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Robert Spencer: Democrat Leaders Protest Trump’s Determination to Fight Jihad

February 7, 2017

Robert Spencer: Democrat Leaders Protest Trump’s Determination to Fight Jihad, Jihad Watch, , February 7, 2017

Spurious moral equivalence employed in order to divert attention from the real threat. My latest at The Geller Report:

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It was reported Friday that “a trio of House Democrats say President Trump is making a mistake pushing for counter-extremism efforts to focus only on radical Islam….Friday’s letter was signed Democratic Reps. Bennie Thompson (Md.), Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and John Conyers (Mich.).”

Thompson, Engel and Conyers wrote: “Such a move is wrongheaded insofar as persons who commit acts of violent extremism are inspired by diverse political, religious and philosophical beliefs, and are not limited to any single population or region.”

In reality, there have been over 30,000 murderous jihad terror attacks worldwide since 9/11. What other political, religious and philosophical beliefs have been responsible for any comparable number? A widely publicized study purporting to show that “right-wing extremists” have killed more people in the U.S. than Islamic jihadis, and thus pose a greater threat, has been debunked on many grounds.

These representatives also wrote: “Changing the name to ‘Countering Islamic Extremism’ or ‘Countering Radical Islamic Extremism’ would have damaging effects to our national security by feeding into the propaganda created by terrorist groups and child domestic and international diplomatic relations. Additionally, it could further alienate and create distrust with the Muslim-American communities when the program depends on close cooperation with law enforcement.”

Islamic jihadis routinely cite the texts and teachings of Islam to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. The idea that Muslims who reject jihad terror will be enraged if the U.S. government takes note of this is absurd. If they reject jihad terror, they won’t embrace it because officials are saying things they don’t like; in fact, if they really reject it, they should welcome and cooperate with efforts to identify its causes and eradicate them. These Congressmen are recommending that we curtail our speech to avoid criticizing Islam, which is a Sharia blasphemy provision that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been trying to foist upon the U.S. by means of “hate speech” laws for years. That the statements of Thompson, Engel and Conyers are simply today’s conventional wisdom is one indication of how successful these efforts have been.

Critics of President Trump’s plan have complained: “The program, ‘Countering Violent Extremism,’ or CVE, would be changed to ‘Countering Islamic Extremism’ or ‘Countering Radical Islamic Extremism,’ the sources said, and would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out bombings and shootings in the United States.”

Indeed, but the white supremacist threat has been wildly exaggerated by Soros-funded groups (which exaggerations have been pushed by Soros-funded media) that downplay and deny the jihad threat. Reuters’ equivalence here also ignores the fact that the jihad is an international movement set on destroying the U.S. and found on every continent; white supremacism is not.

What Trump is really doing here is reversing Obama’s bow to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in scrubbing counter-terror training materials of all mention of Islam and jihad. On October 19, 2011, Farhana Khera of Muslim Advocates delivered a letter to John Brennan, who was then the assistant to the president on National Security for Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism. The letter was signed by the leaders of virtually all significant Islamic groups in the United States: 57 Muslim, Arab, and South Asian organizations, many with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Relief USA, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

The letter denounced what it characterized as U.S. government agencies’ “use of biased, false and highly offensive training materials about Muslims and Islam.” Khera complained specifically about me, noting that my books could be found in “the FBI’s library at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia”; that a reading list accompanying a slide presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit recommended my book The Truth About Muhammad; that in July 2010 I “presented a two-hour seminar on ‘the belief system of Islamic jihadists’ to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Tidewater, Virginia”; and that I also “presented a similar lecture to the U.S. Attorney’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council, which is co-hosted by the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office.”

These were supposed to be terrible materials because I was supposedly bigoted and hateful. However, many of the examples Khera adduced of “bigoted and distorted materials” involved statements that were simply accurate. The only distortion was Khera’s representation of them.

For instance, Khera stated:

A 2006 FBI intelligence report stating that individuals who convert to Islam are on the path to becoming “Homegrown Islamic Extremists,” if they exhibit any of the following behavior:

“Wearing traditional Muslim attire”

“Growing facial hair”

“Frequent attendance at a mosque or a prayer group”

“Travel to a Muslim country”

“Increased activity in a pro-Muslim social group or political cause”

The FBI intelligence report Khera purported to be describing didn’t actually say that. Rather, it included these behaviors among a list of fourteen indicators that could “identify an individual going through the radicalization process.” Other indicators included:

“Travel without obvious source of funds”

“Suspicious purchases of bomb making paraphernalia or weapons”

“Large transfer of funds, from or to overseas”

“Formation of operational cells”

Khera had selectively quoted the list to give the impression that the FBI was teaching that devout observance of Islam led inevitably and in every case to “extremism.”

Despite the factual accuracy of the material about which they were complaining, the Muslim groups signing the letter demanded that the task force, among other actions:

“Purge all federal government training materials of biased materials.”

“Implement a mandatory re-training program for FBI agents, U.S. Army officers, and all federal, state and local law enforcement who have been subjected to biased training.”

They wished to ensure that all law enforcement officials ever learn about Islam and jihad would be what the signatories wanted them to learn — and Brennan was amenable to that. He took Khera’s complaints as his marching orders.

In a November 3, 2011, letter to Khera that — significantly — was written on White House stationery, Brennan accepted Khera’s criticisms without a murmur of protest and assured her of his readiness to comply. He detailed specific actions being undertaken, including “collecting all training materials that contain cultural or religious content, including information related to Islam or Muslims.” In reality, this material wouldn’t just be “collected”; it would be purged of anything that Farhana Khera and others like her found offensive. Honest, accurate discussion of how Islamic jihadists use Islamic teachings to justify violence would no longer be allowed.

The alacrity with which Brennan complied was unfortunate on many levels. Numerous books and presentations that gave a perfectly accurate view of Islam and jihad were purged. Brennan was complying with demands from quarters that could hardly be considered authentically moderate.

This Obama policy of the U.S. government ensured that numerous jihadists simply could not be identified as risks. The Obama administration was bound, as a matter of policy, to ignore what in saner times would be taken as warning signs. Now we can hope that Trump will reverse all that. Indeed, it is our only hope of defeating this scourge.

Categories: "Right wing extremists", Countering Islamic Extremism, Countering violent extremism, Department of Homeland Security, Trump on Islamic jihad, Trump presidency
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To Fix Counterterrorism, End Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Strategy

February 6, 2017

To Fix Counterterrorism, End Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Strategy, PJ Media, Andrew C. McCarthy, February 5, 2017

(Please see also, Trump Seeks to End Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Scam. — DM)

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Last June, the jihadist terrorist Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and wounding several other revelers. It quickly became clear that Mateen was yet another “known wolf” – the term popularized by my friend and colleague Patrick Poole to describe the frequent phenomenon of terrorists who manage to plot and strike against the West notwithstanding that their patent radicalism has put them on the radar screen of law-enforcement and intelligence agents.

I have long argued that the cause of this phenomenon is the restrictions on common sense placed on our agents by political correctness, which essentially blind them to the well-known but rarely acknowledged progression from Islamic scripture to sharia-supremacist ideology (what we call “radical Islam”), to enclaves populated by adherents and sympathizers of this ideology, and inevitably to jihadist terror. This iteration of political correctness has been the backbone of Obama administration counterterrorism strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE). Shortly after the Orlando attack, I delivered a speech at the Westminster Institute – entitled, “Defenseless in the Face of Our Enemies” – in which I addressed CVE. The new Trump administration is in the process of formulating its own counterterrorism strategy. Below, for what it may be worth, is the portion of my speech that addressed CVE:

Of the nearly 36,000 people who work for the FBI, fewer than 14,000 are investigative agents. National security is a crucial part of the Bureau’s portfolio, but the FBI is statutorily the lead investigative agency in virtually every category of criminal offense in federal law. At most, there are a couple thousand agents assigned full-time to counterterrorism. Those numbers are multiplied somewhat by joint federal-state efforts — the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in several metropolitan areas across the nation. Even so, because the Bureau is an intelligence agency as well as a law-enforcement agency, there are over a thousand terrorism investigations ongoing at any one time. The FBI director indicates that there is activity that must be monitored in all 50 states. Unless there are flashing neon signs of imminent attack, the small number of investigators can only spend so much time on any one suspect.

Of course, that time can be maximized, or wasted, depending on whether investigators know what they’re looking for . . . and whether they are permitted to look for it.

Clearly, the FBI spent a lot of time on Mateen. It sent confidential informants to interact with him, conducted physical surveillance, covertly monitored some of his phone calls, and interviewed him face-to-face three separate times. It concluded that his bark was bad, but his bite was non-existent. Honoring guidelines imposed on terrorism investigations, the FBI closed its case. That is, in addition to concluding that no charges should be filed, the Bureau further decided that additional monitoring of Mateen was not warranted.

In retrospect, this seems reckless. But the FBI is not incompetent, far from it. The agency knew Mateen was worth a heavy investigative investment. The problem is that the FBI answers to the Washington political class. The bipartisan Beltway has long ruled that advocacy of radical Islam is protected by the Constitution. It has long instructed its investigators, preposterously, that seditious beliefs and agitation are immune, not just from prosecution, but even from mere inquiry.

What passes for Obama’s national-security strategy, known as “Countering Violent Extremism,” exacerbates this problem. CVE delusionally forbids the conclusion that radical Islamic ideology has any causative effect on terrorist plotting. The FBI is in the impossible position of trying to conduct investigations that follow the facts wherever they lead, while fearing that such investigations — by illuminating the logical progression from Islamic scripture to sharia supremacism to jihadist terror — will enrage its political masters.

Understand: Nothing in the Constitution mandates this suicidal betrayal of national security. It flows from Washington’s lunatic concoction of an imaginary Islam — a belief system the sole tenets of which are peace and anti-terrorism. President Obama and the counsel he keeps (many of whom are connected to insidious Islamist organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood) insist this “anti-terrorist” “Religion of Peace” is the only viable interpretation of Islam. We are not just to believe, we are pressured to endorse, the fantasy that sharia supremacism is a “false Islam.” Its palpable mainstream status in the Middle East and elsewhere is not to be spoken of.

The FBI is bound by guidelines promulgated by the Justice Department, most of which have been in place since the administration of President George W. Bush. They impose a caveat on every investigation:

These Guidelines do not authorize investigating or collecting or maintaining information on United States persons solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other rights secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

On its face, this admonition should not be problematic. It instructs that agents may not investigate for the sole purpose of monitoring activities protected by federal law. Consequently, if agents have other legitimate purposes for investigating — such as preventing terrorist attacks or probing terrorism conspiracies — the Justice Department guidance is no bar to conducting an investigation in which a mosque or a protest rally may foreseeably come under scrutiny.

Political dissent and the exercise of religion are protected by the First Amendment. But this is a protection against being prosecuted merely for one’s words or religious observance. It is not a shield against investigation for criminal activities that are motivated by religious or political belief.

Not only may one be investigated and prosecuted for criminal offenses that are motivated by one’s beliefs or speech; it has long been the law that evidence of one’s beliefs and speech, which is often highly relevant to proving criminal intent, may be admitted in a prosecution for such offenses.

Simply stated, if you are a Muslim who believes sharia law must be imposed on society, and you tell people that Allah commands the commission of violent jihad to impose sharia, that belief and statement are admissible evidence if you are charged with bombing or terrorism conspiracy crimes. You are not being prosecuted for what you believe or what you said; you are being prosecuted for the crimes. The beliefs and statements are evidence of your state of mind — just as they are in all kinds of criminal cases beyond terrorism.

That being the case, there is nothing inherently wrong with, much less constitutionally offensive about, the concept that radical religious or political beliefs should trigger investigations. That is especially the case if those beliefs are conveyed by aggressive language, or by association with other radicals or mosques known to endorse jihadism.

Here’s an important principle we must get right: It cannot be that evidence an investigator may use to prove guilt of terrorism offenses is somehow insulated from an investigator’s suspicions about potential terrorism offenses. The goal of counterterrorism is supposed to be the prevention of jihadist attacks, not the hope that there may be a living terrorist or two still around to be indicted and tried only after Americans have been murdered.

In law enforcement, however, what matters most is not what the law allows investigators to do. It is what the investigators’ superiors allow them to do.

That brings us to “Countering Violent Extremism.” In essence, CVE holds that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, or even with Islamist ideology that reviles the United States. President Obama has conclusively proclaimed: “Muslim American communities have categorically condemned terrorism” — end of discussion . . . as if that were an incontestable proposition or one that told the whole story.

Thus, the administration narrative continues, the real threat to our security is not Muslim terrorist plots against us but our provocation of Muslims. By the Obama administration’s lights, our national-defense measures following the 9/11 attacks have conveyed the misimpression that America is at war with Islam.

Remember, we’re in Fantasy Land, so we’re not supposed to pause at this point to ask: What, then, prompted the 9/11 attacks in the first place? What prompted the increasingly audacious series of attacks from the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center to the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole — all during those sensitive, Islamophilic Clinton years when, we’re to believe, jihadists didn’t think America was “at war with Islam”?

Instead of asking such impertinent questions, we are simply to accept the president’s say-so that the key to our security is to “partner” with the leadership in Muslim communities — much of which just happens to be tied to or heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a major 2007–08 prosecution (the Holy Land Foundation case), the Justice Department proved that the Brotherhood financed the Hamas terrorist organization to the tune of millions of dollars. That same Muslim Brotherhood is the main subject of my 2010 book, The Grand Jihad. The title is lifted from an internal Brotherhood memo seized by the FBI and presented at the Holy Land trial — a memo in which Brotherhood honchos stationed in the United States explained that their mission here is a “grand jihad” to “eliminate and destroy Western Civilization from within” — by “sabotage.”

Under CVE, we are to let our Islamist “partners” train the police, and let them be our eyes and ears in Muslim communities. Because we all share the same interests, you see, we should rest assured that these Islamist leaders will alert us if there is any cause for concern.

Makes perfect sense, right?

If it is possible, the practice of CVE is even more of a national-security disaster than the theory. This is probably best documented by my friend Stephen Coughlin in a recent and essential book: Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.

Apart from being an exceptional lawyer, Steve is a trained military intelligence officer who has studied our enemies’ threat doctrine, Islamic supremacism. Again, to be precise, it may be best to call it “sharia supremacism” because it reflects the classic sharia-based Islam that is mainstream in the Middle East. Catastrophic Failure is about how the United States government has systematically stifled the study of this doctrine since before 9/11. CVE is the paragon illustration of how the Obama administration has exacerbated this catastrophic failure — a failure that I have branded “willful blindness” since first encountering it as a prosecutor two decades ago.

As Coughlin demonstrates, CVE is no secret. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties — which is every bit as radical as the infamous Civil Rights Division in the Obama Justice Department — has worked with the National Counterterrorism Center to develop government-agency training programs that “bring together best [CVE] practices.”

One product of this effort is a handy two-page instruction document of CVE “Do’s and Don’ts.” The “Don’ts” tell agents to avoid, among other things, “ventur[ing] too deep into the weeds of religious doctrine and history” or examining the “role of Islam in majority Muslim nations.” The guidance further admonishes:

Don’t use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally protected activity, with criminal activity. One can have radical thoughts/ideas, including disliking the U.S. government, without being violent; for example, trainers who equate the desire for Sharia law with criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.

As we’ve already observed, this interpretation of the First Amendment is patent rubbish. Again, there is no free-speech protection against having one’s words examined for intelligence or investigative purposes. Free-expression principles protect Americans against laws that subject speech to penalty or prosecution — a protection, by the way, that the Obama administration seeks to deny to speech unflattering to Islam, under a UN resolution it jointly sponsored with several Islamic nations.

In sum, Obama’s CVE strategy expressly instructs our investigators to consider only violent or criminal conduct. They are told to ignore radical ideology, particularly if it has the patina of “religious expression.” They are directed to turn a deaf ear to anti-Americanism and the desire to impose sharia, which just happens to be the principal objective of all violent jihadists, and of the Obama administration’s oft-time consultants, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Our agents, furthermore, are cautioned to avoid doing anything that smacks of subjecting particular groups to heightened scrutiny. After all, that might imply that terrorism committed by Muslims has some connection to Islam — specifically, to the undeniable, unambiguous commands to violent jihad found in Muslim scripture.

Obviously, this CVE guidance is exactly what our investigators follow when they consciously avoid scrutinizing jihadist social-media postings by visa applicants from Muslim-majority countries — such as Tashfeen Malik. She was the Pakistani immigrant who joined her jihadist husband, Syed Farook, in carrying out last December’s mass-murder attack in San Bernardino (in which 14 people were killed and dozens wounded).

There is nothing secret about CVE. Willful blindness is right there in black and white.

Categories: Countering violent extremism, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama and law enforcement, Obama and Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia law
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Feds Blame “Lapse in Vetting” for Admitting Syrian Refugees with Terrorist Ties into U.S.

January 26, 2017

Feds Blame “Lapse in Vetting” for Admitting Syrian Refugees with Terrorist Ties into U.S., Judicial Watch, January 26, 2017

Circling back to Syrian refugees, as Obama let thousands settle in the U.S. his own intelligence and immigration officials admitted that individuals with ties to terrorist groups used the program to try to infiltrate the country and that there is no way to properly screen them.

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Dozens of Syrian refugees already living in the Unites States may have ties to terrorism and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is downplaying it, claiming federal agents missed “possible derogatory information” about the immigrants due to “a lapse in vetting.” Among those who slipped through the cracks is a man who failed a polygraph test after applying to work at a U.S. military installation and another who communicated with an Islamic State leader.

Information about this scandalous security lapse comes from federal agents with firsthand knowledge of the situation. They spoke to a mainstream newspaper on condition of anonymity, as many Judicial Watch sources who expose delicate information do, out of fear. This is the type of case the government works hard to keep quiet and consequences could be serious for those who blow the whistle. The news article reveals that federal agents are now “reinvestigating the backgrounds” of the dozens of Syrian refugees because somehow DHS discovered that the lapse in vetting allowed refugees with “potentially negative information in their files to enter the country.” The newspaper attributes the information to “U.S law enforcement officials” who were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Coincidentally, on the day this story broke a national newswire service reported that President Donald Trump drafted an executive order to stop accepting Syrian refugees. The president also plans to suspend issuing visas for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Under President Barrack Obama’s lax immigration policies, large numbers of terrorists from some of these nations entered the U.S., including members of ISIS and other radical Islamic groups. They include individuals who have engaged in or attempted to engage in acts of terrorism, conspired or attempted to conspire to provide material support to a terrorist organization or engaged in criminal conduct inspired by terrorist ideology. Some have been convicted and sentenced in American courts.

Additionally, the Obama administration was very generous in granting citizens of Muslim nations special amnesty protections and residency benefits in the U.S. During a five-year period, Obama’s DHS issued around 680,000 green cards to foreigners from Muslim countries, according to the agency’s figures. Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Libya were among the nations. In 2015 Judicial Watch reported on a special “humanitarian” amnesty program offered to illegal aliens from Yemen, an Islamic Middle Eastern country well known as an Al Qaeda breeding ground. Yemen is the headquarters of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the State Department has revealed that AQAP militants carried out hundreds of attacks including suicide bombers, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations.

Circling back to Syrian refugees, as Obama let thousands settle in the U.S. his own intelligence and immigration officials admitted that individuals with ties to terrorist groups used the program to try to infiltrate the country and that there is no way to properly screen them. In 2015 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) confirmed that individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria tried to gain entry to the U.S. through the refugee program and that the program is “vulnerable to exploitation from extremist groups seeking to send operatives to the West.” Before that the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Matthew Emrich, admitted during a congressional hearing that there’s no way to adequately screen Syrian refugees because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against. Additionally, FBI Assistant Director Michael Steinbach conceded that the U.S. government has no system to properly screen Syrian refugees.

Categories: Dept. of Homeland Security, Islamic refugees, Obama administration, Vetting Immigrants and refugees
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DHS rushing faulty citizenship system that could miss ‘national security threats’: IG

January 24, 2017

DHS rushing faulty citizenship system that could miss ‘national security threats’: IG, Washington Times, Stephen Dinan, January 23, 2017

(President Trump’s new Director of Homeland Security seems likely to fix that problem as well as many others promptly. — DM)

The government’s new system that grants citizenship has “alarming” security breaches, including allowing immigrants to be approved without a full FBI background check, the Homeland Security inspector general said Monday in an “urgent” warning telling the government to put everything on hold.

Inspector General John Roth said he got wind  that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was about to take the troubled system online later this month, and said he was compelled to issue the extraordinary alert to try to prevent a massive mistake.

He said that as of Jan. 11, about 175 citizenship applications were approved despite never having completed the background checks.

“Without sufficient vetting, immigrants could potentially be granted U.S. citizenship although they are ineligible or pose national security threats,” Mr. Roth said in his alert.

He first made his appeal to USCIS on Jan. 19, the day before the change in administrations. He released his public “urgent” appeal at noon Monday.

Mr. Roth said after the agency was alerted to the 175 applications it had wrongly approved, it started to redo them.

Dubbed ELIS, or the Electronic Immigration System, the new process was deployed last April, and quickly ran into problems.

The inspector general said it failed to make “core” checks it was required to make, kept canceling applicants’ appointments and ruined the workflow, forcing officers to end up processing applications manually anyway.

The entire system was halted last year as the problems became clear.

Mr. Roth said USCIS was prematurely rushing to get it back up and running this month.

He’d planned to issue a full report later in the year, but said USCIS’s moved forced him to issue his immediate warning.

“Although we are only in the beginning phases of our review, we have already identified significant operational and security issues that pose grave concern,” Mr. Roth said.

USCIS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the new warning.

But an internal email obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte last year showed how deep the concerns ran.

“At this point we are not confident that proper FBI Name Checks have been run on certain ELIS cases. At this point we are uncertain of the scope of the problem,” Daniel M. Renaud, USCIS associate director, said in an email.

Mr. Goodlatte demanded answers on when USCIS learned of the problem and how many cases it affected.

He said the agency should move to strip citizenship from anyone who was wrongly approved.

Categories: Citizenship, Department of Homeland Security, Vetting immigrants
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Border Patrol Alters Stats to Hide Release of Criminal Aliens, High Recidivism

January 21, 2017

Border Patrol Alters Stats to Hide Release of Criminal Aliens, High Recidivism, Judicial Watch, January 19, 2017

Perhaps President Trump’s new head of Homeland Security will chat politely with a few employees. — DM)

The U.S. Border Patrol alters statistics involving the apprehension of criminal illegal immigrants to conceal that thousands are being released, a new federal audit reveals. The frontline Homeland Security agency charged with preventing terrorists and weapons—including those of mass destruction—from entering the country also skews figures to drastically deflate the high recidivism rate of aliens caught entering the U.S.

The distressing details of this crucial agency’s crafty record-keeping practices are outlined in a scathing report issued this month by the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The probe focuses on a Border Patrol system developed to address a smuggling crisis along the southwest border. It’s officially known as Consequence Delivery System (CDS) and is used to identify the most effective and efficient consequences to deter illegal cross border activity in each of the agency’s sectors. For the system to work, the Border Patrol must report accurate information involving illegal aliens who are apprehended.

Instead, it appears that federal agents on the ground are being ordered to fudge the numbers as part of a broader Obama administration effort to protect illegal immigrants and falsely portray the Mexican border as safe. The GAO report suggests that Border Patrol headquarters directed agents to misclassify criminal illegal aliens, presumably to hide the fact that they were being released instead of prosecuted. Officials interviewed as part of the probe “said that agents received oral direction from headquarters to reclassify criminal aliens who cannot be given a consequence of federal prosecution, and that written data integrity guidance to sectors did not include activities for checking the accuracy of alien classifications,” the GAO report states.

The misclassification of apprehended illegal immigrants resulted in nearly 4,000 criminal aliens being returned to their home country rather than prosecuted between 2013 and 2015, the GAO found. After analyzing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data, congressional investigators determined that an astounding 94% (109,080) of the 116,409 aliens given a consequence of warrant or notice to appear still had an open case and “may remain in the United States.” Thousands more escaped criminal prosecution because they were not properly classified. “Specifically, of the approximate 15,000 apprehensions of criminal aliens who were not classified according to CDS guidance between fiscal years 2013 and 2015, 8 percent were recommended for criminal prosecution (3,912 apprehensions) compared to 47 percent of all criminal aliens during that timeframe,” the GAO writes.

In some cases, Department of Justice (DOJ) restrictions limit the number of illegal aliens that can be referred for prosecution, the report says. This leaves agents in a bind and hesitant to apply consequences that require referral to federal partners. Here’s an example: “Rio Grande Valley sector officials said that while agents apprehended over 129,000 aliens in fiscal year 2015, the sector can only refer about 40 immigration-related cases each day to the corresponding USAO District (Southern District of Texas) for prosecution. Once this daily limit is reached, agents must apply an alternative consequence that is not the Most Effective and Efficient as defined by the CDS guide.”

Recidivism numbers are kept down by using an unscrupulous system that only classifies an apprehended illegal alien as recidivist if he or she had been previously caught within a fiscal year. The system doesn’t account for immigrants with no record of removal after apprehension and who may have remained in the United States without the opportunity to recidivate. The Border Patrol guidance also states that a first-time apprehension classification may be used on an alien that has been apprehended by another agency. Congressional investigators determined that the Border Patrol system slashed recidivism numbers in half. In one outrageous case cited in the report an “alien apprehended 54 times in the Rio Grande Valley sector between October 2012 and May 2015 was classified as a First Time Apprehension 6 times.”

Categories: Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. southern border
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President Trump’s Immigration Challenge

January 4, 2017

President Trump’s Immigration Challenge, Front Page Magazine, Michael Cutler, January 4, 2017

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On January 20, 2017 President Trump can and likely will end all of Obama’s illegal immigration executive orders, but he needs to do more.

For decades the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws was hobbled by lack of resources in general and a particularly devastating failure to enforce the immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.

For decades the Border Patrol was perceived as the primary enforcement arm of America’s immigration laws and for the Border Patrol this worked out fine.  They got the lion’s share of publicity and, far more importantly, the funding while INS special agents and the interior enforcement mission were all but ignored

When the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) was created in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, the former INS was dismantled and broken into several components of the DHS and mixed in with other agencies, principally the U.S. Customs Service.

Bad as it was for INS agents to operate in the shadow of the Border Patrol, the creation of the DHS was disastrous and caused many of the INS agents nostalgic for “the good old days.”

On May 5, 2005 the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims conducted a hearing on the topic, “New ‘Dual Mission’ Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.”

I was one of four witnesses who testified at that hearing.  In point of fact, I testified at several hearings that sought to understand the challenges that the creation of the DHS created for the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws.

In my testimony I clearly articulated my concerns about the myriad issues created when the DHS was established and the former INS was dismantled.

Consider this excerpt from the testimony of then-Subcommittee Chairman John Hostettler in which he articulated the importance of immigration law enforcement and that was, however, hobbled by the creation of the DHS:

The first two Subcommittee hearings of the year examined in detail how the immigration enforcement agencies have inadequate resources and too few personnel to carry out their mission. The witnesses mentioned the lack of uniforms, badges, detention space, and the inevitable low morale of frontline agents who are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of incoming illegal aliens. If this were not enough, these ”immigration enforcement” agencies also face internal confusion resulting from dual or multiple missions in which immigration has all too often taken a back seat. Sadly, contrary to Congress’ expectations, immigration enforcement has not been the primary focus of either of these agencies, and that is the subject of today’s hearing.

The Homeland Security Act, enacted in November 2002, split the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, into separate immigration service and enforcement agencies, both within the Department of Homeland Security. This split had been pursued by Chairman Sensenbrenner based on testimony and evidence that the dual missions of INS had resulted in poor performance.

There was a constant tug-of-war between providing good service to law-abiding aliens and enforcing the law against law-breakers. The plain language of the Homeland Security Act, Title D, creates a ”Bureau of Border Security,” and specifically transfers all immigration enforcement functions of INS into it. Yet when it came down to actually creating the two: new agencies, the Administration veered off course. Although the service functions of INS were transferred to USCIS, the enforcement side of INS was split in two, what is now Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to handle interior enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to guard our borders.

ICE was given all Customs agents, investigators, intelligence and analysis-from the Treasury Department, as well as the Federal Protective Service to guard Federal buildings, and the Federal Air Marshals to protect our airplanes, and finally the INS investigators.

CBP was given all Treasury Customs inspectors at the ports-of-entry, Agriculture Inspector from the Department Of Agriculture, and INS inspectors.

At no time during the reorganization planning was it anticipated by the Committee that an immigration enforcement agency would share its role with other enforcement functions, such as enforcement of our customs laws. This simply results in the creation of dual or multiple missions that the act sought to avoid in the first place.

Failure to adhere to the statutory framework established by HSA has produced immigration enforcement incoherence that undermines the immigration enforcement mission central to DHS, and undermines the security of our Nation’s borders and citizens.

It is not certain on what basis it was determined that customs and agriculture enforcement should become part of the immigration enforcement agency, except to require Federal agents at the border to have more expertise and more functions.

It is also unknown on what basis the Federal Air Marshals should become part of this agency, especially since it has been revealed that the policy is not to apprehend out-of-immigration status aliens when discovered on flights. If the mission of the Department of Homeland Security is to protect the homeland, it cannot effect its mission by compromising or neglecting immigration enforcement for customs enforcement.

The 9/11 terrorists all came to the United States without weapons or contraband—Added customs enforcement would not have stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda’s plan was additional immigration focus, vetting and enforcement. And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is a very important national security issue that cannot take a back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation’s security.

It was clear that the Bush administration was eager to de-emphasize immigration law enforcement.  What was not noted in the testimony is that most of the management at ICE came from Legacy Customs and not from Legacy INS.

Categories: Department of Homeland Security, Illegal immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Immigration laws, Immigration reform, President Trump, Trump agenda, Trump and deportation of illegal alien criminals, Trump and immigration, Trump and U.S. Southern Border, Trump appointments, Trump transition
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DHS, FBI release joint report on Russian cyber activity

December 29, 2016

,DHS, FBI release joint report on Russian cyber activity, Washington Examiner, Gabby Morrongiello, December 29, 2016

(A thirteen page PDF “Joint Analysis” is available at the link. — DM)

A joint report released Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and FBI has shed light on how federal investigators concluded that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic political institutions in the presidential election.

Without mentioning either by name, the 13-page document illustrates how Russian civilian and military actors compromised the Democratic National Committee’s internal communications network and hacked thousands of emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton‘s campaign chairman, John Podesta, as well as other “U.S. government, political and private sector entitites.”

“These cyber operations have included spearphishing campaigns, targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure entities, think tanks, universities, political organizations, and corporations leading to the theft of information,” states the report.

The report was released just hours before the White House imposed a series of new sanctions on Russian officials and institutions as part of its pledge to retaliate against Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election. It is separate from the “full review” of Russia’s hack-and-release operations President Obama requested earlier this month.

According to the report, the Democratic party appears to have been the victim of a spearphishing campaign in which hundreds of employees were tricked “into changing their passwords through a fake webmail domain” hosted by Russian hackers.

Though U.S. intelligence officials insists the hacks were perpetrated by the Russian government, President-elect Trump has refused to accept such findings as fact.

“I think we ought to get on with our lives,” Trump told reporters late Wednesday when asked about the Obama administration’s plan to level sanctions against Russia for the election-year hacks.

 

Categories: 2016 elections, Democrat Party, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Russian hacking
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IPT EXCLUSIVE: DHS Hires CAIR to Train French Officials

December 15, 2016

IPT EXCLUSIVE: DHS Hires CAIR to Train French Officials, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Steven Emerson, December 14, 2016

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The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) facilitated a training session last week for a French police delegation, in conjunction with the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)’s Community Engagement Office in Tampa, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has confirmed with DHS officials and other agencies.

This session stands in contrast with the FBI’s 2009 policy not to engage with CAIR outside of criminal investigations due to questions about the Hamas ties of its top executives. An FBI official wrote that “until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.” That FBI policy toward CAIR remains in effect, and was publicly reaffirmed in 2013.

CAIR-Florida issued a press release Dec. 8 giving details of the event, and posted numerous photos of the French delegation on its Facebook page. The training session was devoted to showing the French officials “how to effectively challenge violent extremist individuals of all backgrounds and prevent hate crimes, while protecting civil rights and challenging profiling and discrimination,” the release said.

Several French counter-terror officials received this training, including a representative of France’s Ministry of the Interior and many police chiefs.

They presented Nezar Hamze, CAIR-Florida’s regional operations director, with a medallion bearing the French national colors and inscribed: “Public Safety Departmental Directorate at Bouches-du-Rhone / Discipline – Valor – Devotion.”

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“We appreciated the opportunity to communicate how restricting liberty encourages hate crimes and violence and that preserving liberty and civil rights is key to preserving peace and security,” CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly said in the release.

This indicates that the thrust of this training was devoted to discouraging counter-terror activities within Muslim communities, which CAIR often has falsely represented as infringing upon the civil liberties of Muslims. CAIR officials repeatedly urge Muslim Americans not to cooperate with the FBI.

DHS and the State Department participated in this CAIR training of French officials despite the well-documented record of CAIR’s ties to terrorists. Internal Muslim Brotherhood records obtained by the FBI place CAIR and its founders at the core of a Brotherhood-created Hamas support network in the United States known as the Palestine Committee.

CAIR’s Powerful Ties

CAIR officials enjoyed close relations with the Obama administration despite the FBI’s evidence linking it to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Hamas. DHS/State Department coordination with CAIR is nothing new. The State Department sent CAIR officials abroad to conduct foreign outreach.

The State Department hosted CAIR officials in October 2015 to discuss Syria and “the need … to challenge [alleged] aggressive Israeli actions targeting the Al Aqsa mosque compound, one of the holiest sites in Islam.”

Top CAIR officials repeatedly received White House invitations and participated in White House conference calls. DHS collaborates with CAIR on numerous non-public projects, and funnels anti-terrorism funds allocated by Congress.

CAIR received a sub-grant of $70, 324 from DHS in 2015, records show.

Hassan Shibly: Terrorist Apologist

Considering Shibly’s statements that Islamist ideology has nothing to do with terrorism and the rash of jihadist attacks that have rocked France since January 2015, his involvement in the training should be cause for alarm.

In an April 21, 2013 interview with OnIslam, Shibly said that, “American political scientists have made it very clear that those who commit acts of terrorism have nothing to do with religion and are often motivated by political, not religious, reasons. Actually, such attacks can never be justified and truly are nothing more than the result of having a twisted and sick mind.”

In a June 2014 blog post, Shibly argued that the purported “FBI entrapment program targeting the Muslim community” was an example of tyranny that strayed away from the “great ideals of liberty, equality and justice.”

In his view, the FBI manufactures terrorists through sting operations such as that against Sami Osmakac, convicted in 2014 on charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possession of a fully automatic firearm.

“I’m concerned that the government’s own tactics turned him into a greater threat than he could have been on his own,” Shibly told the Tampa Tribune in a June 3, 2014 article. “There’s no need to enable a Hollywood-style plot … Would Osmakac have had the ideas and the means to do this crime but for the government informant?”

Shibly also is helping a family sue the FBI, alleging an agent unjustly shot and killed a friend of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev after hours of questioning in his Orlando home in 2013.

Independent investigations, requested by CAIR, completed by the Justice Department and a Florida state attorney found that Ibragim Todashev, a “skilled mixed-martial arts fighter,” attacked the agent shortly after acknowledging involvement in a separate triple-murder case in Massachusetts. Todashev continued charging after being shot, prompting the agent to fire more.

Shibly rejected the findings, saying only Todashev could “contradict the government’s narrative,” but he was dead.

Kareem Shora: CAIR’s Ally at DHS

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According to a source, Kareem Shora played a key role in organizing the French delegation’s CAIR training. Shora serves with the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) and a Community Liaison Council with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

He has a long record of denying the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. Last July, for example, Shora claimed that it was an “unfortunate reality” that Muslims were portrayed as “more vulnerable” to “potential recruitment to terrorist activities…including those represented by Daesh.” Instead of devising ways to counter this “unfortunate reality,” Shora said that the DHS was trying to “promote the notion” that Muslims were no more likely than anyone else to be recruited into terror organizations:

“It’s not because they’re Muslims. They represent nothing of Islam. Daesh represents nothing of Islam or a state for that matter, quote unquote. So I think our position, as U.S. government, is to advocate that point every opportunity we get. And from a Homeland Security perspective, in order to build a society that’s resilient to all threats, regardless of the nature of that threat, our job is to make sure that these communities don’t end up being categorized as being vulnerable, because they are in fact the ones most suffering as a result of those attacks.”

Shora helped leading Islamist figures attend DHS meetings, including Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and, Ingrid Mattson of the Islamic Society of North America, records obtained by the IPT through the Freedom of Information Act show.

DHS could have turned to any number of organizations and people to work with the French delegation. Choosing an Islamist group whose ties to a terrorist group rendered it persona non grata with the FBI is either a sign of dangerous incompetence or institutional arrogance.

Categories: CAIR, Countering violent extremism, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, France, Islam and terrorism, Islamic indoctrination, Islamisation, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Islamophobia
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Trump’s Pick for DHS Secretary Warned About Iranian Infiltration of South America

December 7, 2016

Trump’s Pick for DHS Secretary Warned About Iranian Infiltration of South America, Washington Free Beacon, , December 7, 2016

gestures with retired US Marine Corp General John Kelly Donald Trump prospective cabinet members at Trump International Golf Club, New Jersey, USA - 20 Nov 2016 (Rex Features via AP Images)

Trump gestures with retired US Marine Corp General John Kelly Donald Trump prospective cabinet members at Trump International Golf Club, New Jersey, USA – 20 Nov 2016 (Rex Features via AP Images)

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security has been warning for some time about Iranian influence along America’s southern border and in South America in another sign that the incoming administration is seeking to tackle the Islamic Republic’s terrorist footprint from its first days in office.

Retired Gen. John Kelly, a former commander of U.S. Southern Command, has been sounding the alarm about Iran’s efforts to counter U.S. influence in Central and South America, according to past testimony.

Kelly is expected to focus on this issue when he takes over DHS, which has been plagued by criticism about its failed attempts to seal the southern border under the Obama administration.

The selection follows a line of high-profile picks by Trump who are known for their outspoken criticism of Iran and the Obama administration’s diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.

Kelly, during his time as Southcom’s commander, informed Congress last year that Iran is bolstering its ties with Latin American countries in order to use the region as a base for operations.

“Over the last 15 years Iran has periodically sought closer ties with regional governments, albeit with mixed results,” Kelly said in testimony to Congress in March 2015. “Iranian legislators visited Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua to advocate for increased economic and diplomatic cooperation. Iran’s outreach is predicated on circumventing sanctions and countering U.S. influence.”

Iran is building “cultural centers” in these countries to build support for its radical ideology among local Muslim populations, according to Kelly.

“Iran has established more than 80 ‘cultural centers’ in a region with an extremely small Muslim population,” he said. “The purported purpose of these centers is to improve Iran’s image, promote Shi’a Islam, and increase Iran’s political influence in the region. As the foremost state sponsor of terrorism, Iran’s involvement in the region and these cultural centers is a matter for concern, and its diplomatic, economic, and political engagement is closely monitored.”

Kelly has also warned that Hezbollah, a terror organization primarily funded by Iran, has been building support in Latin America. Kelly said terrorist organizations could exploit the porous southern border to infiltrate the United States.

“Members, supporters, and adherents of Islamic extremist groups are present in Latin America,” including Hezbollah, Kelly said in 2014.

Kelly described Iran’s presence in the region as “a matter for concern.”

Trump’s selection of Kelly is winning early support from congressional Republicans who have worked with the former commander.

“In my capacity as chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, I have worked firsthand with Gen. Kelly on numerous Western Hemisphere security issues during his tenure as the head of the Southern Command,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.), said in a statement. “He fully understands the threats from ISIS, Iran’s activities in South and Central America, as well as the risks America faces due to our porous southern border.”

“General Kelly has a wealth of experience and knowledge of the threats facing our country in the 21st Century, and I am confident he will help the president-elect form a robust strategy to protect America from radical Islamic extremism here at home, protecting American sovereignty and dealing with the numerous security issues here in the homeland,” Duncan said.

One source in direct contact with the Trump transition team told the Washington Free Beacon that Kelly brings direct experience with Iran’s infiltration of South America.

“General Kelly is an outstanding national security pick. It’s another sign the Trump administration knows exactly how Iran has been destabilizing countries and sowing terror across the globe,” the source said. “The Obama administration too often turned a blind eye to Iranian activities on U.S. soil, and even downplayed an Iranian terror plot to launch an attack in Washington, D.C. Clearly the Trump administration is signaling that it will do exactly the opposite, and will target Iranian aggression across all areas of national security.”

Categories: Dept. of Homeland Security, Hezbollah in Latin America, Iran - Latin America, Iran and U.S. southern border, John Kelly, President Elect Trump, Secretary of DHS, Trump and Iran, Trump and U.S. Southern Border, Trump appointments
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Trump chooses Kelly to lead homeland security

December 7, 2016

Trump chooses Kelly to lead homeland security, Washington Examiner, Keith Koffler, December 7, 2016

trumpkellyPresident-elect Donald Trump talks to media as he stands with retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, right, at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J.. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped retired Marine Gen. John Kelly to be secretary of homeland security, putting yet another general into a key national security post, according to reports.

Trump has already made Marine Gen. James Mattis his defense secretary and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn his national security adviser, and he is considering retired Army Gen. David Petraeus for secretary of state.

Kelly, 66, is not expected to face difficulty being confirmed, according to the Post. He is viewed as a border security hawk who will please Trump backers looking for the president-elect to follow through on vows to limit immigration.

Categories: Department of Homeland Security, Illegal immigration, John Kelly, President Elect Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security, Trump appointments
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