1. FL Rep. questions loophole
2. IL Rep. fights SC law
3. Survey: Ethnic divide in CA
4. FL town fights detention center
5. Pakistani immigrant accused
1.
Lawmaker fights feds over immigrant criminals whose nations shun them
By Mark K. Matthews
Orlando Sentinel, November 19, 2011
The stories are horrific: a Fort Myers policeman gunned down in 2008 by a Cuban convict freed from U.S. detention because he couldn't be deported. A New York City woman attacked and eviscerated last year by a Chinese immigrant criminal also free because he couldn't be sent back to his homeland.
U.S. Rep. Sandy Adams of Orlando, a former Orange County deputy, has seized on these stories as evidence of what she deems a deadly loophole in U.S. immigration policy: a decade-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says the U.S. cannot indefinitely detain immigrant criminals whose home country refuses to take them back.
"We have American citizens being harmed," said Adams, a freshman Republican who has made the issue a front-burner concern, using it to grill Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano and as fodder for a stinging newspaper essay.
"At the end of the day, criminal immigrants are going back into the community, and they are going back to commit really heinous crimes," she said.
But officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement — while acknowledging the murders — say the problem represents a fraction of the cases they handle annually.
The people Adams is talking about — mostly criminals released from immigration detention centers after serving jail or prison time for their crimes — totaled a bit fewer than 13,000 during the past three years. By comparison, the U.S. in 2010 deported nearly 400,000 immigrants, about half of them convicted criminals — a rate that ICE called a one-year record.
"These releases are a very small part of what we do," said a senior ICE official not authorized to speak on the record.
According to ICE, about 4,000 — fewer than a third — of those released in the past three years were Cubans, whose government refuses to take them back.
Others are from nations, such as China and India, that require time-consuming investigations before accepting deportees. Once released, all are monitored by either parolelike visits or more-sophisticated tracking such as GPS devices as the U.S. tries to deport them.
Though ICE doesn't keep crime statistics, it has tracked at least two murders since 2008 — the ones Adams cites — and says that anyone convicted of a crime goes back to jail.
One of the solutions Adams supports — an allowance for indefinite detention of immigrant criminals who can't be deported — has drawn the ire of human-rights groups.
"We're a nation of laws, and our laws don't condone indefinite detention unless there is exceptional circumstances. That is what a free society does," said Susana Barciela, policy director of the Miami-based advocacy group Americans for Immigrant Justice.
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http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-11-19/news/os-adams-immigration...
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2.
Congressman Gutierrez Visits South Carolina to Discuss Immigration Law
WTMA (SC), November 21, 2011
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who chairs the Immigration Task Force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, is touring several states to discuss immigration issues and to urge the Obama Administration to adjust deportation policies.
Gutierrez, visited South Carolina on Sunday to discuss the new immigration law which takes effect in January and allows police to call immigration officials if they suspect a person, whom they stop for an unrelated incident such as a traffic violation, is in the country illegally.
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http://www.wtma.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=134&itemid=29757915
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3.
Survey finds ethnic divide among voters on DREAM Act
Among Latinos, 79% support government financial aid for illegal immigrants who attend state universities, compared with 30% of whites. And 49% of all respondents say UC and Cal State campuses are not very affordable or are unaffordable.
By Larry Gordon
Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2011
Many Californians worry that they are being priced out of the state's public university systems, and they object to allowing illegal immigrants the same financial aid that U.S. citizens can receive at the campuses, a new poll has found.
Fifty-five percent of the voters questioned said they oppose a new state law known as the California DREAM Act. It will permit undocumented students who graduated from California high schools and meet other requirements to receive taxpayer aid to attend the University of California, Cal State and community colleges starting in 2013. Forty percent support it.
But there is a huge ethnic divide on the issue, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey: 79% of Latinos approve of the law, while only 30% of whites do.
"There are not a lot of other issues on which there are such huge differences," said Manuel Pastor, a USC professor of American studies and ethnicity.
Partly, he said, it's easier for many Latinos, because they may know more undocumented people, to "understand the potential of someone who lacks papers but can really contribute to America."
But there are pocketbook factors too, especially in rough economic times, said Pastor, director of USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. The poll shows that more Latinos than whites feel they may be unable to afford a university education; they may be more likely to support aid for all needy students, he said.
The bipartisan survey found that a narrow majority of registered Democrats, 53%, support the new policy, which was signed into law last month by a fellow Democrat, Gov. Jerry Brown. But only 23% of Republicans do.
"I don't think illegal aliens should have any benefits in this country," said respondent Lois Hartman, 64, a Republican who is a retired database supervisor from Downey.
As for arguments that many students were brought to the U.S. as babies and had no choice about where they were raised, she said, "Their parents should have thought about that. I don't have any sympathy for them."
On the other hand, Andrew Haesloop, 25, a Democrat from San Carlos, supports the DREAM Act. Its costs ultimately will be offset, he reasoned, by the higher taxes paid by students who land better jobs because they had the opportunity for a college education.
"It's a benefit that could encourage these people to become contributing members of society," said Haesloop, an admissions counselor at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont.
A decade of tuition increases, including two this year at the 10 University of California and 23 Cal State campuses, has clearly taken a toll. The poll found that 49% of voters consider the universities not very affordable or not at all affordable, compared with 41% who say they are very or somewhat affordable. Fifty-two percent of Latinos said they are concerned about the cost, compared with 48% of whites.
Opinions are harsher among potential bill-payers: 53% of parents or grandparents living with children younger than 18 and 57% of people between the ages of 19 and 29 find the universities somewhat or entirely out of reach.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poll-higher-ed-20111119,0,410803...
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4.
Upscale Fla. town in fight over immigrant prison
By Laura Wides-Munoz
The Associated Press, November 20, 2011
In one of South Florida's upscale, rural enclaves, where peacocks roam and horse trails are as common as sidewalks, town leaders decided to bring in much of their money from an unusual business: a prison.
Only the leaders of Southwest Ranches kept their plans quiet from residents for almost a decade, and the project has now ballooned into what would be among the federal government's largest immigrant detention centers. The town would have to pay $150,000 each year to keep the prison, but officials say the town would turn a profit by getting 4 percent of what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays the company operating the prison to hold inmates there.
Many residents finally caught wind of the idea this year, when the immigration agency announced a tentative deal, and they're angry. They've held protests at public meetings, contemplated whether to recall the mayor before his March election and whether to amend the town charter to make it easier to fire the city attorney pushing the deal.
The objection over the prison has created an odd set of allies among the town's affluent residents, many of whom are wary of illegal immigrants, and longtime activists who fight for immigrants, legal or not.
The proposed facility is part of the federal government's new plan to move immigrants from jails to detention centers it says are better for holding people with no criminal background. The centers are also supposed to be easier to reach for detainees' relatives and lawyers.
Plans are in the works for other facilities near San Antonio, Texas, and in Essex County, N.J. and Orange County, Calif. But none of those proposals has drawn the outrage seen in Southwest Ranches, the Fort Lauderdale suburb where telenovelas are filmed in the shaded ranches, and wealthy developers, Miami Dolphins football players and others seek privacy and a country lifestyle.
Diana Bramhall is one of 7,000 people living in the town. She trains horses and grows an array of exotic avocados at the Southwest Ranches home she has lived for 18 years. She hadn't heard of the prison plan until last year.
"I don't want my town built on the back of the detention of illegal immigrants," Bramhall said. "I think there are better ways to make money."
But according to Mayor Jeff Nelson and others involved at the time, the plan for some kind of prison run by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison operator, was always integral to Southwest Ranches' ability to survive.
Nelson believes the plan has been out in the open, and officials list more than two dozen public meetings over the last decade where it was discussed. But residents insist the town did little to notify them.
An announcement for a Nov. 5 meeting about the detention center with ICE, CCA and Southwest Ranches officials was listed on the town website only as an "information meeting."
When the town incorporated in 2000, leaders annexed a 24-acre parcel of nearby land, sandwiched between a small women's prison and a dump. CCA had purchased the land just three years before. It was a curious move. The land wasn't connected by a road to the rest of the town. Many residents never even drove by it.
The town first tried to build a 700-bed county jail. By 2005, Southwest Ranches and CCA settled on a detention facility. The proposal was part of a growing trend among private prison contractors to move away from state and local facilities to federal ones. ICE facilities alone now provide about 12 percent, or nearly $200 million of CCA's total annual revenue, according to company filings.
Southwest Ranches and CCA sent a draft plan to ICE for review in 2007, two years before the agency officially put out its latest call for new proposals, according to records obtained by The Associated Press through a public information request.
In the latest version of the deal, calling for some 1,500 beds, Southwest Ranches could earn more than $1.5 million annually if ICE keeps the center filled year round. CCA officials say the number is closer to $400,000, in part because many beds may not always be filled, with another $400,000 in real estate taxes.
The 13-square mile town, which prides itself on low taxes, needs the revenue, recently telling the federal government it was struggling to meet its $9 million budget.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h7CJjqp-lhYgdeD666wpDB...
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5.
'Al-Qaida sympathizer' accused of NYC bomb plots
By Tom McElroy
The Associated Press, November 21, 2011
An "al-Qaida sympathizer" accused of plotting to bomb police and post offices in New York City as well as U.S. troops returning home remained in police custody after an arraignment on numerous terrorism-related charges.
Jose Pimentel of Manhattan was described by Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a Sunday news conference announcing Pimentel's arrest as "a 27-year-old al-Qaida sympathizer" who was motivated by terrorist propaganda and resentment of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said police had to move quickly to arrest Pimentel on Saturday because he was ready to carry out his plan.
"He was in fact putting this bomb together," Kelly said. "He was drilling holes and it would have been not appropriate for us to let him walk out the door with that bomb."
Manhattan assistant district attorney Brian Fields said Pimentel, a convert to Islam, "was approximately one hour from completing these explosive devices."
Ten years after 9/11, New York remains a prime terrorism target. Bloomberg said at least 14 terrorist plots, including the latest alleged scheme, have targeted the city since the Sept. 11 attacks. No attack has been successful, however. Pakistani immigrant Faisal Shahzad is serving a life sentence for trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.
Kelly said Sunday that Pimentel was energized and motivated to carry out his plan by the Sept. 30 killing of al-Qaida's U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
"He decided to build the bomb August of this year, but clearly he jacked up his speed after the elimination of al-Awlaki," Kelly said.
An unemployed U.S. citizen originally from the Dominican Republic, Pimentel was "plotting to bomb police patrol cars and also postal facilities as well as targeted members of our armed services returning from abroad," Bloomberg said.
He also talked of bombing a police station in Bayonne, N.J., Kelly said.
New York police had him under surveillance for at least a year and were working with a confidential informant; no injury to anyone or damage to property is alleged, Kelly said. In addition, authorities have no evidence that Pimentel was working with anyone else, the mayor said.
"He appears to be a total lone wolf," the mayor said. "He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad."
At Pimentel's arraignment, his lawyer Joseph Zablocki said his client's behavior leading up to the arrest was not that of a conspirator trying to conceal some violent scheme. Zablocki said Pimentel was public about his activities and was not trying to hide anything.
"I don't believe that this case is nearly as strong as the people believe," Zablocki said. "He (Pimentel) has this very public online profile. ... This is not the way you go about committing a terrorist attack."
Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yusuf, was denied bail and remained in custody. The bearded, bespectacled man wore a black T-shirt and black drawstring pants and smiled at times during the proceeding. His mother and brother attended the arraignment, Zablocki said.
Pimentel is accused of having an explosive device Saturday when he was arrested, one he planned to use against others and property to terrorize the public. The charges accuse him of conspiracy going back at least to October 2010, and include first-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism, and soliciting support for a terrorist act.
Bloomberg said at the news conference that Pimentel represents the type of threat FBI Director Robert Mueller has warned about as U.S. forces erode the ability of terrorists to carry out large scale attacks.
"This is just another example of New York City because we are an iconic city ... this is a city that people would want to take away our freedoms gravitate to and focus on," Bloomberg said.
Kelly said a confidential informant had numerous conversations with Pimentel on Sept. 7 in which he expressed interest in building small bombs and targeting banks, government and police buildings.
Pimentel also posted on his website trueislam1.com and on blogs his support of al-Qaida and belief in jihad, and promoted an online magazine article that described in detail how to make a bomb, Kelly said.
Among his Internet postings, the commissioner said, was an article that states: "People have to understand that America and its allies are all legitimate targets in warfare."
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jRnA6mTVF-o-7HHRtlJJFS...
