Federal immigration officials moving to deport Omar Ameen back to Iraq
May 5—Iraqi refugee Omar Ameen is facing deportation proceedings despite a Sacramento judge’s ruling last month that there was not enough evidence to extradite him back to his home country to face trial in the slaying of a police officer there, officials confirmed Wednesday.
Ameen, 47, had been in the Sacramento County Main Jail since his 2018 arrest in the extradition case, and his lawyers expected him to be released April 21 after the judge’s finding.
Instead, Ameen was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and is now facing deportation proceedings on the grounds that he allegedly lied on his applications to come to the United States as a refugee, ICE said in a statement Wednesday.
The statement notes that, at the same time Ameen was arrested by FBI agents in the extradition case, ICE charged him “based on misrepresentations on applications for admission.”
“Ameen is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings,” the statement said.
[….]
Prosecutors also accuse Ameen of lying on his refugee resettlement forms about how his father died, saying in court records that Ameen claimed his father was “shot dead” for assisting the American military.
“In actuality, the death certificate for Abdulsattar Ameen (which Ameen did not submit with any of his applications) indicates he died from natural causes—a cerebral clot—on December 25, 2010,” court records say.
“Ameen’s claim that his father was killed due to his possible assistance to military forces is a fiction, and his refugee application was approved in part on the basis of this false claim,” the court records say, adding that Ameen also lied about his father’s supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and other relatives’ ties to terror.
Of course they lie!
“When asked in his written Sworn Statement in support of his refugee application ‘Have you ever engaged in . . . any other form of terrorist activity? Ameen answered ‘no,'” the court records say. “In actuality, Ameen is alleged to have engaged in various forms of terrorist activity, from 2004 through his departure from the region for the United States in 2014.”
The records say that because Ameen allegedly lied about ties to terror groups he was granted permission to move to the United States under false pretenses.
Here is one of several posts I wrote about Ameen in 2018:
The other day when I posted on an opinion piece published in a Billings, Montana newspaper where the writer was attempting to tell readers that refugees were all about peace and love and a better life, a reader reminded me of this story which I wrote about several times over the years.
Hate Crime Hoax du jour….
A good actor (for awhile). Jurors ultimately did not believe Kassim Al-Himidi’s grieving husband schtick!
I had included ‘El Cajon Iraqi murders wife and pins it on whitey‘ in myterror and crime round-up,but it bears repeating especially in light of the admission by the State Department that many Iraqis entered the US fraudulentlyand as someone once said about another group of migrants “they aren’t very good people.”
If there could be anything worse than murdering your wife, it is blaming the murder on Americans and creating a frenzy that brought in CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center to scream Islamophobia and racism!
…the “hate crime” hoax had frightened Muslims in the El Cajon area into thinking there was a raving Islamophobe on the loose killing Muslims in their kitchens. CAIR and the Southern Poverty Law Center were right in the forefront helping fan the flames.
After beating his wife to near death in 2012 (she died of her injuries a few days later), Al-Hamidi set the frenzy in motion by penning a note and claiming he found it near his injured wife. The note read:
“Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.”
So to wrap up, go back to see what the Billings, Montana writer told gullible readers:
It’s a credit to our government that not a single one of more than 3 million refugees resettled since the Refugee Act was signed in 1980 has taken the life of a U.S. citizen in a terrorist attack.
But, I guess killing one’s refugee wife and making it look like it was a domestic terrorist attack perpetrated by a xenophobic Islamophobe doesn’t count in his mind. Welcoming more to places like Montana is what ‘good Christians’ should be doing.
P.S. Consider the fact that you, the American taxpayer paid for these Iraqis to have a “better life” and paid for law enforcement and a criminal trial, and you get to pay for his prison care and feeding for decades. Oh joy!
This is one more story on how refugees are being harmed by the Chinese virus supposedly disproportionately to us white folks (that is the implicit suggestion anyway!).
When I saw this opinion piece, it reminded me to check the refugee camp virus crisis news. There is no new news—the media is poised to report that COVID-19 is running through refugee camps like wildfire. So far it isn’t, but, the warnings of pending doom are rampant. (And, we better damn well do something about it!)
Herein this Op-Ed from San Diego we are told there is no data on refugees who have Coronavirus, however the good doctors know that refugees there are being hit at a greater rate then who? Other migrants? Illegal aliens? African Americans? White people?
No, they really don’t know because on one thing opined, I agree—-there is no good data on refugees, on their health before arrival and the cost of their medical care here, their income, their rates of employment, the cost of educating the kids, their crime rates and the list goes on.
Yes, if you are willing to wait years for theAnnual Report to Congressthat the Office of Refugee Resettlementis supposed to be preparing (even during the Trump Administration ORR is dragging its feet) you might get some data.
However, much of the data there is based on phone interviews with refugees willing to be quizzed about their welfare use by a stranger on the phone, or based on inflated employment data from the contractors—great methods for getting at the truth.
Your local welfare agencies are not cataloging welfare use by immigration category, heck, I doubt they even pay any attention to broad categories like illegal status vs. legal refugee status when handing out government goodies.
How many times over the years have readers asked me—how much is all this refugee resettlement costing US taxpayers? You can’t even find out how many refugee kids are in your local school system, or how many refugees are using local health services! And, you know who is happy to keep it that way—the nine refugee contractors that monopolize all resettlement in America.
I do agree with the opinion writers on one thing!
“A national debate on the way we collect data on refugees is urgently needed.”
Commentary: Refugees must not be left behind in the U.S response to the coronavirus pandemic
Reopen the country or not? The answer may be complicated, but is surely “no” if we fail to control the novel coronavirus pandemic in certain communities.
Refugees are one community that is being hit particularly hard by the coronavirus, yet data is not telling their story, threatening their survival once again.
San Diego refugees, photo accompanying the Op-Ed
[….]
Generations of refugees have been essential contributors to the economy, diversity and prosperity of San Diego.
More than 100,000 refugees have been resettled since the end of the Vietnam War, making it the second largest refugee resettlement city in the U.S. and home to half of California’s refugees.
The majority of refugees are clustered in El Cajon and City Heights, two of the top seven areas in San Diego with the highest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that refugees, although healthier than the general population when they first arrive, suffer “loneliness and social Isolation” resettlement as their health deteriorates over time. Researchers refer to this phenomenon as “intergenerational trauma,” which is passed on to children and persists over time. The pandemic is risking further alienation and social isolation of these communities.
So they were healthier BEFORE arriving in America? Then why not leave them where they were?
For example, despite the pandemic, many refugees are reluctant to access public assistance programs, including healthcare, because of the “public charge” rule, which is a White House policy that bars citizenship to immigrants and refugees who take advantage of public assistance programs.
Refugees are specifically exempt from the public charge rule! Facts please!
A report by the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., indicates that almost half of all refugees living in the U.S. have annual incomes that are less than half the federal poverty level, and that the majority work in the service industry. This could be as rideshare drivers or emergency responders or for other businesses deemed “essential” that make staying at home impossible.
When Ted Kennedy and his sidekick, Joe Biden, pushed through the Refugee Act of 1980, they promised the program was not importing poverty. Ho hum! I guess they lied.
In U.S. health systems, we rarely collect data on country of birth or refugee class. Population-based data is limited to data collected by the county health departments when the refugees first arrive in the U.S. and undergo health screening. In San Diego, mapping cases by ZIP code may be the only way to tell how the refugee community is being affected by the pandemic.
Observations of high rates of hospital admissions of Arab refugees with coronavirus was noticed by Arab American doctors…
Okay, so some Arab docs say they see a lot of Arabs with COVID? What are we supposed to do about that?
A national debate on the way we collect data on refugees is urgently needed.
It is almost impossible to get an accurate estimate of the number of refugees in the population carrying COVID-19….
But the authors are sure it is disproportionate and therefore unfair!
If it is so awful in America for refugees, it begs the question—maybe they should have been left in their own country or a safe one nearby?
I’m sure this is happening everywhere, so it is all the more reason to continue the suspension of new refugee arrivals that was supposed to have been liftedthis week by the US State Department.
No jobs for newly arrived refugees and no one to give them instructions in person as to where to get signed up for their taxpayer-funded ‘services.’
Nonprofits Retool to Serve Refugees Struggling During COVID-19 Shutdown
Refugees who arrived in the Bay Area around the time shelter-in-place orders were issued, as well as those who have been her for an extended period, are struggling to stay afloat, organizations who serve them said.
The most recent arrivals are simply trying to establish themselves, whereas others are unaware of services available to them, are being led astray by misinformation on social media or are faced with a rekindling of the trauma they thought they had left behind.
Given the shutdown of many businesses, new arrivals are less likely to find jobs.***
Without employment, refugees have less access to health insurance and more need for income assistance. Lacking income to buy cars, newly arrived refugees must rely on drastically curtailed bus and rail service to do essential tasks like shop for groceries or get to the hospital. New arrivals without existing community connections can then end up extremely isolated.
[….]
….the system of refugee resettlement in the United States is based on rapidly finding employment. “You are looking at a substantial pool of individuals who may not be able to pay for rent and their needs even if they were working,” said Blythe Raphael, who heads the refugee services program at Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay.“Those families we’re watching carefully and trying to find assistance.” [This organization is asubcontractor of HIAS.—ed]
Multiple organizations that serve refugees have shifted gears, reorganized and launched new services to ensure they can meet this population’s needs during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The stay-at-home order was issued just after several families arrived in the area from Aghanistan, forcing Raphael’s East Bay organization to retool for remote work at the same time it was delivering assistance. “As all services were closing to in-person interviews, we had to really review our model in order for us to make the service connections for all of our new arrivals and for our case managers to be able to serve people with essential course services,” Raphael said.
In other words, it is hard to get new refugees signed up for their various welfare programs and other services when so much is closed.
These groups have had to quickly adjust to the shelter-in-place order, and are themselves vulnerable to the economic fallout, so they need as much public support as they can get, said advocates. “Small organizations are going to suffer a lot from this economic crash that’s going to happen,” said Zand (Leva Zand, development director of the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland).
***One of those jobs that refugees are hired to do is slaughterhouse work. And, now comes news that meat plants are having to close due to the number of workers getting sick with COVID-19. See here.
Did you know that the center of the Armenian immigrant community in America is located in Glendale, California and that we are still bringing Armenian ‘refugees’ to the US to be placed mostly, where? in California, in and around Glendale where there are obviously ethnic and racial cultural clashes going on.
According to wikipedia, Glendale has the highest concentration of Armenians in the US.
Glendale, just a few miles away from Downtown Los Angeles, has a population of about 200,000, of which, according to some estimates, 40% is Armenian.
Thanks to reader ‘ganjagrandma’ for sending this story from theAtlanta Black Star.
It is several weeks old, but this news about racial and ethnic tensions at Glendale’s Hoover High sure didn’t make the national news.
So much for the mythical American melting pot!
Shocking Video Shows Brawl Parents Described as a ‘Race Riot’ at California High School
Several students have been disciplined after shocking footage of what concerned parents called a racially-motivated melee between dozens of teens at a Glendale, California high school.
Students involved in last Wednesday’s brawl at Hoover High School were remanded to separate rooms Monday and spoke little during “restorative circle” sessions with school counselors, according to KTLA.
The fight reportedly erupted during lunch period Wednesday, starting as a dispute between two students and quickly growing to involve dozens. That’s when police arrived to restore order, as the fists continued to fly.
No serious injuries were reported.
Parents said their kids tell them there’s been mounting racial tension on campus between Armenian students, the largest ethnic group at the school, and members the football and baseball teams who are mostly Black and Latino, among other ethnicities.
