Category Archives: U.S. Constitution

Border Security Facts or Not

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March 23, 2016

National Security and Border Threats

Key word, key term for entry: CREDIBLE FEAR = immediate entry, on the fly on asylum.

Horowitz: What is Homeland Security Hiding Behind Immigration Numbers?

CR: As Americans ominously observe the raging fire of suicidal immigration policies implemented by our European friends across the pond, one of the first questions on their minds is: how many of these Islamic radicals have been admitted to our country?  The answer is we don’t even know how many people in total have come to our country since 2013 because the Department of Homeland Security has refused to publish that data or make it available to Congress.

It is already March 2016, yet the public and members of Congress still do not have any of the immigration data for 2014, much less 2015.

Over the past year we’ve been posting data on the number of immigrants, naturalized citizens, and immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries we have accepted in recent years.  The immigration and naturalization trends are skyrocketing across the board, particularly from Muslim countries.  Roughly 680,000 immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries have been given green cards from 2009-2013.  But notice we have no data since 2013.

While data on refugees can be pulled from the State Department’s database (when it is working) and information on some non-immigrant visas can be pulled from the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, the public is in the dark as to the number of people who have been granted green cards in total (and the breakdown by country) without access to the annual “Yearbook on Immigration Statistics” from the Department of Homeland Security.

yearbook immigration statics

It is already March 2016, yet the public and members of Congress still do not have any of the immigration data for 2014, much less 2015.  Typically, the statistics are published during the spring of the following year.  The release of data has gotten progressively slower since the INS was restructured into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, but the Obama administration has consistently stonewalled on publishing data.  For example, it wasn’t until last week that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement published its 2014 report on refugees.  But even Obama’s DHS had the 2013 data posted by June of 2014.  Why is there still no data on 2014 two years later?

With evidence from Census data indicating a surge in immigration overall and a spike in immigration from the Middle East, why is it that in a first world country we don’t even know how many people have come in since the advent of ISIS?  Given the terrorism threats and the growing population from the Middle East, wouldn’t it be nice to know how many people from predominantly Muslim countries have been granted green cards over the past two years?

Given the influx of Central American illegal immigrants, shouldn’t we know how many were granted asylum and how many children were granted Special Immigrants Juvenile Status, which leads to a pathway to citizenship?

Given Obama’s unprecedented move of advertising and recruiting immigrants to become naturalized citizens last year, shouldn’t we know how many have signed up and from where they originated?

The notion that even members of Congress don’t know the details of who is being added to our civil society until two years later is patently absurd and dangerous.  Congress should have the full reports the following year and topline data every month.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough members of Congress who care enough to exercise proper oversight over this administration’s violation of our sovereignty.

 

He is Back in the Fight and a Leader

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Just a reminder:

Freed Guantánamo convict returns to the fight

Ibrahim al Qosi pleaded guilty to war crimes in exchange for certain release

U.S. Air Force delivered him to Khartoum in 2012; he’s in Yemen now

U.S. officials won’t confirm recidivist case, which comes as Pentagon weighs more Guantánamo releases

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

MiamiHerald: A former Guantánamo detainee who was released to Sudan after a war court guilty plea has emerged in a key position in Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, according to an expert on jihadist movements.

“He’s clearly a religious leader in the group,” said Aaron Zelin, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who edits the Jihadology blog. He found Guantánamo 2002-12 detainee Ibrahim al Qosi — his photo and his biography — on the latest video release from the offshoot of Osama bin Laden’s organization, “Guardians of Shariah.”

Obama administration officials did not confirm or deny the apparent case of recidivism, which was first reported on the Long War Journal website Wednesday.

The video included Qosi’s biography and said he joined the jihad in Yemen in December 2014. It also said he was close to bin Laden “until he was imprisoned in Guantánamo in 2001.” Qosi, now 55, arrived at the detention center on Jan. 13, 2002, according to documents obtained by McClatchy Newspapers from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. He pleaded guilty to foot soldier war crimes in 2010 in exchange for release in 2012.

Qosi’s former U.S. attorney, Paul Reichler, told the Miami Herald on Wednesday that he had not been in touch with the Sudanese man since Qosi left the U.S. Navy base prison for Sudan in July 2012.

“I was told by a Sudanese lawyer a year ago that al Qosi was working as a taxi driver in Khartoum,” Reichler said by email. “I have received no information about his activities since then, and I do not know what he has been doing, or where he is living.”

At the time of Qosi’s return to Sudan, Reichler said he looked forward to being reunited with his wife and family, including two daughters, “and live among them in peace, quiet and freedom.” His wife at the time was the daughter of a former chief bodyguard to bin Laden.

On the AQAP tape, Qosi opines in Arabic on the evolving globalization of jihad. His comments were translated for the Herald by a journalist who is fluent in Arabic.

“As the U.S. has waged war on us remotely as a solution to minimize its casualties, we have fought it remotely, as well by individual jihad,” he is heard saying. “And as the U.S. has killed our men, we have killed its people. But it is not the same. Our dead are in heaven and theirs are in the hellfire, and the war is not over yet.”

Qosi, an accountant, kept the books for a bin Laden business in Khartoum in the early ’90s, according to Pentagon documents made public by WikiLeaks. He then followed bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996. Because the timeline for war crimes only covers the era in Afghanistan, Qosi pleaded guilty to foot-soldier crimes — sometimes driving for bin Laden, working at al-Qaida’s Star of Jihad compound in Jalalabad, and fleeing the post-Sept. 11 U.S. invasion to Tora Bora, armed with an AK-47 rifle.

The AQAP video biography mirrors much of that noting, “he participated in the famous battle of Tora Bora” with bin Laden “until the withdrawal.”

Qosi was also one of the first at Guantánamo to formally allege torture — the use of strobe lights, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, being wrapped in the Israeli flag — in an unlawful detention petition his Air Force attorney filed in federal court in 2004. It was never heard. Instead, he withdrew the habeas corpus suit as part of his 2010 plea agreement.

The disclosure comes at a complicated time: As Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is considering the release to repatriation or resettlement of as many as 17 detainees who have been cleared for transfer. Qosi got out on the war court guilty plea that saw him spend his last two years at the prison Convict’s Corridor separated from the majority of the detainee population.

Pentagon statement

“We take any incidence of re-engagement very seriously, but we don’t comment on specific cases. More than 90 percent of the detainees transferred under this Administration are neither confirmed nor suspected by the Intelligence Community of re-engagement. We work in close coordination through military, intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomatic channels to mitigate re-engagement and to take follow-on action when necessary.” — Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross

Additional reading

Click this, to read about the captive’s 2012 release from Guantánamo.

 

 

The WH, the Wilful Failures on FOIA Requests

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WashingtonExaminer 2014: It’s Sunshine Week, so perhaps some enterprising White House reporter will ask press secretary Jay Carney why President Obama rewrote the Freedom of Information Act without telling the rest of America.

The rewrite came in an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved “White House equities.”

That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.

The Greg memo is described in detail in a new study made public today by Cause of Action, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group that monitors government transparency and accountability.

How serious an attack on the public’s right to know is the Obama administration’s invention of the “White House equities” exception?

“FOIA is designed to inform the public on government behavior; White House equities allow the government to withhold information from the media, and therefore the public, by having media requests forwarded for review. This not only politicizes federal agencies, it impairs fundamental First Amendment liberties,” Cause of Action explains in its report.

Equities are everything

The equities exception is breathtaking in its breadth. As the Greg memo put it, any document request is covered, including “congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and FOIA requests.”

US gov’t sets record for failures to find files when asked

WASHINGTON (AP) – When it comes to providing government records the public is asking to see, the Obama administration is having a hard time finding them.

In the final figures released during President Barack Obama’s presidency, the U.S. government set a record last year for the number of times federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn’t find a single page of files requested under the Freedom of Information Act. In more than one in six cases, or 129,825 times, government searchers said they came up empty-handed, according to a new Associated Press analysis.

The FBI couldn’t find any records in 39 percent of cases, or 5,168 times. The Environmental Protection Agency regional office that oversees New York and New Jersey couldn’t find anything 58 percent of the time. U.S. Customs and Border Protection couldn’t find anything in 34 percent of cases.

“It’s incredibly unfortunate when someone waits months, or perhaps years, to get a response to their request – only to be told that the agency can’t find anything,” said Adam Marshall, an attorney with the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Beverly Lumpkin, said the administration answered more records requests and reduced its backlog of leftover requests, which should be considered good work on the part of the government in fulfilling information requests.

The AP’s annual review covered all requests to 100 federal agencies during fiscal 2015. The administration released its figures days ahead of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

It was impossible to know whether more requests last year involved non-existent files or whether federal workers were searching less than diligently before giving up to consider a case closed. The administration said it completed a record 769,903 requests, a 19 percent increase over the previous year despite hiring only 283 new full-time workers on the issue, or about 7 percent. The number of times the government said it couldn’t find records increased 35 percent over the same period.

“It seems like they’re doing the minimal amount of work they need to do,” said Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter at Vice News and a leading expert on the records law. “I just don’t believe them. I really question the integrity of their search.”

In some high-profile instances, usually after news organizations filed expensive federal lawsuits, the Obama administration found tens of thousands of pages after it previously said it couldn’t find any. The website Gawker sued the State Department last year after it said it couldn’t find any emails that Philippe Reines, an aide to Hillary Clinton and former deputy assistant secretary of state, had sent to journalists. After the lawsuit, the agency said it found 90,000 documents about correspondence between Reines and reporters. In one email, Reines wrote to a reporter, “I want to avoid FOIA,” although Reines’ lawyer later said he was joking.

When the government says it can’t find records, it rarely provides detailed descriptions about how it searched for them. Under the law, federal employees are required to make a reasonable search, and a 1991 U.S. circuit court ruling found that a worker’s explanation about how he conducted a search is “accorded a presumption of good faith, which cannot be rebutted by purely speculative claims” that a better search might have turned up files.

For a deeper and accurate summary, go here.

Foreign Fundraisers for Hillary

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Hillary Clinton campaign totals 13 fundraisers in foreign countries

SunLightFoundation: As the 2016 election rolls toward November, candidates are travelling far and wide to raise money to fill their campaign coffers. At Political Party Time, we previously mapped and detailed Hillary Clinton’s fundraising tour de force in the states. While Clinton benefits from many fundraisers outside of the Beltway, she’s also cashing in on at least 13 events outside of the country, according to an analysis of Party Time‘s fundraising data.

Clinton’s campaign has held eight total fundraisers in London, including two in March. And her offshore fundraising operation has so far reached Munich with one fundraiser; Durban, South Africa with one fundraiser; and Mexico City with two fundraisers. It is worth noting, that to the best of our knowledge Clinton herself, won’t be attending any of these fundraising parties.

Donors at these events presumably are U.S. citizens who currently live in the countries where the events are held. However, it is also worth nothing that the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) permits U.S. permanent residents (as well as U.S. citizens) to donate to presidential campaigns.

According to the FEC, “Foreign nationals are prohibited from making any contributions or expenditures in connection with any election in the U.S. Please note, however, that ‘green card’ holders (i.e., individuals lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the U.S.) are not considered foreign nationals and, as a result, may contribute.”

These “foreign nationals” include foreign governments, political parties, corporations, associations, partnerships, persons with foreign citizenship and non-permanent resident immigrants.

Overseas fundraisers are relatively common for leading presidential candidates, but hosting over a dozen events before spring illustrates the vast reach of Clinton’s fundraising machine. By comparison, according to Party Time, no other presidential candidate has any official overseas fundraisers to his/her name. For a map and details click here.

*****

This is clearly not a new rodeo for Hillary and her team. A matter to be noted is the experience she has with regard to the Clinton Foundation. Are we to assume her run for the White House is for more global favors and access?

Hillary’s foreign fundraising mess: Even the liberal press is fed up

FNC: It’s not surprising that Hillary Clinton was the constant target of attacks at CPAC, second only to Barack Obama.

What was striking is how many of those barbs involved foreign money. And that didn’t require much explanation.

I was in the audience when Ted Cruz joked that the former secretary of State could have been there, but no one could find a foreign government to foot the bill.

The more I think about it, the more I find it inexplicable that the Clinton Foundation created this mess. It was entirely predictable that the foreign cash story would blow up as Hillary was gearing up to run for president, creating yet another financial controversy for the dominant Democratic front-runner.

But critics of the liberal media should take note of how the story surfaced. The news side of the Wall Street Journal revealed that the foundation had dropped its self-imposed ban on taking dough from foreign governments now that Hillary was no longer in Obama’s Cabinet.

Then the Washington Post advanced the story with two strong pieces, the second of which said:

“The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration.”

And there was damning detail: “In one instance, foundation officials acknowledged they should have sought approval in 2010 from the State Department ethics office, as required by the agreement for new government donors, before accepting a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government.”

So even when Clinton was secretary of State, foreign regimes looking to curry favor with the administration were able to use the backdoor route of the foundation run by her husband. These included Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. And the foundation didn’t even follow its own rules.

What’s more, what is now the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation thinks it’s all right once again to solicit foreign governments that of course would love to buy influence with a potential president.

A New York Times editorial urged Hillary “to reinstate the foundation’s ban against foreign contributors” and “reassure the public that the foundation will not become a vehicle for insiders’ favoritism, should she run for and win the White House.”

When you’re a Democrat and lose the Times editorial page, you’re in trouble.

Now the broadcast networks have largely blown off the story, except for half a minute on CBS. But I have seen it on CNN and MSNBC as well as Fox.

On CNN’s “New Day,” National Journal columnist Ron Founrier said:

“I wrote a couple weeks ago that this was ethically sleazy and politically stupid. I stand by those words and actually, what we’ve seen since then, I think I’ll double down on them. Again, this proves that the Clintons’ biggest blind spot for all — the admirable things about them is — the biggest blind spot is they actually think that the ends justify the means.”

On yesterday’s “Fox News Sunday,” former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman made no attempt to defend the Hillary situation, saying the appearance is “poor.”

Even the liberal New Republic is uncomfortable, saying “it’s worth questioning why the Foundation has accepted those donations in recent years, particularly in 2014 with the 2016 cycle about to get going. The Foundation had to know that accepting foreign donations would generate negative coverage and would give Republicans an easy way to attack Hillary.” The magazine’s mild verdict? Poor judgment.

Even a Salon headline says: “The Clinton Foundation’s Fundraising Is a Big Problem for Hillary.”

All this is happening while Hillary continues to give big money speeches, a subject that has brought her enormous political grief.

There’s no question that the foundation donations have gone to such worthy causes as earthquake relief and cheaper HIV drugs. But the appearance created by a foreign money pipeline is awful, as even Hillary’s defenders recognize.

The whole mess was utterly avoidable, and even now it’s hard to understand why the Clinton team is providing fodder for places like CPAC.

Click for more from Media Buzz

Gowdy Prevents Cummings From Leaking Benghazi Testimony

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Sheesh…. leaking purposely? To save Hillary? Permission granted for Cummings to leak testimony? Has Cummings considered the impact of leaks to media to other witnesses?

Judge for yourself.

Benghazi Republicans limit Democrats’ access to witness records

WaPo: Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi are placing new restrictions on Democrats’ access to key documents out of fear they could be made public before the panel concludes its investigation.

The move arrives amid growing speculation about when Republicans will release their final report about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks and what conclusions it will draw about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is solidifying her position as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Under new rules communicated Wednesday by Republicans, Democratic lawmakers and staff will no longer be given their own physical and digital copies of witness interview transcripts. Instead, they will only be able to access to hard copies of the transcripts inside GOP offices during business hours.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) argued the arrangement became necessary after panel Democrats led by ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) threatened to unilaterally release transcripts from interviews with key witnesses, including White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA director David Petraeus.

“Democrats have threatened to leak more transcripts and therefore I have no choice but to protect past witnesses, future witnesses, confidential material and the integrity of the investigation by allowing the Democrats equitable access but not control,” Gowdy said in a statement.

“Once they stated their intention to misuse transcripts, I could not in good faith allow them to do so. Mr. Cummings likes to frequently lecture people how ‘we’re better than this,’ but his actions and the actions of his staff with regards to this investigation unfortunately prove otherwise.”

Cummings accused Republicans of breaking House rules and working to time disclosures in order to maximize harm to Clinton in the election.

“Democrats on the Select Committee will not agree to conditions that prevent us from putting out the facts that witnesses have told the Committee in order to rebut the conspiracy theories about Benghazi,” Cummings said in a statement.

“Republicans are so desperate to keep us from sharing these facts with the public, they denied Democrats any access to some of these witness transcripts for weeks.  Republicans are writing a secret, partisan report that they plan to make public shortly before the election – and they are violating House Rules in order to try to silence Democrats from putting out the facts before then.”

The conflict represents yet another stalemate for the dysfunctional select committee and its leaders, Gowdy and Cummings. And the rancor is only expected to build as the investigation approaches its two-year anniversary in May.

Republicans would not provide a deadline for their final report, arguing the Obama administration would merely stonewall on further document and interview requests until that date. Instead, Gowdy has said he hopes for completion as soon as possible “before summer.”

The question remains whether that timetable includes a window for the CIA to complete a classification review of the report, which could take several months. Democrats argue that, adding time for the review, the schedule would put the release of the report just before the general election in November.

Cummings said his side must have full access to the transcripts in order to conduct its work, including efforts to counteract what Democrats see as a Republican campaign to unfairly target Clinton. Aides described the limits on their access to documents as unprecedented and another sign of the GOP’s desire to manipulate the investigation.

“By limiting Democratic access to these transcripts, you impair our ability to share the evidence supporting our fact-based analysis with the public, essentially quieting any dissent from your report from the start,” Cummings wrote to Gowdy on Tuesday.

Gowdy defended his decision.

“I have consulted with the House Parliamentarian and I am confident this arrangement complies with the letter and intent of House rules,” he wrote back on Wednesday.

The process for sharing documents in a congressional investigation is usually straightforward.

Under normal circumstances, the stenographer recording the closed-door interviews would pass along transcripts to the majority — in this case, the Republicans — who would then pass them to Democrats.

This is how the panel functioned until mid-February, when Democrats threatened in a comment to the Washington Post to release transcripts in order to rebut the GOP’s claims of “significant breakthroughs” in the investigation. After that, according to aides from both sides, Republicans withheld transcripts from interviews as they took place.

The new rules for access were not communicated until Republican and Democratic staffers spoke on Wednesday. Aides to Gowdy said he spoke to Cummings on the House floor, offering free access to transcripts if Cummings promised not to release them.

“He would not give me that assurance,” Gowdy said in a statement.