Radio America Online News Bureau

immigration

Sheriff Clarke: ‘We Are A Nation of Laws’

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One of the nation’s most outspoken law enforcement officers is praising the Trump administration for cracking down on sanctuary cities, slamming liberal politicians for protecting criminal aliens, and explaining what those criminals have done to his community far from the border.

Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Session announced the Justice Department would lower or eliminate federal grants to locales that fail to cooperate in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Sheriff David Clarke is thrilled.

“Finally, we have a president in Donald Trump, who appointed an outstanding attorney general in Jeff Sessions, unapologetic about immigration enforcement.  I am as well,” said Clarke, who is also author of the new book, “Cop Under Fire: Moving Beyond Hashtags of Race, Crime and Politics for a Better America.’

After years of lip service from both parties, Clarke says he is happy to see decisive action.

“Finally, we have somebody who’s going to get his arms around this thing, along with the Congress.  Congress has the constitutional authority to set immigration standards.  They’re going to have to take the test as well.  And you know what?  Congress is afraid to deal with this issue because it’s explosive,” said Clarke.

Despite the warning from Sessions about lost federal funds, mayors and police chiefs around the country say they won’t budge.  Clarke sees that as a dereliction of duty.

“These mayors out there are abdicating their responsibility to keep their citizens safe.  This is nothing more than aiding and abetting criminal activity when you start to harbor criminal illegal aliens,” said Clarke.

Opponents of the Trump policy, such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, often stake their positions on America’s history of welcoming immigrants seeking a better life, without distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration.

Clarke says that distinction matters.

“You got a guy in Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who’s actually going to enforce the law.  That is a shock to some people.  But we’re a nation of laws.  People want to say we’re a nation of immigrants.  No, we’re not.  We are a nation of laws.  We are a nation of lawful immigration,” said Clarke.

The sheriff also emphasizes that all the mayors and law enforcement officials are being asked to do is deal with criminals who are in the U.S. illegally.

“I’m not talking about immigration in general and not even illegal immigration.  I’m not giving it a pass, but I’m focusing on criminal illegal aliens.  I think it’s a good place to start because these individuals have no business in the country.  Many of them have been deported over and over and over again only to return, which shows the border is porous,” said Clarke.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is nowhere near the southern border, but Clarke says the effects of illegal immigration are having a very real impact on his community.

“We had a case several weeks ago of a criminal illegal alien (with a) criminal history.  He was not deported because of the catch and release policies that have gone on,” said Clarke.

“In a domestic violence situation, he pointed a forearm at his girlfriend, threatened his girlfriend, pointed a firearm at his two young kids and threatened them as well,” said Clarke.

He says that’s just one of many crimes and tragedies linked to illegal immigration in Milwaukee County.

“We’re talking about murders.  We’ve had criminal illegal aliens involved in drunk driving incidents in Milwaukee County who would have killed other motorists.  We’ve had robberies.  We’ve had sexual assaults.  We’ve had incidents of child abuse,” said Clarke.

Unlike officials in sanctuary cities, Clarke says he fully cooperates with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in rooting out criminals in the country illegally.

“I work with ICE and ICE officials have access to all of my booking data.  They look at it every day and they decide who they’re going to give a further look at.  I don’t tell them, ‘Look at this guy and this guy.’  They’ll decide and then they’ll call and tell us, ‘Hold onto this guy or this guy.  We want to do some further investigation to see if this person is in the country lawfully,” said Clarke.

One of Clarke’s greatest frustrations is the lack of hard data on criminal illegals.  He says it’s something liberals deliberately want to keep fuzzy.

“We don’t know the extent of the problem because data isn’t being collected on crimes involving a criminal illegal alien.  It’s funny how, in this country, the left demands that we collect data on all traffic stops involving black motorists.  We actually collect that data.  There’s a box you have to check and a form you have to fill out,” said Clarke.

“All of a sudden now when we want to collect data, so we have some accuracy as to what’s going on with this problem, they don’t want anything to do about it,” said Clarke, who praises Trump for ordering the collection of data on crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

Clarke is taking steps to prepare his department to offer even more cooperation.

“I’m going to help ICE.  I’ve applied for the 287 (g) program, which, after training, will deputize my law enforcement officers with immigration enforcement,” said Clarke.

“We’re not going to be doing home raids and we’re not going to be doing workplace raids and school raids like the left likes to portray as the sky is falling and the bogeyman propaganda.  I’m going to focus on going after criminal illegal aliens, who have been arrested for some very serious crimes, deported previously but got back in,” said Clarke.

“Once they get that border sealed, the next time we get them out , we’ll be able to keep them out,” said Clarke.

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Three Martini Lunch 3/2/17

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss Democrats killing their own goal of immigration reform by refusing to work with Trump.  They also discuss Attorney General Jeff Session and the significance of his comments under oath about Russian communication with the Trump campaign.  And they discuss the new interior secretary’s first commute to work and comments from a GOP House member that may come back to bite him.

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Three Martini Lunch 2/28/17

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are encouraged by some of the budget tightening the Trump administration wants to do but are concerned that there seems to be no appetite for entitlement reform.  They also wonder why George W. Bush is coming forward to criticize Trump after virtually eight years of silence on the Obama administration.  And they have fun with Sen. Tom Udall’s suggestion that the Senate confirm Neil Gorsuch AND Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.

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‘He Hasn’t Been Keeping Up With the News’

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Former President George W. Bush indicated he considers President Trump’s recent executive order a “Muslim ban” and opposes efforts to infringe upon anyone’s freedom to worship, an analysis that one immigration experts suggests is evidence Bush doesn’t know what is in the policy and is continuing with his narrative that anyone killing in the name of Islam cannot be a Muslim.

Bush appeared on NBC’s ‘Today’ show to promote his new book, “Portraits of Courage,” but soon found himself immersed in a conversation about the president, the press  and Trump’s temporary pause on immigration from seven nations suffering from the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism.

‘Today’ host Matt Lauer began the discussion of the executive order by quoting Bush’s positive portrayal of Islam following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

“That’s very different talk than what we’re hearing today about a Muslim ban,” said Lauer.  “Do you think the president’s position on this has been well thought out?”

“It’s important for all of us to recognize one of our great strengths is for people to worship the way they want to or not worship at all.  A bedrock of our freedom is the right to worship freely,” Bush responded.

Bush later said he supported an “immigration policy that is welcoming and upholds the law.”

Center for Immigration Reform Executive Director Mark Krikorian says Bush’s focus on the freedom to worship suggests he’s not all that familiar with Trump’s executive order.

“He still misunderstands what the struggle is and specifically about the travel ban he didn’t push back against Lauer’s comment that this was a Muslim ban.  How can it be a Muslim ban if it only covers 10 or 12 percent of the world’s Muslims.  He hasn’t been keeping up with the news and he really shouldn’t be commenting on it if he hasn’t,” said Krikorian.

But Bush wasn’t done.

“I understood right off the bat, Matt, that this was an ideological conflict and people who murder the innocent are not religious people.  They want to advance an ideology,” said Bush.

Krikorian says Bush sees the threat in much the same way former President Barack Obama does.

“Even President Obama made these points about how if you’re a terrorist killing innocent people, you’re not religious.  Well, that’s completely misunderstanding what it means.  Who are we to say that a terrorist acting in the name of Islam doesn’t understand what Islam is?” asked Krikorian.

“Former President Bush would have been correct in saying that sort of violent perspective on Islam is not the only way to see it, that there are many Muslims who reject it.  But he steps over the line, and Obama did this too, when he said that other perspectives of Islam that see it legitimately as killing infidels are not really Islam,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian is also keeping a close eye out for Trump’s revised executive order banning travel from the seven nations with significant terrorism problems.  He expects the new order to carve out exceptions for anyone holding green cards.

He says the massive fight over the order is largely a distraction from the real fight over which branch of government gets to establish immigration policy.

“It’s only 90 days for seven countries.  What this is really about is whether the elected representatives of the people or the judges get to decide who moves to the United States,” said Krikorian, who says the statutory power clearly gives authority to Congress, which allows the president to ban any alien or class of alien he wants.

He says the left wants that power to be in the hands of judges.

“This is something that the anti-borders people, whether on the right or on the left, have been pushing for for years, where every single visa decision – everything – would be decided by judges ultimately.  That’s not what the law says,” said Krikorian.

“The courts suspending that old executive order were acting lawlessly.  It was literally an illegal act by those judges,” said Krikorian.

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Three Martini Lunch 2/10/17

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are thrilled to see Tom Price confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.  They also discuss the numerous problems with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the Trump immigration order.  And they slam CNN’s Chris Cuomo for asserting that accusing a journalist of fake news is the equivalent of using the N word.

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‘The Law Is Very Clear’

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A former top immigration official says federal law is very clear in giving the President of the United States broad power over who is allowed into the country and points out that possession of a visa does not give permission  to enter the United States.

The issue is still at a boiling point after Federal Judge James Robart placed a temporary restraining order on President Trump’s executive order pausing immigration to the United States from seven nations roiled by radical Islamic terrorism.

In his ruling, Robart said he was granting the injunction because the plaintiffs were likely to win in the merits and individuals and the states could suffer irreparable harm before the case is fully resolved.

Jan C. Ting served as Assistant Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Justice Department during in the George H.W. Bush administration.  He now teaches at the Temple University School of Law.  He says the law is clearly on Trump’s side.

“The law is very clear that Congress has authorized the president to decide.  If the president finds the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he is authorized to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens or to impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate,” said Ting.

“It’s codified as Immigration and Nationality Act, Section 212 (f).  It’s also codified as 8 USC Section 1182 (f).  It gives broad power to the president to exclude, basically, any aliens or non-citizens he chooses on the grounds that it would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” said Ting.

He says this should be an open and shut case for the courts in the Trump administration’s favor.

“I think the courts, if they follow the precedents, have to come up with that result, and I hope they will,” said Ting.

Robart did not cite any constitutional provision or U.S. statute.  The only court cases he cited dealt with his power to issue an injunction.  Ting says the ruling was unconvincing.

“I didn’t find the temporary restraining order terribly persuasive.  I thought the judge relied on generalities about the law and the Constitution and our customs and practices,” said Ting.

Prof. Ting is also taking aim at some of the legal arguments against the executive order, starting with the contention that anyone in possession of a U.S. visa has a right to enter the country.

“People need to understand what a visa is.  All a visa is is permission to get on an airplane coming to the United States,” said Ting.

“If you don’t have a visa, you can’t get on the airplane, but the visa does not itself authorize anyone to come into the United States.  They have to present themselves for inspection and the inspectors are authorized to turn people around, even if they have visas,” said Ting.

And that is why Ting says citing a 1965 law barring discrimination against aliens from a particular country doesn’t matter in this case.  He says that law also focuses only on visas and not actual entry into the United States.  He says Section 202 (a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act makes that clear.

“I think it’s clear that the 1965 language in 202 (a) does not apply to the inadmissability language in 212 (f),” said Ting.

Nonetheless, if the courts continue to rule against the Trump administration, Ting says it’s up to Congress to clarify statutory language even more to make sure the lew is being followed as the original lawmakers intended.

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Three Martini Lunch 2/6/17

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America have all bad news, starting with a federal judge putting a hold on Pres. Trump’s immigration order without citing any law or constitutional provision and Trump’s subsequent tweets attacking the judicial system.  We also blast Trump for his moral equivalence in dismissing Vladimir Putin as a killer by saying America’s done a lot of bad things too.  And we discuss and debate whether the slower GOP strategy on Obamacare and tax reform is responsible leadership or letting a golden opportunity slip away.

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‘This is Not A Permanent Ban’

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President Trump’s executive order is not a permanent ban but is necessary for national security thanks to the lax vetting practices applied by the Obama administration, according to a leading immigration policy experts.

Trump has issued a flurry of orders, but his executive order last week ordering an immediate and indefinite pause on travel to the United States from seven terrorism-prone nations is drawing by far the fiercest response.  Protesters have clogged airports and political critics are demanding Trump rescind the order.

Jessica Vaughan is director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.  She says there is a lot of confusion and misinformation about what Trump’s order does.

“I think the most misunderstood part is that people are being permanently prevented from coming to the United States who had been approved before,” said Vaughan.  “This is not a permanent ban.  It’s a temporary suspension.  You can call it a ban if you want, but it’s a temporary ban.  No one has been told that the benefit they were approved for  has been taken away.”

And she says refugees in dire situations are still being processed from those countries even with the pause in place.

“I have to emphasize there is language in this executive order that anybody with a particularly emergency situation, compelling circumstances, in imminent danger, or in other categories can ask for a waiver.  From what I’ve heard in statements today, they’ve already granted more than a thousand waivers for people,” said Vaughan.

But she says the pause on entry from the seven unstable nations is needed to recalibrate how the U.S. screens people entering our country.

“The point was to give our government the opportunity to take another look at these people who have been granted green cards, visas, refugee status.  We know that the vetting process under the Obama administration was not adequate,” said Vaughan.

Vaughan, a former visa officer, says the Obama administration failed to do even basic screening much of the time, including waiving required interviews with those seeking to go to the U.S.  But she said the problems didn’t end there.

“In other cases, officers were not allowed to look very deeply into the applications that they got.  The claims they made on their applications were not always verified.  Officers were told to assume that they were qualified and not ask too many questions.  [There was] not a lot of fraud prevention work taking place,” said Vaughan.

Then there is the problem of trying to vet people coming from hostile countries or ones that don’t have decent records on their people.

“In some of these countries, we don’t have enough of a relationship with the government to be able to be sure that people’s identities are who they say they are or that their story checks out,” said Vaughan.

“There was a lot of enforcement that was undone by the Obama administration.  We’ve seen illegal immigration rise to levels we have not seen in many years,” said Vautghan.

Vaughan says she has sympathy for those caught in transit as the order took effect, but she says national security has to take precedence.

“It is important to recognize that our security has been put at risk every single day that we have not had adequate vetting in place.  So it was important to put a stop to that as soon as possible,” said Vaughan.

Vaughan likens the pace of Trump’s immigration actions thus far – ranging from this order to ordering border wall construction to cracking down on sanctuary cities – to “drinking from a fire hose,” but she believes Trump is on the right course.

“There’s a lot that needed to happen,” she said.  “It’s been presented as an integrated plan.  Throwaway lines like, ‘Let’s have more border security.’  They’re talking about a wall but changing the policies also and enforcing the laws in the interior.  That’s a comprehensive approach that’s likely to work.”

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Three Martini Lunch 1/26/17

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are encouraged by President Trump’s vow to enforce existing immigration laws.  They also rip Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for her Syria trip and going easy on Assad in her analysis.  They unload on disingenuous Democrats upset about Trump looking to end sanctuary cities, and they note the rise of Canada’s Trump – and it’s someone you may well be aware of.

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Obama’s Cuba Impact: Repression of People & Enriching Castros

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President Obama’s thawing of relations with Cuba has already drawn plenty of criticism, but a prominent Castro critic says Obama’s actions in his final week will only serve to increase repression in Cuba while enriching the coffers of the Castro regime.

On Friday, the Obama administration announced it would no longer accept Cubans into the country if they arrive in the U.S. without a visa.  For years, the American policy had been to accept refugees who reached our shores but turn back those encountered off the Florida coast.

For critics of Obama’s earlier overtures, this latest move is another major slap in the face.

“It is very significant.  It is another cave-in by Obama to Castro,” said Humberto Fontova, a prominent author and journalist who fled Cuba as a boy while his father was imprisoned.

However, he says it’s not the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy shift that enrages him the most.

“Folks, this is a smokescreen.  This is cover.  This is camouflage for the real issue here,” said Fontova.  “What Obama did along with this is he abrogated the doctor asylum program.  Read the fine print, folks.”

At issue is the Cuban policy of “Doctor Diplomacy,” which Fontova describes as Cuba sending doctors to many friendly or third-world nations in exchange for large sums of money pumped into the Cuban treasury.  He says the doctors get less than 10 percent of the money and their families are “held hostage” while they’re abroad.

In 2006, President George W. Bush instituted the aforementioned asylum program, allowing those Cuban doctors to defect to the U.S. by strolling into any one of our embassies around the world.

“That was costing the Castro regime dearly because what the host country would have paid for these quack doctors was being lost.  It’s estimated this was bringing in about eight billion to the Castro regime,” said Fontova.

He says that money will flow more freely again now that Obama has reversed the Bush policy.

Fontova also points out that Obama is not clamping down on all Cuban entering the U.S.  Those with visas are welcome, and he says how those visas are distributed is a scandal in itself.

“Here’s the kicker.  The issuance of those visas is outsourced by Obama to the Castro regime.  The U.S. embassy in Havana leaves it up to Castro to decide who is going to get these visas,” said Fontova.

He says the visa recipients are chosen specifically to fleece the American welfare system for the benefit of Cuba, a strategy that Obama helped make easier by easing the U.S. remittance policy toward Cuba early in his administration.

“They sprint off the plane, run straight to the welfare offices, apply for the U.S. welfare benefits, which can total $1,200 a month, and almost immediately start wiring that money back to Cuba,” said Fontova.

“It’s estimated that last year four billion dollars flowed from the U.S. to Cuba, thanks to Obama opening that lifeline and thanks to those so-called refugees that the Castro regime chooses,” said Fontova.

In his farewell address, President Obama took credit for opening “a new chapter with the Cuban people.”  Fontova says that new chapter means even more suffering for the Cuban people.

“The real horror of this is that repression in Cuba is at a 20-year high.  The last two years, in other words coinciding exactly with Obama’s opening, have coincided with a wave of terror against Cuban dissidents,” said Fontova, who says the Cuban government feels emboldened to persecute dissenters since it know there will be no negative reactions from the U.S.

And thanks to Obama refusing to accept refugees who make it to U.S. shores, those dissidents have no way of escape.

“The Cubans who Castro didn’t want to come to the U.S., genuine refugees, folks who jump on two pieces of styrofoam tied together.  Those people will be prevented from coming, but the Cubans who Castro wants to come over here because they’re a cash cow for him will continue coming,” said Fontova.

He says the Cuban dissidents point the finger of blame at Obama.

“Do you know that Cuban dissidents have been protesting in Cuba wearing Obama masks?  They’re saying it’s his fault.  Naturally, that hasn’t been reported in the mainstream media, but it is all Obama’s fault, Cuban dissidents keep telling us,” said Fontova.

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