Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

Obama, He Freed Them and They Kill

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How about next we pass a law in Congress, that it is against the law not to follow and apply the law? Imagine the government savings….and especially the lives saved….

Free to Kill: 124 Criminal Aliens Released By Obama Policies Charged with Homicide Since 2010

Vaughn, CIS: In response to congressional inquiries, ICE has released information on some of the criminal aliens who have been released by the agency since 2010. Specifically, ICE provided information on aliens who were charged with homicides after being released and aliens who were released multiple times by ICE.

The criminal aliens released by ICE in these years — who had already been convicted of thousands of crimes — are responsible for a significant crime spree in American communities, including 124 aliens charged with 135 new homicides. Inexplicably, ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple times.

Only a tiny percentage of the released criminals have been removed — most receive the most generous forms of due process available, and are allowed to remain at large, without supervision, while they await drawn-out immigration hearings. They are permitted to take advantage of this inefficient processing even though they are more likely to re-offend than they are to be granted legal status.

There is a human cost to the Obama administration’s careless catch and release policies for criminal aliens, euphemistically known as “prioritization”. These policies have led to 124 new homicides since 2010, and thousands of other crimes that harm citizens and degrade the quality of life in American communities.

124 Aliens Charged With Homicide After Release Since 2010

A total of 121 criminal aliens who were freed by ICE over the five-year period between 2010 and 2014 were subsequently charged with homicide-related crimes within that time frame. (Three more were charged in 2015; see below.) These 121 accused murderers were associated with 250 different communities in the United States, with the most clustered in California, New York and Texas.

 

Source: ICE information provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
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Some aliens had multiple zip codes associated with them in ICE’s system, so the records include more zip codes than the 121 individual criminal aliens charged through 2014. (Three more were charged in 2015; ICE did not provide their zip codes.)

These aliens were charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes after release. Two of them had homicide-related convictions even before they were released.

These aliens had 464 criminal convictions prior to release by ICE, ranging from drug crimes to DUI and other driving offenses to larceny and theft.

Another three aliens who were released by ICE during that time were charged with homicides during the first 10 months of FY2015, bring the total number of criminals aliens released by ICE who subsequently were charged with homicide to 124.

This tally does not include aliens who were released by sanctuary jurisdictions, nor those aliens that were released by local law enforcement agencies after ICE declined to take them into custody due to Obama administration prioritization policies. This list includes only those aliens that ICE arrested and then released.

The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015 Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes.

Aliens Released By ICE on Multiple Occasions Since 2013 Commit Hundreds of New Crimes

ICE reported that there are 156 criminal aliens who were released at least twice by ICE since 2013. Between them, these criminals had 1,776 convictions before their first release in 2013, with burglary, larceny, and drug possession listed most frequently.

The vast majority (124) of these criminal aliens were released in California. In addition, 16 were released in Arizona, six in Texas, three in Florida, two in Georgia, and one each in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon.

These criminal aliens racked up a total of 243 additional convictions after being freed by ICE. The largest number (24) were for drunk or drugged driving, but they also included drug offenses, burglary, theft and larceny, and sex offenses.

ICE further disclosed that 47 of the recidivist aliens who were released at least twice had since been charged with an additional 106 crimes since their most recent release. So far, 20 have been convicted of crimes including burglary, dangerous drugs, DUI, fraud, and assault on a police officer.

Why Were They Released?

ICE has previously disclosed that 75 percent of the homicidal criminal aliens were released due to court orders, including the so-called Zadvydas cases, in which the alien’s home country would not take them back. The rest were released by ICE’s choice.

Of the 156 recidivists that ICE released at least twice, fewer than half (67) were released because their home country would not take them back, 16 were released on bond by an immigration judge, and 73 were released by ICE’s choice. ICE says it tried to contest only one of the releases ordered by an immigration judge — meaning that ICE essentially consented to more than half of these releases.

Of the 156, a total of 88 were released under “supervision”, 40 were released on bond, and 28 were released on an order of recognizance (without supervision).

In a separate communication, ICE provided a list of the countries that currently are uncooperative in accepting their deported citizens: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

Criminal Aliens Released in 2014 Were Convicted of 2,560 New Crimes

In 2014, ICE released a total of 30,558 criminal aliens from its custody. These aliens had already been convicted of 92,347 crimes before they were released by ICE.

As of July 25, 2015, a total of 1,895 aliens have been charged with a crime after being freed by ICE. As of that date, 1,607 aliens had been convicted of a crime after being freed by ICE. The total number of new crimes for which these aliens were convicted after ICE released them was 2,560.

These 2,560 new crimes by aliens ICE released instead of deported in 2014 include: 298 dangerous drug offenses, 185 assaults, 40 weapons offenses, 28 sex offenses, 10 sex assaults, four kidnappings, two arsons, and one homicide. There were 1,044 traffic offenses included in the list.

Only 3 percent of the Criminal Aliens Released in 2014 Have Been Removed

As of July 25, 2015, only 974 (3 percent) of the 30,558 criminal aliens freed by ICE in 2014 have been removed. Presumably some of these aliens are again incarcerated or in ICE custody following conviction for the 2,560 new crimes after their release by ICE.

However, ICE reports that 28,017 still had a pending immigration case as of July 25, 2015, suggesting that many of these released criminal aliens will remain here for some time under Obama administration policies that allow them to elect for drawn-out immigration court proceedings rather than accelerated forms of due process and removal.

In addition, there were 1,567 of these released criminal aliens who have been allowed to stay in the United States.

ICE’s full response to the Judiciary Committee’s inquiries can be found here.

Improved Reporting on Immigration Status of Criminals Needed

The public should not have to rely on members of Congress to demand information from federal immigration agencies about criminal aliens. Immigration status should be reported on a routine basis by all law enforcement agencies, so that federal authorities can respond appropriately when an alien is arrested, and so that the public can determine the true public safety impact of immigration policy. Legislation has been introduced by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) that would remedy this problem.

By Summer: The Final Benghazi Cmte Report Published

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Timing is everything and yet there are still a handful of additional investigations still to come.

A big question that remains unanswered is where on Ahmed Abu Khattallah, the only attacker that has been arrested.

According to a press release from the Justice Department:

PBS: “The superseding indictment describes Khatallah’s alleged role in the attacks at a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi and a second U.S. facility there, known as the annex. According to the superseding indictment, Khatallah was a leader of an extremist militia group and he conspired with others to attack the facilities, kill U.S. citizens, destroy buildings and other property, and plunder materials, including documents, maps and computers containing sensitive information.

“The offenses that could carry death sentences include one count of murder of an internationally protected person; three counts of murder of an officer and employee of the United States; four counts of killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility involving the use of a firearm and a dangerous weapon; and two counts of maliciously damaging and destroying U.S. property by means of fire and an explosive causing death.”

In the indictment, the U.S. alleges that Khatallah undertook the attack because he had learned the United States had two intelligence facilities in Benghazi.

House Benghazi probe: Report by summer, factor for Clinton

WASHINGTON (AP) – Nearly two years after it was created, the House Benghazi Committee is plowing ahead, interviewing witnesses, reviewing documents and promising a final report “before summer” that is certain to have repercussions for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency.

The panel’s Republican chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said in an email to The Associated Press that the committee has made “considerable progress” investigating the deadly 2012 attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

Gowdy declined to elaborate specifically on what progress has been made beyond listing new witnesses and documents.

The Benghazi inquiry has gone on longer than the 9/11 Commission took to investigate the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, spending more than $6 million in the process, Democrats said. They say the only goal of the investigation is to undermine Clinton’s candidacy.

Gowdy declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that the committee had advanced in its inquiry in recent weeks, after interviewing national security adviser Susan Rice; her deputy, Ben Rhodes, and other witnesses. Former CIA Director David Petraeus and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are among those who have testified before the panel in closed-door sessions at the Capitol.

Many of the witnesses, including Rice and Rhodes, had not been interviewed before by a congressional committee, Gowdy said. The panel has interviewed a total of 83 witnesses since its creation in May 2014, including 65 never before questioned by lawmakers, he said in an email to The Associated Press.

The committee also has gained access to documents from the State Department and CIA and to a cache of emails from Clinton and Stevens, who was killed on Sept. 11, 2012 in twin attacks on the diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi.

“The American people and the families of the victims deserve the truth, and I’m confident the value and fairness of our investigation will be abundantly clear to everyone when they see the report for themselves,” Gowdy said in an email, promising the report “as soon as possible, before summer.”

Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks, dismissed the panel’s work, noting at a recent Democratic debate that she testified before Gowdy and other lawmakers for nearly 11 hours last fall.

“Anybody who watched that and listened to it knows that I answered every question that I was asked, and when it was over the Republicans had to admit they didn’t learn anything,” Clinton said.

She was referring to Gowdy’s comments immediately after the Oct. 22 hearing in which he struggled to explain what the committee – and the American public – learned from the marathon session. “I don’t know that she testified that much differently than she has the previous times that she’s testified,” he said.

Democrats are skeptical about Gowdy and the GOP members finishing their report in a few months, noting that the committee has blown through other self-imposed deadlines.

“The only real deadline is the presidential election” in November, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the Benghazi panel and a longtime Gowdy critic.

Schiff dismissed Gowdy’s claim that new witnesses and documents have led to progress in the investigation. “They have a number of new witnesses and a number of new documents, but no new facts,” he said.

“I don’t think there are new meaningful facts to uncover at this point,” after seven previous congressional investigations and an independent panel led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Schiff said.

Schiff serves on the House intelligence committee, which completed its investigation in 2014.

The Pickering-Mullen report said security at the Benghazi compound was “grossly inadequate” and that requests for security improvements were not acted upon in Washington. Subsequent congressional reports debunked various claims, including a “stand down” order to the military.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the Benghazi committee’s senior Democrat, said the 22-month-old panel is “nothing more than a taxpayer-funded effort to bring harm to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Republicans say the committee has been hindered by stonewalling by the State Department and other executive branch agencies. And they say Schiff and other Democrats have done more carping about the committee than constructive work on its behalf.

Still, Republican insistence that the investigation is not politically motivated was undermined last year when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested that the Benghazi panel could take credit for Clinton’s slumping poll numbers.

Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., a member of the Benghazi committee, said Clinton’s testimony was the most visible, but not necessarily the most important, aspect of the panel’s work.

“We want to know what went wrong between the secretary of state, Defense Department, White House and CIA,” Brooks said at a Rotary Club meeting last week in Anderson, Ind. The Herald Bulletin of Anderson reported on the event.

“We want to prevent this from happening again, which is what the families of the victims want,” Brooks said, according to the newspaper.

al Qaeda in Maghreb Attacks Ivory Coast, Americans

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FNC: The terrorist attack in the Ivory Coast Sunday most likely targeted a US delegation led by the assistant commerce secretary visiting the country, a diplomatic source in the region tells Fox News. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Marcus Jadotte was leading a group of Americans in Grand-Bassam, located 25 miles east of the capital city of Abidjan, including college recruiters from the University of Florida. US embassy officials from Abidjan were also included in the group, according to the source.

Eyewitnesses describe Ivory Coast beach resort atrocity

Western tourists and beachgoers described scenes of panic and carnage on Sunday as Al Qaeda-linked gunmen opened fire killing 16 people at a usually sleepy seaside town in Ivory Coast before special forces intervened.

France24:  Grand-Bassam, a UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts foreigners and the Ivorian elite, briefly became a war zone Sunday as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) gunmen shot beachgoers.

“We were eating, when suddenly we heard gunshots. People where running in all directions and we didn’t know what was going on”, one witness told FRANCE 24.

“The shots started getting closer and we saw people coming our way. I told my wife ‘we can’t stay here’, and 20 seconds after that they killed three people behind us”, he said.

“It was truly, truly, terrifying, it was indeed terrorists,” eyewitness Marie-Claire Yapi, who was separated from her nine-month old baby and her sister in the chaos, told FRANCE 24. “Someone said to me: ‘Run, this is serious – they are killing everyone.’”

Ivorian officials said six terrorists stormed the beach, but AQIM praised its three “heroes” for the attack in an online statement.

‘A blast every 10 to 15 seconds’

“It all started down by the beach, as soon as they saw someone they would open fire. Everyone began running. There were women and children running and looking for a place to hide,” witness Marie Bassole told Reuters.

Koumena Kakou Bertin said that he heard the attackers shouting “Allahu Akbar”, Arabic for “God is great”, as they sprayed the beach with bullets.

Charles-Philippe d’Orleans, a retired French army officer who served in the Ivory Coast, was also on the beach at the moment of the attack.

“We could hear a blast every 10 to 15 seconds. They were shooting at us and the bullets were flying everywhere”, he told French weekly Paris Match.

“I did not hear shouts of ‘Allahu Akbar’, nor did I hear repeated bursts of gunfire that are usual for automatic weapons. I think they had handguns, like 9 mm or Magnums” he added.

Beach packed due to heatwave

After targetting swimmers and sunbathers, the gunmen turned their attention to hotels near the shore, including the Grand Bassam’s Chelsea Hotel and the Hotel Etoile du Sud.

The Etoile du Sud was packed full of beachgoers and expats escaping the current heatwave when the gunmen attacked.

“I saw one of the attackers from far away”, said Abbas El-Roz, a Lebanese salesman, who was swimming in the hotel’s pool when the attackers struck. “He had a Kalashnikov and a grenade belt. He was looking for people”.

Ivorians and Europeans among victims

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara praised special forces for regaining control of the situation in a relatively short amount of time. “This attack was brought under control in 45 minutes thanks to our security forces”, he said on national television.

Two special forces soldiers were killed in the gun battle with the attackers, Ivorian officials said.

Four Europeans were also among the dead, with France’s foreign ministry confirming that one French national died in the attack.

The assault itself resembled the terrorist attack on a Tunisian beach resort in June 2015, and comes on the heels of similar deadly incidents in Mali and Burkina Faso.

“Most of the victims are Africans, Africans from Ivory Coast or from neighbouring countries”, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a statement on Sunday.

“So it is one again Africa that has been targeted by terrorism”, he added.

However, FRANCE 24’s expert on jihadi movements Wassim Nasr, said the attack should be considered part of al Qaeda’s war against the West, and France in particular.

“They target wherever they see French interests, or French or [other] Western citizens. They are trying to export their war to Western Africa. So I suspect that more attacks will happen in this region”, Nasr added.

Additional details here.

Watch: GOP Convention. Delegates Rule 40

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In part from Rush Limbaugh:

There are many interpretations and variations of rule 40.  For example, it’s not just a candidate has to get 1,237 and if nobody does, it’s wide open.  Even at that point, even if nobody gets 1,237, you still have to have won a majority of eight states to be eligible to win the nomination.  Did you know that?

However, rule 40 can be changed the day before the convention by the Republican Party.  And there is a party convention meeting in April, and if it looks like whatever eventuality is gonna happen, they can easily change that eight states to two.  They could change it to four in order to make everybody eligible.  Let’s say they want Rubio and Rubio does not win a majority of delegates in eight states.  This is not the 20% threshold we’re talking about.  We’re talking about a majority.  If he doesn’t, then there’s no way that even if Trump doesn’t get to 1,237, there’s no way that Rubio would be eligible, according to rule 40.

However, they can change rule 40 the day before the convention.  That’s also in the rule!  Rule 40 basically says what it says today, and has the provision that they can rewrite it and say whatever they want it to say the day of the convention or the day before. (interruption) Well, it’s their convention, Snerdley.  It’s the Republican Party’s convention.  They can write whatever rules they want.  And they have given themselves all kinds of outs and latitude and leeway to write new rules whenever they need them.  (interruption) It’s exactly right, why they don’t trust — and this is what Cruz is talking about.  If they start messing around like this, it’s all over.

Full transcript here.

Rules of the Convention are here and Rule 30 is important.

$500 Million State Dept Climate Change Collusion

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Senators accuse State Dept. of defying Congress with $500M UN climate payment

FNC: Two Republican senators are accusing the State Department of misusing taxpayer dollars by green-lighting $500 million for a United Nations climate change program without first obtaining congressional approval.

The senators now are demanding the department justify the “cloak-and-dagger” contribution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) – even threatening legal action.

“Lawyers cannot replace the constitutional requirement that only Congress can appropriate money,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said, adding that he’s demanding a “full legal analysis.”

Gardner, in a statement to FoxNews.com, alleged the department was trying to “wave a magic wand and write a half-billion dollar check to a Green Climate Fund that they admit was never authorized by Congress.”

He also vowed to “pursue legislative action that prevents cloak-and-dagger re-programming of money outside of congressional approval.”

At the center of the dispute is whether the State Department abused its authority in shifting funds between an existing program and the climate fund.

The Obama administration – despite resistance from congressional Republicans — has committed the U.S. to contributing $3 billion to the fund, a program established by the United Nations to help poor countries adopt clean energy technologies to address climate change. Nearly 200 other nations have agreed to provide $100 billion per year by 2020, from private and public sources.

Along with Gardner, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., maintains Congress has not allocated any funding for what he calls the “international climate change slush fund” and has in fact “prohibited the transfer of funds to create new programs.”

The State Department acknowledges the funding was never explicitly approved by Congress – but argues the department was within its authority to shift funding to the Green Climate Fund, because Congress did not explicitly prohibit funding the GCF.  

Under questioning by Barrasso at a March 8 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom told the committee the funds were diverted from the department’s Economic Support Fund — which provides economic funding to foreign countries — to the GCF after a full review by department lawyers.

State Department spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff also confirmed to FoxNews.com the source of the funding was the economic fund, but could not say from which exact program the money came.

And she bluntly addressed the GOP senators’ accusation. “Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No,” she said, adding that department lawyers “reviewed the authority and the process under which we can do it.”

The administration, meanwhile, has requested another $750 million for the GCF in its fiscal 2017 budget.

Higginbottom also insisted they were not required to notify Congress about the transfer from the Economic Support Fund.

At the hearing, though, Barrasso said the first installment of the $3 billion pledge was “a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Barrasso said because the GCF technically is a new program and not authorized by Congress, the department may have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

According to Politico, Barrasso is prepared to go to court over the issue and to seek prosecution of individuals if they are found to have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act.

The Wyoming senator’s communications director, Bronwyn Lance Chester, confirmed to FoxNews.com that “all options are being considered.”

The department may have been able to effectively use a loophole to contribute the money – namely, because Congress did not include specific language barring spending to the GCF. Analysts say this dispute could have been avoided if Congress had simply included a specific prohibition on spending for the climate fund.

“The problem is that the horse has already left the barn. There was not a specific line item in the budget prohibiting spending on the GCF. I am sure [State Department lawyers] have come up with some creative way to fund it, but it would not be an issue if Congress had explicitly prohibited it,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the Heartland Institute.

Senate Republicans backed away from including a specific rider in last year’s omnibus bill after President Obama threatened to veto if such a rider were included.

“They were gutless,” said Burnett, who noted the first installment is a “drop in the bucket” when compared with the $3 billion.

Because the omnibus spending bill was silent on the GCF, the White House argued this left the door open for the administration to fund the U.N. program. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in December “there are no restrictions in our ability to make good on the president’s promise to contribute to the Green Climate Fund.”

Gardner and Barrasso also were signatories to a letter sent last year to Obama asserting the deal reached at a United Nations climate change conference in Paris, including the $100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund, must be submitted to Congress for approval before any funding could be made.