Back in April and May there were several arson fires in Lewiston, ME. A Somali boy is charged in one of those fires (see our earlier posts, here and here), now that boy is being released from a juvenile detention facility, but the District Attorney, earlier this week objected to the judge’s decision citing the boys prior criminal record.
One of Lewiston’s several arson fires that occurred within a week. Photo Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
Here is the latest from earlier this week from the Lewiston Sun Journal(Hat tip: Michael):
LEWISTON — A judge on Wednesday ordered the release of a 13-year-old boy charged with four counts of arson in a May 3 fire that burned four downtown apartment buildings and left nearly 100 people homeless.
Abdi Ibrahim of Lewiston was in 8th District Court for a juvenile detention hearing. Because he is charged with felonies, his court proceedings are held in public.
His attorney, Richard Charest, said a residential facility that offers programs that address the teen’s problems is the least restrictive setting for him, something required by the state’s juvenile code.
Judge Rick Lawrence agreed, provided a safety plan is in place that will protect Ibrahim as well as the community.
Assistant District Attorney Melanie Portas opposed the placement, telling Lawrence that Ibrahim posed a risk to the community if released from a lockdown facility such as Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, where the teen has been held since he was charged.
Abdi was already in trouble with the law at 9-years old***
Portas cited Ibrahim’s criminal record, which dates back to when he was 9 years old. Charges include theft, robbery, burglary and assault. In addition to the arson fires, he has been charged with criminal mischief and criminal threatening, Portas said.
She said the seriousness of the new charges, coupled with the manner in which fire investigators believe the fires were set — using gasoline on materials in a Pierce Street garage and igniting them with a lighter — was of particular concern to prosecutors.
A residential setting “cannot ensure that (Ibrahim) will not set another fire,” she told the judge.
Portas referenced a recent psychological evaluation that concluded Ibrahim suffered from poor impulse control, displayed a “significant amount of immaturity” and “under appreciates” the effect of his actions on others by showing a lack of remorse.
Photo: The photo is from one of the Lewiston fires, but the article has this informative item. Abdi’s parents both live in Lewiston, but not together. It makes me wonder if Dad has more than one wife, a common practice in Somalia that has been brought to America.
Ibrahim lives with his mother, Marian Ibrahim, according to court papers. His father, Yussef Abdi, lives at a separate address in Lewiston.
An American kid is charged in another of the fires.
***It just occurred to me—I wonder if Abdi was among the Somali boys back in 2009 who were attacking people (for the “thrill”) on the streets of multicultural Lewiston, here.
For new readers, our complete Lewiston archive is here. Be sure to see this 2009 postabout how Somalis came to be in Lewiston in the first place, it is still one of our most widely read posts.
Apartment with nine kids in it catches fire when Mom goes shopping, but, although Mom has been here since 2006, she can’t speak enough English to deal with this emergency.
Somali mom (Do I detect a baby bump? Or, just a lot of fabric?). Photo: Mark DiOrio / Observer-Dispatch
UTICA —
On Feb. 22, Johara Abdi came home to a nightmare.
Her Adrean Terrace apartment was on fire with her 4-year-old daughter Halima Haji still inside.
And the Somali-Bantu refugee didn’t know enough English to communicate with emergency responders.
“I went to go shopping. When I get here, I see a lot of fire,” Abdi said through an interpreter. “I couldn’t (communicate). It was very difficult life for me.”
Emergencies, such as fires, are terrible situations for anyone, especially for refugees and immigrants who speak little or no English.
A five bedroom apartment! Can you imagine what that cost someone!
Abdi and her nine children, ages 2 to 17, were displaced from the five-bedroom apartment at 64 W. Adrean Terrace, by the fire, which originated in the kitchen.
Temporarily living in a four bedroom place while housing authority renovates them a bigger place. How many bedrooms did they have in Somalia?
The Municipal Housing Authority has found them a new apartment and is in the process of renovating in, said authority consultant Bob Calli. “We’re shooting for the middle of the month to move them into the apartment.”
Until then, they are living in a four-bedroom apartment, and space is at a premium.
Then get this, the Dad isn’t living with the family because there isn’t enough room. Or, could he have another wife in town? Is there ever any curiosity by reporters and editors when they hear a line like that? With nine kids (the youngest is 2!), clearly he found some time to stop by, but not enough time to be around to save the kids from a fire.
Abdi’s husband, Omar Dhume, works a minimum-wage job and is learning English. The money he earns is not enough for the family to get a larger apartment or house, and there’s not enough room for him to live with his family, he said.
This article is about the one little girl who was injured, but is recovering (who is paying her medical bills?), and Mom is worried about her.
“What’s going to happen?” Abdi asked. “Will she grow up a normal person, will she have mental problems? As a mom, I feel like she’s not the same as other kids.”
No comment.
Utica is one of New York state’s most “welcoming” cities. I looked up all the stats for NY, and do plan to post on the numbers one of these days! The city has taken 5,095 refugees since 2001.
Oh, great, there is more. They are teaching the kids a Somali language and Arabic in Utica, here.
Why do we care? Because for the last 5 years (at least) we have been taking some Somali illegal aliens who arrive in Malta on boats to the US as legitimate refugees. So, now I suppose we should be glad infectious disease screening is going to improved. Here is just one recent poston the Malta mess.
Africans arrive in Malta. Bound for the USA (eventually).
A new initiative by the Health Ministry, funded by the EU and intended to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in Malta, will kick off tomorrow at Lyster Barracks Detention Centre.
The Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate within the Ministry, has managed to secure an investment of over €700,000 from the European Refugee Fund Emergency Measures Annual Programme 2012 to develop a project to enhance the screening process at Lyster Detention Centre in Ħal Far.
For ambitious readers, I bet we have over a hundred posts (at least dozens and dozens for sure) on Malta here at RRW.
Update:Be sure to see World Refugee Day celebrated on Malta, here. They celebrated a dinghy.
No jobs! Disrespect for rental property! Don’t speak English! Need more child care! Not enough housing for refugees!
Back in 2008 we wrote about “welcoming” Ft. Morgan, CO home of agribusiness giant Cargill. By the way, do you think Senator Jeff Sessions was referring to Cargill when he said the meat packers were driving the S.744 train and the Gang of Eight (cheap immigrant labor!), here?
If so, since there are so many unemployed refugees, why do we need more immigrant labor?
Cargill Meat Solutions in Ft. Morgan, CO. I’m now wondering if the meat packer giant, probably the largest employer there, controls the newspaper.
A few years ago, Somali refugees which had caused problems in Greeley and were fired by JBS Swift after a row over prayer times during work began flowing to a thrilled-to-have-them Ft. Morgan (or at least the Ft. Morgan Times was thrilled).
Here is one of many many posts on Somalis shopping for the most accommodating meat packers. We have a whole category on Greeley, JBS Swift and Somalis, here.
In 2008, the Ft. Morgan Times actually editorialized saying that Refugee Resettlement Watch (not by name, but who else would it be), was a blog teaching people how to chase refugees away, and represented the “dark ugly underside” of America. Click here for my take on their broadside.
Here is what the editor said about us!
Of course, if it were up to some people, Somali refugees would not have a chance to resettle anywhere in the U.S. There is even a Web site devoted to teaching Americans how to chase refugees of various sorts out of town.
This is a kind of insanity, since everyone except Native Americans are immigrants. Unfortunately, it shows the dark, ugly underside of our great country.
Just now, in trying to figure out how to post this latest news from the Ft. Morgan Times, I realize we have dozens of posts on the problems Ft. Morgan has had with its refugee overload going back five years (click herefor the whole listing). There were tensions in the community, in 2010 they brought in Justice Department community facilitators, the Chief of Police went to Denmark to learn how to deal with Somali Muslim refugees, there was even a Somali honor killing. I had never heard of the federal facilitators before Ft. Morgan, had you? Here is what the articlein the Ft. Morgan Timessaid then:
Essentially, it is a mediation agency which helps deal with cases involving changing community demographics, hate crimes, demonstrations and emotionally charged issues…
Fast forward to last week:
Based on this story in the Ft. Morgan Times, it sure sounds like, ho-hum, the town is still having problems with its Cargill-generated immigrant overload. (Hat tip: Joanne). But, Cargill doesn’t have enough jobs for all the immigrants so that is the rub (why then do we need more immigrant laborers as per S.744?).
A quarterly meeting was hosted by the following:
Joe Wismann-Horther of Colorado Refugee Services, OneMorgan County Executive Director Brenda Zion and Ryan Gray of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains hosted the quarterly refugee services meeting Tuesday.
The news report is written like it’s just someone’s lengthy notes of the meeting. Here are some of the points that interested me:
* Refugees don’t speak English so go unemployed and they take lousy care of rental property.
Among issues mentioned were the need for properties to be taken better care of, day care for refugees, support for business development and employment.
Outside of jobs at Cargill Meat Solutions, there are few local jobs for refugees who do not speak English very well.
One idea is to look at how to develop job skills and how to work with Fort Morgan’s Workforce Center, said Joe Wismann-Horther of Colorado Refugee Services.
Local agencies and businesses could discuss how to develop employment options for refugees who do not work at Cargill.
Cargill only has a limited number of jobs, said Shirley Penn, coordinator for Cargill’s and Morgan Community College’s Workplace Education program.
[….]
It is difficult for refugees to take classes in business when they do not have high-level English skills, said OneMorgan County Executive Director Brenda Zion.
[….]
Some refugees do not understand what is expected with properties they rent, such as weed control, said Fort Morgan Police Chief Keith Kuretich.
* Colorado Refugee Services rep says more refugees are coming because after ten years they can bring family. What the heck? They can bring family anytime, they need not wait ten years. What he is obliquely referring to here is that Somalis were banned from 2008 until recently to bring their “family” members because the State Department uncovered massive fraud in 2008. Gee, about 30,000 were not family members! They had lied. Either the reporter didn’t know enough to clarify what was said by Wismann-Horther, or it was purposefully left out of the story.
The city may see a new development for refugees soon, as they are in the U.S. for 10 years and can start bringing relatives from their native countries, he said.
The U.S. refugee program is overseeing that possibility by requiring DNA testing to make sure people really are relatives, Wismann-Horther said. [At this point wouldn’t you think someone would ask/report to the public what that is all about!—ed]
* We only allow refugees from certain countries for a limited time—say what! There is no rule about this, I personally think that contractors are out scouting for new ethnic groups because they tire of the ones they have been resettling after a time.
And, Wismann-Horther is wrong about Somalis, we are bringing a very large number this year. We are on target to rival the top years(during the Bush Administration) with possibly 9,000-10,000 if the present trend continues.
He said that immigration from places like Bhutan and Burma are falling off now, as have immigrants from Somalia. The U.S. refugee program only allows people from countries for a limited amount of time.
Wismann-Horther told the gathering to get ready for the Congolese as the “next stream.” We know—50,000! Are you ready for your share, Colorado?
* Surprise! Not enough housing for all the refugees.
A huge issue is the “zero vacancy rate” in Fort Morgan, she [Board of Realtors Director] said. New people come to the city and cannot find anywhere to live.
Wismann-Horther at that point goes on about possibly building new housing (for jobless immigrants who are having problems keeping their present properties maintained?)
We want more immigrants in Maine and in America because Thomas Jefferson said that’s good for America! (Or I think he did! Well, sort of!). King opened afloor speechlast week with words from Jefferson that frankly I read three or four times and couldn’t figure out how the words fit today’s immigration situation, especially when one considers the large number of Muslim immigrants entering the US and Maine.
Indeed Jefferson, of all people, knew what violence Muslims were capable of. He would never have ‘welcomed’ Muslims to America, but maybe King doesn’t know about theBarbary Wars.
Here are a couple of excerpts from King’s speech on S.744:
Vibrant refugee? Portland Somali convicted of rape after breaking into woman’s home while she slept. King: Immigrants are a little scary!
Does this discussion affect the State of Maine? Well, yes, it does. We have migrants and immigrants picking our crops in northern Maine, blueberries and potatoes and broccoli. We have a vibrant refugee and asylum-seeking community in Portland, ME, and in Lewiston. Many of those from Africa come here with very different cultures.We have 52 languages spoken in the Portland public schools. Yes, we have strains and difficulties adjusting one culture to another. But we are making it work and it is making our State richer spiritually, culturally, intellectually, and, yes, financially. It is working. [Readers: Type Lewiston into our search function to see how it’s working!—ed]
King: We need more immigrants because the white birthrate is declining, and so we need to speed up the decline of America as we know it by allowing the Third World to enter in a speedier manner! Heck! Might as well get it over with sooner than later!
We are living in a negative demographic time bomb. Last year, I believe for the first time in American history, we had more deaths than births of White Americans. One doesn’t have to be a mathematician to know if that continues, we will shrink and shrivel as a society. We need immigration to add to our population, to add to the ideas and creativity.
[…..]
Immigrants are always going to be different and a little scary, and that has been true throughout American history.
Read the whole speech. It is the usual blah, blah, blah….but read it anyway! By the way, King says this is the job he has been preparing for throughout his entire life, here.
Then below is a report from some readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch who visited a staff member in King’s office the following day.
We need to take in Syrian refugees!
The speech was on Thursday. On Friday we visited with a Senator King aide who is paid $73,000 per year and who works on immigration issues. We were there to discuss the 24-pound Immigration bill, S. 744. The aide did give us a lot of time and we discussed many points. The below points may be of particular interest to readers of Refugee Resettlement Watch and to those in Maine.
The aide, on his own, blurted out, without any question or provocation from us, that whenever “we [America] invade a country or create a war and chaos, we need to take in refugees from that country. We need to take in Syrian refugees. We need to take in Iraqi and Afghan refugees.”
[I didn’t think we had gone to war in Syria yet, but I guess I’m quibbling! We did send arms through Benghazi earlier and we are promising more weapons to the rebels real soon, so I guess that means, at least in the mind of King’s staffer, that the refugees are ours!—ed]
Later, in response to one of our group suggesting that her experiences in the Middle East indicated that Muslim and Arabic culture are just too different and should not be allowed into the USA, the aide responded “that is exactly the same argument that was used against the Catholics 100 years ago.” One assumes that the aide does not foresee within the Muslim refugee and immigrant population the possibility of an embedded catastrophic problem. The aide had no response when recent events in Boston, the World Trade center and other places were mentioned.
Go hereto learn more about the Portland Somali rapist.
The problem King has here (was the speech written by this staffer?), by using emotional arguments and platitudes to make his point, is that for every appealing “creative” blueberry picking immigrant, I can find him an immigrant criminal, a terrorist or a welfare mooch, or an immigration advocate in the Chamber of Commerce looking for cheap blueberry-picking labor!
We want more immigrants in Maine and in America because Thomas Jefferson said that’s good for America! (Or I think he did! Well, sort of!). King opened a