UAE Doubles Down on Designation of CAIR as Terrorists | Image: Clarion Project Clarion Project … the United Arab Emirates is standing by its decision to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS) …
Editor’s note: CAIR is active in lobbying against state legislation related to illegal immigration in the Georgia Capitol, including 2019’s HB202.
Robert Spencer in Frontpage magazine: “So long, everybody. If I’m shut out of all platforms over the next few days, you’ll know why.”
March 18, 2019
Frontpage magazine
Calling for or justifying a massacre of innocent people is one thing. But that “failing to address far-right extremism on their platforms” is quite another. For years now, Leftists and Islamic supremacists have insisted that opposing jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women and others constitutes “far-right extremism.” So it is likely that those who will be shut down will not be limited solely to people such as this “24-year-old from Oldham” who was “making reference and support for the terrible events.” It will include foes of jihad terror.
My friends, it could be time for me to be saying goodbye. Leftist and Islamic groups have been trying for years to silence all criticism of jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women and others, and in the New Zealand massacre they see the best chance in a long time to move in for the kill. I (along with other foes of jihad terror) could be banned from everything and rendered a non-person, a la Alex Jones, any day now.
This is no exaggeration. Meeting in Istanbul, the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has called on non-Muslim countries to ban “Islamophobia,” which means criticism of Islam, including analysis of the motivating ideology fueling jihad terror. IUMS President Ahmed al-Raisouni said Friday: “IUMS calls on non-Muslim countries to ban the spread of hatred against Islam and Muslims.”
Since analysis of the motivating ideology behind jihad terror is routinely smeared as “hatred of Islam and Muslims,” this will likely outlaw all such analysis and make opposition to jihad terror effectively impossible.
And these bans are very likely coming. In America, they won’t take the form of actual laws forbidding criticism of Islam (although remember that Tom Perez, the current head of the Democratic National Committee, refused to rule out the implementation of such laws a few years ago, when he was Assistant Attorney General in the Obama administration). They’re more likely to take the form of a complete deplatforming. We will be able to speak, but no one will be able to hear us, as we won’t be allowed on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the rest.
IUMS was not alone. Saudi King Salman tweeted: “The heinous massacre that targeted worshippers in the mosque in New Zealand is a terrorist act, and it reaffirms the responsibility of the international community in combating hate speech and terrorism that is not condoned by religions or the values of tolerance.” Apparently terrorism that is condoned by religions is fine with him, as in “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60). But by “hate speech” he almost certainly means honest discussion of how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence.
Domestically, the call for censorship came from the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has for years been trying to shut down all opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others. They have succeeded in fooling many people into thinking that it is “bigotry” and “racism” to oppose jihad terror, and have made those who discuss the motivating ideology behind jihad terror toxic in the public square. Now Hamas-linked CAIR is attempting to use the New Zealand massacre to achieve total victory: the complete closure of all media platforms to foes of jihad terror and Sharia oppression… Read more here.
Ruling likely will lead to additional legal action on public benefits
DACA recipients are “inadmissible and thus removable” under federal law.
Illegal aliens who have been awarded deferred action on deportation proceedings through the DACA amnesty by both the Obama and Trump administrations are illegal aliens and do not have “lawful presence” says the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision was handed down March 6, 2019.
The ruling was in response to a suit brought by several illegal aliens in Georgia who are challenging the Board of Regents policy that requires lawful presence for instate tuition purposes and admittance to some USG universities.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than is Arizona. Statistics from the Washington DC – based Migration Policy Institute highlighted by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute indicate that Georgia has more illegal aliens than green card holders.
Image: GBPI.org
A group of DACA recipients sued the leaders of the Georgia higher education system in 2016, which bars aliens who are not “lawfully present” from enrolling in some Georgia colleges and universities, even if they would academically qualify for admission. “The students argued that they were lawfully present under federal law, which preempted state law. They also claimed that the admissions bar violated their right to equal protection, as Georgia treats aliens who are paroled into the U.S. or granted asylum as “lawfully present” reported the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
The Eleventh Circuit rejected all of the students’ claims. The court noted that “lawfully present” is not a standalone immigration classification, and it is not defined anywhere in the (Immigration and Nationality) Act” *(opinion here).
The ruling is consistent with an official October 2017 statement to this writer from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that “current law does not grant any legal status for the class of individuals who are current recipients of DACA. Recipients of DACA are currently unlawfully present in the U.S. with their removal deferred.”
Decision may lead to additional legal action on access to public benefits
The court’s decision likely portends more legal action. Georgia’s public benefits law, OCGA 50-36-1, requires “lawful presence” for non-citizens to access a host of public benefits, including drivers licenses, official ID Cards, health benefits, food stamps, insurance licenses and unemployment benefits. While it goes largely unreported by the Georgia media, various official agencies have been quietly issuing these benefits to DACA recipients since 2012 based on the applicant’s oath on affidavits that they are a “qualified alien.”
The monetary cost to Georgia taxpayers for benefits to the illegal aliens with deferred action on deportation, both in and outside of DACA is unknown.
Fast Fact: In a state with more illegal aliens than Arizona: Georgia’s Republican state senators send out an issues poll with no option for illegal immigration.
What you think matters. Please complete this survey.
1.
Are you in favor of setting up a process in Georgia that allows the growing of the cannabis plant that produces medical marijuana?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
2.
Do you favor taxing streaming services to extend broadband to rural areas of the state?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
3.
Do you favor voting machines that produce a printed paper ballot or a paper ballot that the voter fills out?
Printed ballot
Voter-filled ballot
Undecided
4.
Would you favor the licensing of the growing of hemp, recently legalized by federal farm bill?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
5.
Do you support the exemption of military retirement income from state income taxes? (All citizens 65 and older are presently exempt up to $65,000 per spouse)
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
6.
Would you be in favor of changing the definition of “unemployed” to allow federal government employees to collect unemployment benefits in the event of a government shutdown?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
7.
Would you favor changing the classification of possession of a small amount (less than one ounce) of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a fine offense in a municipal court?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
8.
Do you favor legalizing horseracing in Georgia?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
9.
Do you favor raising the mandatory age of school attendance from 16 to 17 years old?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
10.
Do you favor the State of Georgia ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)?
Favor
Oppose
Undecided
11.
Do you favor the State of Georgia ratifying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)?
“The new governor has not taken action on illegal immigration despite his campaign promises, said King. “This would be an ideal time for Governor [Brian] Kemp to speak up in favor of transparency about the cost of illegal immigration…”
Breitbart News has taken notice of the fact that the Republican Rules Committee has so far not allowed HB202 to see a vote in the full House.
The below report was posted this yesterday. *The Dustin Inman Society has put out an action alert with contact info for the Republican Chairman of the Gold Dome committee where the bill is being held captive. HERE.
Breitbart News
Georgia Establishment Legislators Try to Hide Migrant Crime from Voters
By Neil Munro
March 1, 2019
Republican and Democratic legislators in Georgia are trying to block good-government legislation that would help Georgia voters learn the number of criminal illegal aliens in their state.
The draft legislation would require state officials to provide quarterly reports on the number of deportable illegal migrants and of non-citizens who are held in detention. But it must pass the Georgia House’s rules committee and the House floor before midnight March 7.
The bill, HB 202, was promoted in a February 28 hearing by GOP state Rep. Jesse Petrea. But the GOP chairman of the rules committee quickly signaled his opposition to the legislation. “Why do we need this?” chairman Jay Powell challenged Petrea.
In response, Petrea criticized “the inability by both parties in Congress to do anything to deal with this [illegal migration] problem,” adding:
What we can do is make the people we represent recognize the degree to which the issue impacts their lives daily … There are 1,505 violent and sex offenders in Georgia correctional facilities [on the list] who murdered, raped, killed, kidnapped, child-molested Georgia citizens … So the people can look at that list and have complete transparency and they can say “That is a big deal,” or they may say “That is not a big deal.” But right now, that data is not available to them … All I want is for that data to be transparent and posted on the web site. And the people can make up their own minds.
“1,505 inmates is a lot of money on our budget and it is a lot of human tragedy,” Petrea added.
Three Democrats joined in opposition to the bill.
Rep. Robert Trammell suggested the release of the statistics would “inflame public opinion against a group based on their citizenship or non-citizenship status.” READ THE REST HERE.
Estimates of the Illegal Alien Population Residing in the United States: January 2015 (latest official figures)
Bryan Baker
DEFINITIONS
Legal Residents
The legally resident immigrant population as defined for these estimates includes persons granted lawful permanent residence, persons granted asylum, persons admitted as refugees, and persons admitted as nonimmigrants under classes of admission associated with residence (e.g., students and temporary workers, as opposed to tourists) and with authorized periods of admission ending after January 1, 2015.
Illegal Alien Residents
The resident illegal alien population is defined as all foreign- born non-citizens who are not legal residents (see above). Most illegal aliens either entered the United States without
1 The Department of Homeland Security refers to foreign-born non-citizens unlawfully present in the United States as “illegal aliens.” Previous versions of this report used the term “unauthorized immigrants” to refer to this population.
2 Previous editions of this report are available at:https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics.
3 The estimates for Jan. 2013 and Jan. 2014 have been revised; see Appendix 2 for details and updated estimates.
inspection or were admitted temporarily and remained past the date they were required to depart. Persons who are beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or other forms of prosecutorial discretion, or who are residing in the United States while awaiting removal proceedings in immigration court are included among the illegal alien population estimates. Illegal aliens applying for adjustment to LPR status under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) are considered to be part of the resident illegal alien population until they have been granted lawful permanent residence. Here.
Speakers sign-up sheet for House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee, Feb 25, 2019 Image; Dustin Inman Society
House Rules Committee holding incarceration cost transparency bill prisoner
D.A. King
For many watchers it has long been assumed that the Republicans who run the Gold Dome would rather taxpayers not have any official hard data on any part of the cost of illegal immigration. Now, with crossover day looming, the House Rules Committee with South Georgia Rep. Jay Powell (R-Camilla) as chairman seems poised to prove that assumption.
House Rules Chairman Jay Powell
In a red-ish state that is home to more illegal aliens than green card holders, we may never be allowed to know the cost of state incarceration of the illegal aliens.
HB 202 from Rep Jesse Petrea (R- Savannah) is a simple and long-overdue one-pager that would require the Georgia Department of Corrections to publish a public, quarterly report on the number of non-citizens in the prison system, the number of that group who already are subjects of ICE detainers, the home nations and crimes committed along with the percentage of the entire prison population these aliens represent.
All concerned should note that ICE detainers could only be issued if federal authorities have already had contact with illegal aliens who are serving state time. The current version of the bill is a step back from original language that would have required immigration status, if known, of all aliens in the system. The data the now weakened legislation produced would not be an indicator of the entire cost of incarcerating all illegal aliens in the state. But it is apparently still too much information for the House Rules Committee.
A letter of endorsement to Rep Petrea from Mr. Robert Trent, a now retired Senior ICE enforcement agent in Brunswick, notes that because the DOC is using the federal 287 (g) program in addition to the Secure Communities system to collect fingerprints from prisoners, they have more than enough tools to gather information on the immigration status for allprisoners. These databases can also alert ICE to legal immigrants who may be deportable.
This writer testified in support of the bill in the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee earlier this week and watched with pleasant surprise to see that there were more pro-enforcement Americans – including several immigrants – signed up to speak in favor of Petrea’s legislation than there were corporate-funded leftists opposed to the bill… Read the rest here.
Georgia Rep Jesse Petrea (R, Savannah) has dropped one-page legislation under the Gold Dome to begin the process of creating an official database of criminal aliens in the state prison system. The descriptive caption on Petrea’s new HB 202 reads:
to require the commissioner of corrections to report certain information regarding the immigration status, offenses, and home countries of persons who are confined under the authority of the Department of Corrections…
A staunch advocate of public safety, in 2017 Rep Petrea successfully sponsored HB 452 which required the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to share information it receives from the federal government on the release from federal custody of criminal aliens with Georgia sheriffs
“This bill is about transparency. The people have a right to know when criminal aliens are released back into our communities. That information is not now available to them. The people can form their own opinions based on the data made available to them. My goal is to make the information available” Petrea said at the time.
The current effort at creating official records of crime and punishment of aliens in Georgia will serve to document one of the costs to taxpayers of criminal activity by non-citizens regardless of their immigration status. Including former Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, now Republican state Rep. Bill Hitchens, a partial list of cosigners to HB 202 can be seen on the top of Petrea’s bill, introduced yesterday. While only the federal government has authority to deport illegal aliens, Georgia’s new governor, Brian Kemp is expected to show support for the concept, as he ran on a platform of cracking down on criminal aliens and gangs. Georgia has suffered a noted increase in gang activity.
Rep. Jesse Petrea. Image: Georgia General Assembly
Expert observers predict that the corporate-funded anti-enforcement immigration lobby will offer strong resistance to Petrea’s public safety information sharing measure. Currently, the Coca Cola – funded GALEO Corp. is joined by the SPLC and FWD.US along with multiple other leftist groups in a massive lobbying force to convince the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature to kill any legislation that advances immigration enforcement or establishes official records of costs associated with illegal immigration.
Contacted by phone Friday, Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway expressed his strong support for Petrea’s bill, saying “it’s always a good idea to collect more information on crime and this is valuable information. It’s a no brainer”, said Conway. In 2009, Conway implemented the federal 287(g) program in the Gwinnett jail.
Legislators in other states have expressed interest in Petrea’s public safety move. Georgia Rep Jesse Petrea can be contacted through his Capitol office.
Will the General Assembly reverse the 2018 GDOT carve-out on E-Verify for contractor bids?
D.A. King
In last year’s legislative session Republican state Senator Steve Gooch (R-Dahlonega) introduced legislation that gutted the process intended to ensure that the Georgia Department of Transportation hires contractors that are using a legal workforce. In the haste and bedlam of 2018’s Sine Die, Senate Bill 445 sailed through both the House and Senate.
It is notable that SB 445 went through the Senate Transportation Committee, as Senators Brandon Beach, Butch Miller, Frank Ginn and Mike Dugan were bill signers, in that order. All are transportation committee members — with Beach as chairman.
On SB 445, Chairman Beach made it clear in his committee that “it’s a DOT bill” (professional transcription here. – two-minute archived committee video here).
Now that the cat is out of the bag on this caper- and we have a new governor — one “important issue” for the 2019 session should be to see if lawmakers will reinstate the bidding system for GDOT that all other public employers and their contractors are still supposed to follow.
We recognize many readers will view this as a dry topic – the only folks who may have a concern are those who don’t want their taxes used to pay illegal aliens on GDOT projects.
After mandates were put into place in the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act of 2006 (SB 529) to require all public employers and contractors to use E-Verify, adjustments were made in HB2 of 2009 to deal with the obvious problem that some public contractors were bidding on – and winning – contracts with bids that were based on the cost of black market labor before they swore on an affidavit that they were using E-Verify. This allowed contractors to hire a crew for a job that could not be verified as eligible to work using the E-Verify system, which can only be used for newly hired employees after receiving authorization from the feds to use the online system.
The 2009 solution to this chicanery was to change the law so that bids are not considered unless and until the E-Verify affidavit is presented.
In his quick presentation of the measure, Sen. Gooch told the committee the changes to the GDOT bid rules were being proposed to make life easier for contractors.
“Section 3… makes clear that the deadline for a bidder to supply their signed notarized e-verify affidavit is prior to contract award as opposed to the bid submission. This has caused a problem with some of the contractors that submitted their e-verify affidavits but they didn’t reach to the department either by mail or by other means of delivery in time for the bid, um, deadlines and therefore they were disqualified from bidding on the work. Now essentially requires ’em to submit those E-Verifies prior to the contracts being awarded” said Gooch (emphasis mine).
It is hard to accept that this is a constructive or plausible reason to make changes to the GDOT bidding system, as the existing law is clear that bids and E-Verify affidavits may be submitted electronically. If a contract bidder is indeed an E-Verify user, he can easily send that documentation along with his bid from his computer.
This writer asked GDOT for comment on this curious scenario. One of the questions asked for verification that SB 445 was in fact a GDOT bill, as Chairman Beach told the committee. That question went unanswered.
This is not the first adventure in state law on E-Verify, bids, and contractors for GDOT.
CBS Atlanta 46 TV News did a series of stories on GDOT’s violations of the bidding/E-Verify law in 2010 that illustrated the lack of concern for the hard-fought mandate designed to make Georgia unwelcoming to illegal employers and illegal labor – and to safeguard taxpayer dollars. We have archived some of those reports:
* “Activist: GDOT Is Breaking State’s Immigration Law – Violation May Make It Easier For Contractors To Hire Illegal Immigrants. Here.
* “CBS Atlanta Asks If GDOT Contractor Is Hiring Illegal Workers.” CBS Atlanta 46 news video here.
* “GDOT Didn’t Know About The Illegal Immigrant Labor Law.” Here.
* “Federal Document Shows GDOT Contractor Lied On Affidavit – Company Swore To Check Employee’s Legal Status in Federal Database.” Here.
* “GDOT: Worker May Have Been Illegal. The Georgia Department of Transportation said Wednesday that one of its subcontractors may have been in the country illegally. The admission came after a CBS Atlanta investigation…” (No link)
* “GDOT Admits Mistake For Breaking Immigration Law: GDOT Commissioner Dodges Tough Questions About Hiring Illegal Worker.” Here.
IAG will follow up on this later in the legislative session, there is more.
You read it here first.
D.A. King is president of the Dustin Inman Society and proprietor of ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com. He has worked on the law featured above since 2006.
Editors determined to sway public opinion at the liberal AJC may have learned their lesson on mentioning illegal immigration. Apparently too many people are still paying attention to that crisis. Despite a January Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showing that a plurality of U.S. voters point to immigration as the most important issue facing the country, the AJC did not include any question on immigration in their own recent poll of issues and voter opinion.
The AJC poll of 702 registered voters was conducted Jan. 7-17 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs.
Voter ballots, gun rights, our new governor, health care/Obamacare and a possible new internet tax were all included as questions, but illegal immigration was absent from the AJC poll. According to DHS Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than is border-state Arizona. According to the left leaning Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC and the corporate funded anti-enforcement Georgia Budget and Policy Institute more illegal aliens than green card holders call Georgia home. Free car wash for readers who and a news item in the AJC on these facts.
Image: GBPI.org More illegal aliens than Lawful Permanent Residents – green card holders
A June, 2017 AJC poll of voters in Georgia’s 6th District showed metro Atlanta’s infamous traffic congestion, abortion, government spending, and “climate change” all attracted fewer reactions from voters as being very or somewhat important than illegal immigration. Nevertheless, the AJC went with the headline: “Most Georgia 6th voters very concerned about climate change.”
It was bad news for the liberals when the AJC had to report in 2010 that a statewide poll they participated in showed that two-thirds of Georgians wanted to bar “the undocumented” from attending taxpayer-funded state universities — at any tuition rate.
In the pre-Trump, state-wide poll, two-thirds of Georgians wanted to bar “the undocumented” from attending taxpayer-funded state universities — even if they pay out of state tuition. Sixty-seven percent of people polled in September 2010 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Georgia Newspaper Partnership, which included the AJC, favored a law requiring proof of legal residency to even attend a Georgia college or university.
It couldn’t have made the editors at the AJC happy to report that polling showed most Georgia voters wanted an “Arizona style immigration law in Georgia” in 2010 either. It should be noted that such a law was passed under the Gold Dome, but it is not enforced by the Republicans who rule the state government. That fact is also not “news” at the liberal AJC.
Often, it is an indicator of what real issues are when those topics are ignored by the AJC.
On the crime of illegal immigration, it is much more difficult to achieve the liberal goals – including another amnesty – when the pesky voters are allowed access to too much information. Thus the “no immigration polls for you” attitude at the “credible, compelling, complete” AJC.
Originally published in Pew’s Stateline, the below is from the influential Governing Magazine” From our eight years of personal experience with the IERB, we will have plenty to add soon, but a “parody of a Kangaroo Court” is a good start.
An Example of What Not to Do’: The State Where Immigration Law Is Enforced by Political Appointees Granted the Power of Courts
Over the past few years, statehouses around the country have tried to rein in cities deemed too friendly to undocumented immigrants. But Georgia is the only state that’s created an independent board with one specific mission: Punishing cities that aren’t doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration.
Typically, that responsibility falls to state attorneys general. But in Georgia, residents can file a complaint against any city or county they judge to be breaking state immigration law.
Until a recent case against the small liberal town of Decatur, though, all but one of the complaints had come from one private citizen, an avowed anti-illegal immigration activist who’s made this his life’s calling.
Then the lieutenant governor, Republican Casey Cagle, filed a complaint accusing Decatur of violating state immigration law last year as he was running for governor. And on Facebook, he threatened to yank its state funding.
“Liberal politicians in the City of Decatur are trying to put the interests of criminal illegal aliens ahead of our safety — and I will not allow it!” Cagle wrote. (He did not respond to repeated requests from Stateline for comment.)
Few locals have heard of it, but Georgia’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board was created seven years ago, when the state passed one of the nation’s strictest immigration laws. Trying to keep track of the legal comings and goings of the IERB, as the board is known, can be dizzying.
Most of its members are not attorneys or immigration experts. All are volunteers — and all are political appointees, which in this red state, makes it a majority Republican board.
And while technically not a court, the board has been given many of the powers of a court: It investigates alleged wrongdoing, subpoenas witnesses and hears testimony.
The board has the power to recommend sanctions against municipalities found to be in the wrong — and ultimately, withhold millions in state funding from them as punishment.
So far, though, it has levied just one lasting fine, for $1,000 against Atlanta. A handful of small cities, though, have been forced to spend time and money defending themselves against accusations.
Two of the immigration board members refused to step down years after their terms ended, and did so only in 2018, when they were sued by a Decatur resident and accused of violating Georgia law.
“The Georgia board is an example of what not to do, rather than a model for something effective,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a national research and advocacy group that favors limited immigration to the United States.
“It’s troubling,” Vaughan said, “to have that authority go to a politically appointed group that lacks expertise in the subject matter.”
The city of Decatur has filed two lawsuits against the board, saying it has violated public meetings and public records laws; the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center joined one of the suits in December. (Under James Balli’s tenure as chair, he has made efforts to make the board more transparent, including releasing records to a reporter.)
Balli, said it is just complying with state immigration law in its work, and until that law is changed, it’ll continue with its charge.
The 2011 law the board is focused on, HB 87, permits law enforcement officers to stop anyone they deem to be “suspicious” and ask for their papers. The law also requires cities and counties, and many businesses, to use E-Verify to ensure workers are in the country legally; and punishes those who use fake identification to get work.
“The goal is compliance, not punishment,” Balli said.
“We’re not anti-immigration,” Balli said, adding that his grandmother was an immigrant from Mexico. “We don’t want that to be the picture of this board.”
Atlanta’s Hippie Cousin
Decatur’s been described as a speck of blue in a sea of red, and that is true — up to a point. There have always been specks of blue in Georgia, and the state is increasingly trending purple. In November, Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp in the race for governor.
But Decatur, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution puts it, is “renowned as a bastion of Southern liberalism.” It’s Atlanta’s hippie cousin — population 23,800 — 4 square miles of bungalows, yoga studios and farm-to-table fare. In 2016, 86 percent of voters here cast their lot with Hillary Clinton.
Both Decatur and its next-door neighbor Atlanta issued directives in 2017 ordering local police not to detain immigrants, barring a court order. Decatur doesn’t even have a jail — and has few immigrants.
But for the past year, it is Decatur, not Atlanta, that has been in battle with the state, fighting accusations that it is a sanctuary city.
And even though the IERB has yet to yank state funding in any of the cases it’s heard, Decatur officials say they worry the city could lose millions in funding if the board tried to take action.
‘Kangaroo Court’
Many critics of the board, who fall on both sides of the immigration battle, have said it should be disbanded.
“It’s a court that operates in very strange, mostly nontransparent ways and yet has a tremendous amount of power,” said Naomi Tsu, who oversees the legal and advocacy work on behalf of immigrants in the Deep South for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The center has profiled the IERB on its “Hatewatch” blog.
Then there’s Marietta, Georgia, resident D.A. King, who’s filed 20 of the 22 complaints that have come before the board. He called the IERB a “parody of a kangaroo court.”
King, a Detroit native, describes himself as a nationalist “along the lines of a George Washington,” but says that he’s not a white supremacist. Nor is he against legal immigration. “My adopted sister is from Korea,” he said.
“I’m trying to educate people about immigration. It’s about the law and what’s good for America and Americans.” Read the rest of the report here.
