Punjabis shipped to US in containers, Punjabis in detention in Texas, Punjabis arrested in CA

04/17/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Punjabis come from Eastern Pakistan or Northern India and they are coming to the US illegally with some seeking asylum in ever-larger numbers. The primary religions of Punjabis are Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. Most of those in our post today appear to be Sikhs. Reader ‘pungentpeppers’ has come across these important stories over the last few days.

First, this one is from The Tribune in India. I’m sure when the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service hears this news they will want to take the “youths” home with them— not to their neighborhoods, but to yours!

Look at this route! They are clearly getting help in Russia, Turkey, Guatemala and Mexico!

The Tribune (India):

The well-oiled human trafficking network and business, involving the ferrying of hundreds or thousands of Punjabis to North America, is alive and kicking. Unscrupulous travel agents operating from the USA and New Delhi are minting money from these shady deals.

As many as 64 Punjabi youths [numbers vary, some reports say 40, this one 64 and yet another says 100—ed], who travelled across more than half the world in search of greener pastures, have been detained in El-Paso processing centre (jail) in Texas, USA.

Forty-two of them are on hunger strike against their prolonged detention and the jail authorities’ “inhuman” action of withdrawing communication and other facilities to them. The startling revelations made by some detainees there and their families in the Doaba region of Punjab has indicated that human smuggling to the USA by travel agents from India is going on unabated.

[….]

At times, youths (mostly from India and Pakistan) were concealed in containers — having little air or almost no food and water for days — for the purpose of shipping them to North America.

One account of the “youths” (believed to be young men in their twenties) has them coming through Cuba as well.

In that same story, we learn that the North American Punjabi Association has gone to their defense, but ICE says there are no hunger strikers among the “youths.”

And, as for this “greener pastures” comment it tells us these are economic migrants not legitimate asylum seekers. By the way, some think if they are granted asylum they can never go back “home,” but that was not the case with that charming Tsarnaev family (of Boston bombing fame)—we know they traveled back and forth. And, we have had many reports of Somali ‘refugees’ traveling back to Somalia (even though they claimed they needed protection from persecution).

What about persecuted Americans?

Punjabi youths driving a Mercedes arrested. One charge against them is “elder abuse.”

California: Punjabi “youths” arrested for ATM robbery of former Marine

From the San Jose Mercury News:

FREMONT — Two men and a teenager were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of robbing a retired U.S. Marine at a bank ATM last week, authorities said.

Prabhleen Singh, Manjot Dhillon, and a 17-year-old boy were arrested in connection to the April 9 armed robbery in Fremont, police said. The arrest came hours after authorities released surveillance photos of the suspects.

Police say the 67-year-old was using the ATM at a Fremont Bank of America, located at 46650 Mohave Drive, at 1:05 a.m. when a Mercedes car pulled up. Singh, 22, of Fremont, allegedly got out of the car, pointed a gun at the victim and demanded his wallet. The former U.S. Marine threw his wallet to Singh, authorities said.

Dhillon, 24, of Union City, allegedly drove the getaway car. Authorities did not release the 17-year-old’s name because he is a minor.

Will the North American Punjabi Association be coming to their defense?

Looks like one more ethnic group adding diversity to our cities and towns that we need to keep an eye on.

Santa Barbara, CA: TB outbreak among Mexican ethnic group called “tip of the iceberg”

04/17/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Although the ethnic group members harboring an outbreak of active TB in scenic Santa Barbara are not refugees, but largely illegal aliens, this is still an important story especially coming at the same time as the case in Illinois we reported last week.

We have, over the years, been following TB outbreaks largely coming from the foreign-born because we think it is one of the most under-reported problems (due to political correctness!) with our willy-nilly immigration system. See our ‘Health issues’ category, here.

From the Santa Barbara Independent last week (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):

Santa Barbara health officials have been quietly working for months to contain a tuberculosis (TB) outbreak, and are now ramping up suppression efforts after publicly announcing that a Santa Maria High School student has been diagnosed with the infectious disease.

While the single diagnosis is a cause for concern, prompting both a community meeting on Friday and mass screenings at the school next Monday, the County of Santa Barbara Public Health Department’s grander ground plan has been actively kept under the radar for the past six months due to fears of alienating an already marginalized population and concerns about political backlash.

In 2013, 26 Santa Barbara residents were diagnosed with TB; 16 are North County residents, and nine are of Oaxacan descent. Figures for 2014 are not yet available, said Public Health Department spokesperson Susan Klein-Rothschild. At least one person died in 2013 from the disease (which typically attacks the lungs and has a 50 percent mortality rate if left untreated) and many had let it progress to advance stages before receiving treatment (which makes it much more contagious). Three children younger than 10 years old were diagnosed last year, and one was left severely and permanently disabled.

The disease has taken a real hold in the Oaxacan community!

Five of the Oaxacan cases “have epidemiologic links and the same genetic pattern on their TB isolate,” meaning they are all part of the same transmission chain. The Center for Disease Control declares an “outbreak” when three of more cases display that genetic link, and this week’s high school student case has been connected to the chain……the disease appears to have taken a real hold in the Oaxacan community.

Challenging job partly because they speak neither English or Spanish (diversity is strength, right!)

Thoman explained during an interview this Wednesday that Public Health nurses have been combing North County communities “day and night” in recent weeks, searching for signs of the disease. It’s a challenging assignment, she went on, as some of the Oaxacan individuals may be undocumented and harbor a distrust of government workers. Plus, many of them only speak Mixteco.

Only ten percent of California TB cases will become active! Do the math! Yikes! Isn’t ten percent of 3 million, 300,000?

While an estimated three million California residents carry the bacteria that causes the disease, only about 10 percent of them will come down with active TB, which can be cured with medication. [if they get it in time, and if the foreign-born person completes the prescribed drug treatment regime—ed]

Why isn’t this story all over the national news? For the same reason Santa Barbara health officials kept it quiet for so long—political correctness!

If fears of terrorism or crime don’t wake up Americans regarding our present out-of-control immigration, then surely the fear of ones kids getting TB in school will do it. Or, how about Mom bringing the disease home because she is a public health nurse, a social service worker, or simply a volunteer for refugee and immigrant groups?

Another US media propaganda campaign: no more detention for asylum seekers

04/17/2014 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While Australia and New Zealand increase the number of detainees—migrants who have arrived illegally on their shores and asked for asylum, in the US the Open Borders lobbyists, including federal refugee contractors at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, if it were up to them, want no one detained.

Is there (more) money in it for the contractors? That is what I want to know!

Keegan Hamilton (a freelance reporter from NYC who writes for the Village Voice) has picked the wrong poster boy for his detention sob story published at the Houston Press!

Reporter Keegan Hamilton really lays it on thick in this propaganda piece.

Hussein Mohamed, the Somali star of the story, had a legal pathway to America (see yesterday’s post, 3,708 Somalis came to the US legally in the first six months of this fiscal year). He was living safely in Kenya (not Somalia) when he launched his trek to America. And, it strains credulity that he had a life savings large enough to pay traffickers the cash needed for his half way around the world travels to the Mexican border.

From the Houston Press ‘For Many Refugees, the Journey to America Ends in a Cold Jail Cell’ (wahhhhhh!):

Hussein Mohamed took a hard road to America. Born into a minority clan in a nation rife with ethnic conflict, the boyish 24-year-old with gangly limbs and intense brown eyes describes fleeing his village in Somalia in 2012 after gunmen threatened to kill him. Mohamed says he was forced to quit his jobs as an English teacher and taxi driver and escape to neighboring Kenya. After making his way to South Africa, he forked over his life savings to human smugglers, who shipped him across the Atlantic to Brazil and guided him north through the jungles of South and Central America into Mexico. [I bet if you gave this one paragraph to the average American and asked if he should be detained while his asylum claim is adjudicated, 90% of those asked would say ‘incarcerate him.’—ed]

When he finally arrived at a border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, this past summer, Mohamed thought he’d safely reached the end of a harrowing ten-month journey. He had no inkling of the ordeal awaiting him on the other side of the Rio Grande.

Mohamed approached a U.S. Border Patrol agent and recounted his story. He explained that he wanted to seek asylum, a classification of refugee status granted to people who arrive in the United States having fled persecution in their homeland. He was immediately handcuffed and placed in immigration detention: a cold, cramped cell in a privately owned and operated prison facility. Soon after, along with hundreds of other detainees, he was herded onto a cargo plane and transferred without explanation to a jail in Newark, New Jersey. [Newark—eeek!—ed]

Then we are told about his dreams of a job and a family in California—blah! blah! blah!

Instead, he will likely be deported, shipped back to the war-torn country on the Horn of Africa he worked so hard to escape. Mohamed’s request for asylum was denied because he lacks a passport or other documents to confirm his identity. [He could be al-Shabaab—ed] He has filed an appeal, and his detention ticks on indefinitely. [He is safe and is fed, right!—ed]

There are no statutory limits to the amount of time a non-citizen like Mohamed may be held in immigration detention. When the process goes smoothly, asylum seekers tend to be released in a matter of weeks. Many end up imprisoned for much longer. [Obviously for a reason!—ed]

So how many ‘poor souls’ like Mohamed are in detention? A measly 6,000 (in the last three years) out of the tens of thousands who arrive each year asking for asylum.

Approximately 6,000 survivors of torture — exiles from Iran, Myanmar, Syria and other nations with brutal regimes — were detained in immigration jails while seeking asylum over the past three years, according to a 2013 report by the Center for Victims of Torture.

Now, are you ready for it! Below is the most revealing paragraph in this whole pathetic propaganda story! The Lutherans have a contract to get asylum seekers out of detention and house them in your neighborhoods.

The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIARS oops! LIRS) is a federal refugee contractor (96% of their income comes from you!) and they seem now to have parlayed that role into one where they are the guardians of people like Hussein Mohamed in several US cities. Recently they lobbied the administration for a relaxation of detention for illegal aliens, are they looking for future ‘clients’ for their ‘services’?

Thirty two detainees have been released into the care of LIRS (and signed up for welfare) in the last 20 days in the trial project! They say they aren’t being paid yet for this effort (although remember 96% of their funds already comes from taxpayers, did Keegan know that? Did he ask how they would pay for this pilot project?), they want to convince Congress that this is what should be done—halfway houses you might call them—for thousands eventually. LOL! Like any good business they are expanding their client base!

Though the political climate looks bleak for advocates of asylum reform, an ongoing pilot project offers a glimmer of hope. The project allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at facilities in New York City, Newark, San Antonio, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul to release select detainees seeking asylum into a program coordinated by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. As of March 31, the program has helped secure temporary housing and social services for 32 people, including survivors of torture, victims of domestic abuse and LGBT individuals, all of whom would otherwise have remained jailed indefinitely.

Read it all, Keegan does eventually discuss the frauds in the asylum racket, but having chosen Hussein Mohamed (if that is his name because he came with no papers), he obviously thinks Mohamed (with the gangly limbs and intense brown eyes) can’t possibly be a fraud.