If you're like most Americans, you probably suffered a severe case of heartburn today about the Supreme Court decision tossing most of Arizona's immigration law, S.B. 1070. While the High Court did uphold the "status check" part of the legislation, every silver lining has a cloud:
The Obama administration said Monday it is suspending existing agreements with Arizona police over enforcement of federal immigration laws, and said it has issued a directive telling federal authorities to decline many of the calls reporting illegal immigrants that the Homeland Security Department may get from Arizona police...“We will not be issuing detainers on individuals unless they clearly meet our defined priorities,” one official said in a telephone briefing.
Raise your hand if you are fed up with this lawless, pandering administration. Apparently Justice Scalia is:
In a far more rational decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Knox v. SEIU late last week that the big union couldn't continue to steal money from government workers' paychecks. This decision was also discussed on FNC, but please disregard the liberal's tired and lame "police, firefighters and teachers" reference as the public sector is mostly made up of paper shufflers on perpetual coffee break who have nothing whatsoever to do with law enforcement:
It was disappointing but far from surprising that a Clinton-appointed liberal judge blocked key portions of SB 1070, the Arizona immigration law. That the 9th Circuit was unwilling to hear an expedited appeal, and therefore won't take up the case until November, is also disheartening. Only in an upside world would the federal government prefer to spend money on lawyers than in securing the border. But ultimately Arizona and the American people will prevail, although the statute may be headed toward a 5-4 Supreme Court decision sometime down the line.
We've previously referred to Chris Christie as America's governor, but perhaps that honor also belongs to Jan Brewer. The Arizona governor, who is running for re-election to be sure, might not come across as the most prepared politician during television interviews, but she's unwavering when it comes to protecting the border. She's already said that she will be "relentless" when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration. The vast majority of the American people logically want the border secured first before any legislative initiatives on immigration reform, so-called, should be considered. The media and the Obama administration (is there a difference?) are out of step with the American people.
She's going to do all that she can to continue down the litigation path to allow secure borders. Jan Brewer has the cojones that our president does not have to look out for all Americans, not just Arizonans, but all Americans, in this desire of ours to secure our borders and allow legal immigration to help build this country, as was the purpose of immigration laws.
Last month, Boston Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald sounded a similar theme:
The Arizona governor knows what she believes and has the courage of her convictions, making her a breath of fresh air here in Massachusetts where public officials cower at incurring the wrath of a politically correct lunatic fringe.
In town this weekend for a meeting of the National Governors Association, Brewer’s sure to hear from malcontents enraged by her state’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
They’d have us believe it’s hateful to suggest new arrivals ought to comply with America’s expectations.
Learn our language? How insensitive. Apply for citizenship? How inhospitable. Obey our laws? How mean-spirited.
Please. We’re sicker than they are if we pay any attention to them.
Fitzgerald's Herald colleague Howie Carr added the following:
It’s not about immigration. It’s about illegal immigration. You cannot have a society where one group is expected to obey the laws, play by the rules, pay taxes and speak a common language, and another group sneaking in and not asking, but demanding, to be given everything, for free, with no consequences whatsoever for any crimes they commit.
Last night on FNC, a focus group of Arizona voters, many of whom voted for Obama, spoke out on the situation in their state when it comes to illegal immigration:
What's the best use of Justice Department resources when you have a border overrun by drug gangs, human traffickers, potential terrorists, and other violent criminals? Well, it is to sue the state of Arizona, of course, over SB 1070, even though the Arizona law is a mirror image of federal immigration law.
In the meantime, RedState.com broke the story that per U.S. Senator Jon Kyl, Obama is using border security as a bargaining chip to get comprehensive, so called, immigration reform through the Congress. Sen. Kyl says the administration is holding its constitutional duty to secure the border "hostage" for political reasons. The idea that this administration would politicize national security as if it's merely another shakedown, another Chicago-style deal like the "cornhusker kickback" or the "Louisiana purchase," speaks for itself. Here's the video featuring Sen. Kyl at a town hall meeting:The White House has denied the senator's claim, but Kyl, who has no reputation for grandstanding, isn't backing down.
Deploying "up to" 1200 National Guard troops (that's 300 per shift, assuming this temporary measure is actually implemented) to the 2,000 mile U.S.-Mexican border is obviously just a superficial, going-through-the motions move. The administration is not serious about really securing the border. For example, Obama's minions on Capitol Hill defeated a measure that would have sent 6,000 troops to the southwestern border. Similarly, Senate Democrats also blocked an amendment that would have required completion of the 700-mile border fence between the U.S. and Mexico within a year.
And you have any doubts that the temporary National Guard deployment isn't just a public relations stunt, consider this:
US National Guard troops being sent to the Mexican border will be used to stem the flow of guns and drugs across the frontier and not to enforce US immigration laws, the State Department said Wednesday.The clarification came after the Mexican government urged Washington not to use the additional troops to go after illegal immigrants. [AFP]
The troops, expected to be spread along the southern border of all four southwestern states, would largely assist border patrol agents and local law enforcement by providing intelligence and intelligence analysis, surveillance and reconnaissance support, and the ability to train additional Customs and Border Protection agents,
In fact, ABC aired this surprising fair report on the president's decision:
In the meantime, the security threats at the southern border don't merely involve drug and human smugglers:
The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com...Security experts tell FOXNews.com that the influx of hundreds of Somalis over the U.S. border who allegedly have ties to suspected terror cells is evidence of a porous and unsecured border being exploited by groups intent on wrecking deadly havoc on American soil.
What is is about securing the border first that this administration (and the previous one) doesn't understand? If, for example, U.S. troops can secure the border between North and South Korea and elsewhere around the world, why can't we protect our own border?
Virtually every country in the world, including Mexico, controls its own border. If you don't have secure borders, you really no longer have a country. Out of control immigration is one of the major issues in Thursday's parliamentary elections in the UK, where the Conservatives are projected to capture about 300 seats. Here, the federal government--under President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano--has failed in its responsibility, so the state of Arizona enacted a statute to give the police additional authority. Predictably, the usual open-borders advocates went completely bonkers. One of the bill's authors responds in the New York Times:
On Friday, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a law — SB 1070 — that prohibits the harboring of illegal aliens and makes it a state crime for an alien to commit certain federal immigration crimes. It also requires police officers who, in the course of a traffic stop or other law-enforcement action, come to a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal alien verify the person’s immigration status with the federal government...
In sum, the Arizona law hardly creates a police state. It takes a measured, reasonable step to give Arizona police officers another tool when they come into contact with illegal aliens during their normal law enforcement duties.
President Obama and the Beltway crowd feel these problems can be taken care of with “comprehensive immigration reform” — meaning amnesty and a few other new laws. But we already have plenty of federal immigration laws on the books, and the typical illegal alien is guilty of breaking many of them. What we need is for the executive branch to enforce the laws that we already have.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration has scaled back work-site enforcement and otherwise shown it does not consider immigration laws to be a high priority. Is it any wonder the Arizona Legislature, at the front line of the immigration issue, sees things differently?
Forest Rangers vs. Border Patrol on border enforcement, according to the Washington Times:
In the battle on the U.S.-Mexico border, the fight against illegal immigration often loses out to environmental laws that have blocked construction of parts of the "virtual fence" and that threaten to create places where agents can't easily track illegal immigrants.
Documents obtained by Rep. Rob Bishop and shared with The Washington Times show National Park Service staffers have tried to stop the U.S. Border Patrol from placing some towers associated with the virtual fence, known as the Secure Border Initiative or SBInet, on wilderness lands in parks along the border.
In a remarkably candid letter to members of Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department could have to delay pursuits of illegal immigrants while waiting for horses to be brought in so agents don't trample protected lands, and warns that illegal immigrants will increasingly make use of remote, protected areas to avoid being caught.
The documents also show the Interior Department has charged the Homeland Security Department $10 million over the past two years as a "mitigation" penalty to pay for damage to public lands that agencies say has been caused by Border Patrol agents chasing illegal immigrants.
With the economy still in the tank, runaway federal spending, million of Americans jobless, and looming threats to national security, what's the next logical federal initiative? Amnesty for border jumpers, of course:
The Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Friday.
In her first major speech on the overhaul, Ms. Napolitano dispelled any suggestion that the administration — with health care, energy and other major issues crowding its agenda — would postpone the most contentious piece of immigration legislation until after midterm elections next November.
The Washington Post says DHS has a plan--subject to White House approval--for identifying foreign visitors who fly out of the U.S. by air:
The Department of Homeland Security is finalizing a proposal to collect fingerprints or eye scans from all foreign travelers at U.S. airports as they leave the country, officials said, a costly screening program that airlines have opposed.
The plan, which would take effect within two years, would collect fingerprints at airport security checkpoints, departure gates or terminal kiosks, allowing the government to track when roughly 35 million foreign visitors a year leave the country and who might be overstaying their visas, DHS officials said. The department plans to send the proposal to the White House as soon as next month for review and inclusion in President Obama's next budget.
Some experts and former government officials are skeptical. In a concession to industry, DHS said it probably will drop plans to require airlines to pay for the bulk of the program and is looking to cut costs, which could reach $1 billion to $2 billion over a decade, largely to be paid by taxpayers or foreign travelers. In addition, the program would not operate for now at land borders, where 80 percent of noncitizens enter and leave the country, because fingerprinting travelers there could cost billions more and significantly delay commerce.
Awkward! DHS Secretary Napolitano may be put on the hot seat by the U.S. Supreme Court, although it's far from clear if she will actually respond to the court's request for information:
A simple query from the Supreme Court is forcing the Obama administration to wrestle with the limits of states’ authority to enforce immigration laws — and also is throwing an uncomfortable spotlight on Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
On Monday, the justices asked the Justice Department to provide its views on Arizona’s attempt to force employers to verify the immigration status of potential employees. The law being challenged in the cases was signed by Napolitano in 2007, when she was governor of Arizona.
Napolitano has stated that she believes the law is constitutional, but business groups and immigration reform advocates generally in President Barack Obama’s camp are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the statute.
...A federal appeals court rejected the legal challenges to the Arizona law. The Supreme Court has not said that it will take the case but wants the administration’s view on whether further review is warranted.
They say actions speak louder than words, so it's difficult to take the Homeland Security Department seriously about border enforcement when it decides to decertify Sheriff Arpaio's crackdown on illegal immigration under the 287(g) program:
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he will continue his controversial "crime suppression operations" despite a Department of Homeland Security decision to strip him of authority to arrest suspected illegal immigrants based solely on their immigration status...
“It’s all politics,” says Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County.
Arpaio will still have the power to check the immigration status of people booked by his officers, but not the authority to conduct street patrols looking for illegal immigrants.
Mr. Arpaio was an early participant in a federal immigration program that enlists and trains local police to identify suspected criminal aliens in jails and on the streets. The program, known as 287g, is designed to target drug dealers, gang members and human smugglers.
Since February 2007, Mr. Arpaio has arrested about 30,000 illegal immigrants who were booked into jails in his county. The street-enforcement component, the most contentious portion of the program, resulted in the apprehension of far fewer people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
Given the profound if not overwhelming security challenges at our southern border, how in the world does make sense?
Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of the border are “easily breached,” and the Government Accountability Office has revealed that three persons “linked to terrorism” and 530 aliens from “special interest countries” were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Border Patrol Director of Media Relations Lloyd Easterling confirmed this week...that his agency is planning for a net decrease of 384 agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2010, which begins on October 1.
A Department of Homeland Security annual performance review updated by the Obama administration on May 7 said the Border Patrol “plans to move several hundred Agents from the Southwest Border to the Northern Border to meet the FY 2010 staffing requirements, with only a small increase in new agents for the Southwest Border in the same year.”
DHS Secretary Napolitano, who only gave lip service to border security as governor of Arizona, appears to be in over her head even according to AP:
Facing criticism for her handling of federal stimulus money, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that she would not start any new border construction projects while the department reviewed how projects were selected.
Napolitano has faced questions since The Associated Press reported last month that Homeland Security officials did not follow their internal priority lists when choosing which border checkpoints would get money for renovations. Under a process that is secretive and susceptible to political influence, officials planned to spend millions at tiny checkpoints, passing over busier, higher-priority projects.
The criticism peaked Wednesday when a senior Senate Democrat, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, said that, despite Napolitano's assurances, he felt Homeland Security was treating the economic stimulus plan like a "bottomless pit" of taxpayer money. It was unusually pointed criticism from a member of the president's own party about how the administration is handling economic recovery spending.
With the Homeland Security Department's bureaucracy apparently immobilized, the modern day counterparts of Captains Gus McRae and Woodrow F. Call are now on the case:
Special teams of Texas Rangers will be deployed to the Texas-Mexico border to deal with increasing violence because the federal government has failed to address growing problems there, Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday
"It is an expansive effort with the Rangers playing a more high-profile role than they've ever played before," Perry said of the Department of Public Safety's elite investigative unit.
The forces, dubbed "Ranger recon" teams, are the latest effort "to fill the gap that's been left by the federal government's ongoing failure to adequately secure our international border with Mexico," he said.
The governor early this year asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for 1,000 National Guard troops and renewed his call last month in a letter to President Barack Obama. The request is bogged down over who will pay for the troops and how they will be deployed.
In an August 27 statement, DHS "announced new directives to enhance and clarify oversight for searches of computers and other electronic media at U.S. ports of entry." However, the Washington Post says the policies aren't really new:
The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.
The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.
But representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.
Separately, a corruption investigation of Gov. Bill Richardson is apparently all for naught:
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won't be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor's large political donors, someone familiar with the case said.
The decision not to pursue indictments was made by top Justice Department officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because federal officials had not disclosed results of the probe.
"It's over. There's nothing. It was killed in Washington," the person told The Associated Press.
So, the Justice Dept won't prosecute Richardson, won't prosecute those individuals intimidating voters in Philadelphia, but will prosecute CIA interrogators while at the same time trying to come up with reasons to set terrorists free. And they said the Bush Justice Department was politicized?
