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Retired Immigration Agent’s angry letter to Gov Kemp on his pick for Insurance Commissioner

 GALEO is a clear enemy of enforcement. John King is an active friend of GALEO. My own opinion of you as governor has been greatly and permanently diminished.”

A follow up to our recent column (Georgia Governor Appoints Replacement Insurance Commissioner With Ties to Anti-Enforcement Immigration Lobbying Group)  alerting readers to Governor Brian “I have a big truck” Kemp’s choice for his appointment to state wide office as Insurance Commissioner.

We explained that the appointee, John King, is a friend of the notorious GALEO Corp. and speaker for least one fundraiser for that anti-enforcement group. The fact that Doraville Police Chief John King was helping GALEO while GALEO was smearing King’s fellow law enforcement officers – including several county sheriffs – with false accusations of “racial profiling” because they assisted in immigration enforcement seems to have been lost on Gov. Kemp.

In 2014 GALEO – with the help and friendship of Police Chief John King – boasted on it’s website of their role in convincing Fulton County to end cooperation with federal ICE agents on holding criminal illegal aliens. GALEO Executive Director Jerry Gonzalez put out a press release with the following statement:

On behalf of GALEO, I would like to commend Fulton County Commissioners’ leadership and resolution urging the Fulton County Sheriff to stop honoring the ICE hold requests in order to keep families together but to also enhance public safety. We urge the Fulton County Sheriff to move forward quickly and implement the recommendation.

Since Fulton County is the first jurisdiction in the state with such a recommendation, GALEO would also like to encourage other jurisdictions in the state to adopt similar policies and stop honoring the hold requests from ICE.”

The entire media release can be read here.

We think it is educational to share a few letters from Georgians that have been sent to Gov Kemp regarding his “historic” appointment of GALEO’s John King to constitutional office.

Here is a recent letter from Mr. Robert Trent, a retired federal immigration agent, to Kemp:

 “June 17, 2019

Governor Kemp,

I am Robert M. Trent, Senior Special Agent, USINS (Ret.). My final assignment was at the U.S. Immigration Officers Academy, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynco, GA. . I served as the Assistant Director for Enforcement Training.

 Having spent most of my life fighting for public safety through enforcement of our immigration laws, I am shocked and extremely disappointed to learn that in your recent appointment of John King to Insurance Commissioner, you have chosen to elevate a friend of the notorious GALEO organization to a position of power in our state government. John King has served as a valuable assistant in GALEO’s fundraising.

 GALEO’s Executive Director, Jerry Gonzalez is giddy in his excitement over King’s appointment and boasting of the friendship and connection with your choice for an appointment to constitutional office. Like most conservatives, we expected to see this happen only after the Democrats gained control of our state government.

 I have also just learned that you have lent your own prestige to a GALEO fundraiser with your attendance in the past.

GALEO is shamelessly dedicated to stopping enforcement of the immigration laws I swore to uphold and has a verified history of opposition to literally every tenant of commonsense policy that conservatives elected you to implement. If you have even mentioned illegal immigration since you took office it hasn’t filtered down to our attention here in South Georgia.

 Like many of my friends and colleagues, I am outraged beyond the words I send you today. This appointment and your association with GALEO is a memorable mistake on your part and it is obviously far away from your campaign promises on illegal immigration in Georgia.

GALEO is a clear enemy of enforcement. John King is an active friend of GALEO. My own opinion of you as governor has been greatly and permanently diminished.

 Robert M. Trent

Saint Mary’s, GA 31558″

 Other letters to Kemp on the appointment, including from legal immigrants who do not share GALEO’s anti-borders views on immigration and enforcement can be seen on the Dustin Inman Society blog page here.

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GALEO – a partial history as published in The Islander newspaper in Glynn Co., GA.

Part 1

The Islander

October 17, 2022

The illegal alien lobby in GA: An introduction to GALEO

“California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn’t like it they should leave. They ought to go back to Europe.” — Mario Guerra Obledo, co-founder of MALDEF, on the Tom Likus radio show, 1998

To provide some insider insight into how our state government really works, here is an abbreviated outline of just one of the many corporate-funded, far left non-profits that have staff and lobbyists working against immigration enforcement around the state and in the Georgia Capitol. Space does not allow more than a partial storyline. But I cannot give readers an honest view of the innocuously named Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, known as ‘GALEO,’ without the above quote from a founder of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Mario Obledo.

The CEO of the Atlanta-based GALEO is former Democrat Party fund raiser, community organizer and Biden supporter Jerry (Gerardo E.) Gonzalez. Before he was awarded with the leadership of GALEO, he was also a MALDEF lobbyist under the Gold Dome where he is known for his vitriolic outbursts at Republican legislators in committee hearings and hallways. Gonzalez and his anti-enforcement corporation have actively fought every immigration enforcement bill in the state legislature since 2003.

Gonzalez once brought the leader of the Socialist Workers party into Georgia to fight for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

Gonzalez boasts on the GALEO website that American luminary Jane Fonda was a GALEO “founding friend.” A leader in Atlanta’s LGBTQ community, Gonzalez is also noted for his antics at a 2011 business luncheon at the Coosa County Country Club focused on use of E-Verify to detect newly hired illegal aliens by private employers in Georgia. Gonzalez had angrily shouted at Rome’s diminutive Republican state Representative Katie Dempsey from the audience after the event and was escorted off the property by local police according to the Rome News Tribune.

I was in the state Capitol in 2011 when Capitol Police warned Gonzalez that he would be removed if he continued his hallway-screaming at GOP state Senator Renee Unterman after she spoke in favor of immigration enforcement. Jerry is not what most would call “tolerant.”

A condensed list of Gonzalez’s accomplishments running GALEO Inc. include fearlessly marching in the streets of Atlanta demanding amnesty for illegals and escorting a busload of illegal aliens into the state Senate Chamber. GALEO has actively opposed voter ID (it’s “anti-Hispanic”), English as the official language of government in Georgia (“it would be an insult to “our culture”), ICE holds for criminal illegals in Georgia jails (“…bad for communities”) and in 2011 joined the ACLU and the SPLC in a federal lawsuit to stop state implementation of HB 87, the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011” – apparently enforcement of immigration law is “anti-immigrant.”

After this writer and several other pro-enforcement citizens spoke in favor of HB 202 in the House Public Safety and Homeland Security committee in 2019, we watched as GALEO lobbyists joined the SPLC and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) lobbyists in testifying against advancement of the bill. HB 202 would have required the Georgia Department of Corrections to publish a public, quarterly report on the number of foreigners in the state prison system, the number of that group who already are subjects of ICE detainers, their home nations and crimes committed along with the percentage of the entire prison population these aliens represent.

I write “would have” because the Republican-dominated House Rules Committee killed the bill.

Sponsors at GALEO fund raisers have included the Coca Cola Co., Telemundo, Western Union, Cox Communications (parent company of the liberal Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper), Georgia Power, State Farm Ins. Co., Univision, Atlanta’s Kilpatrick Townsend law firm and Southwest airlines.

I watched in person sometime about 2005 as Gonzalez marched in protest of then-CNN newsman Lou Dobbs with a large group of fellow travelers carrying signs calling Dobbs a “racist” with other placards reading “THIS IS OUR CONTINENT- GO BACK TO EUROPE!” I asked some of the group with Gonzalez to where my black friends who opposed illegal immigration should return. “Africa” was the quick, loud, and defiant reply.

I am out of space for now but not close to the end of the story. Please save this edition and see here next time for more recent information on how deeply GALEO is involved in Georgia politics and how our state government really works. You won’t get this from “the news.”

Part 2.

The Islander

October 31, 2022

More on the illegal alien lobby in Georgia – GALEO Inc. and our government

In my previous column here, we began an insider’s account and history of the corporate-funded GALEO Inc. as related to our government. As promised, here is some additional information. It’s worth the reader’s time to check out the October 17, 2022 edition of The Islander if you missed part one.

The innocuously named Georgia Association of Latino and Elected Officials Corp. (GALEO) is run by former MALDEF lobbyist and Biden-supporter Jerry (Gerardo E.) Gonzalez, who is known for badgering female Republican state legislators and escorting admitted illegal aliens into the state Senate Chamber. Gonzalez has been widely quoted in liberal news media as part of the effort to erase the obvious difference between illegal aliens and real immigrants – like this writer’s adopted sister. Gonzalez says use of the word “illegal” in the term illegal immigrant/alien is akin to use of “the N-word.”

It is imperative that readers understand a large part of the names of far-left groups are intended to provide a basis for mindless marginalization of critics. Example: “You don’t agree with us? You must be “anti-Latino.” “You oppose illegal immigration? – you are against Hispanics, and you are clearly “anti-immigrant.” Those of us who have been fighting for enforcement and sanity on immigration for decades were being attacked with the shameless race-baiting and name calling long before the Democrats and the liberal media took the practice mainstream and nationwide.

A 2015 press release from community organizer Gonzalez provides important insight into part of GALEO’s dangerous agenda: “On behalf of GALEO, I would like to commend Fulton County Commissioners’ leadership and resolution urging the Fulton County Sheriff to stop honoring the ICE hold requests in order to keep families together but to also enhance public safety. We urge the Fulton County Sheriff to move forward quickly and implement the recommendation.”

The liberal Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper refers to GALEO as a “civil rights group.”

GALEO’s Institute for Leadership (“a nationally recognized Latinx leadership program”) conducts classes every year to train future leftist community organizers – in partnership with UGA’s J.W. Fanning Institute. Really.

In 2015 then President Barack Obama nominated GALEO board member, tactician, and fundraiser Dax Lopez for a lifetime seat on the federal bench in the Northern District of Georgia. Lopez was also a DeKalb County state court judge at the time. Happily, the confirmation process was stopped by then U.S. Senator David Perdue after Perdue was presented with irrefutable facts about GALEO by the Dustin Inman Society. Thank you, Senator Perdue.

Fast forward to 2022 Georgia: Dax Lopez was appointed to the prestigious and powerful state Judicial Qualifications Commission in June. The JQC educates Georgia judges about their ethical duties and conducts investigations and hearings regarding judges’ misconduct. Really.

Readers may have assumed that Georgia politicians, especially Republican elected officials who present themselves as conservatives would avoid all things GALEO Inc.

Consider this: GALEO board member and current Democrat candidate for state senate Jason Esteves (District 6, Fulton County area) is a favorite to win the seat Nov 8th. Current Republican state Senator Jason Anavitarte (Paulding Co) was a GALEO board member about the time he ran for the state House – as a Democrat. In June 2019, Gov Brian Kemp appointed then Doraville police chief John King as Georgia’s Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner. An ecstatic Jerry Gonzalez boasted to the media that “several years ago, Chief John King served as a keynote speaker for one of GALEO’s Power Breakfasts, one of our annual fundraising events…we look forward to working alongside his leadership,” Gonzalez gushed.

In 2015 then Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Attorney General Sam Olens, Republicans both, attended the 12th annual GALEO “Power Breakfast.” Then Gov. Nathan Deal (R) was scheduled to attend but changed plans at the last minute. Another notable attendee that year was AJC political reporter and blogger Greg Bluestein who was captured in a GALEO promo photo wearing a name tag provided by one of the corporate sponsors – not the press ID that normally hangs from working reporter’s necks.

It is a sad truism that most people have no idea how their government really works. We have done a bare outline of just one corporate-funded leftist group here. Unless you already visit our websites, follow us on Facebook or me on Twitter (@DAKDIS), we are guessing you read it here first.

end

Con Ed – Georgia political history

Part two of a GALEO/Jerry Gonzalez profile in The Islander newspaper coming next Monday

In 2011, GALEO‘s Jerry Gonzalez went after a female Republican legislator, Renee Unterman, inside the Georgia Capitol. I was in the building when Capitol Police confronted Gonzalez. It is notable that this is the same time frame in which Jerry shouted at another female GOP Georgia legislator, 110 (ish)-pound Katie Dempsey, while chasing her around a Rome, GA  event designed to explain the E-Verify system and the corresponding state law requiring its use. We will save that one for later, but the Rome News-Tribune did a good job of the short story here.

We have been so busy here in Georgia lately struggling to stop pandering Republicans from advancing the far left anti-enforcement agenda that we haven’t had time to educate Georgians on the anti-borders Marxists in the corporate-funded illegal alien lobby. Here is a small view of one of these hateful leftists, GALEO’s CEO, Jerry Gonzalez. One problem with exposing the far left crazies is that lots of normal folks who only get their news from “the news” have difficulty accepting or believing  stories explaining how truly hateful the crazies really are.

We think many Georgians will be surprised to learn who helps GALEO with fundraising and operations.

I am halfway through a two-part profile of Jerry and GALEO for The Islander newspaper in SSI/Brunswick and mentioned this gem in part one. I’ll post them  here after the second part is published.

• Related: Readers write: AJC letter to the editor published October, 2020 – “Anti-enforcement GALEO is not a “civil rights group.”

Anyway, I stumbled across a page from GALEO’s website from 2011 on which Gonzalez is still seething about a speech then Senator Unterman made from the Well on the floor of the state Senate. It’s vintage Jerry. I link it below with link to the entire GALEO newsletter page.

First, a short explanation that cannot be repeated too many times: The anti-borders lobby (including most of the liberal media) is trained to always use the term “immigrants” when topic is illegal aliens – in the endless effort to make resistance and opposition to illegal immigration into “anti-immigrant.” Senator Unterman was addressing the topic of illegal aliens in Georgia during the process of debate on that year’s HB 87, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011.

Here is a link to the surviving GALEO newsletter page from 2011.

Below is the pasted image of Angry Jerry’s narration and illustration of his inner anger and hissy fit.

August 08, 2024

TOPEKA, Kan. — (AP) — Fifteen states filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the Biden administration over a rule that is expected to allow 100,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to enroll next year in the federal Affordable Care Act’s health insurance.

The states are seeking to block the rule from taking effect Nov. 1 and providing people known as “Dreamers” access to tax breaks when they sign up for coverage. The Affordable Care Act’s marketplace enrollment opens the same day, just four days ahead of the presidential election.

The states filed suit in North Dakota, one of the states involved. All have Republican attorneys general who are part of a GOP effort to thwart Biden administration rules advancing Democratic policy goals.