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Arrested development In his fiscal 2009 budget, President Bush has proposed eliminating the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which reimburses states for incarcerating illegal aliens who commit crimes. As America hardens its stance against illegal aliens, the program is yet another tool against sanctuary cities, and it promotes tighter border security. The program offers states roughly 15 cents for every dollar spent on holding illegal residents who are found committing non-federal crimes. States receive payments for holding only those criminals who meet a narrow set of criteria; payments overwhelmingly go to states like California, New York, Texas and Florida, which are battling a troubling crush of illegal aliens. White House budget officials say the program is not directly reducing crime and thus is "not demonstrating results." The Office of Management and Budget also states the program is failing because it lacks clear goals. It is true that the program could benefit from reform, such as increased accountability measures to ensure proper disbursement of federal money and coordination with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to deport these criminals. However, as Jessica Vaughan, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Washington Times, the purpose of the program is clear: to help state and local government officials who are apprehending criminals who shouldn't be here in the first place but remain in the United States due to failed federal policies....
U.S. Steps Up Deportation Of Immigrant Criminals Immigration officials are increasingly scouring jails and courts nationwide and reviewing years-old criminal records to identify deportable immigrants, efforts that have contributed to a steep rise in deportations and strained the immigration court system. Long accused of failing to do enough to deport illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, federal authorities have recently strengthened partnerships with local corrections systems and taken other steps to monitor immigrants facing charges, officials said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, it placed 164,000 criminals in deportation proceedings, a sharp increase from the 64,000 the agency said it identified and placed in proceedings the year before. The agency estimates that the number will rise to 200,000 this year. Two groups of people are now more likely to be placed in deportation proceedings: illegal immigrants who might once have been criminally prosecuted without coming to the attention of immigration authorities, and legal immigrants whose visas and residency permits are being revoked because of criminal convictions. The number of deported immigrants with criminal convictions has increased steadily this decade, from about 73,000 in 2001 to more than 91,000 in 2007, according to ICE....
Officials Split on Viability of Border-Fence Project A top Homeland Security Department official said Thursday that a pilot project to create a virtual fence along parts of the Mexican border had been a success, but he said the technology was never intended to be used — and would not be used — across the entire length of the border. “It is working, and it met the requirements,” Jayson P. Ahern, deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said of the pilot project during a briefing with reporters in Washington. Mr. Ahern’s assessment was in line with an announcement last Friday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff but contradicted testimony on Wednesday by an official from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog arm of Congress. The official, Richard M. Stana, who handles domestic security and justice issues for the accountability office, told a House subcommittee that the pilot project had “resulted in a product that did not fully meet user needs.” He also said “the project’s design will not be used as the basis” for future development of a virtual fence along the border because of the problems. The conflicting accounts about the pilot project and its applicability elsewhere add to the confusion and debate that has surrounded the virtual fence almost since its inception....
Management, technology short-circuit DHS's "virtual fence" A U.S. government plan to build a "virtual fence" along the border of Mexico and Canada, using radar, satellites, sensors and communication links to rapidly dispatch border patrol, has all the earmarks of a technology boondoggle. Congress was told this week that project is being delayed, and for reasons likely familiar to IT managers: the users weren't involved in the project's development, and the technology's complexity was underestimated. Roger Krone, president of The Boeing Co.'s Network and Space Systems, the project vendor, was asked to explain to two U.S. House Homeland Security subcommittees in a joint hearing Wednesday what happened and what's being done to fix it. The first segment of the 28-mile electronic fence was built along part of Arizona's border with Mexico. Congress was told this week that initial plans to extend the fence out to El Paso, Texas, will likely take until the end of 2011....
Plan for Texas Border Fence Laid Out Homeland Security officials on Thursday presented details of plans to build about 57 miles of border fencing and add other border enforcement technology in the El Paso area. Barry Morrisey, a Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said federal officials presented the plans at a city ballroom Thursday to get reaction on an environmental assessment drafted in advance of construction. The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008. Officials explained proposed locations for five sections of double-layer steel fencing that will stretch from just east of downtown El Paso to just east of the port of entry at Fort Hancock. All told, 56.7 miles of fencing is expected to be built across largely rural areas in El Paso and Hudspeth counties, Morrisey said. Construction plans also don't call for the use of private land, he said....
Columbine To Va. Tech To NIU: Gun-Free Zones Or Killing Fields? As Northern Illinois University restarts classes this week, one thing is clear: Six minutes proved too long. It took six minutes before the police were able to enter the classroom that horrible Thursday, and in that short time five people were murdered, 16 wounded. Six minutes is actually record-breaking speed for the police arriving at such an attack, but it was simply not fast enough. Still, the police were much faster than at the Virginia Tech attack last year. 12,000 people, including relatives of the Northern Illinois University students killed Feb. 14, attend a memorial Sunday in DeKalb, Ill. 12,000 people, including relatives of the Northern Illinois University students killed Feb. 14, attend a memorial Sunday in DeKalb, Ill. The previous Thursday, five people were killed in the city council chambers in Kirkwood, Mo. There was even a police officer already there when the attack occurred. But, as happens time after time in these attacks when uniformed police are there, the killers either wait for the police to leave the area or they are the first people killed. In Kirkwood, the police officer was killed immediately when the attack started. People cowered or were reduced to futilely throwing chairs at the killer. Just like attacks last year at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and the recent attack at the Tinley Park Mall in Illinois, or all the public school attacks, they had one thing in common: They took place in "gun-free zones," where private citizens were not allowed to carry their guns with them....
Oakland’s Gun Buy-Back Misfires On Feb. 9, Oakland police, led by state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, offered to buy handguns and assault weapons for $250 each, “no questions asked, no ID required.” The “One Less Gun” buy-back program attracted so many eager sellers that the money quickly ran out. But instead of closing up shop, the police handed out IOUs good for a future buy back. The Oakland police are now stuck with a bill for $170,000. The buy back has been criticized as a poorly organized fiasco, but even the critics say it was “the right idea” and “a step in the right direction.” On the contrary, the buy back was a bad idea from the beginning. Gun buy backs have been tried before, in cities from Seattle to Washington, D.C., and they simply don’t work. In an authoritative study, the National Academy of Sciences reported that “the theory underlying gun buy-back programs is badly flawed and the empirical evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of these programs.” It doesn’t take much insight to understand why gun buy backs don’t work. Gun buy backs attract low-quality guns from people who aren’t likely to use them to commit crimes. The Oakland police, for example, bought a dozen guns from seniors living in an assisted-living facility. Are you relieved to know that Perata disarmed these dangerous senior citizens? The Oakland buy back was especially absurd because of the high price offered: $250. Why didn’t anyone running the program think to look at the price of a new gun? In fact, the first two people in line at one of the three buy-back locations were gun dealers with 60 firearms packed in the trunk of their cars....
Park Rangers Oppose Bid to Ease Gun Ban Park rangers, retirees and conservation groups are protesting a plan by the Interior Department to reconsider regulations restricting loaded guns in national parks. The groups say current regulations requiring that visitors to national parks render their weapons inaccessible were working and have made national parks among the safest places in America. "Loaded guns are not needed and are not appropriate in our national parks," said Doug Morris, a retired park superintendent and member of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees. The plan to reconsider the gun regulations "could break what is not broken and change the nature of our national parks," Morris said Monday. Morris spoke at a news conference called in response to an announcement Friday that the Interior Department will review gun laws on lands administered by the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service....
Who'da thunk? Guns best crime deterrent after all And that, says a new brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by police officers and prosecutors in a controversial gun-ban dispute, is why gun ownership is important and should be available to individuals in the United States. The arguments come in an amicus brief submitted by the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, whose spokesman, Ted Deeds, told WND there now are 92 different law enforcement voices speaking together to the Supreme Court in the Heller case. That pending decision will decide whether an appeals court ruling striking down a District of Columbia ban on handguns because it violates the 2nd Amendment will stand or not. The gun ban promoters essentially argue that any gun restriction that is ruled "reasonable" is therefore constitutional, such as the D.C. handgun ban. Deeds said this probably is the largest unified law enforcement statement in support of the 2nd Amendment ever, and includes nearly a dozen organizations that represent tens of thousands of police officers across the country, dozens of state attorneys general, dozens of prosecutors and a long list of federal law enforcement experts up to and including federal judges....
'Thousands of Aliens' in U.S. Flight Schools Illegally Thousands of foreign student pilots have been able to enroll and obtain pilot licenses from U.S. flight schools, despite tough laws passed in the wake of the 9/ll attacks, according to internal government documents obtained by ABC News. "Some of the very same conditions that allowed the 9-11 tragedy to happen in the first place are still very much in existence today," wrote one regional security official to his boss at the TSA, the Transportation Security Administration. "Thousands of aliens, some of whom may very well pose a threat to this country, are taking flight lessons, being granted FAA certifications and are flying planes," wrote the TSA official, Richard A. Horn, in 2005, complaining that the students did not have the proper visas. Under the new laws, American flight schools are only supposed to provide pilot training to foreign students who have been given a background check by the TSA and have a specific type of visa....
InfraGard: An Unhealthy Government Alliance There is an organization that is quietly and secretly becoming very large and powerful. The FBI started this partnership or alliance between the federal government and the private sector in 1996 in Cleveland with a few select people. After September 11, 2001, when the general population replaced their rationality with fear, this organization, called InfraGard, continued growing, and with little notice. By 2005 more than 11,000 members were involved, but as of today, according to the InfraGard website, there are 23,682 members, including FBI personnel. InfraGard’s stated goal “is to promote ongoing dialogue and timely communications between members and the FBI.” Pay attention to this next part: Infragard members gain access to information that enables them to protect their assets and in turn give information to government that facilitates its responsibilities to prevent and address terrorism and other crimes. I take from this statement that there is a distinct tradeoff, a tradeoff not available to the rest of us, whereby InfraGard members are privy to inside information from government to protect themselves and their assets; in return they give the government information it desires. This is done under the auspices of preventing terrorism and other crimes. Of course, as usual, “other crimes” is not defined, leaving us to guess just what information is being transferred....
U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in World of Warcraft Be careful who you frag. Having eliminated all terrorism in the real world, the U.S. intelligence community is working to develop software that will detect violent extremists infiltrating World of Warcraft and other massive multiplayer games, according to a data-mining report from the Director of National Intelligence. The Reynard project will begin by profiling online gaming behavior, then potentially move on to its ultimate goal of "automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world." The publicly available report -- which was mandated by Congress following earlier concerns over data-mining programs -- also mentions several other data-mining initiatives. These include: * Video Analysis and Content Extraction - software to automatically identify faces, events and objects in video * Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination - This tool is reminiscent of the supposedly-defunct Total Information Awareness program. It seeks to access disparate databases to find patterns of known bad behavior. The program plans to work with domestic law enforcement and Homeland Security....
Report: 1 in every 100 Americans behind bars For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs. The report, released today by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said. Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world....