Month: March 2013

Waukegan grocer gets 2 1/2 years for food stamp fraud; no deportation mentioned

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of a story we posted previously, here and here.  It’s the one that made me laugh so much because when the feds busted them the wife put hundreds of thousands of dollars in a suitcase, grabbed her mom and tried to make a run for it.

Khaled and Fatima Saleh who own Sun (aka Sunset) Food Market, located at 1501 Sunset Ave. in Waukegan, were found guilty of food stamp fraud. Note that the store name has been altered. | Ryan Pagelow~Sun-Times Media

Here is the sentencing news from last week:

CHICAGO (NBC) — An Illinois grocer was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in federal prison Monday for defrauding government and nutrition programs.

Khaled Saleh, 48, the owner of Sunset Food Market in Waukegan was charged with illegally exchanging cash with customers using food stamp cards and nutrition coupons during an undercover investigation.

Saleh was sentenced to 30 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle.

Saleh, along with his wife, Fatima Saleh, 37, acquired more than $844,000 by paying customers approximately half the value in cash for goods purchased at other stores using their benefits.

They then re-sold the same items in their store at a substantially higher price.

[….]

The couple was arrested in May 2011 and both pleaded guilty last August to conspiracy to defraud government programs.

The government forfeited $391,616 in cash and bank account funds that were seized from the Salehs, and Khaled Saleh was ordered to pay $453,013 in restitution for the remaining balance.

Sentencing for Fatima Saleh has been postponed to March 22.

Then this is from the original US Attorneys Office Press Release from 2011:

After the search of the store, Fatima Saleh went to her apartment and agents observed her leaving a short time later with a suitcase and her mother.

After giving consent to search the suitcase, agents found more than $350,000 cash and more than 800 coupon vouchers for the Women, Infants and Children Program (WIC)*, a supplemental food program to provide a more nutritious diet to low-income infants, young children and pregnant and post-partum women.

Agents later discovered an additional $25,000 cash in the couple’s apartment.

The indictment seeks forfeiture of approximately $377,000 seized on April 26, as well as more than $14,500 seized from Sunset Food’s bank account.

Don’t you think this story is interesting enough to make the national news especially as wasteful government spending is the topic of the day—fat chance!—the Saleh’s are likely members in good standing of the Religion of Peace and CAIR would be on the news outlet like white on rice.

LOL! These must be some of the immigrants ‘finding their way’ to smaller US cities to set up business that Professor Kotkin admires.

* Does this mean 800 people sold her their WIC cards???   Note to refugees (70% of whom are using food stamps):  Do not sell your benefits, it is as much against the law as buying them!

Suggestions for cutting US budget: Start with grants to non-profits for healthy marriage education

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars!

All of last week, we heard the dire warnings from Washington about sequestration.  If we cut a few billion from our trillions of dollars of government funded programs and projects, the planes won’t fly, children will starve and trashcans will overflow in our National Parks.  Yet here is an example of what we are spending our money on—-teaching refugees to have healthy marriages!

I could see some rationale for giving federal dollars to city or county mental health departments overloaded with refugees and asylees to deal with these issues where there might be some taxpayer oversight and review of how the grant money was used, but to give millions to non-profits for this purpose is sheer madness!

This is from that goldmine of information, the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress (p. 50).  Granted it reports on 2009 and earlier years, but it’s really all we have since the ORR is breaking the law by not having already completed reports for years 2010, 2011, and 2012.   No one in Congress seems to care that they are flouting the law.

Who knew all those Laotians, Vietnamese and Cambodians had such rotten marriages!

From the annual report:

Refugee Healthy Marriage Program

In FY 2009, ORR continued its commitment to promoting policies and programs that help strengthen the strong, positive family relationships that refugees have brought with them to the United States. The Refugee Healthy Marriage Program (RHMP) helps provide opportunities for refugees to strengthen their marriages by providing marriage education.

It is believed that refugee couples face unique difficulties because of their flight from persecution and long periods of insecurity. ORR funds marriage education in order to help refugees cope with these difficulties. This group of grantees provides marriage education workshops to refugee couples in order to enhance and promote healthy relationships by providing the skills, tools, knowledge and support necessary to create and sustain healthy marriages. Since the inception ofthe program in FY 2006, 44,476 refugees have attended family courses or workshops.

In FY 2009, ORR funded the following grants:

~Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc., $830,000, NY

~Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Inc., $400,000, NY

~United States Committee for Refugees & Immigrants, $780,000, VA

~Jewish Family & Career Services, $309,930, GA

~Lao Family Community Development,$250,000, CA

~Boat People SOS, $250,000, VA

~The Cambodian Family, $250,000, CA

~Alliance for Multicultural Community Services, $250,000, TX

~Jewish Child & Family Services, $247,785, IL

~Catholic Charities of Hartford, $250,000, CT

Obviously the big kahuna in the marriage-fixing business is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (one of the top nine federal refugee contractors).  They get paid by you to bring in refugees, then paid to fix their marriages!

Here are the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s affiliates teaching “healthy marriage” courses.    I had to laugh when I saw that Mohamud Mohamed of JFS (Jewish Family Services) of Western MA is teaching healthy marriages.  I sure hope he has a lesson or two on polygamy in refugee communities, that we don’t beat wives in America, and that honor killing one’s daughters will get you prison time.

Hopefully, this will be first in a series of suggested federal budget cuts from RRW!

Reminder!  Find me on twitter (I just started) @RefugeeWatcher!

Shall we call Lexington, KY “Little Congo?”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Sure sounds like it.  Don’t tell Professor Kotkin that these new immigrants didn’t ‘find their way’ to Lexington, Kentucky as the result of all the buzz back in Kinshasa about the great economy for ‘new Americans’ in “the horse capital of the world”.

Red states are being turned blue through refugee resettlement.

Once a seed community has been established and no one complains, more will arrive. 

From WEKU-FM (hat tip: Robin)

They aren’t coming from Syria yet!

As refugees flee the civil war in Syria, few will probably settle in the Commonwealth.  Barbara Kleine with Kentucky Refugee Ministries [subcontractor of  one of the top nine federal contractors Church World Service—ed] says many displaced Syrians still remain within that nation’s borders.  “There are just multiple layers of security checks before people are admitted to the U.S. and that can takes months up to years really.  So right now, there is no process in place that is processing Syrian refugees who are outside the country,” said Kleine.

But, they are going to “welcoming” Lexington from the Congo:

Congolese on the march! ‘Finding their way’ to Lexington, KY with the help of Church World Service!

Meanwhile, the number of immigrants from the African nation of Congo who settle in central Kentucky is expected to grow significantly.  Kleine says about 800 Congolese ex-patriots now live in Lexington.  She predicts they’ll attract even more refugees from that war-torn nation.

“When there is a community of say Congolese or Bhutanese in your community and you can prove to the State Department that you have the language capacity and the community support to welcome those refugee, then you are able to continue to resettle that population,” added Kleine.

Kleine says the new immigrants could arrive in the Lexington-area this coming fall.  Over the last five years, she says Lexington has become one of the nation’s most popular destinations for refugees from Congo.

More on drug-resistant TB; it’s on the rise in the UK

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I told you about an asylum seeker from Nepal getting across the US border infected with one of the worst strains of drug-resistant TB; now I see that there is news from Great Britain—immigrants are bringing TB to the UK.

From the Halifax Courier:

“Cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis are on the rise”, the Daily Mail reported today. The Guardian also says that a study published in the British Medical Journal has found that cases of drug resistant TB in the UK nearly doubled between 1998 and 2005. They report that rising immigration and inadequate measures to control outbreaks “among prisoners and drug users” could be to blame. The Daily Mail also says the increase is thought to be linked to immigrants, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, contracting drug-resistant TB abroad before moving to Britain.

Read it all.

Virginia Imam stirring up Ethiopian Muslims with Jihad talk

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is the news from the Daily Caller earlier this week (hat tip: Cathy):

Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, Falls Church, VA

The controversial imam of a prominent mosque in Arlington, Va., has urged immigrant Muslims in the United States to wage war for Islam.

“The enemies of Allah are lining up. The question for us is, are we lining [up] or are we afraid because they maycall us terrorists?” Shaker Elsayed told a crowd of Ethiopian Muslims during a lecture at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va.

“Let me give you the good news: they are already calling us terrorists anyway. Whether you sitting at home, watching TV, drinking coffee, sleeping or playing with your kids, you are a terrorist because you are a Muslim.”

“Well, give them a run for their money. Make it worth it. Make this title worth it, and be a good Muslim,” said the Cairo-born Muslim.

[….]

At the end of the imam’s incendiary speech, a representative of the Ethiopian group walked to the podium and declared the speech was not calling for jihad.

Fire the Imam?  Never!

“If Dar al-Hijrah were like most American religious institutions it would fire Elsayed, but it’s not like most religious institutions,” John Rossomando, a researcher at the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“The mosque operates as a front for Hamas … [and] has the distinction of being connected with more terror plots than just about any other mosque in America,” he said in a statement to TheDC.

So how did all these Ethiopians get here?  You guessed it!  Refugee Resettlement.

From 1983 to 2009 we resettled over 40,000 Ethiopians.  How many are Christians?  How many Muslims? We don’t know, but the State Department knows and doesn’t release that information to the public.

According to that treasure trove of information the 2009 ORR Annual Report to Congress (the first such report during Obama’s Presidency), Virginia received 1,262 Ethiopians through 2009.  And, by the way, the Office of Refugee Resettlement still owes Congress reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012!

Maryland and the District of Columbia each received over a thousand, but top resettlement states for Ethiopians were CA, MN, and TX  (see Table 1 Appendix A).

Remember it was only last month that we learned an Ethiopian man in Northern Virginia was sentenced to 25 years in prison for shooting at the Pentagon and planning to deface graves in Arlington Cemetery (wonder if he attended Dar al-Hijrah?).

Ethiopian Community Development Council

Did you know that one of the Nine major federal refugee contractors  is the Ethiopian Community Development Council headquartered in Arlington, VA?

For fun, see their most recent Form 990.   Their revenue listed on page 9 is $12,887,556.  You, the taxpayer, paid them $12,755,523 for their work!   99% of their revenue came from you!

Electing Obama!

In 2008 an Ethiopian community organizer in DC bragged that they could get 10,000 Ethiopian votes in Northern Virginia for the O-man, here.