the name the Tijuana Cartel– New Generation (CTNG) and have been kidnapping, torturing and murdering rivals in an attempt to seize control of local drug sales and distribution.

Their targets, according to a Zeta source from the local Public Security Coordination Group (Grupo de Coordinación de Seguridad Pública), are rival hitmen, operatives that have switched sides, plaza chiefs linked to the Sinaloa Cartel and local drug distributors. Their aim is not only to remove these people but also to obtain information on the large scale Sinaloa distributors that continue providing drugs to the region.

However, the source said, identifying the relationship between the local criminal cells and larger cartels is difficult due to the fragmented nature of the current underworld and the constantly shifting allegiences of local networks.

InSight Crime Analysis

The battle for La Paz reflects a new dynamic in the Mexican underworld, as fragmented remains of once all-powerful cartels confront or ally themselves with new players as they compete for control of local as well as transnational criminal markets.

The relatively new CJNG has been one of the most expansionist groups in Mexico in recent years, and it is little surprise that it has now moved into Bajo California Sur. It was once believed to be in alliance with the Sinaloa Cartel, but there are now growing signs the organization is looking to capitalize on what appears to be a fragmentation of the Sinaloa Cartel in the wake of the capture of the cartel’s most prominent leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

SEE ALSO: Jalisco Cartel – New Generation Profile

In contrast, the Tijuana Cartel has been in long term decline, and so an alliance with an up-and-coming group such as the CJNG represents the remaining cartel factions’ best chance of clinging on to some level of criminal power.

Los Dámaso, meanwhile, have long been operatives for the Sinaloa Cartel. However, there have been numerous reports suggesting the network has been in conflict with other Sinaloan factions.

As highlighted by Zeta’s source, these national actors are increasingly dependent on alliances with local criminal cells that have more autonomy and less loyalty to larger organizations than in the past. This makes for a much more complex and often chaotic dynamic in this latest generation of Mexico‘s cartel wars.

*** Improvised armored vehicle captured from the Zetas cartel.

Juan Cedillo : Improvised armored vehicle captured from the Zetas cartel.

Time Magazine has provided more information:

As Mexican gangsters shot it out with troops in the border city of Reynosa this month, residents posted warnings on social media of where not to drive. Not only was the gunfire itself a problem but cartel gunmen had covered some roads with perilous spikes that they call ponchallantas or “tire punchers.” The hazard can appear suddenly as the cartels have customized vans with tubes that eject the spikes. If a car drives into them too fast, it can spin into a lethal crash. Gangsters also set grounded vehicles on fire, creating more debris in the way of security forces.

The tire punchers used in the April 17 firefight, in which soldiers arrested an alleged kingpin called José Tiburcio Hernández, are the latest example of the homemade battle technology developed by Mexico’s cartels. Gangsters have also built fighting vehicles with four inch-thick armor, sometimes referred to as “monsters” or “narco tanks.” And in October, police in the western state of Jalisco even busted a clandestine factory where traffickers assembled their own assault rifles.

The development of this narco technology south of the Rio Grande has grabbed the attention of U.S. security thinkers such as Robert Bunker, an external researcher for the U.S. Army War College. He compares it to the homemade war tools used by insurgent forces round the world. “Each battle technology has been adapted to both the conflict environment and the ideological and illicit economic motivations of the irregular forces,” Bunker says. “Caltrops and spike traps have been a component of warfare going back to the ancient Greeks. In many ways, we can think of them as pre-modern landmines.”

While there is no declared war in Mexico, fighting between rival cartels and the security forces has claimed more than 83,000 lives since 2007, according to a count by Mexico’s federal intelligence agency. Gangsters use traditional weapons, including Kalashnikovs, which are often smuggled from the United Sates. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms has traced 73,684 guns seized in Mexico to U.S. gun sellers since 2009. Cartels also have rocket-propelled grenades, which may be stolen from Central American military caches.

However, it is harder for them to buy actual military vehicles leading to them inventing their own. The Zetas cartel, which was led by former soldiers, first developed its own armored vehicles, both converting regular trucks and building others from scratch. Their “monsters” resemble machines from the fantasy road wars of Mad Max, with gun turrets, battering rams and walls of armor.

The Mexican army has taken many of these makeshift tanks off the road, holding more than 40 of them in its base in Reynosa. But some are still at large and causing havoc. Last year, a Zeta monster attacked a hotel in the border town of Ciudad Mier, where executives from the oil services multinational Weatherford were staying. (The executives were shaken but unscathed).

Furthermore, vigilante groups that formed to fight cartels also built their own armored vehicles. “We were going into heavy gunfire and we needed protection. So we made these monsters of our own, based on the vehicles that the Zetas had built,” said Francisco Espinosa, a cattle rancher turned vigilante. With the help of local metal workers, they also used thick layers of armor, and added some of their own features such as mobile sand trenches.

The gun factory busted in October belonged to rising gang called the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The cartel has gained infamy for a series of attacks on Mexican officials, including an ambush on April 7 that killed 15 policemen. Hidden in two farm houses in the tequila-producing region, the factory used industrial metal cutters and blow torches to assemble AR15 rifles from components. “It’s highly sophisticated machinery with very precise software that allows them to make the cuts to finish the guns, which work perfectly,” Jalisco Attorney General Luis Carlos Najera said.

The factory likely uses gun parts that are sold on line, producing untraceable AR15’s, says Bunker, the security scholar. “I consider it conceptually sophisticated but not technologically sophisticated. The next step in this process will be the addition of a 3D metal printer. I’m sure this will come in time as more of these improvised arms factories spring up, metal printer technology matures, and prices for them drop.”

The cartels’ ability to make their own guns, customized vehicles and spike ejectors make them difficult for Mexico’s government to wipe out. Under President Enrique Pena Nieto, troops have arrested a string of cartel leaders, including the head of the Zetas and Sinaloan chief Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman. This has helped reduce the total number of homicides, which went down from a peak of more than 22,000 in 2011 to 15,649 last year, according to a police count. But incidents such as the chaos in Reynosa and ambushes in Jalisco continue to shake the nation.

Bunker warns that cartels may keep on developing their battle tech. They could use drones for surveillance in the near future, giving them a fighting edge. Mexican gangsters have also used small car bombs, and could potentially harness bigger improvised explosive devices like those in the Middle East. “One area that we should keep an eye on is car bomb and IED use potentials,” Bunker says. “I could envision IEDs being placed in a city or town under certain circumstances.”

400 ISIS Fighters Roaming the Streets of Britain

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Almost 400 ISIS jihadis trained in Iraq and Syria are now at large on Britain’s streets… as it’s revealed just 14 fighters who have returned to the UK have been jailed

Just 14 battle-hardened ISIS fighters who returned to Britain after waging war in Syria have been jailed, the Government has admitted.

Imran Khawaja was jailed for 12 years after he was caught trying to sneak back into Britain
Imran Khawaja was jailed for 12 years after he was caught trying to sneak back into Britain

DailyMail: The shock figure is far lower than Ministers previously claimed and means almost 400 jihadis trained in Syria and Iraq are at large on Britain’s streets.

Experts told The Mail on Sunday they could use the deadly skills with automatic weapons and bombs that they honed on the battlefield to plot atrocities such as the Paris and Brussels attacks in the UK, massacring hundreds.

Figures slipped out in Parliament reveal that the Home Office believes 850 Britons have travelled to fight for the Islamic State terror group and although many have been killed by drone strikes and in battle, about 400 have sneaked back into the UK.

Any of them could be prosecuted as it is a crime to attend terrorist training camps and also to be a member of a banned group such as ISIS.

But Ministers admit that only 14 people who have fought for Islamic State have been convicted, despite mistakenly claiming the number was 54 earlier this year.

Last night, critics urged Home Secretary Amber Rudd to give more money to the Border Force so it can catch terrorists as they sneak back into the country, as well as ensuring that police and MI5 have enough officers to track down those already here.

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, who believes thousands of Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq, said: ‘It is a tiny number who have been prosecuted and it’s absurd to say this is any form of success.

‘If they know who they are, they should be prosecuted but the police and security services don’t have the resources to do that.

Professor Anthony Glees, Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, told The Mail on Sunday that the ‘minuscule’ number of prosecutions was ‘very disturbing’.

‘These people have been trained to be killers and people will think it beggars belief [that they haven’t been prosecuted]. What message are we sending out to the world?

‘If you go out to join a regime like so-called Islamic State, you forfeit your right to come back.’

Former Security Minister Lord West of Spithead said: ‘We know that people who have been abroad and radicalised are extremely dangerous.

HATE CLERIC CONVERT IS ‘KILLED FIGHTING FOR ISLAMIC STATE’

Terence Le Page, 30, died in Syria in June

Terence Le Page, 30, died in Syria in June

A white convert to Islam who became a disciple of jailed hate cleric Anjem Choudary is believed to have been killed in Syria fighting for Islamic State.

Terence Le Page, 30, died in Syria in June, according to jihadists on social media. Le Page, from Lewisham, South-East London, converted to Islam around five years ago, shortly after his older brother, Dean, 31, also became a Muslim.

Both brothers then became members of Choudary’s banned group Al-Muhajiroun.

Terence took the Muslim name Abu Khalid and is believed to have gone to Syria in the middle of last year with his wife and two children.

Last night, his mother Donna Le Page, 50, of South-East London, confirmed she had received news of his death.

‘Clearly we need to be able to keep a handle on that and make sure they are properly monitored. If we’re not doing that, we are letting the public down.’

Among the hundreds of ISIS veterans at large in the UK is Maarg Kahsay, a student who fled to Syria while awaiting trial for rape.

He spent up to two months in IS territory as a fighter in 2014 but then returned home and, as this newspaper revealed in the summer, is free to roam the streets of London and live in a council flat.

Another jihadi, Gianluca Tomaselli, is working as a parking attendant at an NHS hospital in London after spending up to a year fighting in Syria.

The revelation that only 14 returnees have been convicted was quietly made in a written answer given to the House of Lords.

Ministers had claimed in May that 54 jihadis had been successfully prosecuted – but last month admitted this larger figure wrongly included dozens who had been fundraising for terrorism or attempting to reach the war zone.

In the new statement, Home Office Minister Baroness Williams of Trafford said: ‘Data from the Crown Prosecution Service shows that they have successfully prosecuted ten cases involving 14 defendants who have returned to the UK and are suspected of having fought in Syria and/or Iraq.’

She added: ‘All those who return from engaging in the conflict in Syria and Iraq can expect to be subject to investigation to determine if they have committed criminal offences abroad or represent a threat to our national security.’

Police and MI5 attempt to contact all those who return from the war zone to work out how dangerous they are.

Some will be left alone if they only went to experience life in the so-called Islamic State or to deliver humanitarian aid, but others will be put under surveillance to see if they form terror cells or start to plan attacks.

Other returnees will be referred to NHS mental health services or the Channel deradicalisation programme if it is felt they can be turned away from extremism.

Among the dangerous returnees who have been locked up is Imran Khawaja, who tried to sneak back into Britain

undetected by faking his own death. 

The West Londoner was caught at Dover and jailed for 12 years in February last year.

Labour’s former policing spokesman Jack Dromey MP said: ‘Britain faces the most serious terrorist threat for a generation. We need to stop jihadis going to the Middle East and we need to be confident that when people return they are under proper surveillance.’

 

 

Mexican Officials are Smuggling Haitians into the U.S.

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Immigration Official Warns 40,000 Haitians On Their Way To U.S. Via California’s Mexico Border

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A top U.S. immigration official says 40,000 Haitians may be on their way to the United States amid what she calls an “emergency situation” on California’s border with Mexico.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana said Thursday in Washington that the estimate came from other governments during a recent trip she made to Central America.

Saldana told the House Judiciary Committee that word of the new arrivals contributed to the Homeland Security Department’s announcement on Thursday that it was lifting special protections shielding Haitians from deportation that were put in place after their country’s 2010 earthquake. She says changing conditions in Haiti also played a part.

***  

Mexican officials quietly helping thousands of Haitian illegal immigrants reach U.S.

WashingtonTimes: Mexican officials are quietly helping thousands of illegal immigrant Haitians make their way to the United States, according to an internal Homeland Security document that details the route taken by the migrants, the thousands of dollars paid to human smugglers along the way and the sometimes complicit role of the governments of America’s neighbors.

More than 6,000 Haitians arrived at the border in San Diego over the last year — a staggering 18-fold increase over fiscal year 2015. Some 2,600 more were waiting in northern Mexico as of last week, and 3,500 others were not far behind, waiting in Panama to make the trip north, according to the documents, obtained by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican.

The migrants are paying at least $2,350 to be smuggled from South America to the doorstep of the U.S., where many present themselves at the border and many demand asylum, hoping to gain a foothold here.

Boat maker Audit Volmar walks inside the shell of a sail boat he's building on the beach of Leogane, Haiti. The 30-foot-long boats are purchased by smugglers for around $12,000 and then taken to northern Haiti to find passengers. (Associated Press)
Photo by: Dieu Nalio Chery
Boat maker Audit Volmar walks inside the shell of a sail boat he’s building on the beach of Leogane, Haiti. The 30-foot-long boats are purchased by smugglers for around $12,000 and then taken to northern Haiti to find passengers. (Associated Press)

“Haitians have forged a dangerous and clandestine new path to get to the United States,” says the document, which lays out in detail the route and the prices paid along the way for smugglers, bus tickets and, where they can be obtained legally, transit documents.

Their trek begins in Brazil and traces a 7,100-mile route up the west coast of South American and Central America, crossing 11 countries and taking as long as four months.

Some countries are more welcoming than others, according to the document, which was reviewed by The Washington Times. Nicaragua is listed as being particularly vigilant about deporting the Haitian migrants if they are caught — so smugglers charge $1,000 to get through that country.

When traveling through Central American countries the Haitians will claim instead to be from Congo, believing that authorities in Central America aren’t likely to go through the hassle of deporting them to West Africa if they are caught, Homeland Security said.

Being smuggled through Ecuador costs $200, while Guatemala and Colombia cost $300 apiece, the document says.

Mexico, though, is more accommodating to the migrants. It stops them at its southern border in Tapachula, processes them and — though they don’t have legal entry papers — “they receive a 20-day transit document” giving them enough time to get a bus across Mexico, arriving eventually in Tijuana, just south of San Diego.

Once in the United States, many of the Haitians claim asylum and fight deportation in cases that can drag on for years, guaranteeing the migrants a foothold in the country in the meantime. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it received referrals to conduct credible fear screenings, which is the first part of an affirmative asylum claim, for 523 Haitians over the last year.

Other Haitians who are apprehended are put on a slow deportation track, giving them a chance to blend into the shadows along with other illegal immigrants. Southern Florida is a particularly attractive destination for the Haitians once they are released into the U.S., the document said.

Haitians are the latest nationality to surge into the United States, along with Central Americans enticed by the belief that lax enforcement policies under President Obama will enable them to stay, even if it means living in the shadows.

“The exponential increase in Haitian migrants showing up at the southern border is truly astonishing, and it shows one of the many consequences of President Obama’s immigration policy, which invites illegal entry and exploitation of the system,” said Joe Kasper, chief of staff for Mr. Hunter.

He said he was struck by “Mexico’s complicity” in helping the Haitians by granting them legal passage just to reach the United States.

“Mexico doesn’t want them, but it’s entirely content with putting migrants — in this case Haitians — right on America’s doorstep,” he said.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington has not responded to repeated inquiries from The Times, dating back to last month, on its role in the Haitian surge.

As many as 75,000 Haitians fled to Brazil after the 2010 earthquake. Some 50,000 still remain, but the rest have left — including a steady stream over the last year headed for the United States.

Haiti’s embassy in Washington promised to make someone available to discuss the situation, but didn’t follow through.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency that guards the borders and ports of entry, acknowledged “an uptick” in Haitians arriving without permission. In fact, the numbers leapt from 339 in fiscal year 2015 to 6,121 in 2016 — an increase of more than 1,800 percent.

“While CBP officials have made adjustments to port operations to accommodate this uptick in arriving individuals, CBP officials are used to dynamic changes at our local border crossings, including San Ysidro, the nation’s busiest border crossing, and are able to flex resources to accommodate those changes,” the agency said in a statement.

CBP says it processed the Haitians “on a case by case basis” and those that don’t have permission to be in the U.S. are sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the deportation agency.

As of Sept. 24, ICE had 619 Haitians in detention.

ICE had been moving slowly on deportations of Haitians under a humanitarian policy in place since the 2010 earthquake. But on Sept. 21, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced a change, saying agents would again begin rapid deportations of Haitians caught at the border.

Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the data shows just how much the smuggling operations control illegal immigration. She said there are faster routes through Mexico and into the United States, but the fact that 90 percent of them are coming to San Diego is evidence they have an arrangement, likely with the Sinaloa cartel.

She also that by issuing transit permits, Mexico was assisting not only the Haitians’ illegal migration, but also providing a financial boost to the very criminal cartels that Mexican officials say are a threat to their society.

“I understand how this collusion or ambivalence to a criminal phenomenon works in Mexico, but I don’t understand why the Obama administration is letting it happen,” she said. “We could shut this down in a hurry simply by telling asylum seekers that they need to apply in one of the eight or nine safe countries that they passed through on the way. Otherwise we are just asking to see another 160,000 or more applicants next year.”

Congressman Issa Still in Court Fighting on the Fast and Furious Case

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Good for him !!

The Flash Memo from the House Oversight Committee, dated April 2016.

House GOP Presses Court on ‘Fast and Furious’ Documents Committee argues Justice lied about botched gun-tracking initiative

House Oversight Committee under Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., probed failed gun-tracking program. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo) –

RollCall: House Republicans accused the Obama administration of “generally making a mockery” of the congressional oversight process, as they fight in a federal appeals court for documents related to a flawed gun-tracking initiative known as Operation Fast and Furious. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in a brief filed Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argued that a lower court judge did not fully correct the Justice Department’s “executive abuses” as it responded to a congressional subpoena.

“DOJ responded by lying to Congress; engaging in concerted resistance, delay and gamesmanship; refusing to produce a privilege log for more than three years; belatedly raising new purported grounds for withholding documents long after the fact; and generally making a mockery of the process of negotiation and accommodation that is supposed to facilitate the exercise of Congress’s oversight and investigative powers,” the brief stated.

The lower courts allowed the Justice Department to benefit from that response, the committee argued, preventing the House from completing its obstruction of Congress investigation.

“This court should restore balance to the congressional oversight process by correcting the errors of the district court and compelling DOJ to produce in full, at long last, the entirety of the documents sought in the complaint,” the brief stated.

The appeal challenged rulings in the case, including U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s order Jan. 19 for the administration to turn over internal documents related to the Justice Department’s response to the congressional inquiry. President Barack Obama had asserted executive privilege over those documents on the grounds that disclosure would reveal the agency’s deliberative process.

Jackson’s order applied to documents responsive to the committee’s subpoena in October 2011 as part of the investigation spearheaded by then-Chairman Darrell Issa.

The California Republican has said the records will show that the Justice Department covered up the Fast and Furious program launched in 2009 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in which the government lost track of guns it was trying to trace to Mexican drug cartels. The weapons have been traced to crimes such as the 2010 murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The program was halted in 2011.

The order also applied to nine documents for which no justification for the invocation of privilege had been provided, however the order denied all other requests from the committee for documents from the administration.

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today released the following statement regarding the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the House of Representatives’ lawsuit concerning administration documents related to the Operation Fast and Furious scandal.

The President asserted executive privilege over these subpoenaed documents on June 20th 2012.

“This ruling is a repudiation of the Obama Justice Department and Congressional Democrats who argued the courts should have no role in the dispute over President Obama’s improper assertion of executive privilege to protect an attempted Justice Department cover-up of Operation Fast and Furious,” said Chairman Issa. “I remain confident in the merits of the House’s decision to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt; this ruling is an important step toward the transparency and accountability the Obama Administration has refused to provide.”

 

This is the premise of Congressman Issa’s argument, a hearing from 2014. Essentially a Constitutional crisis.