Udate: Reader Elena found this tiny mention in the local news, rescheduled for April 10th. Liban Mohamed was found guilty in December of attempted sexual assault of a special needs woman. He was arrested last July after reportedly only being in the country for one week.
Aberdeen Mayor Mike Levsen has been an advocate for making Aberdeen another refugee placement site. Meat packing political power? See here: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/04/16/heads-up-aberdeen-south-dakota-new-resettlement-site-being-proposed/ We are waiting to hear whether his sentencing will go ahead today as originally scheduled. (No mugshot is available!)
If you missed the story yesterday, go here, to learn about how an arrest, an indictment and a guilty verdict all went missing from local news reports about a Somali refugee who had been in the country one week before his July encounter with a special-needs woman.
Here is a recap and an update from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily:
A South Dakota newspaper that failed to report on the case of a Somali man convicted of trying to molest a severely handicapped woman, changed gears Wednesday after being outed by WND and decided to publish a story about the crime.
Continue reading here.
There are still many outstanding questions. Lutheran Social Services, the refugee contractor in SD, has never indicated whether that agency resettled the now convicted Somali refugee. We are all still puzzled about how he was able to be wandering around an Aberdeen neighborhood after only a few days in the country. The only resettlement city in South Dakota now is in Sioux Falls (a couple hundred miles away) since reportedly the office in Huron has been closed for new resettlement.
Mohammed was reportedly scheduled to go to work for Dem Kota Ranch beef.
Meanwhile be sure to see that the Huffington Post is going after WND’s Leo Hohmann today.
See all of our previous reports on South Dakota by clicking here. I stopped in both Aberdeen and Huron during my summer tour of cities troubled with large numbers of refugees.
P.S. I have about 5 or 6 other Somali stories I need to post. Hope to get to them soon, but needless to say things are crazy. I apologize to all who are trying to reach me, but it is just me here!
If you missed the story yesterday, go here, to learn about how an arrest, an indictment and a guilty verdict all went missing from local news reports about a Somali refugee who had been in the country one week before his July encounter with a special-needs woman. Here is a recap and an update from Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily:
A South Dakota newspaper that failed to report on the case of a Somali man convicted of trying to molest a severely handicapped woman, changed gears Wednesday after being outed by WND and decided to publish a story about the crime.
Most SD refugees are placed in Sioux Falls. How Mohamed got to Aberdeen within a week of his arrival in the US and was left unsupervised is still unexplained.
The story ran on page three of the Aberdeen American News under the headline “Sentencing later this month for a man convicted of attempted sexual contact.”
But the newspaper left out an important detail.
The convicted sex criminal, 39-year-old Liban Mohamed, was a recently arrived refugee brought to the state from Somalia at the invitation of the U.S. government. He had been in the country only about a week and in Aberdeen only one day when he wandered up to a group home and tried to molest a 31-year-old mentally handicapped woman who was sitting outside the facility.
Mohamed, freshly arrived in the U.S. just days prior, wandered more than a mile from his hotel on foot and preyed upon a mentally handicapped woman at the Aspire Inc. residential care facility, which houses about 150 handicapped people. His victim was left unattended for only minutes. When a caregiver returned, she caught him with his hand between the disabled woman’s legs, reaching toward her private parts.
AAN’s belated story also neglected to mention that Mohamed had been brought to Aberdeen to work in the local meatpacking plant, DemKota Ranch, which has become a magnet for cheap refugee labor.
I did some looking around last night and there is some very funny business that went on with this particular meat plant and its former owners that involved the state government and then-Governor Rounds (now US Senator for SD). It would be good if someone out there took time to investigate the broader story.
Near the end of his update, Hohmann, reports on a group of citizens who met with the South Dakota Attorney General in October (when surely this AG would have known about this case while the citizens did not!): What did AG Jackley know and when did he know it?
Meanwhile, a citizens group tells WND they met with South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley on Oct. 3 at the state Capitol in Pierre to discuss their concerns about refugee resettlement and its impact on safety.
The meeting was affable with the approximately 10 citizens sharing concerns about refugees who might put the safety of their communities at risk.
Then the atmosphere changed:
“If you guys know of anything, can cite anything [negative] that’s happening in your communities, then please tell me,” he reportedly said.
“He wouldn’t give the concerned people the answers they were looking for,” said one person present at the meeting. “I watched him and was thinking what are you doing? It was more like dodge ball and ‘what do you know?’”
He told the group refugee resettlement was a federal issue and “his hands were tied,” one participant of the meeting said. “What’s upsetting is, he already knew, he would have known that this crime had happened in Aberdeen.
So what are they hiding in South Dakota? The situation is shaping up there to look very similar to what happened in Twin Falls, Idaho where a sexual assault case blew things up—big company/big money wants foreign laborers, pols going along, newspaper covering for them all, citizens treated like troublemakers and labeled racists for wanting answers about why their community is being radically altered and wanting to know who is behind it?
Update January 5th: Be sure to see my next installment of this story, here.
A newly arrived Somali refugee*** who court records show had arrived in Aberdeen, SD to work for the controversial meat packing plant there was found guilty by a jury on December 20th of attempting to sexually assault a special-needs woman.
Read the story! And, ask yourselves, why didn’t the local media report on the case?
Did it have something to do with the controversy roiling there among citizens who were vigorously opposing a plan to make Aberdeen a new resettlement site (only Sioux Falls and Huron were getting direct resettlements), a plan supported by the mayor, as we reported last April. Aberdeen Mayor Mike Levsen: ““We need workers, and we certainly would be glad to have more friends and neighbors and more children in our schools and more cultures that we can learn from.” [And you get to pay for it all while big business gets cheap labor!] https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/04/16/heads-up-aberdeen-south-dakota-new-resettlement-site-being-proposed/BTW, for new readers, my title refers to the sexual assault case that the media and elected officials downplayed in Twin Falls, Idaho earlier in 2016. Hereis what Leo Hohmann (WND) learned yesterday. After you read the whole incredible story, see what I have to say below about the timeline.
A refugee newly arrived from Somalia has been tried and convicted for attempting to sexually assault a special-needs woman while she was sitting outside of a home for the disabled in Aberdeen, South Dakota.
Liban Mohamed, 39, was in the United States for only about a week when he tried to force himself on a 31-year-old woman with severe disabilities.He is not a U.S. citizen, but whether he will be deported in the wake of his conviction remains unclear.
The trial for Mohamed was held just a few days before Christmas and not a word of the conviction has made it into the local media, residents of Aberdeen told WND on Tuesday.
Mohamed speaks no English and required two interpreters at trial, according to the state’s attorney who prosecuted the case.
“I do know he lived in Aberdeen,” prosecutor Christopher White told WND. “The day that it happened, he was staying at the White House Inn hotel in Aberdeen. What came out at trial, in his defense attorney’s opening statement, was that he arrived in Aberdeen that day and had only been in the United States for approximately a week, and he had come to work at the beef plant in Aberdeen.But I don’t know if he had already started working or was about to start work there.”
Mohamed mentioned to law enforcement that he had been hired on at the Demkota Ranch beef plant, White said. [Someone needs to do some research on DemKota Ranch Beef and figure out how closely they are working with Lutheran Social Services of SD and the US State Dept.—ed]
Read the whole thing! Click here. Don’t miss the line where Mohamed told the arresting officers that what he did was o.k. in his country!
Hohmann wraps up with this:
According to court records obtained by WND, Mohamed was arrested July 30 and indicted by a grand jury on Aug. 15. The jury was seated on Monday, Dec. 19, and the trial was held Tuesday, Dec. 20.
What a coincidence!
I was in Aberdeen meeting with residents on July 25, just five days before the arrest. Citizens there were becoming troubled by the changes they were seeing in their community and expressed fear about just such a thing happening. They told me that the meat plant was luring labor like these newly arrived Somalis and they had already noticed an increase in crime. They said that they did not want a resettlement office in town.
As we reported in April, there was a big push going on to open a direct resettlement site in Aberdeen which would presumably supply labor for DemKota directly from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. A small refugee office existed in Huron, but most refugees placed in South Dakota still go to Sioux Falls which is 200 miles away from Aberdeen. Tim Jurgens, State Refugee Coordinator. SD is a Wilson-Fish state which means that state elected officials have virtually no say about the program that is run by Lutheran Social Services and the US Dept. of State in Washington, DC.
Because of the public outcry in late summer and early fall, Lutheran Social Services appeared to back off a plan to open a direct resettlement site in Aberdeen after some of the citizens I met on July 25 organized a resistance. (I’ll give you some numbers below for SD).
The first public meeting organized by residents occurred a little over two weeks later and the Aberdeen News didn’t miss that event reporting on it on August 12th. Go hereto see what happened at the heated meeting and read about the paper’s biased news coverage.
Look at the timeline. Mohamed was arrested on July 30th (no local media coverage). A grand jury indicted him three days after (on August 15th) the paper wrote in negative (biased!) tones about the citizens who dared question what was happening in their quiet town. Did the paper cover up the sexual assault story on purpose because it confirmed the things citizens said they were worried about (or was it just incompetence)?
Look at what was happening in Twin Falls, Idaho in the first week of August! Click here. All hell had broken loose about a sexual assault there!
And, then of course it is quite stunning that no court reporter was present at the trial on December 20th. But, also not present was the family of the victim, and there still remains a question about how the guardians of the mentally-impaired woman were not told to be in court.
Many more questions remain!
Have the wheels come off the US Refugee Admissions Program? Are they trying to shoe-horn so many refugees in to the country that there is flagrant violation of contracts going on?
Refugees are to be placed by the contractor (LSS SD) directly in to apartments or rental houses and their initial resettlement period is about 3 months during which the contractor introduces the new refugee to American culture, signs them up for their welfare services, gets kids in school, tries to find them jobs, and arranges their medical screening (for things like TB!).
I am simply blown away by the information given by the state’s attorney that Mohamed had only been in the US a week and was walking the streets of Aberdeen unsupervised.
What! Did LSS simply bring him in to Sioux Falls and put him on a bus to Aberdeen to work at the meat plant? And, then put him up in a hotel? (I’m getting more and more reports of refugees being housed in hotels when State Department policy has always been that the refugee is to be picked up at the airport and escorted to their furnished apartment with ‘culturally appropriate’ food in the refrig!). What is going on? Too many refugees for them to handle?
I know it is pretty easy to unload on Mohamed, but why was he literally walking the streets in Aberdeen? He didn’t even speak English. Was no one supervising him? Was no one giving him any instructions about American culture and laws especially as it relates to the treatment of women?
Does this guy have a family? Or are we admitting single men to work in meatpacking now? Didn’t Homeland Security find out during his vetting process that he might have a problem?
What did Aberdeen’s mayor Mike Levsen know (about the sexual assault case) and when did he know it?
What role did Aberdeen’s mayor play in bringing DemKota to Aberdeen, and did he encourage LSS to open a refugee office to supply the company with cheap labor? Is it even a US-owned company?
I think folks in Aberdeen need to start having a serious look at the man they elected mayor in 2004! What! 12 years! Isn’t it time for a new mayor? See one of many stories about him here.
South Dakota numbers
This is getting too long, so here (below) are some numbers from South Dakota (via Wrapsnet.org). I’m sure this story isn’t going away any time soon especially since sentencing is scheduled for January 30th! (After expensive-to-taxpayers incarceration, will he be sentenced to be deported?)
In the 8 fiscal years since Obama has been in office, South Dakota received a total of 4,319 refugees. The largest groups were Bhutanese and Burmese, but Somalis came in at #3 with 577 placed in the state. Almost all of them were resettled in Sioux Falls. 64 Somalis came in FY 2016 (Mohamed would have been one of them, but does he have a family that we are now completely supporting somewhere else in SD?).
***Almost all Somalis who get in to the US come as resettled refugees, however, if we learn that he came in with a work visa that is going to open up a whole new controversy for the incoming Trump administration. OMG! Work visas from terror-producing countries of the world! Jeff Sessions, as newly appointed Attorney General must look into this case.
At a time when refugee offices are expanding nationwide and new offices are opening, South Dakota state coordinator Tim Jurgens tells the Argus Leaderthat SD is cutting back because it is “mindful of people opposed to welcoming refugees.” Wow! Can we take this as a hopeful sign that someone is listening! Argus Leader (hat tip: Elena):
South Dakota won’t participate in the White House’s next push to increase the number of refugees escaping poverty and violence.
Aberdeen Mayor Mike Levsen couldn’t possibly be too thrilled to hear this news (unless they are shifting Huron’s numbers to Aberdeen). In April he was looking for more refugee labor as we reported in a post which went viral here this week. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/04/16/heads-up-aberdeen-south-dakota-new-resettlement-site-being-proposed/
The director of the lone resettlement program in South Dakota said it would not participate in the federal effort, citing the debate over immigration in the state.
“There’s people that fall on both sides of this particular issue,” said Tim Jurgens, director of Lutheran Social Service’s Center for New Americans.
Jurgens said the center won’t increase its numbers, in part because it wants to be mindful of people opposed to welcoming refugees.
“We try to visit with anybody, regardless of their opinion and try to inform them of the process and collect their input,” Jurgens said.
Meanwhile, the group has raised millions of dollars for a new space for its refugee services, and was awarded a $250,000 grant Thursday from the federal government to help immigrants prepare for citizenship.
Fewer refugees are finding a home in Sioux Falls and the rest of the state in recent years in spite of the federal government’s wishes. Lutheran Social Services plans to end a direct resettlement program in Huron at the end of the month.
Continue reading here.
I traveled to Aberdeen and Huron this summer and met some great people who are pretty unhappy about the influx of refugees in recent years mostly to work in meat packing plants there (remember, cheap labor is the major driver of refugee resettlement in America!).
I’m sorry to say I don’t have time to give you all the background of what happened this week in Aberdeen, SD (a city I visited on my travels) as I dash out to my last stop of my 4 week (12 state so far) tour of American cities and towns troubled with a refugee program that is largely aimed at supplying cheap LEGAL immigrant labor to large manufacturing companies and that includes the new (re-opening) meat packing plantin Aberdeen. Blogger, progressive activist and candidate for the SD Senate, Corey Heidelberger appears to be working on behalf of the South Dakota meat packing industry as he confronted Branstner. I have a hard time understanding why liberals work with the large multi-national corporations pushing migrant labor on America. Bio here: http://coryheidelberger.com/bio/
See my previous post on Aberdeen byclicking here.
A new ‘pocket of resistance’ is forming there.
Here is a small portion of the story atAberdeen News(you have to subscribe to see it):
Things got heated at a lecture by Ron Branstner at the Best Western Ramkota Hotel in Aberdeen on Thursday when Corey Heidelberger defended a piece from his blog, Dakota Free Press, that Branstner critiqued in front of the group of about 200 assembled.
Heidelberger and Branstner began talking over each other, and members from the audience began shouting “get out” to Heidelberger, who is running for state Senate.
This happened during the question-and-answer portion at the end of Branstner’s lecture.
Branstner asked that things not get violent and the crowd quieted down.
The beginning portion of his lecture used a digital slide show as a guide as Branstner spoke off the cuff.
Much of his speech attempted to discredit the U.S. refugee resettlement program, which in South Dakota is run by Lutheran Social Services.
He also spoke out against Islamic groups, President Barack Obama’s administration and illegal immigration.
By the way, I have met Ron Branstner, great guy, and an extremely knowledgeable private citizen who has done his homework about how the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program is busy supplying large multi-national corporations with immigrant workers.
One major conclusion for me at the end of my tour—-it is about MONEY! (and it is about producing Democrat voters by shoving diversity down the throats of unsuspecting towns and cities!). Update August 16th : For a laugh, see some more on Heidelberger by clicking here.
