A Perspective on News, politics and Current Events From the Right Side of the Left Coast
Jun 26
June 26, 2006 01:40 PM
NEWS 6 NEWSBOX
JUNE 26, 2006 — An illegal immigrant is in the Brunswick County Jail after authorities say he stabbed and killed a man.
Authorities say Jamie Cruz stabbed Jose Flo-rino in the head on Saturday.
It happened at the Chadwick’s Mobile Home Park in Leland.
The injured man later died at New Hanover Regional Medical Center. Authorities say both men are illegal immigrants.
Cruz is in the Brunswick County Jail, where he is being held without bond.
Jun 24
By Jared Allen, jallen@nashvillecitypaper.com
June 23, 2006
Nashville Tennesee
When he was wheelchaired into criminal court just days after police say he drove his SUV head first into a Mt. Juliet couple, killing them both, Gustavo Reyes Garcia looked shaken and sullen — like his world had collapsed in an instant.
But an extensive review of Garcia’s criminal record in Davidson County, which dates back to 1997, reveals that Garcia, an illegal immigrant, is no stranger to the court system.
Nor is he a stranger — police say — to driving under the influence, evading arrest or trying to flee the scene of accidents.
In fact, a close examination of Garcia’s police and court records show a serial drunk driver who often clashed with police — sometimes violently — and who took drastic measures to avoid being pulled over or caught after accidents that resulted in injuries.
Between early 1997 and a few weeks ago, when he was arrested and charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of evading arrest, Garcia was arrested 17 times by Metro Police. At least 13 of those arrests involved driving infractions.
Over a nine-year period, Garcia’s driving charges included five DUIs, four charges of evading or resisting arrest, 10 charges of driving on either a suspended or revoked license, two charges of leaving the scene of an accident, and one charge of assaulting a Metro Police officer.
But despite his numerous run-ins with the law, Garcia always ended up back on the street — and invariably behind the wheel.
Since 2001 — as far back as Davidson County Sheriff’s Office records go — Garcia was placed in the Davidson County Jail 13 different times for a total of 168 days, according to Rick Gentry, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office.
But even in spite of his regular court appearances, the longest jail sentence Garcia served was 58 days, in July 2005, after he pled guilty to driving under the influence and driving with a revoked license.
“Driving on a suspended or revoked license is a misdemeanor offense,” said Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron. “You’re going to get out of jail soon, generally, on those offenses. And you can be admonished not to get back behind the wheel but, obviously, person after person does just that.”
“Once we bring a person into the system, it’s up to others to make decisions on the individual’s guilt and what punishment is appropriate,” Aaron said.
Before the July 2005 incident, most of Garcia’s cases resulted in suspended sentences.
In August 2001, Garcia was arrested and charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident with injuries, a felony. He pled guilty to a lesser offense and was given a jail sentence of 11 months and 29 days by General Sessions Judge Houston Hagar. All but seven days of that sentence were suspended.
On April 23, 2003, Garcia was again arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident with injuries as well as driving on a revoked license. Again, he pled guilty in court to a lesser charge. He was sentenced, again by Hagar, to 45 days in jail. After getting credit for time already served, Garcia walked out of jail on April 29.
Almost two years later, an incident that police say began with Garcia trying to steal beer from a store ended with him being arrested and charged with DUI, driving on a revoked license, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting an officer.
The case was dismissed for failure to prosecute because Metro officers did not show up for Garcia’s court appearance, District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Susan Niland said.
Less than three months after that case was dismissed, Garcia was arrested again for DUI and driving with a revoked license. Less than a year after that, he crashed his vehicle into the sedan driven by Sean and Donna Wilson of Mt. Juliet, who both died that day.
“This is obviously a tragedy no matter how you look at it. At the same time, this person was arrested multiple times and he did do time within the confines of what the law allows. These habitual offenders are a problem in every state,” Niland said.
“Every state tries to make their laws more stringent and Tennessee has one of the more stringent laws on DUIs,” Niland said. “But the system can only do what it can.”
Jun 24
I think this could have been avoided if they watched our borders more closely and check the illegal’s out better than they do! Our government think’s all illegal’s deserve a chance, to what keep bombing our country!! This is totally outragous
By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 17 minutes ago
MIAMI – A plan hatched by seven men to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and other buildings was “more aspirational than operational,” FBI officials said.
The group of men, who were arrested Thursday when authorities busted their alleged hide-out in a Miami warehouse, had no explosives and lacked adequate funding. Their only link to al-Qaida was through an FBI informant fronting as a member of the terrorist group, authorities said Friday.
But U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said it was exactly the right time to dismantle the group, before it was able to execute a plan that one member said he hoped would be “as good or greater than 9/11.”
“You want to go and disrupt cells like this before they acquire the means to accomplish their goals,” Acosta said.
Investigators said all members of the alleged plot were in custody on conspiracy charges.
Five of the defendants, including alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, appeared in federal court in Miami on Friday under heavy security. They were brought in and out in single file, chained together at the wrists and wearing ankle chains.
“This group was more aspirational than operational,” FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described the men as “homegrown terrorists” who “view their home country as the enemy.”
The FBI learned of the plot from someone the defendants tried to recruit, authorities said.
In February, Batiste told the informant that he and his five soldiers wanted to attend al-Qaida training and planned a “full ground war” against the United States in order to “kill all the devils we can,” according to the indictment.
Batiste and a co-defendant provided the informant with photographs of the FBI building in North Miami Beach, as well as video footage of other Miami government buildings, and discussed a plot to bomb the FBI building, the indictment said.
Neighbors who watched the men’s vigorous exercise regime said the group appeared to be training for something. One of its members was always standing guard outside the small, windowless warehouse in the blighted Liberty City neighborhood.
Relatives described the defendants as deeply religious people who studied the Bible and took classes in Islam. Joseph Phanor, the father of defendant Stanley Grant Phanor, said his son went to classes on Islam with a friend but that he read the Bible at his father’s house.
Phanor’s brother Michael said his brother owned a construction company and had been friends with this group for about a year. He said they were trying to do community service in the area where they grew up, studying martial arts to keep in shape and setting a good example for neighborhood kids.
A sixth defendant, Lyglenson Lemorin, was arrested in Atlanta and made a court appearance there. Phanor did not appear in court. He was in custody on what authorities said was an unrelated state charge.
The other defendants were identified as Patrick Abraham, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin and Rotschild Augustine.
The men, who range in age from 22 to 32, include a legal immigrant from Haiti and a Haitian who is in the United States illegally. Five are U.S. citizens.
No pleas were entered during the court hearings.
Officials at the 110-floor Sears Tower said it was business as usual Friday. The building, the tallest skyscraper in North America, has received numerous threats since Sept. 11, but officials said they have never found evidence of a credible threat that went beyond criminal discussions.
Jun 20
Why would the GOP say this? Because they are going to wait until after the re-election and then they are going to shove this “immigration bill” right up our asses with a red hot fire poker. JD
WASHINGTON – In a defeat for President Bush, Republican congressional leaders said Tuesday that broad immigration legislation is all but doomed for the year, a victim of election-year concerns in the House and conservatives’ implacable opposition to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
“Our number one priority is to secure the border, and right now I haven’t heard a lot of pressure to have a path to citizenship,” said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., announcing plans for an unusual series of hearings to begin in August on Senate-passed immigration legislation.
“I think it is easy to say the first priority of the House is to secure the borders,” added Rep. Roy Blunt, the GOP whip.
In deference to the president, neither Hastert nor any other Republican official in either house said publicly that the president’s ambitious plan – including a guest worker program as well as an opportunity for citizenship for many illegal immigrants – was dead for the year.
But several Republicans in both houses, speaking on condition of anonymity, were less guarded.
“There will be no path to citizenship,” said one lawmaker who attended a strategy session in Hastert’s office.
Some officials added that Republicans have begun discussing a pre-election strategy for seizing the political high ground on an issue that so far has served to highlight divisions within the party. Among the possibilities, these officials said, are holding votes in the House or Senate this fall on additional measures to secure the borders, or on legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving Social Security payments or other government benefits.
“The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president,” said one aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Additionally, GOP aides said Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the House campaign committee, has recently been using polling data to persuade fellow members of the leadership that the public would respond poorly to some provisions in the Senate-passed bill.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after Hastert’s announcement of hearings, “The president is undeterred. We are committed and we have been working very hard with members (of Congress) to see if we can reach consensus on an issue the American people have said they want action on.”
In the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told reporters he welcomed hearings. “As much examination of the House bill and Senate bill as possible is good,” he said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a principal author of the Senate-passed measure, offered to testify at House hearings. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said, “I’m hopeful” of a compromise before the elections.
Hastert announced no schedule for the completion of hearings. He and other members of the leadership sidestepped numerous times when asked whether a House-Senate compromise along the lines of what Bush has sought could come to a vote by year’s end. “I am not putting any timetable on this thing, but I think we need to get this thing done right,” the speaker told reporters.
The Republican-controlled House passed border security legislation last year, largely along party lines. By contrast, the Senate approved a bipartisan bill calling for tougher border enforcement; penalties against employers who hire illegal immigrants, a new guest worker program and a shot at citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country illegally.
The measure won the support of only 23 of the Senate’s 55 Republicans. Frist, a likely presidential contender for 2008, is under pressure from conservatives not to agree to a compromise bill they oppose. Democrats, on the other hand, are insisting on assurances that any final bill will remain bipartisan.
Hastert told reporters he had conveyed his views on immigration privately to Bush in recent days, and other officials said opinions among House Republicans hardened when Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray won a special election this month in the San Diego area. Bilbray campaigned for tougher immigration measures than Bush favors, and equated the president’s approach to amnesty.
Several Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hastert and the president had expressed differing views at one meeting about the importance of immigration in Bilbray’s victory. These officials said Hastert assigned it greater weight than the president. The Republican National Committee ran a 72-hour program in the campaign’s final days that many Republicans credit with maximizing the vote for the winner.
Additionally, the RNC conducted a postelection poll of the San Diego-area district that suggests voters take a dim view of citizenship for illegal immigrants.
The poll found that when people were asked if they prefer a comprehensive bill to one that emphasizes border security and imposing criminal penalties on individuals already in the country illegally, the comprehensive approach was favored, 45-32. But when asked if they favor a comprehensive approach or a security-first bill that “under no circumstances” allows for citizenship, 43 percent said they prefer focusing on the border, and 33 percent picked overall reform.
Jun 19
Yesterday KTRH-740 reported that Harris County taxpayers paid $97 million in health care costs for illegal immigrants last year:
KTRH has learned the Harris County Hospital District is shelling out millions of dollars every year to treat people who are here in this country illegally.
When you subtract what patients paid for hospital district services, and money from federal grants and other sources, $97.3 million dollars is what the local property taxpayer subsidized the district budget for undocumented immigrant care in 2005. That’s 14 percent of the entire hospital system’s operating budget.
Today the Chronicle has more:
Commissioner Steve Radack, who requested the report on the district’s costs of treating undocumented immigrants, said county residents are shouldering a burden created by the federal government.
The federal government doesn’t prevent illegal immigration, but hardly reimburses local counties where the immigrants most frequently settle and use public health care facilities, he said.
“The federal government allows people to come here illegally,” Radack said. “Because of that the cost shouldn’t fall on the local taxpayer.”
The district treated more than 57,000 illegal immigrants last year, at a cost of $128 million. The federal and state governments reimbursed about $28 million, and the patients themselves paid about $3 million. Over the past 11 years, the district has paid about $607 million in unreimbursed costs for treating undocumented immigrants.
The district does not directly ask patients if they are in the country legally, but infers their status from other information gleaned during patient screenings, officials said.
And this is only for the county hospitals. Chris Baker was discussing this yesterday and one of his callers identified herself as an employee of a private, fourteen-hospital group here in the Houston area. She said they routinely write off anywhere from 40 to 60 surgeries each week, because the patients are here illegally and are unable to pay. She said the paperwork will often have Social Security numbers such as 111-11-1111, or 999-99-9999, and bogus addresses, but since hospitals are prohibited from turning anyone away, there is nothing they can do about it.
Jun 17
By LYNN BREZOSKY
Some people just don’t have any brains!!
FALFURRIAS, Texas (AP) – A few Texas ranchers tired of costly repairs to cattle fences damaged by illegal immigrants have installed an easier route over the U.S.-Mexican border – ladders.
“It’s an attempt to get them to use the ladders instead of tearing the fences,” said Scott Pattinson, who owns one of a group of ranches known as La Copa.
La Copa is just south of a U.S. Border Patrol highway checkpoint that went up 75 miles from the border several years ago, sending migrants through the brambly scrub of nearby ranches instead.
Some immigrants walk for hours or days to skirt the checkpoints in temperatures hovering around 100 degrees. Their feet have worn visible paths through a forest of cactus and mesquite otherwise thick enough to conceal them from Border Patrol helicopters overhead and agents only a few hundred yards away.
The paths lead from one ripped-down section of fencing to another. Texas ranches can be so large it could be days before owners notice the hole in the fence, long after the livestock possibly escapes.
Paul Johnson protects his 2,700-acre exotic game ranch of zebras, scimitar-horned oryx and wildebeests with about 10 miles of high wire fence, and joined his neighbors in placing ladders along the way.
But apparently some immigrants think the ladders are too good to be true.
“They ignore it a lot,” Johnson said. “They’re afraid that they’re monitored by the Border Patrol.”
Johnson plans to take the ladders down, worried about the message he’s sending.
“I think what it does is give a signal that we are wanting them to cross there, don’t mind the crossing, and that kind of magnifies the problem,” he said.
Rancher Michael Vickers never liked the ladder idea and instead has ringed his fence with 220 volts of electricity.
“I’ve had a dose of it myself, it’s not fun,” he said. “That’s just my attitude, why make it easier for them to trespass?”
Jun 15
Assistance checks paid for a vacation, jewelry, a sex-change operation and more, the GAO reports. The fraud could total $1.4 billion.
I read shit like this and think, ‘what did you expect?’ This is a part of our country that has been glomming off of the rest of America for more than a century. Unemployment in and around New Orleans was more than 65% in the days before Katrina hit. These people have been pre-conditioned to be bottom feeders that think America owes them something because their great great great great great second cousin twice removed was a slave. So when the opportunity presents itself, people like that have no problem justifying their piss poor behavior as human beings ….. BECAUSE THE SAME POLITICAL HACKS THAT ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT IT IN WASHINGTON ARE GOING BACK TO THEIR DISTRICTS AND TELLING THESE LOSERS THAT THEY DESERVE ALL OF THESE FREEBIES IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! JD
By Johanna Neuman, Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2006
WASHINGTON — A Caribbean vacation. Pro football tickets. “Girls Gone Wild” videos. Fees for a divorce lawyer. A diamond ring. A sex-change operation.
This list is not a celebrity spending spree, but a chronicle of the fraud committed by Americans who said they were victims of Hurricane Katrina at a cost to the federal government of as much as $1.4 billion, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office.
As many thousands attempted to recover from the loss of their homes in one of the greatest natural disasters to hit U.S. shores, con artists used false addresses — cemeteries, vacant lots and post office boxes — and fraudulent Social Security numbers, including some from the dead, to obtain rental assistance checks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some of the fraud was committed from behind bars.
Others went on spending sprees with federal aid designed for immediate food, shelter and clothing.
The GAO assigned auditors to work undercover from February to June to test how easy it was to defraud the federal government. In its report, the GAO estimated that after examining a sample of 247 claims, 16% of FEMA’s assistance for housing and emergency provisions was misspent, for a total of $600 million to $1.4 billion lost in fraud.
During a hearing Wednesday before the House Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations, Donna M. Dannels, FEMA’s acting director for recovery, said the “questionable purchases” in the GAO investigation totaled “just under $8,000, or 0.02% of nearly $39 million” in aid.
As for the rental assistance checks, she argued that the fraudulent cases represented only “a fraction of the overall assistance provided” — $6.3 billion in housing payments distributed by the agency.
But her arguments did not sway legislators.
“This is an insult to the victims of Katrina and Rita,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the panel’s chairman. “The ultimate victim is the American taxpayer.”
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, blamed the White House. “The administration’s irresponsible contracting processes and lax oversight have cost taxpayers billions,” he said.
Nor did Dannels’ statements impress the GAO. Sitting beside her during the hearing was Gregory Kutz, the agency’s managing director of forensic audits, who said FEMA was having trouble accepting the results because it had previously estimated the fraud rate at 2% to 3%, not 16% as the GAO now calculates.
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said the GAO report was so compelling, “I don’t think it’s refutable.”
During the hearing, FEMA was attacked for failing to impose controls or checks on the process. Dannels said the agency has taken a number of steps to reduce the potential for fraud, including a new system to verify the identity of individuals registering by telephone.
But McCaul and Etheridge both called for further investigations, this time into contract fraud. In Senate hearings this year, the U.S. government testified that it wasted $900 million on trailers that were too wide for housing-deprived flood zones.
The FEMA money was intended to help victims pay for food, housing, clothes and other essentials. The subcommittee said that based on the information in the GAO report, it has referred 7,000 cases to the Justice Department for prosecution.
In its report, the GAO found that prisoners applied for assistance from jail phones. Using false identities, they routed the assistance checks to the homes of relatives or friends. One inmate collected $20,000 using a post office box address.
A Texas man filed 19 applications and used the money for a sex-change operation. Elsewhere in Texas, a recipient used FEMA money to buy a diamond ring and other jewelry worth $3,700. FEMA gave an individual $2,358 in rental assistance while paying an additional $8,000 so that same person could stay at a Hawaii hotel for more than two months.
FEMA funds purchased a $2,200 weeklong vacation in the Dominican Republic and five season tickets to the New Orleans Saints. In Houston, federal money was used to buy sexual enhancement products and hire a divorce lawyer. And thanks to FEMA, someone in Santa Monica purchased $300 worth of “Girls Gone Wild” sex videos.
“There were no controls in place, and a clear lack of management,” said McCaul, who is pushing legislation that would require FEMA to set up a database to verify and cross-reference individuals and their Social Security numbers. “Americans have good reason to be angry. That’s why we held the hearing, to put some sunlight on it.”
AMERICANS KEEP SNORTING...
