Category: Nashville

Two Somalis dropped from sex-trafficking case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I guess this is going to be Somali news round-up Saturday.   I just told you about Somali kids not being vaccinated in Minneapolis and this is news from Nashville updating that huge Somali sex trafficking case we first reported here.

Two have been dropped from the case not because they have been exonerated, but because they can’t be found.  One is believed to have skipped the country.

From the City Paper in Nashville:

The government has dropped the names of two defendants from a case of alleged juvenile sex trafficking so that the case may move forward.

U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes Jr. signed an order Friday severing Abdikarim Osman Ali and Abdigadir Ahmed Khalif from the list of 29 individuals indicted last fall on a variety of charges including juvenile sex trafficking, credit card fraud and obstruction of justice involving members and associates of three Somali gangs.

Last November, law enforcement officials arrested two dozen suspects allegedly involved in the sex trafficking ring with connections between Nashville and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Filed by Assistant U.S Attorney Van Vincent, the order granting a motion states that Ali and Khalif were removed from the indictment “to avoid necessary delay as these defendants have not been apprehended.”

King hearings and the elephant in the living room

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“There is a big elephant in the room, but our society continues not to see it.”

Those are the words of Melvin Bledsoe whose son converted to Islam and subsequently killed a soldier who happened to be standing outside of a recruiting station in Arkansas on a fine spring day in 2009.  My posts on the murder are here.  Bledsoe said in testimony yesterday that his son was radicalized in Nashville.

For more on the important and controversial hearings see Jerry Gordon writing at the Iconoclast here, and Steve Emerson at the Investigative Project on Terrorism, here.

Abdirizak Bihi

Note that one of those giving testimony was Abdirizak Bihi who we encountered in 2009 when he wrote to Refugee Resettlement Watch (here) in an attempt to get the story out about his nephew being lured to Somalia for Jihad training.  We reported on Bihi again in November of 2009, here, when he said the FBI wasn’t anywhere close to the “big fish” responsible for recruiting the Somali “youths.”

By the way, the US Senate Homeland Security Committee held hearings in March of 2009 on the radicalization of Somali young men, but they were squishy politically correct hearings and I could barely stand listening to it, here.

Not the “big fish” by any stretch, but readers should know that a former Somali refugee from Minnesota, Mohamud Said Omar, was captured in the Netherlands in connection with funding the trips of the Somalis who returned to Africa for Jihad training.  Last I heard (May 2010) he was fighting extradition from the Netherlands to the US.  I bet he knows if the mosque in Minneapolis was involved in recruiting.

For new readers: We have admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US.   To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years.   In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.

Also, after being closed for nearly two years, the US State Department is on the verge of resuming the fraud-ridden family reunification program that admitted as many as 36,000 Somalis fraudulently to the US between 2003 and 2008.  See the latest on new regulations, here.  The State Department is on the verge of re-opening the program and may already have done so.

At least Tennessee blogger GiGi is honest

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

Just came across this blog—Jacob Street—where blogger GiGi posted her plea to US Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker to not cut any funding for the refugee program.  I told you here and here recently that the resettlement industry is busy drumming up opposition to proposed budget cuts passed by the House of Representatives.   By the way, the longer this 2011 budget issue drags on the more time all the special interests will have to gear up and oppose any cuts.

At least, and probably for the first time, I’m seeing an employee of a federal contractor—in this case Catholic Charities—express fear for the loss of her job.  BUT,  MY QUESTION CONTINUES TO BE—WHY ARE WE FUNDING CHURCH GROUPS TO RESETTLE REFUGEES IN THE FIRST PLACE?   What happened to private Christian charity?

From Jacob Street:

As your constituent and a staff member of Catholic Charities of TN and the Tennessee Office for Refugees, I write to urge you to save the refugee resettlement program from drastic cuts, and to fund the Migration and Refugee Assistance Account (MRA); Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR); and International Disaster Assistance (IDA) accounts at their FY2010 enacted levels. Cuts to these accounts, which have been historically under-funded, will have a devastating affect on refugees, Afghan and Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa recipients, victims of torture and trafficking, other vulnerable populations, as well as communities across the country that welcome these populations.

[…..]

I worry for my job and the jobs of all of my co-workers and all of the organizations that have a role in refugee resettlement. I worry for the refugees we resettle and for the refugees who live in dire situations in refugee camps across the world. By cutting funding our livelihoods will be drastically affected and sadly, many many lives will be in jeopardy.

I don’t blame GiGi for being worried for herself.  People have become so accustomed to living off the government (the taxpayer) that they don’t even think about where the money comes from.   Just like the unions in Wisconsin, they don’t get it.   The taxpayer is broke, the government is broke!

For new readers: Tennessee has many problems with refugees such as the Somalis resettled there by mostly Catholic Charities (see my whole category on Nashville).  Remember the Somali sex trafficking gang was working out of Nashville, here.  Also, State Senator Jim Tracy introduced a bill in the state legislature to try and get more state and local control over the refugee program being run by Catholic Charities, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and the US State Department, here.   There is also a growing controversy over a bill to make Shariah Law (favored by Muslims in Tennessee) illegal, here.  So, it’s not all sweetness and light in Tennessee as it relates to immigrants and refugees as GiGi would have her Senators think.

Migration Policy Institute–more than a research outfit

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update: Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies has some insiteful comments about MPI’s 287g report at National Review On Line, here.  Hat tip: Judy.

Yesterday two people sent me the latest “study” from the benign-looking Migration Policy Institute. The press release on the report is entitled, “ICE’s 287(g) Immigration Enforcement Program Is Not Targeted Primarily at Serious Offenders, New MPI Study Finds,” and attempts to show that some jurisdictions involved in the 287g program (that is the federal program which authorizes local law enforcement to apprehend illegal aliens) are stopping illegals for petty crimes and traffic violations and thus in their view abusing the law.   It is a study that looks balanced, but in fact advances a political agenda.

The Migration Policy Institute  (MPI) does just that—it advances an open-borders agenda (as well as advocates for more legal immigration—more refugees and more asylees).

I had never really looked more deeply into the organization, but did just now because this report irritated me so much—not what it says, but that over and over again we are led to believe there is no agenda behind supposedly objective studies like this one and gullible readers, especially reporters, take this stuff as the unvarnished truth.

In 30 minutes I found some of the following information:

The first thing I always check is a group’s Form 990 (virtually all of these pro-migration advocacy groups are non-profits and are required to file a Form 990, some do so in a more timely fashion than others).  Here is the most recent Form 990 for MPI–2008.  There is no reason they shouldn’t have 2009 available.

The most interesting thing to me is that their income went from just over $4 million in the prior year and then jumped to a whopping $9.6 million in the next year.   Could it be that with Obama’s election they were gearing up to push amnesty through Congress?

Unfortunately other than the government portion of their funding which is $443,000, one is not given access to their funders.  I don’t care what end of the political spectrum a group is on, but its major funders should be identified on their public Form 990—a good project for an enterprising Tea Party oriented Congressman!

Like so many of these Washington groups ostensibly helping the world’s poor and downtrodden, one of the biggest portions of their expenses is for all the 6-figure salaries paid to employees.  Examining the Form 990, one sees that one of those receiving six-figures from MPI is Doris Meissner.  I told you about her here recently as she was quoted supporting the “free market idea” of human trafficking and smuggling Somalis across our border:

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said applicants can wait in camps for years with no assurance they’ll get into the country of their choice.

“Sometimes they decide that smuggling is the best shot,” said Meissner, now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. [You see what I mean about reporters, they eat this up, “nonpartisan think tank” my foot—-ed]

When I scrolled down that Form 990 all I had to see was a $50,000 grant MPI gave to the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition that year to know who they were.  That is a very far Left, highly political, open borders and pro-migration and pro-Muslim immigration advocacy group we have written about on many occasions.

And, interestingly, I didn’t know that MPI was actually mentioned in an article about the hotel in Nashville that canceled a meeting I attended in May 2009.  After the Lowe’s Vanderbilt hotel canceled a conference days before it opened, we all went to another “welcoming” hotel and proceeded to have a good meeting.  Here is ACT for America’s account of what happened.  Here is Judy’s post.

So, just by giving TIRRC a $50,000 grant I knew there was nothing nonpartisan and balanced about MPI.  Just one more of George Soros money laundering outfits?

When you can’t figure out who exactly is funding an organization one can search by just googling some of the likely candidates.  For example, I typed in Migration Policy Institute and the Tides Foundation or Tides Center (the hard Left’s premier money laundering operation), MPI and George Soros, and then Discover the Networks is also a really good first option.

Below are some links to give you a better idea of who MPI is:

Discover the Networks, here.

MPI and George Soros here ( here is the source for that story).  Soros operation is called the “shadow party.”

Working with the big money government contractor, International Rescue Committee, here for a PR campaign for more tax dollars going to Iraqi refugees (actually it won’t go directly to the refugees it will pass through the contractors so the head of the IRC can make his $400,000 plus salary).

I told you about this meeting hosted by MPI (here) where “experts” admitted that black men are hurt the most when immigrant numbers are high, but that doesn’t matter to the elite and highly educated at MPI.

Wikipedia reports that MPI gets funding from international interests through the United Nations, here.  Heck, you can see all their international funders at their website, here.

And, to really see what grassroots immigration control groups are up against, see UNBOUND PHILANTHROPY, here.

O.K. so this is taking me more than a half hour—UNBOUND has a boatload of information on its Form 990!  Will have to write a separate post!  [Update: Here is my post on Unbound Philanthropy.]

Bottomline, MPI is not an unbiased, nonpartisan, independent think tank.  It is an open borders advocate and a pro-migration organization. So please read any “study” or report that they release as propaganda to advance their agenda.

Tyson’s Shelbyville plant gets another bomb threat

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update January 18th: Arrest made in the graffiti incident—bored twentysomething confesses,  bomb threats appear to be stunts too, but those responsible have not yet been identified, according to this report.

Update: Jerry Gordon got the scoop and posted it at New English Review. An arrest was made today in this case.   I’m sure we will have more news tomorrow on the motives of this Tysons employee.

I didn’t even tell you about the first  bomb threat, here, but over the weekend the controversial Shelbyville, TN chicken plant got another bomb threat.

This is what News Channel 5 from Nashville is reporting:

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn.- For the second time in less than a month, a terror threat is made at a mid-state plant.

Shelbyville Police say a bomb threat was made Saturday night at the Tyson Plant. They say the threat was written in graffiti on a wall inside the plant.

This is not the first time this has happened. At the end of December, someone also used graffiti to make threats against employees at the plant.

For the earlier graffiti (reportedly “all americans must die”) terror threat that the feds were called in for, go here.  Tysons has still not released what exactly was written in that pre-Christmas event, nor whether a woman’s bathroom had been set on fire.

Meanwhile, the ‘Welcome to Shelbyville’ propaganda film has been selected by the US State Department to be shown around the world.

The documentary film is meant to show how a southern redneck Bible-belt town can learn to live with Somali refugees who have come to work at Tyson Foods.   I told you more about that Saturday, here.

Last evening I happened to see a Fox News critical report of this State Department program that is apparently sending films around the globe that are showing the world our dirty linen at a huge cost to taxpayers.  Searching around for a link to this story, the only thing I found quickly was this AP story by none other than Matthew Lee.  Longtime readers will remember Lee as the reporter who each month at the end of the Bush Administration pounded Bush and the State Department on not bringing enough Iraqi refugees to the US fast enough.

Here is what Lee says about the State Department’s multi-million dollar propaganda film series of which ‘Welcome to Shelbyville’ is a part.

The “American Documentary Showcase” series is funded and organized by the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs. It brings “award-winning contemporary American documentaries to audiences around the world to offer a view of American society and culture as seen by independent documentary filmmakers,” according to its website.

[….]

The department said that this year’s selections, chosen by the University Film and Video Association and independent international group of filmmakers, educators and students, explore topics ranging from civil rights and the treatment of military veterans to environmentalism and freedom of the press.

More later, I don’t think this issue is going away.