My commentary today will be focused on two different news stories so that you might say that today we connect two of the dots.
The first story I want you to consider is how New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg has decided to greatly limit how the City of New York will cooperate with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Here is a link to a report that appeared in a local newspaper that reported on this madness that Mayor Bloomberg has now foisted not only on the City of New York but, in fact, on our nation:
Mayor Mike Bloomberg signed a bill limiting the Dept. of
Corrections cooperation with federal immigration authorities, which
immigration advocates believe will reduce the number of unnecessary
deportation of immigrant inmates who do not have criminal records.
The controversial bill, also known as, Intro 656, directs the
city’s Dept. of Corrections to refrain from turning over many
undocumented immigrants to the federal Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agency upon an individual’s release from prison.
A copy of that news report, in its entirety, can be found below along with two other articles that deal with the arrest of three fugitives from Guatemala.
Mayor Bloomberg makes the assertion that:
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(The bill) strikes the right balance – protecting public safety for all New Yorkers while ensuring that individuals who have no record of criminal history or pending cases and who have no other record of being a threat to the community are released from Dept. of Correction custody at the conclusion of their case,” Bloomberg said in a statement after signing the legislation
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In point of fact, when aliens run our nation’s borders there is no record that is created as to their entry into the United States and there is also no way of knowing why illegal alines run our borders in the first place.
While the great majority of illegal aliens who run our borders are simply seeking employment, there are hundreds of thousands, if not more criminals who seek to evade law enforcement authorities in another country or seek to ply their criminal trades on the streets of cities and towns across our nation.
It is especially disconcerting that at a time that our nation is attempting to defend itself from the threat of terrorist attacks that there are unknown millions of aliens present in our country whose true identities- including their nationalities, backgrounds, potential affiliation with criminal or terrorist organizations or their ultimate intentions are unknown and unknowable.
Title 8, United States Code section 212 is section of law that enumerates the various categories of aliens who, under the Immigration and Nationality Act, are supposed to be prevented from entering the United States and are supposed to be removed if they are found here:
Please take the time to review the contents of this section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Among the categories of aliens who are supposed to be kept out of the United States are aliens with dangerous communicable diseases, aliens who suffer serious mental illness and are prone to violence, aliens who are convicted felons, aliens who fugitives from justice in other countries, aliens who are human traffickers and drug smugglers, aliens who are war criminals and aliens who have committed human rights violations. Also aliens who are engaged in terrorism and espionage are among those who are, by law, supposed to be prevented from entering our country and are supposed to be removed if they manage to evade the Border Patrol or otherwise enter the United States.
It is extremely important to understand that these laws apply equally to all individuals irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity.
Virtually every terror suspect who is arrested is identified by the job that he (she) held at the time of arrest. In fact, the day before a terrorist participates in a terror attack, he is likely to hide in plain sight by going to his job!
Where aliens violate our borders and our laws to simply secure a job- it is an insult to every hard working American or out of work American who desperately wants a job,, to be told that illegal aliens are apparently harder working and more conscientious than our own citizens! Yet this is precisely the message often spewed by the polticiains who claim that “Illegal aliens do the work Americans won’t do!”
The point is not that illegal aliens are more industrious, it is that they are vulnerable and desperate and as a consequence can be coerced into working under conditions that are so substandard as to be illegal and they will settle for wages that no American or lawful immigrant worker would accept because they could not support themselves or their families on the pittance that passes for wages where illegal aliens are concerned!
Any politician who claims that illegal aliens will do the work Americans won’t do are not only insulting American and lawful immigrant workers but they are also making it clear that they favor the exploitation of desperate vulnerable people from other countries!
At a time when so many American families are losing their homes to foreclosure and are unable to adequately feed their children, politicians who truly represent those beleaguered Americans are those who stand for the enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws and the securing of our nation’s borders against the unlawful entry of illegal aliens.
The newspaper article that addressed the betrayal of the citizens of the city of New York by Mayor Bloomberg did report on one New York politician who took the proper stand, NYC Councilman, Peter Vallone, Jr., here is the excerpt from the article that addresses his position:
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Although the measure received an overwhelming amount of support before being signed into law on Nov. 22, Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) urged the mayor to not sign what he termed “dangerous legislation” and return to his original position which supported the City’s continued cooperation with federal immigration officials.
“Make no mistake, this will make our communities less safe – it not only puts illegal immigrants who have been charged with another crime back on our streets, but makes no distinction between arrests for violent crimes and other crimes,” Vallone said in a statement.
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I next want to discuss the other news reports that take note of the arrest of the three citizens of Guatemala who are wanted in connection with a heinous, monstrous crime- the rape and murder of a woman in Guatemala. While neither the ICE news release nor the television news report don’t delve into what sort of lives these three illegal aliens had in the United States it is likely that they managed to find work and/or carried out crimes in order to get by. Their presence in our country posed a clear and immediate threat to the lives of the people that they routinely interacted with in the United States. This illustrates a principle that I have come to refer to as, “What you don’t know can hurt you!”
What is not known, where the millions of illegal aliens of illegal aliens who live in communities across our nation is concerned, is who they are and why they are here!
Here is a photo of one of the three illegal aliens who is alleged to have carried out this crime of outrageous sociopathic violence:
It is not apparent from looking at his photo that he is the monster that his alleged crime would certainly indicate that he is.
The articles did not report on how long these three illegal aliens had been residing in the United States or how they managed to enter the United States- my hunch is that they ran our southern border- the border that the administration continues to claim is “secure!”
Where these criminals and all too many others are concerned- I believe it would be fair and accurate to say that our borders are certainly not secure enough!
This is why I have come to refer to DHS as the Department of Homeland Surrender!
Most of the terrorists who attacked our nation did not appear different from anyone else. Someone once said that an effective spy is someone who would not attract the attention of a waiter at a “greasy spoon” diner. The same could be said of terrorists. In fact, a spy or terrorist or wanted fugitive may well be working as a waiter or waitress at some greasy spoon diner. As an INS agent I have arrested wanted fugitives who were being sought in the United States or in foreign countries for all sorts of crimes ranging from robbery, weapons violations, narcotics trafficking to murder and had criminal histories that involved just about every crime you could imagine and some crimes that were too horrific to imagine!
The first responsibility that our government leaders have is to protect those folks who live within their jurisdiction. A nation’s security and safety begin at the borders of that nation. this is why many countries position their military forces on their borders- the leaders of those countries understand that there can be no security if the borders are not secure!
While the federal government has, for decades, failed abysmally at securing its borders and enforcing the immigration laws that were promulgated to protect our nation and our citizens, there is a statute that is on the books within the Immigration and Nationality Act that establish a felony for those who aid, encourage, harbor or shield illegal aliens from detection.
Here are the statutes under the Immigration and Nationality Act that address the issues of concealing, harboring, encouraging or inducing aliens to enter the United States in violation of law or reside within the United States thereafter in reckless disregard of their violations of law:
Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a) defines several distinct offenses related to aliens. Subsection 1324(a)(1)(i)-(v) prohibits alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts. Subsection 1324(a)(2) prohibits bringing or attempting to bring unauthorized aliens to the United States in any manner whatsoever, even at a designated port of entry. Subsection 1324(a)(3).
Encouraging/Inducing — Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) makes it an offense for any person who — encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.
Conspiracy/Aiding or Abetting — Subsection 1324(a)(1)(A)(v) expressly makes it an offense to engage in a conspiracy to commit or aid or abet the commission of the foregoing offenses.
Here is the link to this section of law in its entirety.
When an individual is found guilty of being a sex offender, special care is taken to protect the residents of the community where he (she) live. When illegal aliens run our nation’s borders the fact that they have evaded the laws that are supposed to protect our nation and our citizens it must be presumed that they evaded that inspections process because they fall under one or more categories of aliens who, by law, are excludible from the United States. This makes them a potential risk to the safety and security of the people who reside in the same communities with these illegal aliens who often use multiple false identities to conceal their illegal status and, with that change in identity, they are often able to hide in plain sight even though they are wanted for crimes in foreign countries.
Simply fingerprinting an alien will not always determine his true criminal history in other countries.
Additionally, communities that have large numbers of illegal aliens usually have a number of business establishments that not only enable illegal aliens to work in our country in violation of our laws, but they are also invaluable in helping that illegal population in other ways that are not only essential for illegal aliens but absolutely vital for transnational gang members and international terrorists! Among those establishments are mail drop services, disposable cell phone establishments and fraud document vendors.
Houses of prostitution are also in great demand in neighborhoods that have large numbers of illegal aliens because often the illegal aliens who come to the United States are young, unattached men who come from countries where prostitution is a part of their normal lives. These houses of prostitution may involve underage prostitutes and women who are coerced into becoming prostitutes. This is still more of the collateral damage that our nation’s open borders inflict on our nation, on our communities and on so many victims!
This is not conjecture on my part- as an INS special agent I often participated in raids with the Public Morals Squad of the NYPD and other police departments.
Finally, while we are on the topic of local police and immigration law enforcement, I want to call your attention to the following segment of the newspaper article:
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But Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson), who heads the Council Committee on Immigration, disagreed with Vallone’s stance and said the legislation will begin to build trust between the NYPD and immigrants throughout the City.
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Again, to cite my personal experiences- I can tell you without any equivocation that the enforcement of immigration laws can and does enhance the trust of the immigrant communities with local police departments.
I have worked extremely closely with the NYPD and other police departments throughout the 26 years that I was a special agent with the INS but for more than half of my career, beginning in 1988 when I was assigned as the first INS special agent, to the Unified Intelligence Division (UID) of the New York Office of the Drug Enforcement Administration and then nearly 4 years later when I was promoted to the position of Senior Special Agent and assigned to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), one of my areas of responsibility was to seek the cooperation of members of the various immigrant communities to combat drug trafficking and the violence that went along with it in their communities. I was often called upon to use my authority to cultivate informants within these immigrant communities because under the Immigration laws, victims of crimes are eligible to receive visas and those who become informants and/or cooperators are eligible for visas that can even enable them to bring their family members to live with them in the United States! The mythology that immigration law enforcement destroys trust in the police is not only not true- it is a bald-faced lie!
Transnational criminals who operate in the United States generally set up shop in the communities where a large number of immigrants who come from the same country and possess the same ethnicity as the criminals live. This is not only the case where the Hispanic community is concerned, but is the case in every immigrant community whether we are talking about the Russian community, the Asian community, the Caribbean community, the Pakistani community, the Mexican community or any other such community. The thugs do this for a couple of reasons. They do this because it is far easier to blend in with the residents of a community who look as they do so that they can more easily hide in plain sight, or, in the parlance of the 911 Commission, embed themselves. They do this because they want to be able to interact with people they feel comfortable around- they want companionship and food they are accustomed to. Finally, they also know that they can easily intimidate immigrants who have family members living back in their home countries. An alien who would report the suspicious activities of a criminal or terrorist who lives among them could find family members back home paying the “ultimate price” because a friend or family member living in the United States had spoken with law enforcement.
Members of the immigrant community are also subject to being extorted into carrying out assignments for transnational criminals with the threat of harm coming to family members back home being used with great effectiveness.
Immigration can be the antidote in these situations. Family members can be brought to the United States in extreme situations when their family members in the United States cooperate with law enforcement officials in this country.
I wrote an extensive article on the issue of the nexus between crime and immigration for the Social Contract’s Summer 2011 edition.
You can read my article and all of the other articles contained in that edition of this publication at:
Finally, it is time to end the myth that it is “Anti-Immigrant” to enforce our nation’s immigration laws. This term has been used for many years by those who favor open borders and providing illegal aliens whose identities are unknown and unknowable with pathways to United States citizenship. They understood that the laws, facts, commonsense and morality were all working against their efforts to oppose immigration law enforcement.
I would contend that it is “Pro-Immigrant” to stand for border security and the enforcement of our immigration laws!
Those who disagree are not “Pro-Immigrant” they are immigration anarchists!
To provide a bit of additional clarity, the difference between and immigrant and an illegal alien is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar!
It is time for our nation’s leaders, on all levels, to come to terms with the fundamental fact that the purpose of our immigration laws is to protect our nation and our citizens from aliens whose presence has the potential to have a serious adverse impact. Ignoring those laws exposes our nation and our citizens to a variety of serious threats and challenges ranging from national security and criminal justice and public safety to the economy, the environment, healthcare and education!
A country without secure borders can no more stand than can a house without walls!
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our country is to survive and if our children and their children are to get their share of the “American Dream” the citizens of this nation must take their citizenship seriously!
We the People must be the best citizens we can be, citizens who are worthy of the gallantry demonstrated by our valiant men and women in the military, law enforcement and firefighters, who routinely go in harm’s way in defense of this nation and our citizens.
My goal in writing this and other commentaries is to point out our nations many failings before more victims pay the ultimate price for the incompetence and ineptitude of our government.
The first step in problem-solving is to first identify the problems and vulnerabilities and then devise strategies to overcome them.
If you find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and encourage them to do the same. We need to create a “Bucket Brigade of Truth!”
The practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it only begins there.
For far too long our citizens demonstrated apathy which emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups.
It is therefore understandable that the politicians of both parties, are greatly concerned about the demonstrations currently sweeping our nation just as did the creation of the Tea Party. Clearly more and more of our fellow Americans are demonstrating that they are not as dumb as the politicians from both parties had expected us to be!
I am encouraged that more and more of us, We the People, are not willing to simply sit on the sidelines anymore!
I believe our nation’s is greatly benefited by the rich diversity of our people which is why I could never imagine living anywhere except New York City, arguably the most diverse city in our nation if not, in fact, the world. However, my idea of diversity most certainly does not include members of MS-13, the Mexican drug cartels or members of other transnational gangs or members of al-Qaeda!
I also believe that the original purpose of our nation’s immigration laws need to be be brought “front and center” to make certain that our nation does not permit the entry of aliens into our country whose presence in our country is problematic for the citizens of our nation and that if such aliens do succeed in entering our country that our nation have the resources, integrity and dedication to do everything possible to make it impossible for such aliens to function within our country so that even if they are not apprehended, they will find it pointless to remain in the United States.
As I have noted on a number of occasions, “No one would break into the amusement park if they could not get to go on the rides and no one remains in the amusement park at the end of the day when they turn shut down the rides and turn off the lights!”
If our government’s failures to secure our nation’s borders and effectively enforce our immigration laws concerns you or especially if it angers you, I ask you to call your Senators and Congressional “Representative. This is not only your right- it is your obligation!
All I ask is that you make it clear to our politicians that we are not as dumb as they hope we are!
We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.
This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue- simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue!
You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem!
Democracy is not a spectator sport!
Lead, follow or get out of the way!
-michael cutler-
