DoJ Issues an Arrest Warrant of Jose Zarate, Steinle’s Killer

Posted on December 1, 2017December 1, 2017 by Denise Simon

The Department of Justice issued an arrest warrant in the U.S. District Court in Texas for Jose Garcia Zarate for a supervised release violation.

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His original criminal complaint filed in May of 2016, shows that Zarate’s criminal history in the United States goes back to 1993.

San Francisco owns this, meanwhile:

The San Francisco Superior Court knew this case would be such a big event, they issued a MEDIA GUIDE.

Zarate was acquitted of first and second degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and found not guilty of an assault with a weapon. He was only guilty of possessing a firearm by a felon.

Now under the Department of Justice, ICE will take custody of of Mr. Garcia where U.S. Marshals will transport him under the arrest warrant pursuant to the Western District of Texas. This arrest warrant was originally issued in 2015 and has been amended since that time with additional charges.

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While we grieve for Kate and her family:

The timeline since he was acquitted for the murder of Kate Steinle:

SAN FRANCISCO — Latest on the trial of a Mexican man in a killing on a San Francisco pier (all times local):

1:45 p.m.

A federal judge in Texas has unsealed an arrest warrant for the Mexican man found not guilty of killing a woman on a San Francisco pier.

U.S. District Judge Alia Moses unsealed the warrant for Jose Ines Garcia Zarate on Friday. It was issued in July 2015 after Garcia Zarate was arrested in the slaying of Kate Steinle days earlier on a San Francisco pier.

Garcia Zarate had been convicted in federal court of illegally re-entering the U.S. and was on supervised release at the time of Steinle’s slaying. Federal officials allege the Steinle shooting violated the terms of his supervision.

The Justice Department has said it will look at possible illegal re-entry and/or violation of supervised release charges against Garcia Zarate after jurors in San Francisco acquitted him of murder in Steinle’s shooting.

12:15 p.m.

The office of Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement that San Francisco is and always will be a “Sanctuary City” as thousands of Twitter users bashed a verdict finding a Mexican man not guilty of killing a woman.

Lee did not elaborate in the statement issued Friday.

Two former city supervisors also defended San Francisco’s sanctuary policy, which prohibits local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener says that public safety is improved when people who are in the country illegally can go to police without fear of deportation.

David Campos, who now chairs the San Francisco Democratic Party, said the jury system worked.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was released from jail despite a federal immigration detainer request in 2015 and months later, he shot and killed Kate Steinle on a city pier.

9:30 a.m.

The Justice Department is considering bringing federal charges against a Mexican man found not guilty of killing a woman on a San Francisco pier.

Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores tells Fox News that the U.S. Attorney General’s Office is looking at every option to prosecute Jose Ines Garcia Zarate “to the fullest extent available under the law because.”

A Department of Justice official says federal prosecutors will look at possible illegal re-entry and/or violation of supervised release charges.

A San Francisco jury on Thursday found Garcia Zarate not guilty of killing Kate Steinle in a case that touched off a national immigration debate.

Drug Cartels Upped the Game with Weaponized Drones

Posted on November 15, 2017November 15, 2017 by Denise Simon

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Police in Mexico pulled over four men in a pickup truck near the city of Salamanca in Guanajuato state on October 20 and got a nasty surprise. Along with an AK-47 assault rifle, the men had in their possession an unmanned aerial vehicle fitted with a “large explosive device” and a remote detonator.

That’s right: a weaponized drone.

Police didn’t say whether they suspected the men of ties to drug cartels. But Guanajuato is currently contested by several drug gangs, including the Sinaloa cartel, Los Zetas, and Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG, according to Dr. Robert Bunker, a fellow with Small Wars Journal, a military trade publication.

ISIS set up factories in Iraq and Syria to modify mortar bombs—basically, small artillery shells—to fit on small drones. During intensive fighting in the Iraqi city of Mosul in February, ISIS’s drones were “the main problem” for coalition troops, Captain Ali, an Iraqi officer, told War Is Boring.

The cartels, for their part, have been using so-called “potato bombs”—hand-grenade-size improvised explosive devices—in attacks on each other and authorities. Bunker said the explosive the police found alongside the drone in Guanajuato is “consistent” with a potato bomb.

The cartels could also draw inspiration from online-retailer Amazon and its delivery drones. “As both Islamic State and Amazon have shown, small drones are an efficient way of carrying a payload to a target,” said Nick Waters, a former British Army officer and independent drone expert. “Whether that payload is your new book or several hundred grams of explosive is up to the sender.”

But don’t panic, Waters and other experts said. Drug cartels were plenty dangerous before they weaponized flying robots. Potato bomb-hauling drones might just give narcos more options for perpetrating crimes they are perfectly capable of pulling off some other way. “Considering their already impressive traditional capability, I think this will probably be another tool rather than a game-changing capability,” Waters said.

You should be “no more worried than you should be by cartels also using machine guns, car bombs, machetes, etc,” Singer said. More here.

New report shows how Mexican cartels are infiltrating Texas

Mexican cartels smuggle more drugs into the U.S. than any other criminal group, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration said in a new report.

The 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment released in October lists six cartels as having major influences across the country and Texas.

Cartels’ influence in Texas is far-reaching, affecting cities hundreds of miles from the state’s border with Mexico.

San Antonio is the only city in the state with a drug trade controlled by the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion, which deals mostly with methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and marijuana, according to the DEA.

The Gulf Cartel has a hold on cities in Texas’ tip and coastal bend. McAllen, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Galveston, Houston and Beaumont are impacted most by the Gulf Cartel which mostly brings marijuana and cocaine into the area, according to the DEA. Drugs smuggled through the Gulf Cartel are mostly brought in through the area between the Rio Grande Valley and South Padre Island.

Every week in Houston, a relative of a Gulf Cartel leader receives 100 kilograms of cocaine, according to the DEA.

Moving West, Los Zetas control two cities and the Juarez Cartel has a hold on Alpine, Midland, El Paso and Lubbock.

While the arrests of two Los Zetas leaders has weakened the cartel’s influence on Eagle Pass and Laredo, its presence is still felt because of members who have assumed control, bringing cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into Texas.

The Sinaloa Cartel, formerly run by prison escape artist Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman,” is most found in Dallas, Lubbock and Fort Worth, according to the DEA.

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The FY 2017 OCDETF Program Budget Request comprises 2,975 positions, 2,902 FTE,

and $522.135 million in funding for the Interagency Crime and Drug Enforcement (ICDE)

Appropriation, to be used for investigative and prosecutorial costs associated with OCDETF cases targeting high-level criminal drug and money laundering networks as well as priority transnational poly-crime organizations whose primary criminal activity may not necessarily be drug-related. Go here to read the full report.

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Drug Czar Nominee, Trump vs. 60 Minutes

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

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Primer: The Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed hiring its own prosecutor corps to bring cases related to drug trafficking, money laundering and asset forfeiture — a move that advocacy groups warn could exceed the DEA’s legal authority and reinvigorate the 1980s-era war on drugs.

Citing the epidemic in opioid-related overdoses, the DEA said it wants to hire as many as 20 prosecutors to enhance its resources and target the biggest offenders. The DEA said the new force of lawyers “would be permitted to represent the United States in criminal and civil proceedings before the courts and apply for various legal orders.” The agency would use money it gets from companies that manufacture and dispense certain kinds of prescription drugs under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

From the Federal Register

Joe Manchin calls Trump to pull drug czar nomination

Sen. Joe Manchin urged President Trump on Monday to withdraw his nomination for drug czar, Rep. Tom Marino, after a report noted he was the chief backer behind legislation that made it more difficult for the federal government to go after prescription drug companies for suspicious narcotic shipments.

Manchin does not mention in his letter that at the time he also had voted in favor of passing the bill, which received unanimous support in the Senate and was signed into law by former President Barack Obama.

“Congressman Marino led the effort in Congress to move through a bill that has made it significantly harder for the Drug Enforcement Agency to enforce our nation’s anti-drug diversion laws,” Manchin, D-W.Va., wrote to Trump in a letter. “For years, wholesale drug distributors were sending millions of pills into small communities – far more than was reasonably medically necessary.”

Manchin was responding to a report published Sunday by the Washington Post and CBS “60 Minutes,” which concluded that the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016 made it so the DEA could no longer bring enforcement actions against opioid distributors who give the painkillers to corrupt doctors and pharmacists.

As a result of the legislation one prescription opioid company shipped 20 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone to pharmacies in West Virginia between 2007 and 2012, including 11 million doses in a county where 25,000 people lived, according to the news investigation.

Trump tapped Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican, in September to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which administers programs aimed at combating opioid abuse, including through drug monitoring programs or helping people access treatment.

“The head of this office … is a key voice in helping to push and implement strategies to prevent drug abuse, stop drug trafficking, and promote access to substance use disorder treatment,” Machin said, adding that the Washington Post report “calls into question Congressman Marino’s ability to fill this critical role in a manner that will serve the American people and end the epidemic. Congressman Marino no longer has my trust or that of the public that he will aggressively pursue the fight against opioid abuse.”

The opioid epidemic, which started after doctor overprescribing of prescription painkillers, resulted in more than 33,000 deaths in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because of such CDC reports, lawmakers were aware of the rising death toll and the contribution of the prescription drug industry to the trend when Obama signed the bill in April of 2016.

Many patients who were prescribed the drugs to treat pain then moved onto the drug’s cheaper alternative, heroin, which comprised an increased proportion of such deaths. West Virginia, in particular, has been hit hard, with 700 people dying from opioid overdoses in 700, according to Manchin’s office.

70 WH Points the Democrat Caucus Declared DOA

Posted on October 9, 2017October 9, 2017 by Denise Simon

Poor Chuck and Nancy…

President Trump’s political dalliance with “Chuck and Nancy” already is running into problems, as the top congressional Democrats balk at the president’s new terms for a deal to help the roughly 800,000 young illegal immigrants known as ‘Dreamers.’

“This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement, after the administration announced the demands Sunday night.

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*** But this could mean no other legislative business will advance for the balance of Trump’s first term.

WT: Determined to finally solve illegal immigration, the White House submitted a 70-point enforcement plan to Congress Sunday proposing the stiffest reforms ever offered by an administration — including a massive rewrite of the law in order to eliminate loopholes illegal immigrants have exploited to gain a foothold in the U.S.

The plans, seen by The Washington Times, include President Trump’s calls for a border wall, more deportation agents, a crackdown on sanctuary cities and stricter limits to chain migration — all issues the White House says need to be part of any bill Congress passes to legalize illegal immigrant “Dreamers” currently protected by the Obama-era deportation amnesty known as DACA.

But the plans break serious new ground on the legal front, giving federal agents more leeway to deny illegal immigrants at the border, to arrest and hold them when they’re spotted in the interior, and to deport them more speedily. The goal, the White House said, is to ensure major changes to border security, interior enforcement and the legal immigration system.

“Anything that is done addressing the status of DACA recipients needs to include these three reforms and solve these three problems,” a senior White House official told The Times. “If you don’t solve these problems then you’re not going to have a secure border, you’re not going to have a lawful immigration system and you’re not going to be able to protect American workers.”

All told, the list includes 27 different suggestions on border security, 39 improvements to interior enforcement and four major changes to the legal immigration system.

The White House said the list was built from the ground up, with input from the Justice, State and Labor Departments and the three main immigration agencies at Homeland Security, each of whom was asked what tools they needed to finally get a handle on illegal immigration.

Ideas poured in, ranging cracking down on sanctuary cities that shield illegal immigrants — a long-running battle — to new proposals, such as doling out assistance to other in the Western Hemisphere, enlisting them as partners in the effort to stop illegal immigrants heading north.

The running theme of the list, though, is closing loopholes that illegal immigrants have exploited:

• Lax asylum standards, which illegal immigrants have learned to game through saying “magic words” that earn them instant protections, would be stiffened.

• The Unaccompanied Alien Children — or UAC — who streamed to the U.S. under President Obama would have to prove they really are without parents and are fleeing abuse, in order to access generous humanitarian protections.

• Visitors who come legally but overstay their visas — perhaps now an even larger group of illegal immigrants than those who jump the border — would, for the first time, face a misdemeanor penalty.

• A 2001 Supreme Court decision that has forced the release of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, including murderers, would be curtailed.

• The ability of federal, state and local authorities to detain illegal immigrants would be fully enshrined in law, helping settle a long-running question that’s fueled some sanctuary cities.

Also on the list are proposals that have been included in past immigration bills that garnered bipartisan support such as canceling the annual visa lottery that doles out 50,000 green cards at random, and requiring all businesses to use E-Verify, the government’s currently voluntary system for checking to make sure new hires are legally eligible to work.

Immigrant-rights advocates had feared the move, saying they believed Mr. Trump was giving in to hard-liners in his administration, including senior adviser Stephen Miller.

“President Trump and Members of Congress need to decide – do they want to resolve this crisis, or do they want to fall prey to Stephen Miller et al’s strategy to kill legislation and expose all 800,000 DACA beneficiaries to deportation?” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, said in a statement last week in anticipation of the announcement.

Many of the items on the president’s list have drawn bipartisan support in the past, including more fencing, a massive boost in Border Patrol agents, the end to the diversity visa lottery and mandatory use of E-Verify.

Each of those was, in fact, part of the 2013 immigration bill the Senate approved, with the support of every single Democrat in the chamber.

But Democrats say they only supported those measures at the time as part of a broad compromise that offered legal status to some 8 million of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country at that point. They said a smaller legalization for Dreamers can’t be coupled with that broad an enforcement surge.

“Please do not put the burden on the Dreamers to accept every aspect of comprehensive immigration reform to get a chance to become citizens of the United States,” Sen. Richard Durbin, a Democrat who was part of the so-called “Gang of Eight” senators that wrote the 2013 bill, told top administration officials at a hearing last week. “That’s too much to ask.”

The senior White House official, though, said Mr. Durbin’s logic amounted to a “false pretense that the safety of the American people should be held hostage to some other goal.”

“Congress doesn’t need an excuse to pass laws that make our streets safer or our country safer or make our jobs more secure. It’s just the right thing to do,” the official said.

The administration’s new list is likely to irk Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who emerged from a meeting with Mr. Trump last month insisting they had the outlines of a Dream Act-style deal that would grant a pathway to citizenship to Dreamers in exchange for limited border security, such as technology, boosting the Coast Guard or adding more inspectors at ports of entry.

The two leaders said they had explicitly won an agreement not to couple the Dream Act with any new action on Mr. Trump’s proposed border wall.

Refugee Proposal to Congress for 2018

Posted on October 5, 2017October 5, 2017 by Denise Simon

Click here to see the report and numbers filed for previous years including locations.

(Reuters) – The United States will admit a maximum of 45,000 refugees during the 2018 fiscal year, President Donald Trump said in a memorandum to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and released by the White House on Friday.

The cap, the lowest in decades, was proposed by the administration in a report to Congress on Wednesday.

Refugee advocates say the lower limit ignores growing humanitarian crises around the world that are causing people to flee their native countries in greater numbers, and represents a departure from U.S. global leadership.

The Trump administration says the lower cap is necessary so that U.S. officials can address a growing backlog of people applying for asylum inside the United States, and to do better vetting of refugees.

In its report to Congress, which was reviewed by Reuters, the administration said it may assess refugees on their “likelihood of successful assimilation and contribution to the United States.”

***

Then there is DACA:

A major deadline for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, has arrived as the Trump administration continues to press forward in rolling back the Obama-era program for young undocumented immigrants.

Under the program, these immigrants, who entered the U.S. as children have been able to receive renewable two-year deferred action from deportation so that they can work or go to school.

As part of the wind-down process announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month and under the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, those eligible for DACA had until Thursday to properly file for a renewal request and other associated applications for employment authorization to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

After Thursday, young undocumented immigrants will not be able to apply for renewal of their DACA status.

According to DHS, eligible individuals are DACA recipients whose DACA and work authorization expire between Sept. 5, 2017, and March 5, 2018, inclusive. Of the approximately 154,200 individuals whose DACA is set to expire between Sept. 5, 2017, and March 5, 2018, just over 106,000 either have renewal requests currently pending with USCIS, or have already had USCIS adjudicate their renewal request.

Acting Secretary of DHS Elaine Duke released a memo on Wednesday urging all those still eligible to request a renewal of their DACA status as soon as possible if they have not done so already.

“I urge you to make this a priority. The renewal process is quicker than an initial request and requires minimal documentation, so take the time now to fill out and properly file your renewal request. It is imperative that USCIS physically receives your request by October 5th,” said Duke.

USCIS has also been frequently updating applicants over social media, urging followers to file their requests in order to get their case adjudicated in time.

But in light of the recent devastation in Puerto Rico, which left millions without power, food or shelter, Duke said she has directed USCIS to consider on a “case-by-case basis DACA requests received from U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico residents.”

“As of today, fewer than 20 current recipients from the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have yet to renew with USCIS,” she added.

Since the announcement, several lawmakers have made moves on drafting legislation to serve as a temporary fix to the DACA program as the roll back allowed for six months of adjudication, time that Congress could use to develop new immigration laws.

President Trump hosted a dinner last month with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer which caused an uproar after the two Democrats issued a statement saying they had they had agreed to finalize a law “quickly” that would protect DACA recipients, and that the law would also include border security, “excluding the wall.” More here.