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.
Gold Dome Republicans will not allow voters to decide on constitutional official English
The liberal Gainesville Times is reporting today that the Hall County elections board is again investigating the possibility of foreign language ballots.
Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires that counties with large enough populations of minority groups provide election materials in their population’s native languages. Voters who are not proficient in English have the option to bring a translator with them to the polls.
Hall’s elections board voted last year to reverse plans to provide ballots in Spanish, but now that the busy election season is over, board members said Tuesday that they wanted to devote some time to studying how the county could offer ballots in Spanish.
The corporate-funded anti-English Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) in Atlanta has long lobbied against English as Georgia’s constitutional official language of government and has led the attack on English in the voting process. The Republican-ruled Georgia House killed legislation in 2016 to allow Georgia voters to answer a ballot question on amending the state constitution to make English the state’s official language of government.
The ability to read, write, and speak basic English is a requirement for naturalization.
Gwinnett County is already using foreign language ballots.
“GALEO is very glad about the designation by the U.S. Census Bureau and the requirement to provide much needed Spanish language assistance to Latino voters in Gwinnett County,” Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, said in a news release Monday afternoon.
“Voting is an important right we have as U.S. citizens, regardless of English language proficiency. As we had mentioned over one year ago, the need for Spanish language assistance and information is certainly a reality,” GALEO Executive Director Jerry Gonzalez told the liberal AJC.
Metro-Atlanta’s DeKalb County School system alone deals with 140 languages
The Times’ story on Hall County and foreign language ballots can be read here.
Candidate Jesse Vaughn – Image: Chattanooga Times Free Press
North Georgia voters reject former Democrat Party local chairman in Georgia’s House District 5 run-off
Despite a reported $4000.00 campaign donation from Georgia’s Republican Speaker of the House, former Democratic party local chairman Jesse Vaughn has lost the race to fill an empty seat in the Georgia House to opponent Matt Barton.
Barton will replace State Rep. John Meadows, R-Calhoun, who died Nov. 13.
Defeated candidate Vaughn said he switched parties around 2008. His voting record shows he first cast a ballot in a Republican primary in 2010, according to the Chattanooga Times.
He is a former member of the board of directors for the Gordon County Chamber of Commerce.
“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.”
