WASHINGTON – A U.S. Immigration Judge in Memphis, Tennessee has issued a removal order against a German citizen and Tennessee resident, based on his service in Nazi Germany in 1945 as an armed guard of concentration camp prisoners in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp system (Neuengamme).
After a two-day trial, U.S. Immigration Judge Rebecca L. Holt issued her opinion finding Friedrich Karl Berger removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act because his “willing service as an armed guard of prisoners at a concentration camp where persecution took place” constituted assistance in Nazi-sponsored persecution. The court found that Berger served at a Neuengamme sub-camp near Meppen, Germany, and that the prisoners there included “Jews, Poles, Russians, Danes, Dutch, Latvians, French, Italians, and political opponents” of the Nazis.
Judge Holt found that Meppen prisoners were held during the winter of 1945 in “atrocious” conditions and were exploited for outdoor forced labor, working “to the point of exhaustion and death.” The court further found, and Berger admitted, that he guarded prisoners to prevent them from escaping during their dawn-to-dusk workday, and on their way to and from the worksites. At the end of March 1945, with the advance of British and Canadian forces, the Nazis abandoned Meppen. The court found that Berger helped guard the prisoners during their forcible evacuation to the Neuengamme main camp – a nearly two-week trip under inhumane conditions which claimed the lives of some 70 prisoners.
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Built in December 1938 by one hundred inmates transferred from Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Neuengamme concentration camp was established around an empty brickworks in Hamburg-Neuengamme. The bricks produced there were to be used for the “Fuehrer buildings”, part of the National Socialists’ redevelopment plans for the river Elbe in Hamburg.
Until June 4th, 1940, Neuengamme was a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen. At this date Neuengamme became an independent concentration camp, under the direct control of the overseer of concentration camps. The prisoners worked on the construction of the camp and the brickworks, regulating the flow of the Dove-Elbe river and the building of a branch canal, as well as on the mining of clay. The number of inmates increased dramatically in only a few months: in 1940, the population of the camp was 2,000 prisoners (with a proportion of 80% German inmates among them), Between 1940 and 1945, more than 95,000 prisoners were incarcerated in Neuengamme. On April 10th, 1945, the number of prisoners in the camp itself was 13,500. More than 2,000 men and 10,300 women were working in the different sub-camps depending on Neuengamme SS administration.
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“Berger was part of the SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division. “This ruling shows the Department’s continued commitment to obtaining a measure of justice, however late, for the victims of wartime Nazi persecution.”
The investigation was initiated by DOJ’s Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section (HRSP) and was conducted in partnership with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center and HSI’s Nashville Special Agent in Charge office.
“The investigation of human rights violations and those who engage in these heinous acts, continues to be a focus for Homeland Security Investigations and this successful outcome is an example of those efforts” stated Jerry C. Templet Jr, Special Agent in Charge, HSI Nashville.
The removal case was jointly tried by attorneys in ICE New Orleans Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (Memphis), and attorneys from DOJ’s HRSP, with the assistance of the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center.
Established in 2009, ICE’s Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center furthers ICE’s efforts to identify, locate and prosecute human rights abusers in the United States, including those who are known or suspected to have participated in persecution, war crimes, genocide, torture, extrajudicial killings, female genital mutilation and the use or recruitment of child soldiers. The HRVWCC leverages the expertise of a select group of agents, lawyers, intelligence and research specialists, historians and analysts who direct the agency’s broader enforcement efforts against these offenders.
Since 2003, ICE has arrested more than 450 individuals for human rights-related violations of the law under various criminal and/or immigration statutes. During that same period, ICE obtained deportation orders against and physically removed 1034 known or suspected human rights violators from the United States. Additionally, ICE has facilitated the departure of an additional 160 such individuals from the United States.
Currently, HSI has more than 180 active investigations into suspected human rights violators and is pursuing more than 1,640 leads and removal cases involving suspected human rights violators from 95 different countries. Since 2003, The HRVWCC has issued more than 76,000 lookouts for individuals from more than 110 countries and stopped over 315 human rights violators and war crimes suspects from entering the U.S.
Category Archives: Trump Administration
Pro Bono Lawyer Assigned to Roger Stone’s Jurors
There is a lawsuit filed by citizen journalist well known to many as Mike Cernovich. He is seeking voir dire of the jurors in the Roger Stone trial. Translation of that term is ‘preliminary questions’. Each juror is required to complete a questionnaire prior to being assigned to a case. This particular motion filed by Cernovich has the focus on Tomeka Hart, the anti-Trump juror in question. Cernovich argues that her public social media posts obstructed her duty as a juror for a fair and impartial decision in the case.
To read the 9 page Cernovich motion for access to the preliminary questions, click here.
The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has chosen Alan Raul from the law firm Sidley Austin to represent the jurors free of charge. Judge Berman only provided one reason for assigning the pro bono lawyer and that was in the interest of justice and a full and fair resolution. Raul is a member of the ABA Cybersecurity Legal Task Force and Center for Democracy. Before his time at Sidley Austin, Raul was general council for the Office of Management and Budget as well as the Department of Agriculture.
But wait…he does not like President Trump either and have some real issues with Attorney General Bill Barr. Imagine that.
You see there is an organization called ‘Checks and Balances’ made up of allegedly conservative/libertarian lawyers. Alan Raul is part of that organization. This is a real issue within the White House. How so you ask?
Conservative attorney George Conway, husband of White House advisor Kellyanne Conway, has been vocal about his distaste for his wife’s boss, Donald Trump. He has been known to subtweet the president and has said he regrets introducing his wife to Trump at all. And now, he’s helped to form a group for conservative and libertarian lawyers who argue Trump is undermining the rule of law.
The 14 founding members of Checks and Balances are prominent attorneys—law professors, private practitioners, and former government lawyers—who say they are “standing up for the principles of constitutional governance.” Their mission statement explains:
We believe in the rule of law, the power of truth, the independence of the criminal justice system, the imperative of individual rights, and the necessity of civil discourse. We believe these principles apply regardless of the party or persons in power. We believe in “a government of laws, not of men.”
Swell huh? Hold on…it gets worse:
Orin Kerr, another founding member of Checks and Balances, is a professor at the University of Southern California’s law school and former trial attorney in the Department of Justice. He is also an active voice on Twitter, where he is frequently critical of the president. Hat tip Quartz.
The President is a seventh grader. https://t.co/48ieFkyfbW
— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) November 18, 2018
Back To Raul however. He did sign a previous Checks and Balances letter last October that was quite supportive of the Trump impeachment and critical of President Trump when it came to holding military aid to Ukraine for political purposes. Judge Jackson in court hearing the arguments for a new trial for Roger Stone, real aloud online commentary by President Trump and made several references to Tucker Carlson. Judge Jackson is expressing concern for the safety of the Stone trial jurors. She has not yet ruled on the motion by Roger Stone and his lawyer for a new trial. This article is a summary from Law.com.
DOJ New Unit to Strip US Citizenship of Criminals and Terrorists
Hoorah…it is a great start.
new unit staffed with an estimated 30 lawyers will review cases that point to those that fraudulently obtained citizenship by failing to disclose past convictions for serious crimes — including terrorism and war crimes.
The section, which will be within the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation, will be dedicated to denaturalizing those who had failed to disclose they had been involved in criminal activity on their N-400 form for naturalization. It requires the government to show that citizenship was obtained illegally or “procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.”
That form includes questions asking whether an applicant has been involved in genocide and torture among other serious crimes, if they have ever been part of a terrorist or totalitarian organization, if they had been associated with the Nazi government in Germany, and if they have been charged or convicted with a crime or served prison time. Targets for denaturalization are those who have made material breaches of those questions.
“When a terrorist or sex offender becomes a U.S. citizen under false pretenses, it is an affront to our system — and it is especially offensive to those who fall victim to these criminals,” Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said. “The new Denaturalization Section will further the Department’s efforts to pursue those who unlawfully obtained citizenship status and ensure that they are held accountable for their fraudulent conduct.”
The department has seen an increase in such cases both because of an increased effort by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to root out fraud, as well as Operation Janus — an operation which began during the Obama administration and that identified hundreds of thousands of cases where paper fingerprint data was not entered into the centralized fingerprint database.
Officials have pointed to recent cases whereby the DOJ has secured the denaturalization of terrorists, war criminals and sex offenders. They include:
- An individual convicted of terrorism in Egypt who admitted recruiting for Al Qaeda in the U.S. He was denaturalized while in Egypt and had his passport taken away from him.
- An individual who received military training in an Afghan jihadist camp and coordinated with 9/11 mastermind Usama Bin Laden. He “self-deported” to Somaliland.
- An individual who was convicted in Bosnia of executing eight unarmed civilians and prisoners of war during the Balkans conflict. He was denaturalized while serving a sentence in Bosnia.
- One individual who engaged in sexual contact with a 7-year-old family member and another who sexually abused a minor for multiple years.
The department has filed 228 civil denaturalization cases since 2008, and 94 since 2017. Officials say it has increased its filing rate by 200 percent in the past three years and has seen an increase in referrals by over 600 percent.
Such denaturalization proceedings are not targeted at people who commit crimes after they become citizens, only those who have made fraudulent citizenship applications and left out crimes they committed on that form. A number of cases involve those who were initially denied entry to the U.S. or removed from the country, only to re-enter under a false identity.
Citizens cannot be deported, but those who have been stripped of citizenship revert back to permanent residency status, which allows deportation or barring of entry from the U.S. in the case of serious criminal offenses. Source
AG Sessions Lawsuit and Big Win for President Trump
A 3 judge panel…unanimous decision by the way.
The program began in 2006. The Federal government created a grant assistance program for states, local and tribal governments to reduce crime and violence….let that sink it. It is called the Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program….let that sink in….justice.
This would have been easy to argue in court actually to stop the violators from receiving the grants. Just understand the simple premise —>
BJA helps to make American communities safer by strengthening the nation’s criminal justice system: Its grants, training and technical assistance, and policy development services provide state, local, and tribal governments with the cutting edge tools and best practices they need to reduce violent and drug-related crime, support law enforcement, and combat victimization.
BJA is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office for Victims of Crime, and Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking.
FILE – In this Tuesday, March 20, 2018 file photo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, left, speaks during a roundtable talks on sanctuary cities hosted by President Donald Trump, third from right, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in Washington. The Trump administration can withhold millions of dollars in law enforcement grants to force states to cooperate with U.S. immigration enforcement, a federal appeals court in New York ruled Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020 in a decision that conflicted with three other federal appeals courts. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Anyway…
(AP) — The Trump administration can withhold millions of dollars in law enforcement grants to force states to cooperate with U.S. immigration enforcement, a federal appeals court in New York ruled Wednesday in a decision that conflicted with three other federal appeals courts.
The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned a lower court’s decision ordering the administration to release funding to New York City and seven states — New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia and Rhode Island.
The states and city sued the U.S. government after the Justice Department announced in 2017 that it would withhold grant money from cities and states until they gave federal immigration authorities access to jails and provide advance notice when someone in the country illegally is about to be released.
Before the change, cities and states seeking grant money were required only to show they were not preventing local law enforcement from communicating with federal authorities about the immigration status of people who were detained.
At the time, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said: “So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes.”
In 2018, the Justice Department imposed additional conditions on the grant money, though challenges to those have not yet reached the appeals court in New York.
The 2nd Circuit said the plain language of relevant laws make clear that the U.S. attorney general can impose conditions on states and municipalities receiving money.
And it noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly observed that the federal government maintains broad power over states when it comes to immigration policies.
In the past two years, federal appeals courts in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco have ruled against the federal government by upholding lower-court injunctions placed on the enforcement of some or all of the challenged conditions.
“While mindful of the respect owed to our sister circuits, we cannot agree that the federal government must be enjoined from imposing the challenged conditions on the federal grants here at issue,” the 2nd Circuit three-judge panel said in a decision written by Judge Reena Raggi.
“These conditions help the federal government enforce national immigration laws and policies supported by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. But more to the authorization point, they ensure that applicants satisfy particular statutory grant requirements imposed by Congress and subject to Attorney General oversight,” the appeals court said.
The Justice Department praised the decision, issuing a statement calling it a “major victory for Americans” and saying it recognizes that the attorney general has authority to ensure that grant recipients are not thwarting federal law enforcement priorities.
The department added that the ruling’s effect will be limited because other courts have ruled the other way, giving the plaintiffs in the New York case the opportunity to point to those as reasons to ignore the new conditions.
Cody Wofsy, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, called the decision a “real outlier,” saying he believed the 2nd Circuit was the nation’s first court to side with the Trump administration on the issue.
“Over and over, courts have said the Department of Justice doesn’t have authority under governing statutes to impose these conditions,” he said. “These conditions are part of the administration’s attempts to bully, cajole and coerce state and local governments into participating in federal immigration enforcement activities.”
Under the Constitution’s federalism principles and the 10th Amendment, Wofsy said, states and municipalities “are entitled to decline to become part of the administration’s deportation force.”
The appeals rulings pertain to the issuance of the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program.
Operation Mega Flex
From July to September last year, Customs and Border Patrol in that 3 month period seized 1061 shipments of counterfeit goods at our cargo ports of entry. Items from Louis Vuitton bags to sports equipment with faulty parts. Other items included children’s toys, drug paraphernalia, deadly opioids, and really scary were (are) counterfeit drivers’ licenses. Recreational drugs, clothing, jewelry and even food and nutritional items (may contain toxins) are part of the counterfeit items affecting likely every American and business.
Unlike legitimate drug manufacturers that are subject to inspections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, labs that manufacture counterfeits have no such oversight. According to a 2019 Better Business Bureau study, “companies based in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India shipped 97 percent of the counterfeit medicines seized in the U.S.”In March 2019, Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, seized 13 million doses of counterfeit medicine ranging from opioids to heart medication. Europol noted that this type of counterfeiting is on the rise due to the relatively low risk of criminal detection.
Check those items in retail operations of all sorts and locations and what you purchase in the e-commerce realm, not the from the street vendor at the corner and when purchasing books, movies or music, you could be in real trouble for a transaction that violates copyright protected work.
Watches and jewelry follow at 13 percent of total seizures. During the Mega Flex operation on August 21, 2019, for example, CBP officers seized counterfeit Rolex watches valued at over $1.4 million. Handbags and wallets represented nearly 11 percent of all seizures, including counterfeits of luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, and Gucci. Consumer electronicsrepresented 10 percent of seizures, including products such as iPhones, hover boards, earbuds, microchips, and others. Pharmaceuticals and personal care items account for only 7 percent of total seizures. However, as discussed in the next section, many of the products in these categories pose significant dangers to the consumer. Fake prescription drugs can lack active ingredients, contain incorrect dosages, or include dangerous additives. Fake personal care items such as cosmetics have been found to contain everything from harmful bacteria to human waste. Between 2017 and 2018, CBP and ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized over $31 million in fake perfumes from China.
Law enforcement officials have uncovered intricate links between the sale of counterfeit goods and transnational organized crime. A study by the Better Business Bureau notes that the financial operations supporting counterfeit goods typically require central coordination, making these activities attractive for organized crime, with groups such as the Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza heavily involved. Criminal organizations use coerced and child labor to manufacture and sell counterfeit goods. In some cases, the proceeds from counterfeit sales may be supporting terrorism and dictatorships throughout the world.
In FY 2018, 12 percent of DHS seizures included counterfeit versions of critical technological components, automotive and aerospace parts, batteries, and machinery. Each of these industrial sectors have been identified as critical to the defense industrial base, and thus critical to national security. One example drawn from a 2018 study by the Bureau of Industry and Security within the Department of Commerce featured the import of counterfeit semiconductors or “Trojan chips” for use in defense manufacturing and operations. Such Trojan chips can carry viruses or malware that infiltrate and weaken American national security. The problem of counterfeit chips has become so pervasive that the Department of Defense has referred to it as an “invasion.” Companies from China are the primary producers of counterfeit electronics.
According to a 2019 report, Instagram and Counterfeiting, nearly 20 percent of the posts analyzed about fashion products on Instagram featured counterfeit or illicit products. More than 50,000 Instagram accounts were identified as promoting and selling counterfeits, a 171 percent increase from a prior 2016 analysis. Instagram’s Story feature, where content disappears in twenty-four hours, was singled out as particularly effective for counterfeit sellers.