I Call BS!

Hundreds of youths heading to a political protest jumped BART fare gates Friday morning, catching transit officials off-guard and forcing shutdowns at three East Bay stations that stranded some passengers for more than an hour.

The Fruitvale and Coliseum stations in Oakland and the Richmond station were all closed starting about 9:15 a.m. as young people heading for a rally in San Francisco against enforcement of federal immigration laws evaded fares. All three stations reopened by 10:30 a.m., but BART closed the Fruitvale station a second time for nearly an hour starting at 11 a.m. as more youths jumped the gates.

SF backtracks on its refusal to enforce federal immigration laws, but the damage is done - the next generation now sees law breaking as just another form of political protest. Good job SF!

Well boo-frickin’-hoo! Emphasis added:

Juan Reardon, standing on the corner of 23rd Street and Barrett Avenue in Richmond on a hot Monday afternoon, strongly suggests you turn right. Particularly if you speak Spanish. Particularly if you lack a driver’s license or drive an uninsured vehicle.

Just know that police wait ahead at a checkpoint to ask for that paperwork, and to tow cars.

“We have a law that mandates you to have a driver’s license, but at the same time prohibits you from getting one,” said Reardon, fronting a group of placard-waving locals. “And the Richmond police, by implementing these BS policies, are … directly targeting the Latino population.”

I can’t help but notice how he neglects to mention that it was law-breaking that got these people into this situation in the first place.

Political candidate Chris Tallerico can set him straight:

“Driving is not a right. It’s a privilege,” Tallerico said. “If this provides us with a safer city, more power to it.”

The Richmond Vice Mayor also has his head on straight:

[John] Marquez, one of the city’s first Latino politicians and the council member most closely identified with the Latino business community, also is chairman of the council’s public safety subcommittee. He joined in a unanimous vote in the winter to support checkpoints and also clamored for the California Highway Patrol to temporarily supplement the local police force.

It is not “helping” the Latino community to allow lawlessness to run rampant in their neighborhoods, or to pick and choose which laws to enforce. It is not the job of law enforcement, or indeed of local government, to pass judgment on the laws passed by the legislative branches of state or federal government - their job is only to enforce them. It is up to the legislature to pass or repeal those laws, and it is for the courts to determine if they are unconstitutional. The anarchy that these protesters are asking for is not part of the American legal system.

Deportations from Washington, Oregon and Alaska have spiked by nearly 40 percent, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Friday.

Immigration officials said the number of illegal aliens deported from those three states was 7,345 for the first nine months of the fiscal year. That number was up from 5,256 for the same period last year.

If the monthly average continues, the agency is on pace for a record-breaking year in the region, said Neil Clark, field office director for ICE detention and removal operations in Seattle.

Officials credit the increase in part to expansion of the Criminal Alien Program, in which immigration officers hone in on illegal aliens with criminal records and work with local law enforcement to process them. Those deportations increased by 26 percent in the same period. Of the more than 7,300 deported, more than 2,000 had prior criminal convictions.

“If you think of ICE’s mission being public safety, the Criminal Alien Program really goes at the heart of that,” agency spokeswoman Lori Dankers said.

Kudos to immigration officials for stepping up the pace to remove criminals from our country! But…how effective are these deportations given that our borders remain porous?

An effort by San Francisco to shield eight young Honduran crack dealers from federal immigration officials backfired when the youths escaped from Southern California group homes within days of their arrival, officials said Monday.
The walkaways are the latest in a string of embarrassments for city officials who are protecting illegal-immigrant drug dealers from federal authorities and possible deportation because of San Francisco’s 1989 declaration that the city is a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.

Until recently, San Francisco flew juvenile illegal immigrants convicted of drug crimes to their home countries rather than cooperate with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a practice that drew national attention when The Chronicle reported it Sunday.

When federal law enforcement authorities demanded that San Francisco halt the flights and began a criminal investigation, the city decided to house some of the dealers in long-term youth rehabilitation centers. Some of those centers are run by a nonprofitcompany called Silverlake Youth Services in mountain towns southeast of San Bernardino.

Eight Honduran juveniles who had been convicted of dealing drugs in San Francisco were sent within the past few weeks to the company’s group homes, where one month’s placement costs $7,000 per youth - an expense borne by San Francisco taxpayers. (emphasis added)

What more needs to be said?

Think about this story next time you are tempted to call someone who is pro-border enforcement “anti-immigrant:”

The feds returned to Fair Haven a year after rounding up immigrants for deportation — but this time to save undocumented Ecuadorians allegedly working in slave-like conditions at a well-known Italian bakery.

Rather than face deportation, the six Ecuadorians are being protected in hiding. They filed a lawsuit this month against the bakery’s owners.

The complaint centers around Rocco’s Bakery on Ferry Street (pictured), where the family of Ecuadorians was working. They claim the owners failed to pay them for forced overtime, kept them trapped in apartments above the bakery, regularly threatened them, and sexually harassed the women.

snip

The Ecuadorian family says Tony DiBenedetto beckoned them to the U.S. with the promise of labor, then kept them under a form of modern slavery, forcing them to work long hours below minimum wage and demanding sexual favors from the women in exchange for rent money. They workers say they kept quiet because they were told they would be fired, evicted and deported if they told anyone of their situation.

The suit was filed on behalf of Mercedes and her daughter, as well as Mercedes’ sister Maria, her husband Nestor and their two children [last names withheld]. The suit details deplorable working conditions behind the scenes at the prim pastry shop, famous for its cannoli and cakes. It describes conditions where women and children were trafficked to the U.S., forced to haul bags of flour during 12-hour days without bathroom breaks; conditions where women endured sexual harassment and assault while on the job — all under fear of punishment if they spoke up.

“Whatever we think about the issue of illegal immigration, we can all agree that no one should be forced to work in fear of physical harm or sexual assault or in fear that they will be punished if they complain about working conditions,” wrote Jennifer Mellon, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, in a press statement.

If these allegations are true, this highlights the other side of the illegal immigrant issue - U.S. immigration laws exist, not just to protect U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, but to protect illegal immigrants from such exploitation.

Pledging to “take them on big-time,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, sharply criticized the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency Friday and declared she would push for measures to reduce the fear she said agents have caused East Bay immigrant families.

The Oakland Democrat told a packed North Oakland church that she wants to “ensure that ICE is following the rules and that those rules are well-known and publicized — especially when it comes to actions at schools, hospitals, religious centers and other critical community institutions.”

Her comments followed a furor in Oakland and Berkeley last month when federal operations to arrest illegal immigrants, which ICE says were routine, caused panic because agents were seen in the vicinity of public schools.

But was ICE to blame for the panic?

Berkeley High senior Chase Stern said he was taking an Advanced Placement test May 6, when he noticed that his classmates were fidgeting in their seats and seemed distracted.

He soon found out that the Latino students were receiving text messages and phone calls from family members, warning them that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were nearby, and that they should be cautious and find their way home because family members could not pick them up.

Scores of undocumented parents began to panic as early as 7:30 a.m. May 6, as word got around that ICE vehicles were parked near schools in East Oakland and South Berkeley.

ICE agents “seen in the vicinity” caused people admittedly breaking the law to panic, and they themselves spread the disinformation.

And who was it that ICE was after?

ICE fugitive operations teams arrested four adults from a residence in Berkeley and one adult from a business in Oakland on May 6…The fugitive operations teams were looking for specific individuals who were named in administrative warrants, she said.

ICE’s Fugitive Operations Teams are tasked with identifying and arresting foreign nationals who have ignored final orders of deportation or have returned to the United States illegally after being removed. The teams prioritize cases involving immigration violators who pose a threat to national security and community safety. These include child sex offenders, suspected gang members, and those who have convictions for violent crimes.

It should be noted that we found no reports that the individuals arrested in Oakland and Berkeley on May 6 were violent offenders. However, given that ICE is tasked with arresting immigration violators who pose a threat to the community, why would Lee choose to risk the safety of immigrant children just to avoid causing them fear - fear caused, not by the ICE agents doing their jobs, but by paranoid immigrants?

It should also be noted that the “well-known rules” Rep. Lee claims ICE is violating may not exist:

What remains unclear is whether ICE has the sort of rules about sensitive locations that Lee said she wants to make sure are followed.

ICE’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had a written policy expressly stating that the service “attempt to avoid apprehension of persons and to tightly control investigative operations on the premises of schools, places of worship, funerals and other religious ceremonies,” according to copies of agency memorandums from the 1990s.

But Kice said that past policies were not necessarily transferred to ICE when it formed under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

I spent a couple of hours trying to verify the rules in this regard pertaining to ICE raids, but was unable to confirm or deny their existence.

I call BS on Rep. Lee’s unfounded claims of broken rules and her attempts to obstruct federal agents from doing their lawful work! Congresspeople have a duty to verify the facts and not make unfounded accusations! I challenge Rep. Lee or any of her supporters to specify any rules or laws that ICE broke in this matter!

By Nicole Gaouette

WASHINGTON — Unemployment among Latinos and particularly Latino immigrants jumped in the last year, according to a report released today by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Amid an extended housing market slump, the Pew figures prompted concern among Latino leaders but offered indirect affirmation for immigration enforcement officials about new aggressive enforcement raids.