VOA: Deportations of Africans up in 2016; very cool data base

05/22/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve been hearing the news here and at other news outlets about the stepped-up deportations of Somalis back to their homeland. Many failed asylum seekers are in the mix.
Asylum, for new readers, is, in a way, the other side of the same refugee coin. Either ‘refugees’ are chosen abroad (usually by the UN these days) and are flown to your towns after supposedly proving that they are persecuted people, or one gets in to the US either illegally or through some temporary legal way and then applies for asylum.

It is difficult (impossible I think) to find photos of Somalis being deported from the US, but there are an unending supply of the Saudi deportations in 2014. Saudi Arabia deported as many as 12,000 Somalis that year. I wonder did Trump ask the Saudis why they don’t take any refugees, including their fellow Muslims?

When the wannabe ‘refugee’ cannot prove his or her case—that they will be persecuted if sent home—then they are supposed to go home!
Conversely, if granted asylum, the migrant is then given all the rights of a ‘refugee’ who was chosen abroad and flown here and will be put on track for US citizenship.
Now, under the Trump Administration, more of those who failed in their asylum bid are being found, detained and sent home.
By the way, this up-tick in deportations is news that should be sent far and wide so as to discourage even more illegal entry and flimsy asylum claims that clog up the courts.
DHS should actually promote an ad campaign around the world trumpeting the news of stepped-up deportations!
Here is Voice of America on the news about Africans, but more importantly I learned about a new and very cool data base.

The United States has expelled about 326 Somali nationals since January.

That number is greater than the total for all Somalis expelled from the country in 2016.

This is the third consecutive year in which the number of Somalis deported by the U.S. government has risen. The rising numbers have increased immigrants’ fears of raids, detentions and deportations.

The deportations of Somali citizens appear to be part of a larger movement, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse*** at Syracuse University. It found that in the first three months of 2017, the U.S. government ordered the deportation of more than 1,200 Africans. Citizens of Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia and Kenya have received the most removal orders.

Recent deportation orders are undoing a ten-year-long trend.

From 2006 to 2016, the number of Africans deported every year fell from 2,100 to about 1,000. If the trend continues, four times more Africans will be deported by the end of this year than during 2016.

Continue reading here.
***Now check out the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse!
Here is one page that I screenshot to show you what interesting stuff is archived there.
On this page we see that there were 19 deportations for reasons of national security in fiscal year 2017 (that fiscal year began on October 1, 2016). You can learn in what states and what courts those cases came from and the nationality of the person to be deported. From this screenshot page, we note that there was one, an Iraqi, ordered by the court in Detroit to be removed.

This post is filed in our ‘Where to find information’ category.
You can watch that 2014 video about Saudi deportations here: http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Saudi+arabia+deports+Somalis&view=detail&mid=6490B0418567061F00636490B0418567061F0063&FORM=VIRE

(Only) 237 Somalis have been removed from US since last October; not thousands!

04/30/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was pretty excited to report here that we were stepping up deportations of illegal alien/criminal Somalis, that thousands would be removed. But, now I see that even that administration effort is really not much to write home about!
The news here, if it is accurate, is that ICE won’t arrest illegal Somalis (who are not in detention) at their homes or work places. Already, “sensitive places” such as schools, places of worship and hospitals are off limits.

Trump’s ambassador to Somalia (Stephen Schwartz) gives Somalia’s new Prez a special gift. A better gift might be to give Somalia back its people instead of hauling them by the thousands to the US! We will see how many of their illegal aliens they will repatriate as well! Photo: http://tribunist.com/news/american-ambassador-gives-make-somalia-great-again-hat-to-somalian-president/

So are we expected to believe that federal agents are going to wait on the streets to nab them coming and going from home to mosque? Only, if we hire a lot more agents!
Over the many years I’ve written RRW there would be flurries of pronouncements that Somalis in the country illegally would be sent back to Somalia and each time there would follow squishy, mealy-mouthed discussions about how can we do such a thing (send people back) because Somalia is still a hellhole!
Is Somalia ever NOT going to be a hellhole? Is this administration headed that way (to weakness and squishy talk) again?
In case you missed it, Trump has admitted 1,359 supposedly persecuted (by whom?) Somalis since inauguration day.
According to Wrapsnet (as of today) the US ‘welcomed’ 5,167 Somalis in FY17 (so far). And, we are supposed to be excited by the removal of 237 of them in that same time frame? Net gain is 4,930 since October of 2016!

Here is the latest at Voice of America:

Somalia’s ambassador to the U.S., Ahmed Isse Awad, says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has informed his embassy the agency will no longer arrest illegal Somali immigrants in their homes or at their workplaces. However, federal authorities have not confirmed that there has been any shift in policy.

Awad said the agency reached the decision after his embassy expressed concern to immigration authorities regarding the recent arrests of 11 Somalis in Virginia, Minnesota and Georgia.

“Once we found out that 11 Somalis were arrested from their homes for removal, we thought the arrests looked [like] profiling and targeting Somalis. Then we submitted our concern to ICE and asked clarification,” Awad told VOA’s Somali service. “Fortunately, they came back to us tell us that they would no longer arrest Somalis from their homes or at their workplaces.”

[….]

However officials have previously said that ICE does not have specific exemptions in place for certain groups of people. The agency policy currently directs that anyone in violation of immigration laws may be subject to arrest, detention and removal from the United States.

Authorities say the agency’s policy directs personnel to avoid conducting enforcement activists at “sensitive places” such as schools, places of worship and hospitals, unless they have prior approval from a supervisor.

The U.S. government said almost 5,000 Somali nationals in the United States face deportation orders.

“As of April 1, 2017, there were 4,801 Somali nationals with final orders of removal,” ICE spokesman Brendan Raedy said last week. “As of that same date, 237 Somali nationals have been removed to Somalia in fiscal year 2017.”

[….]

Most of the Somalis facing final orders of removal are not in detention centers and are unlikely to be removed in the near term because their cases are making their way through the system. [I thought they said most had failed their asylum bids?—ed]

Since Somalia’s embassy in Washington reopened in November 2015, the ambassador said, about 170 Somali immigrants who either ran afoul of U.S. law or had their asylum applications rejected have been deported to Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

Most of those previously deported had applied for, but been denied, political asylum in the United States, he added. Another group of Somali applicants whose requests for asylum have been denied are now in detention centers or prisons, awaiting deportation.

Big Whoop!

Fewer than 300 Somalis are scheduled to be moved out in the next couple of months, Awad told VOA, adding that his embassy was awaiting information from U.S. authorities on who the deportees were and when they would depart.

And, as soon as they get that information, they will tell those Somalis to head to Canada ASAP!
See our category ‘Trump Watch’ for more on what Trump has changed and what he hasn’t changed regarding refugees.

Pence in Australia: Sure! We will be taking over 1,000 illegal aliens now held in Australian detention

04/23/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump called it a “dumb deal,” but your American town may soon see some of the 1,250 illegal aliens, who attempted to get to Australia by boat and have been housed in detention centers, flown in and given apartments and homes where you live. They won’t be living next door to Vice President Pence for sure!

Some of these men will be coming to your town!

Here is what AP is reporting at the Japan Times (emphasis is mine) about a deal the Obama State Department left for Trump:

SYDNEY – Vice President Mike Pence and Australia’s prime minister brushed off any lingering hostility over a contentious refugee deal and joined forces on Saturday to urge China to take a greater role in pressuring North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program.

Pence and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull repeatedly praised the decades-long American-Australian alliance following a meeting in Sydney, with the vice president thanking Turnbull for calling on Beijing to play a more active part in the international effort to de-escalate Pyongyang’s nuclear threat.

The two leaders appeared at pains to present a united front following an unusual period of tension between the longtime allies that was sparked by a spat between Turnbull and President Donald Trump over a refugee resettlement deal struck by the Obama administration.

Pence said Saturday that the U.S. would honor the agreement even if it didn’t agree with it. Under the deal, the U.S. would take up to 1,250 refugees that Australia houses in detention camps on the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Trump’s anger over the agreement led to a tense phone call with Turnbull in January and an angry tweet in which the president called the deal “dumb.”

“President Trump has made it clear that we’ll honor the agreement — that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement,” Pence said during a joint news conference with Turnbull.

So some small American towns and cities are going to get illegal aliens (mostly Muslim men) who failed to be approved for asylum in Australia! Disgusting!
Here is a portion of a letter from the chairmen of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent to the Obama Administration in November identifying which countries the illegal aliens are from (the “stateless” are most likely Rohingya from Bangladesh or Burma).

All of our posts on the Australian “dumb deal” are here.
And, by the way, beginning in 2012, I testified at US Dept. of State hearings that there were ten reasons a moratorium on refugee admissions should be put in place. One thing I said must be done is to stop using the refugee program to move people around the world just to address some other foreign policy objective.
Only people who are truly refugees, in need of humanitarian assistance, should be considered for resettlement. This Australia deal is exactly what I had in mind when I presented my testimony. This deal is only to help the Turnbull government out of a sticky situation. Here is my #7:

7) Congress needs to specifically disallow the use of the refugee program for other purposes of the US Government,especially using certain refugee populations to address unrelated foreign policy objectives—Uzbeks, Kosovars, Meshketians and Bhutanese (Nepalese) people come to mind.

Let the White House know how you feel by clicking here (do it even if you have done it before!).

And, Chairmen Grassley and Goodlatte are not off the hook either, they could pressure this White House (they were all too happy to pressure the Obama White House) on the subject!
All of my posts about Trump’s refugee policies are archived in Trump Watch!

Trump Effect: More Central American migrants want asylum in Mexico, not moving on to US

04/19/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, that is how asylum is supposed to work.
Anyone who meets the legal definition of a refugee*** is supposed to seek asylum in the first safe country they reach—not go asylum-shopping throughout the continent as we saw in yesterday’s report on the rush to the Canadian border by many migrants illegally in the US.

More Central American young men are staying in Mexico and applying for asylum. UN sending more workers to process them.

For probably a couple of decades the open borders left has been trying to expand the definition of ‘refugee’ (fleeing violence or looking for better economic conditions does not make one a refugee!) and to condone the practice of asylum-shopping (seeking the best deal!).
The Left wants you to believe that anyone on the move, anywhere in the world, is a legitimate refugee!
Here is a sob-story about how Mexico is being increasingly saddled with Central Americans who would normally be simply passing through to a better deal in the US.
From Buzzfeed News (hat tip: Joanne):

Fleeing violence in their home countries, more Central Americans are seeking asylum in Mexico instead of making the trip north to the US, according to the United Nations.

More Central Americans are seeking asylum upon reaching Mexico, rather than attempt to make it into the US, where the Trump administration has been clamping down on immigration.

The number of Central Americans applying for refugee status in Mexico has been steadily increasing since 2011, but applications surged in 2016 by 156% compared to the year prior, according to Mark Manly, a representative in Mexico for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

“What we have seen is more people arrive in Mexico, not because they’re in transit for a better future in the United States, but they are fleeing for their lives and see in Mexico a country that can offer protection and asylum,” Manly said in an interview released by the UN.

As in previous years, many Central Americans continue to flee violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, but instead of passing through on their way to the US, many of them are looking to make a new home in Mexico, Manly said. [That is how asylum is supposed to work!—ed]

From November 2016 to March, Mexico’s commission for refugee assistance, known as COMAR, received 5,421 asylum applications. During the same five-month period in 2015, the agency received 2,148 applications, Reuters reported.

As applications for refugee status mount, the Mexico government and United Nations have had to beef up border resources to handle the strain on resources. [Good! Not our problem!—ed]

More here.
Endnote:
Obama began processing Central Americans to the US as ‘refugees’ directly from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala last year. The practice continues under Trump. We have admitted (directly from their home country) over a thousand (1,106 as of today) mostly fake ‘refugees’ from El Salvador to the US in FY2016 and 2017.
*** Refugee definition (do you see anything in here about violence or economic need?)

(42) The term “refugee” means:

(A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion….

For the zillionth time, a legitimate refugee is supposed to be able to prove he or she will be PERSECUTED! Anyone looking for economic well-being is an “economic migrant.” Fleeing gangs and violence does not make one a refugee! Notice that war isn’t mentioned either!

Fishy, fishy, fishy! PBS relates tall tales from US to Canada border-crossers!

04/18/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You’ve heard the news, we’ve reported it for months, that fearing the Trumpster, migrants are flooding to the Canadian border into Prime Minister Trudeau’s waiting and welcoming arms.
Here we have PBS interviewing a couple of Africans who feared if they stayed in the US, Trump would be rounding them up to return them to Africa. Their tales of woe are transparently and obviously fishy!
The Somali woman, we are first introduced to, risked a winter trek across the US/Canada border with a small child even though we are told she was in the US LEGALLY. There are only a few possibilities: She was NOT in the US legally; she is shopping for a better welfare deal in Canada; or she is a nut. In any case, Canada can have her!

Lisa Desai hides face of Somali woman for her “safety”? Why is she unsafe in Canada? She clearly has escaped the grasping arms of Donald Trump’s Justice Dept.

PBS:

LISA DESAI: Much of the four thousand mile American border with Canada is wide open and unsecured. In the first three months of this year, a steady stream of immigrants from all over the world braved the bitter cold to reach a country where they believe there’s less risk of detention and deportation. [Lisa doesn’t report that the upward trend of border crossers began while Obama was still President and the expectation was that Hillary would be the next one, so this isn’t a new phenomenon—ed]

Just north of Minnesota and North Dakota lies the Canadian province of Manitoba. The town of Emerson is a main entry point. An hour’s drive north is the provincial capital, Winnipeg, a city of 700-thousand. That’s where I met this woman from Somalia.

For her safety, we agreed to shield her face and call her “Nasra.” She settled in Minneapolis on a U.S. medical visa to get treatment for her six-year-old autistic son. Her family is part of a minority clan persecuted in Somalia’s civil war. [So, if she would be persecuted, why didn’t Nasra apply for asylum in US?—ed]

NASRA: I faced a lot of problems in Somalia. During the war, my father and my brother were attacked, and my mother and I endured so much pain — we left and never went back.

LISA DESAI: After President Trump listed Somalia as one of the countries whose citizens would be blocked from entering the U.S. Nasra decided that although she was legal, it wasn’t safe to stay.

NASRA: I heard that they were going to arrest people and take them back to Somalia and that they were going into people’s homes and they were going to separate families, mothers from children.

LISA DESAI: What would happen if you were deported back to Somalia?

NASRA: If I go back to Somalia I won’t stand a chance there, I would be killed.

LISA DESAI: In February, she left Minneapolis and became one of nearly 1,000 migrants, according to the Canadian Government, to cross from the U.S. into Canada this year. She paid a driver to take her and her son most of the way.

NASRA: We walked for hours, the snow was falling, we couldn’t see. It was cold, it was dark and if it wasn’t for God we would have died.

LISA DESAI: Under Canadian law, people like Nasra, who cross the border illegally, are arrested and taken in for a background check. If they don’t have a criminal record, they are often released within 24 hours. They’re appointed a government lawyer to represent them in their asylum hearing which usually takes place in two months. They are also connected with nonprofits that provide food and housing.

Go to the report, here, and don’t miss the story of the FAILED asylum seeker from Ghana. He failed to be granted asylum in Ecuador and in the US, so he took a trip to Canada to shop for a better deal. How convenient that PBS can blame Trump for scaring him to Canada?

Then it appears that the ‘welcoming’ Canadians are getting sick of it!

LISA DESAI: A poll last month found Canadian support for welcoming refugees is slipping. 48 percent said Canada should send these migrants back to the U.S. 36 percent said Canada should accept them.

See our previous posts on Trump and the Canada border by clicking here.