So Far, Top Leaders Intend New Health Plan to Cover Illegal Aliens
By Roy Beck, Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 12:36 AM
Oh, sure, they say it isn't true. But every indication says it is.
Consider this report on CBS News' website:
Asked by CBS News' Katie Couric in an exclusive interview whether illegal immigrants should be covered under a new health care plan, President Obama responded simply, "no."
Fantastic, I thought, the President recognizes that his health plan already is so costly (according to CBO estimates) that he is losing Members of his own Party and he realizes that there is no way that he can add on the cost of providing full health care to 11-19 million illegal aliens.
But immediately, the President thought of an exception:
The one exception that I think has to be discussed is how are we treating children,
Uh, oh. That would be a few million exceptions, although he tried to make it sound like it would be limited to vaccinations and communicable disease control.
But he had much worse to tell Couric:
First of all, I'd like to create a situation where we're dealing with illegal immigration, so that we don't have illegal immigrants. And we've got legal residents or citizens who are eligible for the plan. And I want a comprehensive immigration plan that creates a pathway to achieve that.
Hmmmm, so the reason the President can say that NO he wouldn't cover illegal aliens with his health plan is because he plans to change their name from "illegal aliens" to "U.S. citizens" and cover them!
I know that Orwellian doublespeak is so common we almost don't pay attention anymore, but please allow me to state plainly what the President said so obliquely:
The Obama Administration's hope is that nearly all current illegal aliens will be covered by the emerging new national health plan because they will be re-labeled as legal residents as soon as the amnesty is passed.
In case it isn't clear, let me also state that the health costs of the 11-19 million illegal aliens to the U.S. taxpayer will be just as high whether they are called illegal aliens or legal residents. I hope the CBO cost counters are paying attention.
NO MEANS YES ON BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS
The leaders of the U.S. House are playing the same game.
They allow language to be put into the health bill (as in many other benefits legislation) that says illegal aliens are not eligible.
But when an amendment is offered to require verification of legal residence before receiving the benefit, Speaker Pelosi's team demands Party-line votes to kill it.
Friends, don't let a single politician fool you by talking about supporting language that bars illegal aliens from something. Those words mean nothing unless there is a verification system. And thus far, illegal aliens will not have to prove they are legal residents to get the new federal health coverage.
FOREIGN BORN RESPONSIBLE FOR MOST GROWTH IN UNINSURED
NumbersUSA takes no position on the various proposals for changes in our national health system.
But I think it is important to note that we probably would not be having this particular debate if not for immigration.
That is because immigration (legal and illegal) has been the primary cause of the growth in the uninsured, which is one of the primary factors that moved health care to center stage.
Consider this from a study by the Center for Immigration Studies:
According to the Census Bureau, since 1989 the population without health insurance has grown by 14.62 million and stood at 47 million in 2006.
In the March 2007 CPS there were 9.21 million immigrants who arrived in 1990 or later who did not have health insurance. This is equal to 62.9 percent of the growth in the uninsured population.
Moreover, there were 1.12 million children born to post-1990 immigrants who also lacked insurance, meaning that new immigrants and their U.S.-born children accounted for 71 percent of the growth in the uninsured population.
Without legal and illegal immigration since 1989, the uninsured population would have grown only one-quarter as much as actually happened. The "uninsured crisis" is almost entirely a crisis created by our immigration system.
CURRENT IMMIGRATION POLICIES WILL ADD MORE AND MORE NET DRAINS ON THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM
Be clear that this is much more than just an illegal immigration problem.
Our immigration system is set up to bring in 1 million new legal immigrants each year who are disproportionately low-skilled, low educated and poor. The minute they arrive under a national health system, they will require additional health subsidies from the existing taxpayers.
If the government were really serious about reducing national medical costs, it would immediately pass the SAVE Act to slash illegal immigration and it would reduce legal immigration by 80%.
But who's serious?
The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Va., certainly is serious. Get a load of these excerpts from its editorial:
Let’s set aside the arguments pro and con for nationalized health care, and zero in on those uncovered millions whom some proponents want other American taxpayers to support with their dollars.
First, the stats: There are an estimated 46 million folks out there not paying for health insurance. Of that number some 7-10 million people, or 15-20 percent, are illegal aliens. . . .
. . . . . All of this is to point to a major flaw in health-care legislation before Congress. As of earlier last week, none of the major legislative proposals had strict requirements that any agencies check the immigration status of anyone seeking to receive health-care services.
Most Americans may have already figured out that it’ll be their tax dollars and health-care premiums that will go toward the cost of underwriting health-care costs for millions of illegal immigrants.
If health-care legislation passes without a tough mandate for screening illegal immigrants, then the first prescribed procedure should be brain scans for the congressmen who voted for it.
We have NumbersUSA members who are rooting for the health care action to come through reasonably like the proposals and we have members who absolutely hate all of the proposals. But I think close to 100% of our members would agree that the proposals should go no further until there are guarantees that national health care will not be provided to today's illegal aliens and will not be used as a carrot to entice millions more.
ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA
Thursday, July 30, 2009
HOUSE COMMITTEE REJECTS LIMITS ON HEALTH CARE WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS - who pays?
House Committee Rejects Closing Health Coverage Loophole = Illegals (Trillions in debt AND STILL SPENDING!)
________________________________________
Date: 2009-07-30, 10:23AM PDT
Reply to: comm-nvcdm-1297069562@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
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House Committee Rejects Closing Health Coverage Loophole for Illegal Aliens
During consideration of the health care reform bill (H.R. 3200), the House Ways & Means Committee rejected an amendment that would have helped ensure illegal aliens would not receive taxpayer-funded health care benefits.
The amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), would have required the government to verify that enrollees in the "public plan" and applicants for "affordability credits" are not illegal aliens. Eligibility verification would have been determined by using existing databases — the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. (Congressional Quarterly, July 16, 2009; See also FAIR's Press Release, July 22, 2009). The Heller amendment would have addressed many of the same concerns that FAIR raised last week about whether illegal aliens would be able to receive taxpayer-funded health care benefits. (See FAIR's Legislative Update, July 20, 2009). Speaking in support of his amendment, Congressman Heller stated: "Requiring citizenship verification for enrollment would ensure only citizens and legal residents receive taxpayer funded healthcare." (Representative Heller's Press Release, July 16, 2009).
Opponents suggested that Heller's amendment was unnecessary because Section 246 of the bill states: "Nothing … shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States." (Legislative Text, Section 246). Critics of this language correctly point out that: (1) Section 246 only applies to affordability credits, which are the subsidies to help people pay for enrolling in a private health insurance plan, but will not prevent illegal aliens from enrolling in the government-run, taxpayer financed public option health plan; and (2) with respect to enrollment in private health insurance plans, Section 246 does not contain any meaningful verification procedures to ensure that illegal aliens do not receive subsidies paid for by American taxpayers. Accordingly, although the bill contains a provision limiting eligibility for the affordability credit to those legally present, it is limited in scope and virtually meaningless in effect. Unfortunately, despite the merits of the Heller Amendment, the House Ways and Means Committee rejected it on a party-line vote, with 15 Republicans supporting and 26 Democrats opposing the amendment. (For a list of the members opposing the Heller Amendment, see FAIR's Action Alert).
This may be exactly what the illegal alien lobby is looking for. In late June, the National Council of La Raza issued a statement demanding that Congress give illegal aliens taxpayer-funded health care under this bill. (See FAIR's Legislative Update, June 22, 2009). This week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) also urged Speaker Pelosi to ensure that illegal aliens are covered by the health care reform bill. (Roll Call, July 24, 2009). According to a CHC member, the organization's leaders are not asking Speaker Pelosi to "specifically spell something out" in the bill, but instead to seek to ensure that the bill does not actually prohibit illegal aliens from receiving benefits. "We're pushing to include everyone in the health care bill. Everyone," the CHC member who asked not to be identified said. "Sometimes if you don't say something, something happens." (Id.).
The health care legislation is now expected to move to the House Energy and Commerce Committee before it moves to the full House of Representatives.
________________________________________
Date: 2009-07-30, 10:23AM PDT
Reply to: comm-nvcdm-1297069562@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
________________________________________
House Committee Rejects Closing Health Coverage Loophole for Illegal Aliens
During consideration of the health care reform bill (H.R. 3200), the House Ways & Means Committee rejected an amendment that would have helped ensure illegal aliens would not receive taxpayer-funded health care benefits.
The amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV), would have required the government to verify that enrollees in the "public plan" and applicants for "affordability credits" are not illegal aliens. Eligibility verification would have been determined by using existing databases — the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system. (Congressional Quarterly, July 16, 2009; See also FAIR's Press Release, July 22, 2009). The Heller amendment would have addressed many of the same concerns that FAIR raised last week about whether illegal aliens would be able to receive taxpayer-funded health care benefits. (See FAIR's Legislative Update, July 20, 2009). Speaking in support of his amendment, Congressman Heller stated: "Requiring citizenship verification for enrollment would ensure only citizens and legal residents receive taxpayer funded healthcare." (Representative Heller's Press Release, July 16, 2009).
Opponents suggested that Heller's amendment was unnecessary because Section 246 of the bill states: "Nothing … shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States." (Legislative Text, Section 246). Critics of this language correctly point out that: (1) Section 246 only applies to affordability credits, which are the subsidies to help people pay for enrolling in a private health insurance plan, but will not prevent illegal aliens from enrolling in the government-run, taxpayer financed public option health plan; and (2) with respect to enrollment in private health insurance plans, Section 246 does not contain any meaningful verification procedures to ensure that illegal aliens do not receive subsidies paid for by American taxpayers. Accordingly, although the bill contains a provision limiting eligibility for the affordability credit to those legally present, it is limited in scope and virtually meaningless in effect. Unfortunately, despite the merits of the Heller Amendment, the House Ways and Means Committee rejected it on a party-line vote, with 15 Republicans supporting and 26 Democrats opposing the amendment. (For a list of the members opposing the Heller Amendment, see FAIR's Action Alert).
This may be exactly what the illegal alien lobby is looking for. In late June, the National Council of La Raza issued a statement demanding that Congress give illegal aliens taxpayer-funded health care under this bill. (See FAIR's Legislative Update, June 22, 2009). This week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) also urged Speaker Pelosi to ensure that illegal aliens are covered by the health care reform bill. (Roll Call, July 24, 2009). According to a CHC member, the organization's leaders are not asking Speaker Pelosi to "specifically spell something out" in the bill, but instead to seek to ensure that the bill does not actually prohibit illegal aliens from receiving benefits. "We're pushing to include everyone in the health care bill. Everyone," the CHC member who asked not to be identified said. "Sometimes if you don't say something, something happens." (Id.).
The health care legislation is now expected to move to the House Energy and Commerce Committee before it moves to the full House of Representatives.
LA RAZA OWNED DEMS FIGHT E-VERIFY as they fight to give away our jobs!
Amnesty Supporters Criticize E-Verify in Senate and House Subcommittee Hearings
Last week, E-Verify — the electronic employee verification system that allows employers to verify the work eligibility of their employees - was the topic at both Senate and House subcommittee hearings. (See FAIR's E-Verify Backgrounder). The Senate Judiciary Committee's Immigration Subcommittee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee heard from witnesses about the program.
Despite the great strides that E-Verify has made since its inception in 1996 and its great popularity, some in Congress still question its effectiveness. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, presented harsh criticism of E-Verify, calling the program "half-hearted and flawed." Sen. Schumer and other members of the subcommittee expressed concern about what they say is an inability of the system to detect document fraud and identity theft. Senator Schumer did not mention the vast amount of fraud the program can detect when illegal aliens attempt to gain employment by providing invalid Social Security numbers. In fact, although the program reduces an employer's dependence on screening an identification document, Sen. Schumer incorrectly stated that the current system "require[s] employers to make subjective determinations about an employee's identity or legal status."
In order for Congress to move forward with a large-scale amnesty bill, Schumer proposed that his subcommittee look into incorporating "non-forgeable" biometric data into E-Verify. The Subcommittee's Ranking Member, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), largely agreed with Sen. Schumer, while Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) expressed apprehension with the proposed biometric system. Sen. Sessions expressed satisfaction with E-Verify and the improvements that the system has made, stating that he is "baffled by people who don't use it." (Senate Immigration Subcommittee Hearing, July 21, 2009).
Long-time amnesty advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) testified at the Senate hearing that mandatory employee verification alone will not fix our broken immigration system because "undocumented workers are already an integral part of our country, economy, communities and families." Rep. Gutierrez spoke in support of the biometric-based employment verification system proposed by fellow amnesty proponent, Sen. Schumer. (Testimony of Luis Gutierrez, July 21, 2009).
Among the second panel of witnesses, Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Deputy Director Michael Aytes noted the steps his agency is taking to strengthen the program, including:
Increased oversight (including monitoring and compliance);
The recent addition of passport information to the system; and
Looking at working with states to incorporate the use of driver's licenses into an E-Verify accessible database. (Testimony of Michael Aytes, July 21, 2009).
Former Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) Commissioner James Ziglar recommended incorporating biometric components into E-Verify, but warned against "scrapping the present system and all of the hard work that has been done to date" (Testimony of James Ziglar, July 21, 2009). Ziglar admitted that it would be costly and time consuming to incorporate biometrics into E-Verify, but former USCIS Chief Counsel Lynden Melmed argued that "the cost of not doing it is too significant… it is a question of how to pay for it." (Senate Immigration Subcommittee Hearing, July 21, 2009).
On the House side, Members of the Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee expressed a different set of concerns. With the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) recent announcement that it intends to finally implement a Bush-era regulation to require most federal contractors to use E-Verify (DHS Press Release, July 8, 2009), some subcommittee members expressed concern that USCIS would not be able to handle the surge of new activity. However, the Deputy Associate Director of the National Security and Records Verification Directorate within USCIS, Gerri Ratliff, assured the subcommittee that the system can handle the additional workload.
At the House hearing, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) suggested that the government should charge employers for using E-Verify. (House Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee Hearing, July 23, 2009). Such an idea is unwise and overlooks several key points. First, the federal government is responsible for securing our borders and enforcing immigration laws. E-Verify relies on employers' voluntary use of the program to further a federal government responsibility. It is important that the federal government take responsibility for the cost of enforcement rather than pass that cost on to patriotic employers who are currently using the system. Second, America is suffering from a jobs deficit. E-Verify makes sure available jobs are going to legal American workers and not illegal aliens. By posing a burden on employers, Congress runs the risk that employers would stop using E-Verify. This would enable illegal aliens to obtain available jobs instead of ensuring those jobs go to legal American workers. Third, E-Verify only costs the government about $140 million a year. For the money, E-Verify is one of the most cost-effective programs administered by the federal government. By trying to pass that cost on to employers, Congress could actually end up discouraging the program's use, which would undermine E-Verify's effectiveness.
Last week, E-Verify — the electronic employee verification system that allows employers to verify the work eligibility of their employees - was the topic at both Senate and House subcommittee hearings. (See FAIR's E-Verify Backgrounder). The Senate Judiciary Committee's Immigration Subcommittee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee heard from witnesses about the program.
Despite the great strides that E-Verify has made since its inception in 1996 and its great popularity, some in Congress still question its effectiveness. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Chairman of the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, presented harsh criticism of E-Verify, calling the program "half-hearted and flawed." Sen. Schumer and other members of the subcommittee expressed concern about what they say is an inability of the system to detect document fraud and identity theft. Senator Schumer did not mention the vast amount of fraud the program can detect when illegal aliens attempt to gain employment by providing invalid Social Security numbers. In fact, although the program reduces an employer's dependence on screening an identification document, Sen. Schumer incorrectly stated that the current system "require[s] employers to make subjective determinations about an employee's identity or legal status."
In order for Congress to move forward with a large-scale amnesty bill, Schumer proposed that his subcommittee look into incorporating "non-forgeable" biometric data into E-Verify. The Subcommittee's Ranking Member, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), largely agreed with Sen. Schumer, while Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) expressed apprehension with the proposed biometric system. Sen. Sessions expressed satisfaction with E-Verify and the improvements that the system has made, stating that he is "baffled by people who don't use it." (Senate Immigration Subcommittee Hearing, July 21, 2009).
Long-time amnesty advocate Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) testified at the Senate hearing that mandatory employee verification alone will not fix our broken immigration system because "undocumented workers are already an integral part of our country, economy, communities and families." Rep. Gutierrez spoke in support of the biometric-based employment verification system proposed by fellow amnesty proponent, Sen. Schumer. (Testimony of Luis Gutierrez, July 21, 2009).
Among the second panel of witnesses, Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Deputy Director Michael Aytes noted the steps his agency is taking to strengthen the program, including:
Increased oversight (including monitoring and compliance);
The recent addition of passport information to the system; and
Looking at working with states to incorporate the use of driver's licenses into an E-Verify accessible database. (Testimony of Michael Aytes, July 21, 2009).
Former Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) Commissioner James Ziglar recommended incorporating biometric components into E-Verify, but warned against "scrapping the present system and all of the hard work that has been done to date" (Testimony of James Ziglar, July 21, 2009). Ziglar admitted that it would be costly and time consuming to incorporate biometrics into E-Verify, but former USCIS Chief Counsel Lynden Melmed argued that "the cost of not doing it is too significant… it is a question of how to pay for it." (Senate Immigration Subcommittee Hearing, July 21, 2009).
On the House side, Members of the Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee expressed a different set of concerns. With the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) recent announcement that it intends to finally implement a Bush-era regulation to require most federal contractors to use E-Verify (DHS Press Release, July 8, 2009), some subcommittee members expressed concern that USCIS would not be able to handle the surge of new activity. However, the Deputy Associate Director of the National Security and Records Verification Directorate within USCIS, Gerri Ratliff, assured the subcommittee that the system can handle the additional workload.
At the House hearing, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) suggested that the government should charge employers for using E-Verify. (House Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee Hearing, July 23, 2009). Such an idea is unwise and overlooks several key points. First, the federal government is responsible for securing our borders and enforcing immigration laws. E-Verify relies on employers' voluntary use of the program to further a federal government responsibility. It is important that the federal government take responsibility for the cost of enforcement rather than pass that cost on to patriotic employers who are currently using the system. Second, America is suffering from a jobs deficit. E-Verify makes sure available jobs are going to legal American workers and not illegal aliens. By posing a burden on employers, Congress runs the risk that employers would stop using E-Verify. This would enable illegal aliens to obtain available jobs instead of ensuring those jobs go to legal American workers. Third, E-Verify only costs the government about $140 million a year. For the money, E-Verify is one of the most cost-effective programs administered by the federal government. By trying to pass that cost on to employers, Congress could actually end up discouraging the program's use, which would undermine E-Verify's effectiveness.
BOND SET FOR MAN WITH 28 DEPORTATIONS! and yet still NO WALL
Bond set for man with 28 deportations (WHERE IS THE FENCE?)
Bond set for man with 28 deportations
Associated Press
Share MORE ON IMMIGRATION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOTHAN, Ala. — An Alabama judge set a $20,000 cash bond for a native of Mexico who reportedly has been deported from the United States 28 times.
Houston County Sheriff's Sgt. Jackie Smith said he charged Luis Hernandez-Arellano, 38, with felony obstruction of justice last week for giving deputies false identification.
Smith said deputies stopped a vehicle on Alabama Highway 109 Thursday for running a stop sign. The driver told deputies his name was Caesar Garza.
After Garza failed to provide a driver's license or other identification, deputies were able to positively identify him as Carlos Cortez. Investigators later learned through Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Cortez is actually Luis Hernandez-Arellano
Location: WHERE IS THE FENCE?
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 1297055214
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Bond set for man with 28 deportations
Associated Press
Share MORE ON IMMIGRATION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOTHAN, Ala. — An Alabama judge set a $20,000 cash bond for a native of Mexico who reportedly has been deported from the United States 28 times.
Houston County Sheriff's Sgt. Jackie Smith said he charged Luis Hernandez-Arellano, 38, with felony obstruction of justice last week for giving deputies false identification.
Smith said deputies stopped a vehicle on Alabama Highway 109 Thursday for running a stop sign. The driver told deputies his name was Caesar Garza.
After Garza failed to provide a driver's license or other identification, deputies were able to positively identify him as Carlos Cortez. Investigators later learned through Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Cortez is actually Luis Hernandez-Arellano
Location: WHERE IS THE FENCE?
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 1297055214
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUDICIAL WATCH - LA RAZA MOVE FOR HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGALS - Who pays?
JUDICIAL WATCH
Health Benefits For Illegal Immigrants
Last Updated: Fri, 07/24/2009 - 11:42am
The powerful House committee that decides and controls the nation’s tax policy has essentially voted to give illegal immigrants health benefits under President Obama’s proposed multi trillion-dollar government plan.
On the heels of a national poll revealing that most Americans want illegal aliens excluded from national health coverage, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means defeated a measure designed to reduce taxpayers’ liability by ensuring that undocumented immigrants don’t qualify for the benefits.
In a straight party line vote of 23-18, the committee rejected a Nevada congressman’s amendment requiring the federal government to confirm health care eligibility with the same databases currently used to screen welfare recipients. The government assures that illegal aliens don’t receive taxpayer-financed welfare benefits by utilizing the Income and Eligibility Verification System and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
Neither will be utilized to screen illegal immigrants when America’s Affordable Health Care Choices Act kicks in, however. Caving into the influential open borders movement, House Democrats refused to take action to limit the health system overhaul’s already outrageous and still-growing tab.
Nevada Republican Dean Heller offered the amendment as a cost-cutting effort by requiring the use of existing citizenship verification tools for the new health plans. The government-run healthcare system will kill jobs, hurt families and result in massive federal spending, according to the lawmaker. But if it passes, at least the government should assure that only citizens and legal residents get the taxpayer-funded healthcare, he says.
U.S. taxpayers already spend billions of dollars annually to provide free medical care for illegal immigrants with states that border Mexico taking the biggest hit. The expense has become so unbearable in California—long an illegal alien sanctuary—that several municipalities eliminated the perk this year to save tens of millions of dollars in the midst of the state’s dire financial crisis.
It hasn’t stopped Mexico's government from operating programs in about a dozen American cities referring its nationals—living in the U.S. illegally—to publicly funded health centers where they can get free medical care without being turned over to immigration authorities.
While this may sound too outrageous to be true, it’s very real. The program is called Ventanillas de Salud (Health Windows) in Spanish and its mission is to help illegal immigrants find U.S. hospitals, clinics and other government programs where they can get free services without being deported for violating federal immigration laws. Imagine the campaign Mexico will launch when Obama’s national health care bill passes.
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Health Benefits For Illegal Immigrants
Last Updated: Fri, 07/24/2009 - 11:42am
The powerful House committee that decides and controls the nation’s tax policy has essentially voted to give illegal immigrants health benefits under President Obama’s proposed multi trillion-dollar government plan.
On the heels of a national poll revealing that most Americans want illegal aliens excluded from national health coverage, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Ways and Means defeated a measure designed to reduce taxpayers’ liability by ensuring that undocumented immigrants don’t qualify for the benefits.
In a straight party line vote of 23-18, the committee rejected a Nevada congressman’s amendment requiring the federal government to confirm health care eligibility with the same databases currently used to screen welfare recipients. The government assures that illegal aliens don’t receive taxpayer-financed welfare benefits by utilizing the Income and Eligibility Verification System and the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system.
Neither will be utilized to screen illegal immigrants when America’s Affordable Health Care Choices Act kicks in, however. Caving into the influential open borders movement, House Democrats refused to take action to limit the health system overhaul’s already outrageous and still-growing tab.
Nevada Republican Dean Heller offered the amendment as a cost-cutting effort by requiring the use of existing citizenship verification tools for the new health plans. The government-run healthcare system will kill jobs, hurt families and result in massive federal spending, according to the lawmaker. But if it passes, at least the government should assure that only citizens and legal residents get the taxpayer-funded healthcare, he says.
U.S. taxpayers already spend billions of dollars annually to provide free medical care for illegal immigrants with states that border Mexico taking the biggest hit. The expense has become so unbearable in California—long an illegal alien sanctuary—that several municipalities eliminated the perk this year to save tens of millions of dollars in the midst of the state’s dire financial crisis.
It hasn’t stopped Mexico's government from operating programs in about a dozen American cities referring its nationals—living in the U.S. illegally—to publicly funded health centers where they can get free medical care without being turned over to immigration authorities.
While this may sound too outrageous to be true, it’s very real. The program is called Ventanillas de Salud (Health Windows) in Spanish and its mission is to help illegal immigrants find U.S. hospitals, clinics and other government programs where they can get free services without being deported for violating federal immigration laws. Imagine the campaign Mexico will launch when Obama’s national health care bill passes.
Bookmark/Search this post with: (What's this?)
JUDICIAL WATCH Barbara Boxer (CA) Says NO to ICE Enforcement of Laws!
JUDICIAL WATCH
Sen. Boxer To Halt Immigration Enforcement
Last Updated: Thu, 04/09/2009 - 3:05pm
In a shameless effort to gain additional Congressional seats, California Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer has attached an amendment to a spending bill that will block federal immigration enforcement until after the 2010 census.
The idea is to count all illegal immigrants in the next official U.S. Census, which will more than likely give states with large illegal alien populations such as California, Arizona, Texas and Florida additional seats in the House of Representatives after 2010.
Although they cannot vote, illegal immigrants are included in the census and legislators in states with large undocumented populations say aggressive immigration enforcement will prevent those living in the U.S. illegally from being counted.
To keep federal agents from enforcing the country's immigration laws, Senator Boxer actually attached an amendment to an existing appropriations bill (HR 3093) for the departments of Commerce and Justice.
A fixture in the U.S. Senate since 1993, Boxer's amendment specifically calls on the Customs and Enforcement Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security to limit aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws to promote full participation of non citizens in the census.
The amendment points out that during the census counts of 1980, 1990 and 2000 federal immigration officials agreed to limit immigration enforcement efforts to encourage the participation of all persons in the United States.
However, Boxer's amendment goes on to say that Homeland Security officials have publicly stated that they will not even consider scaling back efforts to aggressively enforce federal immigration laws during the 2010 census. Therefore she felt it necessary to sneak the amendment into an unrelated spending bill.
Boxer is no stranger to controversy. This year alone she was exposed for accepting illegal campaign contributions from a Pakistani fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list, unethically using her position as chair of a powerful Senate committee to raise money for her reelection campaign and introducing legislation to put 1.5 million illegal immigrant farm workers and their relatives on a path to United States citizenship by granting them immediate legal residency.
Sen. Boxer To Halt Immigration Enforcement
Last Updated: Thu, 04/09/2009 - 3:05pm
In a shameless effort to gain additional Congressional seats, California Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer has attached an amendment to a spending bill that will block federal immigration enforcement until after the 2010 census.
The idea is to count all illegal immigrants in the next official U.S. Census, which will more than likely give states with large illegal alien populations such as California, Arizona, Texas and Florida additional seats in the House of Representatives after 2010.
Although they cannot vote, illegal immigrants are included in the census and legislators in states with large undocumented populations say aggressive immigration enforcement will prevent those living in the U.S. illegally from being counted.
To keep federal agents from enforcing the country's immigration laws, Senator Boxer actually attached an amendment to an existing appropriations bill (HR 3093) for the departments of Commerce and Justice.
A fixture in the U.S. Senate since 1993, Boxer's amendment specifically calls on the Customs and Enforcement Bureau of the Department of Homeland Security to limit aggressive enforcement of federal immigration laws to promote full participation of non citizens in the census.
The amendment points out that during the census counts of 1980, 1990 and 2000 federal immigration officials agreed to limit immigration enforcement efforts to encourage the participation of all persons in the United States.
However, Boxer's amendment goes on to say that Homeland Security officials have publicly stated that they will not even consider scaling back efforts to aggressively enforce federal immigration laws during the 2010 census. Therefore she felt it necessary to sneak the amendment into an unrelated spending bill.
Boxer is no stranger to controversy. This year alone she was exposed for accepting illegal campaign contributions from a Pakistani fugitive on the FBI's most wanted list, unethically using her position as chair of a powerful Senate committee to raise money for her reelection campaign and introducing legislation to put 1.5 million illegal immigrant farm workers and their relatives on a path to United States citizenship by granting them immediate legal residency.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
A.C.L.U wants your money TO EXPAND ILLEGALS' RIGHTS!
Immigration/US Borders
See other Immigration/US Borders Articles
Title: BillO'Reilly had S. Poverty Law Ctr.slam Dobbs as racist on pgm.& O'Reilly to have Dobbs on his pgm.
Source: BILL O'REILLY
URL Source: http://www.FoxNews.com
Published: Jul 28, 2009
Author: BILL O'REILLY on Fox News Cable TV
Post Date: 2009-07-29 04:10:19 by blackhorse
Ping List: *Illegal Aliens-Action Alert*
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BILL O'REILLY HAD RICHARD COHEN- SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER ON HIS PROGRAM TO ASK WHY HE SLAMS LOU DOBBS AS A RACIST!
Ever since Lou Dobbs called for our U.S. government to stop the U.S. invasion by "illegal aliens" and build a border fence, RICHARD COHEN, head of his notorious anti-American group has slandered Lou Dobbs and anyone who tries to stop illegal aliens, as racists...anti-Hispanic...xenophobes, etc.
Bill O'Reilly on his program July 27th, defended Lou Dobbs for permitting freedom-of-speech & opinion. But Richard Cohen kept repeating that Lou Dobbs was anti-immigrant, a racist and demands that CNN remove him as an TV talkhost anchor! Cohen tried to get Bill O'Reilly to agree with him and O'Reilly said you just came on my program to get even with Lou Dobbs, didn't you?
Richard Cohen, just kept repeating that Lou Dobbs is a disgrace and highly offensive to immigrants and doesn;t know why he has never beeen fired from CNN-TV!
At the end of Bill O'Reilly's program July 28th, he said he was going to have LOU DOBBS on his program on Wed., July 29th! This should be a hot program!
If these two TV talkhost giants would join forces in a large push against "illegal aliens & amnesty", they and we Immigration Control Activists could crush the pro-illegal alien A M N E S T Y lunatics and RICHARD COHEN's SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER who makes numerous false claims of racism...false claims of persons who are against or try to stop illegal aliens are all racists and must be stopped! He even stooped so low as to calling Minutemen like me as "vigilantes"! Who elected or appointed Richard Cohen to be the decider and champion authority of the entire U.S. legal citizens to demand that we all must stop demanding that we must stop reporting illegal aliens as well as stop initiating legislative bills calling for deportation, building a border fence, stop fining employers, stop using 287(g), stop using the E-Verify System, stop the ICE making raids at factories and meat packing plants, etc.
This lunatic RICHARD COHEN - Head of the SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER is out of his mind if he thinks we are going to cave in and follow his insane instructions! "Over my dead body COHEN"! As a true American citizen, I will never give up and I will defend my country, my English lnguage that our U.S. Constitution is written in (not Spanish), as well as to defend our culture and political system without his insulting intrusions and slanderous remaks against U.S. born English speaking Americans.
See other Immigration/US Borders Articles
Title: BillO'Reilly had S. Poverty Law Ctr.slam Dobbs as racist on pgm.& O'Reilly to have Dobbs on his pgm.
Source: BILL O'REILLY
URL Source: http://www.FoxNews.com
Published: Jul 28, 2009
Author: BILL O'REILLY on Fox News Cable TV
Post Date: 2009-07-29 04:10:19 by blackhorse
Ping List: *Illegal Aliens-Action Alert*
10 Comments
BILL O'REILLY HAD RICHARD COHEN- SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER ON HIS PROGRAM TO ASK WHY HE SLAMS LOU DOBBS AS A RACIST!
Ever since Lou Dobbs called for our U.S. government to stop the U.S. invasion by "illegal aliens" and build a border fence, RICHARD COHEN, head of his notorious anti-American group has slandered Lou Dobbs and anyone who tries to stop illegal aliens, as racists...anti-Hispanic...xenophobes, etc.
Bill O'Reilly on his program July 27th, defended Lou Dobbs for permitting freedom-of-speech & opinion. But Richard Cohen kept repeating that Lou Dobbs was anti-immigrant, a racist and demands that CNN remove him as an TV talkhost anchor! Cohen tried to get Bill O'Reilly to agree with him and O'Reilly said you just came on my program to get even with Lou Dobbs, didn't you?
Richard Cohen, just kept repeating that Lou Dobbs is a disgrace and highly offensive to immigrants and doesn;t know why he has never beeen fired from CNN-TV!
At the end of Bill O'Reilly's program July 28th, he said he was going to have LOU DOBBS on his program on Wed., July 29th! This should be a hot program!
If these two TV talkhost giants would join forces in a large push against "illegal aliens & amnesty", they and we Immigration Control Activists could crush the pro-illegal alien A M N E S T Y lunatics and RICHARD COHEN's SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER who makes numerous false claims of racism...false claims of persons who are against or try to stop illegal aliens are all racists and must be stopped! He even stooped so low as to calling Minutemen like me as "vigilantes"! Who elected or appointed Richard Cohen to be the decider and champion authority of the entire U.S. legal citizens to demand that we all must stop demanding that we must stop reporting illegal aliens as well as stop initiating legislative bills calling for deportation, building a border fence, stop fining employers, stop using 287(g), stop using the E-Verify System, stop the ICE making raids at factories and meat packing plants, etc.
This lunatic RICHARD COHEN - Head of the SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER is out of his mind if he thinks we are going to cave in and follow his insane instructions! "Over my dead body COHEN"! As a true American citizen, I will never give up and I will defend my country, my English lnguage that our U.S. Constitution is written in (not Spanish), as well as to defend our culture and political system without his insulting intrusions and slanderous remaks against U.S. born English speaking Americans.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - 3 MEXICAN MALES MOLEST YOUNG GIRL
Every day 12 Americans are murdered by illegal Mexicans.
Every day 8 children are molested by illegal Mexicans
Every year billions are spent to expand the Mexican welfare state, and pay for the staggering cost of prisons for Mexicans
Every day an illegal takes another American’s job.
Every day the LA RAZA owned DEMS flip-off the people and work for open borders, no e-verify, no enforcement of laws prohibiting the employment of illegals.
Every day it becomes harder and harder to hear English spoken.
Every day Mexican gangs, now a family enterprise, spread over wider territory, now in every major city in California, and according to the FBI, in 233 American cities.
Every day there are more illegals from Mexico that are illiterate, criminal and frequently pregnant continue to walk over our border by virtue of the inducements offered them by the La Raza owned dems for “cheap” labor.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (go here and do search for Mexican gangs!)
Cops arrest 3 men in sexual assault of girl, 14, at San Jose party
By Jessie Mangaliman
Posted: 07/28/2009 02:52:32 PM PDT
Updated: 07/28/2009 08:43:44 PM PDT
Three San Jose men accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl during a party Sunday have been booked in the Santa Clara County Jail, police said.
Allan Diaz, 21, Joseph Escobedo, 23, and Joel Vega-Araiza, 21, all of San Jose, are being held on charges of sexual assault.
Police learned of the assault when officials at Kaiser-San Jose hospital notified authorities at 5:44 a.m. Sunday. The victim was transported to the hospital.
The victim told police that she was at a party in the 3300 block of Rocky Mountain Drive in East San Jose, and was intoxicated. The party began late Saturday night, police said, and the assault took place early Sunday morning.
Soon after, investigators learned the suspects' identities and arrested them, according to San Jose police spokesman Sgt. Ronnie Lopez.
Individuals with information about the case were asked to call detective John Moutzouridis of the department's sexual assaults investigations unit at 408-277-4290. To make an anonymous tip, call Crime Stoppers at 408-947-STOP.
*
More Americans Killed by Illegal Aliens than Iraq War, Study Says
"...if our military can understand that Iraq's security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn't our country similarly protecting our own borders?"
Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
February 22, 2007
Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population.
Mike Cutler, a former senior special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (the former INS), is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to Family Security Matters (FSM). He says the high number of Americans being killed by illegal aliens is just part of the collateral damage that comes with tolerating illegal immigration.
"The military actually called for the BORTAC team, ... the elite unit of the Border Patrol, to be detailed to Iraq to help to secure the Iraqi border," Cutler notes. "Now, if our military can understand that Iraq's security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn't our country similarly protecting our own borders?" he asks.
"We are now five and a half years, nearly, after 9/11, and yet our borders remain open," the Center for Immigration Studies fellow observes. "We have National Guardsmen assigned on the border, but it turns out they are unarmed," he points out. "Their rules of engagement are very simple: if armed intruders head your way, run in the other direction."
This situation would "almost be comical if it wasn't so tragic," Cutler asserts. "If our borders are wide open, this means that drugs, criminals, and terrorists are entering our country just as easily as the dishwashers," he says.
The report from FSM estimates that the 267,000 illegal aliens currently incarcerated in the nation are responsible for nearly 1,300,000 crimes, ranging from drug arrests to rape and murder. Such statistics, Cutler contends, debunk the claim that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. "Then we even have another problem," he adds, "and that's the Visa Waiver Program."
The federal government's Visa Waiver Program enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. According to the U.S. State Department website, the waiver program was established in 1986 with the objective of "eliminating unnecessary barriers to travel," stimulating America's tourism industry, and allowing the government to focus consular resources in other areas.
……………..
According to a recent study from the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, Hispanics involved in car crashes are two-and-a-half times more likely to be drunk than white drivers and three times more likely to be drunk than black drivers.
……….
TWELVE AMERICANS MURDERED EACH DAY BY ILLEGALS
By Joseph Farah 2006
WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – While the military "quagmire" in Iraq was said to tip the scales of power in the U.S. midterm elections, most Americans have no idea more of their fellow citizens – men, women and children – were murdered this year by illegal aliens than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since those military campaigns began. Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research. Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001. Total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq as of last week were reported at 2,863. Total U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan during the five years of the Afghan campaign are currently at 289, according to the Department of Defense. But the carnage wrought by illegal alien murderers represents only a fraction of the pool of blood spilled by American citizens as a result of an open border and un-enforced immigration laws. While King reports 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens, he says 13 are killed by drunk illegal alien drivers – for another annual death toll of 4,745. That's 23,725 since Sept. 11, 2001. While no one – in or out of government – tracks all U.S. accidents caused by illegal aliens, the statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests many of last year's 42,636 road deaths involved illegal aliens. A report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found 20 percent of fatal accidents involve at least one driver who lacks a valid license. In California, another study showed that those who have never held a valid license are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal road accident than licensed drivers. Statistically, that makes them an even greater danger on the road than drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked – and nearly as dangerous as drunk drivers.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 CHILDREN VICTIMS OF ILLEGAL MEX SEX ABUSE PER DAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*
King also reports eight American children are victims of sexual abuse by illegal aliens every day – a total of 2,920 annually. Based on a one-year in-depth study, Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute of Atlanta estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. She analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. As the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases, so does the number of American victims. According to Edwin Rubenstien, president of ESR Research Economic Consultants, in Indianapolis in 1980, federal and state correctional facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. But at the end of 2003, approximately 267,000 illegal aliens were incarcerated in all U.S. jails and prisons. While the federal government doesn't track illegal alien murders, illegal alien rapes or illegal alien drunk driving deaths, it has studied illegal aliens incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In April 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a study of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. It found the following: The 55,322 illegal aliens studied represented a total of 459,614 arrests – some eight arrests per illegal alien; Their arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses – some 13 offenses per illegal alien; 36 percent had been arrested at least five times before. "While the vast majority of illegal aliens are decent people who work hard and are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, (something you or I would probably do if we were in their place), it is also a fact that a disproportionately high percentage of illegal aliens are criminals and sexual predators," states Peter Wagner, author of a new report called "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration." "That is part of the dark side of illegal immigration and when we allow the 'good' in we get the 'bad' along with them. The question is, how much 'bad' is acceptable and at what price?" .............................................
*
Every day 8 children are molested by illegal Mexicans
Every year billions are spent to expand the Mexican welfare state, and pay for the staggering cost of prisons for Mexicans
Every day an illegal takes another American’s job.
Every day the LA RAZA owned DEMS flip-off the people and work for open borders, no e-verify, no enforcement of laws prohibiting the employment of illegals.
Every day it becomes harder and harder to hear English spoken.
Every day Mexican gangs, now a family enterprise, spread over wider territory, now in every major city in California, and according to the FBI, in 233 American cities.
Every day there are more illegals from Mexico that are illiterate, criminal and frequently pregnant continue to walk over our border by virtue of the inducements offered them by the La Raza owned dems for “cheap” labor.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (go here and do search for Mexican gangs!)
Cops arrest 3 men in sexual assault of girl, 14, at San Jose party
By Jessie Mangaliman
Posted: 07/28/2009 02:52:32 PM PDT
Updated: 07/28/2009 08:43:44 PM PDT
Three San Jose men accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl during a party Sunday have been booked in the Santa Clara County Jail, police said.
Allan Diaz, 21, Joseph Escobedo, 23, and Joel Vega-Araiza, 21, all of San Jose, are being held on charges of sexual assault.
Police learned of the assault when officials at Kaiser-San Jose hospital notified authorities at 5:44 a.m. Sunday. The victim was transported to the hospital.
The victim told police that she was at a party in the 3300 block of Rocky Mountain Drive in East San Jose, and was intoxicated. The party began late Saturday night, police said, and the assault took place early Sunday morning.
Soon after, investigators learned the suspects' identities and arrested them, according to San Jose police spokesman Sgt. Ronnie Lopez.
Individuals with information about the case were asked to call detective John Moutzouridis of the department's sexual assaults investigations unit at 408-277-4290. To make an anonymous tip, call Crime Stoppers at 408-947-STOP.
*
More Americans Killed by Illegal Aliens than Iraq War, Study Says
"...if our military can understand that Iraq's security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn't our country similarly protecting our own borders?"
Jim Brown
OneNewsNow.com
February 22, 2007
Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population.
Mike Cutler, a former senior special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (the former INS), is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to Family Security Matters (FSM). He says the high number of Americans being killed by illegal aliens is just part of the collateral damage that comes with tolerating illegal immigration.
"The military actually called for the BORTAC team, ... the elite unit of the Border Patrol, to be detailed to Iraq to help to secure the Iraqi border," Cutler notes. "Now, if our military can understand that Iraq's security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn't our country similarly protecting our own borders?" he asks.
"We are now five and a half years, nearly, after 9/11, and yet our borders remain open," the Center for Immigration Studies fellow observes. "We have National Guardsmen assigned on the border, but it turns out they are unarmed," he points out. "Their rules of engagement are very simple: if armed intruders head your way, run in the other direction."
This situation would "almost be comical if it wasn't so tragic," Cutler asserts. "If our borders are wide open, this means that drugs, criminals, and terrorists are entering our country just as easily as the dishwashers," he says.
The report from FSM estimates that the 267,000 illegal aliens currently incarcerated in the nation are responsible for nearly 1,300,000 crimes, ranging from drug arrests to rape and murder. Such statistics, Cutler contends, debunk the claim that illegal immigration is a victimless crime. "Then we even have another problem," he adds, "and that's the Visa Waiver Program."
The federal government's Visa Waiver Program enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. According to the U.S. State Department website, the waiver program was established in 1986 with the objective of "eliminating unnecessary barriers to travel," stimulating America's tourism industry, and allowing the government to focus consular resources in other areas.
……………..
According to a recent study from the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, Hispanics involved in car crashes are two-and-a-half times more likely to be drunk than white drivers and three times more likely to be drunk than black drivers.
……….
TWELVE AMERICANS MURDERED EACH DAY BY ILLEGALS
By Joseph Farah 2006
WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – While the military "quagmire" in Iraq was said to tip the scales of power in the U.S. midterm elections, most Americans have no idea more of their fellow citizens – men, women and children – were murdered this year by illegal aliens than the combined death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan since those military campaigns began. Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research. Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens, according to statistics released by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa. If those numbers are correct, it translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001. Total U.S. troop deaths in Iraq as of last week were reported at 2,863. Total U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan during the five years of the Afghan campaign are currently at 289, according to the Department of Defense. But the carnage wrought by illegal alien murderers represents only a fraction of the pool of blood spilled by American citizens as a result of an open border and un-enforced immigration laws. While King reports 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens, he says 13 are killed by drunk illegal alien drivers – for another annual death toll of 4,745. That's 23,725 since Sept. 11, 2001. While no one – in or out of government – tracks all U.S. accidents caused by illegal aliens, the statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests many of last year's 42,636 road deaths involved illegal aliens. A report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found 20 percent of fatal accidents involve at least one driver who lacks a valid license. In California, another study showed that those who have never held a valid license are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal road accident than licensed drivers. Statistically, that makes them an even greater danger on the road than drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked – and nearly as dangerous as drunk drivers.
*
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 CHILDREN VICTIMS OF ILLEGAL MEX SEX ABUSE PER DAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*
King also reports eight American children are victims of sexual abuse by illegal aliens every day – a total of 2,920 annually. Based on a one-year in-depth study, Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute of Atlanta estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. She analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. As the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases, so does the number of American victims. According to Edwin Rubenstien, president of ESR Research Economic Consultants, in Indianapolis in 1980, federal and state correctional facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. But at the end of 2003, approximately 267,000 illegal aliens were incarcerated in all U.S. jails and prisons. While the federal government doesn't track illegal alien murders, illegal alien rapes or illegal alien drunk driving deaths, it has studied illegal aliens incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In April 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a study of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. It found the following: The 55,322 illegal aliens studied represented a total of 459,614 arrests – some eight arrests per illegal alien; Their arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses – some 13 offenses per illegal alien; 36 percent had been arrested at least five times before. "While the vast majority of illegal aliens are decent people who work hard and are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, (something you or I would probably do if we were in their place), it is also a fact that a disproportionately high percentage of illegal aliens are criminals and sexual predators," states Peter Wagner, author of a new report called "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration." "That is part of the dark side of illegal immigration and when we allow the 'good' in we get the 'bad' along with them. The question is, how much 'bad' is acceptable and at what price?" .............................................
*
Sunday, July 26, 2009
SFGATE.com - Mexican Gangs Operate BARS - MEX CRIME WAVE SPREADS
SFGATE.com
LA street gang operates underground bars
Saturday, July 25, 2009
(07-25) 09:46 PDT Los Angeles, CA (AP) --
Authorities say raids at illegal after-hours bars and nightclubs in Los Angeles have led to the arrests of 34 gang members on local and federal charges.
The Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents say the 18th Street gang operated the underground establishments, using them as bases for various criminal enterprises. LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese says the locations have been connected to homicides, shootings and drug trafficking.
The arrests are the culmination of an 18-month probe into so-called casitas concealed at homes and shuttered stores in South Los Angeles.
LA street gang operates underground bars
Saturday, July 25, 2009
(07-25) 09:46 PDT Los Angeles, CA (AP) --
Authorities say raids at illegal after-hours bars and nightclubs in Los Angeles have led to the arrests of 34 gang members on local and federal charges.
The Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents say the 18th Street gang operated the underground establishments, using them as bases for various criminal enterprises. LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese says the locations have been connected to homicides, shootings and drug trafficking.
The arrests are the culmination of an 18-month probe into so-called casitas concealed at homes and shuttered stores in South Los Angeles.
OBAMA moves to deport MEXICAN CRIMINALS - about time!
Proponents of stricter enforcement of immigration laws complain that by concentrating on people who pass through the jails, the government is letting too many other illegal immigrants off the hook.
Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who favors stricter immigration enforcement, has said the focus on criminal offenders “will create a de facto amnesty” for the millions of illegal immigrants who do not have criminal records.
“We can prevent many of these crimes by deporting illegal immigrants before they have committed them, instead of waiting until after the fact,” he said, echoing the views of many hard-liners.
NEW YORK TIMES
July 26, 2009
Debate Intensifies Over Federal Deportation Policy
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
HOUSTON — The Obama administration is vastly expanding a federal effort begun under President George W. Bush to identify and deport illegal immigrants held in local jails. But here in the city where the effort got a trial start eight months ago, people on each side of the immigration debate have found fault with it.
Under the effort, known as Secure Communities, local officials check every set of fingerprints taken at jails against those of people who have had a brush with federal immigration authorities; in the past, they could check only for a criminal history in the F.B.I. database. If a person turns out to be an illegal immigrant, the case is turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible deportation proceedings in addition to the criminal charges.
The Obama administration considers the trial program successful enough to pledge $195 million over the next year to expand the effort with an eye toward establishing it nationwide by late 2012, when it is projected to cost about $1 billion a year. It is now under way in 70 counties across the country, including those containing the cities of San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami and Durham, N.C.
“Before we had no idea who was deportable,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Gwen Carroll of Harris County, where Houston is located.
But the trial program’s experience here has raised difficult questions about its goals, critics say, and serves as a stern reminder of the political and practical challenges facing the larger rollout.
Federal officials say that while they are pleased with their new ability to identify illegal immigrants, they do not have enough agents to deport all of those identified. Over all, only a third of those identified in the first seven months of the program as foreign nationals — which includes people with visas and temporary residence cards as well as illegal immigrants — have been deported.
“We do have a limited amount of resources,” said David J. Venturella, the director of the federal program. “It’s our priority to focus on the more serious offenders.”
Proponents of stricter enforcement of immigration laws complain that by concentrating on people who pass through the jails, the government is letting too many other illegal immigrants off the hook. On the other side, advocacy groups for immigrants complain that the program has created a climate of fear and paranoia among Hispanics, hampering the police.
Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who favors stricter immigration enforcement, has said the focus on criminal offenders “will create a de facto amnesty” for the millions of illegal immigrants who do not have criminal records.
“We can prevent many of these crimes by deporting illegal immigrants before they have committed them, instead of waiting until after the fact,” he said, echoing the views of many hard-liners.
But Maria Jimenez, a longtime advocate for immigrants in Houston, said the Secure Communities program, along with a second federal program that allows certain local law enforcement officials to act as federal immigration agents, has done just what Mr. Smith and other conservatives want. “In casting the net so broadly,” she said, “it will be a de facto immigration enforcement program by local police.”
While federal officials say the purpose of the effort is to identify serious and violent criminals, immigrant advocates complain that the great majority of people deported so far under the trial program here were arrested for misdemeanor and nonviolent crimes.
In the first six months of the trial program in Harris County, the automatic fingerprint checks led to the deportation of 94 people accused of the highest level of felonies and 1,624 people accused of misdemeanors and various property crimes, federal officials said. In all, there were 5,300 matches with the immigration database.
“People are getting deported for even minor offenses like not having an ID or a driver’s license,” said Cesar Espinosa of America for All, a group that helps immigrants in Houston.
But what constitutes a minor offense is a matter of debate.
Sheriff Adrian Garcia of Harris County says he regards most of the people tagged for deportation as criminals, including those arrested for drunken driving and drug possession. Fewer than one in 10 have been charged with traffic offenses and other “Class C” misdemeanors under state law, Sheriff Garcia noted.
“We are taking people off the streets of Houston, off the streets of Harris County, who have indicated they are not interested in following the rules around here,” he said.
Support for deporting immigrants with criminal records grew in Houston after a city police officer, Rodney Johnson, was killed in 2006 by a felon who had been deported but returned. Last March, that sentiment reached a peak when a second officer, Rick Salter, was critically injured by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record.
On a recent morning, one young man who was arrested on charges of failing to provide information to the police slouched on a bench in the Harris County jail, while on the other side of a grate, Sheriff’s Deputy Sammie Rinehart scanned his immigration record.
A year ago, Deputy Rinehart said, it would have been nearly impossible to find out if he was in the country illegally because he had given officers a phony name. But after his fingerprints were taken using a computerized scanner and run through the government’s immigration database, they told a different story. He was really Carlos Bringas Nimrod, 22, of Mexico.
“I find about 10 to 12 names he’s used,” Deputy Rinehart said. “He’s got immigration charges — illegal entry. Most of his crimes have always been illegal entry.”
Mr. Bringas Nimrod was one of about 10 illegal immigrants the local police had locked up on misdemeanor charges that afternoon. One was Celio Velásquez, a 23-year-old construction worker from Honduras, who was accused of drunken driving and running over a volunteer firefighter with a car, making it necessary to amputate his legs.
Another was Jaime López, a 48-year-old Mexican citizen with a bloody bandage over one eye. He had been arrested on aggravated assault charges for the second time.
Jay K. Aiyer, a Houston immigration lawyer, said few people here disagree that dangerous criminals should be deported. But Mr. Aiyer said he had handled several cases in the last eight months in which illegal immigrants faced deportation proceedings after the state had dropped criminal charges.
But John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of homeland security in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, does not see the roundup of relatively harmless immigrants as a flaw.
“We are interested in identifying and removing all offenders if we can,” Mr. Morton said in an interview. “But we have limited resources, and in a world of limited resources we are focusing on violent serious offenders first.”
Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who favors stricter immigration enforcement, has said the focus on criminal offenders “will create a de facto amnesty” for the millions of illegal immigrants who do not have criminal records.
“We can prevent many of these crimes by deporting illegal immigrants before they have committed them, instead of waiting until after the fact,” he said, echoing the views of many hard-liners.
NEW YORK TIMES
July 26, 2009
Debate Intensifies Over Federal Deportation Policy
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
HOUSTON — The Obama administration is vastly expanding a federal effort begun under President George W. Bush to identify and deport illegal immigrants held in local jails. But here in the city where the effort got a trial start eight months ago, people on each side of the immigration debate have found fault with it.
Under the effort, known as Secure Communities, local officials check every set of fingerprints taken at jails against those of people who have had a brush with federal immigration authorities; in the past, they could check only for a criminal history in the F.B.I. database. If a person turns out to be an illegal immigrant, the case is turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for possible deportation proceedings in addition to the criminal charges.
The Obama administration considers the trial program successful enough to pledge $195 million over the next year to expand the effort with an eye toward establishing it nationwide by late 2012, when it is projected to cost about $1 billion a year. It is now under way in 70 counties across the country, including those containing the cities of San Diego, Phoenix, Dallas, Miami and Durham, N.C.
“Before we had no idea who was deportable,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Gwen Carroll of Harris County, where Houston is located.
But the trial program’s experience here has raised difficult questions about its goals, critics say, and serves as a stern reminder of the political and practical challenges facing the larger rollout.
Federal officials say that while they are pleased with their new ability to identify illegal immigrants, they do not have enough agents to deport all of those identified. Over all, only a third of those identified in the first seven months of the program as foreign nationals — which includes people with visas and temporary residence cards as well as illegal immigrants — have been deported.
“We do have a limited amount of resources,” said David J. Venturella, the director of the federal program. “It’s our priority to focus on the more serious offenders.”
Proponents of stricter enforcement of immigration laws complain that by concentrating on people who pass through the jails, the government is letting too many other illegal immigrants off the hook. On the other side, advocacy groups for immigrants complain that the program has created a climate of fear and paranoia among Hispanics, hampering the police.
Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who favors stricter immigration enforcement, has said the focus on criminal offenders “will create a de facto amnesty” for the millions of illegal immigrants who do not have criminal records.
“We can prevent many of these crimes by deporting illegal immigrants before they have committed them, instead of waiting until after the fact,” he said, echoing the views of many hard-liners.
But Maria Jimenez, a longtime advocate for immigrants in Houston, said the Secure Communities program, along with a second federal program that allows certain local law enforcement officials to act as federal immigration agents, has done just what Mr. Smith and other conservatives want. “In casting the net so broadly,” she said, “it will be a de facto immigration enforcement program by local police.”
While federal officials say the purpose of the effort is to identify serious and violent criminals, immigrant advocates complain that the great majority of people deported so far under the trial program here were arrested for misdemeanor and nonviolent crimes.
In the first six months of the trial program in Harris County, the automatic fingerprint checks led to the deportation of 94 people accused of the highest level of felonies and 1,624 people accused of misdemeanors and various property crimes, federal officials said. In all, there were 5,300 matches with the immigration database.
“People are getting deported for even minor offenses like not having an ID or a driver’s license,” said Cesar Espinosa of America for All, a group that helps immigrants in Houston.
But what constitutes a minor offense is a matter of debate.
Sheriff Adrian Garcia of Harris County says he regards most of the people tagged for deportation as criminals, including those arrested for drunken driving and drug possession. Fewer than one in 10 have been charged with traffic offenses and other “Class C” misdemeanors under state law, Sheriff Garcia noted.
“We are taking people off the streets of Houston, off the streets of Harris County, who have indicated they are not interested in following the rules around here,” he said.
Support for deporting immigrants with criminal records grew in Houston after a city police officer, Rodney Johnson, was killed in 2006 by a felon who had been deported but returned. Last March, that sentiment reached a peak when a second officer, Rick Salter, was critically injured by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record.
On a recent morning, one young man who was arrested on charges of failing to provide information to the police slouched on a bench in the Harris County jail, while on the other side of a grate, Sheriff’s Deputy Sammie Rinehart scanned his immigration record.
A year ago, Deputy Rinehart said, it would have been nearly impossible to find out if he was in the country illegally because he had given officers a phony name. But after his fingerprints were taken using a computerized scanner and run through the government’s immigration database, they told a different story. He was really Carlos Bringas Nimrod, 22, of Mexico.
“I find about 10 to 12 names he’s used,” Deputy Rinehart said. “He’s got immigration charges — illegal entry. Most of his crimes have always been illegal entry.”
Mr. Bringas Nimrod was one of about 10 illegal immigrants the local police had locked up on misdemeanor charges that afternoon. One was Celio Velásquez, a 23-year-old construction worker from Honduras, who was accused of drunken driving and running over a volunteer firefighter with a car, making it necessary to amputate his legs.
Another was Jaime López, a 48-year-old Mexican citizen with a bloody bandage over one eye. He had been arrested on aggravated assault charges for the second time.
Jay K. Aiyer, a Houston immigration lawyer, said few people here disagree that dangerous criminals should be deported. But Mr. Aiyer said he had handled several cases in the last eight months in which illegal immigrants faced deportation proceedings after the state had dropped criminal charges.
But John T. Morton, the assistant secretary of homeland security in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, does not see the roundup of relatively harmless immigrants as a flaw.
“We are interested in identifying and removing all offenders if we can,” Mr. Morton said in an interview. “But we have limited resources, and in a world of limited resources we are focusing on violent serious offenders first.”
Saturday, July 25, 2009
TAXPAYERS REVOLUTION to end MEXICAN WELFARE STATE
AN INITIATIVE TO HELP CALIFORNIA'S
BUDGET DEFICIT CRISIS:
CALIFORNIA TAXPAYER PROTECTION ACT
BORDER CONTROL BY STOPPING THE MAGNETS
The initiative requires illegal alien mothers to apply in person for a certificate designated for Foreign Parent, pay an additional fee, submit official government issued identification with photograph and fingerprint, all of which is transmitted to the United States Department of Homeland Security.
ENDS illegal aliens use of all public funded benefits including pre-natal and non-
emergency medical care. California is one of thirteen states with this taxpayer expense. In 1987, California had a teenage birth rate below the national average. Pre-natal commenced for illegal aliens in 1988. Four years later the teenage birth rate was twice the national average and the highest of any state. If you understand the multitude of long term problems that are transferred from one generation to the next which are caused by teenage births, you will support this initiative.
TERMINATES all child welfare checks that are now direct deposited into illegal aliens
bank accounts for the anchor babies. Many of these checks become remittances that are
sent out of the U.S. The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the state
can require lawful presence of all applicants to prevent state block grant funds from going to illegal aliens.
The California Legislature allows issuance of child welfare to illegal aliens for 18 years.
Citizens can only receive the benefit for five years. Between 1988-1995 this welfare program quadrupled and continues to spiral out of control. In spite of the budget deficits the Legislature refuses to end this welfare magnet.
Public benefits to be issued to only those who are citizens, or qualifed aliens with signed affidavits verified for lawful status.
With your support to Taxpayer Revolution we can launch the legal movement to end birth tourism caused by the unconstitutional policy of automatic U.S. citizenship.
If "birth tourism," and all other welfare paid to illegal aliens had been stopped 20 years ago there would not be a state budget deficit today that is close to $42 billion dollars.
Please mail donations and self-addressed stamped envelopes for petitions to:
TAXPAYER REVOLUTION
P.O. Box 9985
San Diego, CA 92169
Formally supported by the American Legion, Department of California, Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Brian Bilbray, Numbers USA, and more. Please see Endorsements. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE on-line now.
BUDGET DEFICIT CRISIS:
CALIFORNIA TAXPAYER PROTECTION ACT
BORDER CONTROL BY STOPPING THE MAGNETS
The initiative requires illegal alien mothers to apply in person for a certificate designated for Foreign Parent, pay an additional fee, submit official government issued identification with photograph and fingerprint, all of which is transmitted to the United States Department of Homeland Security.
ENDS illegal aliens use of all public funded benefits including pre-natal and non-
emergency medical care. California is one of thirteen states with this taxpayer expense. In 1987, California had a teenage birth rate below the national average. Pre-natal commenced for illegal aliens in 1988. Four years later the teenage birth rate was twice the national average and the highest of any state. If you understand the multitude of long term problems that are transferred from one generation to the next which are caused by teenage births, you will support this initiative.
TERMINATES all child welfare checks that are now direct deposited into illegal aliens
bank accounts for the anchor babies. Many of these checks become remittances that are
sent out of the U.S. The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the state
can require lawful presence of all applicants to prevent state block grant funds from going to illegal aliens.
The California Legislature allows issuance of child welfare to illegal aliens for 18 years.
Citizens can only receive the benefit for five years. Between 1988-1995 this welfare program quadrupled and continues to spiral out of control. In spite of the budget deficits the Legislature refuses to end this welfare magnet.
Public benefits to be issued to only those who are citizens, or qualifed aliens with signed affidavits verified for lawful status.
With your support to Taxpayer Revolution we can launch the legal movement to end birth tourism caused by the unconstitutional policy of automatic U.S. citizenship.
If "birth tourism," and all other welfare paid to illegal aliens had been stopped 20 years ago there would not be a state budget deficit today that is close to $42 billion dollars.
Please mail donations and self-addressed stamped envelopes for petitions to:
TAXPAYER REVOLUTION
P.O. Box 9985
San Diego, CA 92169
Formally supported by the American Legion, Department of California, Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Brian Bilbray, Numbers USA, and more. Please see Endorsements. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE on-line now.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
CA Assembly Member PAUL FONG fights E-VERIFY for more illegals
Many of the politicians that support PAUL FONG are also against E-verify and work tirelessly for MORE ILLEGALS, AMNESTY, NO WALL, NO ICE, NO ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING THE ILLEGAL HIRING OF ILLEGALS, along with MORE WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS TO INDUCE MORE TO HOP OUR BORDERS AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE SUBCLASS OF “CHEAP” LABOR THAT BIG BUSINESS ENDLESSLY PUSHES FOR.
THESE POLITICIANS ARE:
Barack Obama
Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Joe Baca, Farr, Eshoo, Lofgren, Honda, Harman
CONTACT SELLOUT FONG – send a copy of this! He’ll get the point just as he’s stuffing special interest money that benefits from more illegals into his pockets!
Assembly Member Paul Fong
245 Castro St, No. 202
Mountain View, CA 94041
650 210-2022 FAX 650 210 2005
408 277-2003 FAX 408 277 2084
SACRAMENTO
916 319-2022 FAX 916 319-2122
Also pushing for NO E-VERIFY is La Raza, the Mexican government, U.S. Chamber of Commerce for BIG BUSINESS, and the FORTUNE 500, major contributors to LA RAZA and beneficiaries of all that “cheap” labor.
For your info, 47% of those employed in Los Angeles are ILLEGALS! The County of Los Angeles pays out $40 million per month in welfare to illegals, and is characterized by The Christian Science Monitor as “Mexican gang capital of America.”. Every year there are 500 – 1,000 Mexican gang related murders that cost taxpayers $1,000,000 each to prosecute.
ISN’T IT TIME WE END THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE FOR CHEAP LABOR?
Let Paul Fong know!
AB1288: Devious Legislature Stopping Employer E-Verify of Illegals while pretending to be opposed to illegals (all dems speak out of both sides of their fat mouths!)
As usual the pro-illegal alien Democrats up in Sacramento are working to maintain open borders.. while pretending to be against the growing illegal immigrant invasion that's overwhelming CA.
AB1288.. which stops E-Verify
It's authored by Assemblyman Paul Fong, Cupertino
The Democrat controlled State Legislature is busy stopping recently hard fought for illegal immigrant employee detection controls... such as the currently required use by employers of the effective (& popular!) employee E-Verify system.
The Democrats, along with the cheap labor Republicans, are permitting CA to continue being flooded with millions of illegals... whom are now bankrupting our state.
http://capwiz.com/caps/issues/alert/?alertid=13738741
Visit:
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
http://www.AmericanPatrol.com
http://www.NumbersUSA.com
http://www.Vdare.com
http://www.TheTerryAndersonShow.com
Terry's 1hr radio show is on Sun at 9pm on powerful KDWN 720AM out of Las Vegas.. which is just on the left edge of 740KCBS, or you can hear his show live on his website link above.
THESE POLITICIANS ARE:
Barack Obama
Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, Joe Baca, Farr, Eshoo, Lofgren, Honda, Harman
CONTACT SELLOUT FONG – send a copy of this! He’ll get the point just as he’s stuffing special interest money that benefits from more illegals into his pockets!
Assembly Member Paul Fong
245 Castro St, No. 202
Mountain View, CA 94041
650 210-2022 FAX 650 210 2005
408 277-2003 FAX 408 277 2084
SACRAMENTO
916 319-2022 FAX 916 319-2122
Also pushing for NO E-VERIFY is La Raza, the Mexican government, U.S. Chamber of Commerce for BIG BUSINESS, and the FORTUNE 500, major contributors to LA RAZA and beneficiaries of all that “cheap” labor.
For your info, 47% of those employed in Los Angeles are ILLEGALS! The County of Los Angeles pays out $40 million per month in welfare to illegals, and is characterized by The Christian Science Monitor as “Mexican gang capital of America.”. Every year there are 500 – 1,000 Mexican gang related murders that cost taxpayers $1,000,000 each to prosecute.
ISN’T IT TIME WE END THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE FOR CHEAP LABOR?
Let Paul Fong know!
AB1288: Devious Legislature Stopping Employer E-Verify of Illegals while pretending to be opposed to illegals (all dems speak out of both sides of their fat mouths!)
As usual the pro-illegal alien Democrats up in Sacramento are working to maintain open borders.. while pretending to be against the growing illegal immigrant invasion that's overwhelming CA.
AB1288.. which stops E-Verify
It's authored by Assemblyman Paul Fong, Cupertino
The Democrat controlled State Legislature is busy stopping recently hard fought for illegal immigrant employee detection controls... such as the currently required use by employers of the effective (& popular!) employee E-Verify system.
The Democrats, along with the cheap labor Republicans, are permitting CA to continue being flooded with millions of illegals... whom are now bankrupting our state.
http://capwiz.com/caps/issues/alert/?alertid=13738741
Visit:
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
http://www.AmericanPatrol.com
http://www.NumbersUSA.com
http://www.Vdare.com
http://www.TheTerryAndersonShow.com
Terry's 1hr radio show is on Sun at 9pm on powerful KDWN 720AM out of Las Vegas.. which is just on the left edge of 740KCBS, or you can hear his show live on his website link above.
TED HILTON Proposition to end BIRTHING STATE FOR ILLEGALS
Stop anchor baby benefits /300,000 a year born in US
Most countries don’t even allow that many LEGAL immigrants per year into their country...
A proposition to stop automatic benefits to children of illegals (anchor babies) is coming soon.
The cost to California is 4 to 6 billion a year. This prop is not driven by racism, but by citizen-ism... to prevent people from taking dollars from legal taxpayers to give to another illegal group of non-citizen parents....
It will also help to prevent illegals crossing our border and having a baby for this purpose (and then later complaining about unfair/exploitation) This also will help stop Birth-Tourism.
Illegal immigration will never stop, as long our laws stay the same, are not enforced, and we act like idiots and give our hard earned taxes, freedoms and citizen rights away.
300,000 illegal babies a year are born here.
97 percent of anchor baby births are paid for by US taxpayers - your money that you need for your own kids.
Ted Hilton with the TAXPAYER REVOLUTION has launched a June 2010 ballot initiative to help solve California's budget deficit crisis. The laws address the problems of "birth tourism," welfare dependency and other benefits used by those here unlawfully which are draining U.S. citizens' tax dollars. Mail all petitions to POB 9985, San Diego, CA 92169.
go to this link to DOWNLOAD the petiton for the June 2010 Ballot initiative:
http://www.taxpayerrevolution.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8&Itemid=20
thank you.
Most countries don’t even allow that many LEGAL immigrants per year into their country...
A proposition to stop automatic benefits to children of illegals (anchor babies) is coming soon.
The cost to California is 4 to 6 billion a year. This prop is not driven by racism, but by citizen-ism... to prevent people from taking dollars from legal taxpayers to give to another illegal group of non-citizen parents....
It will also help to prevent illegals crossing our border and having a baby for this purpose (and then later complaining about unfair/exploitation) This also will help stop Birth-Tourism.
Illegal immigration will never stop, as long our laws stay the same, are not enforced, and we act like idiots and give our hard earned taxes, freedoms and citizen rights away.
300,000 illegal babies a year are born here.
97 percent of anchor baby births are paid for by US taxpayers - your money that you need for your own kids.
Ted Hilton with the TAXPAYER REVOLUTION has launched a June 2010 ballot initiative to help solve California's budget deficit crisis. The laws address the problems of "birth tourism," welfare dependency and other benefits used by those here unlawfully which are draining U.S. citizens' tax dollars. Mail all petitions to POB 9985, San Diego, CA 92169.
go to this link to DOWNLOAD the petiton for the June 2010 Ballot initiative:
http://www.taxpayerrevolution.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8&Itemid=20
thank you.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
CA CONTENDER FOR GOV, Gavin Newsom IS A HISPANDERER for the ILLEGAL'S VOTES
HISPANDERING NEWSOM selling us out for the ILLEGALS’ ILLEGAL VOTES!
Newsom taps SoCal Latino powerhouse Padilla for state chair
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is aiming big for Southern California and Latino voters in his 2010 gubernatorial run -- underscored by his announcement today of his campaign's new state chair, State Senator Alex Padilla.
With Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa deciding not to make a 2010 run, Padilla, 36, ranks as one of the Latino community's biggest stars in California. He ran for Los Angeles City Council at the age of 26 and served more than 7 years on the Los Angeles City Council -- including more than four as council president.
And that's not all he brings to the campaign of the Democratic San Francisco mayor. Padilla's got a "very tight" relationship with labor, is seen as a rising star in the party -- the first Latino to be president of the League of California Cities -- and has a strong political organization in the voter-rich San Fernando Valley, all big advantages to Team Newsom.
Just in time for Newsom's big town hall meeting tonight at Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley.
And he'll need that help if they want to compete with his likely competition, state Attorney General Jerry Brown, the former two term governor. Public and private polls show that while the San Francisco mayor is equally well known as Brown in Northern California, Brown has the advantage in the Southland.
No wonder: he made his political debut in 1969, just around the time Newsom was born, on the Los Angeles Community College Board.
So Job One for Newsom: building cred and name recognition in that huge and crucial media market -- part of the reason he is taking his town hall road shows to the Southern part of the state all this month and next.
And, of course, Padilla's support is also crucial with regard to Newsom's Latino vote challenge; Brown has been widely seen as having the advantage with Latino voters and likely to pick up the lion's share of Villaraigosa's ethnic supporters. That's because with decades in state politics, the AG is not shy about reminding voters of his work with legendary farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, and noting his work as governor on issues like education and environment.
But the naming of a big state name like Padilla to lead the charge for Newsom also underscores a new challenge for Brown: seems we're getting to the point in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign where crucial endorsements are emerging.
So will the former governor have to finally declare whether in 2010 he's running for AG -- or governor -- before he can announce his own big backers?
Stay tuned.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=43641#ixzz0LQsBULPK
Newsom taps SoCal Latino powerhouse Padilla for state chair
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is aiming big for Southern California and Latino voters in his 2010 gubernatorial run -- underscored by his announcement today of his campaign's new state chair, State Senator Alex Padilla.
With Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa deciding not to make a 2010 run, Padilla, 36, ranks as one of the Latino community's biggest stars in California. He ran for Los Angeles City Council at the age of 26 and served more than 7 years on the Los Angeles City Council -- including more than four as council president.
And that's not all he brings to the campaign of the Democratic San Francisco mayor. Padilla's got a "very tight" relationship with labor, is seen as a rising star in the party -- the first Latino to be president of the League of California Cities -- and has a strong political organization in the voter-rich San Fernando Valley, all big advantages to Team Newsom.
Just in time for Newsom's big town hall meeting tonight at Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley.
And he'll need that help if they want to compete with his likely competition, state Attorney General Jerry Brown, the former two term governor. Public and private polls show that while the San Francisco mayor is equally well known as Brown in Northern California, Brown has the advantage in the Southland.
No wonder: he made his political debut in 1969, just around the time Newsom was born, on the Los Angeles Community College Board.
So Job One for Newsom: building cred and name recognition in that huge and crucial media market -- part of the reason he is taking his town hall road shows to the Southern part of the state all this month and next.
And, of course, Padilla's support is also crucial with regard to Newsom's Latino vote challenge; Brown has been widely seen as having the advantage with Latino voters and likely to pick up the lion's share of Villaraigosa's ethnic supporters. That's because with decades in state politics, the AG is not shy about reminding voters of his work with legendary farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, and noting his work as governor on issues like education and environment.
But the naming of a big state name like Padilla to lead the charge for Newsom also underscores a new challenge for Brown: seems we're getting to the point in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign where crucial endorsements are emerging.
So will the former governor have to finally declare whether in 2010 he's running for AG -- or governor -- before he can announce his own big backers?
Stay tuned.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=43641#ixzz0LQsBULPK
FEINSTEIN says "American are stupid" NOT TO WANT OPEN BORDERS She hires illegals!
Major LA RAZA ENDORSED POLITICIANS are FEINSTEIN, who has long illegally hired illegals at her SF hotel.
*
Tony Phyrillas
Another liberal, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, said the American people are too stupid to understand the opening the nation's borders to anyone who wants to come in is good for them. Feinstein said amnesty opponents "don't understand the bill." Feinstein urged her colleagues to vote for cloture because "if we miss this opportunity, there is not likely to be another opportunity in the next few years to fix this."
*
Tony Phyrillas
Another liberal, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, said the American people are too stupid to understand the opening the nation's borders to anyone who wants to come in is good for them. Feinstein said amnesty opponents "don't understand the bill." Feinstein urged her colleagues to vote for cloture because "if we miss this opportunity, there is not likely to be another opportunity in the next few years to fix this."
ILLEGALS COST CALIFORNIA 10 BILLION and that was figured in 2004!
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION COSTS CALIFORNIA OVER TEN BILLION ANNUALLY
State's "cheap labor" costs average household $1,183 a year
By Robert Longley, About.com
Dateline: December, 2004
In hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.
Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals.
"California's addiction to 'cheap' illegal alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state's shrinking middle class tax base," stated Dan Stein, President of FAIR. "Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become."
The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Californians focuses on three specific program areas because those were the costs examined by researchers from the Urban Institute in 1994. Looking at the costs of education, health care and incarceration for illegal aliens in 1994, the Urban Institute estimated that California was subsidizing illegal immigrants to the tune of about $1.1 billion. The enormous rise in the costs of illegal immigrants over the intervening ten years is due to the rapid growth in illegal residents. It is reasonable to expect those costs to continue to soar if action is not taken to turn the tide.
"Nineteen ninety-four was the same year that California voters rebelled and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to limit liability for mass illegal immigration. Since then, state and local governments have blatantly ignored the wishes of the voters and continued to shell out publicly financed benefits on illegal aliens," said Stein. "Predictably, the costs of illegal immigration have grown geometrically, while the state has spiraled into a fiscal crisis that has brought it near bankruptcy.
"Nothing could more starkly illustrate the very high costs of ‘cheap labor' than California's current situation," continued Stein. "A small number of powerful interests in the state reap the benefits, while the average native-born family in California gets handed a nearly $1,200 a year bill."
The Federation for American Immigration Reform is a nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization advocating immigration policy reforms that would tighten border security and prevent illegal immigration, while reducing legal immigration levels from about 1.1 million persons per year to 300,000 per year.
State's "cheap labor" costs average household $1,183 a year
By Robert Longley, About.com
Dateline: December, 2004
In hosting America's largest population of illegal immigrants, California bears a huge cost to provide basic human services for this fast growing, low-income segment of its population. A new study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) examines the costs of education, health care and incarceration of illegal aliens, and concludes that the costs to Californians is $10.5 billion per year.
Among the key finding of the report are that the state's already struggling K-12 education system spends approximately $7.7 billion a year to school the children of illegal aliens who now constitute 15 percent of the student body. Another $1.4 billion of the taxpayers' money goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens and their families, the same amount that is spent incarcerating illegal aliens criminals.
"California's addiction to 'cheap' illegal alien labor is bankrupting the state and posing enormous burdens on the state's shrinking middle class tax base," stated Dan Stein, President of FAIR. "Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become."
The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Californians focuses on three specific program areas because those were the costs examined by researchers from the Urban Institute in 1994. Looking at the costs of education, health care and incarceration for illegal aliens in 1994, the Urban Institute estimated that California was subsidizing illegal immigrants to the tune of about $1.1 billion. The enormous rise in the costs of illegal immigrants over the intervening ten years is due to the rapid growth in illegal residents. It is reasonable to expect those costs to continue to soar if action is not taken to turn the tide.
"Nineteen ninety-four was the same year that California voters rebelled and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to limit liability for mass illegal immigration. Since then, state and local governments have blatantly ignored the wishes of the voters and continued to shell out publicly financed benefits on illegal aliens," said Stein. "Predictably, the costs of illegal immigration have grown geometrically, while the state has spiraled into a fiscal crisis that has brought it near bankruptcy.
"Nothing could more starkly illustrate the very high costs of ‘cheap labor' than California's current situation," continued Stein. "A small number of powerful interests in the state reap the benefits, while the average native-born family in California gets handed a nearly $1,200 a year bill."
The Federation for American Immigration Reform is a nonprofit, public-interest, membership organization advocating immigration policy reforms that would tighten border security and prevent illegal immigration, while reducing legal immigration levels from about 1.1 million persons per year to 300,000 per year.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
SFGATE.com - UNEMPLOYMENT TO BE HIGH FOR YEARS.... we just need more ILLEGALS then!
UNEMPLOYMENT TO REMAIN HIGH.... hardly news to most Americans. So, explain to me why these lifer-politicians, like Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi, Waxman, Reid, and now Obama want to keep giving our jobs away?
In Los Angeles 47% of those employed are ILLEGALS. The invasion, by invitation of these (aforementioned) LA RAZA endorsed politicians, has caused the destruction of the American middle-class, and depressed wages for AMERICAN workers $200 - $300 BILLION PER YEAR.... but that’s not all! It’s the American middle class that ends up paying the taxes to support the MEXICAN WELFARE STATE! In Los Angeles ILLEGALS, collect $40 MILLION PER MONTH, YES, MONTH in welfare!
Back to Article
Fed: unemployment will top 10 percent this year
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
(07-15) 13:37 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
The Federal Reserve expects the economy this year will sink at a slower pace than it previously thought, but that unemployment will top 10 percent and remain high for the next few years, according to a new forecast released Wednesday.
The Fed now predicts the economy will shrink between 1 and 1.5 percent this year, an improvement from its old forecast issued in May. At that time, the Fed projected the economy would contract between 1.3 and 2 percent.
The upgrade — which helped major stock indicators jump about 3 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average to add 257 points — comes from the expectation that the economy's downhill slide in the first half of 2009 wasn't as bad as previously thought. The Fed said the economy should start growing again in the second half of this year, although the pace is likely to be plodding.
In fact, most Fed policymakers said it could take "five or six years" for the economy and the labor market to get back on a path of full health in the long term. And, most officials saw "the economy as still quite weak and vulnerable to further adverse shocks."
Against that backdrop, the Fed's forecast for unemployment this year worsened. The central bank predicted the jobless rate could rise as high as 10.1 percent, compared with the previous forecast of 9.6 percent.
The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent in June, a 26-year high.
The predictions are based on what the Fed calls its "central tendency," which exclude the three highest and three lowest forecasts made by Fed officials. The central bank also gives a range of all the forecasts. That range showed that some officials expect the jobless rate could rise as high as 10.5 percent this year, and 10.6 percent in 2010. The post-World War II high was 10.8 percent at the end of 1982, when the country had suffered through a severe recession. The jobless rate averaged 5.8 percent last year.
For 2010, the Fed predicted the economy would grow between 2.1 and 3.3 percent. That's a slight upgrade from its old forecast of growth between 2 and 3 percent.
The Fed's estimate is based on comparing projected activity in the fourth quarter of one year to the same period a year earlier. The economy dipped 0.8 percent in 2008 by that measure.
Still, it would mark a slow recovery and that will keep unemployment elevated well into 2011, the Fed said. Companies won't be in any mood to ramp up hiring until they are certain that any recovery has staying power. Some Fed officials predicted the jobless rate could hover in the 8 percent range or as high as 9.2 percent in 2011.
To help lift the country out of recession, the Fed has slashed interest rates to a record low near zero. In March, the Fed launched a $1.2 trillion effort to drive down interest rates to revive lending and get Americans to spend more freely. Those actions — along with President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package of tax cuts and increased government spending — should help the economy return to growth in the second half of this year.
Fed officials at their June meeting observed "the economic contraction was slowing and that the decline in activity could cease before long." Consumer spending appeared to have stabilized, new-home sales were flattening out and declines in capital spending did not look as severe as they had at the beginning of the year.
At the June meeting, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues pledged to hold its key bank lending rate near zero for an extended period to help brace the economy. Many analysts believe the Fed will leave rates at record lows through the rest of this year.
The Fed last month also decided against expanding its $1.2 trillion program of buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities to drive down rates on mortgages and other consumer debt.
Part of the reason the Fed stayed the course was out of fear that expanding the programs could stir up investor fears that the central bank's aggressive actions could spur inflation later on, documents of the closed-door June meeting indicated. In addition, "it seemed that economic activity was in the process of leveling out."
On the inflation front, Fed policymakers did bump up their forecasts for this year and next. The Fed expects inflation to rise between 1 and 1.4 percent in 2009, reflecting the influence of higher oil and commodity prices. The old forecast called for a gain of between 0.6 and 0.9 percent this year.
Even with the projected pickup, the Fed believes inflation "would remain subdued for some time" and be lower than the 1.9 percent increase logged in 2008. The sluggish recovery, idle plants, a weak employment market and cautious consumers will restrain companies from jacking up prices.
Next year, inflation should rise between 1.2 and 1.8 percent, the Fed said. That's up from the old forecast of between a 1 and 1.6 percent gain.
Several Fed participants, though, worried that investors and consumers might start to expect that prices will march higher if the central bank's aggressive steps to stimulate the economy "were not unwound in a timely fashion as the economy recovers."
In Los Angeles 47% of those employed are ILLEGALS. The invasion, by invitation of these (aforementioned) LA RAZA endorsed politicians, has caused the destruction of the American middle-class, and depressed wages for AMERICAN workers $200 - $300 BILLION PER YEAR.... but that’s not all! It’s the American middle class that ends up paying the taxes to support the MEXICAN WELFARE STATE! In Los Angeles ILLEGALS, collect $40 MILLION PER MONTH, YES, MONTH in welfare!
Back to Article
Fed: unemployment will top 10 percent this year
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
(07-15) 13:37 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
The Federal Reserve expects the economy this year will sink at a slower pace than it previously thought, but that unemployment will top 10 percent and remain high for the next few years, according to a new forecast released Wednesday.
The Fed now predicts the economy will shrink between 1 and 1.5 percent this year, an improvement from its old forecast issued in May. At that time, the Fed projected the economy would contract between 1.3 and 2 percent.
The upgrade — which helped major stock indicators jump about 3 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average to add 257 points — comes from the expectation that the economy's downhill slide in the first half of 2009 wasn't as bad as previously thought. The Fed said the economy should start growing again in the second half of this year, although the pace is likely to be plodding.
In fact, most Fed policymakers said it could take "five or six years" for the economy and the labor market to get back on a path of full health in the long term. And, most officials saw "the economy as still quite weak and vulnerable to further adverse shocks."
Against that backdrop, the Fed's forecast for unemployment this year worsened. The central bank predicted the jobless rate could rise as high as 10.1 percent, compared with the previous forecast of 9.6 percent.
The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent in June, a 26-year high.
The predictions are based on what the Fed calls its "central tendency," which exclude the three highest and three lowest forecasts made by Fed officials. The central bank also gives a range of all the forecasts. That range showed that some officials expect the jobless rate could rise as high as 10.5 percent this year, and 10.6 percent in 2010. The post-World War II high was 10.8 percent at the end of 1982, when the country had suffered through a severe recession. The jobless rate averaged 5.8 percent last year.
For 2010, the Fed predicted the economy would grow between 2.1 and 3.3 percent. That's a slight upgrade from its old forecast of growth between 2 and 3 percent.
The Fed's estimate is based on comparing projected activity in the fourth quarter of one year to the same period a year earlier. The economy dipped 0.8 percent in 2008 by that measure.
Still, it would mark a slow recovery and that will keep unemployment elevated well into 2011, the Fed said. Companies won't be in any mood to ramp up hiring until they are certain that any recovery has staying power. Some Fed officials predicted the jobless rate could hover in the 8 percent range or as high as 9.2 percent in 2011.
To help lift the country out of recession, the Fed has slashed interest rates to a record low near zero. In March, the Fed launched a $1.2 trillion effort to drive down interest rates to revive lending and get Americans to spend more freely. Those actions — along with President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus package of tax cuts and increased government spending — should help the economy return to growth in the second half of this year.
Fed officials at their June meeting observed "the economic contraction was slowing and that the decline in activity could cease before long." Consumer spending appeared to have stabilized, new-home sales were flattening out and declines in capital spending did not look as severe as they had at the beginning of the year.
At the June meeting, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues pledged to hold its key bank lending rate near zero for an extended period to help brace the economy. Many analysts believe the Fed will leave rates at record lows through the rest of this year.
The Fed last month also decided against expanding its $1.2 trillion program of buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities to drive down rates on mortgages and other consumer debt.
Part of the reason the Fed stayed the course was out of fear that expanding the programs could stir up investor fears that the central bank's aggressive actions could spur inflation later on, documents of the closed-door June meeting indicated. In addition, "it seemed that economic activity was in the process of leveling out."
On the inflation front, Fed policymakers did bump up their forecasts for this year and next. The Fed expects inflation to rise between 1 and 1.4 percent in 2009, reflecting the influence of higher oil and commodity prices. The old forecast called for a gain of between 0.6 and 0.9 percent this year.
Even with the projected pickup, the Fed believes inflation "would remain subdued for some time" and be lower than the 1.9 percent increase logged in 2008. The sluggish recovery, idle plants, a weak employment market and cautious consumers will restrain companies from jacking up prices.
Next year, inflation should rise between 1.2 and 1.8 percent, the Fed said. That's up from the old forecast of between a 1 and 1.6 percent gain.
Several Fed participants, though, worried that investors and consumers might start to expect that prices will march higher if the central bank's aggressive steps to stimulate the economy "were not unwound in a timely fashion as the economy recovers."
A SMALL GLIMPSE AT CALIFORNIA under MEX OCCUPATION
CALIFORNIA
• 82% of Californians believe that the projected population growth during the next 20 years will make the state a less desirable place to live. Over 80% of California’s growth is due to immigration.
• 50% of California voters oppose granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, versus 34% who favor it.
35% of all people in prisons and jails are ILLEGALS FROM MEXICO.
The county of Los Angeles spends millions jail housing illegals who are actively engaged in drug trafficking.
2,000 CALIFORNIANS have been murdered by illegals who fled back over the border to avoid prosecution. The Narco-mex government refused to return them.
Gang violence cost millions.
The City of Compton has more murders due to Mexican gangs. than all the European Union together.
Illegals actively DRIVE WITHOUT LICENSE, CONTRACT WITHOUT LICENSE.
No matter how long a Mexican illegal has been in this country, few leave the tax-free underground economy.
Los Angeles loses 2 BILLION in tax revenue from the Mexican illegal economy.
• 82% of Californians believe that the projected population growth during the next 20 years will make the state a less desirable place to live. Over 80% of California’s growth is due to immigration.
• 50% of California voters oppose granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, versus 34% who favor it.
35% of all people in prisons and jails are ILLEGALS FROM MEXICO.
The county of Los Angeles spends millions jail housing illegals who are actively engaged in drug trafficking.
2,000 CALIFORNIANS have been murdered by illegals who fled back over the border to avoid prosecution. The Narco-mex government refused to return them.
Gang violence cost millions.
The City of Compton has more murders due to Mexican gangs. than all the European Union together.
Illegals actively DRIVE WITHOUT LICENSE, CONTRACT WITHOUT LICENSE.
No matter how long a Mexican illegal has been in this country, few leave the tax-free underground economy.
Los Angeles loses 2 BILLION in tax revenue from the Mexican illegal economy.
ILLEGALS MURDERING AMERICANS driving drunk.
Every day there are 12 Americans or more murdered by ILLEGALS. Many are by ILLEGALS driving without license, insurance or properly licensed vehicles. Many ILLEGALS put their car registration in the name of a "nominee" so if they're pulled over the vehicl won't be impounded.
Many politicians, like HILLARY CLINTON, long selling us out for the ILLEGALS' VOTES, have pushed for driver's license. This is not out of concern about the murder rates of ILLEGALS DRIVING DRUNK, Clinton, and most dems, simply want to hand over DE FACTO citizenship, so the ILLEGAL can registere to vote for the biggest HISPANDERING politicans selling us out for more illegals on behalf of their corporate LA RAZA donors bent on DEPRESSING WAGES.
In California there have been more than 2,000 Americans murdered by ILLEGALS that fled back over the border to Mexico to avoid prosecution.
Illegal aliens have turned our roads into killing fields
July 12, 7:18 AM · Dave Gibson - Norfolk Crime Examiner
On June 8, 2009 Lori Donohue and her daughter Kayla were walking through the parking lot at the Seven Stars School of Performing Arts, in Brewster, NY where 8-year-old Kayla had just finished a dance class, when they were killed by a drunk-driving illegal alien.
Guatemalan national Zacaria Conces-Garcia, 35 who had a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit, lost control of his Ford F-350 pick-up truck and came speeding through the parking lot, hitting both Lori and Kayla.
Little Kayla died at the scene, while her mother died later at Westchester Medical center.
Conces-Garica was charged with vehicular homicide.
Lori and Kayla were buried together in the same casket. Andrew Guzi, funeral director at Beecher Funeral Home said: "The family said they wanted Kayla to be wrapped in her mother's arms."
Though the senseless loss of a little girl is a crushing tragedy, this story is one told all too often in this country.
On September 10, 2008, the parents of 3-year-old Marten Kudlis buried their son at Fairmount Cemetery, after he was killed while waiting for his ice cream in a Denver Baskin and Robbins.
An SUV speeding through the intersection of Havana and Mississippi, with Guatemalan national Francis Hernandez at the wheel, slammed into a pickup truck, which was then pushed into the ice cream shop´s window. The toddler was sitting at a table in front of that window, and was sent flying as the truck came crashing through it.
After the crash, Hernandez jumped from his Chevy Suburban and fled the scene. He was later apprehended without incident.
Marten was taken to the hospital, but died a short time later due to massive internal injuries.
The two women in the pickup truck struck by Hernandez were Patricia Guntharp, 49, and Debra Serecky, 51. They were both pronounced dead at the scene.
KMGH of Denver covered the child´s funeral and reported that the first song heard during the service was Eric Clapton´s "Tears in Heaven."
In a heart wrenching display of grief and anger, Marten´s mother Marat Kudlis shouted: "That bastard!" referring to the illegal alien who killed her son. Between the tears, Marten´s father cried out: "I really loved him."
The rabbi conducting the service told the heartbroken family and friends: "This burden feels like more than we can bear because it is so sudden. It´s a parent´s worst nightmare. It does not seem fair and it is not fair to lose someone so young."
A teddy bear was placed in the tiny open casket which held Marten´s body.
Following the funeral, many of the mourners returned to the crash site, which became a makeshift memorial, filled with flowers, stuffed animals, and cards with expressions of sympathy and support for the Kudlis family.
One of those mourners, Duane Stokes, told a KMGH reporter: "I helped pull Marten out of the building. I was right there with him. He squeezed my hand. I held his hand until he passed on. My fiance and I were just saying a prayer to Marten and just getting one last glimpse of everything around here. Just to say goodbye to him."
Marten´s death hit the community hard and his funeral was attended by many people who never met him, but have been saddened and angered by his senseless death.
Hernandez who has no less than 12 aliases and two dates of birth, has been arrested 19 times since 2003. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation also confirmed that Hernandez had been arrested by nine different police departments. Despite his lengthy arrest record and illegal status in this country, Hernandez has never been deported nor have deportation proceedings ever been started against him.
The police report shows that Hernandez ran from the scene and phoned his girlfriend, Brenda Aleman, asking her to come pick him up at a local Hooter´s restaurant.
In June 2008, a six year-old girl was hit and killed while crossing the street in a suburb of Milwaukee. The man behind the wheel was previously-deported Mexican national Jose Rodriguez.
As little Mackenzie Maddox and her mother crossed the street at S. 84th St. and W. Cleveland Ave. in West Allis, WI, the car driven by Rodriguez came speeding through the intersection, striking both the little girl and her mother Andrea. Mackenzie died at the scene and her mother was taken to Froedtert Hospital, her mother survived her injuries..
Rodriguez, worked for an Oak Creek waterproofing business.
Only four months before the homicide, Rodriguez who had four prior convictions including a DUI, was identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as being in the country illegally and deported to Mexico.
In February 2008, four children were killed in Cottonwood, Minnesota, after their bus was hit by an illegal alien who ran a stop sign.
On a gloomy Tuesday morning, Mexican national Alianiss Nunez Morales went sailing past a stop sign on County Road 24, and right into a school bus carrying 28 Lakeview School students. The bus flipped over on its side, injuring several children and killing four.
The children who were killed in the crash were: Emilee Olson, 9; Hunter Javens, 9; Jesse Javens, 13; and Reed Stevens, 12. Four other children were hospitalized at Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Another child was transported to the Mayo Clinic.
Morales was arrested and charged with four counts of vehicular homicide as well as several misdemeanors. Apparently, she was not even licensed to drive in Mexico. Lt. Mark Peterson of the Minnesota State Patrol told reporters: "She (Morales) doesn't have a drivers' license anywhere that we're aware of."
Of course, that was not Morales' first brush with the law. In 2006 she pleaded guilty in a Chippewa County court to driving without a license.
Morales told police that she was on her way to work when she caused the fatal wreck. Despite her illegal status, she was employed by Norcraft Cabinetry in Eagan, Minn. The company's website (norcraftcompanies.com) displays a section entitled "Code of Business Ethics and Conduct." Within that section, the following statement is made: "All employees must respect and obey the laws of the cities, states, and countries in which we operate."
That statement seems more than a bit hypocritical coming from a company which hires illegal aliens!
In April 2007, in Virginia Beach, Va., a Mexican national named Alfredo Ramos slammed into the rear of a vehicle in which Allison Kuhnhardt and Tessa Tranchant were stopped while waiting at a traffic light. Ramos, 22 was traveling at a high rate of speed and was drunk at the time (he blew a .14 BAC). The two high school students had to be cut from their crumpled car and both later died after being taken to the hospital. Ramos suffered only a busted lip.
Though an illegal alien, Alfredo Ramos had been living in Virginia Beach for quite a while and worked at local a Mexican restaurant known as Mi Casita. Ramos had been previously convicted of three separate charges of public intoxication, identity theft, and even a DUI, but continued to live in the area. He speaks only Spanish and required an interpreter at all of his court proceedings.
The girls which Ramos killed were ages 16 and 17. Tessa Tranchant's brother Dylan had only been home from Iraq for two weeks, when his sister was killed. Dylan was tasked with identifying his little sister's body. The case gained national fame thanks to the reporting of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.
The arrogance displayed by the illegal alien in this latest incident was the same attitude given by Ramos last year. In addition to disregard for our laws, disregard for human life seems to be a constant theme among many illegal aliens, those who hire them, and the politicians who allow them to stay here.
In 2006, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) released the findings of a study which determined that 4,745 Americans are killed annually by drunk driving illegal aliens. Most consider that to be a very conservative estimate. Currently, there are no official government statistics on the number of fatal accidents caused by illegal aliens.
*Reporter’s note: How many more of our children will have to be killed so that greedy businesses can enjoy the use of cheap labor? Ours is no longer a nation of laws. We have become a banana republic fueled by the labor of Third World invaders.
Until our elected representatives develop the courage to defend our border and actually carry-out the oath they recite before taking office…May the memories of these slain children haunt their dreams.
Many politicians, like HILLARY CLINTON, long selling us out for the ILLEGALS' VOTES, have pushed for driver's license. This is not out of concern about the murder rates of ILLEGALS DRIVING DRUNK, Clinton, and most dems, simply want to hand over DE FACTO citizenship, so the ILLEGAL can registere to vote for the biggest HISPANDERING politicans selling us out for more illegals on behalf of their corporate LA RAZA donors bent on DEPRESSING WAGES.
In California there have been more than 2,000 Americans murdered by ILLEGALS that fled back over the border to Mexico to avoid prosecution.
Illegal aliens have turned our roads into killing fields
July 12, 7:18 AM · Dave Gibson - Norfolk Crime Examiner
On June 8, 2009 Lori Donohue and her daughter Kayla were walking through the parking lot at the Seven Stars School of Performing Arts, in Brewster, NY where 8-year-old Kayla had just finished a dance class, when they were killed by a drunk-driving illegal alien.
Guatemalan national Zacaria Conces-Garcia, 35 who had a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit, lost control of his Ford F-350 pick-up truck and came speeding through the parking lot, hitting both Lori and Kayla.
Little Kayla died at the scene, while her mother died later at Westchester Medical center.
Conces-Garica was charged with vehicular homicide.
Lori and Kayla were buried together in the same casket. Andrew Guzi, funeral director at Beecher Funeral Home said: "The family said they wanted Kayla to be wrapped in her mother's arms."
Though the senseless loss of a little girl is a crushing tragedy, this story is one told all too often in this country.
On September 10, 2008, the parents of 3-year-old Marten Kudlis buried their son at Fairmount Cemetery, after he was killed while waiting for his ice cream in a Denver Baskin and Robbins.
An SUV speeding through the intersection of Havana and Mississippi, with Guatemalan national Francis Hernandez at the wheel, slammed into a pickup truck, which was then pushed into the ice cream shop´s window. The toddler was sitting at a table in front of that window, and was sent flying as the truck came crashing through it.
After the crash, Hernandez jumped from his Chevy Suburban and fled the scene. He was later apprehended without incident.
Marten was taken to the hospital, but died a short time later due to massive internal injuries.
The two women in the pickup truck struck by Hernandez were Patricia Guntharp, 49, and Debra Serecky, 51. They were both pronounced dead at the scene.
KMGH of Denver covered the child´s funeral and reported that the first song heard during the service was Eric Clapton´s "Tears in Heaven."
In a heart wrenching display of grief and anger, Marten´s mother Marat Kudlis shouted: "That bastard!" referring to the illegal alien who killed her son. Between the tears, Marten´s father cried out: "I really loved him."
The rabbi conducting the service told the heartbroken family and friends: "This burden feels like more than we can bear because it is so sudden. It´s a parent´s worst nightmare. It does not seem fair and it is not fair to lose someone so young."
A teddy bear was placed in the tiny open casket which held Marten´s body.
Following the funeral, many of the mourners returned to the crash site, which became a makeshift memorial, filled with flowers, stuffed animals, and cards with expressions of sympathy and support for the Kudlis family.
One of those mourners, Duane Stokes, told a KMGH reporter: "I helped pull Marten out of the building. I was right there with him. He squeezed my hand. I held his hand until he passed on. My fiance and I were just saying a prayer to Marten and just getting one last glimpse of everything around here. Just to say goodbye to him."
Marten´s death hit the community hard and his funeral was attended by many people who never met him, but have been saddened and angered by his senseless death.
Hernandez who has no less than 12 aliases and two dates of birth, has been arrested 19 times since 2003. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation also confirmed that Hernandez had been arrested by nine different police departments. Despite his lengthy arrest record and illegal status in this country, Hernandez has never been deported nor have deportation proceedings ever been started against him.
The police report shows that Hernandez ran from the scene and phoned his girlfriend, Brenda Aleman, asking her to come pick him up at a local Hooter´s restaurant.
In June 2008, a six year-old girl was hit and killed while crossing the street in a suburb of Milwaukee. The man behind the wheel was previously-deported Mexican national Jose Rodriguez.
As little Mackenzie Maddox and her mother crossed the street at S. 84th St. and W. Cleveland Ave. in West Allis, WI, the car driven by Rodriguez came speeding through the intersection, striking both the little girl and her mother Andrea. Mackenzie died at the scene and her mother was taken to Froedtert Hospital, her mother survived her injuries..
Rodriguez, worked for an Oak Creek waterproofing business.
Only four months before the homicide, Rodriguez who had four prior convictions including a DUI, was identified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as being in the country illegally and deported to Mexico.
In February 2008, four children were killed in Cottonwood, Minnesota, after their bus was hit by an illegal alien who ran a stop sign.
On a gloomy Tuesday morning, Mexican national Alianiss Nunez Morales went sailing past a stop sign on County Road 24, and right into a school bus carrying 28 Lakeview School students. The bus flipped over on its side, injuring several children and killing four.
The children who were killed in the crash were: Emilee Olson, 9; Hunter Javens, 9; Jesse Javens, 13; and Reed Stevens, 12. Four other children were hospitalized at Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Another child was transported to the Mayo Clinic.
Morales was arrested and charged with four counts of vehicular homicide as well as several misdemeanors. Apparently, she was not even licensed to drive in Mexico. Lt. Mark Peterson of the Minnesota State Patrol told reporters: "She (Morales) doesn't have a drivers' license anywhere that we're aware of."
Of course, that was not Morales' first brush with the law. In 2006 she pleaded guilty in a Chippewa County court to driving without a license.
Morales told police that she was on her way to work when she caused the fatal wreck. Despite her illegal status, she was employed by Norcraft Cabinetry in Eagan, Minn. The company's website (norcraftcompanies.com) displays a section entitled "Code of Business Ethics and Conduct." Within that section, the following statement is made: "All employees must respect and obey the laws of the cities, states, and countries in which we operate."
That statement seems more than a bit hypocritical coming from a company which hires illegal aliens!
In April 2007, in Virginia Beach, Va., a Mexican national named Alfredo Ramos slammed into the rear of a vehicle in which Allison Kuhnhardt and Tessa Tranchant were stopped while waiting at a traffic light. Ramos, 22 was traveling at a high rate of speed and was drunk at the time (he blew a .14 BAC). The two high school students had to be cut from their crumpled car and both later died after being taken to the hospital. Ramos suffered only a busted lip.
Though an illegal alien, Alfredo Ramos had been living in Virginia Beach for quite a while and worked at local a Mexican restaurant known as Mi Casita. Ramos had been previously convicted of three separate charges of public intoxication, identity theft, and even a DUI, but continued to live in the area. He speaks only Spanish and required an interpreter at all of his court proceedings.
The girls which Ramos killed were ages 16 and 17. Tessa Tranchant's brother Dylan had only been home from Iraq for two weeks, when his sister was killed. Dylan was tasked with identifying his little sister's body. The case gained national fame thanks to the reporting of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly.
The arrogance displayed by the illegal alien in this latest incident was the same attitude given by Ramos last year. In addition to disregard for our laws, disregard for human life seems to be a constant theme among many illegal aliens, those who hire them, and the politicians who allow them to stay here.
In 2006, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) released the findings of a study which determined that 4,745 Americans are killed annually by drunk driving illegal aliens. Most consider that to be a very conservative estimate. Currently, there are no official government statistics on the number of fatal accidents caused by illegal aliens.
*Reporter’s note: How many more of our children will have to be killed so that greedy businesses can enjoy the use of cheap labor? Ours is no longer a nation of laws. We have become a banana republic fueled by the labor of Third World invaders.
Until our elected representatives develop the courage to defend our border and actually carry-out the oath they recite before taking office…May the memories of these slain children haunt their dreams.
WASHINGTON POST Mex Agents Murdered by the dozens WHY OPEN BORDERS THEN?
12 Federal Agents Are Slain in Mexico
Toll Marks Sharp Escalation in Drug War
By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
NUEVO CASAS GRANDES, Mexico, July 14 -- Mexican authorities said Tuesday that a super-violent drug cartel called La Familia was responsible for torturing and killing 12 federal agents whose bodies were found dumped alongside a mountain road in the western state of Michoacan late Monday.
The agents, who included one woman, had been investigating organized crime in Michoacan, where gunmen launched a series of highly coordinated commando attacks against police officers and soldiers over the weekend.
The abduction, torture and execution of such a large group of federal agents marks a steep escalation in President Felipe Calderón's war with the drug cartels. Though drug mafias often clash with local police officials they fail to intimidate or corrupt, a direct counterattack against federal forces is almost unheard-of. The 12 agents represent the highest one-day death toll for federal forces in the three-year-old drug war.
Placed beside the corpses of the agents, who were off-duty when they were abducted, was a sign threatening police, Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior federal security official, said at a news conference.
Federal officials say they think the attacks by La Familia, a mini-cartel that announced its presence two years ago by rolling five decapitated heads into a dance hall, were carried out in retaliation for the capture of one of the group's leaders.
The attacks began at dawn Saturday in Michoacan's capital, Morelia, shortly after the arrest of Arnold Rueda Medina, reported to be the right-hand man of La Familia founder Nazario Moreno González, known as "El Mas Loco," or the Craziest One.
After La Familia gunmen were repelled in their attempt to free Rueda, they went on what police described as a shooting rampage to "avenge" his capture. The attacks, in which convoys of gunmen mounted surprise assaults on government positions in eight cities, went on for 10 hours Saturday and continued sporadically Sunday.
Mexican law enforcement officials say La Familia is a different kind of cartel, combining a code of extreme violence with a commitment to protect Michoacan residents from outsiders -- which would include federal agents and army soldiers.
Members of La Familia are recruited from rural militias and drug treatment centers. Federal authorities swept into city halls in Michoacan and arrested 10 mayors in May on suspicion of colluding with the gang.
La Familia is fighting for control of cocaine-smuggling routes that lead from the port of Lazaro Cardenas toward the United States. The group also operates clandestine methamphetamine labs and marijuana farms in the mountains.
Toll Marks Sharp Escalation in Drug War
By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
NUEVO CASAS GRANDES, Mexico, July 14 -- Mexican authorities said Tuesday that a super-violent drug cartel called La Familia was responsible for torturing and killing 12 federal agents whose bodies were found dumped alongside a mountain road in the western state of Michoacan late Monday.
The agents, who included one woman, had been investigating organized crime in Michoacan, where gunmen launched a series of highly coordinated commando attacks against police officers and soldiers over the weekend.
The abduction, torture and execution of such a large group of federal agents marks a steep escalation in President Felipe Calderón's war with the drug cartels. Though drug mafias often clash with local police officials they fail to intimidate or corrupt, a direct counterattack against federal forces is almost unheard-of. The 12 agents represent the highest one-day death toll for federal forces in the three-year-old drug war.
Placed beside the corpses of the agents, who were off-duty when they were abducted, was a sign threatening police, Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior federal security official, said at a news conference.
Federal officials say they think the attacks by La Familia, a mini-cartel that announced its presence two years ago by rolling five decapitated heads into a dance hall, were carried out in retaliation for the capture of one of the group's leaders.
The attacks began at dawn Saturday in Michoacan's capital, Morelia, shortly after the arrest of Arnold Rueda Medina, reported to be the right-hand man of La Familia founder Nazario Moreno González, known as "El Mas Loco," or the Craziest One.
After La Familia gunmen were repelled in their attempt to free Rueda, they went on what police described as a shooting rampage to "avenge" his capture. The attacks, in which convoys of gunmen mounted surprise assaults on government positions in eight cities, went on for 10 hours Saturday and continued sporadically Sunday.
Mexican law enforcement officials say La Familia is a different kind of cartel, combining a code of extreme violence with a commitment to protect Michoacan residents from outsiders -- which would include federal agents and army soldiers.
Members of La Familia are recruited from rural militias and drug treatment centers. Federal authorities swept into city halls in Michoacan and arrested 10 mayors in May on suspicion of colluding with the gang.
La Familia is fighting for control of cocaine-smuggling routes that lead from the port of Lazaro Cardenas toward the United States. The group also operates clandestine methamphetamine labs and marijuana farms in the mountains.
Christian Science Monitor - MEX DRUG CARTELS LAUNCH 'Tet offensive'
from the July 14, 2009 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0714/p06s01-woam.html
Drug cartels launch Mexico's 'Tet offensive'
Gunmen shot up police stations across the country in an apparent retaliation for the arrest of a suspected leader of La Familia drug cartel.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Mexico City
Revenge is not a new current in Mexico's drug wars. Journalists who investigate too deeply are often killed, making Mexico one of the most dangerous places to report from. Prosecutors seeking justice often face the same fate.
But suspected members of the La Familia cartel in the state of Michoacán gave new meaning to the word over the weekend – even in hardened Mexico – after gunmen shot up police stations across the country, killing five officers and two soldiers by the time the revenge attacks were over on Saturday.
Mexican authorities say the series of assaults, among the most brazen since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched an antidrug offensive in Mexico in December 2006, were a direct response to the arrest of one of their alleged leaders early Saturday.
Mexico's 'Tet offensive'?
It was characterized as a Mexican version of the "Tet offensive" by one columnist – a turning point in a nation's loss of faith that Mexico can come out from under the force of organized crime. And that questioning is perhaps no greater than in Michoacán, Mr. Calderón's home state, where his military effort began, and where a grenade was launched in a public plaza last year.
"This attack and [the grenade incident] are not just simply examples of gang violence. They have a much more profound impact on the public psyche," says Bruce Bagley, a Latin America drugs expert at the University of Miami. "They erode confidence in Calderón's strategy and the legitimacy of the state response."
Brutal retaliation
Authorities told the Associated Press that the attacks were a retaliatory response to the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, believed to be a head of the La Familia cartel, on Saturday morning in Morelia, the capital of Michoacán.
Throughout that day, gunmen attacked federal police stations in seven cities across the state, as well as in Guanajuato and Guerrero states. The following day a hotel in Michoacán, in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, was shot into but no one was injured.
Two men have since been arrested in the attacks against government authorities, among the worst the nation has seen since Calderón sent 45,000 troops across the country to lessen the grip of organized crime that reaches into police forces, government institutions, and mountain villas across the country. Some 11,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006.
But even here, where beheadings and public death threats are a new norm, the weekend attacks seemed to raise the stakes.
Writing in the Milenio newspaper, columnist Ciro Gómez Leyva described the public mood: "In the war against the narcos, July 11 seems like a kind of Tet offensive, the synchronized, made-for-Hollywood offensive by the ... North Vietnamese Army that, despite being characterized as a military disaster, created the perception that the otherwise invincible US army would never win in Vietnam."
Another blow to Calderón
The attacks over the weekend will do little to bolster Calderón's national action party, which already fared poorly well in legislative elections last week.
"The [drug gangs] are demonstrating to the government that their security strategy has only limited impact," says Mr. Bagley. "They demonstrated that they have ongoing capacity to intimidate, coerce, and carry out violence against police despite the militarization."
This message resounds in Michoacán, where the military has manned the streets the longest, and where La Familia has grown into one of the nation's most powerful outfits. "In Michoacán, they have become a force to be reckoned with," says Bagley.
Drug cartels launch Mexico's 'Tet offensive'
Gunmen shot up police stations across the country in an apparent retaliation for the arrest of a suspected leader of La Familia drug cartel.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Mexico City
Revenge is not a new current in Mexico's drug wars. Journalists who investigate too deeply are often killed, making Mexico one of the most dangerous places to report from. Prosecutors seeking justice often face the same fate.
But suspected members of the La Familia cartel in the state of Michoacán gave new meaning to the word over the weekend – even in hardened Mexico – after gunmen shot up police stations across the country, killing five officers and two soldiers by the time the revenge attacks were over on Saturday.
Mexican authorities say the series of assaults, among the most brazen since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched an antidrug offensive in Mexico in December 2006, were a direct response to the arrest of one of their alleged leaders early Saturday.
Mexico's 'Tet offensive'?
It was characterized as a Mexican version of the "Tet offensive" by one columnist – a turning point in a nation's loss of faith that Mexico can come out from under the force of organized crime. And that questioning is perhaps no greater than in Michoacán, Mr. Calderón's home state, where his military effort began, and where a grenade was launched in a public plaza last year.
"This attack and [the grenade incident] are not just simply examples of gang violence. They have a much more profound impact on the public psyche," says Bruce Bagley, a Latin America drugs expert at the University of Miami. "They erode confidence in Calderón's strategy and the legitimacy of the state response."
Brutal retaliation
Authorities told the Associated Press that the attacks were a retaliatory response to the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, believed to be a head of the La Familia cartel, on Saturday morning in Morelia, the capital of Michoacán.
Throughout that day, gunmen attacked federal police stations in seven cities across the state, as well as in Guanajuato and Guerrero states. The following day a hotel in Michoacán, in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas, was shot into but no one was injured.
Two men have since been arrested in the attacks against government authorities, among the worst the nation has seen since Calderón sent 45,000 troops across the country to lessen the grip of organized crime that reaches into police forces, government institutions, and mountain villas across the country. Some 11,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006.
But even here, where beheadings and public death threats are a new norm, the weekend attacks seemed to raise the stakes.
Writing in the Milenio newspaper, columnist Ciro Gómez Leyva described the public mood: "In the war against the narcos, July 11 seems like a kind of Tet offensive, the synchronized, made-for-Hollywood offensive by the ... North Vietnamese Army that, despite being characterized as a military disaster, created the perception that the otherwise invincible US army would never win in Vietnam."
Another blow to Calderón
The attacks over the weekend will do little to bolster Calderón's national action party, which already fared poorly well in legislative elections last week.
"The [drug gangs] are demonstrating to the government that their security strategy has only limited impact," says Mr. Bagley. "They demonstrated that they have ongoing capacity to intimidate, coerce, and carry out violence against police despite the militarization."
This message resounds in Michoacán, where the military has manned the streets the longest, and where La Familia has grown into one of the nation's most powerful outfits. "In Michoacán, they have become a force to be reckoned with," says Bagley.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
JIHAD JIHAD JIHAD on our open and undefended borders!
Where’s the DISCONNECT?
There have been MORE heads lopped off by freaking Mexicans along our borders than in MUSLIMLAND!
There have been MORE American murdered by ILLEGALS from Mexico than all the Americans sacrificed for BIG BUSH SAUDI OIL v Saddam Hussein!
In California along there have been 2,000 American murdered by ILLEGALS that fled back over the border to avoid prosecution.
EVERYDAY there are 12 Americans murdered by ILLEGALS, typically MEXICANS ILLEGALLY DRIVING UNLICENSED, UNREGISTERED, UNINSURED AND DRUNK!
There are 500-1,000 MURDERS COMMITTED BY MEXICAN GANGS IN LOS ANGELES PER YEAR. Each costs nearly one million to prosecute!
AND YET….
OBAMA, FEINSTEIN, REID, PELOSI, BOXER, BIDEN et al, are still flipping off the American people and busting their corporate fed fat asses for:
AMNESTY, NO REAL WALL, NO E-VERIFY, NO ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING THE HIRING OF ILLEGALS, NO ICE, and every inducement to get even more “cheap” labor illegals as they can for their corporate paymasters!
DOES IT REALLY MAKE SENSE?
NEW YORK TIMES
July 12, 2009
A Call to Jihad From Somalia, Answered in the U.S.
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
MINNEAPOLIS — The Carlson School of Management rises from the asphalt like a monument to capitalist ambition. Stock prices race across an electronic ticker near a sleek entrance and the atrium soars skyward, as if lifting the aspirations of its students. The school’s plucky motto is “Nowhere but here.”
For a group of students who often met at the school, on the University of Minnesota campus, those words seemed especially fitting. They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, embracing basketball and the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: one planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur.
But last year, in a study room on the first floor of Carlson, the men turned their energies to a different enterprise.
“Why are we sitting around in America, doing nothing for our people?” one of the men, Mohamoud Hassan, a skinny 23-year-old engineering major, pressed his friends.
In November, Mr. Hassan and two other students dropped out of college and left for Somalia, the homeland they barely knew. Word soon spread that they had joined the Shabaab, a militant Islamist group aligned with Al Qaeda that is fighting to overthrow the fragile Somali government.
The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert M. Mueller, has said Mr. Ahmed was “radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota.”
An examination by The New York Times, based on interviews with close friends and relatives of the men, law enforcement officials and lawyers, as well as access to live phone calls and Facebook messages between the men and their friends in the United States, reveals how a far-flung jihadist movement found a foothold in America’s heartland.
The men appear to have been motivated by a complex mix of politics and faith, and their communications show how some are trying to recruit other young Americans to their cause.
The case represents the largest group of American citizens suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with Al Qaeda. Although friends say the men have never thought of carrying out attacks in the United States, F.B.I. officials worry that with their training, ideology and American passports, there is a real danger that they could.
“This case is unlike anything we have encountered,” said Ralph S. Boelter, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis office, which is leading the investigation.
Most of the men are Somali refugees who left the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in two waves, starting in late 2007. While religious devotion may have predisposed them to sympathize with the Islamist cause in Somalia, it took a major geopolitical event — the Ethiopian invasion of their homeland in 2006 — to spur them to join what they saw as a legitimate resistance movement, said friends of the men.
For many of the men, the path to Somalia offered something personal as well — a sense of adventure, purpose and even renewal. In the first wave of Somalis who left were men whose uprooted lives resembled those of immigrants in Europe who have joined the jihad. They faced barriers of race and class, religion and language. Mr. Ahmed, the 26-year-old suicide bomber, struggled at community colleges before dropping out. His friend Zakaria Maruf, 30, fell in with a violent street gang and later stocked shelves at a Wal-Mart.
If failure had shadowed this first group of men, the young Minnesotans who followed them to Somalia were succeeding in America. Mr. Hassan, the engineering student, was a rising star in his college community. Another of the men was a pre-med student who had once set his sights on an internship at the Mayo Clinic. They did not leave the United States for a lack of opportunity, their friends said; if anything, they seemed driven by unfulfilled ambition.
“Now they feel important,” said one friend, who remains in contact with the men and, like others, would only speak anonymously because of the investigation.
The case has forced federal agents and terrorism analysts to rethink some of their most basic assumptions about the vulnerability of Muslim immigrants in the United States to the lure of militant Islam. For years, it seemed that “homegrown” terrorism was largely a problem in European countries like Britain and France, where Muslim immigrants had failed to prosper economically or integrate culturally. By contrast, experts believed that the successful assimilation of foreign-born Muslims in the United States had largely immunized them from the appeal of radical ideologies.
The story of the Twin Cities men does not lend itself to facile categorizations. They make up a minuscule percentage of their Somali-American community, and it is unclear whether their transformation reflects any broader trend. Nor are they especially representative of the wider Muslim immigrant population, which has enjoyed a stable and largely middle-class existence.
Even among the world’s jihadists, the young men from Minneapolis are something of an exception: in their instant messages and cellphone calls, they seem caught between inner-city America and the badlands of Africa, pining for Starbucks one day, extolling the virtues of camel’s milk and Islamic fundamentalism the next.
“Allah will never change the situation of a people unless they change themselves,” Mr. Hassan, the engineering student, wrote in a Facebook message he posted on April 15. “Take a sec and think about your situation deeply. What change do you need to make?”
Generation of Refugees
Shirwa Ahmed climbed the worn, concrete steps of Roosevelt High School on his first day as a freshman in September 1996.
A slim boy with a watchful gaze, he was one of hundreds of Somali teenagers who had landed at the school in southeastern Minneapolis. Some had never seen a drinking fountain. Others did not know how to hold a pencil, recalled the school’s principal, Bruce Gilman. They carried unspeakable traumas. A number of the students had witnessed their parents being killed.
“It’s almost unimaginable what some of these kids went through,” Mr. Gilman said.
The country they had fled, on the eastern tip of Africa, was embroiled in a civil war that had left it without a functioning government since 1991.
The anarchy reached American televisions two years later, when warlords shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, killing 18 United States soldiers. By then, tens of thousands of Somalis had died and a mass exodus had begun.
A generation of Somalis grew up in the overcrowded refugee camps of northern Kenya, where malaria, scorpion infestations and hunger took their toll. Tales of America sustained them. Clean water was said to flow freely in kitchens, and simple jobs like plucking chickens paid handsomely.
Proof came in the cash sent by a first wave of refugees who had arrived in the United States in the early 1990s. Minneapolis, with its robust social services and steady supply of unskilled jobs, quickly became the capital of their North American diaspora.
When they ended their shifts as cabdrivers or janitors, many Somalis retreated from American life. They had transformed a blighted stretch near the Mississippi River into a Little Mogadishu, commandeering a grim collection of cinderblock buildings known as the Towers — a onetime fictional residence of the heroine of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
They cut their hair at Somali barber shops, prayed at Somali mosques and organized themselves along the same clan lines that had divided them for decades, calling on tribal elders to settle family disputes and community rifts.
If the adults kept their distance from American culture, their children had little choice but to dive in.
At Roosevelt, Mr. Ahmed was a quick study. He memorized Ice Cube’s lyrics. He practiced for hours on neighborhood basketball courts. He took note of the clothing and vernacular of his African-American classmates, emulating what he could.
His pants sagged, but never too much. He spoke of “homeboys” and used the “n” word, but gave careful regard to the school’s rules. When a classmate’s purse was stolen, it was Mr. Ahmed who dutifully turned in the thief.
Much as he tried, he failed to fit in.
You’re not black, his peers taunted. Go back to Africa.
Somali and African-American students clashed frequently at the school, but Mr. Ahmed seemed ill-suited to the fight. Taciturn by nature, he recoiled at the taunts, his close friend Nicole Hartford said.
“How can they be mad at me for looking like them?” she recalled him saying. “We’re from the same place.”
Even as Mr. Ahmed met rejection at school, he faced disapproval from relatives, who complained that he was mixing with “ghetto people,” Ms. Hartford recalled. It was a classic conundrum for young Somalis: how to be one thing at school and another at home.
Developments in the homeland, followed obsessively by the adults, held little interest among teenagers. They rolled their eyes at the older men known as “the sitting warriors,” who debated clan politics with such gusto at one Starbucks that the staff bought a decibel meter to ensure that the noise did not rise above legal limits.
Yet young men like Mr. Ahmed remained tethered to Somalia by the remittances they were pressed to send. After school every day, he joined a stream of teenagers headed for the airport, where he pushed passengers in wheelchairs. He sent half of his income to Somalia, to “relatives we don’t even know,” his friend Nimco Ahmed said.
The war had torn families apart, and fathers were in short supply. Somali boys struggled most visibly. The financial strain on families like Mr. Ahmed’s, which was headed by an older sister, proved staggering. Of the estimated 100,000 Somalis in the United States, more than 60 percent live in poverty, according to recent census data.
After graduating from high school in 2000, Mr. Ahmed seemed to flounder, taking community college classes while working odd jobs, friends said. But he had done better than many peers, who turned to crime and gangs like Murda Squad and Rough Tough Somalis.
At the root of the problem was a “crisis of belonging,” said Mohamud Galony, a science tutor who was friends with Mr. Ahmed and is the uncle of another boy who left. Young Somalis had been raised to honor their families’ tribes, yet felt disconnected from them. “They want to belong, but who do they belong to?” said Mr. Galony, 23.
By 2004, Mr. Ahmed had found a new circle of friends. These religious young men, pegged as “born-agains” or “fundis,” set themselves apart by their dress. Their trousers had gone from sagging to short, emulating the Prophet Muhammad, who was said to have kept his clothes from touching the ground.
Perhaps none of Mr. Ahmed’s contemporaries had undergone a transformation like that of Zakaria Maruf.
A short boy prone to fits of rage, Mr. Maruf began running afoul of the law at the age of 14. For a time, he fell in with the Hot Boyz, a violent street gang.
He seemed to crave recognition. Known on the basketball court as Zak, he was a mediocre athlete, but he pushed himself harder than anyone else, recalled his coach, Ahmed Dahir.
Mr. Maruf threw himself into Islam with the same intensity, becoming a fixture at a mosque near the Towers, where he mastered the call to prayer. “He had an ego the size of Minnesota,” one fellow mosque member said. “It was, ‘Look at me.’ ”
Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Maruf were sometimes seen preaching to kids on the street, offering their own lives as examples of reform. Yet they continued to struggle.
Mr. Maruf’s criminal record had foiled his search for a job. When he proposed to a young woman in 2005, her parents scoffed, one friend recalled. They did not want their daughter winding up “on welfare,” they told Mr. Maruf, who worked at a Wal-Mart.
“They think that life is about money and material things, but watch what that will do for them,” Mr. Maruf told the friend one afternoon, sitting slumped at the mosque.
He seemed to be searching for a clean slate. Both he and Mr. Ahmed would find it thousands of miles away.
A Political Awakening
In 2006, an Islamist movement swept through Somalia and seized control, giving the country its first taste of peace in a generation.
The group, known as the Islamic Courts Union, promised to end 15 years of internecine violence by uniting Somalia’s clans under the banner of Islam. Key ports were reopened, and order was restored to the capital, Mogadishu.
In Washington, officials of the Bush administration saw a threat to East African stability. Hard-line factions of the Courts were thought to be sheltering Qaeda operatives and had declared a jihad against neighboring Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian country. In December 2006, Ethiopian troops crossed the border and routed the Islamist forces with intelligence support from the United States, beginning a two-year occupation.
These events triggered a political awakening among young Somalis in Minneapolis. They had long viewed their homeland’s problems as hopelessly clan-based, but the Ethiopian campaign simplified things. Here was an external enemy against which young Somalis could unite.
Spurred by a newfound sense of nationalism, college students distributed T-shirts emblazoned with the Somali flag and held demonstrations during a frigid Minnesota winter.
The protests took on a religious dimension as well. While the United States had defended the Ethiopian invasion as a front in the global war on terrorism, many Somalis saw it as a Christian crusade into a Muslim land. They were outraged at reports of Ethiopian troops raping Somali women, looting mosques and killing civilians.
If the Ethiopians were seen as infidel invaders, an insurgent group known as the Shabaab — “youth,” in Arabic — was emerging as “freedom fighters.” In its online propaganda, the Shabaab conflated nationalist sentiments with religious ideology, following a tactic honed by Al Qaeda.
The Shabaab began releasing videos portraying Somalia’s struggle as part of a global movement to defend Islam and restore its rule. Foreign recruits were promised “victory or martyrdom” for enlisting. Several American converts to Islam joined up.
The recruitment of the Twin Cities men can be traced to a group of Somali immigrants from Northern Europe and other countries who, in 2005, traveled to Somalia to fight with the Islamist movement, a senior law enforcement official said. A handful of those men later went to Minneapolis, the official said, and helped persuade the first large group from the Twin Cities to leave for Somalia starting in late 2007.
That first wave consisted of men in their 20s and 30s who had been fixtures at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, the largest Somali mosque in Minneapolis. They included an emergency medical technician, a former waiter, a car-rental employee and Shirwa Ahmed, the onetime Roosevelt student who now wore a thick beard and silk gown.
That fall, Mr. Ahmed announced to friends that he was moving to the Middle East to study Islam. After he left for Saudi Arabia to make hajj, the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca, his nephew wrote to a friend, “My uncle is a changed man.”
The following spring, Zakaria Maruf, the former gang member, vanished. Shortly after his disappearance, two teenage boys walked into a travel agency near the Towers, clutching their Somali passports, recalled Abia Ali, an accountant at the agency.
Ms. Ali recognized the boys from the mosque and suspected that they planned to follow Mr. Maruf to Somalia. She warned the mosque’s leaders, who alerted the boys’ parents and then summoned a meeting with the mosque’s young members.
“All this talk of the movement must stop,” the imam, Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmed, recalled telling the crowd. “Focus on your life here. If you become a doctor or an engineer, you can help your country. Over there you will be a dead body on the street.”
In the audience were several young men who would soon disappear.
‘Our Best Kids’
If the first men who left for Somalia had struggled to find their place in America, the boys to follow were “our best kids,” in the words of one uncle.
Mohamoud Hassan outdid most of his peers at Roosevelt High School in 2006, becoming one of the few Somali boys to make it to college that year.
He stood out at the University of Minnesota. Answering to the nickname Snake, the tall, lanky freshman wore a black cotton beret and a pencil-thin moustache. Women found him clownishly charming, occasionally giving in to his pleas for their “digits.” The engineering major tried to cultivate a more serious image, writing poetry, debating politics and poring through “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” his friend Hindia Ali recalled.
Even his closest friends found Mr. Hassan an enigma. He had come to the United States without parents or siblings and looked after his ailing grandmother in a dim apartment in the Towers. He longed to return to his homeland, both to experience it for himself and to rebuild it. It was a common obsession among his friends. “It’s just this missing piece of us,” his friend Ruqia Mohamed said.
After the Ethiopian invasion, a circle of listeners sometimes gathered around Mr. Hassan at the Coffman student center. Mr. Hassan, then the vice president of the Minnesota Somali Student Union, defended the occupation, posting an essay on Facebook assailing the insurgents as “a handful of thugs.”
But over time, he began to see things differently.
Mr. Hassan’s interest in the Islamist movement dovetailed with his own religious transformation, friends said. In the fall of 2007 he began downloading sermons onto his iPod and soon was attending the Abubakar mosque.
By then, Mr. Hassan had become upset by the reports of rapes in Somalia and set out to learn more about the insurgency, one friend recalled. He began talking of joining the movement as early as February 2008, around the same time that a friend from the mosque — Mr. Maruf, the former gang member — left for Somalia.
“I wanted to go, so I got to know him,” Mr. Hassan said in a recent telephone conversation from Somalia with a Minneapolis friend.
That May, he was incensed by a United States military air strike that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, a leader of the Shabaab, along with at least 10 civilians. “How dare they?” Mr. Hassan demanded one afternoon at the student center. “Who is the terrorist?”
Mr. Hassan and another university student searched the Internet for jihadist videos and chat rooms, the friend said. They listened to “Constants on the Path to Jihad,” lectures by the Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is suspected of inciting Muslims in the West to violence.
While Somali nationalism had initially driven the men, a friend said, their cause eventually took on a religious cast. They became convinced that Somalia’s years of bloodshed were punishment from God for straying from Islam, the friend said. The answer was to restore the Caliphate, or Islamic rule.
“They saw it as their duty to go and fight,” the friend said. “If it was just nationalism, they could give money. But religion convinced them to sacrifice their whole life.”
Over the next few months, the men communicated frequently with Zakaria Maruf, who was then in southern Somalia trying to recruit men in Minneapolis to join him, said a senior law enforcement official and a lawyer, Stephen L. Smith, who represents one of the men Mr. Maruf approached.
Mr. Maruf reached out through listservs and conference calls arranged by a teenage boy who distributed 800 numbers and passwords so people could listen in. Mr. Maruf had little trouble finding an audience for his pitch in the Twin Cities; he had shuttled boys from the Abubakar mosque to basketball games, and a recording of his call to prayer was a ring tone on the cellphones of young Somalis.
In his calls, listeners heard him boast that he had gotten married, had a child and become a governor for the Shabaab. The onetime stock boy with a criminal record was now a figure of authority, if one believed his claims.
“He was the ‘I’ll take you to the battlefield’ person,” one acquaintance said.
Despite all the spirited talk of the jihad, Mohamoud Hassan, the engineering student, seemed to waver, friends recalled. The tipping point, one said, may have come that September when a close friend was shot dead outside a youth center — the fifth slaying of a young Somali in the Twin Cities in a year.
“I used to think that death only happens to old people,” Mr. Hassan told his friend Ruqia Mohamed. “But he was young — my age. I guess I could die tomorrow.”
Mr. Hassan began spending much of his time with a small group of men that included a pre-med student, an electrical engineering student, a white 27-year-old convert and a pesky 17-year-old Roosevelt senior. The boy, known as Little Bashir, had memorized the Koran and talked of going to Harvard.
The men acted secretive, friends recalled, meeting alone in a study room at the Carlson building, where Mr. Hassan and the pre-med student worked as uniformed security personnel.
In late October, the group visited University Travel Services, near the Towers, accompanied by an older man with a gray beard who introduced himself as their uncle, the manager of the agency said in an interview.
The “uncle” explained that the men wanted to buy tickets to Somalia, and were waiting for passports. Soon after, the young men returned by themselves and paid cash for their tickets, roughly $1,800 apiece, the manager said.
They left on different days to avoid drawing attention, a friend said. Mr. Hassan drove to Chicago, where he boarded a plane to Dubai on Nov. 1, according to an itinerary obtained by The Times. By the eve of the United States presidential election three days later, all of the men were gone.
Training for Jihad
As word spread in Minneapolis that a new group of men had disappeared, another piece of jarring news came from Somalia: Shirwa Ahmed had blown himself up. On Oct. 29, 2008, he drove a car packed with explosives into a government compound in Puntland, a region of northern Somalia.
The bombing was among five attacks that day coordinated by the Shabaab, which left more than 20 people dead in the group’s campaign to eliminate enemies and show their might. The F.B.I. investigated and sent Mr. Ahmed’s remains to Minneapolis in November.
By then, Mr. Hassan and his friends were journeying in the opposite direction. A close friend said the men were met by Zakaria Maruf, the recruiter, and taken to the southern port city of Merka, where they stayed in a “welcoming house” run by a Somali woman whom the men called Mama.
By January, most of the men were at a training camp in southern Somalia, following a strict routine that Mr. Hassan and others described to their Minneapolis friends in phone calls. They woke before dawn to pray and study the Koran. They engaged in rigorous training, running obstacle courses and learning to make bombs.
As foreign recruits, they received special treatment. These mujahideen slept in a different bunker and were considered to have a higher status, the friend said.
Mr. Hassan was struck by the diversity of the fighters, who included Chechnyans and converts from Europe. “I am looking out into the field and I see so many different colors,” Mr. Hassan told the friend by phone.
If becoming a jihadist usually means parting with life in the West, the men from Minneapolis soon broke with tradition. They frequently communicated with dozens of friends in the United States whom one acquaintance described as “the homeys they left behind.”
Two friends showed The Times the Facebook communications of four of the men, including one whose profile picture was, until recently, of Osama bin Laden.
One exchange on Facebook distilled the push and pull: “’Sup dawg,” one of the men wrote to a friend in late December. “Bring yourself over here” to “M-town,” the message continued, where the men carry “all types of guns.”
“I ain’t goin’ over there man,” the young man answered. “Dats the same reason we came 2 America Locco.”
Mr. Hassan and the others claimed to be enjoying their adventure. They had grown up hearing tales about the winding Shabelle River in southern Somalia and the rich taste of camel milk. When they finally swam in the river and drank the milk, they called their friends in Minneapolis, their voices dreamy.
The men seemed to revel in their new identity as fighters. One day in March, Mr. Hassan’s friend the pre-med student was talking on the phone with someone in Minneapolis when he opened fire with his AK-47. He was checking “to see if it worked,” the person recalled him saying.
But there were cracks in the men’s bravado. While on a boat headed to a Shabaab stronghold in the south, the high school student known as Little Bashir began vomiting so violently that he lost his glasses, his mother said in an interview. After he told her this by phone, she fetched his prescription and read it to him, hoping he would somehow find an optometrist.
It was hard to imagine this 17-year-old — a frail, bookish boy who had delighted in calculus — making his way through war-ravaged Somalia, friends of his said.
“I doubt that he could even pick up a handgun,” said Mr. Galony, who had tutored the boy in chemistry.
If the others seemed hardier, they still had moments of weakness. They missed movies and basketball, deodorant and boxer shorts, they told friends back home. One of the men, who suffered from heartburn, asked if anyone could send him a box of Tums by DHL.
Their longing for life in America came and went. They encountered more serious challenges in Somalia. By the time some of them entered training, the Shabaab was fast losing popularity. The Ethiopian troops had pulled out, making way for a new Somali president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the same man who had once led the Islamist movement to which the Shabaab formerly belonged.
“Some of them wondered who they were fighting,” one friend said.
The jihadists’ conversations with their Minneapolis friends sometimes turned testy. Two of the friends said in interviews that they, like many Somalis, had become sharply critical of the Shabaab. The group has carried out beheadings, amputations and the fatal stoning of a 13-year-old rape victim.
In April, the Shabaab fired several mortar rounds at a plane carrying Representative Donald M. Payne, a New Jersey Democrat who was leaving Somalia after meeting with the president.
“What, are y’all retarded?” one of Mr. Maruf’s friends, a college student, chided him in a phone call. “He’s our only friend in Congress.”
“You have been brainwashed by the media,” Mr. Maruf shot back.
Later, the student thought back on the conversation. “Sometimes they will talk and you’re like, Are you trying to prove this to me or to yourself?” she said. “They have this inner struggle.”
An Inquiry Intensifies
Ralph S. Boelter had a robust résumé by the time he took over the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis office in early 2007. He had worked on white-collar crimes in Boston and violent gangs in Los Angeles. He had investigated the leak of the C.I.A. officer Valerie Wilson’s identity.
Returning to the Midwest put Mr. Boelter, a square-jawed Wisconsin native, back on familiar ground. But less than two years later, he found himself tasked with one of the most complex terrorism cases since Sept. 11.
“Never did I imagine that I would step into this here,” Mr. Boelter said one recent afternoon.
In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, Somalis had remained largely under the law enforcement radar while other Muslim immigrants — primarily Arabs and South Asians — experienced the brunt of the raids and scrutiny.
While federal investigators had tracked the movements of American recruits to the Shabaab since at least early 2008, the F.B.I.’s case did not swing into high gear until after Shirwa Ahmed’s suicide attack that fall.
Investigators in Minneapolis approached Somalis on the street, in their homes, at the Abubakar mosque and on the University of Minnesota campus. Brandishing photographs, the agents asked questions about community figures like the imam of the mosque and its youth director.
As the inquiry wore on, community leaders say, more than 50 people were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Minneapolis and another jury was convened in San Diego. In April, F.B.I. agents raided three Somali money wiring businesses in Minneapolis. By then, the investigation had expanded to smaller Somali communities in Boston; Seattle; Portland, Me.; and Columbus, Ohio.
Somalis in Minneapolis, by turns frightened and intrigued by the inquiry, came up with a Somali code name for the F.B.I. agents in their midst: Fadumo Bashir Ismael.
Mr. Boelter tried to counter the negative attention by appearing on Somali television and radio, encouraging people to cooperate with investigators. Yet he has revealed little about the case itself. The scope and intensity of the investigation, he said, is merely commensurate to the danger posed by the men.
“If American citizens are joining the Shabaab, the potential threat domestically is serious,” Mr. Boelter said. “I think they could be commissioned to come back. Or they could do it on their own because they are philosophically aligned with the Shabaab or Al Qaeda.”
Senior Qaeda leaders have aggressively promoted Somalia as the latest destination for foreign fighters, said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant who frequently works for the government. In recent months, a small number of Qaeda operatives have reportedly sought sanctuary there.
Analysts find the alliance troubling because Al Qaeda has long sought recruits with American and European passports who can cross borders more freely, said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University who studies terrorism.
There are indications that three Twin Cities men have returned, possibly after defecting from the Shabaab. A friend of the men still in Somalia said they had no thought of attacking America. “Why would I do that?” the friend recalled the pre-med student, Adbisalan Ali, saying on the phone last spring. “My mom could be walking down the street.”
The central question driving the F.B.I. investigation is whether United States citizens have provided material support to the Shabaab, either in the form of personnel or money. Three local acquaintances of Mr. Maruf, the recruiter, sent him small amounts of money at his request, according to one of the friends and a lawyer for the others. It is not known how the young men who followed him to Somalia paid for their trips. Two of the teenage boys were seen knocking on doors at the Towers last summer, asking for donations for “an orphanage.”
The full dimensions of the recruitment effort also remain unclear. A close friend of several of the men described the process as “a chain of friendship” in which one group encouraged the next.
“They want to bring people they are close with because they need that familiarity,” the friend said. “They created their own little America in Somalia.”
The manager of University Travel Services said that since November, he had turned away at least 20 men looking to buy tickets to Somalia, adding that the requests had slowed considerably. Meanwhile, some Somali parents in the Twin Cities have taken to hiding their sons’ passports.
The tension in the community has turned inward at times. Last March, the uncle of Burhan Hassan, the boy known as Little Bashir, testified at a Congressional hearing on the case that the mosque had been “brainwashing” the young men and had possibly raised money for the Shabaab.
The mosque’s leaders denied this, in turn accusing the family and others of shirking responsibility for their own children. “That’s their obligation, to know where their kids are going,” said Omar Hurre, the mosque’s executive director.
A Struggle to Understand
For many older Somalis in Minnesota, the deepest mystery is why so many young refugees would risk their lives and futures to return to a country that their parents struggled to leave.
The mother of Burhan Hassan had been trying to persuade him to escape to the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, said the uncle, Osman Ahmed.
The boy had been calling from Somalia, telling her that he was “fine” and that he missed her cooking. “There is no future for me in America anymore,” she recalled him telling her. “If I come back they’ll send me to Guantánamo.”
But he finally agreed to leave, and in late May his mother wired him about $800, Mr. Ahmed said. Ten days later, on June 5, she picked up the telephone to learn that her son was dead.
He had been shot in the head, a stranger on the phone told Mr. Hassan’s mother. Some of the boy’s relatives suspect that he was killed to prevent him from cooperating with the American investigation. F.B.I. officials have declined to confirm Mr. Hassan’s death.
Months have passed since the older members of his group completed their training in Somalia. Lately, they seem “hardened” and at times radical, a Minneapolis friend said.
During one call, the friend asked Mohamoud Hassan, the engineering student, what it was like to kill people. He told of getting “an adrenaline rush,” the friend recalled, and joked that he and his friends compared “body counts.”
Two weeks ago, they spoke again and the conversation turned to the killing of Little Bashir. One of the men had referred to his passing as “martyrdom” in a recent Facebook posting.
Mr. Hassan seemed to agree.
“Allah knows how to pick,” he said. “The family’s feeling sad, but we’re feeling happy for him.”
There have been MORE heads lopped off by freaking Mexicans along our borders than in MUSLIMLAND!
There have been MORE American murdered by ILLEGALS from Mexico than all the Americans sacrificed for BIG BUSH SAUDI OIL v Saddam Hussein!
In California along there have been 2,000 American murdered by ILLEGALS that fled back over the border to avoid prosecution.
EVERYDAY there are 12 Americans murdered by ILLEGALS, typically MEXICANS ILLEGALLY DRIVING UNLICENSED, UNREGISTERED, UNINSURED AND DRUNK!
There are 500-1,000 MURDERS COMMITTED BY MEXICAN GANGS IN LOS ANGELES PER YEAR. Each costs nearly one million to prosecute!
AND YET….
OBAMA, FEINSTEIN, REID, PELOSI, BOXER, BIDEN et al, are still flipping off the American people and busting their corporate fed fat asses for:
AMNESTY, NO REAL WALL, NO E-VERIFY, NO ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING THE HIRING OF ILLEGALS, NO ICE, and every inducement to get even more “cheap” labor illegals as they can for their corporate paymasters!
DOES IT REALLY MAKE SENSE?
NEW YORK TIMES
July 12, 2009
A Call to Jihad From Somalia, Answered in the U.S.
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
MINNEAPOLIS — The Carlson School of Management rises from the asphalt like a monument to capitalist ambition. Stock prices race across an electronic ticker near a sleek entrance and the atrium soars skyward, as if lifting the aspirations of its students. The school’s plucky motto is “Nowhere but here.”
For a group of students who often met at the school, on the University of Minnesota campus, those words seemed especially fitting. They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, embracing basketball and the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: one planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur.
But last year, in a study room on the first floor of Carlson, the men turned their energies to a different enterprise.
“Why are we sitting around in America, doing nothing for our people?” one of the men, Mohamoud Hassan, a skinny 23-year-old engineering major, pressed his friends.
In November, Mr. Hassan and two other students dropped out of college and left for Somalia, the homeland they barely knew. Word soon spread that they had joined the Shabaab, a militant Islamist group aligned with Al Qaeda that is fighting to overthrow the fragile Somali government.
The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since Sept. 11. One of the men, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert M. Mueller, has said Mr. Ahmed was “radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota.”
An examination by The New York Times, based on interviews with close friends and relatives of the men, law enforcement officials and lawyers, as well as access to live phone calls and Facebook messages between the men and their friends in the United States, reveals how a far-flung jihadist movement found a foothold in America’s heartland.
The men appear to have been motivated by a complex mix of politics and faith, and their communications show how some are trying to recruit other young Americans to their cause.
The case represents the largest group of American citizens suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with Al Qaeda. Although friends say the men have never thought of carrying out attacks in the United States, F.B.I. officials worry that with their training, ideology and American passports, there is a real danger that they could.
“This case is unlike anything we have encountered,” said Ralph S. Boelter, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis office, which is leading the investigation.
Most of the men are Somali refugees who left the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in two waves, starting in late 2007. While religious devotion may have predisposed them to sympathize with the Islamist cause in Somalia, it took a major geopolitical event — the Ethiopian invasion of their homeland in 2006 — to spur them to join what they saw as a legitimate resistance movement, said friends of the men.
For many of the men, the path to Somalia offered something personal as well — a sense of adventure, purpose and even renewal. In the first wave of Somalis who left were men whose uprooted lives resembled those of immigrants in Europe who have joined the jihad. They faced barriers of race and class, religion and language. Mr. Ahmed, the 26-year-old suicide bomber, struggled at community colleges before dropping out. His friend Zakaria Maruf, 30, fell in with a violent street gang and later stocked shelves at a Wal-Mart.
If failure had shadowed this first group of men, the young Minnesotans who followed them to Somalia were succeeding in America. Mr. Hassan, the engineering student, was a rising star in his college community. Another of the men was a pre-med student who had once set his sights on an internship at the Mayo Clinic. They did not leave the United States for a lack of opportunity, their friends said; if anything, they seemed driven by unfulfilled ambition.
“Now they feel important,” said one friend, who remains in contact with the men and, like others, would only speak anonymously because of the investigation.
The case has forced federal agents and terrorism analysts to rethink some of their most basic assumptions about the vulnerability of Muslim immigrants in the United States to the lure of militant Islam. For years, it seemed that “homegrown” terrorism was largely a problem in European countries like Britain and France, where Muslim immigrants had failed to prosper economically or integrate culturally. By contrast, experts believed that the successful assimilation of foreign-born Muslims in the United States had largely immunized them from the appeal of radical ideologies.
The story of the Twin Cities men does not lend itself to facile categorizations. They make up a minuscule percentage of their Somali-American community, and it is unclear whether their transformation reflects any broader trend. Nor are they especially representative of the wider Muslim immigrant population, which has enjoyed a stable and largely middle-class existence.
Even among the world’s jihadists, the young men from Minneapolis are something of an exception: in their instant messages and cellphone calls, they seem caught between inner-city America and the badlands of Africa, pining for Starbucks one day, extolling the virtues of camel’s milk and Islamic fundamentalism the next.
“Allah will never change the situation of a people unless they change themselves,” Mr. Hassan, the engineering student, wrote in a Facebook message he posted on April 15. “Take a sec and think about your situation deeply. What change do you need to make?”
Generation of Refugees
Shirwa Ahmed climbed the worn, concrete steps of Roosevelt High School on his first day as a freshman in September 1996.
A slim boy with a watchful gaze, he was one of hundreds of Somali teenagers who had landed at the school in southeastern Minneapolis. Some had never seen a drinking fountain. Others did not know how to hold a pencil, recalled the school’s principal, Bruce Gilman. They carried unspeakable traumas. A number of the students had witnessed their parents being killed.
“It’s almost unimaginable what some of these kids went through,” Mr. Gilman said.
The country they had fled, on the eastern tip of Africa, was embroiled in a civil war that had left it without a functioning government since 1991.
The anarchy reached American televisions two years later, when warlords shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, killing 18 United States soldiers. By then, tens of thousands of Somalis had died and a mass exodus had begun.
A generation of Somalis grew up in the overcrowded refugee camps of northern Kenya, where malaria, scorpion infestations and hunger took their toll. Tales of America sustained them. Clean water was said to flow freely in kitchens, and simple jobs like plucking chickens paid handsomely.
Proof came in the cash sent by a first wave of refugees who had arrived in the United States in the early 1990s. Minneapolis, with its robust social services and steady supply of unskilled jobs, quickly became the capital of their North American diaspora.
When they ended their shifts as cabdrivers or janitors, many Somalis retreated from American life. They had transformed a blighted stretch near the Mississippi River into a Little Mogadishu, commandeering a grim collection of cinderblock buildings known as the Towers — a onetime fictional residence of the heroine of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
They cut their hair at Somali barber shops, prayed at Somali mosques and organized themselves along the same clan lines that had divided them for decades, calling on tribal elders to settle family disputes and community rifts.
If the adults kept their distance from American culture, their children had little choice but to dive in.
At Roosevelt, Mr. Ahmed was a quick study. He memorized Ice Cube’s lyrics. He practiced for hours on neighborhood basketball courts. He took note of the clothing and vernacular of his African-American classmates, emulating what he could.
His pants sagged, but never too much. He spoke of “homeboys” and used the “n” word, but gave careful regard to the school’s rules. When a classmate’s purse was stolen, it was Mr. Ahmed who dutifully turned in the thief.
Much as he tried, he failed to fit in.
You’re not black, his peers taunted. Go back to Africa.
Somali and African-American students clashed frequently at the school, but Mr. Ahmed seemed ill-suited to the fight. Taciturn by nature, he recoiled at the taunts, his close friend Nicole Hartford said.
“How can they be mad at me for looking like them?” she recalled him saying. “We’re from the same place.”
Even as Mr. Ahmed met rejection at school, he faced disapproval from relatives, who complained that he was mixing with “ghetto people,” Ms. Hartford recalled. It was a classic conundrum for young Somalis: how to be one thing at school and another at home.
Developments in the homeland, followed obsessively by the adults, held little interest among teenagers. They rolled their eyes at the older men known as “the sitting warriors,” who debated clan politics with such gusto at one Starbucks that the staff bought a decibel meter to ensure that the noise did not rise above legal limits.
Yet young men like Mr. Ahmed remained tethered to Somalia by the remittances they were pressed to send. After school every day, he joined a stream of teenagers headed for the airport, where he pushed passengers in wheelchairs. He sent half of his income to Somalia, to “relatives we don’t even know,” his friend Nimco Ahmed said.
The war had torn families apart, and fathers were in short supply. Somali boys struggled most visibly. The financial strain on families like Mr. Ahmed’s, which was headed by an older sister, proved staggering. Of the estimated 100,000 Somalis in the United States, more than 60 percent live in poverty, according to recent census data.
After graduating from high school in 2000, Mr. Ahmed seemed to flounder, taking community college classes while working odd jobs, friends said. But he had done better than many peers, who turned to crime and gangs like Murda Squad and Rough Tough Somalis.
At the root of the problem was a “crisis of belonging,” said Mohamud Galony, a science tutor who was friends with Mr. Ahmed and is the uncle of another boy who left. Young Somalis had been raised to honor their families’ tribes, yet felt disconnected from them. “They want to belong, but who do they belong to?” said Mr. Galony, 23.
By 2004, Mr. Ahmed had found a new circle of friends. These religious young men, pegged as “born-agains” or “fundis,” set themselves apart by their dress. Their trousers had gone from sagging to short, emulating the Prophet Muhammad, who was said to have kept his clothes from touching the ground.
Perhaps none of Mr. Ahmed’s contemporaries had undergone a transformation like that of Zakaria Maruf.
A short boy prone to fits of rage, Mr. Maruf began running afoul of the law at the age of 14. For a time, he fell in with the Hot Boyz, a violent street gang.
He seemed to crave recognition. Known on the basketball court as Zak, he was a mediocre athlete, but he pushed himself harder than anyone else, recalled his coach, Ahmed Dahir.
Mr. Maruf threw himself into Islam with the same intensity, becoming a fixture at a mosque near the Towers, where he mastered the call to prayer. “He had an ego the size of Minnesota,” one fellow mosque member said. “It was, ‘Look at me.’ ”
Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Maruf were sometimes seen preaching to kids on the street, offering their own lives as examples of reform. Yet they continued to struggle.
Mr. Maruf’s criminal record had foiled his search for a job. When he proposed to a young woman in 2005, her parents scoffed, one friend recalled. They did not want their daughter winding up “on welfare,” they told Mr. Maruf, who worked at a Wal-Mart.
“They think that life is about money and material things, but watch what that will do for them,” Mr. Maruf told the friend one afternoon, sitting slumped at the mosque.
He seemed to be searching for a clean slate. Both he and Mr. Ahmed would find it thousands of miles away.
A Political Awakening
In 2006, an Islamist movement swept through Somalia and seized control, giving the country its first taste of peace in a generation.
The group, known as the Islamic Courts Union, promised to end 15 years of internecine violence by uniting Somalia’s clans under the banner of Islam. Key ports were reopened, and order was restored to the capital, Mogadishu.
In Washington, officials of the Bush administration saw a threat to East African stability. Hard-line factions of the Courts were thought to be sheltering Qaeda operatives and had declared a jihad against neighboring Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian country. In December 2006, Ethiopian troops crossed the border and routed the Islamist forces with intelligence support from the United States, beginning a two-year occupation.
These events triggered a political awakening among young Somalis in Minneapolis. They had long viewed their homeland’s problems as hopelessly clan-based, but the Ethiopian campaign simplified things. Here was an external enemy against which young Somalis could unite.
Spurred by a newfound sense of nationalism, college students distributed T-shirts emblazoned with the Somali flag and held demonstrations during a frigid Minnesota winter.
The protests took on a religious dimension as well. While the United States had defended the Ethiopian invasion as a front in the global war on terrorism, many Somalis saw it as a Christian crusade into a Muslim land. They were outraged at reports of Ethiopian troops raping Somali women, looting mosques and killing civilians.
If the Ethiopians were seen as infidel invaders, an insurgent group known as the Shabaab — “youth,” in Arabic — was emerging as “freedom fighters.” In its online propaganda, the Shabaab conflated nationalist sentiments with religious ideology, following a tactic honed by Al Qaeda.
The Shabaab began releasing videos portraying Somalia’s struggle as part of a global movement to defend Islam and restore its rule. Foreign recruits were promised “victory or martyrdom” for enlisting. Several American converts to Islam joined up.
The recruitment of the Twin Cities men can be traced to a group of Somali immigrants from Northern Europe and other countries who, in 2005, traveled to Somalia to fight with the Islamist movement, a senior law enforcement official said. A handful of those men later went to Minneapolis, the official said, and helped persuade the first large group from the Twin Cities to leave for Somalia starting in late 2007.
That first wave consisted of men in their 20s and 30s who had been fixtures at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, the largest Somali mosque in Minneapolis. They included an emergency medical technician, a former waiter, a car-rental employee and Shirwa Ahmed, the onetime Roosevelt student who now wore a thick beard and silk gown.
That fall, Mr. Ahmed announced to friends that he was moving to the Middle East to study Islam. After he left for Saudi Arabia to make hajj, the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca, his nephew wrote to a friend, “My uncle is a changed man.”
The following spring, Zakaria Maruf, the former gang member, vanished. Shortly after his disappearance, two teenage boys walked into a travel agency near the Towers, clutching their Somali passports, recalled Abia Ali, an accountant at the agency.
Ms. Ali recognized the boys from the mosque and suspected that they planned to follow Mr. Maruf to Somalia. She warned the mosque’s leaders, who alerted the boys’ parents and then summoned a meeting with the mosque’s young members.
“All this talk of the movement must stop,” the imam, Sheikh Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmed, recalled telling the crowd. “Focus on your life here. If you become a doctor or an engineer, you can help your country. Over there you will be a dead body on the street.”
In the audience were several young men who would soon disappear.
‘Our Best Kids’
If the first men who left for Somalia had struggled to find their place in America, the boys to follow were “our best kids,” in the words of one uncle.
Mohamoud Hassan outdid most of his peers at Roosevelt High School in 2006, becoming one of the few Somali boys to make it to college that year.
He stood out at the University of Minnesota. Answering to the nickname Snake, the tall, lanky freshman wore a black cotton beret and a pencil-thin moustache. Women found him clownishly charming, occasionally giving in to his pleas for their “digits.” The engineering major tried to cultivate a more serious image, writing poetry, debating politics and poring through “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” his friend Hindia Ali recalled.
Even his closest friends found Mr. Hassan an enigma. He had come to the United States without parents or siblings and looked after his ailing grandmother in a dim apartment in the Towers. He longed to return to his homeland, both to experience it for himself and to rebuild it. It was a common obsession among his friends. “It’s just this missing piece of us,” his friend Ruqia Mohamed said.
After the Ethiopian invasion, a circle of listeners sometimes gathered around Mr. Hassan at the Coffman student center. Mr. Hassan, then the vice president of the Minnesota Somali Student Union, defended the occupation, posting an essay on Facebook assailing the insurgents as “a handful of thugs.”
But over time, he began to see things differently.
Mr. Hassan’s interest in the Islamist movement dovetailed with his own religious transformation, friends said. In the fall of 2007 he began downloading sermons onto his iPod and soon was attending the Abubakar mosque.
By then, Mr. Hassan had become upset by the reports of rapes in Somalia and set out to learn more about the insurgency, one friend recalled. He began talking of joining the movement as early as February 2008, around the same time that a friend from the mosque — Mr. Maruf, the former gang member — left for Somalia.
“I wanted to go, so I got to know him,” Mr. Hassan said in a recent telephone conversation from Somalia with a Minneapolis friend.
That May, he was incensed by a United States military air strike that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, a leader of the Shabaab, along with at least 10 civilians. “How dare they?” Mr. Hassan demanded one afternoon at the student center. “Who is the terrorist?”
Mr. Hassan and another university student searched the Internet for jihadist videos and chat rooms, the friend said. They listened to “Constants on the Path to Jihad,” lectures by the Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is suspected of inciting Muslims in the West to violence.
While Somali nationalism had initially driven the men, a friend said, their cause eventually took on a religious cast. They became convinced that Somalia’s years of bloodshed were punishment from God for straying from Islam, the friend said. The answer was to restore the Caliphate, or Islamic rule.
“They saw it as their duty to go and fight,” the friend said. “If it was just nationalism, they could give money. But religion convinced them to sacrifice their whole life.”
Over the next few months, the men communicated frequently with Zakaria Maruf, who was then in southern Somalia trying to recruit men in Minneapolis to join him, said a senior law enforcement official and a lawyer, Stephen L. Smith, who represents one of the men Mr. Maruf approached.
Mr. Maruf reached out through listservs and conference calls arranged by a teenage boy who distributed 800 numbers and passwords so people could listen in. Mr. Maruf had little trouble finding an audience for his pitch in the Twin Cities; he had shuttled boys from the Abubakar mosque to basketball games, and a recording of his call to prayer was a ring tone on the cellphones of young Somalis.
In his calls, listeners heard him boast that he had gotten married, had a child and become a governor for the Shabaab. The onetime stock boy with a criminal record was now a figure of authority, if one believed his claims.
“He was the ‘I’ll take you to the battlefield’ person,” one acquaintance said.
Despite all the spirited talk of the jihad, Mohamoud Hassan, the engineering student, seemed to waver, friends recalled. The tipping point, one said, may have come that September when a close friend was shot dead outside a youth center — the fifth slaying of a young Somali in the Twin Cities in a year.
“I used to think that death only happens to old people,” Mr. Hassan told his friend Ruqia Mohamed. “But he was young — my age. I guess I could die tomorrow.”
Mr. Hassan began spending much of his time with a small group of men that included a pre-med student, an electrical engineering student, a white 27-year-old convert and a pesky 17-year-old Roosevelt senior. The boy, known as Little Bashir, had memorized the Koran and talked of going to Harvard.
The men acted secretive, friends recalled, meeting alone in a study room at the Carlson building, where Mr. Hassan and the pre-med student worked as uniformed security personnel.
In late October, the group visited University Travel Services, near the Towers, accompanied by an older man with a gray beard who introduced himself as their uncle, the manager of the agency said in an interview.
The “uncle” explained that the men wanted to buy tickets to Somalia, and were waiting for passports. Soon after, the young men returned by themselves and paid cash for their tickets, roughly $1,800 apiece, the manager said.
They left on different days to avoid drawing attention, a friend said. Mr. Hassan drove to Chicago, where he boarded a plane to Dubai on Nov. 1, according to an itinerary obtained by The Times. By the eve of the United States presidential election three days later, all of the men were gone.
Training for Jihad
As word spread in Minneapolis that a new group of men had disappeared, another piece of jarring news came from Somalia: Shirwa Ahmed had blown himself up. On Oct. 29, 2008, he drove a car packed with explosives into a government compound in Puntland, a region of northern Somalia.
The bombing was among five attacks that day coordinated by the Shabaab, which left more than 20 people dead in the group’s campaign to eliminate enemies and show their might. The F.B.I. investigated and sent Mr. Ahmed’s remains to Minneapolis in November.
By then, Mr. Hassan and his friends were journeying in the opposite direction. A close friend said the men were met by Zakaria Maruf, the recruiter, and taken to the southern port city of Merka, where they stayed in a “welcoming house” run by a Somali woman whom the men called Mama.
By January, most of the men were at a training camp in southern Somalia, following a strict routine that Mr. Hassan and others described to their Minneapolis friends in phone calls. They woke before dawn to pray and study the Koran. They engaged in rigorous training, running obstacle courses and learning to make bombs.
As foreign recruits, they received special treatment. These mujahideen slept in a different bunker and were considered to have a higher status, the friend said.
Mr. Hassan was struck by the diversity of the fighters, who included Chechnyans and converts from Europe. “I am looking out into the field and I see so many different colors,” Mr. Hassan told the friend by phone.
If becoming a jihadist usually means parting with life in the West, the men from Minneapolis soon broke with tradition. They frequently communicated with dozens of friends in the United States whom one acquaintance described as “the homeys they left behind.”
Two friends showed The Times the Facebook communications of four of the men, including one whose profile picture was, until recently, of Osama bin Laden.
One exchange on Facebook distilled the push and pull: “’Sup dawg,” one of the men wrote to a friend in late December. “Bring yourself over here” to “M-town,” the message continued, where the men carry “all types of guns.”
“I ain’t goin’ over there man,” the young man answered. “Dats the same reason we came 2 America Locco.”
Mr. Hassan and the others claimed to be enjoying their adventure. They had grown up hearing tales about the winding Shabelle River in southern Somalia and the rich taste of camel milk. When they finally swam in the river and drank the milk, they called their friends in Minneapolis, their voices dreamy.
The men seemed to revel in their new identity as fighters. One day in March, Mr. Hassan’s friend the pre-med student was talking on the phone with someone in Minneapolis when he opened fire with his AK-47. He was checking “to see if it worked,” the person recalled him saying.
But there were cracks in the men’s bravado. While on a boat headed to a Shabaab stronghold in the south, the high school student known as Little Bashir began vomiting so violently that he lost his glasses, his mother said in an interview. After he told her this by phone, she fetched his prescription and read it to him, hoping he would somehow find an optometrist.
It was hard to imagine this 17-year-old — a frail, bookish boy who had delighted in calculus — making his way through war-ravaged Somalia, friends of his said.
“I doubt that he could even pick up a handgun,” said Mr. Galony, who had tutored the boy in chemistry.
If the others seemed hardier, they still had moments of weakness. They missed movies and basketball, deodorant and boxer shorts, they told friends back home. One of the men, who suffered from heartburn, asked if anyone could send him a box of Tums by DHL.
Their longing for life in America came and went. They encountered more serious challenges in Somalia. By the time some of them entered training, the Shabaab was fast losing popularity. The Ethiopian troops had pulled out, making way for a new Somali president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the same man who had once led the Islamist movement to which the Shabaab formerly belonged.
“Some of them wondered who they were fighting,” one friend said.
The jihadists’ conversations with their Minneapolis friends sometimes turned testy. Two of the friends said in interviews that they, like many Somalis, had become sharply critical of the Shabaab. The group has carried out beheadings, amputations and the fatal stoning of a 13-year-old rape victim.
In April, the Shabaab fired several mortar rounds at a plane carrying Representative Donald M. Payne, a New Jersey Democrat who was leaving Somalia after meeting with the president.
“What, are y’all retarded?” one of Mr. Maruf’s friends, a college student, chided him in a phone call. “He’s our only friend in Congress.”
“You have been brainwashed by the media,” Mr. Maruf shot back.
Later, the student thought back on the conversation. “Sometimes they will talk and you’re like, Are you trying to prove this to me or to yourself?” she said. “They have this inner struggle.”
An Inquiry Intensifies
Ralph S. Boelter had a robust résumé by the time he took over the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis office in early 2007. He had worked on white-collar crimes in Boston and violent gangs in Los Angeles. He had investigated the leak of the C.I.A. officer Valerie Wilson’s identity.
Returning to the Midwest put Mr. Boelter, a square-jawed Wisconsin native, back on familiar ground. But less than two years later, he found himself tasked with one of the most complex terrorism cases since Sept. 11.
“Never did I imagine that I would step into this here,” Mr. Boelter said one recent afternoon.
In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, Somalis had remained largely under the law enforcement radar while other Muslim immigrants — primarily Arabs and South Asians — experienced the brunt of the raids and scrutiny.
While federal investigators had tracked the movements of American recruits to the Shabaab since at least early 2008, the F.B.I.’s case did not swing into high gear until after Shirwa Ahmed’s suicide attack that fall.
Investigators in Minneapolis approached Somalis on the street, in their homes, at the Abubakar mosque and on the University of Minnesota campus. Brandishing photographs, the agents asked questions about community figures like the imam of the mosque and its youth director.
As the inquiry wore on, community leaders say, more than 50 people were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Minneapolis and another jury was convened in San Diego. In April, F.B.I. agents raided three Somali money wiring businesses in Minneapolis. By then, the investigation had expanded to smaller Somali communities in Boston; Seattle; Portland, Me.; and Columbus, Ohio.
Somalis in Minneapolis, by turns frightened and intrigued by the inquiry, came up with a Somali code name for the F.B.I. agents in their midst: Fadumo Bashir Ismael.
Mr. Boelter tried to counter the negative attention by appearing on Somali television and radio, encouraging people to cooperate with investigators. Yet he has revealed little about the case itself. The scope and intensity of the investigation, he said, is merely commensurate to the danger posed by the men.
“If American citizens are joining the Shabaab, the potential threat domestically is serious,” Mr. Boelter said. “I think they could be commissioned to come back. Or they could do it on their own because they are philosophically aligned with the Shabaab or Al Qaeda.”
Senior Qaeda leaders have aggressively promoted Somalia as the latest destination for foreign fighters, said Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant who frequently works for the government. In recent months, a small number of Qaeda operatives have reportedly sought sanctuary there.
Analysts find the alliance troubling because Al Qaeda has long sought recruits with American and European passports who can cross borders more freely, said Bruce Hoffman, a professor at Georgetown University who studies terrorism.
There are indications that three Twin Cities men have returned, possibly after defecting from the Shabaab. A friend of the men still in Somalia said they had no thought of attacking America. “Why would I do that?” the friend recalled the pre-med student, Adbisalan Ali, saying on the phone last spring. “My mom could be walking down the street.”
The central question driving the F.B.I. investigation is whether United States citizens have provided material support to the Shabaab, either in the form of personnel or money. Three local acquaintances of Mr. Maruf, the recruiter, sent him small amounts of money at his request, according to one of the friends and a lawyer for the others. It is not known how the young men who followed him to Somalia paid for their trips. Two of the teenage boys were seen knocking on doors at the Towers last summer, asking for donations for “an orphanage.”
The full dimensions of the recruitment effort also remain unclear. A close friend of several of the men described the process as “a chain of friendship” in which one group encouraged the next.
“They want to bring people they are close with because they need that familiarity,” the friend said. “They created their own little America in Somalia.”
The manager of University Travel Services said that since November, he had turned away at least 20 men looking to buy tickets to Somalia, adding that the requests had slowed considerably. Meanwhile, some Somali parents in the Twin Cities have taken to hiding their sons’ passports.
The tension in the community has turned inward at times. Last March, the uncle of Burhan Hassan, the boy known as Little Bashir, testified at a Congressional hearing on the case that the mosque had been “brainwashing” the young men and had possibly raised money for the Shabaab.
The mosque’s leaders denied this, in turn accusing the family and others of shirking responsibility for their own children. “That’s their obligation, to know where their kids are going,” said Omar Hurre, the mosque’s executive director.
A Struggle to Understand
For many older Somalis in Minnesota, the deepest mystery is why so many young refugees would risk their lives and futures to return to a country that their parents struggled to leave.
The mother of Burhan Hassan had been trying to persuade him to escape to the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, said the uncle, Osman Ahmed.
The boy had been calling from Somalia, telling her that he was “fine” and that he missed her cooking. “There is no future for me in America anymore,” she recalled him telling her. “If I come back they’ll send me to Guantánamo.”
But he finally agreed to leave, and in late May his mother wired him about $800, Mr. Ahmed said. Ten days later, on June 5, she picked up the telephone to learn that her son was dead.
He had been shot in the head, a stranger on the phone told Mr. Hassan’s mother. Some of the boy’s relatives suspect that he was killed to prevent him from cooperating with the American investigation. F.B.I. officials have declined to confirm Mr. Hassan’s death.
Months have passed since the older members of his group completed their training in Somalia. Lately, they seem “hardened” and at times radical, a Minneapolis friend said.
During one call, the friend asked Mohamoud Hassan, the engineering student, what it was like to kill people. He told of getting “an adrenaline rush,” the friend recalled, and joked that he and his friends compared “body counts.”
Two weeks ago, they spoke again and the conversation turned to the killing of Little Bashir. One of the men had referred to his passing as “martyrdom” in a recent Facebook posting.
Mr. Hassan seemed to agree.
“Allah knows how to pick,” he said. “The family’s feeling sad, but we’re feeling happy for him.”
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