Category Archives: U.S. Constitution

Apple vs. FBI, Try the iCloud or iTunes

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In all fairness, General Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA actually disagrees with FBI Director James Comey and sides with Apple. The reason is fascinating.

Apple’s formal statement is here.

Zetter – Wired:

The news this week that a magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI hack an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooter suspects has polarized the nation—and also generated some misinformation.

Those who support the government say Apple has cooperated in the past to unlock dozens of phones in other cases—so why can’t it help the FBI unlock this one?

But this isn’t about unlocking a phone; rather, it’s about ordering Apple to create a new software tool to eliminate specific security protections the company built into its phone software to protect customer data. Opponents of the court’s decision say this is no different than the controversial backdoor the FBI has been trying to force Apple and other companies to build into their software—except in this case, it’s an after-market backdoor to be used selectively on phones the government is investigating.

The stakes in the case are high because it draws a target on Apple and other companies embroiled in the ongoing encryption/backdoor debate that has been swirling in Silicon Valley and on Capitol Hill for the last two years. Briefly, the government wants a way to access data on gadgets, even when those devices use secure encryption to keep it private.

Apple specifically introduced security features in 2014 to ensure that it would not be able to unlock customer phones and decrypt the data on them; but it turns out it overlooked a loophole in those security features that the government is now trying to exploit. The loophole is not about Apple unlocking the phone but about making it easier for the FBI to attempt to unlock it on its own. If the controversy over the San Bernardino phone causes Apple to take further steps to close that loophole so that it can’t assist the FBI in this way in the future, it could be seen as excessive obstinance and obstruction by Capitol Hill. And that could be the thing that causes lawmakers to finally step in with federal legislation that prevents Apple and other companies from locking the government out of devices.

If the FBI is successful in forcing Apply to comply with its request, it would also set a precedent for other countries to follow and ask Apple to provide their authorities with the same software tool.

In the interest of clarifying the facts and correcting some misinformation, we’ve pulled together a summary of the issues at hand.

What Kind of Phone Are We Talking About?

The phone in question is an iPhone 5c running the iOS9 version of Apple’s software. The phone is owned by the San Bernardino Department of Public Health, which gave it to Syed Rizwan Farook, the shooter suspect, to use for work.

What Is the Issue?

Farook created a password to lock his phone, and due to security features built into the software on his device, the FBI can’t unlock the phone and access the data on it using the method it wants to use—a bruteforce password-guessing technique wherein they enter different passcodes repeatedly until they guess the right one—without running the risk that the device will lock them out permanently.

How Would It Do That?

Apple’s operating system uses two factors to secure and decrypt data on the phone–the password the user chooses and a unique 256-bit AES secret key that’s embedded in the phone when it’s manufactured. As cryptographer Matthew Green explains in a blog post, the user’s password gets “tangled” with the secret key to create a passcode key that both secures and unlocks data on the device. When the user enters the correct password, the phone performs a calculation that combines these two codes and if the result is the correct passcode, the device and data are unlocked.

To prevent someone from brute-forcing the password, the device has a user-enabled function that limits the number of guesses someone can try before the passcode key gets erased. Although the data remains on the device, it cannot be decrypted and therefore becomes permanently inaccessible. The number of password tries allowed before this happens is unclear. Apple says on its web site that the data becomes inaccessible after six failed password attempts. The government’s motion to the court (.pdf) says it happens after 10 failed guesses.

The government says it does not know for certain if Farook’s device has the auto-erase feature enabled, but notes in its motion that San Bernardino County gave the device to Farook with it enabled, and the most recent backup of data from his phone to iCloud “showed the function turned on.”

A reasonable person might ask why, if the phone was backing data up to iCloud the government can just get everything it needs from iCloud instead of breaking into the phone. The government did obtain some data backed up to iCloud from the phone, but authorities allege in their court document that he may have disabled iCloud backups at some point. They obtained data backed up to iCloud a month before the shootings, but none closer to the date of the shooting when they say he is most likely to have used the phone to coordinate the attack.

Is This Auto-Erase the Only Security Protection Apple Has in Place?

No. In addition to the auto-erase function, there’s another protection against brute force attacks: time delays. Each time a password is entered on the phone, it takes about 80 milliseconds for the system to process that password and determine if it’s correct. This helps prevent someone from quickly entering a new password to try again, because they can only guess a password every 80 milliseconds. This might not seem like a lot of time, but according to Dan Guido, CEO of Trail of Bits, a company that does extensive consulting on iOS security, it can be prohibitively long depending on the length of the password.

“In terms of cracking passwords, you usually want to crack or attempt to crack hundreds or thousands of them per second. And with 80 milliseconds, you really can only crack eight or nine per second. That’s incredibly slow,” he said in a call to reporters this week.

With a four-digit passcode, he says, there are only about 10,000 different combinations a password-cracker has to try. But with a simple six-digit passcode, there are about one million different combinations a password cracker would have to try to guess the correct one—Apple says would take more than five-and-a-half-years to try all combinations of a six-character alpha-numeric password. The iOS9 software, which appears to be the software on the San Bernardino phone, asks you to create a six-digit password by default, though you can change this requirement to four digits if you want a shorter one.

Later models of phones use a different chip than the iPhone 5c and have what’s called a “secure enclave” that adds even more time delays to the password-guessing process. Guido describes the secure enclave as a “separate computer inside the iPhone that brokers access to encryption keys” increasing the security of those keys.

With the secure enclave, after each wrong password guess, the amount of time you have to wait before trying another password grows with each try; by the ninth failed password you have to wait an hour before you can enter a tenth password. The government mentioned this in its motion to the court, as if the San Bernardino phone has this added delay. But the iPhone 5c does not have secure enclave on it, so the delay would really only be the usual 80 milliseconds in this case.

Why None of This Is an Issue With Older iPhones

With older versions of Apple’s phone operating system—that is, phones using software prior to iOS8—Apple has the ability to bypass the user’s passcode to unlock the device. It has done so in dozens of cases over the years, pursuant to a court order. But beginning with iOS8, Apple changed this so that it can no longer bypass the user’s passcode.

According to the motion filed by the government in the San Bernardino case, the phone in question is using a later version of Apple’s operating system—which appears to be iOS9. We’re basing this on a statement in the motion that reads: “While Apple has publicized that it has written the software differently with respect to iPhones such as the SUBJECT DEVICE with operating system (“iOS”)9, Apple yet retains the capacity to provide the assistance sought herein that may enable the government to access the SUBJECT DEVICE pursuant to the search warrant.”

The government is referring to the changes that Apple initially made with iOS8, that exist in iOS9 as well. Apple released iOS9 in September 2015, three months before the San Bernardino attacks occurred, so it’s very possible this is indeed the version installed on the San Bernardino phone.

After today, technology vendors need to consider that they might be the adversary they’re trying to protect their customers from.

What Does the Government Want?

A lot of people have misconstrued the government’s request and believe it asked the court to order Apple to unlock the phone, as Apple has done in many cases before. But as noted, the particular operating system installed on this phone does not allow Apple to bypass the passcode and unlock the phone. So the government wants to try bruteforcing the password without having the system auto-erase the decryption key and without additional time delays. To do this, it wants Apple to create a special version of its operating system, a crippled version of the firmware that essentially eliminates the bruteforcing protections, and install it on the San Bernardino phone. It also wants Apple to make it possible to enter password guesses electronically rather than through the touchscreen so that the FBI can run a password-cracking script that races through the password guesses automatically. It wants Apple to design this crippled software to be loaded into memory instead of on disk so that the data on the phone remains forensically sound and won’t be altered.

Note that even after Apple does all of this, the phone will still be locked, unless the government’s bruteforcing operation works to guess the password. And if Farook kept the iOS9 default requirement for a six-character password, and chose a complex alpha-numeric combination for his password, the FBI might never be able to crack it even with everything it has asked Apple to do.

Apple CEO Tim Cook described the government’s request as “asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers—including tens of millions of American citizens—from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.”

What Exactly Is the Loophole You Said the Government Is Exploiting?

The loophole is the fact that Apple even has the ability to run crippled firmware on a device like this without requiring the user to approve it, the way software updates usually work. If this required user approval, Apple would not be able to do what the government is requesting.

How Doable Is All of This?

Guido says the government’s request is completely doable and reasonable.

“They have to make a couple of modifications. They have to make it so that the operating system boots inside of a RAM disk…[and] they need to delete a bunch of code—there’s a lot of code that protects the passcode that they just need to trash,” he said.

Making it possible for the government to test passwords with a script instead of typing them in would take a little more effort he says. “[T]hat would require a little bit of extra development time, but again totally possible. Apple can load a new kernel driver that allows you to plug something in over the Thunderbolt port… It wouldn’t be trivial but it wouldn’t be massive.”

Could This Same Technique Be Used to Undermine Newer, More Secure Phones?

There has been some debate online about whether Apple would be able to do this for later phones that have newer chips and the secure enclave. It’s an important question because these are the phones that most users will have in the next one or two years as they replace their old phones. Though the secure enclave has additional security features, Guido says that Apple could indeed also write crippled firmware for the secure enclave that achieves exactly what the FBI is asking for in the San Bernardino case.

“It is absolutely within the realm of possibility for Apple themselves to tamper with a lot of the functionality of the secure enclave. They can’t read the secure private keys out of it, but they can eliminate things like the passcode delay,” he said. “That means the solution that they might implement for the 5c would not port over directly to the 5s, the 6 or the 6s, but they could create a separate solution for [these] that includes basically crippled firmware for the secure enclave.”

If Apple eliminates the added time delays that the secure enclave introduces, then such phones would only have the standard 80-millisecond delay that older phones have.

“It requires more work to do so with the secure enclave. You have to develop more software; you have to test it a lot better,” he said. “There may be some other considerations that Apple has to work around. [But] as far as I can tell, if you issue a software update to the secure enclave, you can eliminate the passcode delay and you can eliminate the other device-erase [security feature]. And once both of those are gone, you can query for passcodes as fast as 80 milliseconds per request.”

What Hope Is There for Your Privacy?

You can create a strong alpha-numeric password for your device that would make bruteforcing it essentially infeasible for the FBI or anyone else. “If you have letters and numbers and it’s six, seven or eight digits long, then the potential combinations there are really too large for anyone to bruteforce,” Guido said.

And What Can Apple Do Going Forward?

Guido says Apple could and should make changes to its system so that what the FBI is asking it to do can’t be done in future models. “There are changes that Apple can make to the secure enclave to further secure their phones,” he said. “For instance, they may be able to require some kind of user confirmation, before that firmware gets updated, by entering their PIN code … or they could burn the secure enclave into the chip as read-only memory and lose the ability to update it [entirely].”

These would prevent Apple in the future from having the ability to either upload crippled firmware to the device without the phone owner’s approval or from uploading new firmware to the secure enclave at all.

“There’s a couple of different options that they have; I think all of them, though, are going to require either a new major version of iOS or new chips on the actual phones,” Guido said. “But for the moment, what you have to fall back on is that it takes 80 milliseconds to try every single password guess. And if you have a complex enough password then you’re safe.”

Is the Ability to Upload Crippled Firmware a Vulnerability Apple Should Have Foreseen?

Guido says no.

“It wasn’t until very recently that companies had to consider: What does it look like if we attack our own customers? What does it look like if we strip out and remove the security mitigations we put in specifically to protect customers?”

He adds: “Apple did all the right things to make sure the iPhone is safe from remote intruders, or people trying to break into the iPhone.… But certainly after today, technology vendors need to consider that they might be the adversary they’re trying to protect their customers from. And that’s quite a big shift.” (Great job on this Kim)

 

Jeh Johnson’s State of DHS, Judge for Yourself

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Remarks by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh C. Johnson on the State of Homeland Security

Washington, D.C.
Woodrow Wilson Center
(As delivered)

Good morning everyone. Thank you Jane and the Wilson Center for hosting me again for this annual ritual. Jane is a terrific supporter of our Department and our homeland security mission, and a voice of strength and common sense in this town. Jane, for the third year in a row, I continue to appreciate your leadership and mentorship. Thank you again.

Today I will outline progress we made in 2015 and the goals the President and I have for the Department of Homeland Security in 2016. In the remaining 344 days of this Administration, there is much to do. I intend to make every day count. The former president of my alma mater, Morehouse College, used to tell his students we only have just a minute, but eternity is in it, and it’s up to us to use it. With Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as my partner, we will push an aggressive agenda to the end.

I begin these remarks with a shout-out to the men and women of DHS, led by the terrific component heads seated before me. It’s the nature of our business in homeland security that no news is good news. But no news is very often the product of the hard work and extraordinary, courageous effort our people put in every day to keep the American public safe.

Last fiscal year, for example, TSA screened 695 million passengers (3 million more than the year before); screened 450 million pieces of checked luggage (the highest in six years), and, at the same time, seized a record number 2,500 firearms from carry-on luggage, 84 percent of which were loaded.

Last fiscal year CBP screened 26.3 million containers, 11.3 million commercial trucks, 1 million commercial and private aircraft, 436,000 buses, ferries and trains, 103 million private vehicles, and 382 million travelers at land, marine and air ports of entry to the United States. At the same time, CBP collected nearly $46 billion in duties, taxes, and fees, making it the second largest revenue collector in the U.S. government.

Last fiscal year, HSI made a record high 33,000 criminal arrests, including 3,500 alleged members of transnational criminal gangs, and 2,400 alleged child predators.

Last fiscal year the Coast Guard saved over 3,500 lives, and seized 319,000 pounds of cocaine and 78,000 pounds of marijuana worth a total of $4.3 billion wholesale. In just one mission off the coast of Central and South America, the National Security Cutter STRATTON alone seized over $1 billion in cocaine, along with two drug cartel-owned submersibles.

Last year the Secret Service successfully orchestrated what may have been the largest domestic security operation in the history of this country, by providing physical security to 160 world leaders at the UN General Assembly, and, at the same time, providing security for Pope Francis as he visited New York, Washington, and Philadelphia.

Last year FEMA provided over $6 billion in federal disaster assistance, and was there to help communities recovering from flooding in Texas and South Carolina, tornadoes in Oklahoma, and typhoons in the Western Pacific.

This past Sunday, DHS personnel from the Secret Service, TSA, CBP, HSI, FEMA, I&A, NPPD, the Coast Guard, and other components led the federal effort to provide ground, air, maritime and cyber security for Super Bowl 50.

Then there are the individual acts of good and heroic work by our people, to save lives and go above and beyond the call of duty.

In late December nine Border Patrol agents traveled miles on foot or by horseback to come to the aid of an Arizona rancher who had fallen off her horse in a remote, mountainous area.

Last March two uniformed Secret Service officers helped save the life of a journalist who suffered a heart attack in the East Room of the White House.

Last July Coast Guard Petty Officer Darren Harrity swam nearly a mile, at night, in 57-degree water and 30-mph winds, to save the lives of four stranded fishermen.

Finally, we honor those killed in the line of duty. HSI Agent Scott McGuire was killed last month by a hit and run driver in Miami. I was glad to at least have had the opportunity to visit with Scott’s wife and five-year-old son, and hold Scott’s hand before he was officially declared brain dead. His funeral was 10 days ago in New Orleans.

Our people do extraordinary work every day to protect the homeland. Please consider thanking a TSO, a Coastie, a Customs officer, or a Border agent next time you see one.

Management Reform

Though our people do extraordinary work, I know we must improve the manner in which the Department conducts business. Like last year, reforming the way in which the Department of Homeland Security functions, to more effectively and efficiently deliver our services to the American people, is my New Year’s resolution for 2016. We’ve done a lot in the last two years, but, under the leadership of our Under Secretary for Management Russ Deyo, there is still much we will do.

My overarching goal as Secretary this last year is to continue to protect the homeland, and leave the Department of Homeland Security a better place than I found it.

The centerpiece of our management reform has been the Unity of Effort initiative I announced in April 2014, which focuses on getting away from the stove pipes, in favor of more centralized programming, budgeting, and acquisition processes.

We have transformed our approach to the budget. Today, we focus Department-wide on our mission needs, rather than through component stove pipes. With the support of Congress, we are moving to a simplified budget structure, in which line items mean the same across all components.

We have transformed our approach to acquisition. Last year I established a DHS-wide Joint Requirements Council to evaluate, from the viewpoint of the Department as a whole, our components’ needs on the front end of an acquisition.

We have launched the “Acquisition Innovations in Motion” initiative, to consult with the contractor community about ways to improve the quality and timeliness of our contracting process, and the emerging skills required of our acquisition professionals. We are putting faster contracting processes in place.

We are reforming our HR process. We are making our hiring process faster and more efficient. We are using all the tools we have to recruit, retain and reward personnel.

As part of the Unity of Effort initiative, in 2014 we created the Joint Task Forces dedicated to border security along the southern border. Once again, we are getting away from the stove pipes. In 2015, these Task Forces became fully operational. In 2016, we are asking Congress to officially authorize them in legislation.

We are achieving more transparency in our operations. We have staffed up our Office of Immigration Statistics and gave it the mandate to integrate immigration data across the Department. Last year, and for the second year in a row, we reported our total number of repatriations, returns and removals on a consolidated, Department-wide basis.

The long-awaited entry/exit overstay report was published in January, providing a clearer picture of the number of individuals in this country who overstay their visitor visas. It reflects that about one percent of those who enter this country by air or sea on visitor visas or through the Visa Waiver Program overstay.

We are working with outside, non-partisan experts on a project called BORDERSTAT, to develop a clear and comprehensive set of outcome metrics for measuring border security, apprehension rates, and inflow rates.

Since 2013 we’ve spearheaded something called the “DHS Data Framework” initiative. For the protection of the homeland, we are improving the collection and comparison of travel, immigration and other information against classified intelligence. We will do this consistent with laws and policies that protect privacy and civil liberties.

As we have proposed to Congress, I want to restructure the National Protection and Programs Directorate from a headquarters element to an operational component called the “Cyber and Infrastructure Protection” Agency.

I am very pleased with the 2016 DHS budget adopted by Congress and signed by the President as part of the omnibus spending deal reached in December. I’m very pleased with that. It funds all of our homeland security priorities, including, finally, the completion of the main building of the new DHS headquarters at St. Elizabeths campus in SE Washington. I will never get to work there, but perhaps they will name a courtyard or conference room after me.

The President’s budget request for 2017, released two days ago, funds our key priorities, to include aviation security, the Secret Service, recapitalization of the Coast Guard, and provides a huge increase in funding for cybersecurity.

Finally, we will improve the levels of employee satisfaction across the Department. We’ve been on an aggressive campaign to improve morale over the last two years. It takes time to turn a 22-component workforce of 240,000 people in a different direction. Though the overall results last year were still disappointing, we see signs of improvement. Employee satisfaction improved in a number of components, including at DHS headquarters.

This year we will see an improvement in employee satisfaction across DHS.

Counterterrorism

In 2016, counterterrorism will remain the cornerstone of the Department of Homeland Security’s mission. The events of 2015 reinforce this.

As I have said many times, we are in a new phase in the global terrorist threat, requiring a whole new type of response. We have moved from a world of terrorist directed attacks to a world that includes the threat of terrorist inspired attacks – in which the terrorist may have never come face to face with a single member of a terrorist organization, lives among us in the homeland, and self-radicalizes, inspired by something on the internet.

By their nature, terrorist-inspired attacks are harder to detect by our intelligence and law enforcement communities, could occur with little or no notice, and in general makes for a more complex homeland security challenge.

So, what are we doing about this?

First, our government, along with our coalition partners, continues to take the fight militarily to terrorist organizations overseas. ISIL is the terrorist organization most prominent on the world stage. Since September 2014, air strikes and special operations have in fact led to the death of a number of ISIL’s leaders and those focused on plotting external attacks in the West. At the same time, ISIL has lost about 40 percent of the populated areas it once controlled in Iraq, and thousands of square miles of territory it once controlled in Syria.

On the law enforcement side, the FBI continues to do an excellent job of detecting, investigating, preventing, and prosecuting terrorist plots here in the homeland.

As for the Department of Homeland Security, following the attacks in Ottawa, Canada in 2014, and in reaction to terrorist groups’ public calls for attacks on government installations in the western world, I directed our Federal Protective Service to enhance its presence and security at various U.S. government buildings around the country.

Given the prospect of the terrorist-inspired attack in the homeland, we have intensified our work with state and local law enforcement. Almost every day, DHS and the FBI share intelligence and information with Joint Terrorism Task Forces, fusion centers, local police chiefs and sheriffs.

In FY 2015 we provided over $2 billion in homeland security assistance to state and local governments around the country, for things such as active shooter training exercises, overtime for cops and firefighters, salaries for emergency managers, emergency vehicles, and communications and surveillance equipment. We helped to fund an active shooter training exercise that took place in the New York City subways last November and a series of these exercises just last weekend in Miami, Florida.

As I said at a graduation ceremony for 1,200 new cops in New York City in December, given the current threat environment, it is the cop on the beat who may be the first to detect the next terrorist attack in the United States.

We are enhancing information sharing with organizations that represent businesses, college and professional sports, faith-based organizations, and critical infrastructure.

We are enhancing measures to detect and prevent travel to this country by foreign terrorist fighters.

We are strengthening our Visa Waiver Program, which permits travelers from 38 different countries to come here without a visa. In 2014, we began to collect more personal information in the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, also known as the “ESTA” system, that travelers from Visa Waiver countries are required to use. As a result of these enhancements, over 3,000 additional travelers were denied travel here in FY 2015.

In August 2015, we introduced further security enhancements to the Visa Waiver Program.

Through the passage in December of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, Congress has codified into law several of these security enhancements, and placed new restrictions on eligibility for travel to the U.S. without a visa. We began to enforce these new restrictions on January 21. Waivers from these restrictions will only be granted on a case-by-case basis, when it is in the law enforcement or national security interests of the United States to do so. Those denied entry under the Visa Waiver Program as a result of this new law may still apply for a visa to travel to the U.S.

We are expanding the Department’s use of social media for various purposes. Today social media is used for over 33 different operational and investigative purposes within DHS. Beginning in 2014 we launched four pilot programs that involved consulting the social media of applicants for certain immigration benefits. USCIS now also reviews the social media of Syrian refugee applicants referred for enhanced vetting. Based upon the recent recommendation of a Social Media Task Force within DHS, I have determined that we must expand the use of social media even further, consistent with law.

CBP is deploying our Customs personnel at various airports abroad, to pre-clear air travelers before they get on flights to the United States. At present, we have this pre-clearance capability at 15 airports overseas. And, last year, through pre-clearance, we denied boarding to over 10,700 travelers (or 29 per day) seeking to enter the United States. As I said here last year, we want to build more of these. In May 2015, I announced 10 additional airports in nine countries that we’ve prioritized for preclearance.

For years Congress and others have urged us to develop a system of biometric exit – that is, to take the fingerprints or other biometric data of those who leave the country. CBP has begun testing technologies that can be deployed for this nationwide. With the passage of the omnibus bill, Congress authorized $1 billion in fee increases over a period of ten years to pay for the implementation of biometric exit. I have directed CBP begin implementing the system, starting at airports, in 2018.

Last month I announced the schedule for the final two phases of implementation of the REAL ID law, which goes into effect two and then four years from now. At present 23 states are compliant with this law, 27 have extensions, and 6 states or territories are out of compliance. Now that the final timetable for implementation of this law is in place, we will urge all states, for the good of their residents, to start issuing REAL ID-complaint drivers’ licenses as soon as possible.

In the current threat environment, there is a role for the public too. “If You See Something, Say Something™” must be more than a slogan. We continue to stress this. DHS has now established partnerships with the NFL, Major League Baseball and NASCAR, to raise public awareness at sporting events. An informed and vigilant public contributes to national security.

In December we reformed “NTAS,” the National Terrorism Advisory System. In 2011, we replaced the color-coded alerts with NTAS. But, the problem with NTAS was we never used it. It consisted of just two types of Alerts: “Elevated” and “Imminent,” and depended on the presence of a known specific and credible threat. This does not work in the current environment, which includes the threat of homegrown, self-radicalized, terrorist-inspired attacks.

So, in December we added a new form of advisory – the NTAS “Bulletin” – to the existing Alerts. The Bulletin we issued in December advises the public of the current threat environment, and how the public can help.

Finally, given the nature of the evolving terrorist threat, building bridges to diverse communities has become a homeland security imperative. Well informed families and communities are the best defense against terrorist ideologies. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are targeting Muslim communities in this country. We must respond. In my view, this is as important as any of our other homeland security missions.

In 2015 we took these efforts to new levels. We created the DHS Office for Community Partnerships, headed by George Selim. George and this office are now the central hub of the Department’s efforts to counter violent extremism in this country, and the lead for a new interagency CVE Task Force that includes DHS, DOJ, the FBI, NCTC and other agencies.

Aviation Security

We are taking aggressive steps to improve aviation and airport security. The traveling public should be aware that, because of this and increased traveler volume, overall wait times have increased somewhat at airports, but we believe this is necessary for the public’s own safety.

Since 2014 we have enhanced security at overseas last-point-of-departure airports, and a number of foreign governments have replicated these enhancements.

As many of you know, in May of last year a certain classified DHS Inspector General’s test of TSA screening at eight airports, reflected a dismal fail rate and was leaked to the press. I directed a 10-point plan to fix the problems identified by the IG. Under the new leadership of Admiral Pete Neffenger over the last six months, TSA has aggressively implemented this plan. This has included “back to basics” retraining of the entire TSO force, increased use of random explosive trace detectors, testing and re-evaluating the screening equipment that was the subject of the IG’s test, a rewrite of the standard operating procedures manual, increased manual screening, and less managed inclusion. These measures were implemented on or ahead of schedule.

We are also focused on airport security. In April of last year TSA issued guidelines to domestic airports to reduce access to secure areas, to require that all airport and airline personnel pass through TSA screening if they board a flight, to conduct more frequent screening of airport and airline personnel, and to conduct continuous criminal background checks of airport and airline personnel. Since then employee access points have been reduced, and random screening of personnel within secure areas has increased four-fold. We are continuing these efforts in 2016. Two days ago TSA issued guidelines to further enhance the screening of aviation workers in the secure area of airports.

Cybersecurity

While counterterrorism remains a cornerstone of our Department’s mission, I have concluded that cybersecurity must be another. Making tangible improvements to our Nation’s cybersecurity is a top priority for me and President Obama before we leave office.

Two days ago the President announced his “Cybersecurity National Action Plan,” which is the culmination of seven years of effort by his Administration. The Plan includes a call for the creation of a Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, additional investments in technology, federal cybersecurity, cyber education, new cyber talent in the federal workforce, and improved cyber incident response.

DHS has a role in almost every aspect of this plan.

As reflected in the President’s 2017 budget request, we want to expand our cyber response teams from 10 to 48.

We are doubling the number of cybersecurity advisors to in effect make “house calls,” to assist private sector organizations with in-person, customized cybersecurity assessments and best practices.

Building on DHS’s Stop.Think.Connect campaign, we will help promote public awareness on multi-factor authentication.

We will collaborate with Underwriters Laboratory and others to develop a Cybersecurity Assurance Program to test and certify networked devices within the “Internet of Things” — such as your home alarm system, your refrigerator, or even your pacemaker.

Last year we greatly expanded the capability of DHS’s National Cybersecurity Communications Integration Center, or “NCCIC.” The NCCIC increased its distribution of information, the number of vulnerability assessments conducted, and the number of incident responses.

At the NCCIC, last year we built a system to automate the receipt and distribution of cyber threat indicators in near real-time speed. We built this in a way that also includes privacy protections. We did this ahead of schedule.

I have issued an aggressive timetable for improving federal civilian cybersecurity, principally through two DHS programs:

The first is called EINSTEIN. EINSTEIN 1 and 2 have the ability to detect and monitor cybersecurity threats in our federal civilian systems, and are now in place across all federal civilian departments and agencies.

EINSTEIN 3A is the newest iteration of the system, and has the ability to actually block potential cyber attacks on our federal systems. Thus far E3A has actually blocked 700,000 cyber threats, and we are rapidly expanding this capability. About a year ago, E3A covered only about 20 percent of our federal civilian networks. In the wake of the OPM attack, in May of last year I directed our cybersecurity team to make at least some aspects of E3A available to all federal departments and agencies by the end of last year. They met that deadline. Now that the system is available to everyone, 50 percent are actually on line, including OPM, and we are working to get all federal departments and agencies on board by the end of this year.

The second program, called Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, helps agencies detect and prioritize vulnerabilities in their networks. In 2015, we provided CDM sensors to 97 percent of the federal civilian government. Next year, DHS will provide the second phase of CDM to 100 percent of the federal civilian government.

We have worked with OMB and DNI to identify the government’s high value systems, and we are working aggressively with the owners of these systems to increase their security.

In September, DHS awarded a grant to the University of Texas San Antonio to work with industry to identify a common set of best practices for the development of Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations, or “ISAOs.”

Finally, I thank Congress for passing the Cybersecurity Act of 2015. This new law is a huge assist to DHS and our cybersecurity mission. We are in the process of implementing this new law now.

Immigration/Border Security

Turning to immigration and border security:

As I explain it to both Democrats and Republicans, immigration policy must be two sides of the same coin. The resources we have to enforce immigration laws are finite, and they must be used wisely. This is true of every aspect of law enforcement. It’s referred to as “prosecutorial discretion.”

With the immigration enforcement resources we have, ICE is focused more sharply on public safety and border security. Those who are convicted of serious crimes or who are apprehended at the border are top priorities for removal. And we will enforce the law in accordance with these priorities.

Accordingly, over the last several years deportations by ICE have gone down, but an increasing percentage of those deported are convicted criminals. And, an increased percentage of those in immigration detention, around 85 percent, are in the top priority for removal. We will continue to focus our resources on the most significant threats to public safety and border security.

In furtherance of our public safety efforts, in 2014 we did away with the controversial Secure Communities program and replaced it with the new Priority Enforcement Program, or “PEP.” PEP fixes the political and legal controversies, in my judgment, associated with Secure Communities and enables us to take directly into custody from local law enforcement the most dangerous, removable criminals. Since PEP was created, cities and counties that previously refused to work with Secure Communities are coming back to the table. Of the 25 largest counties that refused to work with ICE before, 16 are now participating in PEP. In 2016, we want to get more to participate.

And, because we are asking ICE immigration enforcement officers to focus on convicted criminals and do a job that’s more in line with law enforcement, last year we reformed their pay scale accordingly. Now these immigration officers are paid on the same scale as the rest of federal law enforcement.

We have also prioritized the removal of those apprehended at the border. We cannot allow our borders to be open to illegal migration.

southwest border u s b p apprehensions f y 2000 - f y 2015

Over the last 15 years, our Nation – across multiple administrations — has invested a lot in border security, and this investment has yielded positive results. Apprehensions – which are an indicator of total attempts to cross the border illegally – are a fraction of what they used to be.

southwest border u s b p apprehensions f y 2000 - f y 2015 - noting numbers rose in 2014

In FY 2014, overall apprehensions increased, as we saw a spike in the number of families and unaccompanied children from Central America during the spring and summer of 2014. That year the overall number of apprehensions was 479,000. Across the government, we responded aggressively to this surge and the numbers fell sharply within a short period of time.

southwest border u s b p apprehensions f y 2000 - f y 2015 noting numbers fell in 2015

In FY 2015, the number of those apprehended on the southwest border was 331,000 – with the exception of one year, this was the lowest number since 1972.

From July to December 2015 the numbers of migrants from Central America began to climb again.

In January I announced a series of focused enforcement actions to take into custody and remove those who had been apprehended at the border in 2014 or later and then ordered removed by an immigration court. I know this made a lot of people I respect very unhappy. But, as I said, we must respect the law in accordance with our priorities and enforce it.

In January overall apprehensions on the southwest border dropped 36 percent from the month before. At the same time, the number of unaccompanied children apprehended dropped 54 percent, and the number of those in families dropped 65 percent. So far in February, the numbers have remained at this decreased level. This six-week decline is encouraging, but it does not mean we can dial back our efforts. We will continue to enforce the law consistent with our priorities for enforcement, which includes those apprehended at the border in 2014 or later.

Then there is the other side of the coin. The new enforcement policy the President and I announced in November 2014 makes clear that our limited resources will not be focused on the removal of those who have committed no serious crimes, have been in this country for years, and have families here. Under our new policy, these people are not priorities for removal, nor should they be.

In fact, the President and I want to offer, to those who have lived here for at least five years, are parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanents residents, and who have committed no serious crimes, the opportunity to request deferred action on a case-by-case basis, to come out of the shadows, get on the books, and be held accountable. We are pleased that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Texas v. United States, which involves the new deferred action policies we announced in November 2014.

Our immigration enforcement priorities, the ending of Secure Communities, and the new deferred action policy now in the courts are among 10 executive actions the President and I announced in November 2014 to fix our broken immigration system.

We also issued a proposed rule to expand eligibility for “provisional” extreme hardship waivers of the 3- and 10-year bars to all persons who statutorily qualify for a waiver. The comment period is closed, and we are now preparing to issue the final rule on provisional waivers.

We published new guidance for public comment on the “extreme hardship” requirement. The comment period is closed and we plan to issue final guidance on extreme hardship very soon.

We are about to publish a final rule to strengthen the program that provides Optional Practical Training for students in STEM fields studying at U.S. universities.

We finalized a new rule that allows spouses of high-skilled H-1B workers who are here in the United States under H-4 visas to apply for work authorization.

We are working with the Department of Labor and other agencies to ensure, for the protection of workers, the consistent enforcement of federal labor, employment and immigration laws.

We are promoting and increasing access to citizenship through the new White House Task Force on New Americans. The week of September 14-21 we celebrated the “Stand Stronger Commit to Citizenship Campaign.” In that one week, USCIS naturalized 40,000 people.

We now permit credit cards as a payment option for naturalization fees.

Our overall policy is to focus our immigration resources more effectively on threats to public safety and border security, and, within our existing legal authority, do as much as we can to fix the broken immigration system. We’re disappointed that Congress has not been our partner in this effort, by passing comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Finally, we recognize that more border security and deportations may deter illegal migration, but they do nothing to overcome the “push factors” that prompt desperate people to flee Central America in the first place. We are preparing to offer vulnerable individuals fleeing the violence in Central America a safe and legal alternate path to a better life. We are expanding our Refugee Admissions Program to help vulnerable men, women and children in Central America who qualify as refugees. We are partnering with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and non-governmental organizations in the region to do this as soon as possible. This approach builds on our recently established Central American Minors program, which is now providing an in-country refugee processing option for certain children with lawfully present parents in the United States.

Refugees

We are doing our part to address the Syrian refugee crisis. USCIS, in conjunction with the Department of State, is working hard to meet our commitment to admit at least 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of this fiscal year. We will do this carefully, screening refugees in a multi-layered and intense screening process involving multiple law enforcement, national security, and intelligence agencies across the Federal Government.

U.S. Secret Service

Over the last year, Director Joe Clancy of the Secret Service has done a tremendous job reforming his agency, including hiring a chief operating officer from outside the Secret Service, altering the structure and management of the agency, ramping up efforts to hire new members of its workforce, and expanding training opportunities. In 2016 we will continue to work on areas that still need improvement.

The U.S. Coast Guard

With the help of Congress, in 2016 we will continue to rebuild the Coast Guard fleet. This year Congress provided funding for a ninth National Security Cutter, design funding for the Offshore Patrol Cutter, and funding to continue production of our Fast Response Cutter. As reflected in the President’s 2017 Budget Request, we will also seek $150 million for the design of a new heavy icebreaker, in recognition of the expanding commercial activity in the Arctic.

FLETC

Since 2012, our Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) has trained more than a quarter million federal, state and local officers and agents. At the same time, FLETC continually updates its curriculum to address the biggest challenges facing law enforcement, to include training for active shooter situations, in cyber forensics, and in human trafficking.

FEMA

In 2016 FEMA will continue to do its extraordinary job of supporting the American people and communities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from various disasters. FEMA will continue to focus on efforts to enhance resilience and mitigation measures before disaster strikes, to prevent loss and save lives.

Lawful Trade and Travel

We continue to promote lawful trade and travel. We will continue to pursue the President’s U.S.-Mexico High Level Economic Dialogue and his Beyond the Border Initiative with Canada. We are implementing the “Single Window,” which, by December 2016, will enable the private sector to use just one portal to transmit information to 47 government agencies about exports and imports, thereby eliminating over 200 different forms and streamlining the trade process.

Last week the Secretary of Commerce and I joined the President of Mexico to open a new six-lane bridge near El Paso that will replace a 78-year-old two-lane one. Next week I will join the Mexican Secretary of Finance to inaugurate a pre-inspection pilot in Laredo, Texas.

Conclusion

In conclusion, according to Time Magazine, I have “probably the hardest job in America.” That’s not true. The President has the hardest job in America. But I may rank in the top ten. I have a lot of challenges, a lot of problems and a lot of headaches. There is also far too much partisanship in Washington, and, especially during an election year, politics has become a blood-sport in this town. Too often it is more important to score political points than achieve smart, sound government policy on behalf of the American people.

Through it all, I still love public service, and I am dedicated to serving the American people, protecting our homeland, and serving our President.

I find inspiration in the amazing stories of our workforce that I told you about at the beginning of this speech. I also find inspiration and strength in the weekly batch of letters I receive from the American people we serve, particularly from the school kids. Here’s one from a young man named Brett Shepard, handwritten in pencil:

“To Jeh Johnson…I just wanted to say I think you’re doing a good job… I ran for class president in my government class. I ended up becoming the Secretary of Homeland Security which honestly I would rather be … [president is] not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Like Brett, at this moment in the life of our Nation, there’s nothing I’d rather be than Secretary of Homeland Security. It is and always will be the highlight of my professional life. In the time left to me in office, I pledge all my energy to continue to protect the homeland and leave the Department of Homeland Security a better place than I found it.

Thank you very much.

Texas Sheriff, Immigration Truths

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Texas Sheriffs, Jails on Immigration Front Line

TexasTribune: With a $6 billion budget and more than 20,000 employees, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stands poised to seize and deport immigrants — undocumented or not — who commit serious crimes in the United States.

Provided someone else catches them.

The behemoth agency at the center of the nation’s immigration enforcement efforts has no proactive way — watch lists, data mining or the like — to systematically search for dangerous undocumented immigrants, including those who have returned to the United States after being deported for committing crimes.

Instead, if an immigrant criminal is caught and thrown out of the country, the process most likely begins when a local police officer or sheriff’s deputy pulls them over for a traffic stop or arrests them as part of a criminal investigation.

The success of federal deportation policy in Texas and nationwide depends for the most part on a heads up from county sheriffs. They run the jails where people are taken when arrested and where the culling of criminal immigrants begins.

Being at the bottom of the enforcement pyramid places tremendous pressure on them — political, legal and otherwise — sheriffs say, and with federal policy increasingly targeting serious, repeat criminal offenders, their role in the process has grown.

“When some of these sheriffs talk about bringing in an undocumented, it may be one a month,” said Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez. “With us, it’s several a day.”

The legal tool federal authorities use to take custody of immigrants they want is the detainer. Around in some form or fashion since the 1950s, detainers are notices sent to jails asking them to hold on to an immigrant once local authorities are done with them so federal agents can come by and get them.

In its latest incarnation, the detainer is reserved for the most serious convicted immigrant criminals. This new, narrower restriction, imposed in November 2014, has caused the number of detainers to drop. As of October 2015, the latest monthly figure available, 7,117 detainers were issued. That’s down from an all-time monthly high of 27,755 in August 2011, according to voluminous Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Texas is central to the federal agency’s deportation efforts. Nationwide, only eight jails received more than 1,000 detainer requests in the last year, according to clearinghouse data. Four were in Texas — Harris, Travis, Dallas and Hidalgo counties.

A report last year on the federal agency’s enforcement operations shows it plucked 139,368 people from the nation’s jails and prisons during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2015. That accounted for about 59 percent of the total number of people ICE removed from the country that year for a variety of reasons.

Many came from Texas, screened out of state prisons or found among the approximately 71,000 people who are booked into local Texas jails each month, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. On average, 3,724 undocumented immigrants were detained in Texas jails each month in 2015, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of immigration detainer reports from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

Between December 2012 and October 2015, undocumented immigrants who sat in Texas county jails cost taxpayers a total of $210.6 million, according to reports filed with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards that were released to The Texas Tribune.

In 2015, the federal government provided about $12 million to Texas to care for incarcerated undocumented immigrants. Most of that – more than $8 million – went to the Texas prison system, not jails.

Yet for all the statistics, no federal, state or local agency can claim it has a handle on the number of criminal aliens in the country, how many crimes they are responsible for and what share the system catches.

Local options

In Harris, the state’s most populous county, 135,000 inmates each year come through the jailhouse doors. It and the city of Carrollton are the only two Texas jurisdictions that contract with the federal government to have immigration agents stationed at its jail helping pinpoint criminal immigrants. Nine federal officers and nine Harris County deputies schooled in federal procedures comb booking documents and interview inmates suspected of being in the country illegally.

A guard inside the Webb County Jail in Laredo, TX, on Nov. 5, 2015.

by: Martin do Nascimento
A guard inside the Webb County Jail in Laredo, TX, on Nov. 5, 2015.

By contrast, in Brewster County, the state’s geographically largest — as in, bigger than some states — things work a bit differently. About 9,200 people live in the West Texas county, and its jail in Alpine has no official policy for handling undocumented immigrants.

How does it strive to alert federal authorities when a criminal immigrant is arrested? “We’ve got a sign on the wall,” jail administrator Lora Nussbaum told the Tribune, referring to a torn ICE flier taped on a jail wall that lists the agency’s phone number.

County jails may be the front line of efforts to keep undocumented immigrants who commit serious crimes from slipping through the cracks, but the state of Texas has no uniform method of going about that task, or measuring the scope of the problem.

To gain a better picture of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and how counties handle them, the Tribune asked for booking data and immigration procedure policies from 26 Texas counties, including the state’s 10 most populous.

Almost none would provide it. Some, like Montgomery and Presidio counties, insisted that providing booking information, including an inmate’s date of birth, violated the inmate’s right to privacy. Harris County claimed that releasing a list of noncitizens was essentially creating new information — something the Texas Public Information Act does not require a governmental body to do.

Some counties argued that that federal law specifically prohibits releasing information about immigrants.

Attorney General Ken Paxton‘s office upheld most of the counties’ arguments, saying state open records laws don’t compel release of the information.

The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office went a step further and insisted that booking records are court records and, as such, are not subject to the state’s open records law. The attorney general’s office agreed, blocking their release.

Five counties responded to the Tribune’s request for booking data: Brewster, Nueces, Fort Bend, Travis and Tarrant. Of those, only Travis responded with enough detailed information to analyze.

“We don’t want to be in a position where somebody loses their life because of something we didn’t do that was legal for us to do.”— Maj. Wes Priddy, chief administrator for Travis County jails

The numbers show that Travis County booked about 20,000 inmates with federal immigration detainers between 2008 and 2015, facing charges that were roughly evenly divided between felonies and misdemeanors. More than 7,000 of those inmates faced drunk driving charges, the most common charge by far. That was followed by family violence-related assault charges, which about 1,900 inmates faced. An estimated 2,400 of the total inmates were repeat offenders.

Maj. Wes Priddy, chief administrator for Travis County jails, said local law enforcement’s primary concern was public safety, not investigating immigration status. But he said that part of keeping dangerous people off the streets involved close cooperation with federal authorities.

“We don’t want to be in a position where somebody loses their life because of something we didn’t do that was legal for us to do,” Priddy said.

After arresting someone, the Department of Public Safety, county sheriffs, and even the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — the nation’s largest prison system — all have to rely on the federal government to inform them who is in the United States illegally.

“What our obligation is, is to provide ICE with the population information,” said Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson. “They go through it. They determine who they’re going to put a hold on and who they’re not, and our people don’t really have a way to further investigate are they truly here legally or not.”

That typically happens during the booking process, when a suspect’s fingerprints are sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a procedure used for every new inmate. If the fingerprints match a profile in the federal database of non-U.S. citizens with previous criminal histories, ICE can decide to ask for a detainer. Texas jail officers do ask arrestees to name their country of birth as a part of the booking process, but an arrested immigrant’s answer is written down without being verified.

The same holds true for inmates in Texas prison. As of Nov. 30, 2015, three-fourths of the 9,135 inmates in the Texas prison system with ICE detainers were in the United States illegally. The remainder include those serving time for crimes who had legal immigration status.

“Ultimately, ICE will make the determination whether that person is in country illegally,” said Texas prisons spokesman Jason Clark. In 2010, the agency began asking for ICE help verifying those among the system’s 148,000 inmates who were illegally in the country.

But the federal tracking system of verifying what law enforcement refers to as “criminal aliens” is less than precise. It relies on someone’s fingerprints being in the system because they have been arrested before. If an undocumented immigrant has never encountered law enforcement, the federal tracking system might not notice their first arrest.

Jumbled numbers

There is no definitive data showing that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than the citizen population, and a few indications that in Texas they do not.

The Pew Research Center estimates undocumented immigrants comprise about seven percent of the Texas population. On average, 3,724 undocumented immigrants were detained in Texas jails each month in 2015, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of immigration detainer reports from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

Of the 148,000 inmates held in 100 Texas prison units, about 9,135 inmates have federal detainers asking that they be handed to federal officials when their sentences are complete. Not all were in the country illegally when arrested. Those that were illegal account for about 6 percent of the prison population.

Nationwide, almost 60 percent of immigrants who are deported had some previous criminal charges, according to 2015 numbers from ICE.

A group of undocumented Mexican nationals who were convicted of crimes in the U.S. enter Mexico at the US-Mexico border crossing at Brownsville/Matamoros after being deported from the United States on Nov 4, 2015.

by: Martin do Nascimento
A group of undocumented Mexican nationals who were convicted of crimes in the U.S. enter Mexico at the US-Mexico border crossing at Brownsville/Matamoros after being deported from the United States on Nov 4, 2015.

The Pew Center, relying on 2012 U.S. Census numbers, estimated that Texas has 1.7 million undocumented immigrants, ranking second in the nation. What portion of that 1.7 million is responsible for crimes is a tougher calculus.

Estimates from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which gets the information from jails, are considered inaccurate because there’s no uniform requirement to verify citizenship during the jail booking process.

In 2014, then-Gov. Rick Perry was criticized for relying on DPS’ first attempts to calculate the impact of crimes committed by immigrants. That year, Perry repeated the department’s claim that “criminal aliens” had committed more than 642,000 crimes in Texas since 2008. It was later revealed that “criminal aliens” referred to all foreign-born immigrants in Texas, not just those in the state illegally, and the “crimes” counted included charges, not convictions, some dating back decades.

One year later, DPS tried to clarify the numbers, but even director Steve McCraw, appearing before the Texas House Committee on State Affairs in December, tried to lower expectations about the “criminal alien statistic” his agency featured on its website.

“It’s an undercount,” McCraw testified on Dec 10. “We acknowledge it woefully undercounts the amount, but it does accurately count the ones who are in fact here and the ones who have committed crimes.”

The DPS statistics continue to confuse both the public and lawmakers.

ICE officials consider a foreign national — here legally or otherwise — a “criminal alien” if they’ve been convicted of a crime. DPS broadens the definition to include foreign nationals who have only been arrested.

“Criminal alien is a foreign national with a criminal record,” explained DPS Assistant Director Skylor Hearn, who oversees the agency’s law enforcement support division, which includes the state’s crime records. “There was probable cause to arrest them for something, and it would apply to the rest of us as well, generally speaking. If you’ve been arrested, you have a criminal record; you are not a criminal, but you have a criminal record.”

By DPS’s count, 177,060 foreign-born individuals were charged with crimes from 2011 through Jan. 31. That’s a much larger number than those foreign nationals actually convicted during the same time frame in Texas: 84,182 non-U.S. citizens. Of those, 58,128 were determined to be in the United States unlawfully.

State Rep. Cesar Blanco, D-El Paso, says the DPS numbers on “criminal aliens” are artificially pumped up by counting the number of criminal charges filed against undocumented immigrants instead of actual convictions. Charges are routinely dismissed for lack of evidence or other reasons, he noted.

But by hyping the number of charges, the agency bolsters the argument for more border security money. Last year, the Texas Legislature approved an additional $800 million for border security.

“When crime rates were higher in this state, did the legislature move this much money?” Blanco asked.

Adding to the mathematical murkiness, immigration status can be fluid. A foreign-born Texas jail inmate could be legally in the country at the time of one arrest but have an expired visa by the next arrest and be undocumented the second time around, further bedeviling Texas’ attempts at measuring unauthorized immigrants’ impact on the state’s criminal justice system.

Attempts by DPS to connect criminal aliens to their crimes also fall short.

The agency’s data, obtained by the Tribune, shows that 177,060 non-U.S. citizens arrested from 2011 through Jan. 31 were charged with 252,083 offenses during that time. This is less than what DPS reports on its own website because the agency counts crimes committed over a U.S. citizen’s lifetime, outside the five-year span.

DPS officials insist that its criminal alien counts, based on federal immigration data, are not an attempt to construe that foreign-born criminals are a greater threat than U.S. citizens.

“The department has not made that statement and does not have information to support that statement,” DPS spokeswoman Summer Blackwell said in a statement. “The Department of Public Safety believes any individual who has committed a violent crime or is party to criminal activities — no matter their citizenship status or country of origin — is considered a potential threat to public safety and the security of Texas.”

Just say no

Even when federal immigration authorities decide they want to take immigrants from the state criminal justice system into custody, there can be obstacles.

Federal records obtained by the Tribune show that in more than 18,000 cases over the past two years, local jails across the country failed to hand over deportable immigrants to federal authorities. Jurisdictions in many states, including Pennsylvania, California and Colorado, have become reluctant to honor the detainers after facing a series of lawsuits from inmates challenging the constitutional legitimacy of the extended detention.

Further information about the outcomes in cases where local officials declined to detain someone — whether those inmates, many with previous criminal histories, had been released to the public — proved difficult to come by, even in Texas, where there were only 146 such cases.

Of the 11 state jails contacted by the Tribune, only one could provide definitive answers about what had happened with declined detainers in its jurisdiction.

In Collin County north of Dallas, where agency records show two declined detainers, one for an inmate with a criminal history, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said it “would literally be too manpower-intensive and potentially impossible to locate the reasons they were released.”

The Texas county with the most declined detainers — Travis, which had 72 instances, including 33 on inmates with a prior criminal history — referred all questions about the records to the federal government.

“I do not know how ICE came up with those numbers and we do not keep stats for ICE,” Travis County Sheriff’s office spokesman Roger Wade said in an email. “You will have to ask ICE how they arrived at those numbers and what their definition is of declining detainers.”

The federal agency itself could not verify further details about the cases. An ICE official, who lacked authorization to comment and thus spoke on condition of anonymity, said a small number of the cases could be a result of administrative errors at the federal or local level.

But beyond that, the official said it would be “resource-prohibitive” to determine what exactly happened in the individual circumstances.

Step away from the direct cost to jails to house undocumented immigrants — and the troubling lack of standardized record keeping — and there’s the added pressure of keeping up with the federal government’s ever-shifting parameters of who in local jails is eligible for deportation.

On Nov. 20, 2014, ICE’s parent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, discontinued a policy known as Secure Communities in favor of a new plan called the Priority Enforcement Program. Secure Communities — which targeted anyone in the United States illegally — had faced fierce pushback from local officials across the country who feared legal liability under the program.

With the new program, the federal agency decided to focus its deportation efforts on undocumented immigrants who committed the most serious crimes.

In congressional testimony and internal documents detailing the new policy’s implementation, ICE officials have stressed the importance of local cooperation. A 2015 memo from the federal immigration agency describes “expansive efforts to encourage state and local law enforcement partners” to collaborate with the agency.

The program was developed to “bring back on board those state and local jurisdictions that had concerns with, or legal obstacles to, assisting us,” said ICE Director Sarah Saldaña in July testimony before a congressional committee.

But the federal agency has opposed requiring local authorities to honor immigration detainers. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told members of the House Judiciary Committee in July that it would a “huge setback” to mandate compliance with immigration policy.

“I do not believe that mandating through federal legislation the conduct of sheriffs and police chiefs is the way to go,” he said. “I think it will be hugely controversial. I think it will have problems with the Constitution. I want to see us work cooperatively with state and local law enforcement, and I believe they are poised to do that.”

The voluntary guidelines from federal authorities can leave local officials in a politically precarious position — often, no matter what decision they make will land them in hot water.

Jurisdictions in Democratically controlled urban areas face intense pressure from activists critical of federal immigration policy to cease any cooperation with ICE.

“Our ideal situation would be for there to be no ICE collaboration whatsoever,” said Carolina Canizales, the San Antonio-based deportation defense director of United We Dream, a national immigrant rights organization, which regularly stages protests at jails in the state, in an October interview. “I think they shouldn’t condemn thousands of undocumented immigrants for one crime that has been committed.”

At the same time, state lawmakers are on the watch for any sign that county sheriffs are failing to hold unauthorized immigrants singled out by ICE for deportation until federal ICE officers can pick them up and return them to their home country.

Take the case of Dallas County Sheriff Valdez, who throughout her time in office has most often found herself in the crosshairs of immigrant rights activists. She currently faces a lawsuit alleging her jail has held immigrants for unconstitutionally long periods of time even after they received bond.

But recently, she has become better known for the harsh public denunciation she received from Gov. Greg Abbott, who wrote her a letter saying that what he viewed as lacking enforcement of federal immigration policy posed a “serious danger to Texans.”

Abbott’s letter came after Valdez told reporters in October she would review federal detainers placed on inmates in her jail on a case-by-case basis and would not hold immigrants arrested for minor crimes for up to 48 hours for ICE officers.

Her comments seemed to mirror ICE’s changed focus on the most serious immigrant criminals — but before she had a chance to clarify, Abbott blasted her stance and threatened to cut off grants to any sheriff’s office choosing to not abide by federal immigration detainers.

Valdez said late last year that her statement was taken out of context.

“What I said was, when there’s a disagreement (over whether a jail inmate was undocumented or not) we look at it case-by-case,” Valdez told the Tribune in December. “But in this whole time we haven’t had a disagreement … The feds and I are great. ICE and I are fine.”

President’s Day, Was George Washington a Spy?

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The Spymaster’s Toolkit

CIA: Long before General William Donovan recruited spies to advance the American war efforts during World War II as Director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the CIA, General George Washington mastered the art of intelligence as Commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Washington was a skilled manager of intelligence. He utilized agents behind enemy lines, recruited both Tory and Patriot sources, interrogated travelers for intelligence information, and launched scores of agents on both intelligence and counterintelligence missions. He was adept at deception operations and tradecraft and was a skilled propagandist. He also practiced sound operational security. Washington fully understood the value of accurate intelligence, employing many of the same techniques later used by the OSS and CIA.

As we celebrate the 284th birthday of the first American President, we highlight some of the tradecraft employed to secure our independence from the British and offer insights on its use today. Were it not for the use of secret writing, concealment devises, propaganda, and intercepted communications, there may have been a very different outcome to the War of Independence.

* * * * *

SECRET WRITING

Revolutionary War: American agents serving abroad composed their intelligence reports using invisible ink. George Washington believed this would “not only render his communications less exposed to detection, but relieve the fears of such persons as may be entrusted in its conveyance.”

Communicating via invisible ink required the use of several chemical compositions. One mixture was used to write with disappearing ink, the other mixture was applied to the report to make it legible. Despite their invisible communications, it is estimated that the British intercepted and decrypted over half of America’s secret correspondence during the war.

CIA: The CIA has declassified several documents that provided recipes for making invisible ink. One recipe instructs: “Take a weak solution of starch, tinged with a little tincture of iodine. This bluish writing will soon fade away.” A mixture for exposing secret writing included “iodate of potassium, 5 grams, with 100 grams of water, and 2 grams of tartaric acid added” but warned, “run a hot iron over the surface being careful not to scorch the paper.”

During the Cold War, a major advancement in secret writing technology was the shift from liquid invisible inks to dry systems. The KGB was one of the first foreign intelligence services to employ a dry method. The CIA’s Office of Technical Services in the Directorate of Science and Technology spent considerable time researching Soviet systems and finally succeeded not only in “breaking” them, but in anticipating where its KGB counterpart would go next in the never-ending search for more secure systems. By the end of the Cold War, a kind of tacit convergence had emerged as both sides applied new techniques that used very small, almost undetectable quantities of chemical in secret writing messages. In the words of one CIA chemist, it was like “uniformly spreading a spoonful of sugar over an acre of land.”

CONCEALMENT DEVISES

Revolutionary War: Agents used a variety of modified objects to conceal their secret messages.  One device was a wafer-thin lead container that would sink in water, or melt in fire, thus destroying its contents. The device was small enough that an agent could swallow it if no other means of discarding were available. This was done as a last resort as ingestion was typically followed by a severe bout of lead poisoning. The lead container was eventually replaced by a silver, bullet-shaped container that could be unscrewed to hold a message and which would not poison a courier who might be forced to swallow it.

CIA:  A concealment devise can be any object used to clandestinely hide things. They are typically ordinary, every-day objects that have been hollowed out. The best concealment devises are ones that blend in with their surroundings and call no attention to themselves. They can be used to hide messages, documents, or film. Some examples of concealment devises include hollowed out coins, dead-drop spikes, shaving brushes, and makeup compacts.

PROPAGANDA

Revolutionary War: During the American Revolution, the British had a shortage of soldiers so they hired almost 30,000 German Hessian auxiliary forces to fight against the Americans. The Continental Congress devised a propaganda campaign to encourage the Hessian mercenaries to defect to America. The campaign included offering land grants to those mercenaries fighting for the British on American soil. The offers were written in German on leaflets disguised as tobacco packets. A mock-defector ran through the mercenaries’ camps encouraging others to defect as well. As part of the campaign, Benjamin Franklin forged a letter to the commander of the Hessians, “signed” by a German prince. The letter instructed the commander to let the wounded mercenaries die. This dealt a blow to the morale of the Hessians. Between 5,000 and 6,000 Hessian mercenaries deserted from the British, in part because of American propaganda.

CIA: Propaganda campaigns use communication to alter a population’s beliefs and views thus influencing their behavior. There are three types of propaganda: white, black, and grey. White propaganda openly identifies the source and uses gentle persuasion and public relations techniques to achieve a desired outcome. For example, during the Persian Gulf War, the CIA airdropped leaflets before some Allied bombing runs to allow civilians time to evacuate and encourage military units to surrender. Black propaganda, on the other hand, is misinformation that identifies itself with one side of a conflict, but is truly produced by the opposing side – like Franklin sending the letter “from” a German prince. Grey propaganda is the most mysterious of all because the source of the propaganda is never identified.

INTERCEPTED COMMUNICATIONS

Revolutionary War: The Continental Congress regularly received quantities of intercepted British mail. General Washington proposed to “contrive a means of opening them without breaking the seals, take copies of the contents, and then let them go on. By these means we should become masters of the whole plot.”

CIA: Clandestinely opening, reading and resealing envelopes or packages without the recipient’s knowledge requires practice. ‘Flaps and seals’ opening kits were used in the 1960s. A beginner’s kit offered the basic tools for surreptitious opening of letters and packages. Once mastered, an advanced kit with additional tools was used. Many of the tools were handmade of ivory and housed in a travel roll.

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Washington employed the use of many other intelligence gathering techniques still in use today to secure our independence and freedom from Great Britain. Not only is he The Father of His Country, but he is heralded as a great spymaster. Upon the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, a defeated British intelligence officer is quoted as saying, “Washington did not really outfight the British. He simply out-spied us.”

What About Obama and Schumer, the Alito Filibuster?

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Obama Filibustered Justice Alito, Voted Against Roberts

Frontpage: Obama and his media allies are now making all the expected noises about the Senate’s obligation to confirm nominees if they’re qualified without partisan interference. That is the exact opposite of what he did to Bush’s Supreme Court nominees.

Let’s start with Justice Roberts.

Obama admitted that Roberts was eminently qualified. He praised him highly.

“There is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. Moreover, he seems to have the comportment and the temperament that makes for a good judge. He is humble, he is personally decent, and he appears to be respectful of different points of view. It is absolutely clear to me that Judge Roberts truly loves the law. He couldn’t have achieved his excellent record as an advocate before the Supreme Court without that passion for the law…”

But, no he wasn’t going to vote for him anyway.

“I ultimately have to give more weight to his deeds and the overarching political philosophy that he appears to have shared with those in power than to the assuring words that he provided me in our meeting. The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination.”

In short, Obama chose to vote against Roberts because of his perceived conservative politics. Nothing else.

When Obama now prattles about the need to get past partisanship, he is preaching what he doesn’t practice, what he has never practiced and what he especially did not practice in that same situation.

However things really got ugly with the nomination of Justice Alito.

 

Obama joined a filibuster when he was a U.S. senator to delay the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, one of President Bush’s nominees to the Supreme Court.

“I will be supporting the filibuster because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values,” Obama said in January 2006.

Obama has no idea what American values are. His only values are leftist values. Here’s what he said about Justice Alito.

“While I certainly believe that Judge Samuel Alito has the training and the qualifications necessary to serve as a Supreme Court Justice,after a careful review of his record, I simply cannot vote for his nomination.”

Obama claimed that, “Judge Alito simply does not inspire confidence that he will serve as an independent voice on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Meanwhile once in the White House, Obama nominated Elena Kagan, his own lawyer for that “independent voice”. So once again, Obama fought against a justice for no other reason than his politics.

Here’s what Senator Obama had to say about the Senate’s role in confirming nominees.

“There are some who believe that the President, having won the election, should have the complete authority to appoint his nominee, and the Senate should only examine whether or not the Justice is intellectually capable and an all-around nice guy. That once you get beyond intellect and personal character, there should be no further question whether the judge should be confirmed.

I disagree with this view. I believe firmly that the Constitution calls for the Senate to advise and consent. I believe that it calls for meaningful advice and consent that includes an examination of a judge’s philosophy, ideology, and record. And when I examine the philosophy, ideology, and record of Samuel Alito, I’m deeply troubled.

I have no doubt that Judge Alito has the training and qualifications necessary to serve. He’s an intelligent man and an accomplished jurist. And there’s no indication he’s not a man of great character.”

Again, ideology is key. And as Senator, Obama insisted that the Senate should examine a nominee’s ideology and that confirmation should not be expected or anticipated.

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FLASHBACK: In 2007, Schumer Called For Blocking All Bush Supreme Court Nominations

 DailyCaller: During a Sunday morning appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer decried the intent of many Senate Republicans to prevent President Barack Obama from appointing the successor to deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.But less than a decade ago, Schumer advocated doing the same exact thing if any additional Supreme Court vacancies opened under former President George W. Bush.

Almost immediately after Scalia’s death was announced Saturday evening, Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates began arguing the appointment of his successor should be left to the next president. Schumer lamented this outlook as pure obstructionism.

“You know, the kind of obstructionism that [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell ‘s talking about, he’s hearkening back to his old days,” Schumer said, according to The Hill. “In 2010, right after the election or right during the election, he said, ‘My number-one job is to defeat Barack Obama,’ without even knowing what Barack Obama was going to propose. Here, he doesn’t even know who the president’s going to propose and he said, ‘No, we’re not having hearings; we’re not going to go forward to leave the Supreme Court vacant at 300 days in a divided time.’”

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Don’t leave out Hillary, she got a plan from David Brock to impeach Clarence Thomas:

TWS: Hillary Clinton’s recently released emails includes a memo sent by David Brock titled, “Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas.”

The purpose of the document might suggest Clinton, or at least those closest to her and in her circle, are interested in impeaching Justice Thomas.

The document contains information from Brock about his book, The Real Anita Hill, and other similar points on Justice Thomas’s personal life