Category Archives: Whistleblower

Declining Deportations and Increasing Criminal Alien Releases

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Declining Deportations and Increasing Criminal Alien Releases –

The Lawless Immigration Policies of the Obama Administration

Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest

May 19, 2016

Statement of Mark Krikorian

Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies

Hearing May 19, 2016

Deportation is crucial. Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.

– Barbara Jordan

CIS: The Obama administration has embraced a radical new approach to immigration law. It has, without the consent of Congress, transformed violation of immigration law into a “secondary offense.” That is to say, the goal is to ensure that an alien faces consequences for breaking immigration law only if he also breaks some other, “real,” law involving, say, violence or drug dealing. And even then, the primary violation has to be quite severe to warrant deportation for the (secondary) immigration offense.

This is comparable to the seat belt laws in many states; in places where failing to wear a seat belt is a secondary offense, a police officer cannot pull you over just for that, but if he pulls you over for speeding or some other primary offense, he can then also write a seat belt citation.

The administration’s November 2014 deportation priorities memo pretends this is not so; it includes ordinary violations of immigration law, but only as the lowest priority for deportation. And the collapse in interior removals of immigration violators shows that this third priority category is just for show.

John Sandweg, former acting director of ICE, stated the Obama administration position succinctly: “If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.”

This extra-legal shift in the conception of the immigration statute has been misleadingly packaged as “prosecutorial discretion.” True prosecutorial discretion is exercised by individual law enforcement officers in ways that do not undermine the agency’s mission. For instance, if a state trooper stops you for speeding and your documents are in order, you’ve interacted with him in a respectful manner, and your toddler in the back seat is crying because she needs her diaper changed — and he lets you off with a warning rather than a fine, that is prosecutorial discretion.

What the Obama administration has done is use discretion as a pretext for simply exempting the vast majority of immigration violators from any possibility of legal consequences.

The results of this transformation of immigration law are clear in the data. ICE statistics show that deportations from the interior (aliens arrested by ICE deportation officers and special agents, as opposed to the Border Patrol) have collapsed, from 236,000 in President Obama’s first year in office to 72,000 last year, a decline of 70 percent over the course of this administration:

Not only have total interior deportations collapsed, but even the removal of criminals has declined by more than half, from about 150,000 in 2010 and 2011 to about 63,000 last year — this despite the Obama administration’s claim of prioritizing such removals:

This decline has occurred despite increases in the number of criminal aliens identified by ICE, largely from the nationwide implementation of the Secure Communities program, which screened the fingerprints of aliens arrested by local law enforcement agencies. This successful program, which was tremendously popular with local law enforcement agencies, was dismantled by the president’s November 2014 executive actions, and replaced by the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). ICE removal officers are still alerted to the arrest of criminal aliens by local police, but are prohibited by the White House and subservient ICE political leadership from acting on that information.

This collapse in deportations is not because we’ve run out of illegal aliens. After declining in 2007-2009 because of new enforcement efforts at the end of the Bush administration, followed by the recession, the number of illegal aliens has remained essentially constant at between 11 and 12 million. Many of these are new illegal arrivals — we estimate that some 2.5 million new illegal immigrants settled here during the first six years of the Obama administration, offset mainly by departures and legalizations.

Nor is the steep drop in deportations due to a lack of resources. Last year the Obama administration re-programmed $113 million that Congress had provided to ICE/ERO for enforcement and gave it to other agencies within DHS. The White House 2017 budget request actually seeks a decrease in funding for immigration enforcement, most notably a decrease of $100 million in funding for detention beds — from 34,000 beds to 30,900 — and a 15 percent decrease in funding for fugitive operations (i.e., the effort to locate the roughly 900,000 people ordered deported who simply ran off).

Rather, the collapse in enforcement is a policy choice of the Obama administration. Its strategic vision is, as I described above, to downgrade the immigration law to a secondary status. Among the tactics that serve this strategy, especially with regard to criminals, is the termination of the successful Secure Communities program and its replacement with the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP). There are three ways PEP suppresses enforcement:

  1. The new, more restrictive PEP prioritization scheme exempts a larger number of criminal aliens from deportation. Essentially, under PEP the only aliens ICE officers can target for deportation are people convicted of felonies, multiple “serious” misdemeanors, certain gang members, terrorists, and recent deportees. This exempts large numbers of criminal aliens from deportation.
  2. PEP imposes new logistical hurdles for ICE, most notably the requirement that an alien be convicted before ICE takes custody — which can enable a criminal alien to abscond from facing charges, or in some cases walk out of a courthouse or jail before ICE is aware that the offender is being released; and
  3. PEP explicitly allows local governments to impose non-cooperation or sanctuary policies on local law enforcement agencies. In 2014, local sanctuary jurisdictions released more than 10,000 aliens that local ICE field officers were seeking to deport.

As a result of these policies, fewer deportable aliens (and criminal aliens) are being removed from the country and criminal aliens who formerly would have been removed are now being released back to our communities only to commit new crimes.

There is an enormous public safety cost to these enforcement suppression policies. Since 2013 ICE has released approximately 85,000 criminal aliens from its custody. Many of these aliens have gone on to commit additional crimes. More than 125 have since been charged with homicide.

Here are some of the most egregious examples of crimes committed by illegal aliens released from ICE custody because of the president’s prioritization rules:

Sarah Root. In Omaha, Nebraska, on January 31, 2016, an illegal alien named Eswin Mejia, age 19, who had entered illegally as an “unaccompanied minor” but was allowed to stay with his brother, was drag racing while drunk and crashed his pick-up truck into the back of a car driven by Sarah Root, age 21. She died in the hospital soon after, just a day after her graduation from college. Mejia was arrested several days later for felony motor vehicle homicide. He had prior infractions as well. Bail was set at $50,000. Knowing Mejia was an illegal alien, local police contacted ICE five times to urgently request a detainer, fearing he would flee after making bail. ICE refused, saying that Mejia “did not meet ICE’s enforcement priorities.” As the local police feared, Mejia disappeared after posting bail.

Grant Ronnebeck. A 21-year-old man who was murdered while working at a convenience store in Mesa, Arizona. Ronnebeck’s killer was an illegal alien who was released by ICE in 2013 after conviction for a burglary and kidnapping involving drug dealing, to await an immigration hearing years in the future.

Katerin Gomez. This 35-year-old mother of three children under age 13 was killed in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on October 18, 2014, by a stray bullet through her window. The gun was fired during a street brawl allegedly by Hector Ramires, a 21-year old illegal alien member of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang, who was at large awaiting trial for two prior arrests for armed robbery (one with a gun, one with a knife), in which his illegal status and gang membership were noted. The police report also includes mention of prior criminal involvement in his home country of Honduras. ICE did not issue a detainer or initiate deportation proceedings after either prior arrest, nor did it make an effort to charge Ramires as an illegal alien in possession of a firearm, which is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Greg Morton. This Frederick County (Maryland) sheriff’s deputy was attacked last November while sitting in his vehicle by Jose Misael Reyes-Reyes, an 18-year-old illegal alien who had entered as an unaccompanied minor. The attacker was a member of the notoriously violent MS-13 gang and had prior arrests, including one for carrying a dangerous weapon. ICE declined to take him into custody after the prior arrests because he was already awaiting an immigration court hearing.

* * *
Prioritizing enforcement resources is not, in itself, the problem we face in immigration. Applying any body of law requires trade-offs and choices. The Treasury Department, for instance, devotes significant resources to the detection of money-laundering by organized crime or funding for terrorists. But it also has parallel initiatives of routine enforcement, to serve as a deterrent for ordinary taxpayers who might be tempted to cheat. Likewise in traffic enforcement; a driver doing 100 miles per hour through a school zone, firing a gun out the window, will obviously be top priority — but at the same time, there are parallel, routine enforcement efforts — speed traps and the like — to deter ordinary people from endangering others with unsafe driving.

If the IRS were to issue memos exempting anyone who’s not a mobster or terrorist from paying taxes, Congress would be aghast. Yet that is precisely what ICE has been ordered to do in the immigration context.

Some might object that the anticipated “raids” to take Central American illegal aliens into custody prove that the administration has not relegated immigration law to secondary status. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. The first round of “raids,” in January, netted a whopping 121 people — out of thousands of recent Central American illegal aliens — and only 70 of them were actually deported. Even if this next round of apprehensions is several times larger, it still amounts to nothing more than “enforcement theater.” It’s not even good enforcement theater. These Kabuki raids are too small — microscopic would be more accurate — to change the perception in Central America that if you get into the United States it’s unlikely you’ll ever be required to leave.

Despite staged disagreements with the administration over immigration enforcement, Congresswoman Pelosi concisely articulated the view she shares with the White House when she said in 2013 that “Our view of the law is that … if somebody is here without sufficient documentation, that is not reason for deportation.”

This is very different from an earlier Democratic congresswoman, Barbara Jordan, a civil rights pioneer and champion of the rule of law. As head of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, Jordan testified before Congress that “Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.”

WH Coordinated Propaganda with Think Tanks on Iran Deal

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White House paid and coordinated for pay to play, pay to write, pay to exploit, paid for loyalty, paid for messaging and all paid to lie. By the way, this is against the law.

See a short summary of the Smith Mundt Act here.

There is also NIAC and Trita Parsi.  There is also Laura Rozen, another anti-Semite.

Group that helped sell Iran nuke deal also funded media

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group’s annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets.

The Ploughshares Fund’s mission is to “build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles,” one that dovetails with President Barack Obama’s arms control efforts. But its behind-the-scenes role advocating for the Iran agreement got more attention this month after a candid profile of Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s top foreign policy aides.

In The New York Times Magazine article, Rhodes explained how the administration worked with nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and even friendly reporters to build support for the seven-nation accord that curtailed Iran’s nuclear activity and softened international financial penalties on Tehran.

“We created an echo chamber,” said Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, adding that “outside groups like Ploughshares” helped carry out the administration’s message effectively.

The magazine piece revived Republican criticism of the Iran agreement as they suggested it was evidence of a White House spin machine misleading the American people. The administration accused opponents of trying to re-litigate the deal after failing to defeat it in congressional votes last year.

Outside groups of all stripes are increasingly giving money to news organizations for special projects or general news coverage. Most news organizations, including The Associated Press, have strict rules governing whom they can accept money from and how to protect journalistic independence.

Ploughshares’ backing is more unusual, given its prominent role in the rancorous, partisan debate over the Iran deal.

The Ploughshares grant to NPR supported “national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran’s nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security,” according to Ploughshares’ 2015 annual report, recently published online.

“It is common practice for foundations to fund media coverage of underreported stories,” Ploughshares spokeswoman Jennifer Abrahamson said. Funding “does not influence the editorial content of their coverage in any way, nor would we want it to.”

Ploughshares has funded NPR’s coverage of national security since 2005, the radio network said. Ploughshares reports show at least $700,000 in funding over that time. All grant descriptions since 2010 specifically mention Iran.

“It’s a valued partnership, without any conditions from Ploughshares on our specific reporting, beyond the broad issues of national and nuclear security, nuclear policy, and nonproliferation,” NPR said in an emailed statement. “As with all support received, we have a rigorous editorial firewall process in place to ensure our coverage is independent and is not influenced by funders or special interests.”

Republican lawmakers will have concerns nonetheless, especially as Congress supplies NPR with a small portion of its funding. Just this week, the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee tried to summon Rhodes to a hearing entitled “White House Narratives on the Iran Nuclear Deal,” but he refused.

Ploughshares’ links to media are “tremendously troubling,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, an Iran-deal critic.

Pompeo told the AP he repeatedly asked NPR to be interviewed last year as a counterweight to a Democratic supporter of the agreement, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who he said regularly appeared on the station. But NPR refused to put Pompeo on the air, he said. The station said it had no record of Pompeo’s requests, and listed several prominent Republicans who were featured speaking about the deal or economic sanctions on Iran.

Another who appeared on NPR is Joseph Cirincione, Ploughshares’ president. He spoke about the negotiations on air at least twice last year. The station identified Ploughshares as an NPR funder one of those times; the other time, it didn’t.

Ploughshares boasts of helping to secure the deal. While success was “driven by the fearless leadership of the Obama administration and supporters in Congress,” board chairwoman Mary Lloyd Estrin wrote in the annual report, “less known is the absolutely critical role that civil society played in tipping the scales towards this extraordinary policy victory.”

The 33-page document lists the groups that Ploughshares funded last year to advance its nonproliferation agenda.

The Arms Control Association got $282,500; the Brookings Institution, $225,000; and the Atlantic Council, $182,500. They received money for Iran-related analysis, briefings and media outreach, and non-Iran nuclear work.

Other groups, less directly defined by their independent nuclear expertise, also secured grants.

J-Street, the liberal Jewish political action group, received $576,500 to advocate for the deal. More than $281,000 went to the National Iranian American Council.

Princeton University got $70,000 to support former Iranian ambassador and nuclear spokesman Seyed Hossein Mousavian’s “analysis, publications and policymaker engagement on the range of elements involved with the negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Ploughshares has set its sights on other media organizations, too.

In a “Cultural Strategy Report” on its website, the group outlined a broader objective of “ensuring regular and accurate coverage of nuclear issues in reputable and strategic media outlets” such as The Guardian, Salon, the Huffington Post or Pro Publica.

Previous efforts failed to generate enough coverage, it noted. These included “funding of reporters at The Nation and Mother Jones and a partnership with The Center for Public Integrity to create a national security desk.” It suggested using “web videos, podcasts, photo-based stories” and other “attention-grabbing formats” for “creatively reframing the issue.”

The Center for Public Integrity’s CEO, Peter Bale, confirmed the grant.

“None of the funding received by Ploughshares was for coverage of the Iran deal,” said Bale, whose company received $70,000. “In general, we avoided that subject because the topic did not lend itself to the type of investigative reporting the Center does.”

Caitlin Graf, a spokeswoman at The Nation, said her outlet had no partnership with Ploughshares. She referred queries to The Nation Institute, a nonprofit associated with the magazine that seeks to strengthen the independent press and advance social justice. Taya Kitman, the institute’s director, said Ploughshares’ one-year grant supported reporting on U.S.-Iran policy, but strict editorial control was maintained.

Mother Jones’ media department didn’t respond to several messages seeking comment.

The AP has taken grants from nonpolitical groups and journalism foundations such as the Knight Foundation. As with all grants, “AP retains complete editorial control of the final news product, which must fully meet AP standards for independence and integrity,” Standards Editor Thomas Kent said.

How Many Times did Russia Buzz the U.S.?

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Navy releases nearly two dozen videos of Russian jets, helicopter buzzing USS Donald Cook

PilotonLine:The Navy has released new video of two Russian jets buzzing the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea last month, as well as video of a Russian helicopter circling the destroyer.

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The Navy released nearly two dozen videos of the incident in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Virginian-Pilot. The Navy had previously uploaded four videos to YouTube of two Russian Su-24 jets making close-range, low-altitude passes near the ship on April 11 and 12.

The newly released videos show additional angles and commentary from sailors. At one point, a sailor is heard saying “Oh my God” as the jets pass close by. The Russian jets repeatedly flew next to and over the Donald Cook in what the Navy says was a simulated attack profile and didn’t respond to repeated safety advisories issued in English and Russian.

The Navy criticized the passes by the jets and the KA-27 Helix helicopter. The Russian jets appeared unarmed and the helicopter’s crew was seen photographing the Donald Cook.

“We have deep concerns about the unsafe and unprofessional Russian flight maneuvers,” the Navy said in an April 13 statement about the incident. “These actions have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries and could result in a miscalculation or accident that could cause serious injury or death.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry in April said the Navy’s criticism was “not consistent with reality” and that the Russian aircraft had “performed strictly in accordance with the international regulations on the use of airspace.”

The Donald Cook was based in Norfolk until 2014, when it moved to Rota, Spain. A Russian Su-24 Fencer attack aircraft repeatedly flew near the Donald Cook in the Black Sea that year.

The U.S. Navy has released more photographs, taken from aboard USS Donald Cook, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer that was buzzed by Russian Su-24M attack aircraft on Apr. 12.

Although quite provocative, the low passes that the Russian Sukhois performed near the ship (within 1,000 feet once coming as close as 30 feet to the destroyer) had little to be worried about: the aircraft depicted in the photographs are unarmed Sukhoi Su-24M bombers, most probably conducting “simulated attacks” on the American warship at sea.

According to the Russian MoD the Fencers skirted the Donald Cook in international waters some 70 km from a Russian Navy base.

Aviationist: For sure, close encounters at sea occur: in April 2014, when a Russian Su-24MR, flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, that was operating in the Black Sea following the crisis in Ukraine: a show of force considered  “provocative and inconsistent with international agreements.”

On Mar. 3, 2015, Russian Su-30s and Su-24s aircraft from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet based in Crimea conducted attack runs on NATO warships operating in the Black Sea “to practice penetrating anti-air systems.”

On Oct. 27, 2015, USS Ronald Regan, sailing in international waters east of the Korean peninsula, had to scramble four Hornets after two Russian Navy Tu-142 Bear aircraft flew within a nautical mile of the U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

In 2008, USS Nimitz operating in the Pacific had to launch some Hornets to intercept and escort two Tu-95s approaching the carrier.

So, such close encounters have occurred since the Cold War and they have never really escalated even though there are rumors of U.S. Navy officers facing active jamming activities by some Russian planes in the past.

Nothing special then. At least, until something more happens…

Image credit: U.S. Navy

Has Jeh Johnson of DHS Stood in Line at TSA?

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the TSA also cannot publicly point to many significant attacks thwarted at airport gates, leading experts to insist that its protocols should be considered largely ineffective.

Rafi Sela, president of international transportation security consultancy AR Challenges, said the agency’s nearly $8 billion budget is largely being misspent on a misguided model. Politico 

TheVerge: Security lines at airports around the US are growing longer and longer. And that’s infuriating airlines, airports, passengers, and our elected officials alike. The long lines at the TSA-staffed security checkpoints are delaying fights and causing people to miss their planes. But ironically, passengers and airlines — the two groups most affected — are the ones who can do the least about it.

“Logistically, we don’t have the opportunity to hold flights for hours,” Ross Feinstein, a spokesperson for American Airlines, said in an interview with The Verge. Passengers “get to the gate too late and they can’t get rebooked for days or a week. That’s our concern, the impact it’s having on our customers.” Naturally, frustrated customers take their anger out on airline employees or, increasingly, airline Twitter accounts. “We see it every day on social media. They’re very upset, and our employees are very concerned.”

 Related: Statement By Secretary Jeh C. Johnson On Inspector General Findings On TSA

But the airlines can’t fix the problem. Security lines are handled by the TSA and individual airports. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is in charge of JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports — three of the busiest in the country — recently sent a letter to the TSA urging it to fix the problems and threatening to use private security contractors to handle security screening.

hiring private contractors to handle screening isn’t a crazy idea

Hiring private security isn’t some crazy idea. Though most airport security checkpoints are manned by TSA agents, there are a handful of airports enrolled in the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), a TSA effort that allows private security contractors to screen passengers under federal supervision. It’s a program championed by Congressman John Mica (R-FL), a longtime TSA foe. There are nearly two dozen airports enrolled in SPP, including SFO in San Francisco, and Mica says it’s the way of the future.

“The TSA is destined to fail in its current structure,” Mica told The Verge. “It’s a huge bureaucracy.” The TSA is currently funded for 45,000 screeners, up from 16,000 when the Administration was formed in 2002. “We have 13,000 more administrative personnel, of which 4,000 are located within a few miles of the US Capital making an average of $104,000 per year. Incompetence highly paid, screeners not well paid.”

Mica says that TSA is staffed with government bureaucrats who have no incentive to execute well and are focused on “hassling innocent passengers.” He says the agency knows how many passengers will be passing through an airport checkpoint weeks in advance and that it still fails to “staff to traffic” — scheduling enough screeners to properly handle the number of passengers.

 Related: TSA, an ‘abominable failure’

His solution is to have TSA set protocols, requirements, and guidelines, and have private contractors handle the day-to-day passenger screenings. Both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy use private security contractors at military bases and nuclear installations. If it’s good enough for nuclear plants, Mica asks, why isn’t it good enough for our airports?

getty tsaPhoto by John Moore/Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, not everyone in Congress agrees. One of them is Rep. Donald M. Payne, Jr. (D-NJ), who is on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security and whose district includes Newark airport. “I think TSA is more than capable, if it has the manpower to do the job,” Payne told The Verge. “TSA, when given the manpower and proper utilization, has done an outstanding job and there has not been another attack on an American airport since TSA has been on the job.”

And that’s true. But luck may be playing a role. A leaked report showed that TSA failed to detect weapons and explosives 95 percent of the time in an internal Homeland Security test. A Homeland Security Inspector General’s report called an $878 million screening program, meant to detect suspicious behaviors at checkpoints, “expensive and ineffective.” That program reportedly failed to detect a single terrorist.

morale is a big problem at the TSA

It’s not easy to be on the front lines for the TSA agents either. “Morale is a big problem with the TSA. It’s a thankless job,” says Payne. “All you’re dealing with are people who arrive at the airport late, that want to move through the line expeditiously, and weren’t necessarily there when they should have been. But now they want the whole process to be expedited for their benefit. Sometimes it just doesn’t work that way.”

TSA, for its part, puts most of the blame on the increased number of passengers and on the fact that travelers use more carry-ons because of airline baggage fees. The airlines disagree. “There has not been a huge surge,” says Feinstein. “There are more people traveling, yes, but it’s around a 4 percent increase [over last year]. I don’t think anyone saw two-and-a-half hour wait times last summer. It’s not proportional. It doesn’t equate to a 500 percent increase in wait times.”

“Encouraging passengers to check more bags will not help and would actually exacerbate current checked baggage screening issues that are resulting in passengers missing their connections and having their bags delayed,” said Melanie Hinton, a spokesperson for Airlines for America, an industry trade group. “Even at Midway [Airport in Chicago], served predominantly by an airline that doesn’t charge bag fees, wait times are in excess of 90 minutes, further demonstrating that this problem is not a result of bag fees,” she said. (Southwest Airlines, the largest carrier at Midway, doesn’t charge fees for checked baggage.)

TSA refused our requests for an interview.

the entire industry is frustrated

Some airlines are trying to ease the dire situation by deploying their own forces. American Airlines, for example, has assigned employees to help manage non-screening functions at security checkpoints in an attempt to free up more TSA employees for screening. They’re handling things like telling flyers to remove their shoes or throw out water bottles, as well as moving plastic trays from one end of the security line to the other. But that’s only a short-term solution, and something of a last-ditch attempt at that.

“The entire industry is frustrated,” says Feinstein. “We have issues at DFW, LAX, Denver, Newark. It’s not isolated to a hub, it’s across the board.”

The situation isn’t likely to improve any time soon. Peak travel season begins around Memorial Day and really gets going in mid-June. “This isn’t even peak summer and we can’t rebook passengers on these flights,” Feinstein says. What we’re seeing with the long lines “really does concern us.”

Hey State Dept. What’s the Hurry?

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Office of the Spokesperson
Washington, DC
May 19, 2016

Terrorist Designations of ISIL-Yemen, ISIL-Saudi Arabia, and ISIL-Libya

U.S. State Department: The Department of State has announced the designation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL’s) branch in Libya (ISIL-Libya) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Today, the Department is also simultaneously designating ISIL-Libya, along with the ISIL branches in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Section 1(b) of Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, which imposes sanctions and penalties on foreign persons that have committed, or pose a serious risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

The consequences of the FTO and E.O. 13224 designations include a prohibition against knowingly providing, or attempting or conspiring to provide, material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with, these organizations, and the freezing of all property and interests in property of these organizations that is in the United States, or come within the United States or the control of U.S. persons. The Department of State took these actions in consultation with the Departments of Justice and the Treasury.

ISIL-Yemen, ISIL-Saudi Arabia, and ISIL-Libya all emerged as official ISIL branches in November 2014 when U.S. Department of State-designated Specially Designated Global Terrorist and ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced that he had accepted the oaths of allegiance from fighters in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and was thereby creating ISIL “branches” in those countries.

While ISIL’s presence is limited to specific geographic locations in each country, all three ISIL branches have carried out numerous deadly attacks since their formation. Among ISIL-Yemen’s attacks, the group claimed responsibility for a pair of March 2015 suicide bombings targeting two separate mosques in Sana’a, Yemen, that killed more than 120 and wounded over 300. Separately, ISIL-Saudi Arabia has carried out numerous attacks targeting Shia mosques in both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, leaving over 50 people dead. Finally, ISIL-Libya’s attacks have included the kidnapping and execution of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, as well as numerous attacks targeting both government and civilian targets that have killed scores of people.

After today’s action, the U.S. Department of State has now sanctioned eight ISIL branches, having previously designated ISIL-Khorasan, ISIL-Sinai, Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria, Boko Haram, and ISIL-North Caucasus. Terrorism designations are one of the ways the United States can expose and isolate organizations and individuals engaged in terrorism, impose serious sanctions on them, and enable coordinated action across the U.S. Government and with our international partners to disrupt the activities of terrorists. This includes denying them access to the U.S. financial system and enabling U.S. law enforcement actions.