Month: January 2014

Unaccompanied minors or victims of human trafficking?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have written a lot lately about the spike in the number of illegal alien children coming across US borders without their parents—most recently here in December.  Those that aren’t turned over to family members (who may themselves be illegal aliens), end up in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and at least two federal refugee contractors—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services––which of course are paid by you to take care of the kids.

One of the “kids” LIRS took care of. LIRS caption:
Rather than be forced to become a child soldier, Tesfaye Gebre fled Eritrea as an unaccompanied refugee minor. Photo Credit: The Lutheran/Lisa Helfert

Here is a story from the DC Clothesline a few days ago, that explains more about the steep rise in the numbers and how the Obama Administration is complicit in this human trafficking scheme (hat tip: Cathy):

US District Court Judge Andrew S. Hanen, in a December ruling, claims that the Obama administration’s Homeland Security Department has been openly violating US law by conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States. As if all the other scandals that are enveloping this administration weren’t enough, it seems they are now openly aiding an invasion of our country, which again, should be declared as treasonous.

The accusations were contained in the judge’s ruling against Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez, who plead guilty to attempting to smuggle a ten-year-old El Salvadorean girl, identified only as Y.P.S. in the ruling, into the United States in violation of federal law. Nava-Martinez was caught at the Brownsville & Matamoros Bridge checkpoint.

Patricia Elizabeth Salmeron Santos had solicited human traffickers, of which Nava-Martinez is an admitted trafficker, to smuggle her daughter into Virginia. She eventually agreed to pay $8,500 (paying $6,000 in advance) to traffic her daughter into the country.

The Texas federal judge accused DHS of delivering children, illegally smuggled into the US to their illegal immigrant parents. “This action makes the DHS complicit in aiding that Mexican drug cartels that control the people smuggling rings,” writes Hanen. He added that the “government is not only allowing (illegal immigrants in the US) to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels, but is also inspiring them to do so.”

Judge Hanen wrote that in more than one case that has been before his court, members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency under DHS, have arrested human traffickers, who are smuggling children illegally into the US, then “delivering the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States.”

Read it all, there is much more with lots of links.  The article does not mention the role of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and it contractors, but know that thousands of ‘kids’ not immediately sent to family members are now in your (the taxpayers’) care.

See also the Center for Immigration Studies report (The Reality of Childhood Arrivals: Seamy, not Dreamy) from mid-December highlighting another similar case.

Even Senator Ted Cruz says to bring in the Syrians! 2015 to be the year!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Senator Ted Cruz agrees with Senator Durbin—bring in more Syrians. Maybe he can get open-borders Grover back on his side.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/29/norquist_n_4173289.html

But, he references the Christian Syrians, which demonstrates to me that he (his staff) has no idea how the US State Department’s Refugee Program works.  They will not single out the Christians for protection!

The only way Senator Cruz could redeem his uninformed remark is for him to write specific legislation saying that only Syrian Christians will be admitted to the US—good luck getting that through Congress!

From AP at MyNews3 (hat tip: pungentpeppers):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic and Republican senators say the U.S. should offer a home to more Syrian refugees.

Syria’s civil war is now in its third year. More than two million have fled the Arab country, straining neighboring Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Many live under awful conditions.

U.S. aid totals $1.3 billion. But the U.S. has resettled about 100 Syrian refugees since fighting began.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin lamented the figure may only rise to a few hundred this year. He criticized overly restrictive U.S. immigration laws for refugees. [The “overly restrictive…laws” ol’ tricky Dick is referring to are the security clearances he would like to see done away with!—ed]

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father was born in Cuba, also highlighted the crisis, citing the plight of Christian refugees.

U.S. officials cited procedural delays. They said far more refugees could arrive in 2015.

I know we have readers in Texas, you gotta educate Ted!

Palestinians vs. other refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Michael Curtis in American Thinker shows how the Palestinian “refugees” are treated completely different from all other refugees in The Right of Return to Manhattan and Other Places and how absurd it is.   I don’t have time to write anything at length, but here are a few excerpts:

On why there were Palestinian refugees:

The problem started with Arab opposition to Jewish settlement in the area of Palestine even before the establishment of the State of Israel. As a result of the violent Arab Revolt of 1936-39, mainly led and orchestrated by the Arab High Command under Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, over ten per cent of the adult Palestinian population was killed, injured, or imprisoned. This Arab wave of terror directed against British personnel, Jews, and other Arabs opposed to the Mufti and his followers resulted in the first wave of refugees, perhaps as many as 40,000 Arabs who fled the area.

But the main refugee problem was caused by the militant Arab activity in the mid 1940s and then by the 1948-49 War that was initiated by the Arabs. The “catastrophe,” as the war is named by the Palestinians, was brought on by the invasion of Israel immediately after its establishment on May 14, 1948, by troops from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and other Arab countries. As a result of the fighting, and for reasons that are still disputed, Palestinians fled their home in large numbers.

On the origin of the Palestinian refugee organization:

Oppressed Palestinians in Gaza. For more, see http://www.idfblog.com/2013/08/12/what-happened-to-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza/

Before the end of the war, the United Nations General Assembly on November 19, 1948 passed Resolution 212 (III) to create the UN Relief for Palestinian Refugees (UNRPR). This body was replaced by decision of UNGA Resolution 302 (IV) on December 8, 1949, by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

About this UN concern for Palestinian refugees, two aspects are worth noting. One is the fact the UN ignored, and indeed still ignores, the reality that 700,000 Jews, probably a larger number than the actual number of Palestinian refugees, made exodus from the Arab lands in which their families had lived for centuries. The second is that this instance is the only time that the UN has set up an agency only for one group of people and that this unique agency has remained in existence for 64 years.

 Putting this in context:

The initiation of a Palestinian refugee relief agency was a remarkable and inexplicable departure from established relief activity. On December 14, 1950 the UNGA set up the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHRC), originally with a three-year mandate. Its function remains to coordinate international action to protect refugees and to resolve refugee problems worldwide. Since then it has helped more than 50 million people restart their lives. Among the various refugee populations it has assisted are the 4 million from Afghanistan, the 12 million ethnic Germans after World War II, the 5.5 million from Sudan, and the 15 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs after the 1947 Indian-Pakistani war.

Then contrasting the staff and budgets for the two agencies:

With a budget in 2012 of $3.59 billion the UNHRC has a staff of 7,600 in more than 125 countries. Currently, it is concerned with 33 million people. About 14.7 million are internally displaced; 10.5 million are refugees; 3.1 million are returnees; 3.5 million are stateless; 800,000 are asylum seekers; and 1.3 million considered to be in danger. To these figures must be added the millions now fleeing countries like Syria, Iraq, Mali, South Sudan, and Libya.

These figures make an extraordinary contrast with the existence and activity of UNRWA involved with much smaller numbers but with a much larger staff at its disposal. It employees 29,000 people, mostly Palestinians, and has 2 headquarters, 5 field offices, and representatives abroad, including in Washington, DC. A member of the latter group was Chris McGrath, former aide to Senator Harry Reid.

He concludes that UNRWA keeps up a welfare state for Palestinians, something which does them a great disservice.  The cause of the whole thing was an order to Arab states long ago not to take in any of the refugees so they could be used as an ongoing weapon against Israel.

Waiting for the UNHCR to blast Saudi Arabia as they did Israel yesterday

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
African migrants protest at US embassy in Tel Aviv on Sunday. We want the “right” to walk free and stay in Israel.

Sure enough the UN High Commissioner for Refugees blasted Israel for its “warehousing” of Africans claiming to be asylum seekers (see our story yesterday).  Israel has long maintained that most of the migrants are “economic migrants” and not legitimate refugees.  Economic migrants are NOT refugees, but the world-over they have figured out how to use the refugee lingo.

From Haaretz:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has criticized Israel’s policy on African migrants, and in particular the new amendments to the country’s anti-infiltration law.

Following Sunday’s mass protest of tens of thousands of migrants and their supporters in Tel Aviv, the representative for UNHCR in Israel published a rare press release, calling on Israel to consider alternatives to its current “warehousing” of migrants.

The release was titled “Israel’s new laws and policies do not live up to the Spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention.”

UNHCR has previously criticized the amendments to the anti-infiltration law, and even brought its position before the High Court of Justice, but, until now, has refrained from making public statements. In the press release published Sunday, the agency said that in principle it supports establishing a residence facility for asylum seekers, but not in its current incarnation at Holot.

Meanwhile I searched around to see if the UNHCR was also blasting one of the newest members of the UN Human Rights Council, Saudi Arabia, for deporting (not just warehousing but actually deporting!) thousands of Somalis on a regular basis.  I see in 2010 the UN did call out S.A., but am not seeing anything since and obviously the Saudis didn’t listen to the UNHCR nearly 4 years ago.

Waiting!  Waiting!

Photo is from this story about Africans protesting at US embassy in Tel Aviv.  Wouldn’t those get-ups just make the average Israeli say, sure you will fit right in here!  Maybe such protests would work its magic on the Saudis too!

Utah: Trial begins for Burmese Muslim who killed fellow refugee girl

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is a horrible case we reported from the time it happened in 2008.  I’ll bet you won’t hear about it even on Fox News!

Yesterday, jury selection began in the murder trial of Esar Met who was arrested shortly after the murder of a Hser Ner Moo  a 7-year-old Burmese Karen Christian girl who had been resettled in the same apartment building with Met.

In the camp, where they both lived prior to the US State Department contractors (which was it?  Catholic Charities?) sending them to Utah, they lived in separate parts of the camp since Muslims and Christians in Burma have had a long and tense history (it is not just the Buddhists who find the Rohingya Muslims a problem).

I speculated from the outset that Met was a Muslim, but didn’t learn until 2012 (a reader sent me an old story on the case) that one reporter did have the guts to find out.  Here is the post I wrote in June 2012.   This is the lengthy Salt Lake Tribune feature piece which includes these telling lines (emphasis mine):

Rage flashed through the muddy lanes where Hser Ner Moo had once skipped rope and played hide-and-seek. In the camp, tension lingers between the Karen and Muslims, and some choose to live apart. Hser Ner Moo and Esar had lived in separate sections of Mae La.

America had made them neighbors.

Here is the news yesterday at the Salt Lake Tribune as jury selection began in Met’s murder trial:

Jury selection began Monday for a Burmese refugee accused of kidnapping, raping and killing a young girl at the South Salt Lake apartment complex where they both lived in 2008.

Opening statements and evidence in Esar Met’s three-week-long trial are scheduled to begin Tuesday.

Met, 27, is charged in 3rd District Court with first-degree felony counts of aggravated murder and child kidnapping in connection with the March 2008 slaying of 7-year-old Hser Ner Moo.

Hser Ner Moo disappeared on March 31, 2008, prompting hundreds of volunteers to search for her before police found her body in Met’s basement apartment the next night. Her family lived in the same complex, and the girl was acquainted with Met.

She was found face down in Met’s shower, still in the pink shirt, pink skirt and pink coat she was wearing the day before. Police have said the girl was likely dead within an hour of leaving her family’s nearby apartment.

Defense argued to have gruesome photos withheld from the jury:

The defense also petitioned the court to have prosecutors use diagrams instead of certain graphic photos that, the defense argued, are “too gruesome” for jurors.

Prosecutors called the photos relevant, saying they show the brutality with which the child was killed and the injuries she suffered.

“The person who did this, who dragged her into the shower and left her, intended her to die,” prosecutor Robert Parrish said. “They are not gruesome photographs in and of themselves.”

Atherton later ruled that only two photos — one depicting the 7-year-old girl crumpled inside a bathroom stall; the other, a photo of the girl’s bruised and damaged genitals — could be used at trial.

No death penalty!  The taxpayers of the state of Utah will be paying for this guy for life (if he is found guilty)! 

Maybe the resettlement agency that in its infinite wisdom placed the two in the same building should take up a collection for his care in prison.   In fact, in a lot of these crime cases involving refugees, I think there should be some financial responsibility on the US State Department and the resettlement contractors when one of their refugees gets in trouble with the law.  Maybe they will be more selective next time.

To move the case along, prosecutors decided to forgo seeking the death penalty against Met. Instead, Met could face life without the possibility of parole or 20 years to life in prison, if found guilty of aggravated murder.

Read the whole article, there is a problem coming in this case regarding interpreters.  One thing few “welcoming” communities consider is the cost and availability of competent interpreters when refugees end up in police custody or in court, or even need medical treatment.  Federal law requires the local community to find and pay the interpreter.  We have learned in some immigrant-rich counties the cost can run into millions of dollars.