Category Archives: Southern Border War

Presidential Determination Signed to Accept 85,000 Refugees

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No wonder the FBI is on a hiring blitz to attempt to vet what is told to be highly vetted and scrutinized refugee applicants.

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The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
September 29, 2015

Presidential Determination — Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT:      Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2016

In accordance with section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the “Act”) (8 U.S.C. 1157), and after appropriate consultations with the Congress, I hereby make the following determinations and authorize the following actions:

The admission of up to 85,000 refugees to the United States during Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest; provided that this number shall be understood as including persons admitted to the United States during FY 2016 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under the Amerasian immigrant admissions program, as provided below.

The admissions numbers shall be allocated among refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with the following regional allocations; provided that the number of admissions allocated to the East Asia region shall include persons admitted to the United States during FY 2016 with Federal refugee resettlement assistance under section 584 of the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 1988, as contained in section 101(e) of Public Law 100-202 (Amerasian immigrants and their family members):

Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25,000

East Asia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,000

Europe and Central Asia . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000

Latin America/Caribbean. . . . . . . . . . .  3,000

Near East/South Asia. . . . . . . . . . . .  34,000

Unallocated Reserve . . . . . . . . . . . .  6,000

The 6,000 unallocated refugee numbers shall be allocated to regional ceilings, as needed.  Upon providing notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are hereby authorized to use unallocated admissions in regions where the need for additional admissions arises.

Additionally, upon notification to the Judiciary Committees of the Congress, you are further authorized to transfer unused admissions allocated to a particular region to one or more other regions, if there is a need for greater admissions for the region or regions to which the admissions are being transferred.

Consistent with section 2(b)(2) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962, I hereby determine that assistance to or on behalf of persons applying for admission to the United States as part of the overseas refugee admissions program will contribute to the foreign policy interests of the United States and designate such persons for this purpose. Consistent with section 101(a)(42) of the Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(42)), and after appropriate consultation with the Congress, I also specify that, for FY 2016, the following persons may, if otherwise qualified, be considered refugees for the purpose of admission to the United States within their countries of nationality or habitual residence:

  1. Persons in Cuba
  2. Persons in Eurasia and the Baltics
  3. Persons in Iraq
  4. Persons in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador
  5. In exceptional circumstances, persons identified by a United States Embassy in any location

You are authorized and directed to publish this determination in the Federal Register.

 

BARACK OBAMA

Another $400 Million, Total is now $5.9 Billion to Syrians

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it was providing an additional $364 million in humanitarian assistance to help Syrians caught up in the country’s civil war, bringing total U.S. humanitarian spending for Syria to about $5.9 billion.

Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Anne Richard said the funding would help provide food, shelter, safe drinking water, medical care and other support for millions of Syrian refugees and the communities that host them.

Richard told a State Department briefing about three-quarters of the additional funding would help people still inside Syria and the rest would assist Syrians who have fled the country.

She also said the United States had admitted some 85,000 refugees over the past fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. That figure included about 12,500 Syrian refugees, exceeding the administration’s goal of 10,000, she said.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the push for additional humanitarian aid funds came in part because of deteriorating conditions in Aleppo after the collapse of a ceasefire sponsored by the United States and Russia.

The forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have launched a massive push against rebel-held areas of the city, where some 250,000 civilians are believed to be trapped. Intensive bombing has killed hundreds of people, many of whom died in buildings collapsed by bunker-buster bombs.

“Until the past few weeks we felt like we were on a firm path towards a possible diplomatic resolution to this. We still believe that’s possible,” Toner told a briefing.

“That doesn’t mean we’re not mindful … of the tremendous humanitarian suffering that’s going on right now in Aleppo. And that’s why we’re working so hard to ramp up our assistance,” he added.

While saying the United States continued to seek a diplomatic resolution of the problem, he left the door open to other action.

“We’ll continue to weigh all options. Those discussions are ongoing. I don’t want to rule anything out, but right now we’re focused on the diplomatic one,” Toner said.

He noted the United States has warned that failure to achieve a ceasefire could lead to an escalation of the conflict.

“We cannot dictate what other countries … may or may not decide to do in terms of supporting certain groups within Syria,” Toner said. “You may have a further deterioration on either side … and by deterioration I mean more arming and more conflict between them, and intensification of the conflict.”

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Jeh Johnson said in a Senate hearing that the government focuses on refugees for resettlement that are good for the country. The vetting in comprehensive and some of the standards to be met by applicants are classified. The concentration is on women and children.

From the DHS website:

U.S. Expands Initiatives To Address Central American Migration Challenges

Over the past year, the United States has taken a series of steps to address the ongoing humanitarian challenges in Central America, particularly for the many vulnerable individuals attempting to leave the region and come to the United States, while also promoting safe and orderly migration and border security. As part of this ongoing effort, the United States is announcing the following initiatives to help vulnerable families and individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

World Refugee Day: #RefugeesWelcome

Secretary Johnson smiling at the camera with his arm around 11 year old Turkish refugee JaafarSeveral months ago while I was in Turkey I met a 9-year-old refugee named Jaafar.  I was immediately impressed with this extraordinary little boy who spoke almost perfect English.

Readout of Secretary Johnson’s Trip To Turkey

Secretary Johnson visits a Turkish-government run Syrian refugee camp in Adana, TurkeyToday, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson concluded a three-day trip to Turkey, where he visited a refugee camp, reviewed resettlement processing, spoke to a number of Syrian and Iraqi refugee families, met with government officials in Istanbul and Ankara to discuss a range of homeland security-related issues, and signed two bilateral accords to codify mutual commitment to deepen collaboration.

Readout Of Administration Call With Law Enforcement Officials On Refugee Screening

Senior Administration officials spoke by phone today with state and local law enforcement representatives from across the country to provide information on the U.S.’s stringent refugee admissions policies and security screening measures. Officials on the call included Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas; Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Simon Henshaw; U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske; and FBI National Security Branch Executive Assistant Director John Giacalone.

Written testimony of USCIS for a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest hearing titled “Oversight of the Administration’s FY 2016 Refugee Resettlement Program: Fiscal and Security Implications”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services (USCIS) Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Refugee Affairs Division Chief Barbara Strack and USCIS Fraud Detection & National Security Associate Director Matt Emrich address USCIS’s role in refugee resettlement, and the screening measures and safeguards developed by the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.

7700 Terrorists at the Southern Border

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Oh….another leak and no word from the Department of Homeland Security….

Leaked FBI Data Reveal 7,700 Terrorist Encounters in USA in One Year; Border States Most Targeted

Breitbart: Leaked documents with sensitive FBI data exclusively obtained by Breitbart Texas reveal that 7,712 terrorist encounters occurred within the United States in one year and that many of those encounters occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border. The incidents are characterized as “Known or Suspected Terrorist Encounters.” Some of the encounters occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border at ports-of-entry and some occurred in between, indicating that persons known or reasonably suspected of being terrorists attempted to sneak into the U.S. across the border. In all, the encounters occurred in higher numbers in border states.

Some of the documents pertain to the entire U.S., while others focus specifically on the state of Arizona. The documents are labeled, “UNCLASSIFIED/LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE” and contain data from the FBI-administered Terrorist Screening Center, the organization maintaining the Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the “Terror Watch List.”

 CNN

The leaked FBI data are contained in a fusion center’s educational materials, specifically the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center’s (ACTIC) “Known or Suspected Terrorist (KST) Encounters Briefing” covering from July 20 2015 through July 20 2016. The leaked documents are composed of 10 individual pages, but Breitbart Texas chose to release only nine of them due to page 10 containing contact information for ACTIC.

Page Two of the documents contains a map of the entire U.S. with the numbers of encounters per state. The states with the highest encounters are all border states. Texas, California, and Arizona–all states with a shared border with Mexico–rank high in encounters.

Page Three shows a map of where the encounters occurred in the state of Arizona. The majority from this map occurred in Phoenix, a major destination point for people who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The map also shows that encounters occurred at ports-of-entry, likely from persons either walking up and asking for asylum or from Sinaloa cartel attempts to smuggle them into the U.S. in vehicles. Most significantly, the map shows that many of the encounters occurred near the border outside of ports-of-entry, indicating that persons were attempting to sneak into the U.S.

Page Six shows a pie chart indicating that the majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamic known or suspected terrorists, both Sunni and Shi’a. Eighty-nine encounters were Sunni, 56 were Shi’a, 70 were “Other International Terrorist Groups or Affiliates,” and only 52 were with “Domestic Terrorism.”

Page 7 contains definitions to help understand the maps.

Breitbart Texas provides the leaked documents and data below: (Go here to see all pages)

Page 1 of 9 by Brandon Darby on Scribd

Related reading:

2012: Inside a secret U.S. Terrorist Screening Center

(CBS News) The Terrorist Screening Center is one of the U.S. government’s most secure buildings. It is home to the nation’s top secret terrorist databases.

For CBS to gain access, no sound could be recorded and only one agent could be identified, Tim Healy.

He is the FBI veteran who currently runs the center.

“We are the only country in the world that has a terrorist watch list.”

The center was founded in 2003 in response to the 9/11 attacks. Their job is to gather intelligence about possible terrorists both in the United States and abroad.

The watch list contains about 520,000 people world wide suspected of having ties to terrorism. Names on the list are added and subtracted daily, but who in on the list remains a secret.

“We don’t confirm anyone’s existence on the watch list,” said Healy.

In addition to the watch list, Healy oversees a second more critical list, the “No Fly List”.

“If you have information that the guy wants to blow up a plane, I can keep him off a plane,” said Healy. “If I’ve [got] information he wants to conduct a terrorist attack, I can keep him off a plane.”

There are about 20,000 people on the “No Fly List”. Seven-hundred of them are Americans and they are considered too much of a risk to allow onto an airplane.

Names on the various watch lists surface each day in calls to the center. For example, each time a police officer run someone’s ID through a computer, that person is checked against the lists.

“So if you are speeding, you get pulled over, they’ll query that name. And if they are encountering a known or suspected terrorist, it will pop up and say call the Terror Screening Center,” said Healy. “So now the officer on the street knows he may be dealing with a known or suspected terrorist.”

The center averages about 55 encounters a day from people who are known or suspected terrorists.

In most cases, according to Healy, the encounters do not produce arrests, but they do provide additional intelligence.

“[The] location of where the guy’s going. What he’s doing [and] additional associates that the subject is hanging around.”

Throughout the Terrorist Screening Center are placed artifacts from various terrorist attacks including Oklahoma City federal building, the USS Cole bombing, and the World Trade Centers. All sober reminders of how important their work is.

For Tim Healy and the workers of the Terrorist Screening Center, failure is not an option. They measure their success by what doesn’t happen.

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On September 16, 2003, the President signed Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), requiring the establishment of an organization to “consolidate the Government’s approach to terrorism screening and provide for the appropriate and lawful use of Terrorist Information in screening processes.” Specifically, the Attorney General was directed to create a new organization to consolidate terrorist watch lists and provide 24-hour, 7-day a week operational support for federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, and foreign government as well as private sector screening across the country and around the world. As a result of this presidential directive, the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was created. As of the end of fiscal year (FY) 2004, the TSC was a $27 million organization with approximately 175 staff.

Obama Shut it Down to Hide it….

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Obama Administration Shut Down Whistleblower Program Revealing 1,811 Aliens From Terrorist Countries Granted Citizenship

Breitbart: Under the Obama administration, 1,811 aliens from terrorist countries were granted U.S. citizenship instead of being deported—and the Obama administration ended the program that uncovered the extensive fraud.

Originally, the Associated Press reported that the aliens’ fingerprints were not in searchable government databases, allowing them to apply for citizenship under different names and birthdays.

The scope of the problem is massive: “Fingerprints are missing from federal databases for as many as 315,000 immigrants with final deportation orders or who are fugitive criminals,” the Associated Press stated. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not reviewed about 148,000 of those immigrants’ files to add fingerprints to the digital record.”

Three of the aliens under final deportation orders who were granted citizenship gained access to secure commercial airliner areas and maritime facilities. Another is working as a law enforcement officer.

But the Obama administration shut down that program, the Office of Inspector General found:

In 2016, OPS [Office of Operations Coordination] eliminated Operation Janus and disbanded its staff, which raises concerns about the future ability of ICE [U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] and USCIS to continue identifying and prioritizing individuals for investigation. Since 2010 and until recently, Operation Janus identified these individuals, created watchlist entries to ensure law enforcement and immigration officials were aware of them, and coordinated DHS and other agencies’ activities related to these individuals. Two DHS employees outside of OPS said that without Operation Janus, it would be difficult to coordinate these cases and combat immigration fraud perpetrated by individuals using multiple identities. We received this information late in our review and cannot assess the future impact of this change.

ICE didn’t consistently log the digital fingerprints of illegal aliens their agents found until 2010—and federal prosecutors have repeatedly declined criminal cases that could end in the aliens being stripped of their citizenship.

The implications were not lost on one DHS whistleblower.

“If the Department of Homeland Security was serious about this, they would not have shut down the program that discovered this lapse in the first place,” whistleblower Philip Haney said on Fox and Friends Tuesday. “They say they’re addressing it, but they shut the program down that originally discovered it. It’s hard to effectively address it. But they say they have recommendations that the agencies are following, and they’re expecting a follow-up report.”

Haney believed that “high-level fraud” took place: “These individuals are from countries of concern, for terrorists. All of them. The report makes that quite plain. If you come to a law enforcement officer, and you don’t have your complete records, your fingerprints in particular, that could halt the process right there. How people came into the country, either legally or illegally, and accidentally gained citizenship is an impossible concept to me, as a law enforcement officer.”

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Border Patrol does not have guidance on using Streamline for aliens who express fear of persecution or return to their home countries, and its use of Streamline with such aliens is inconsistent and may violate U.S. treaty obligations.

In December 2005, Border Patrol began using Operation Streamline (the precursor to the current Streamline initiative) in response to an increase in illegal alien entries from countries other than Mexico in 2004 and 2005. Implemented in collaboration with and assistance from DOJ and the U.S. Courts, Streamline is a Border Patrol initiative where Border Patrol refers aliens entering the United States illegally for the first time or attempting reentry to DOJ for criminal prosecution. Border Patrol officials said the goal of Streamline is to reduce the rate of alien re-entry recidivism.

Before 2004, Border Patrol only referred a limited number of illegal entry aliens to DOJ for criminal prosecution. Historically, when apprehending aliens entering the United States illegally for the first time, Border Patrol would: immediately return most Mexican nationals to Mexico through the

Voluntary Return process, that is, departure without an order of

removal;

  • administratively detain and process aliens for formal removal from the

United States through the civil immigration system;

* issue a Notice to Appear in immigration court and release aliens on their

own recognizance pending their appearance; or

* refer to prosecution aliens deemed dangerous based on criminal history

or suspected of smuggling.

According to Border Patrol officials, in 2004 and 2005, illegal entry for Other Than Mexican (OTM) foreign nationals increased in Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector.2 Border Patrol could not use Voluntary Return procedures for OTMs because Voluntary Return is not an option for aliens from countries that do not have a contiguous border with the United States.

In addition, ICE had limited detention capacity to hold these aliens pending immigration hearings or removal, and Border Patrol did not have the authority or capacity to detain long-term OTMs it apprehended. As a result, Border Patrol released most OTMs into surrounding U.S. communities with a Notice to Appear in immigration court. This practice was commonly referred to as “catch and release.” The volume of OTM illegal alien entries continued to increase in the Del Rio sector, which Border Patrol attributed to the spread of information in some Central and South American countries about the practice of releasing OTMs into U.S. communities. Read more here from the Inspector General’s Report.

 

Ineligible Individuals Have Been Granted U.S. Citizenship

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Sheesh….fingerprints eh? And those migrants, refugees and asylees don’t have any reference database for fingerprint history much less any travel documents applications.

As citizens they can vote, seek and hold sensitive jobs and more. Don’t you just wonder what DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson has to say on this? Oh wait….more money from Congress will solve it all.

Summary of the Inspector General’s report:

USCIS granted U.S. citizenship to at least 858 individuals ordered deported or removed under another identity when, during the naturalization process, their digital fingerprint records were not available. The digital records were not available because although USCIS procedures require checking applicants’ fingerprints against both the Department of Homeland Security’s and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) digital fingerprint repositories, neither contains all old fingerprint records. Not all old records were included in the DHS repository when it was being developed. Further, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has identified, about 148,000 older fingerprint records that have not been digitized of aliens with final deportation orders or who are criminals or fugitives. The FBI repository is also missing records because, in the past, not all records taken during immigration encounters were forwarded to the FBI. As long as the older fingerprint records have not been digitized and included in the repositories, USCIS risks making naturalization decisions without complete information and, as a result, naturalizing additional individuals who may be ineligible for citizenship or who may be trying to obtain U.S. citizenship fraudulently.

As naturalized citizens, these individuals retain many of the rights and privileges of U.S. citizenship, including serving in law enforcement, obtaining a security clearance, and sponsoring other aliens’ entry into the United States. ICE has investigated few of these naturalized citizens to determine whether they should be denaturalized, but is now taking steps to increase the number of cases to be investigated, particularly those who hold positions of public trust and who have security clearances.

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In July 2014,3 OPS provided the Office of Inspector General (OIG) with the names of individuals it had identified as coming from special interest countries or neighboring countries with high rates of immigration fraud, had final deportation orders under another identity, and had become naturalized U.S. citizens. OIG’s review of the list of names revealed some were duplicates, which resulted in a final number of 1,029 individuals. Of the 1,029 individuals reported, 858 did not have a digital fingerprint record available in the DHS fingerprint repository at the time U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was reviewing and adjudicating their applications for U.S. citizenship.  

USCIS checks applicants’ fingerprint records throughout the naturalization process. By searching the DHS digital fingerprint repository, the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) digital fingerprint repository, the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system,5 USCIS can gather information about an applicant’s other identities (if any), criminal arrests and convictions, immigration violations and deportations, and links to terrorism. When there is a matching record, USCIS researches the circumstances underlying the record to determine whether the applicant is still eligible for naturalized citizenship.

If USCIS confirms that an applicant received a final deportation order under a different identity, and there are no other circumstances to provide eligibility, USCIS policy requires denial of naturalization. Also, USCIS may refer the applicant’s case to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for investigation. Likewise, if a naturalized citizen is discovered to have been ineligible for citizenship, ICE may investigate the circumstances and refer the case to the Department of Justice for revocation of citizenship. Read the complete report here.