“Speaking to a friendly audience, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Mark Potok, spoke frankly about his group’s real purpose. It’s not what most in the media think. “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes,” Potok told a luncheon crowd. Potok then said, “I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”
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.
Mark H. Metcalf formerly served in appointed positions at the Justice and Defense Departments in the administration of George W. Bush. He served as a judge on the Miami Immigration Court from 2005 to 2008. He is a Kentucky prosecutor and a veteran of Iraq.
Skipping Court
U.S. Immigration Courts & Aliens Who Disappear Before Trial
Key Takeaways
43 percent of all aliens free pending trial failed to appear for court in 2017.
Since 1996, 37 percent of all aliens free before trial disappeared from court.
Aliens abscond from court more often today than they did before 9/11.
Deportation orders for failing to appear in court exceed deportation orders from cases that were tried by 306 percent.
46 percent of all unaccompanied children disappeared from U.S. immigration courts from 2013 through 2017.
49 percent of unaccompanied children failed to appear in U.S. immigration courts in 2017.
Introduction
U.S. immigration courts recently released their numbers to Congress for fiscal year 2017. Hoped-for improvements are largely absent and problems that have defined the courts since their beginning persist. Most persistent of all is the failure of aliens to appear for their trials. These no-shows remain high, with 43 percent of all those free before trial — 41,302 aliens out of 95,342 — disappearing from court in 2017.1 More to the point, these numbers add up.
Failures to Appear in Court
American immigration courts consistently have the highest failure to appear (FTA) rates of any state or federal courts in the country.2From 1996 through 2017, 37 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. From the 2,680,598 foreign nationals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released on their own recognizance, 1,320,000, received deportation orders, 75 percent of them (993,593) for failure to appear. Only 25 percent of this group — some 324,402 people altogether — actually tried their cases.3 This dynamic, first reported at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 17, 2010, eventually prompted heated denial by the Obama Justice Department4 but it is not solely a problem of Democrat administrations. Administrations of both parties have failed to effectively address it.5
Immigration trial courts issued three times more deportation orders for failure to appear in court than deportation orders for cases that were actually tried (993,593 ÷ 324,402) over the last 22 fiscal years. (See Figure 1.) On average, more than 45,000 people each year disappeared from court since 1996, making failures to appear the single greatest source of deportation orders in the immigration court system.6
Immigration detention is civil and for the purpose of ensuring appearance of aliens at removal proceedings, and for the actual removal itself.
Congress recognizes both qualitative and quantitative problems associated with illegal immigration in the processes and detention mechanisms it directs.
Claims of asylum and fear of return are a major loophole that result in release of aliens who then disappear.
Lack of detention space to hold aliens also contributes to the collapse of immigration and border controls, resulting in a system of “catch-and-release” that encourages more aliens to attempt to enter illegally or to overstay their visas.
Immigration and border security controls are at a crisis point, due to dismaying case backlogs currently clogging the immigration courts (more than 750,000 cases) and the number of fugitives (900,000) under orders of removal who are loose on the streets of the United States.
Migrant caravans may force both legislators and the administration to take effective remedial action to close legal loopholes and to declare a mass immigration emergency to ensure continued control of our external border(s). Here.
In recent days, the terms “Special Interests Aliens” (SIAs) and “Known and Suspected Terrorists” (KSTs) have become more frequently used as part of discussions about the federal budget and border security. These terms are not synonymous nor interchangeable, but are two separate terms that are commonly used in the national security community to describe different types of potential threats. These are generally well understood terms that are, unfortunately, being misunderstood or mischaracterized as part of the current shutdown debate.
The facts are clear
There are thousands of individuals on the terrorist watchlist that traveled through our Hemisphere last year alone, and we work very hard to keep these individuals from traveling on illicit pathways to our country.
We work with foreign partners to block many of these individuals and prevent them from entering the United States. But effective border security is our last line of defense.
The threat is real. The number of terror-watchlisted individuals encountered at our Southern Border has increased over the last two years. The exact number is sensitive and details about these cases are extremely sensitive. But I am sure all Americans would agree that even one terrorist reaching our borders is one too many.
Overall, we stop on average 10 individuals on the terrorist watchlist per day from traveling to or entering the United States—and more than 3,700 in Fiscal Year 2017. Most of these individuals are trying to enter the U.S. by air, but we must also be focused on stopping those who try to get in by land.
Additionally, last year at our Southern Border, DHS encountered more than 3,000 “special interest aliens”—individuals with suspicious travel patterns who may pose a national security risk—not to mention the many criminals, smugglers, traffickers, and other threat actors who try to exploit our borders.
What is a Special Interest Alien?
Generally, an SIA is a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests. Often such individuals or groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism. DHS analysis includes an examination of travel patterns, points of origin, and/or travel segments that are tied to current assessments of national and international threat environments.
This does not mean that all SIAs are “terrorists,” but rather that the travel and behavior of such individuals indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation. The term SIA does not indicate any specific derogatory information about the individual – and DHS has never indicated that the SIA designation means more than that.
This term isn’t new and neither is the threat from SIAs. In 2016, Secretary Johnson ordered that DHS form a “multi-DHS Component SIA Joint Action Group” to drive efforts to “counter the threats posed by the smuggling of SIAs.” Just this month, the House Homeland Security Committee released a report outlining the threat posed by SIAs, as well as unknown and other potentially dangerous individuals, traveling to the United States using illicit pathways. The report can be found here: https://republicans-homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FINAL-SIA-REPORT.pdf
What is a Known or Suspected Terrorist?
KST is a term commonly used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
First, a “known terrorist” is an individual who has been (a) arrested, charged by information, indicted for, or convicted of a crime related to terrorism and/or terrorist activities by U.S. Government or foreign government authorities; or (b) identified as a terrorist or a member of a terrorist organization pursuant to statute, Executive Order, or international legal obligation pursuant to a United Nations Security Council Resolution.
Second, a“suspected terrorist”is an individual who is reasonably suspected to be engaging in, has engaged in, or intends to engage in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism and/or terrorist activities.
The use of KST is generally accepted to refer to someone for whom we have a reasonable suspicion to believe that they have or are likely to be engaged in terrorist activity, as that term is defined in U.S. law.
Why are these confused publicly?
In a document released by the White House, on Friday January 4, 2019, the White House, using data compiled by the Department of Homeland Security, mentioned a number of KSTs who were prevented from traveling to or entering the United States.
The presentation stated that “3,755 known or suspected terrorists were prevented from traveling to or entering the United States by DHS (FY17).” This statistic has been used repeatedly by the Department and the Administration (e.g. “CBP prevents an average of 10 individuals on the terrorist watchlist per day from traveling to or entering the United States”). The majority of such individuals are attempting to travel to the United States by air, but others are encountered arriving by land and through maritime routes—and have been encountered attempting to enter the country through the Southern Border.
A number that was not included in the presentation, yet has recently been used by Administration officials is Friday: “DHS encountered more than 3,000 Special Interest Aliens last year at the Southern Border.” These KST and SIA figures are not the same and should not be conflated.
Despite what some media has reported, SIAs are not simply people who “traveled from a country that had terrorism.” The targeting information and analysis done by DHS is more sophisticated and incorporates a number of factors. Often these are individuals who have obtained false documents, or used smugglers to evade security across multiple countries. In addition, some have engaged in criminal activity that could pose a danger to the United States, and some are found to have links to terrorism after additional investigative work and analysis by CBP personnel.
The bottom line is that significant numbers of threat actors have attempted, and continue to attempt, to enter the United States surreptitiously and without authority. DHS and other national security agencies remain concerned about the volume of terrorist-watchlisted individuals, SIAs, convicted criminals, gang members, and others who pose a threat to the homeland, attempting to enter the United States. And we will take all appropriate action to legally block their entry.
“From intelligence community sources with access to protected government information, the Center for Immigration Studies has learned that at least 100 migrants from “countries of interest”,3 encountered between 2012 and 2017 at or en route to the southern border, matched the U.S. terrorism “watch lists” known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), or the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). The number of such law enforcement land border encounters with such watch-listed migrants has risen drastically each year after 2012, according to the information, which is deemed credible but could not be independently corroborated.” Here, from CIS.org.
See also:
Central American Countries Are Helping Middle Easterners Illegally Enter The United States
Panama and Costa Rica are chokepoints on the migrant trail followed by people from other continents seeking easier U.S. entry through our porous border with Mexico.
“Qoordheen had been smuggled from Zambia to Brazil, passed through Panama, and was making his way north through Costa Rica when the Americans had him arrested here, 20 miles inside Costa Rica, according to an American intelligence official with knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity.”
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.
Group says each new illegal immigrant costs $82,191, $164B over decade
Stopping just a tiny percentage of illegal immigrants surging into the United States would pay for President Trump’s wall by eliminating the lifetime taxpayer costs provided to those aliens, according to a detailed financial analysis.
The Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of immigration, said that the border wall between Mexico and the United States would only have to stop 3 percent to 4 percent of potential illegal crossers, or about 60,000 of an estimated 2 million over the next decade, to pay for Trump’s $5 billion request.
The analysis highlights the huge price of illegal immigration and what it takes to protect the border, house, educate, and feed new immigrants, and the lifetime of having some 11 million on various welfare programs.
“Camarota said that about 200,000 more illegal immigrants successfully cross the border yearly, a lifetime cost of $16.4 billion added each year.” Here, from the Washington Examiner
Rep. Jesse Petrea. Image: Georgia General Assembly
“Currently in Georgia prisons are some 1,360 criminal aliens. These are criminals convicted of serious crimes. For example, 193 for child molestation, 65 for aggravated child molestation, 134 for murder, 103 for armed robbery, 98 for rape, 42 for statutory rape, 61 for kidnapping, 45 for manslaughter and 18 for vehicular homicide. All 1,360 of these individuals had at least one Georgia victim. All of these 1,360 crimes were avoidable.”
The below is a column published in the Savannah Morning News/SavannahNow.com from Georgia state Rep Jesse Petrea on his “Georgia Illegal Immigration Protection and Public Safety Act.”
Lawmakers Look To “Create a Better Georgia”
January 12, 2019
Rep Jesse Petrea
On Monday, Jan. 14, we will convene the 2019 Georgia legislative session in Atlanta. This year I have multiple bills I am working on to create a better Georgia. Today, I would like to explain my two legislative priorities for 2019.
First, I will attempt again to accomplish something that I have sponsored since my first term in the legislature. I have pre-filed House Bill 7 which would eliminate the state income tax on military retirement income. This is the right thing to do for the men and women who protect this country with a career of military service. Never in our history has a smaller percentage of veterans protected so many in our country.
Further, it will level the field to attract disciplined and skilled men and women to live and work in Georgia. Our industries and businesses desperately need this workforce. Many veterans retire at 40 to 50 years of age and are ready for a new career. They have the skills, discipline and work ethic that our employers so desperately need. However, currently, our neighboring states offer them huge cost savings. In Florida, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina, these veterans can save 5.75 percent of their income because these states do not tax this income as we do in Georgia.
Since being elected, I have made public safety my primary focus. So this year my second priority is to sponsor the Georgia Illegal Immigration Protection and Public Safety Act. Currently in Georgia prisons are some 1,360 criminal aliens. These are criminals convicted of serious crimes. For example, 193 for child molestation, 65 for aggravated child molestation, 134 for murder, 103 for armed robbery, 98 for rape, 42 for statutory rape, 61 for kidnapping, 45 for manslaughter and 18 for vehicular homicide. All 1,360 of these individuals had at least one Georgia victim. All of these 1,360 crimes were avoidable. Had our federal government done its job, none of these illegal immigrants would have been present to commit these crimes.
