Category: Nashville

The back story on the Somali sex trafficking case

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a great article on how the Somali sex trafficking case (first reported here) was pursued over several years and in several states by a pair of dogged investigators.   Here is the lead in:

A feisty prosecutor and passionate cop go after Minnesota-Somali gangs. It took a never-give-up attitude to build the case of a Somali runaway into a massive human trafficking prosecution.

The article begins:

NASHVILLE – “British” and “Moe D” sulked at a table inside courtroom A859. Each wore jail coveralls, their legs shackled.

A St. Paul vice cop faced them in silence while an intense Nashville prosecutor presented rapid-fire reasons why the men should stay locked up pending trial.

They made for something of an odd couple. Investigator Heather Weyker with her long blond hair and passion for this work. Assistant U.S. Attorney Van Vincent with his military-style buzz cut and Tennessee twang.

Nashville, too, seemed an unlikely place to charge mostly Minnesota gang members of Somali descent with selling Minnesota girls for sex. But to those who have worked this complex human-trafficking case that crosses state lines and involves 29 defendants and at least four young victims, Weyker and Vincent are the reason this is a case at all.

“From my perspective, Van and Heather are the heroes of this case,” said Ed Yarbrough, former U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee. “Minneapolis dropped the ball.”

Despite a decision by the U.S. attorney in Minnesota two years ago to not prosecute, Yarbrough said, Weyker never gave up her fight to rescue young girls investigators say were coerced into prostitution and passed around like playthings. Vincent, he said, is a bulldog who plowed through obstacles to build a conspiracy case that could result in life sentences for people who allegedly sold girls for as little as a bottle of brandy.

Read it all, it is fascinating.

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.

Cutting out the State, Catholic Charity and feds decide refugee policy in Tennessee

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In my previous post I mentioned that Catholic Charities and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops are resettling refugees of all religions pretty much wherever they set up an office.   Now, we learn that Catholic Charities of Tennessee doesn’t need any involvement from the State to run the federal refugee program there.  I guess there isn’t much of a States Rights movement in Tennessee these days?

In my opinion this is one more erosion of the rights granted to states by the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution.   Let’s get some lawyers on this!

From The Chattanoogan:

The Tennessee Office for Refugees (TOR) at Catholic Charities of Tennessee has been designated by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to administer $9+ million in annual federal funding for refugee services statewide for the next four years.

TOR previously was ORR’s interim replacement designee in Tennessee to administer funds and services after a decision in late 2007 by the State of Tennessee’s Department of Human Services to cease participation in the refugee programs. TOR now has “permanent” status under the Wilson-Fish (WF) program, an alternative to traditional state-administered refugee resettlement programs. The Tennessee Office for Refugees at Catholic Charities is one of 13 Wilson-Fish programs in the United States.

Doesn’t the state legislature in Tennessee have some say about what rights the TN Department of Human Services can just give away?

If you live in one of these 10 states or one county, you too have given your state’s rights away (or partially away) to an open borders non-profit (a federal contractor) and the federal government:

Alabama

Alaska

Idaho

Kentucky

Louisiana

Nevada

North Dakota

South Dakota

Vermont

Tennessee

San Diego County

Nashville: Somalis charged with sex trafficking had access to restricted areas of the airport

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Debbie Schlussel has the whole story.  Hat tip:  Janet Levy.   Here is just one paragraph to pique your interest (although I suspect you are pretty interested already)!

Remember the child sex slave ring that devout Muslims from Somalia ran all over the U.S. ? I told you about it a few weeks ago and how some of the girls they enslaved were just 12 years old. Well, our friend, syndicated radio host Steve Gill, alerts us to this story about how two of the Muslim men in the sex-slave ring–two of the nearly 30 Muslims indicted–had unfettered, unscreened access to restricted areas of the Nashville International Airport and a cockpit. A federal judge ordered the two men and their brother, who was also indicted for running the Muslim child sex slave ring, released on bond, and the U.S. appealed the decision. The evidence–photos of the two men in restricted areas of the airport (after they did NOT go through TSA screening)–was presented in court by federal prosecutors in their appeal of the bond decision.

Our posts on the sex trafficking gang begin here.

Somali alleged sex-traffickers want out of custody…

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

…..but then there is the Nashville connection.

A Minnesota judge began sorting through the 29 indicted sex-traffickers in Minnesota this week according to Minnesota Public Radio:

St. Paul, Minn. — More defendants indicted this week in an alleged multi-state sex-trafficking ring appeared in court Wednesday for detention hearings in Minneapolis. Magistrate judge Franklin Noel ruled that three defendants should remain in federal custody until they face charges in Nashville.

The indictment says the ring, run by Minneapolis-based Somali gangs, prostituted underage girls in Minnesota, Tennessee and Columbus, Ohio.

Judge Noel ruled one defendant, Andrew Kayachith, should be released on a $25,000 bond to the care of his parents. The judge also ruled Wednesday that another defendant, Abdullahi Afyare, should be released, and had earlier ruled that Bibi Said, who is eight months pregnant, should be allowed to remain free on bond until her Friday detention hearing.

But District Judge William Haynes in Tennessee issued orders blocking the release of Kayachith and Afyare, which may mean the two young men are soon back in custody.

Tennessee legal system involved

Yes, I guess this is going to involve the legal system in several states, so I thought I would check out what they are saying at the pro-Muslim immigrant Tennessean. 

Readers, it’s a long and convoluted tale—-but the bottomline is that the Tennessean has for years been coddling (mollycoddling!) the refugee population including the large Somali population in the city.  It’s been a ‘hear no evil, see no evil’ approach.  Anyone questioning such things as the federal grant scam in 2007 with the local Somali advocacy center there is labeled a racist—same old story.  If you use our search function for Nashville you will see what I mean.  Here is one post from last year to get you started—more huff and fluff from the Tennessean.

Only last month the Tennessean published what can only be called a ‘hit piece’ on the nationally known and well-respected Investigative Project on Terrorism, here.  Readers should know that there is a large and active counter-jihad grassroots movement in the Nashville area.

But, it looks like even the Tennessean has to tell the unvarnished truth once in awhile!  From a story earlier this week:

Several of the charges stem from activity in South Nashville apartments and hotels, where girls were offered for money, drugs and liquor.

Federal prosecutors said some of the gang members lived in Nashville and others had family ties here.

All but one of the 29 were refugees or immigrants. One man was born in the United States, and 26 were born in Somalia. One person each was born in Kenya and Ethiopia. All were legally in the country, prosecutors said.

So much for Allahsoldier’s taqiyya (here) in a comment that these alleged gangs were made up of “dijboutians!”

Arrested were NOT Somalis but djiboutians

Question for Catholic Charities that runs the refugee program in the state of Tennessee, any of these gang members yours?  At the time of the writing of this post in 2009, we didn’t yet know that the whole program in Tennessee had been turned over to a federally-funded non-profit group (Catholic Charities) and the state of Tennesee had been cut out of any role by the US State Department.

Pro-amnesty groups get federal funding then they lobby

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

You’ve heard of the big ones like ACORN and Planned Parenthood that get federal funding then use it for Far Left political causes and for lobbying for more money and power for themselves, but there are hundreds (thousands!) of smaller supposed non-profit groups living off your money. 

Maybe in a new Congress (after the 2010 election) we can get an investigation of all the quasi-government groups that get federal funding then participate in direct political action.  One such group is the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.  

Note here that they received nearly $200,000 from the Office of Refugee Resettlement and have organized ten buses to travel to DC today.  Dry up the federal funding and these groups could not function because there is not enough private financial support for what they do and the positions they take.

Organizing ten buses from Tennessee for today’s March on America.  From AP:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — In his role as a lay minister and translator at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Lewisburg, Jose Gomez hears a lot about the problems his fellow Hispanics face.

That’s part of the reason Gomez was inspired to help organize a group for Sunday’s “March for America” in Washington, D.C. March organizers hope thousands of immigrants and their supporters from around the country will converge on the National Mall in support of comprehensive immigration reform.

The Web site for the march outlines broad goals, including “a path to earned citizenship for the undocumented.”

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition will send 10 busloads of people from around the state. Memphis, Knoxville and Nashville are all sending people, but so are places like Lewisburg, where locals are getting involved in the issue for the first time.

I will bet a lot of those filling seats on the buses today are resettled refugees who don’t understand that by legalizing another 10 million or so illegal immigrants they will have an even more difficult time finding work.   I’ll say it again—refugees are used as pawns for these political activists at groups like the Tennessee Immigrants and Refugee Rights Coalition!