IRS: Tracking Cell Phones, Billions in Fraud Refunds

Posted on April 25, 2016April 25, 2016 by Denise Simon

IRS Can Track Your Cell Phone, but Leaves Billions in Taxes Uncollected

DailySignal: While the Internal Revenue Service continues to leave uncollected tax money on the table, the agency beefed up its surveillance capabilities in a move that alarms both conservative and liberal privacy advocates.

Now some complain the IRS is acting too much like Big Brother and not enough like a traditional taxman.

Since 2006, the IRS has overseen an annual tax gap—the shortfall between taxes owed and collected—of about $385 billion, government analysts say. And according to an April report, the agency has not implemented 70 of 112 actions identified by the Government Accountability Office to close that loop.

In 2009, though, the IRS purchased a “cell-site simulator,” more commonly known as Stingray technology. And since November, the agency has been trying to buy another of the devices.

Related: House moves to Impeach IRS Comish, Speaker Ryan, not so fast

Related: IRS pays billions to illegals, fraud refunds

Like something from a spy movie, a Stingray device mimics a cellphone tower, tricking all mobile phones in an area into revealing their location and numbers. Authorities can deploy the powerful technology to tag and track an individual’s location in real time.

More advanced versions of the devices can be used to copy information stored on a cellphone and to download malware remotely.

The devices are as controversial as they are prevalent. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 61 agencies in 23 states and the District of Columbia own the devices.

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says the IRS uses its Stingray to hunt down fraudsters and stop money laundering. The agency’s use of the devices remained a secret until an October report in the Guardian.

In a November letter to House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, Koskinen wrote that the agency’s technology “cannot be used to intercept the content of real-time communications” such as voicemails, text messages, and emails. Instead, the IRS chief said, the device has been used “to track 37 phone numbers.”

And the IRS commissioner insists his agency deploys the tech only in accordance with state and federal laws.

But during an April 13 hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the deputy IRS commissioner for service and enforcement, John Dalrymple, couldn’t say whether the IRS obtained a warrant before activating the device.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, says he finds that concerning.

With a federal budget deficit projected at $544 billion in 2016, Jordan told The Daily Signal he’d rather have the IRS focus on “their fundamental job, which is to collect revenue due to the federal Treasury.” He added:

The GAO has 112 things they suggest, recommendations for the IRS to actually deal with the $385 billion dollar tax gap. Not one of those recommendations was to purchase a second Stingray unit.

More than a misappropriation of resources, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus said, he fears the IRS could abuse the technology to monitor political groups like it did in 2013, when the agency began targeting conservative nonprofits.

“Now you have this same agency, who again for a long period of time went after people for exercising their First Amendment free speech rights, are using this technology and without a Fourth Amendment probable cause warrant,” Jordan said.

Nathan Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the technology poses a significant threat even when gathering basic information like names and numbers. In an interview with The Daily Signal, Wessler said Stingray devices could be “quite chilling on people’s right to protest.”

And there’s already a precedent for misconduct, albeit at a more local level.

Wessler points to a 2003 incident when the Miami-Dade Police Department purchased a Stingray device to monitor a protest of a conference on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. According to an expense report obtained by the ACLU, police wanted the device because they “anticipated criminal activities.”

“It’s a pretty short step from those words to being concerned about the police intentionally downloading a list of every protester who shows up at some demonstration,” Wessler said. “It’s a powerful way to know who’s there.”

The IRS Criminal Investigations Division is already one of the more elite investigative agencies. Koskinen boasts that in 2015 the division achieved a 93.2 percent conviction rate, “the highest in all of federal law enforcement.”

It’s an open question whether the agency needs Stingray technology to complete its mission.

The IRS did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comment made by emails and phone calls.

Paul Larkin argues that the nature of IRS investigations makes real-time intelligence irrelevant. Larkin, senior legal research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that IRS agents are following a paper trail to investigate previous crimes:

There is no good reason the IRS would ever need real-time data information. The crimes that the IRS investigates all occurred in the past. They’re investigating fraud against the government that’s already happened. They don’t have crimes in progress like a burglary.

But if the IRS ever needed to track a suspect in the moment, Larkin said, there’s a practical solution—teamwork. He explains that there’s “no legal hurdle” that prohibits the IRS from teaming up, for instance, with the Department of Justice and borrowing its Stingray technology.

Jordan says he isn’t ready to accept that the IRS ever needs access to the device.

“Really, should the IRS have this and be using this at all?” the Ohio Republican said. “I tend to think you’d be better off with this technology not being in their hands.”

******

The 23-page report is actually quite readable, and worth looking at if you’ve been a victim of identity theft or refund fraud, you’re a tax preparer, or you’re interested in the future of how Americans file our taxes.

The IRS paid out $3.1 billion in refunds to scammers last year. We’ve discussed in the past how this scam works: someone with basic information about a U.S. taxpayer files a return with fake information, depositing their refund in the scammer’s own account. It’s a sophisticated operation and very lucrative. Additional 5 items are here, a must read from the Consumerist.

Terrifying Facts on ISIS Operatives in America

Posted on April 22, 2016April 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

WashingtonPost: The Justice Department on Thursday revealed that a well-known Islamic State operative instructed a Boston-area man to kill Pamela Geller, the organizer of a controversial Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas last year.

In court documents, prosecutors said that Junaid Hussain, a British militant, had been communicating with Usaamah Abdullah Rahim, 26, who along with two friends discussed beheading Geller.

Rahim, however, changed his mind and instead decided to target a police officer. He was shot and killed in June 2015 in Roslindale, Mass., after he attacked members of an FBI-led surveillance team while wielding a large knife, officials said.

[Boston terrorism suspect had planned to attack police officers, FBI says]

Hussain, 21, was killed in Raqqa, Syria, in August 2015 in a drone strike. He was a well-known militant involved in not only spreading Islamic State propaganda but also recruiting and planning attacks, officials said.

FBI Director James B. Comey has said previously that a Phoenix man who tried to attack the Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas was trading encrypted messages with an Islamic State operative. A senior U.S law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the case, declined to identify that operative but said it was not Hussain. Another official described the person as a member of the group’s unit that runs external operations.

Prosecutors said Rahim, along with two associates, Nicholas Alexander Rovinski, 25, of Warwick, R.I., and his nephew, David Wright, 26, of Everett, Mass., began plotting a terror operation in the United States in early 2015.

According to the Justice Department, Wright in March 2015 drafted organizational documents for a “Martyrdom Operations Cell” and conducted Internet searches about firearms, tranquilizers and the establishment of secret militias in the United States. Rovinski conducted research on weapons that could be used to behead people, the authorities said.

Prosecutors said Hussain communicated directly with Rahim, who then communicated instructions to the other conspirators to kill Geller in New York, where she lives. They planned to kill her around the July 4 holiday, court documents show.

The FBI was closely monitoring the men, officials said, and would have arrested them had they tried to travel to New York.

After Rahim’s death, prosecutors charged Rovinski and Wright with conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Prosecutors also revealed that Rovinski has written letters to Wright from prison “discussing ways to take down the U.S. government and decapitate non-believers.” Rovinski also pledged his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, according to court documents.

On Thursday, Rovinski and Wright were also charged in a superseding indictment with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries.

*****

There is more…. As published on this website on April 21, the deeper details on Gules Ali Omar and his cell, note below. Further, months ago, an investigation revealed ISIS operatives all the way to Chicago.

ISIS suspect reveals plans to open up route from Syria to U.S. through Mexico

FoxLatino: One of the American men accused in Minnesota of trying to join the Islamic State group wanted to open up routes from Syria to the U.S. through Mexico, prosecutors said.

Gules Ali Omar told the ISIS members about the route so that it could be used to send members to America to carry out terrorist attacks, prosecutors alleged in a document filed this week.

The document, filed Wednesday, is one of many filed in recent weeks as prosecutors and defense attorneys argue about which evidence should be allowed at the men’s trial, which starts May 9.

The men — Omar, 21; Hamza Naj Ahmed, 21; Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22; and Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22 — have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit murder outside the U.S. Prosecutors have said they were part of a group of friends in Minnesota’s Somali community who held secret meetings and plotted to join the Islamic State group.

Five other men have pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to support a foreign terrorist organization. A tenth man charged in the case is at-large, believed to be in Syria.

The government’s document was filed in response to a defense request that prosecutors be barred from introducing evidence about possible attacks in the U.S.

Last week, Daud’s attorney wrote that, absent any specific evidence that his client threatened the United States, any references to discussions about attacks would be prejudicial. To permit such references, as well as references to the Sept. 11 attacks or exhibits that show violent images of war crimes, “would cause the jurors to decide out of fear and contempt alone,” defense attorney Bruce Nestor wrote.

But prosecutors said audio recordings obtained during the investigation show the defendants spoke multiple times about the possibility of attacks in the U.S. Among them, Omar spoke of establishing a route for fighters, Farah spoke of killing an FBI agent and another man who pleaded guilty talked about shooting a homemade rocket at an airplane.

Prosecutors wrote that they should be allowed to “play for the jury the defendants’ own words, in which they discuss the possibility of returning to attack the United States.” They also said the defendants watched videos and gruesome images, which they also want to play for the jury, and that a blanket ban on mentioning the 2001 attacks is inappropriate, noting that Omar had pictures of the burning World Trade Center towers and Osama bin Laden on his cellphone.

A phone message left with Omar’s attorney wasn’t immediately returned.

The FBI has said about a dozen people have left Minnesota to join militant groups fighting in Syria in recent years. In addition, since 2007 more than 22 men have joined al-Shabab in Somalia.

After Subpoena: State Removed Benghazi Docs

Posted on April 21, 2016April 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Obstruction of a government process and investigation. That is a violation of the law. Hillary, what say you and your team? Ever notice that the Democrats never ask questions or complain about lack of compliance or cooperation?

Exactly how many had access to Hillary’s office or permission to remove files? Ahem….

State Department Office Removed Benghazi Files After Congressional Subpoena

Release of records delayed over a year due to removal

FreeBeacon: State Department officials removed files from the secretary’s office related to the Benghazi attack in Libya and transferred them to another department after receiving a congressional subpoena last spring, delaying the release of the records to Congress for over a year.

Attorneys for the State Department said the electronic folders, which contain hundreds of documents related to the Benghazi attack and Libya, were belatedly rediscovered at the end of last year.

They said the files had been overlooked by State Department officials because the executive secretary’s office transferred them to another department and flagged them for archiving last April, shortly after receiving a subpoena from the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

The new source of documents includes electronic folders used by senior officials under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They were originally kept in the executive secretary’s office, which handles communication and coordination between the secretary of state’s office and other department bureaus.

The House Benghazi Committee requested documents from the secretary’s office in a subpoena filed in March 2015. Congressional investigators met with the head of the executive secretary’s office staff to discuss its records maintenance system and the scope of the subpoena last April. That same month, State Department officials sent the electronic folders to another bureau for archiving, and they were not searched in response to the request.

The blunder could raise new questions about the State Department’s records process, which has come under scrutiny from members of Congress and government watchdogs. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blasted the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act process as “broken” in January, citing “systematic failures at the agency.”

The inspector general for the State Department also released a report criticizing the agency’s public records process in January. The report highlighted failures in the executive secretary’s office, which responds to records requests for the Office of the Secretary.

Since last fall, the State Department has taken additional steps to increase transparency, recently hiring a transparency coordinator.

But the late discovery of the electronic folders has set back the release of information in a number of public records lawsuits filed against the State Department by watchdog groups.

The State Department first disclosed that staffers had discovered the unsearched folders in a January court filing. Attorneys for the department asked the court for additional time to process and release the documents in response to a 2014 lawsuit filed by the government ethics group Judicial Watch.

Around the same time, the State Department alerted the House Select Committee on Benghazi to the discovery. On April 8, the department turned over 1,100 pages of documents from the electronic folders to the House Benghazi Committee, over a year after the committee’s subpoena. The committee had received other documents from the production in February.

The delay has had consequences. The Benghazi Committee had already completed the majority of its interviews with diplomats and government officials regarding the Benghazi attack before it received the latest tranche of documents.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), chairman of the Benghazi Committee, said in an April 8 statement it was “deplorable that it took over a year for these records to be produced to our committee.”

“This investigation is about a terrorist attack that killed four Americans, and it could have been completed a lot sooner if the administration had not delayed and delayed and delayed at every turn,” Gowdy said.

The decision by State Department officials to transfer the electronic folders to another bureau after receiving the subpoena could also raise questions.

The subpoena requested Benghazi-related documents and communications from 10 of Hillary Clinton’s top aides for the years 2011 and 2012.

The requests included standard language that “Subpoenaed records, documents, data or information should not be destroyed, modified, removed, transferred or otherwise made inaccessible to the Committee.”

The State Department’s attorneys said the executive secretary’s office transferred the folders to the Office of Information Programs and Services for “retiring” in April 2015. Public records officials did not realize for almost eight months that the folders had been moved, and so they were not searched in response to FOIA requests or subpoenas.

“In April 2015—prior to its search in this [Judicial Watch] case—the Secretariat Staff within the Office of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-S”) retired the shared office folders and transferred them to the custody of the Bureau of Administration, Office of Information Programs and Services,” the State Department said in a Feb. 5 court filing.

“The IPS employees working on this FOIA request did not initially identify S/ES retired records as a location to search for potentially responsive records because they were operating with the understanding that, to the extent responsive records from the Office of the Secretary existed, they resided within [the executive secretary’s office].”

According to congressional sources, officials on the House Benghazi Committee had a meeting with the executive secretary’s office to discuss the subpoena and the locations of potentially relevant records on April 10, 2015. Electronic folders of senior staff members were discussed during the briefing.

State Department officials at the meeting included the director of the executive secretary’s office staff, who was responsible for handling the office’s records maintenance, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, and Catherine Duval, the attorney who oversaw the public release of Hillary Clinton’s official emails. The officials gave no indication that electronic folders had recently been transferred out of the office.

The State Department declined to comment on whether the folders were transferred after the meeting took place.

A State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon that personnel did not mislead congressional investigators, and added that no officials at the meeting were involved in transferring the folders.

“The Department personnel who briefed the Select Committee in April 2015 did not play a role in the transfer of these files to State’s Bureau of Administration,” the State Department official said.

The official added that department files are often moved as a routine matter.

“Files that are generated in an office are regularly moved to the Bureau of Administration for storage according to published records retirement schedules,” the official said. “This is a routine action that would not involve a senior supervisor. It also continues to make them available to respond to either Congressional or FOIA requests.”

Duval left the State Department last September. She had previously overseen document production for the IRS during the targeting controversy. Republicans had criticized that process after agency emails were reportedly destroyed and a key IRS official’s hard drive was shredded months after they had been subpoenaed by Congress.

In recent months, the State Department has been working to increase transparency.

“The Department has worked closely with the Select Committee in a spirit of cooperation and responsiveness,” a State Department official said. “Since the Committee was formed, we have provided 48 witnesses for interviews and more than 95,000 pages of documents.”

The efforts drew some praise from the House Benghazi Committee last fall.

“It’s curious the Department is suddenly able to be more productive after recent staff changes involving those responsible for document production,” committee spokesman Jamal Ware said in a Sept. 25, 2015 press release.

Still, it could be months before the public is able to see many of the Benghazi-related documents belatedly discovered by the State Department. The House Benghazi Committee is still completing its investigation and has not released them.

The department’s attorneys have also been granted extensions to produce the documents in response to several public records lawsuits. In one FOIA case, first filed by the watchdog group Citizens United in 2014, a judge has given the State Department until next August to turn over the new materials.

Correction: The original version of this article stated that the House Select Committee on Benghazi had submitted two subpoenas to the State Department. The Committee only submitted one subpoena, on March 4, 2015. The November 2014 request was an official letter from the Committee to Secretary John Kerry.

Russian Aggression Higher than Cold War Era

Posted on April 21, 2016April 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Former Soviet Fighter Pilot: Russian Jets ‘More Aggressive’ Than During Cold War

DailySignal: KYIV, Ukraine—As the NATO-Russia Council prepared to meet for the first time in almost two years, U.S. and Russian officials traded barbs over who’s to blame for a recent spike in military tensions.

The ambassadorial level meeting set for Wednesday at alliance headquarters in Brussels was to be the first time the format, which comprises NATO and Russian officials, has been convened since June 2014.

Looming over the talks are provocative Russian warplane intercepts. These include a pair of Russian Su-24 fighter jets that buzzed within 30 feet of the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea on April 11 and 12, and a Su-27 fighter jet that performed a barrel roll within 50 feet of a U.S. RC-135 spy plane April 14.

“These kinds of planned maneuvers are especially dangerous because they bring us very close to an unplanned accident,” a former Soviet fighter pilot told The Daily Signal.

The U.S. and NATO say Russia has demonstrated a pattern of military aggression and reckless brinksmanship across Eastern Europe that risks sparking a military conflict.

Russia says NATO’s military buildup on the alliance’s eastern frontier is a threat to Russian national security.

“It was definitely done on purpose, and with the NATO summit in mind,” Oleksiy Melnyk, a former Ukrainian air force lieutenant colonel who served as a fighter pilot in the Soviet air force, said of the aerial antics by the Russian jets in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“Having the same background, I’m sure the pilots were not too young and too stupid to realize that these kinds of maneuvers would create an international scandal,” said Melnyk, now co-director of foreign relations and international security programs at the Razumkov Centre, a Ukrainian think tank.

Beginning in 1986, Melnyk flew Mig-21s for the USSR. He said the intent of the recent Russian intercepts was likely twofold: To send a diplomatic message to NATO that the Baltics are Russian turf and to test NATO’s military responses.

Russia’s current pattern of intercepting NATO ships and aircraft is “more aggressive and more frequent” than what the Soviet Union authorized pilots to perform during the Cold War, Melnyk said.

Under Soviet rules of engagement governing intercepts of NATO aircraft, the recent actions would have been forbidden, he said.

Soviet rules governing air intercepts were tightened after the 1983 incident in which Soviet fighter jets shot down a Korean Air Lines 747. Melnyk described this month’s Russian intercepts as “reckless,” and said Soviet pilots would have been punished for such maneuvers if commanders had not approved them beforehand:

These kinds of planned maneuvers are especially dangerous because they bring us very close to an unplanned accident. And any unplanned accident can have grave consequences.

Underscoring the strain on U.S.-Russian relations after the USS Donald Cook incident, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the American ship could have fired on the Russian jets.

“It is reckless. It is provocative. It is dangerous. And under the rules of engagement, that could have been a shoot-down,” Kerry said in an interview with CNN Espanol.

Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the U.S. version of the incident was “not consistent with reality” and that the Russian warplanes had “performed strictly in accordance with the international regulations on the use of airspace.”

Visitors check out Soviet-era aircraft on display at Ukraine’s State Aviation Museum in Kyiv. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

Eastern Front

NATO-Russian relations chilled in March 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and began providing military support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

A senior Obama administration official told The Daily Signal in an email that Wednesday’s NATO-Russia Council meeting “does not indicate a return to business as usual between NATO and Russia.” The official added:

As a direct result of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, NATO decided to suspend all practical civilian and military cooperation with Russia. However, NATO also decided to keep political channels of communication open at the ambassadorial level and above. This meeting is consistent with that policy.

According to NATO, the meeting was to focus on the Ukraine conflict as well as the security situation in Afghanistan.

The meeting comes as fighting in eastern Ukraine continues to escalate in periodic bursts, threatening a complete collapse of the tenuous Minsk II peace accord.

More than 9,200 Ukrainians have died in the conflict, according to the United Nations.

Buildup

Also on the docket: improved communications between NATO and Russia to prevent incidents such as the air intercepts from sparking a conflict.

Russia has shown a pattern of provocative actions in Eastern Europe, particularly in the Baltics, for more than two years. These include the alleged abduction of an Estonian intelligence officer on Estonian soil in 2014.

In July 2015, NATO officials reported the alliance had scrambled warplanes to intercept Russian aircraft more than at any time since the end of the Cold War. And according to U.S. Navy officials, Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic now matches, and may even exceed, Cold War levels.

Since 2014, the U.S. has boosted its military presence in Eastern Europe to reassure its allies. Troops and warplanes have rotated among NATO countries across the region, and an ongoing exercise to train and equip Ukraine’s armed forces began in summer 2015.

Alexander Grushko, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, speaks to reporters after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels. (Photo: Stephanie Lecocq/EPA/Newscom)

Ukraine is not a NATO member state. However, four NATO countries—Canada, Lithuania, Poland, and the U.S.—currently have troops in western Ukraine to train the nation’s military.

In 2014 the White House launched the European Resistance Initiative, pledging $1 billion to bolster U.S. military forces in Europe as a response to Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

Recognizing the long-term security threat Russia poses to the region, the White House included $3.4 billion in its 2017 defense budget for the European Reassurance Initiative—a fourfold increase over the $789 million tagged the previous year.

The funds finance more U.S. troops in the region, military exercises with allies, and construction of new infrastructure to house troops and store weapons and military hardware.

The U.S. buildup is intended to shore up confidence among NATO’s eastern members on the reliability of American support; it’s also a strategic deployment of troops and equipment to defend against a Russian attack.

In March 2015, a U.S. Army Stryker convoy traveled 1,100 miles through the Baltic states and across Eastern Europe on an operation called Dragoon Ride.

Thousands of civilians lined the highways waving American flags. At stops along the way, civilians swarmed U.S. troops, shaking hands and taking selfies.

Dragoon Ride was touted as a public relations event to reassure allies about U.S. commitment to defend the region.

U.S. troops on the convoy, however, said a secondary objective was to scout routes and analyze road conditions for the rapid deployment of armor across the Baltics in the event of a Russian invasion.

Ukraine’s State Aviation Museum in Kyiv displays Soviet-era aircraft such as this one. (Photo: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

Exposure

NATO’s beefed-up military posture along its eastern frontier dates in part from a September 2014 summit in Wales, during which NATO pledged to stockpile supplies and forward-deploy troops in Eastern Europe to repel a Russian attack.

The Obama administration’s defense budget follows through on that initiative, tagging funds to permanently deploy a full armored combat brigade to the region.

Beginning in February 2017, approximately 4,500 troops will rotate every 90 days among Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.

Additionally, 250 tanks, heavy artillery, and armored personnel carriers will be stockpiled across the region.

Even with the increased U.S. presence, NATO’s Baltic states remain vulnerable to a Russian attack. A recent report by the RAND Corporation, a U.S. think tank, concluded that Russian forces could invade to the edge of Estonia’s capital of Tallinn or the Latvian capital of Riga in 36 to 60 hours.

“As currently postured, NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members,” the report said.

The report added that NATO needs seven combat brigades, including three heavy armored brigades, supported with airpower to “prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states.”

Substantial?

The Kremlin has called the U.S. plan for a rotating combat brigade in Eastern Europe a violation of NATO’s pledge not to forward-deploy troops on the alliance’s eastern frontier.

In the Russian Founding Act of 1997, NATO pledged not to station a “substantial” numbers of troops or deploy nuclear weapons among new member states from the former Warsaw Pact.

At the time, Russia criticized the deal for not setting a specific numerical limit on troop numbers. Now, Washington and Moscow are mincing words over whether a U.S. buildup in Eastern Europe would constitute a “substantial” increase in troops.

“We see an unprecedented military buildup since the end of the Cold War and the presence of NATO on the so-called eastern flank of the alliance with the goal of exerting military and political pressure on Russia for containing it,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said April 14, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

In a formal statement on the alliance’s website, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said:

What NATO has done when it comes to reinforcement of our collective defense is defensive; it is proportionate and it is a direct response to what we have seen of Russian aggressive behavior in Ukraine.

BY: Nolan Peterson

Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.

Terrifying Truth on Who Obama is NOT Deporting

Posted on April 21, 2016April 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Goodlatte Urges DHS to Deport Thousands of Criminal Aliens with Federal Drug Convictions Set to Be Released Next Month

HouseJudiciaryCommittee: On April 30, 2014, the United States Sentencing Commission approved Amendment 782, which modified the United States Sentencing Guidelines to lower the base offense level for federal controlled substances offenses. Amendment 782 was made retroactive by the Commission. As a consequence, approximately 2,000 convicted criminal aliens whose sentences were reduced are now eligible for release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on or about November 1, 2015.

In the letter to Secretary Johnson, Chairman Goodlatte urges Secretary Johnson to remove these criminal aliens from the United States, noting that they are the highest enforcement priority based on the Obama Administration’s own written policy for priority enforcement.

Below is the text of Chairman Goodlatte’s letter to Secretary Johnson.

October 20, 2015

The Honorable Jeh Johnson
Secretary
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Dear Secretary Johnson:

On April 30, 2014, the United States Sentencing Commission approved Amendment 782, which modified the United States Sentencing Guidelines to lower the base offense level for federal controlled substances offenses. Amendment 782 was made retroactive by the Commission. As a consequence, approximately 6,000 convicted criminals whose sentences were reduced by the sentencing court pursuant to Amendment 782 are now eligible for release from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on or about November 1, 2015, and approximately 8,500 additional prisoners will be eligible for early release by November 1, 2016. Of the initial 6,000 inmates who will be released early, a significant number – approximately 2,000 – are criminal aliens. These aliens are removable from the United States, either because they are unlawfully present or because of their criminal convictions. In fact, based on their convictions for drug trafficking offenses, such aliens are the highest enforcement priority (Priority 1) for the Department of Homeland Security, based on your own written policy for priority enforcement, issued on November 20, 2014.

During your testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on July 14, 2015, Committee Members questioned you about the early release of aliens under Amendment 782. In response, you stated, “I’m aware of this issue. I’m aware of the adjustment to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. I’m aware that a number of individuals will be released as a result. I’m aware that a number of them are probably undocumented, and we’ve been working with DOJ to do the most effective thing for public safety in that regard.”Given your response, I fully expect that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will issue a detainer with the BOP for each alien expected to be released pursuant to Amendment 782, and that each alien will be taken into custody by ICE, as required by the Immigration and Nationality Act, for purposes of initiating removal proceedings or to execute the removal order of each alien who is already subject to a final order of removal from the United States.

Please confirm whether my expectation will be met and that the Department of Homeland Security is committed to ridding our streets of aliens peddling dangerous and illicit drugs to our children. Additionally, please provide the following requested information:

The specific number of aliens who will be released early by BOP pursuant to Amendment 782.

Of those alien prisoners, how many have ICE detainers or requests for notification?

Does ICE expect to issue detainers or requests for notification for every alien identified in (1) above prior to the prisoner’s release from BOP custody?

Does ICE expect to take custody of every alien identified in (1) above for the purpose of initiating removal proceedings or to execute a final order of removal? If not, why not?

Please provide the number of aliens identified in (1) above who will not be taken into ICE custody upon release from BOP and provide an explanation for each alien as to why ICE will not take the alien into custody.

Please provide this information to me by October 30, 2015. If your office has any questions, please contact Tracy Short, Counsel, Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, at (202) 225-3926.

Sincerely,

Bob Goodlatte
Chairman

**** Summary from Breitbart:

An overwhelming percentage of criminal aliens the Obama administration knows are in the U.S. are not detained but are instead living in neighborhoods and communities across the country, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA).

“The American public has been misled by the ‘enforcement priorities,’ ‘deferred action,’ and ‘executive action’ policies of this Administration, which categorize only certain quote, unquote ‘serious’ criminal aliens as worthy of immigration enforcement,” Goodlatte said at a House subcommittee hearing examining the victims of illegal immigrant crime. “However, this Administration’s actions demonstrate that it finds it acceptable to permit even serious criminal aliens to prey on our communities.”

According to the House Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration’s enforcement policies have allowed tens of thousands of criminal aliens to remain in the U.S.

“At least 95 percent of convicted criminal aliens known to [the Department of Homeland Security] are not detained,” Goodlatte said at Tuesday’s hearing.

The Virginia Republican argued against immigration activists’ contention that illegal immigration is a “victimless crime,” stressing that the opposite it true — “illegal immigration has consequences that can be devastating,” he said.

“Americans deserve to know why this Administration would release thousands upon thousands of criminal aliens from DHS custody – despite convictions that included a total of 473 homicide-related offenses, 375 kidnappings, 890 sexual assaults, and 10,731 assaults before their release,” he continued.

Goodlatte took additional aim at advocates and Democrats’ argument that the unaccompanied minors from Central America — who have been flooding across the border illegally by the tens of thousands and largely allowed to remain — are all helpless children.

“It is no coincidence that the spike in gang crime occurred during the same time that thousands of Central American minors were illegally entering at the southwest border. Sixty-four percent of validated gang members arrested in Frederick County in 2015 entered illegally through the southwest border as unaccompanied minors,” Goodlatte said, at the time foreshadowing the testimony of Sheriff Charles Jenkins of Frederick County, Maryland.

Goodlatte’s strong words preceded emotional testimony offered by two hearing witnesses whose children were killed by illegal immigrants.

“By releasing known criminal aliens and refusing to secure our border, the Administration has sent a clear message to the American people that their safety and security are far less important than ensuring that illegally present and criminal aliens will remain here,” Goodlatte added.