Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

12 School Principals Charged with Bribery

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Rather disgusting when the FBI has to investigate. The pattern perhaps begins in 2009 with spending scandals?

Official statement from the Manager of Detroit Public Schools

Feds charge 12 Detroit school principals with bribery

USAToday: DETROIT —A dozen current and former principals in the Detroit Public Schools system are facing federal bribery and fraud charges, according to court records.

The charges are expected to be announced later Tuesday by the the U.S. Attorney’s Office at a news conference. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade will be joined by FBI and IRS officials at the news conference.

Besides the 12 principals, an administrator and a school district vendor also are among those facing charges.

The announcement comes nearly two months after ex-principal Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, who was hailed as a once-rising education star and turnaround specialist in Detroit Public Schools, pleaded guilty to bribery. Snapp admitted she pocketed a $58,050 bribe from a vendor and spent it on herself while working for the embattled Education Achievement Authority, a state-formed agency that was supposed to help Detroit’s most troubled schools.

Snapp, who is set to be sentenced June 1, faces up to 46 months in prison for bribery. Another women, Paulette Horton, an independent contractor who was involved in a deal to provide tutoring services at two high schools, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit program bribery. The 60-year-old consultant admitted that she was the middleman who handed over bribes to Snapp.

Vendor, Glynis Thornton, also pleaded guilty in January, admitting she gave Snapp money in exchange for awarding her company the tutoring contract. In her guilty plea, Thornton explained how the scheme worked: Thornton would give an independent contractor the bribe money for Snapp, that contractor would meet Snapp at a bank, give her the money, and keep some for herself.

****

In part from Detroit News: One of the seven current principals charged, Ronald Alexander, 60, of Detroit, principal of Spain Elementary, accepted a $500,000 donation from the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” in February for technology updates, campus renovations and additional staff funding.

DPS school board vice president Ida Short, who attended McQuade’s press conference, said a lack of oversight in the district allowed a conspiracy such as this to happen. Before the state took over the district, school board members were required to approve contracts, Short said.

“We have a czar over the district. …We would ordinarily not have principals approving this level of contract. It’s too much money. It’s too easy for people to get greedy as you see,” Short said. “We want to have the rights of every district in the state — to have an elected school board.”

Steven Rhodes, emergency manager for DPS, said Tuesday the district has suspended business with Shy and all of his companies. He added the district has changed policies to prevent fraud.

“I cannot overstate the outrage that I feel about the conduct that these DPS employees engaged in that led to these charges,” Rhodes said. “And I am sure that this sense of outrage is shared by the other dedicated and committed DPS employees, as well as DPS parents and everyone who is interested in the future success of DPS.”

McQuade said her office received a tip from the state of Michigan after it performed an audit at the Education Achievement Authority that raised several red flags.

After her office investigated the EAA and a federal grand jury indicted three people there on criminal charges, McQuade said they next learned about Shy.

The principals charged in the case were not working with each other, McQuade said, and did not know others were participating in the fraud.

She said the decision to file charges in the case has nothing to do with “DPS or the emergency manager.”

“It’s about these 14 people who breached the public trust. The real victims are students and families who attend Detroit Public Schools. … This case is a real punch in the gut for those who do the right thing,” McQuade said.

Also charged in the case are:

■Tanya Bowman, 48, of Novi, former principal of Osborn Collegiate Academy.

■Nina Graves-Hicks, 52, of Detroit, former principal of Davis Aerospace Tech High.

■Josette Buendia, 50, of Garden City, principal of Bennett Elementary.

■James Hearn, 50, of West Bloomfield, principal of Marcus Garvey Academy.

■Beverly Campbell, 66, of Southfield, former principal at Rosa Parks School and Greenfield Union Elementary-Middle School.

■Gerlma Johnson, 56, of Detroit, former principal at Drew Academy and Earhart Elementary-Middle School.

■Stanley Johnson, 62, of Southfield, principal of Hutchinson Elementary.

■Tia’Von Moore-Patton, 46, of Farmington Hills, principal at Jerry L. White Center High school.

■Willye Pearsall, 65, of Warren, former principal at Thurgood Marshall Elementary school.

■Ronnie Sims, 55, of Albion, former principal of Fleming Elementary and Brenda Scott Middle School.

■Clara Smith, 67, Southfield, principal at Thirkell Elementary.

Each of the 14 defendants faces up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 on charges of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery.

Shy and Flowers face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $100,000 on the tax evasion charges.

Rhodes said he was advised Tuesday morning by McQuade of the charges and instructed the district’s employee relations department to place the current employees on unpaid administrative leave.

Rhodes said the policies put in place in light of the charges are suspending  all purchases by individual schools until further notice; requiring central office approval for all school-based purchases, suspending the ability by principals and assistant principals to sign off on or execute any vendor agreements and contracts without central office approval by the superintendent’s office, finance and/or procurement.

He is requiring two signatures on all school-based invoices before they will be paid, conducting a review of all purchases made by the employees identified by the U.S. Attorney, launching a full review of all school-based vendor contracts to determine if all or a portion need to be terminated and rebid, and recruiting an independent auditor to do a thorough review and assessment of procurement processes and procedures to ensure they are in compliance with all state and federal rules and regulations.

“The actions of these individuals are reprehensible and represent a breach of the public trust that has deprived our students of more than $2.7 million in resources,” he said.

David P. Gelios, special agent in charge, FBI Detroit Division, said as a former educator, the case strikes to his very core.

“To enrich oneself at the expense of school children is bad enough, but to misapply public funds intended to educate kids in a district where overall needs are so deep, funding sources are so strained, and the need for better education is so crucial, is reprehensible and an insult to those educators working every day to make a better future for our children,” he said.

In October, the FBI launched a corruption investigation involving DPS and the EAA to determine if contracts were awarded to vendors who paid kickbacks.

In December, a federal grand jury in Detroit indicted a former EAA principal and two school vendors on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and bribery.

Prosecutors said Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, former principal of Mumford and Denby high schools, was part of a kickback scheme along with co-defendants Paulette Horton and Glynis Thornton.

Horton was an EAA vendor who conspired with Snapp and Thornton, a tutoring vendor, to take money from the federally funded school district to enrich themselves.

All three have entered guilty pleas in the case. Sentencing is scheduled for June.

The EAA was created in 2011 by Gov. Rick Snyder as a school district to turn around Detroit’s lowest performing public schools.

The defendants are expected to turn themselves in for a court hearing in U.S. District Court, McQuade. No dates have been set.

Hey Donald, Never Button the Last Button

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Any man with style, with flair and with any knowledge of history knows this, but NOT Donald. Never button the bottom button on the vest. There are certain dress rules and Donald commits the faux pas. Someone tell Donald about King Edward VII.

Meanwhile beyond the Washington Post editorial board interview with the Donald which gives rise to Donald’s failing to be informed all a broad range of issues, there is the item where he gets his information from reading Time magazine. The Washington Post interview was not only a failure but for anyone interested in national security, they should be terrified. As for a radio interview with #NeverTrump Charlie Sykes, Donald did not know or bother to check out Charlie, yet during the interview, Donald admits he gets his information from Time magazine.

Sheesh, if this is not enough….

Donald threatened this past weekend to sue of the delegate distribution in Louisiana. He claims there was a secret meeting…..ah geez…..c’mon Donald….

Donald Trump’s Louisiana Team Attended ‘Secret Meeting,’ State Party Official Says

WSJ: After being shut out of important Republican National Convention committee slots in Louisiana, Donald Trump’s campaign argued on Monday that the posts were chosen at a “secret meeting” to which Trump delegates weren’t invited.

“The problem we’re having here is that there was a secret meeting in Louisiana of the convention delegation, and apparently all of the invitations for our delegates must have gotten lost in the mail,” Trump adviser Barry Bennett said Monday during an interview on MSNBC.

Mr. Bennett said during the TV interview that the Trump campaign’s “legal team” will try to decertify Louisiana’s delegates.

One big wrinkle: Mr. Trump’s two Louisiana state co-chairmen both attended the “secret meeting” – which was in fact a gathering at the Louisiana state GOP convention March 12, according to Jason Doré, the state party’s executive director.

Mr. Trump late Sunday threatened on Twitter that there was a “lawsuit coming”against someone in Louisiana after The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is likely to take up to 10 more delegates from the state than Mr. Trump, even though the New Yorker won Louisiana’s March 5 primary.

“Their issue is with the Rubio delegates and the uncommitted delegates, not with the state party,” Mr. Doré said Monday.

The Trump state co-chairmen, Woody Jenkins, a former state legislator who now owns a local newspaper in suburban Baton Rouge, and Eric Skrmetta, an elected state public service commissioner, didn’t return phone messages. Mr. Bennett and Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Cruz is likely to win the votes from five delegates awarded to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has since suspended his campaign, and five other unbound delegates. Both the Rubio delegates and the unbound delegates are free to vote for any candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Mr. Doré said the state party held its election for delegation committee posts in accordance with state party rules, which were implemented and published online in 2015.

Does Trump have the original Brian Williams’ mis-remembering disease?

Did Donald Trump lie about a near-death experience to gain publicity?

A report from BuzzFeed political reporter Andrew Kaczynski Wednesday suggests that GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump may have fabricated a near death incident to gain publicity.

According to the report, three biographies about the real estate mogul along with other sources close to him contradict Trump’s claim that he nearly boarded an ill-fated helicopter that crashed, killing five people.

At the time of the accident in October of 1989, Trump claimed that he thought about hopping on the helicopter to fly down to Atlantic City with his business associates so they could talk shop. That was the narrative laid out by several news outlet, including UPI, the New York Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

But, as Kaczynski points out, that doesn’t not seem to be the case:

“Donald is still sitting in his office commiserating with some of his staff when he gets a call from yet another reporter,” reads Harry Hurt’s biography of The Donald, Lost Tycoon. “He switches on the speakerphone so that he can hear what the reporter is saying but puts on the mute button so the reporter cannot hear what is being said in the Trump Tower office.”

“Mr. Trump, I know this must be horrible for you,” the book quotes a reporter on the other line. “I know it must be terrible for you to lose your three top casino executives all in the same day. I’m so sorry about what happened…I guess the only thing that could have been worse is if you had been on the helicopter with them.”

Trump, according to the book, then looked at one of his vice presidents and said he needed to get publicity out of the incident.

“You’re going to hate me for this,” Trump is alleged to have said. “But I just can’t resist. I can get some publicity out of this.”

“Then Donald releases the mute button on his speakerphone and informs the reporter, ‘You know, I was going to go with them on that helicopter…’ Donald goes on to confide that for some unexplained reason he changed his mind and decided not to go,” the book reads.

Kaczynski then notes that another book about Trump, “The Deals and the Downfall,” reports that Trump would only trust his own helicopter and that he never would have considered taking someone else’s. A 1991 book entitled “The Down Side of the Donald” makes that same claim.

Trump maintained in his 1991 book “Surviving at the Top” that he had actually considered the trip, noting that he wanted to continue to talk about business with the group but “there was just too much to do in the office that day.”

h/t BuzzFeed

***** What about hiring a lawyer, when it would be a conflict of interest?

In heat of legal fight, lawyer says he got a shocking phone call from Donald Trump

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump had a problem.

He’d met two people who seemed as stubborn as he: a feisty widow whose house stood in the way of his Atlantic City casino expansion, and her attorney.

Trump’s approach struck his adversaries as brazen. Even though the widow was suing him for damaging her house, Trump called her attorney, Glenn Zeitz, and, according to Zeitz, tried to hire him for a potentially more lucrative case.

Zeitz rejected the offer, which came as Trump was also pressing him to settle the dispute and persuade his client to sell her house. Zeitz said he couldn’t fight Trump in one case and represent him in another. It would have created “a tangled web of conflicts,” Zeitz said in a recent interview.

“It was like, ‘Wow!’ Just bizarre. The audacity,” recalled Julia Ingersoll, an associate in Zeitz’s office and one of five friends and former colleagues who learned of the call at the time and confirmed it in recent interviews. “It’s like, if we can’t beat you, we’ll buy you.” (for those of you who think you know the truth about the little old lady and her house and the eminent domain case, you don’t know the facts at all, so click here and get the facts.

Then there is one last item for those Trumpbots that continue to be groupies especially over the National Enquirer scandal. How about the Trump interview for Playboy? The journalist is well known and quite credible, he wrote the book Black Hawk Down. Thank you Mark and Vanity Fair.  Here is some real in sight into The Donald which ends with:

“Mr. Trump would like to talk to you,” she said.

I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing myself.

Foerderer came back on the line. She said:

“He’s too livid to speak.”

 

 

 

 

ISIS: Our Soldiers are Everywhere

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And a major recruiting center in Europe and Belgium are prisons.

How Belgian prisons became a breeding ground for Islamic extremism

WaPo: LIEGE, Belgium — Stephane Medot knows a thing or two about Belgian prisons. He spent 10 years in them. Arrested for carrying out more than a dozen armed bank robberies, the stocky, bald-headed Medot moved from prison to prison, from one cell of his own to another, until he served out his time.

Along the way, he got a front-row seat in a prison system that has become a breeding ground for violent Muslim extremists. Many of those involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks first did short stints behind bars for relatively petty crimes. And there these wayward young people met proselytizers and appear to have acquired a new, lethal sense of purpose.

A Belgian prison is where Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who helped plan the Paris attacks and who was killed in a police raid in November, met Salah Abdeslam, an alleged Paris attacker who was captured in Brussels this month. Salah’s brother Brahim, who blew himself up in Paris, also served time.

[Probe into Brussels bombings expands across Europe]

Two of the suicide bombers in the Brussels attacks last week, brothers Ibrahim and Khalid el-Bakraoui, had spent time in Belgian prisons for violent offenses that included armed robbery and carjacking.

Medot, now 37, said that from prison to prison, the routine he witnessed was similar. Proselytizing prisoners used exercise hours and small windows in their cells to swap news, copies of the Koran and small favors such as illicit cellphones. Gradually, they won over impressionable youths and taught them to stop drinking and start thinking about perceived injustices such as the invasion of Iraq, the plight of Palestinians or the treatment of their own immigrant families.

The prison guards, who could not understand Arabic, had a “laissez-faire attitude,” he said, and did nothing to stop the pulsating music or political discussions.

“If you’re not a Muslim, you feel the need to adapt to the rules,” said Medot, who is not Muslim. When the hour for prayer arrived, everyone was asked to turn off televisions so as not to disturb the faithful.

For the past year, Belgium’s Ministry of Justice has been planning to change a prison system widely seen as a school for radicals. It is creating two isolated areas, each with room for 20 people, at Hasselt and Ittre prisons for the most radical inmates. At the moment, said ministry spokeswoman Sieghild Lacoere, only five inmates clearly qualify. The segregation is set to begin April 11.

“The best solution for fighting the process of radicalization,” the ministry said in its action plan last year before the Paris and Brussels attacks, is “one part isolation by concentration, completely isolating the radical individuals from the other detainees to avoid a great contamination” and prevent them from “feeding other detainees more of their ideology.”

The ministry also said it would improve living conditions in the overcrowded prisons. Belgium has about 11,000 prisoners, ­Lacoere said, of whom 20 to 30 percent are Muslims, even though Muslims make up only about 6 percent of the population.

France, with Europe’s largest Muslim population, is facing similar problems. It, too, has opened special units, manned by psychologists, historians and sociologists, for potentially violent extremists at five prisons. A year ago it vowed to hire 60 more Muslim chaplains.

[French prisons, hotbeds of radical Islam, get new scrutiny after Paris attacks]

Medot said that changing the culture of prison is difficult. He said that youths “arrive alone, feel alone” and that the older Muslim inmates “attract guys who want to become fuller members of the group.”

Medot was in prison when terrorists attacked London, Madrid and a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. He said many prisoners celebrated what their “brothers” did. Medot said that when discussing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, many would say that “Americans stole the [Middle East’s] oil and that this is revenge and this is just.”

For several months, Medot said, he overlapped with Nizar Trabelsi, a professional soccer player turned al-Qaeda follower who confessed in 2003 to an aborted plot to drive a car packed with explosives into Kleine Brogel, a NATO air base in Belgium where U.S. nuclear missiles are thought to be stored. Trabelsi served 10 years in Belgium and then was extradited to the United States, despite condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights.

“He was one of the guys who was seen as a hero,” Medot said. In prison in Belgium, Trabelsi, a Tunisian, taught Arabic by passing books through the cells’ small windows. Though Medot, considered a flight risk, had his own cell, others stayed in cells with two to five people. Trabelsi also played loud Koranic music and prayers from his cell, as well as recordings of bullets and shooting. The guards did nothing except occasionally ask that he turn down the volume.

“The parents will come and visit, and the detainee will say he wants books, wants to find religion and change his ways,” Medot said, “and parents see that as positive, to take a path away from petty crime, away from drugs, away from alcohol. And they don’t know what is happening on the inside.”

[Security forces missed chances before the Brussels attacks]

But Medot said that the government’s plan to isolate radicals won’t work. Who will decide which prisoners are too radical to stay with other detainees? Won’t they become even more radical in isolation? And what will happen to them when their sentences run out?

Lacoere said the Justice Ministry’s plan includes hiring more experts to “de-radicalize” inmates. She said guards will get special training. She said isolating the radicals isn’t the same as abandoning them; they will get more intensive attention, she said.

Still, she acknowledged, there will be difficult issues. “There is not a lot of knowledge in the academic world on this de-
radicalization. It’s a very hard topic to talk about,” she said. “It’s about influencing people’s ideas, and there’s freedom of speech and thought in our country.”

Salmi Hedi, a Tunisian-born imam, has worked in the Belgian prison system for nearly 20 years trying to de-radicalize inmates. He said Belgium’s 18 penitentiaries share just eight imams and one woman religious counselor. The Justice Ministry has promised 11 more.

He disagrees with the government’s diagnosis and concern about “contamination” by radicals.

“Are they viruses? It is not a constructive view,” Hedi said. “It is very dangerous. If you put these people together, you cannot control them anymore. They will feel stronger.”

Customs Border Patrol in Pacific, Whoa

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US agents nearly caught $194 million worth of cocaine in a narco submarine

US Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations agents had a close call with a high-value target in the Pacific Ocean.

The crew of a P-3 Long Range Tracker, working as part of a joint military-law-enforcement task force, picked up a self-propelled semi-submersible traveling in the eastern Pacific Ocean on March 2.

Agents later intercepted the semi-submersible, on which they found more than 12,800 pounds of cocaine, an amount with an estimated value of $193,939,000, according to a CBP release issued on March 24. US agents arrested four people operating the craft.

The seizure was short-lived however, as the “semi-submersible became unstable and sank,” the CBP said in a release. Semi-submersible crafts used for drug smuggling are also referred to as “narco submarines.”

Despite losing the cargo, the CBP characterized the operation as a success. “Our crews will continue to take every opportunity to disrupt this type of transnational criminal activity,” said John Wassong, the director of the National Air Security Operations Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Semi-submersibles used for smuggling are usually built to travel just below the surface, with just an exhaust pipe, a wheelhouse, and an airstack emerging from the water, according to Vice News. The vessels are often camouflaged, and many of them are constructed in Colombia, a major hub for cocaine production.

View gallery

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narco submarine

(US Customs and Border Patrol)
A semi-submersible transporting drugs was captured at sea last year by US agents, but it sank before it could be fully unloaded.

“Typically crews are made up of an experienced sailor, the so-called “captain” who can also be the person who handles communication with the ‘base,'” Javier Guerrero, a researcher focused on drug-trade technology, told Vice in 2015. “Most likely the crew is made up of experienced sailors,” as well, said Guerrero, and their experience and relationship with the cargo’s owner or the narco sub’s owner determines the command hierarchy on the vessel.

The emphasis traffickers have put on seaborne smuggling is one of the latest logistical and technical developments in the drug trade. Throughout much of 1970s and 1980s, most trafficking routes, via air and sea, transited the Caribbean. As interdiction efforts increased, smugglers switched to land and air routes through Mexico, eventually branching into more intense maritime smuggling.

“They started to build the submarines and they’re still using them, but it’s aircraft, commercial freighters, speedboats. You name it and they have it,” Mike Vigil, the former chief of international operations for the DEA, told Business Insider. “They never settle on one method of transportation or on one route. They’re always exploring.”

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Colombia cocaine submarine

(REUTERS/John Vizcaino)
Counternarcotics police guard an under-construction submersible that was seized from the “Los Urabenos” drugs cartel, in Puerto Escondido, Monteria province October 18, 2011. Colombian authorities said that the submersible ship seized on Monday could be used to carry six tons of cocaine illegally.

In 2012, 80% of the illegal drugs smuggled to the US came on maritime routes, and 30% of the illegal drugs delivered to US shores via the sea were carried on narco submarines, according to a 2014 study cited by Vice News.

In late summer last year, US agents intercepted a semi-submersible laden with roughly eight tons of cocaine. US authorities offloaded about six tons of the illicit cargo before the vessel sank. The capture and subsequent sinking of the narco sub were recorded by the Coast Guard.

Had US agents been able to bring this latest shipment to shore, it would have been one of the more substantial hauls captured in recent months. In early February, Air and Marines Operations agents intercepted a 2,300-pound shipment with an estimated value of $172 million. In early March, CBP agents caught a 154-pound shipment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which had an estimated value of $2 million.

Air and Marine Operations agents took part in 198 seizure, disruption, or interdiction efforts in their 42-million-square-mile operation zone — which spans the Pacific Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico — in fiscal year 2015, capturing over 200,000 pounds of cocaine.

Only 5 Years?

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Prison for smuggler who guided people into U.S.

Efrain Delgado Rosales had been caught with undocumented immigrants 23 times in less than 18 years

UnionTribune: San Diego— An apparent career smuggler nabbed while guiding four undocumented immigrants through the Otay Mountains last year was sentenced Friday to five years in prison.

U.S. Border Patrol agents had caught Efrain Delgado Rosales with undocumented immigrants 23 times in less than 17 years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

His latest encounter came in November, when agents spotted the 35-year-old guiding the foursome through rugged East County terrain.

The four men told authorities that Delgado had picked them up at a stash house in Mexico, led them to the border then left them for several hours. As they waited, thieves turned up and robbed them of all of their cash — thousands of dollars.

Delgado returned and — indifferent to the robbery — guided them over the border and through the mountains. While hiking, he left behind three men who could not keep his pace.

At the begging of the fourth man, he eventually returned to collect the distressed trio, each of whom had paid $5,000 to be smuggled into the country.

The details they gave investigators about their experience with Delgado were strikingly similar to an instance in 2014, when a man smuggled into the country died while hiking in a rugged stretch of the Otay Mountains. One of his companions later identified Delgado as their guide.

Federal prosecutors said agents have apprehended Delgado 24 times since 1999, and in all but one instance, he was found with at least two and up to 46 undocumented immigrants.

*****

Brandon Judd, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council

March 21, 2016:

Obama Administration Official Confirms “Catch and Release” Policy

Border Patrol union chief tells the Judiciary Committee explosive information about the Administration’s policy of releasing unlawful immigrants into U.S.

Washington, D.C.– Following the Immigration and Border Security Subcommittee’s hearing on the ongoing surge at the southwest border, the House Judiciary Committee received information from the head of the Border Patrol union showing that a high-ranking Obama Administration official confirmed to Border Patrol agents the Administration’s policy of releasing recent border crossers with no intention of ever removing them.

In his responses to questions submitted for the record to the Committee, Brandon Judd, President of the American Federation of Government Employees National Border Patrol Council, stated that on August 26, 2015 he and two other Border Patrol agents met with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss concerns about the Administration’s policy of releasing unlawful immigrants into the United States. During the meeting, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas confirmed to the agents that the Administration has no intention of removing unlawful immigrants coming to the border as part of the ongoing surge. Specifically, he stated:

“Why would we [issue a Notice to Appear to] those we have no intention of deporting? We should not place someone in deportation proceedings, when the courts already have a 3-6 year backlog.” 

This de facto policy contradicts the Obama Administration’s so-called enforcement priorities issued on November 20, 2014 by DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. Under the guidelines, unlawful immigrants who came to the United States after January 1, 2014 and recent border crossers are deemed a priority for removal and are to be placed in deportation proceedings. However, Deputy Secretary Mayorkas’ comments to Border Patrol agents contradict the Administration’s own policies put forth by Secretary Johnson.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) issued the following statement on this information provided to the Committee:

“Not only has President Obama sought to undermine our immigration laws at every opportunity possible, now his political appointees have implemented a ‘catch and release’ policy that contradicts the Administration’s already weak enforcement priorities. Rather than take the steps necessary to end the border surge, the Obama Administration is encouraging more to come by forcing Border Patrol agents to release unlawful immigrants into the United States with no intention of ever removing them. 

“The ongoing lack of enforcement and dismantling of our immigration laws undermines both our nation’s immigration system and the American people’s faith in their government.”

What about King Midas?

El Chapo’s money man arrested in Oaxaca

OAXACA, Mexico, March 28 (UPI) — A man reported to be one of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán top money launderers has been arrested, Mexican Federal Police said Sunday.

Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, one of the top money launderers for Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, was captured while vacationing in Oaxaca, Mexico by Mexican Federal Police and the Mexican Army. He is alleged to have laundered about $4 billion over the last ten years. Photo by Mexican Federal Police

Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, 34, alleged to have laundered about $4 billion in the last ten years, was arrested while vacationing in the southern state of Oaxaca, police tweeted.

Police said IInzunza, nicknamed “El Rey Midas” or “King Midas”, laundered about $300 million to $400 million dollars a year from the Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel through a network of companies and currency exchange centers in Mexico, the United States, Columbia and Panama, MSN reported.

IInzunza was arrested on a provisional extradition warrant from the U.S., where he is wanted for money laundering.

Guzmán was one of the heads of the Sinaloa Cartel, considered Mexico’s most profitable drug gang. His escape from a maximum-security prison in Mexico drew world-wide attention in 2015. He was recaptured after a shootout on Jan. 8.