Category: Illegal Immigrants

The Hill reports that California Governor Jerry Brown has agreed to send about 400 National Guard troops to the Mexican frontier to help the Feds stem the flow of illegals into the US.

Brown formally accepted the funding in a Wednesday letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. But the California governor also slammed Trump for his pursuit of a wall on the United States-Mexico border.

“But let’s be crystal clear on the scope of this mission,” Brown said in the letter.

“This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.”

I’m sure that Governor Moonbeam feels better about himself after sending that letter. I guess he figures that those 400 troops will be enjoying an extended all-expenses-paid camping trip.

California responds?? pic.twitter.com/8HCXoGXc87

— Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) April 11, 2018

California Governor Jerry Brown is doing the right thing and sending the National Guard to the Border. Thank you Jerry, good move for the safety of our Country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2018

Mick sends a Fox News link which reports that the President threatened to send troops to our border with Mexico until he can get a wall built;

A White House official revealed later Tuesday to Fox News that the plan considered by Trump would be a “substantial” mobilization of the National Guard.

“Until we can have a wall and proper security, we’re going to be guarding our border with the military,” he said. “That’s a big step, we really haven’t done that before, or certainly not very much before.”

At a news conference later, he confirmed the plan, saying the border is unprotected by “our horrible, horrible and very unsafe laws.”

“We don’t have laws, we have catch-and-release,” he said. “You catch and then you immediately release and people come back years later for a court case, except they virtually never come back.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time a President has sent troops to secure the border. CNN remembers;

Under President George W. Bush, a border deployment of the National Guard known as Operation Jump Start started in 2006 and lasted two years. The operation sent more than 6,000 troops to California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to repair secondary border fence, construct nearly 1,000 metal barriers and fly border protection agents by helicopter to intercept immigrants trying to enter illegally.

In 2010, the Obama administration deployed National Guard troops as part of a border protection plan.

Officials in 2010 said up to 1,200 National Guard troops would be in place along the US-Mexico border for up to a year to assist US Customs and Border Protection with surveillance and intelligence gathering while the agency worked to hire additional staff.

And in 2014, as a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America crossed into the United States, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced the activation of up to 1,000 National Guard troops to help secure the southern border.

The President is reacting to the swarm of Hondurans marching through Mexico to get to our borders and Mexico doesn’t seem motivated to stop the crowd of more than a thousand, even though Trump has threatened them with the NAFTA negotiations.

According to Reuters a swarm of more than 1200 Central American immigrants are headed to the US border with Mexico in a 2000-mile trek from the Guatemalan frontier. President Trump has warned Mexico to stop the crowd or they’ll suffer in the NAFTA renegotiation. Instead, the Mexicans seem to be helping the crowd;

Local officials have offered lodging in town squares and empty warehouses or arranged transport for the migrants, participants in a journey organized by the immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. The officials have conscripted buses, cars, ambulances and police trucks. But the help may not be entirely altruistic.

“The authorities want us to leave their cities,” said Rodrigo Abeja, an organizer from Pueblo Sin Fronteras. “They’ve been helping us, in part to speed the massive group out of their jurisdictions.”

Some of the ambitious marchers plan to apply for asylum in the US while others plan to sneak across the border.

Typically, Central Americans have not fared well with U.S. asylum claims, particularly those from Honduras. A Reuters analysis of immigration court data found that Hondurans who come before the court receive deportation orders in more than 83 percent of cases, the highest rate of any nationality. Hondurans also face deportation in Mexico, where immigration data shows that 5,000 Hondurans were deported from Mexico in February alone, the highest number since May 2016.

Yeah, well, they should stay in their country and work to fix the problems instead of just running away compounding the problems.

One of the immigrants, Maria Elena Colindres Ortega, is a former member of the Honduran legislature. She left when the government wouldn’t pay her, so she left her kids behind and joined the caravan. I guess her kids have their own way of providing for themselves without her. Or she doesn’t care about her kids.

AKanomymoose sends us a link to the story of Alex Caceda-Mantilla, a Peruvian immigrant who had overstayed his visa when he was arrested in Palmer, Alaska on a US Immigration Detainer warrant;

The ACLU says Alex Caceda, 38, had been working at Klondike Mike’s Saloon in Palmer when a bouncer attempted to throw out three men involved in a confrontation with a bartender who had just finished her shift.

Caceda was attempting to come to the aid of the bartender and was beaten in the melee, the attorneys say. When Palmer police arrived to sort things out, a wounded Caceda thought they wanted to talk to him because he was the victim of an attack, according to the lawsuit.

Instead, Caceda left in handcuffs. Police reports obtained by the ACLU in the case say officers determined that Caceda was living in the United States illegally.

“Caceda was an illegal alien and had a U.S. Immigration Detainer warrant for his arrest,” wrote Palmer police officer Jamie Hammons. “I confirmed the warrant was active and arrested Caceda.”

Caceda is from Peru and was living in the United States illegally, having overstayed a non-immigrant visa by several years, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman. Court records show he has no apparent criminal history in Alaska.

So, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the police department because they arrested a criminal with a warrant on his ass.

“We want the vulnerable communities in Alaska to know that they can call on the police for protection and not have to be worried about being ripped out of their lives and taken away because federal immigration law is being enforced,” said [Casey] Reynolds, the ACLU of Alaska spokesman.

I guess Casey wasn’t able to pass that statement through his brain before making it public.

The Associated Press tells the story of 66-year-old Andres Avelino Anduaga who, beginning in 1974 with a fake birth certificate, created a phony persona with a driver license, social security number and a US passport that served him well over the years. To the tune of $360,000 in disability payments and medical costs as well as food stamps.

Anduaga’s charade began to unravel in April 2015 during a standard review to determine whether he was still eligible for disability benefits. The man who called himself Riojos gave an address in the Southern California city of Chula Vista, according to the criminal complaint. But when investigators visited the home in January 2016, the landlord admitted Riojos never lived there but instead resided in Mexico, court papers show.

Investigators turned to border crossing records, finding frequent travels indicating Riojos had likely been living in Mexico.

Further investigation revealed the man claiming to be Riojos had a rap sheet that included 21 different names and six dates of birth, dating back to 1974, the newspaper reported. They included a firearms violation, forgery, cocaine possession and multiple DUIs, according to prosecutors.

Immigration records showed he’d been deported in 1994 and again in 2000.

Andres Avelino Anduaga has offered to pay back what he owes, but he’s looking a twelve more years of living off taxpayers’ largess in prison.