Post Sandy Hook Gun Laws to Judges

Posted on June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 by Denise Simon

Post-Sandy Hook Gun Laws to Reach Justices Days After Orlando Shooting

Second Circuit upheld Connecticut restrictions on military-style rifles. But justices haven’t shown a recent interest in gun cases.

NationalLawJournal: With the worst mass shooting in American history in the background, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 16 will take its first look at a challenge to Connecticut’s ban on military-style firearms. But as past actions show, the justices may have little interest in revisiting Second Amendment disputes, including the regulation of the AR-15-style weapon reportedly used in the Orlando shootings that killed at least 50 people at a night club.

Since its landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, the high court has declined numerous requests by gun rights advocates to examine the scope of protection for firearms—from concealed carry bans to open carry and guns on campus.

One possible reason? Lower courts have largely been uniform in upholding firearm restrictions. Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told The National Law Journal last year that the circuit courts haven’t split on any significant issues.

In the Connecticut case, Shew v. Malloy, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and others challenged a law the state passed in the aftermath of the 2012 mass killing of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooter, Adam Lanza, fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes from an AR-15 military-style rifle.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the challenged provisions in October.

The Supreme Court last year was presented a chance to take up a Chicago suburb’s assault-weapon ban. In December, the court, with justices Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia dissenting, denied review in Friedman v. City of Highland Park, Illinois. The decision left in place a Seventh Circuit ruling that upheld the city’s ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines.

Highland Park defined an “assault weapon” as a semiautomatic firearm with one of five specific features and with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition. A large capacity magazine is an “ammunition feeding device with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds,” according to the ordinance.

Thomas dissented from the denial of review. He said the Heller decision asks “whether the law bans types of firearms commonly used for a lawful purpose—regardless of whether alternatives exist. And Heller draws a distinction between such firearms and weapons specially adapted to unlawful uses and not in common use, such as sawed-off shotguns.”

Thomas said Highland Park’s ban “is thus highly suspect because it broadly prohibits common semiautomatic firearms used for lawful purposes. Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting.”

California, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Hawaii, have bans similar to Highland Park’s law.

In June 2015, with Thomas and Scalia again dissenting, the justices declined to review Jackson v. City and County of San Francisco. The Ninth Circuit in that case upheld certain restrictions on handguns kept in the home.

The Ninth Circuit acted again on June 10 in Peruta v. County of San Diego, holding there is no Second Amendment right for private citizens to carry concealed weapons in public.

The Connecticut case that the justices have scheduled for their June 16 conference was filed by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and others. They are represented by the same lawyers who brought the Illinois challenge—including David Thompson of Washington’s Cooper & Kirk.

Thompson argues the Supreme Court’s ruling in Heller applies to firearms “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”

Under Heller’s reasoning, he said, “law-abiding citizens also must be permitted to use the arms at issue in this case, which include AR-15s, the nation’s most popular semi-automatic rifles.”

Opposing review, Connecticut Assistant Attorney General Maura Osborne argued: “There is no disagreement among the lower courts on the question in this case. Indeed, the lower courts that have fully and finally considered whether a state may prohibit access to assault weapons have universally concluded that states may do so.”

Maryland regulations under review

Gun rights advocates and their opponents are closely watching a Maryland case that could create a division among circuit courts.

On May 11, the full Fourth Circuit considered the constitutionality of Maryland’s ban on certain semiautomatic weapons. Maryland’s Firearm Safety Act, like Connecticut’s regulations, passed in the wake of the 2012 Newtown elementary school shootings. The law also prohibits magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

A three-judge panel in Kolbe v. Hogan ruled in February that the state ban imposed a “substantial” burden on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. It vacated a district court decision that upheld the ban. The appellate panel directed the trial court to apply “strict scrutiny,” a high standard that requires the government to prove a restriction “furthers a compelling interest” and it not overly broad.

“Let’s be real: The assault weapons banned by Maryland’s [Firearm Safety Act] are exceptionally lethal weapons of war,” Fourth Circuit Judge Robert King wrote in a dissent that supported the trial judge. “In fact, the most popular of the prohibited semiautomatic rifles, the AR-15, functions almost identically to the military’s fully automatic M16.”

A decision by the full Fourth Circuit is pending.

Read More:

Thomas Objects as Justices Turn Away Challenge to Assault-Weapon Ban

A Liberal Court Could Limit Reach of ‘Heller’

Second Circuit Largely Upholds Weapon Restrictions in Connecticut, New York

Split Ninth Circuit Rejects Concealed Carry Right in Gun Case

Florida Supreme Court Takes On Open-Carry Case

The Long Push to Get Another High-Court Gun Ruling

In Wake of Oregon Shooting, Don’t Expect Gun Makers to Pay

Entitlements for Dreamers, There is an App for That

Posted on June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Play this short video. Ever wonder about the dreams of Americans who would like to attend schools of higher education that cant because the class size limits are met by foreigners? If these ‘dreamers’ need aid and assistance then how about their home countries paying for it? Rhetorical for sure.

Another rhetorical question….How about home countries provide internal dreamer conditions?

Related reading: Facts, numbers and charts

Last year from the White House:

Summary:

The President met with six young “DREAMers” in the Oval Office, all of whom were brought to America by their parents, and — until recently — faced a difficult situation because of their immigration status. The President’s executive action on immigration is changing that.

President Barack Obama shows the Resolute Desk to a group of DREAMers, following their Oval Office meeting in which they talked about how they have benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Feb. 4, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

“I don’t think there’s anybody in America who’s had a chance to talk to these six young people … who wouldn’t find it in their heart to say these kids are Americans just like us, and they belong here, and we want to do right by them.”

President Barack Obama, 2/4/2015

Each of the young people who stood in the Oval Office yesterday had one thing in common: They were all brought here by parents dreaming of a better life for their children in America.

Some of them arrived when they were simply months old. They were raised in American communities, often not realizing their status was any different from that of their classmates or neighbors. Many of them, as the President noted in remarks at the end of the meeting, didn’t discover that there was something different about them — something that might prevent them from giving back to their community and their country — until they were about to go to college.

There is also a Dreamer Portal.

The DREAM Act

Over three million students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Most get the opportunity to test their dreams and live their American story. However, a group of approximately 65,000 youth do not get this opportunity; they are smeared with an inherited title, an illegal immigrant. These youth have lived in the United States for most of their lives and want nothing more than to be recognized for what they are, Americans.

The DREAM Act is a bipartisan legislation ‒ pioneered by Sen. Orin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] ‒ that can solve this hemorrhaging injustice in our society. Under the rigorous provisions of the DREAM Act, qualifying undocumented youth would be eligible for a 6 year long conditional path to citizenship that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service.

For reference on your tax dollars and foreign aid:

In part by Devex: A number of U.S. agencies specifically target private sector partnerships and reforms to drive economic growth, and each of them received a budget increase — some quite significant — under the president’s proposed plan.

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency would see its budget increase by 22 percent if Obama’s request finds traction, a “plus-up” that comes after USTDA’s budget already jumped 19 percent last year. The relatively small agency, which seeks to connect U.S. companies with infrastructure investments in emerging markets, has been lauded from both sides of the political aisle.

The Millennium Challenge Corp., the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Export-Import Bank likewise saw budget increases in the 2015 budget request.

Each of these agencies is involved in the whole-of-government Power Africa initiative, a $7 billion U.S. government commitment to help double access to energy in sub-Saharan Africa.

The accompanying budget justification describes a robust role for using the additional funding provided under the president’s request in support of Power Africa’s goals, although some observers have wondered where the $7 billion will come from, and whether it really represents concrete administration commitments or merely aspirational targets.

Each agency’s specific contribution to the initiative cannot be parsed out of the 2015 numbers. However, the budget — together with the recent congressional vote in favor of the bipartisan “Electrify Africa Act,” which directs the president to create a strategy for alleviating energy poverty in Africa –—suggests Power Africa transactions are poised to represent a substantially larger percentage of the U.S. development portfolio next year.

Climate change

The issue of global climate change has risen in profile since Secretary of State John Kerry took office last year, but funding for the Global Climate Change Initiative remained at a flat $840 million in the 2015 request.

The administration has maintained that a significant portion of Power Africa transactions will target clean energy development on the continent, but attempts to strip OPIC of a controversial cap on carbon power investments has led some observers to question whether Power Africa is truly committed to a balanced blend of clean and conventional fuels.

Just as the President’s budget request does not specify how much it will spend directly on Power Africa, it also sheds little light on what portion of Power Africa’s transactions will focus on non-carbon energy sources.

That could leave climate change advocates wondering what’s in it for them — and whether the funding will ever match the rhetoric — when it comes to foreign affairs spending in 2015 and beyond.

Operating expenses, Middle East democracy

USAID receives a more than 20 percent increase to its operating budget in the president’s request, after a 10 percent reduction to that same account in 2014. While agency officials were confident they could sustain current operations using carry over funding this year, they also maintained that surplus funding will be gone by 2015 and that staffing and programs would suffer if the OE budget was not restored.

The agency will have to wait and see if Congress agrees with Obama’s show of support for investing in the agency’s ability to hire new staff and continue funding the USAID Forward agenda, which seeks procurement system reforms and increased agency capacity.

One past administration request — the Middle East North Africa Incentive Fund — has been scrapped in favor of a new, scaled-back version, the Middle East North Africa Initiative Reforms, which will use $225 million to support ”targeted programs that will advance the transitions under way across the region.”

Such pro-democracy language and overt funding for “locally-led change and emerging reformists” could be read as a response to criticism some have leveled at the administration that it has not done enough to support opposition groups and popular movements against entrenched autocrats.

Next steps

The president’s budget request marks the first step in an appropriations process that will play out for months and ultimately determine how the U.S. government prioritizes spending next year.

The proposal is strong on its message about a “new model of development,” which sees opportunities for partnerships with the private sector in spurring development gains, as well as an obligation for U.S. action to respond effectively when global hot spots ignite.

Some signals — the Electrify Africa Act and USTDA’s continued budget plus-ups, for example — suggest bipartisan support exists for the partnerships model of development, at least in some sectors. But it will be important to watch closely to see if the administration is nearly as successful in defending those priorities within the foreign affairs budget — like new emphases on maternal health and child stunting, and global climate change — that do not appear to lend themselves so easily to the mutual economic benefit argument.

California is real generous: Read the full document here.

California Dream Act AB-130 and AB-131
Allows students eligible for state financial aid to apply for and
receive;
* Institutional scholarships such as the UC
Grant, State University Grant & Educational
Opportunity Program funds;
* California Community College Board of
Governor (BOG) Fee Waivers;
* State financial aid, including Cal Grants and
Chafee Foster Youth for use at qualifying
public and private institutions

9th Circuit Decision Against Conceal Carry

Posted on June 9, 2016June 9, 2016 by Denise Simon

So the most liberal circuit court in the land has rendered a 7-4 decision on the 2nd Amendment and has applied modern day political correctness and Obama/Democrat policy to interpreting the spirit of a Constitutional protection. This will be appealed to the Supreme Court sometime in the near future.

Judge Fletcher

Clearly to show danger, the only response as I see it should have been ‘San Bernardino’. If that is not enough, mention Tel Aviv, Paris or Brussels, or Garland, or Boston…..

Watch out for Arizona and Nevada to respond….

The full 52 page decision is here.

No constitutional right for concealed guns: California appeals court

Reuters: Firearm owners have no constitutional right to carry a concealed gun in public if they face no specific danger, a divided federal appeals court in California ruled on Thursday, in a victory for gun control advocates.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sets a legal precedent in western states, was seen as unlikely to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future.

The San Francisco-based court, in a 7-4 decision, found San Diego and Yolo counties in California did not violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms, when they denied some applicants a concealed firearm license.

“We hold that the Second Amendment does not protect, in any degree, the carrying of concealed firearms by members of the general public,” Judge William Fletcher wrote in a 52-page opinion.

The two California counties had limited their permits to applicants showing “good cause” to be armed, such as documented threats or working in a wide range of risky occupations.

The ruling places the 9th Circuit Court in line with other U.S. appellate courts that have upheld the right of officials in the states of New York, Maryland and New Jersey to deny concealed carry applications in certain cases.

Under California’s concealed carry law, more than 70,000 residents or less than 1 percent of the state’s population had active permits last year, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, in the middle of a raging national debate on guns, declined to weigh in on whether firearm owners have a constitutional right to carry their weapons in concealment outside the home.

Gun rights group the California Rifle and Pistol Association declined to provide immediate comment.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Consuelo Callahan wrote that the court had gone too far in limiting the right to concealed firearms. “The Second Amendment is not a ‘second class’ amendment,” she wrote.

If plaintiffs appeal, the Supreme Court may refrain from reviewing the case because other U.S. circuit courts have also upheld certain requirements for concealed carry permits, said University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Adam Winkler in an email.

The decision by the full 9th Circuit reversed a 2-1 decision in 2014 by a panel of the appellate court that found California residents have an inherent right to a concealed weapon for self defense.

The decision:

Appellants, who live in San Diego and Yolo Counties, sought to carry concealed firearms in public for self-defense, but alleged they were denied licenses to do so because they did not satisfy the good cause requirements in their counties.

Under California law, an applicant for a license must show, among other things, “good cause” to carry a concealed firearm. California law authorizes county sheriffs to establish and publish policies defining good cause. Appellants contend that San Diego and Yolo Counties’ published policies defining good cause violate their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

The en banc court held that the history relevant to both the Second Amendment and its incorporation by the Fourteenth Amendment lead to the same conclusion: The right of a member of the general public to carry a concealed firearm in public is not, and never has been, protected by the Second Amendment. Therefore, because the Second Amendment does not protect in any degree the right to carry concealed firearms in public, any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry – including a requirement of “good cause,” however defined — is necessarily allowed by the Amendment. The en banc court stated that there may or may not be a Second Amendment right for a member of the general public to carry a firearm openly in public, but the Supreme Court has not answered that question. Read the full opinion here.

Red Flags Due to Hillary’s Email Team

Posted on June 7, 2016June 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

Has Hillary explained this to Debbie?

EXCLUSIVE: Emails Show State Dept. Officials Were Warned Of Hillary Clinton Email Spin

Ross/DailyCaller: Newly released State Department emails show that in the days after Hillary Clinton’s exclusive personal email use made international news, officials with the agency’s legal department were urged by the former head of that division to make it clear that the bureau did not sign off on the former secretary of state’s arrangement.

But that advice, which came from John Bellinger, the State Department’s Legal Adviser during the George W. Bush administration, appears to have gone unheeded, at least publicly. The State Department never publicly clarified that Clinton self-approved her personal email system.

While the agency’s information technology, diplomatic security and legal adviser divisions were not made aware of the setup, those facts only came to light in an inspector general’s report that was published last month.In delaying saying whether Clinton’s email system was approved by the State Department, the agency created the perception that the Democratic presidential candidate’s email system was allowed. Clinton herself has made the same claim. The IG report thoroughly debunked that notion, however.

On March 3, 2015, Bellinger, now an attorney with Arnold & Porter, emailed principal deputy legal adviser Mary McLeod and deputy legal advisor Richard Visek of the State Department’s office of legal affairs raising several concerns with how spokeswoman Marie Harf was spinning the scandal.

He took issue with Harf’s implication that the office of the legal adviser signed off on Clinton’s email system and that her email practices were similar to past secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.

“I’m sorry you guys are getting put through the wringer today,” Bellinger wrote in his first email, which The Daily Caller received as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department.

The watchdog group Cause of Action filed the suit on TheDC’s behalf.

Bellinger offered two suggestions to McLeod and Visek.

“Please make sure that Marcie [sic] Harf doesn’t keep saying that Secretary Rice did the same thing. As you know, that is not correct, and Secretary Rice has corrected the record,” wrote Bellinger, who continues to serve as Rice’s personal counsel.

During her March 3 daily press briefing Harf defended Clinton’s email arrangement saying that she “was following what had been the practice of previous secretaries.”

The implication was that Clinton’s immediate predecessors, Rice and Powell, used email in the same way Clinton did. Harf did clarify later that Rice did not use personal email while Powell sometimes did.

Bellinger also bristled at the implication that the office of the legal adviser had approved of Clinton’s foolhardy setup.

Related reading: State Dept.: 75-year wait for Clinton aide emails

“I’m getting calls from people (press and former USG lawyers) asking whether State lawyers actually approved letting Secretary Clinton use a State [BlackBerry] for official business using a personal email account, and then to keep the emails,” he continued.

“Marcie [sic] Harf is implying that State approved this practice (and this suggests that L approved it, though she didn’t say so specifically). As someone who wants to defend L’s reputation, I would urge you to defend the credibility of L as good and careful administrative lawyers, and don’t let the spokesman give L a bad name. I can’t believe that L would have approved this, and you shouldn’t let Marcie Harf imply that you did.”

“L” refers to the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser which, according to its website, “furnishes advice on all legal issues, domestic and international, arising in the course of the Department’s work.”

The emails were released to TheDC just as the State Department’s press shop is facing intense scrutiny after spokesman John Kirby admitted that an agency official ordered the excision of eight minutes of video from a Dec. 2, 2013 press briefing discussing nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.

The State Department has refused to conduct a detailed investigation of the matter, leaving the identity of the official who ordered the deletion to remain a mystery.

As the two top agency spokeswomen at the time, Harf and her colleague Jen Psaki have been suggested as being behind the order. Both have denied any involvement in the deletion.

Visek responded to Bellinger’s advice, writing: “Thanks for the heads up. I’ll reach out to PA and try to make sure they understand.”

“PA” is a reference to the bureau of public affairs.

“Marcie [sic] hasn’t specifically said that L approved the practice, but she’s strongly suggested that it’s all fine which is why people are calling me to ask ‘Did L really approve this’? And I have responded, I can’t believe they did — they are careful lawyers,” Bellinger wrote back.

In those initial days after Clinton’s email practices were revealed, Harf and her fellow spokeswoman Jen Psaki led a clear-cut effort to downplay the burgeoning scandal.

At one point during the March 3, 2015 daily press briefing, Harf, who now serves as senior advisor for communications for Sec. of State John Kerry, exclaimed that “I was a little surprised — although maybe I shouldn’t have been — by some of the breathless reporting coming out last night.”

She came under criticism from many in the press for her dismissive responses to questions about the email setup.

State Department officials declined for months to answer questions about who may have approved Clinton’s email setup.

The arrangement was managed by Bryan Pagliano, who was hired by the State Department as an information technology specialist in May 2009.

The questions of whether any State Department sub-agencies signed off on the Clinton email setup was finally answered last month in a State Department inspector general’s report.

The watchdog found that Clinton did not seek approval for the system from anyone at the department. The report also noted that officials with the Bureau of Diplomatic Security would not have okayed the system even if Clinton had asked for permission to use it.

The office of the legal adviser also had no input on the system. The report did note, however, that a State Department official named John Bentel told two information technology staffers not to ask questions about Clinton’s server. He allegedly told the staffers that the legal adviser had approved the system. Reached by email for comment, Bellinger said he would let his emails speak for themselves.

State Department Office of Legal Adviser emails by Chuck Ross

Former US attorney: Clinton aides’ legal strategy is ‘red flag’

FNC: Four central figures in the FBI’s criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email practices are all using the same lawyer, a move described as a “red flag” by a former U.S. attorney who now runs a government watchdog group.

Lawyer Beth Wilkinson is representing: Clinton former chief of staff Cheryl Mills; policy adviser Jake Sullivan; media gatekeeper Philippe Reines; and former aide Heather Samuelson, who helped decide which Clinton emails were destroyed before turning over the remaining 30,000 records to the State Department.

“I think it would be a real red flag,” Matthew Whitaker, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, or FACT, told Fox News, in reference to the legal defense. He suggested having a single lawyer would help the four Clinton aides align their stories for FBI interviews.

“The benefit is to have one lawyer’s brain have all the knowledge of the various pieces and parts, and so each of those potential targets or subjects of the investigation get to share information across that same attorney — and quite frankly get their story to sync up and understand what other people know of the situation,” he said.

Wilkinson is a well-respected Washington, D.C., attorney who successfully argued in favor of the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing case. Wilkinson has deep ties in Washington and is married to former NBC “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, who is now a regular political commentator on CNN.

Asked for comment, there was no immediate response from Wilkinson’s office. It has been their practice not to respond to press inquiries on this case.

Whitaker was appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa by President George W. Bush in June 2004 and held the position until November 2009, when President Obama’s appointed replacement was confirmed. He said the legal set-up presents challenges for FBI investigators in the Clinton probe.

“All you’re trying to do is seek the truth, and when someone is sharing a lawyer, you worry that the interview that you just did an hour ago with that attorney has been shared with the next witness and they can fix or reconcile their story to be the same,” Whitaker explained.

While apparently unusual, the legal representation has not been openly challenged by Justice Department officials.

A different perspective, presented by a leading defense attorney who asked not to speak on the record, is that the four Clinton aides plan to present a united front and do not fear criminal liability.

Politico first reported in April on the legal representation; since then, Mills and Wilkinson blocked questions about Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano – another key figure in the probe – during a civil suit deposition in Washington. Pagliano, who struck an immunity deal with the Justice Department last year, is now seeking to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions in the same Judicial Watch proceedings.

Clinton told ABC News on Sunday that her email practices were in line with those of her predecessors. In a Friday radio interview with KNX 1070, Clinton said there is “absolutely no possibility” she’d be indicted.

Whitaker’s group FACT also is seeking the emails of Dennis Cheng, Clinton’s former deputy chief of protocol at the State Department, whose records may reveal a great deal about the possible intersection between Clinton Foundation work and Clinton’s time as secretary of state. Cheng was the point person for senior foreign government officials. Only a handful of Cheng emails were among the more than 30,000 pages made public by the State Department.

According to his State Department biography, Cheng also served as Clinton’s national finance director when she was a senator, her New York finance director for her 2008 presidential campaign, and as a consultant to the William J. Clinton Foundation.

The FBI probe into Clinton’s email use is not the first time her record-keeping has faced federal scrutiny. Long before she became a secretary of state, Clinton’s billing records and documents tied to her work as a partner in the Rose Law Firm on behalf of the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan and Capital Management Services came under question. Those missing records from her work as a lawyer were at the crux of investigations by three separate federal agencies which cost taxpayers $65 million. A special committee’s report on the matter (page 155) said it received computer printouts of the billings in January 1996, “discovered under mysterious circumstances in the Book Room of the White House Residence.”

Clinton is still represented by the same lawyer who defended her throughout the in the 1980’s and 1990’s, David Kendall.

Even CNBC is Sounding Alarm on Smuggling at Southern Border

Posted on June 7, 2016June 7, 2016 by Denise Simon

I would say that when a liberal network media outlet is asking the hard questions and investigating the human smuggling at the Southern Border, it is time to challenge the Department of Homeland Security and Jeh Johnson much more aggressively, meaning calling for his removal as well as the Director of ICE.

When the coordinator of the smuggling operations is actually a resident inside the United States, we have issues that are not being debated or remedied.

‘A dangerous world’: What’s at stake when Syrian refugees are smuggled to US

CNBC: On July 27, 2015, five men appeared on the Mexican side of the sprawling Laredo port of entry at the United States border in Texas. They were all from Homs, Syria, which had seen ferocious fighting between ISIS and Syrian government forces over the previous months. All were in their early to mid-20s, except one, who was in his early 40s. And all five requested asylum in the United States.

This presented an immediate dilemma for U.S. officials. Who were these men? What did they want? And most pressingly, exactly how did five military-age males from one of the most gruesome battlefields in the world make their way to the U.S. border with Mexico?

Answers to many of those questions were spelled out in a detailed memo written by the Laredo field office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security investigators. The document, which was obtained by CNBC, details the operations of a previously unreported entity the U.S. government calls the “Barakat Alien Smuggling Organization.”

The leader of that group, the report found, specializes in smuggling Syrian men from Homs to the United States thought the southern U.S. border and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The memo identifies many of the key players: A naturalized Syrian woman in California, an Iraqi man in Turkey and smugglers and phony passport providers on four continents.

The report is stamped “Unclassified//Law Enforcement Sensitive,” and CNBC, for potential personal security risks, is withholding certain details from it, including dates of birth and numerical identification information of the Syrian refugees themselves as well as names and contact information for U.S. government officials involved in the investigation. Details in this account come from the report, as well as interviews with U.S. government officials and an attorney for one of the men.

The events laid out in the report came at a time the U.S. government was grappling with a rapidly unfolding Syrian refugee crisis worldwide. Ultimately, President Barack Obama would pledge to admit as many as 10,000 refugees to the United States. But critics said allowing any influx of immigrants from the war zone risked allowing ISIS infiltrators to come into the United States in the guise of refugees. They said that risk was highlighted by the ISIS inspired or coordinated attacks in Paris, Brussels, and San Bernardino, California.

Related reading from GOA: Alien Smuggling: DHS Could Better Address Alien Smuggling along the Southwest Border by Leveraging Investigative Resources and Measuring Program Performance

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency has added 300 officers to its transnational criminal investigation units to work with foreign governments to target and dismantle human smuggling networks.

Controversy swirled over the vetting process for immigrants, and the difficulty for U.S. officials in determining who was coming to the United States in pursuit of a better life, and who may have darker motives. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was storming toward the Republican presidential nomination on the strength of his call to build a massive wall on the southern border with Mexico.

Even as that campaign rhetoric was reaching a crescendo in 2015, officials privately noted they were seeing a rise in Syrian immigrants trying to cross the border. “Over the past eighteen months there has been an increase of Syrian and Lebanese Nationals attempting to enter the United States along the southwest international border via Mexico,” the report found. “A majority of these individuals have arrived at major land ports of entry in the U.S. claiming credible fear of returning to their home countries.”

The Barakat Alien Smuggling Organization, the report found, was active along the Texas and California borders. The organization specialized in smuggling people who said they were Orthodox Syrian Christians.

The Barakat group, the report found, “is sophisticated enough to exploit the entire southern border.”

‘God be with you brother’

For the five Syrian men, the journey halfway around the world began on the internet, where they first made contact with the Barakat organization on Facebook. Elias was 25 years old. The other men were Albeer, 21, Rawad, 21, George, 26, and Alkhateb, the oldest of the group at 42.

Each of the men had a reason to leave Syria immediately. Elias, for example, said Syrian rebel forces had threatened him and demanded money. To show they were serious, they killed his dog.

It’s not clear whether the men traveled together for the entire trip. But U.S. officials pieced together the story step by step: From the Facebook page, the men were referred to the Baremoon Travel Agency in Homs, Syria. They paid $350 to $400 to a woman named Lucy for travel from Syria to Beirut, Lebanon, by taxi.

Related reading: From the U.S. State Department: Border Security/Alien Smuggling

On May 28, 2015, a post on the Facebook page of a man whose full name and biographical details match those of Elias shows a selfie of a young man with close cropped-hair and trim beard posing at the modern, sky-lighted departure lounge of the Beirut International Airport. The man identified as Elias is wearing a purple shirt and black vest, posing with a young woman in a leopard-print top. The caption says, “Traveling to Istanbul, Turkey.” Alongside the picture, friends posted more than 80 encouraging messages in Arabic, including “Good luck guys,” and “God be with you brother.”

The flight from Beirut to Istanbul is less than two hours. But once in Turkey, the men hit some kind of delay. In Istanbul, two of the men waited for more than 30 days before making contact at a coffee shop in the Aksaray neighborhood — a Syrian expat district in Istanbul crowded with refugees escaping the war and known as a major hub for sex trafficking.

At the coffee shop, the men met with a smuggler, Abu, who would arrange travel from Istanbul to the United States. They described Abu as in his 30s, thin, balding, and about 5-feet-10. Abu’s services did not come cheap. Two of the Syrian men said they paid him $15,000 for travel to the United States, a package deal including phony passports, airline tickets, guides in each country, food and transportation. It was a surprisingly businesslike operation: Abu even offered a grace period for the Syrians to obtain a refund if they didn’t make it to the United States within a certain time.

It’s not clear how the Syrians were able to afford such steep fees. One man said he had saved the money over three years. Another said his family sold land and property to raise funds. He also received $3,000 in a wire transfer initiated by a person in Burbank, California.

Wherever it came from, the money was good enough for Abu. He gave the travelling Syrians their documents: airline tickets and phony passports from Israel. The travel papers would now identify two of the men under the false Israeli names “Miller Idan” and “Halam Rotem.”

Abu also gave the men airline tickets from Turkey to Mozambique, with a layover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. But they never intended to go to Mozambique. Instead, the men switched destinations in Ethiopia, and used their new, phony Israeli passports to board a flight to either Rio de Janerio or Sao Paulo, Brazil. Instead of the African coast, the men took off for South America.

The men had no idea whom they would meet in Brazil. They didn’t have a name or phone number to call. But when they landed in South America, the smuggling organization had someone on the ground to meet them, identifying the Syrians using photos sent by Abu directly to the smugglers’ cellphones in South America. The men turned over their real Syrian passports to the smugglers — from here on out, they would be posing full time as Israelis. The smugglers, in turn, put the passports in packages and mailed them to final destination addresses in the United States. The passports would cross the U.S. border without their bearers.

From Brazil, the men boarded flights to Bogota, Colombia, still posing as Israelis. Then they caught yet another flight, this time to Guatemala City, Guatemala. There, the Syrians said they met a 30-year-old man they describe as tall and slender, with blond hair. The man spoke no Arabic and very little English. To the Syrians, the mysterious smuggler did not appear to be Guatemalan. The tall blond man drove them to the Guatemala-Mexico border, where the Syrians were transferred into the custody of yet another smuggler. The men said they crossed the border into Mexico without being approached at all by Mexican immigration officials.

It was a long drive north through Mexico: Five days in a late-model white four-door Toyota sedan. The Syrians say their latest smuggler was in contact with Abu in Turkey throughout the trip, which ended in the brutally hot border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

The border city is a far cry from the chaos of their hometown of Homs, but Nuevo Laredo is also wracked with violence: the rampages of the brutal Los Zetas drug cartel have prompted the State Department to warn Americans to defer travel to the region because of the prevalence of murder, robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, extortion and sexual assault.

But the Syrians didn’t intend to stay long. On July 27, they requested asylum at the Laredo point of entry to the United States. American Customs and Border Protection Agents processed them and sent them to a detention center in Pearsall, Texas, where they were interviewed by officials.

One of the men, Rawad, gave his destination as an address in Fall River, Massachusetts. But officials discovered that the telephone number he provided was linked to visa denials for three other Syrians. The oldest Syrian, Alkhateb, listed a friend named “Amnar” as a contact in the United States and provided a phone number for him with a California area code. U.S. officials found that number was linked to five other rejected visas from Syrian immigrants.

The Americans asked Elias — the refugee who said his dog had been killed — if he had ever volunteered or been paid to carry a weapon for any political or religious organization in Syria. Elias said he had not been part of any group or received weapons training. Instead, he told American officials, “God would provide protection.”

“Any underground smuggling operation is dangerous and even more so when you get to falsifications and people moving through many different countries. It’s a dangerous world.” -Lauren Mack, spokeswoman, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

The U.S. government intercepted the package the Syrians had mailed from Brazil when it arrived in Miami. Inside, they found military ID in Elias’ Syrian passport. The document indicates Elias was exempt from military service due to the death of his father. Still, the American interviewer thought Elias showed “nervous behavior” when asked about his military service.

It’s not entirely clear what happened to the five men after that. According to the report, Customs and Border Protection officers conducted what’s called a “credible fear” interview to determine their status. They were remanded to the South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall, Texas.

According to Facebook pages that appear to match the names and life histories of three of the men, they are still in the United States, either currently or formerly in California.

U.S. officials would not comment to CNBC on the report or the status of the five men. “Due to the sensitivity and nature of this report we are not going to be able to discuss anything about this case,” said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego, who requested that CNBC not identify the five men. “One of our top priorities is to investigate international human smuggling worldwide,” she said. “Our goal is to get ringleaders and people who are at the top levels of criminal networks who prey on individuals and put them at risk.”

Asked if the Barakat organization itself posed any danger to the United States, Mack said, “Any underground smuggling operation is dangerous and even more so when you get to falsifications and people moving through many different countries. It’s a dangerous world.”

An attorney for one of the Syrian men, who also requested his name not be used, said that his client’s asylum case was still pending before an immigration judge while he lives and works in the United States. The attorney said he represents several Syrians who applied for asylum at the U.S. border. “A lot of these people have never left Syria before, and suddenly they’re traveling through countries around the world. They come from a police state, they’re not very trusting. Back in Syria, their political beliefs are imputed to them because they’re Christians. People say, oh, you’re a Christian, so you’re fair game. They’re in a really bad situation.”

‘I always tell the truth, even when I lie’

The government document lists several “intelligence gaps” that investigators were left with after their interviews and research. Among the loose ends, the officials wanted to know how the Barakat organization got the Israeli passports, and whether they were forged or legitimately issued. They want to identify the specific smugglers in Guatemala and Mexico. They want to figure out just how the passport scheme worked in Addis Ababa, and why Ethiopian customs didn’t spot it.

And at the end the report asks one more question: “Are there more Syrian nationals destined for South Texas?”

Nearly four months later, the U.S. officials may have gotten their answer. In November, authorities in Honduras detained five Syrian men trying to reach the United States, this time on stolen Greek passports. Reuters reported that Honduran officials found the men had passed through Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica.

A Honduran police spokesman told reporters those men had nothing to do with terrorism. “They are normal Syrians,” he said.

Today, a Facebook page for a person with the same name and biographical details as Elias features as its main image a splashy image of Al Pacino in the 1983 gangster movie “Scarface.” The page says Elias is living in Los Angeles and working as a tattoo artist. As a sort of a personal motto, the Facebook page prominently features a quote from Pacino’s character: “You need people like me, so you can point your f—–‘ fingers and say, ‘that’s the bad guy.'”

It’s a line from an arresting scene in the classic film. Pacino’s character, a Cuban refugee who arrives in the United States with nothing and rises to become a drug kingpin, finds himself confused and out of place in an upscale American restaurant. He lashes out in a rage at the well-dressed Americans who surround him.

The outburst may seem to be an odd maxim for the Syrian refugee. But in the same speech, Pacino’s character also says this: “I always tell the truth, even when I lie.”