By Stephen Dinan– The Washington Times – Sunday, November 29, 2020
Republicans’ Georgia election troubles went deep down the ballot last month, including losing two sheriff’s jobs that flipped to Democrats, both of whom have promised to end cooperative agreements with ICE.
Craig Owens, the winner in Cobb County, has said he wants to suspend all dealings with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Keybo Taylor, in Gwinnett County, hasn’t gone that far but is planning to cancel the 287(g) agreement that effectively deputizes the county’s officers to begin the deportation process for deportable migrants booked into local jails.
The results could be devastating to ICE.
Gwinnett this year ranks third of all U.S. counties in migrants flagged for deportation, with the vast majority of those coming out of the 287(g) program.
In Athens-Clarke County doesn’t take part in 287(g), but the incoming sheriff, who unseated a fellow Democrat in a primary this year, campaigned on a promise of refusing other forms of cooperation with ICE, effectively creating a sanctuary.
“Outsiders watching Georgia should know that this is only the end of the beginning of the Democrats’ takeover of a Republican stronghold,” said D.A. King, president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which pushes for enforcement of immigration laws. “The 287(g) programs in both counties served to constantly reduce the overall jail population. The howls from the leftists that 287(g) was too successful should be remembered when illegal aliens released for ‘minor offenses’ go on to hurt or kill Americans in Georgia.”
Named after the section of immigration law that created it, the 287(g) program allows ICE to sign partnership agreements with state and local law enforcement. Officers and deputies go through ICE training and can then begin the deportation process for migrants who come through their prisons or jails and are removable under the law.
There used to be another side to 287(g). The task force model trained officers and deputies who went out on patrol, but the Obama administration canceled those agreements.
The Obama team did, though, see value in the jail model. It argued that immigrants with rap sheets were worthy targets for deportation.
Immigrant rights activists disagree. They say too many migrants are being snared for what they consider to be relatively low-level offenses.
Activists have pressured some of the country’s largest jurisdictions to withdraw from the program and, in many cases, to refuse cooperation at all.
Prince William County in Virginia allowed its 287(g) program to lapse this summer. Los Angeles County’s sheriff canceled all cooperation in August.
All told, 28 jurisdictions have ended 287(g) deals, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Still, more jurisdictions are enrolled now than were at the start off the Trump administration, thanks to strenuous efforts by ICE and sheriffs who see value in cooperating.
In Gwinnett, Sheriff Butch Conway decided to step down after 24 years and didn’t run this year. He said the 287(g) program cut his jail population over the past decade, even as the county grew by more than 300,000 residents.
He said working with ICE helped keep the deportation agency’s own efforts focused on criminals while protecting illegal immigrants who managed to keep clean rap sheets.
“I had been with ICE prior to implementing the program when they attempted to apprehend subjects and took anyone at the location they found without documentation into custody to be deported. Under 287(g), this didn’t occur,” Sheriff Conway told The Washington Times.
He continued: “I believe the program made us safer when serious offenders weren’t released back into the community to commit the same or worse offenses.”
Neither Mr. Taylor nor Mr. Owens responded to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Times, but both confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month that they will follow through on their promises to curtail cooperation.
The Times reached out to a number of Georgia-based migrant rights groups, but none replied for this article.
Not all will go free if Mr. Taylor holds to his promise to cooperate with ICE detainer requests. But without deputies on duty 24/7, some will be released without ICE having a chance to pick them up.
ICE is still holding out hope for some cooperation…
“What are we actually doing to keep Gwinnett County safe?” he asked rhetorically.
Gwinnett County’s new sheriff plans to make changes
The FOX 5 I-Team speaks to the incoming Gwinnett County sheriff who plans two huge changes the first day he takes office in January.
Fox Five News
November 12, 202
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – Gwinnett County’s new sheriff plans two huge changes the first day he takes office in January.
Both involve controversial ways in which inmates are treated at the jail.
Democrat Keybo Taylor won the seat left open with the retirement of longtime Republican sheriff Butch Conway.
It was Conway who joined the 287(g) program in 2010. It allowed deputies to serve as federal immigration officers, screening all prisoners who come into the jail to determine their legal status.
If a prisoner is in the country illegally, they are detained until immigration authorities can transfer the inmate into federal custody and ultimately for deportation.
But Taylor believes the program actually wastes money.
“The program was originally to deport violent criminals,” he said. “When you go in and look at the percentage of people that are in that jail now that is in there on ICE detainers, they are non-violent offenders.”
He said when he takes office in January, he will remove Gwinnett County from the 287(g) program and put those deputies into a beefed-up anti-gang unit. Taylor believes that’s the real source of violence in Gwinnett.
“What are we actually doing to keep Gwinnett County safe?” he asked rhetorically.
But some critics fear what will come next in Gwinnett if the 287(g) program is scrapped.
“I make this very sad prediction,” said DA King, an anti-illegal immigration lobbyist who supported Gwinnett’s arrangement with the 287(g) program.
“There are going to be people killed in Gwinnett County by people in the country illegally who were passed over by the enforcement of — or lack thereof — of this incoming sheriff,” said King.
“Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.”
Insider Advantage Georgia
November 11, 2020
By Phil Kent
Criticism of poor management and decision-making by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger continues, coupled with GOP voter fraud lawsuits that have been filed or will be filed. The controversy and lawsuits are partially spurred by changes in state election laws. One change, agreed to by the Republican secretary of state last March, is especially stunning. And it leads to a big question: Why did he agree to a settlement that smuggled in a major change to mail-in voting?
John Daniel Davidson, writing in The Federalist, has researched and written about Raffensperger’s incredible cave-in involving a settlement in federal court with the Georgia Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee which had sued the state over for absentee voting rules.
The settlement introduced “ballot curing” to Georgia law. Ballot curing, as Davidson describes it, is when voters whose mail-in ballots are rejected for some reason— the signature on the ballot doesn’t match the one on file, the ballot is missing certain voter information, etc.— are notified and given a chance to correct or “cure” their absentee ballot. “Under the settlement, state election officials agreed to contact voters whose ballots were rejected within three business days. If an absentee ballot is rejected in the 11 days before Election Day, officials agreed to contact the voter in the next business day,” Davidson writes.
But here’s where it gets worse. Because more than 8,000 absentee ballots were rejected in Georgia’s 2018 general election, this provision in the settlement got the most media play. Yet the most important one is a crucial change to the rules for accepting absentee ballots in the first place. Consider Davidson’s findings:
“Previously, the signature on the absentee ballot had to match the signature on eNet, a computer database that maintains Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot information. If the signature on the ballot didn’t match, it was thrown out.
“In a cleverly worded section of the settlement, Georgia election officials agreed to a subtle but profound change…, we hope you read the rest here.
This was not just voter fraud out of Philly. It’s a coup by the oligarchy
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The plan was simple.
Saturate the media with polls showing a blue wave and an inevitable victory. Discourage people from voting in person. And then, after tabulating the paltry votes of those who defied the media to vote in person, dump all the tampered, altered, and harvested ballots for Biden in key cities.
Even before Election Day, the Democrats knew their plan was going awry. Suddenly, instead of urging their base to use mail-in ballots they were, just as loudly, telling them to vote in person.
Why? Too few Republicans were voting by mail and too many were going to vote in person.
If the Election Day numbers tilted too decisively to President Trump before suddenly going Biden’s way, the election would look rigged, and there would be an outcry from Republicans.
Despite last minute efforts urging Democrats to vote in person, that’s exactly what happened.
Once again, Democrats had overreached, committed a massive crime, and have been left with no choice except to ride the tiger. That’s what happened last time when the Obama administration allied with the Clinton campaign to eavesdrop on its political opponents. And then doubled down with investigations and indictments, not of the perpetrators, but the victims.
Despite the blatant irregularities in key battleground states, they’re doubling down again.
The American Coup is underway. In classic Leninist fashion, its initial goal is to control the propaganda and the process. The media has declared Biden to be the winner while mass celebratory gatherings cheer the new order. Big Tech censors any skepticism about the election.
And the same faction that declared four years ago that casting doubt on an election was patriotic and the best defense of democracy now claims exactly it’s treason.
The only Democrat rule is that it’s patriotic when they do it and treason when their opponents do. That’s not how ‘democrats think. It’s how dictators rule.
All of this is a sideshow. What really matters is the process, not the propaganda. The propaganda is meant to divert attention from how implausible the media’s numbers are.
Republican turnout rose, instead of falling, in in-person voting, and the GOP also went into Election Day with clear leads in mail-in ballots in key battleground states, including Wisconsin and Michigan. The tide of Biden ballots that arrived during the night resulted in implausible turnout figures. The photos, videos, and whistleblower accounts of poll and postal workers tampering with ballots didn’t take long to show up. And just as quickly to be censored.
The odd numbers mostly came out of urban areas run by notoriously corrupt political machines. And the race between those trying to steal and unsteal the election began with a power struggle. In Philly and Detroit, efforts were made to keep Republican observers out of view.
In Philly, it took a court order to even get the observers within sight of the ballots, while the city continued to fight the ruling. In Detroit, windows were covered up with cardboard, and Republican observers were locked out. Potentially tens of thousands of ballots were illegally transposed with no Republican observers. In Pennsylvania, Democrat operatives had been illegally given access to rejected mail-in ballots so that they could arrange for provisionals. And back in Detroit, workers were told to backdate ballots that had arrived after the election.
In Wisconsin, thousands of witness statements may have been illegally altered.
Meanwhile the glitches, errors, and irregularities began piling up.
In Antrim County, Michigan, a “glitch” turned over a county that President Trump had won to Joe Biden. The glitch was only noticed because the results didn’t match past trends. More than half of the state’s counties use the same software.
“Just last night in Oakland County, we found 2,000 ballots that had been given to Democrats, that were Republican ballots, due to a clerical error,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announced at a press conference.
Oakland had been one of three counties that were crucial to the state being called for Biden.
And then there were the voting dead who went on voting and being registered after death. That allegedly included a woman who voted a week after she died.
The voting dead are not a new problem in Philly. If the dead didn’t vote, few elections would go on as usual. And yet the same media that spent four years falsely claiming that Russians had somehow rigged the previous election with a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads, have declared that accusing the incorruptible City of Brotherly Love of corruption is an outrage.
It’s no coincidence that the areas at the center of the vote fraud controversy, Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta, are also some of the most corrupt cities in the country with plenty of jailed officials. We hope you read the rest here on the Frontpagemag website and that you subscribe to their feed. It’s far undervalued at no-cost.
An Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter with a growing reputation for blundering inaccuracies has been allowed to strike again by AJC editors.
Amanda Coyne has a news report in the October 30, 2020 print version of what is often referred to as Georgia’s “flagship newspaper” in which she tells readers that the I-9 employment and identity verification form is a “tax form.” It isn’t.
The yarn, headlined “Application process stymies 200 + plus would-be poll workers in Gwinnett”explains at length that people who wanted to work at Gwinnett County polls have not been contacted after completing an application. The Gwinnett application is online and requires an easy and quick registration if you want to see it.
From the liberal AJC via reporter Amanda Coyne:
Gwinnett County’s human resources department requires potential poll workers to submit an I-9 form before their application is moved over to the elections department. The I-9 is a tax form that allows the county to pay poll workers. Applicants are supposed to get an automated email after submitting their application with instructions on how to submit the tax form, country spokesman Joe Sorenson said. Nothing in the job posting or application indicates the I-9 is necessary to move forward.”
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the people who administer the I-9 form describe it as the ‘employment verification’ form that it has been since 1986.
From the USCIS I-9 website:
Use Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States. All U.S. employers must properly complete Form I-9 for each individual they hire for employment in the United States. This includes citizens and noncitizens. Both employees and employers (or authorized representatives of the employer) must complete the form.”
Along with a request for correction sent to editors, Coyne was noted here (AJC inventing “facts” on state legislation again – HB960 and “illegal alien”) in February when her editors allowed her to report on legislation introduced by anti-enforcement Democrats in the Georgia Capitol aimed at removing the term “illegal alien” from state law. She apparently didn’t read the bill, invented language that was not there and as usual, to our knowledge (I asked several times via Twitter and email), the AJC never ran a correction.
We don’t think Coyne or her editors spend much time on research.
The slogan for the AJC is “compelling, credible and complete.” It isn’t.
Until Trump’s arrival, there was increasingly no border at all. Fifty-million foreign-born resided, both legally and illegally, in the United States. Nearly a million annually walked northward across the border with ease and without legal sanction or invitation. To object to illegal immigration and decry its deleterious effects on the entry-level wages of our working poor, on the social safety net of the American needy, and on the sanctity of the law was to be smeared as racist, xenophobic, and nativist.
Against all the money and clout of America’s revolutionary forces, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people.
Victor Davis Hanson
Amgreatness.com
November 1, 2020
Until Donald Trump’s arrival, the globalist revolution was almost solidified and institutionalized—with the United States increasingly its greatest and most “woke” advocate. We know its bipartisan establishment contours.
China would inherit the world in 20 or 30 years. The self-appointed task of American elites—many of whom had already been enriched and compromised by Chinese partners and joint ventures—was to facilitate this all-in-the-family transition in the manner of the imperial British hand-off of hegemony to the United States in the late 1940s.
Our best and brightest like the Biden family, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg would enlighten us about the “real” China, so we yokels would not fall into Neanderthal bitterness as they managed our foreordained decline.
We would usher China into “the world community”—grimacing at, but overlooking the destruction it wrought on the global commercial order and the American interior.
We would politely forget about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uyghurs. Hollywood would nod as it put out more lucrative comic-book and cartoonish films for the Chinese markets, albeit with mandated lighter-skinned actors.
The NBA would nod twice and trash a democratic United States, while praising genocidal China—becoming richer and more esteemed abroad to make up for becoming boring and poorer at home. The universities would nod three times, and see a crime not in Chinese espionage and security breaches, but in the reporting of them as crimes.
So our revolutionary role would be to play stuffy and snooty Athenian philosophers to the new muscular Roman legions of China.
Given our elites’ superior morality, genius, and sense of self, we would gently chide and cajole our Chinese masters into becoming enlightened world overseers and democrats—all the easier, the richer and more affluent Chinese became.
For now, Trump has stopped that revolution.
Internal Counterrevolutions
Until Trump’s arrival, Big Tech was three-quarters home on the road to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Five or six companies monopolized most American—and indeed the world’s—access and use of the internet. In cynical fashion, Silicon Valley grandees patronized naïve conservatives that they were the supposed embodiment of Milton Friedman libertarianism and 19th century robber baron daring. Yet to their leftist kindred, the moguls of Menlo Park simultaneously whispered, “Don’t worry about such necessary disinformation: we will enrich only your candidates, only your agendas, only your foundations, only your universities—in exchange for your exemptions.”
Antitrust legislation was as much an anathema to good liberals as rigging searches, institutionalizing the cancel culture, and censoring thoughts and ideas were welcomed. For now Trump, almost alone, is battling that revolution.
Astounding Asylum Numbers in DOS Refugee Report for FY 2021
Center for Immigration Studies
October 28, 2020
Art Arthur
The Department of State (DOS) — with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — transmitted their Report to Congress on Proposed Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2021 on September 30. My colleague Nayla Rush broke down that report, and the changes that the Biden-Harris ticket has proposed to the number of entries, in an October 6 post, but three statistics stick out therein: the number of aliens seeking asylum from DHS, the number seeking asylum as relief from removal from the immigration courts, and the credible fear grant rate in FY 2020.
Aliens who are present in the United States may seek what is called “affirmative asylum” from asylum officers (AOs) in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency in DHS. AOs may grant or deny those aliens asylum.
If an AO opts not to grant the alien asylum, and the alien is removable (as most are), the AO can refer the alien to immigration court (part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) within the Department of Justice (DOJ)), for the alien to renew that application as a defensive application (relief from removal) in removal proceedings.
In addition to adjudicating those affirmative asylum applications, AOs also consider “credible fear” claims for aliens in expedited removal proceedings under section 235(b)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Those AOs can find that the alien has credible fear (in which case the alien is referred to immigration court to file an asylum application before an immigration judge (IJ) in removal proceedings), or determine that the alien does not have credible fear (in which case the alien can ask an IJ to review the AO’s decision).
There were an average of 500 to 550 AOs at USCIS in recent years (USCIS is authorized for 745 AOs), but last year USCIS announced that it planned to hire 500 new employees in the asylum branch of the agency (half of whom would be AOs; the rest staff), and, as of October 2019, they were on track to meet that goal. In a February 2020 report, however, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was critical of USCIS’s efforts to train those AOs to perform credible fear screenings.
The number of such credible fear referrals skyrocketed in FY 2019, as almost one million aliens entered the United States illegally along the Southwest border or sought entry without proper documents at the ports of entry along that border. As GAO noted: “The number of referrals for credible fear screenings in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2019 alone was larger than the total number of referrals in each of fiscal years 2014 and 2015.”
In fact, AOs completed 5,523 credible fear cases in FY 2009, but in FY 2019, it completed 102,204 (out of 105,439 cases received) — a more than 1,750 percent increase. To help out, DHS assigned refugee officers, former AOs, and (in a controversial move), Border Patrol agents to handle interviews. A federal judge blocked that last effort in August.
All of which brings me back to the DOS report. As of August 31, according to the department, there were 598,692 asylum claims (in addition to credible fear claims) pending with USCIS. Assuming that there were the authorized 745 AOs on that date (the actual number — a moving target — is hard to find), that means that each AO is assigned almost 804 cases to adjudicate — not counting new cases that will be added.
In my experience, AOs generally take two hours to conduct interviews and complete about two per day, but USCIS’s statistics show a much lower completion rate. In September 2019, according to USCIS, AOs conducted 2,799 interviews and completed 6,286 cases. Assuming that there were 500 AOs at the time (likely on the low side), that means they each held 5.6 interviews each that month and completed 12.6 cases per capita — much fewer than one a day.
On top of the AOs’ asylum workload, according to DOS, there were 549,724 asylum claims (as of June 30) pending with the nation’s 520 IJs (the latter as of October — 20 new IJs were on-boarded on October 9, meaning that the number in June was actually closer to 500).
Again, that means that each IJ is assigned 1,057 asylum cases. As a former IJ, I generally completed one to two asylum cases per day, and at best IJs can hear approximately four (assuming that the alien shows up and is ready to go at the merits hearing date, which does not always happen). Consequently, as the Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse (TRAC) reported, in 2019 asylum applicants in immigration court on average waited almost three years for their cases to be decided, time that they will spend in the United States — and a timeframe that does not count appeals.
And, again, the DOS report does not count any new asylum cases that have been filed in the interim in immigration court.
Combined, however, these statistics show that there were 1,148,416 pending asylum cases in the United States — at a minimum. If those applicants were a state, they would be the 43rd largest in the United States, ahead of Montana, Rhode Island, Delaware, the Dakotas, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.
Plus, as the foregoing shows, an asylum applicant denied by USCIS can renew his or her claim with the immigration court. In September 2019, for example, AOs approved 34 percent of the asylum claims they adjudicated (1,501), and referred (for one reason or another) 66 percent (2,901). Those cases — assuming that the aliens actually appear in immigration court — will end up on the IJs’ dockets.
This is a hole that the AOs and IJs will not be able to dig themselves out of without a massive increase in resources.
The Trump administration has, in fact, increased the total number of IJs by 70 percent and, as noted, has at least tried to increase the number of AOs by 50 percent. Joe Biden vows to double the number of IJs (as well as the number of EOIR staff and interpreters), but that hiring will take time and a significant increase in resources — resources Congress, which is stingy when it comes to immigration, may not fund. Much more here.
Two years ago I wrote a column for Insider Advantage Georgia informing readers that “the driver’s license Georgia issues to non-citizens – including illegal aliens who have already been ordered deported – is acceptable and “proper identification” when casting a ballot.”
Amazingly, that statement is still true.
When we voted in Cobb County this week I once again asked the very nice staffer who took my drivers license after asking me for identification if she would have accepted it if it read “limited term” across the top. I had to repeat myself and it was obvious she had never heard that description before.
When I made my question clear, she replied they accept any and all Georgia drivers licenses. Even if they are stamped “LIMITED TERM.” Her supervisor confirmed the answer to my question. So does DDS .
We hope readers will ask the same question when they vote. It seems like “an issue.”
For those who haven’t read the 2018 column, the Georgia Department of Driver’s Services (DDS) issues non-citizens drivers licenses and ID Cards that vary from the ones issued to U.S. citizens only in wording reading “LIMITED TERM.” It should be noted that in addition to legitimate guest workers and foreign students this includes a variety of illegal aliens who have been issued a work-permit.
It should also be noted that non-citizens – of any immigration status – are not supposed to vote in Georgia.
So why doesn’t state law make it clear that the default driving and ID credentials only given to aliens cannot legally be used or accepted at the polls? The weak and quiet answer to that question is usually that non-citizens cannot legally register to vote so we shouldn’t concern ourselves with details on voter’s ID offered at the ballot box.
Image: IPG
Considering the “Motor Voter” automatic registration system now implemented in Georgia it seems fair to demand a belt and suspenders on this one.
The left-tilted Georgia Public Broadcasting reported on Georgia’s “motor voter law” in February with “which means when you go to the DMV, the Department of Driver Services, and do any sort of anything, your voter registration is updated.”
“Georgia led the country in the next number of those motor voter interactions with well over 3.5 million. The number of people registered in Georgia increased by nearly a million voters from 2014 to 2018 according to the GPB report.
What could go wrong? We point to a 2019 Pew report on California Motor Voter as one example: “But DMV officials later found more than 100,000 registration errors in the first year, including some voters registered to the wrong party. And at least one noncitizen (state officials still are investigating how many in total) was accidentally signed up — a significant error since noncitizens aren’t allowed to vote.” *Update, 7 October, 2020: Here is another study on motor voter, from Michigan: Motor Voter Mahem: ‘Michigan’s Voter Rolls in Disrepair.’
Outgoing Rep Jeff Jones (R-St. Simons Island) dropped legislation (HB270) at the beginning of the 2019 General Assembly session that would have excluded the drivers license issued to foreigners from the state law on proper identification presented to poll workers. The legislation had an impressive list of cosponsors but never saw so much as a hearing. Thank you for trying, Rep. Jones.
Along with changing the default state ID credentials issued to foreigners to clearly illustrate the non-citizen status – not to mention illegal immigration status – we hope the legislature can manage this simple fix in 2021.
Change the laws.
Non-citizen ID should not be “proper ID” at Georgia polls and if the Republican-ruled state government is determined to reward illegal immigration, credentials issued to illegal aliens should not be identical to those given to legal immigrants and legal, temporary visa holders.
D.A. King is president of the Dustin Inman Society
A version of this essay appeared on the subscription news outlet Insider Advantage Georgia on October 23, 2020.
“Because of the greater number of prisoners received into USMS custody … total detention housing costs increased by approximately 1.9 percent … from $159 million to $162 million,” the DOJ report states.
Breitbart News:
Broken down, more than 53 percent of foreign nationals in federal prison last year were ordered deported before they were locked up for crimes. Another 36 percent of foreign nationals in prison were under investigation by federal immigration officials, and more than seven percent are being adjudicated as illegal aliens.
About 3.5 percent of foreign nationals in federal prison were legal immigrants being either adjudicated or shielded from deportation.
The average cost to American taxpayers to house foreign national convicts in just USMS facilities, not including BOP facilities, last year was $88.19 per prisoner every day.
“Because of the greater number of prisoners received into USMS custody … total detention housing costs increased by approximately 1.9 percent … from $159 million to $162 million,” the DOJ report states.
The DOJ report also detailed various cases such as one involving 30-year-old Colombian national Fredis Valencia Palacios. In 2016, he and c0-conspirators organized a human trafficking scheme where they arranged to smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S.
Three Cuban illegal aliens paid Palacios and his co-conspirators for the smuggling scheme, but when the illegal aliens were put on a boat headed for Miami, Palacios’ co-conspirators raped and murdered a female passenger and murdered a male passenger. The DOJ report states:
One of the co-defendants threw the male passengers overboard, anchoring them with rope to the inside of the boat. The surviving male victim reported that he heard the co-defendants sexually assault the female victim before cutting her throat and murdering her. The surviving victim also heard the co-defendants cut the other male victim’s throat, killing him. The survivor managed to escape by swimming and was subsequently rescued by the Colombian Navy.
Palacios was convicted in December 2018 and sentenced to 180 months in federal prison for his role in the smuggling scheme.
Republicans’ Georgia election troubles went deep down the ballot last month, including losing two sheriff’s jobs that flipped to Democrats, both of whom have promised to end cooperative agreements with ICE.
Craig Owens, the winner in Cobb County, has said he wants to suspend all dealings with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Keybo Taylor, in Gwinnett County, hasn’t gone that far but is planning to cancel the 287(g) agreement that effectively deputizes the county’s officers to begin the deportation process for deportable migrants booked into local jails.
The results could be devastating to ICE.
Gwinnett this year ranks third of all U.S. counties in migrants flagged for deportation, with the vast majority of those coming out of the 287(g) program.
In Athens-Clarke County doesn’t take part in 287(g), but the incoming sheriff, who unseated a fellow Democrat in a primary this year, campaigned on a promise of refusing other forms of cooperation with ICE, effectively creating a sanctuary.
Named after the section of immigration law that created it, the 287(g) program allows ICE to sign partnership agreements with state and local law enforcement. Officers and deputies go through ICE training and can then begin the deportation process for migrants who come through their prisons or jails and are removable under the law.
There used to be another side to 287(g). The task force model trained officers and deputies who went out on patrol, but the Obama administration canceled those agreements.
The Obama team did, though, see value in the jail model. It argued that immigrants with rap sheets were worthy targets for deportation.
Immigrant rights activists disagree. They say too many migrants are being snared for what they consider to be relatively low-level offenses.
Activists have pressured some of the country’s largest jurisdictions to withdraw from the program and, in many cases, to refuse cooperation at all.
Prince William County in Virginia allowed its 287(g) program to lapse this summer. Los Angeles County’s sheriff canceled all cooperation in August.
All told, 28 jurisdictions have ended 287(g) deals, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
Still, more jurisdictions are enrolled now than were at the start off the Trump administration, thanks to strenuous efforts by ICE and sheriffs who see value in cooperating.
In Gwinnett, Sheriff Butch Conway decided to step down after 24 years and didn’t run this year. He said the 287(g) program cut his jail population over the past decade, even as the county grew by more than 300,000 residents.
He said working with ICE helped keep the deportation agency’s own efforts focused on criminals while protecting illegal immigrants who managed to keep clean rap sheets.
“I had been with ICE prior to implementing the program when they attempted to apprehend subjects and took anyone at the location they found without documentation into custody to be deported. Under 287(g), this didn’t occur,” Sheriff Conway told The Washington Times.
Neither Mr. Taylor nor Mr. Owens responded to multiple requests for comment from The Washington Times, but both confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this month that they will follow through on their promises to curtail cooperation.
The Times reached out to a number of Georgia-based migrant rights groups, but none replied for this article.
Not all will go free if Mr. Taylor holds to his promise to cooperate with ICE detainer requests. But without deputies on duty 24/7, some will be released without ICE having a chance to pick them up.
ICE is still holding out hope for some cooperation…