Monday, July 31, 2017

Will ICE Arrest Criminal Sanctuary City/State Leaders?

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Does Thomas Homan Read Federale (And VDare)?

By Federale
July 29, 2017
Federaleagent86

In a surprise move, Thomas Homan, the Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has announced that he will be following the advice offered by this writer on my own blog and on VDare regarding and others who hold official positions in the several States that openly aid illegal aliens, such as Jerry Brown, Janet Napolitano, Bill De Blasio, Ed Lee, Rahm Emanuel, and others. Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested that criminal prosecutions for immigration violations would expand, and it should, to include politicians.



Thomas Homan, the New DHS Secretary?

The country’s top immigration enforcement officer says he is looking into charging sanctuary city leaders with violating federal anti-smuggling laws because he is fed up with local officials putting their communities and his officers at risk by releasing illegal immigrants from jail.
[ICE Chief Wants To Slap Smuggling Charges On Leaders Of Sanctuary Cities, by Stephan Dinan, Washington Times, July 26, 2017]
Homan also noted that the bottleneck in the campaign against MS-13 and illegal aliens is with the Executive Office For Immigration Review (EOIR), part of the Department of Justice, where Attorney General Jeff Sessions is failing to reign in the kritarchs there.
He said the biggest impediment to expanding deportations is no longer ICE priority, but rather a huge backlog in the immigration courts, which are part of the Justice Department. Migrants who in the past would have admitted their unauthorized status and accepted deportation are now fighting their cases.
“They can play the system for a long time,” he said.
We need to hold Jeff Sessions accountable for the failure of the judges of the EOIR to see that aliens have their hearing quickly and are removed once their day in court is over.  But the EOIR is administering their own amnesty under Jeff Sessions. He needs to act to end that or all the arrests by ICE will be for naught. But the real solution is not more or better immigration judges, though that would be good, but expanding Expedited Removal.

Posted by Federale Federale at 4:22 P.M.



Procter & Gamble TV Spot “might be the most racist commercial any company has ever produced”

By Pax Romana
Monday, July 31, 2017 at 7:18:00 P.M. EDT

“Sick sick sick” racist Procter & Gamble ad crosses every line! If you are white, brace yourself before watching

July 31, 2017

“This might be the most racist commercial any company has ever produced.

“A more than two-minute video produced by Procter & Gamble, the company that manufactures Cascade, Febreze, Mr. Clean, Tide, Swiffer, Downy and a plethora of products, shows various scenes of black parents talking with their children about racism.

“The ad, titled ‘The Talk,’ shows scenes of black parents, spanning generations, telling their kids about how the system is stacked against them, how racist white people are and teaching them to fear the police.”

At Biz Pac Review.


“Mooch got DFA'd”: Sportswriters Turn Firing of Anthony Scaramucci into Trade Deadline Joke

By Nicholas Stix

DFA: Designated for Assignment.

At NJ.com.

Feminists: Sex is Not Sex

By Nicholas Stix

At Glaivester.

D.C.: 10 Shot, 2 Dead, in 7 Separate Shootings Since Saturday Night, Including 7 Shot in Less than 5 Hours (Population: 681,170; Diversity: Priceless)

 

 

By Prince George’s County Ex-Pat


10 shot, 2 dead, in 7 separate shootings in DC since Saturday night
By Q McRay/Ryan Hughes
Sunday, July 30, 2017
WJLA/ABC 7

Metropolitan Police and crime scene technicians hide the body from onlookers, including the victim’s father. He told us his son’s name was Jermaine Richard, just 17 years old. His aunt spoke on behalf of the family. “To come over here and see him laying over…”

UK: The Blessings of Islamic Diversity Never End: Acid Attacks are Now a Daily Crime in London Alone

 

Beauty under Islam
 

By Nicholas Stix

People had been telling me about this development, but once looked into it, it took me a while (i.e., a few minutes) to get a news story on it. At first, all I was finding only rumors on message boards.

Isn’t that odd? You’d think the whole matriarchy of Western journalism would be shouting from the rooftops about this outrage.

At Canadian Yahoo/International Business Times.

Breaking News: Trump-Scaramucci Bromance Ends as Quickly as It Began! New Chief of Staff John Kelly Asserts His Prerogative, in Having Scaramucci Fired; Does This Reflect Badly on Scaramucci, or on Trump?

By Grand Rapids Anonymous
Monday, July 31, 2017 at 2:47:00 P.M. EDT

BREAKING NEWS: Scaramucci out

At the request of his new Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, POTUS fires Scaramucci.

Quickest breakup since Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman's marriage (which lasted 9 days).

Story at ABC News.

Luke Ford: What was Insane, is Now the New Conventional Wisdom in Israel: Bibi Netanyahu Supports Forced Land and People Swaps

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix


“Transferring” Palestinian citizens of Israel to a Palestinian state goes from outrage to Netanyahu policy
By Luke Ford
Posted on July 30, 2017, 7:03 a.m.
Luke Ford.net

Sounds like Bibi is keeping it real. If you love Jews and the Jewish state, then you’ll love this idea. Why would any nation want to retain people who hate it? On the other hand, many on the Alt Right accurately see many Jews in their midst as hating their state. So that’s inconvenient.

Most Jews in the West love their country, but among the leading activists pushing disastrous multicultural policies on the goyim, it sure seems that a high percentage are Jews….

[Read the whole thing.]

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Steve Cortes on Sanctuary Cities: It's Racist to Not Protect Americans

 

Mexican invader-felon and alleged serial rapist, Sergio Jose Martinez, left, and Steve Cortes
 

By Reader-Researcher RC


Steve Cortes on Sanctuary Cities: It's Racist to Not Protect Americans
insider.foxnews.com

Steve Cortes said that...
 

The Value of Anthony Scaramucci

 

Anthony Scaramucci
 

By Nicholas Stix

As new, White House Chief of Communications Anthony Scaramucci’s foul-mouthed call to New Yorker operative, Ryan Lizza showed, for the whole world to see, Scaramucci is a dirtbag with delusions of grandeur.

There were four major aspects to Scaramucci’s tirade:

His insults of two men, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and presidential counselor Steve Bannon, who at the time were his official superiors;

His talk about firing a lot of people that suggested that he was the President, or second to the latter;

His deliberate choice to call an enemy of the President to unload on people who work for Trump, and one on particular, Steve Bannon, who has been one of Trump’s most loyal advisors, who played one of the greatest roles in getting Trump elected, and who sacrificed greatly, in order work for him; and

The disgusting language, notwithstanding its occasional humor.

The Chief of Communications has traditionally stood very low on the White House totem pole. The only people whom Anthony Scaramucci has the power to fire are Sara Huckabee Sanders, some secretaries, and receptionists. Yet he spoke as if he were The Man. He suffers from delusions of grandeur.

But even if Scaramucci were half as important as he fancies himself, it was despicable of him to publicly insult Priebus and Bannon the way he did, to an enemy. That he did so to DPUSA Ryan Lizza, who was at times the first operative to float the Party’s fake news of the day during the presidential campaign, was because he wanted to be quoted, word for word. Otherwise, he would have spoken that way in private, either to his few underlings, or to friendly Republican journalists, who would have eliminated the profanity.

Current Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel served as the first White House Chief of Staff to the John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama.” Emanuel is a profanity machine, but he never, to my knowledge, called up his media enemies at Fox News or the weekly standard, to unload on members of the “Obama” cabinet or close aides. And when he spoke to DPUSA media operatives, they did not accurately quote him, in order to protect him and “Obama.”

Based on the above analysis, Scaramucci is a worthless slug of a man. However, he has value, in spite of himself.

Scaramucci spoke as if he were about to fire both Priebus and Bannon, and Priebus was then quickly fired.

What I took away from that was that was not only that Trump had told Scaramucci that he was going to fire Priebus, but that Trump had done in virtually the identical, profanity-laced style that Scaramucci had used with the New Yorker/DPUSA’s Ryan Lizza.

If Trump now fires Steve Bannon, as well, we will know that Anthony Scaramucci is a Trump clone, and that any time Scaramucci speaks badly of a member of the Trump White House, that that person has been slated by the boss for “death.”

There is a universal type who not only does his boss’ dirty work, but does so with a sadistic glee, while imitating his boss to those over whom he either has power, or who have no power over him. The Germans have a particularly nice phrase for this, “Radfahrer.”

A Radfahrer is a bicyclist. The drop handlebars, which became extremely popular during the 1960s, force one to bend one’s head down, like a supplicant, while one kicks down with one’s feet, as one does with all bicycles.

Anthony Scaramucci appears to be a classic Radfahrer. His value, then, will be as a reflection of his boss. If Trump soon fires Steve Bannon, we will know that from Trump’s mouth of Scaramucci’s ears—anytime Scaramucci denounces a member of the Trump Administration, that person will be next on the chopping black.

This is a disgraceful way to run the White House, which applies equally to President Trump and Scaramucci, but it is what it is.

Top 10 Opening Remarks at a Trump Cabinet Meeting (Humor)

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

I read this list at a Yahoo! News editorial bashing President Trump, by Matt Bai, and assumed that it was all over the ‘Net, but when I googled, I found nothing—neither under the title, nor the first (#10) entry—so, here goes.

A tip 'o the hate to TonyZ.


Top Ten Opening Remarks at a Trump Cabinet Meeting

10) Mr. President, you’re even greater than our GOP hero, Putin.

9) Mr. President, thank you for being the most honest person to ever exist.

8) President Trump, I was praying to God last night and God said, “Can you get me Trump’s autograph?”

7) Mr. President, thank you for the opportunity to repeatedly kiss your feet.

6) Your Highness, I love yo……I lov…….I lo………..(begins crying).

5) King Trump, may I have another photo of you? I kissed a hole in my old photo of you.

4) Mine Fuhrer, thank you for making Heaven and Earth great again.

3) Mr. President, you are the light of our lives. Without you, there would only be darkness.

2) Your Greatness, thank you for the universe.

1) Then Trump says: Your opening remarks were fair. We’ll work on it so you can truly know my greatness.

Pope Francis Abolishes Hell

By Nicholas Stix

At Blithe Spirit, the blog of my Catholic (former Jesuit) Oak Park, IL writer friend, Jim Bowman.

Saturday, July 29, 2017

“Boycott” in Los Angeles Seeks to Destroy Businesses Based Merely on Owners' Race

By Reader-Researcher R.C.
 


 

Race-based attacks on Boyle Heights businesses prompt this L.A. councilman to take sides
www.latimes.com

Councilman Jose Huizar said when anti-gentrification protests turn into "destroying property ... or targeting people solely based on race, that goes against everything Boyle Heights stands for."

Video: Did U.S. Border Officers Exact Poetic Justice against a Mexican Drug Mule?

By A Texas Reader


Video shows U.S. border officers ordering Mexican teen to drink liquid meth that killed him
www.sfgate.com

Cruz Velazquez Acevedo began convulsing shortly after he drank the liquid methamphetamine he'd brought with him from Tijuana, Mexico. The 16-year-old had just crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to San Diego and was going through the San Ysidro Port of...

Real Men vs. Cowards, Bullies, and Killers

 

Audie Murphy as a lieutenant, ca January 1945. (I can’t tell from the picture if he was a Second or First Lieutenant, but when the recent battle that had won him his Congressional Medal of Honor began, he was a Second Louie.) Murphy was our most decorated fighting man in The War, and while starting out as a buck private, eventually made it to major.
 

By David in TN

This piece by R. Cort Kirkwood is taken from his book, Real Men, with which we are familiar. Note the account of the confrontation between Lawrence Tierney and a fellow actor at a Hollywood party. The other actor was a fellow named Audie Murphy.

At Taki’s Mag.

 

Lawrence Tierney was a notorious thug who played cut-throats in pictures. He was once handsome, but booze, brawls, and age robbed him of his looks, such that his outside eventually matched his inside.

This Sunday's TCM Film Noir is Born to Kill; No, Not that Born to Kill, this Born to Kill!

 

 

By David in TN
Friday, July 28, 2017 at 11:12:00 P.M. EDT
 

 

This Sunday's Film Noir is Born to Kill (1947). It runs at 10 am ET, Sunday, July 30.
 

 

This film is Lawrence Tierney's ultimate Bad Guy portrayal. He's the most violent, unhinged psycho ever in film noir.
 

 

Claire Trevor is the female lead attracted to Tierney. The plot is hard to believe but it's a so-called “cult classic.”
 

Elisha B. Cook Jr. and Esther Howard
 

N.S.: This picture was directed by Robert Wise, the Rodney Dangerfield of movie directors. Although Wise was nominated for seven competitive Oscars as editor, director, and producer, winning four; and was given the Irving Thalberg honorary Oscar; had record-breaking grosses; and mastered virtually every movie genre, he didn’t get no respect. (Genres: Musicals, horror pictures, science fiction, biopics, period pieces, war pictures, heist movies, boxing flicks, Westerns and film noir.)

 

Mets vs. Mariners: Montero Has “Heart Attack,” While Phelps Finds Relief a Mission Impossible

By Nicholas Stix

Rafael Montero has had years of success in the minors, with lots of Ks and few walks, but in the Big Leagues he has a “heart problem.” He walks the ballpark, because he’s afraid to throw strikes.

Recently, Montero had a good game, to bring his season record to 1-5, and his lifetime big league record to 2-12, but tonight he reverted to form. After four good innings, he “imploded” in the words of Mets announcer Gary Cohen, and gave up three walks, two or three hits, and five runs in the fifth inning, and skipper Terry Collins had to pull him after a mere 4 2/3 innings. The Mets were now losing, 5-4.

Meanwhile, in the top of the eighth, the Mariners ran reliever David Phelps out to the mound. Phelps has a terrible history with the Mets. And tonight was no exception. He gave up three runs, starting with Michael Conforto’s second dinger of the night.

Now, Paul Sewald is pitching in the bottom of the eighth, with two outs and men on second and third for the Mariners.

Friday, July 28, 2017

Another Diverse Mommie Dearest: The Body of a 6-Month-Old Western Michigan Boy Had Already Started to Decompose by the time His Mother Took Him to a Hospital...

 


Lovily Kristine-Anwonette Johnson at her arraignment on July 24
 

By Prince George's County Ex-Pat


Records: Child's body decomposing on arrival at hospital
wjla.com

WYOMING, Mich. (AP) The body of a 6-month-old western Michigan boy had already started to decompose by the time his mother took him to a hospital after she had basically ignored him for two days in her sweltering home with no air conditioning, according...

N.S.: Textbook druggie.

The 18-year-old stepdaughter of an assistant prison warden was murdered by an inmate that escaped July 27 in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana

 

War crime victim Amanda Leigh Carney
 

By A Texas Reader




Amanda Leigh Carney: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

heavy.com

Amanda Leigh Carney, the stepdaughter of a prison warden, was held hostage and then killed by escaped inmate Deltra Henderson. in Louisiana....

 


Late war criminal Deltra Henderson; even his mug shot was crooked

There’s a Medal of Honor Winner, and then There's John McCain... was the Same Man Who Has Betrayed Republican Voters so Many Times Already a Traitor During the War in Vietnam?

 

A patriot shakes hands with a traitor
 

By Reader-Researcher RC

“McCloughan answered two more calls for a medic in the field, rescuing both men. Throughout the night, he poured his drinking water on Vaccaro’s stomach to keep his organs from drying out, while giving Nielsen shots of morphine, he said.”

At the Detroit News.


John McCain: When “Tokyo Rose” Ran for President
www.unz.com

With Sen. John McCain so much in the headlines these days due to his harsh criticism of the foreign policy positions of Donald Trump, a few people suggested that I republish my article from a couple of years ago exploring McCain’s own very doubtful military record.

Given the massive media coverage of rather fanciful allegations that the Russians are blackmailing Trump, perhaps similar resources should be devoted to investigating a much more plausible case of blackmail, and one that is far better documented....

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Breaking News: Tucker Carlson Has an Exclusive Interview at 8 P.M. on Fox News with Attorney General Jeff Sessions!

By Nicholas Stix

In six minutes!

The Jeff Sessions Affair: Is President Trump (Again) Contemplating Political Suicide?

 

An American hero
 

By Nicholas Stix

There’s never a dull moment with this President. Unfortunately, the excitement extends to him humiliating his greatest supporter.

The DPUSA could have attacked President Trump till the cows came home, without hurting his popularity, so long as he did not hurt his friends. So, what did he do? Stab his best friend in the back.

It makes me wonder. Did Trump survive in public life all these years through the draconian enforcement of iron-clad non-disclosure agreements he had his employees and ex-wives sign?


There is one man, without whom Donald J. Trump would be the answer to a trivia question: “Who was the crazy businessman who claimed to be a billionaire, and who ran for president without any political experience, only to be trounced in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history?”

“For $200, Alex, ‘Who was Donald Trump?’”

The one man who saved Trump is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

When no senator supported candidate Donald J. Trump, Senator Jeff Sessions enthusiastically took him under his wing, and spoke up at a huge campaign rally in Alabama with him.

But Sessions went beyond even that. He let his most brilliant policy intellectual, Stephen Miller, leave him to work for Trump.

And Sessions has been loyal to a fault to the man he made. Apparently, with Donald Trump, loyalty is a one-way street.

When Trump miraculously got elected, Jeff Sessions gave up the safest seat in the U.S. Senate to be his attorney general. Session had run unopposed both in the primary and in the general election in 2014. He was probably the most popular man in Alabama.

Although I voted for Trump, and do not regret having done so, given the alternative, he was not my dream candidate. My dream candidate was Jeff Sessions. For better or worse, Sessions decided against running. Maybe it was a lack of a war chest, or a judgment on the Senator’s part that he was two short, and lacked the necessary charisma.

Back in 2008, my dream candidate was Colorado Cong. Tom Tancredo, and his campaign was DOA. Next on my list that year was California Cong. Duncan Hunter. Ditto. So, I’m not much of a political handicapper.

Sessions understood all the issues in his sleep that the new candidate needed tutoring on from Ann Coulter (Adios America), Sessions, and Stephen Miller. Illegal aliens’ damage to every aspect of American society? Check. Immigrants’ damage? Ditto. The way out- and insourcing destroy Americans’ life chances? Check.

At first, when Trump started publicly humiliating Sessions for no good reason, observers thought they might patch things up, but after days of such abuse, those same observers now take the departure of General Sessions as a fait accompli.

Trump went to his enemies at the New York Times, for cryin’ out loud, to humiliate General Sessions! And then he did it on Twitter, and in the Rose Garden. As Tucker Carlson pointed out, Sessions couldn’t anticipate the recusal question, but even if he had, Trump couldn’t expect him not to recuse himself on that question.

As I’ve argued before, Trump seems to be in love with a line from The Godfather Part II: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

It sounds good, like Nietzsche’s line, “Whatever doesn’t kill me, only makes me stronger,” but they’re both nonsense!

You keep your friends close, and your enemies at arm’s distance.

What doesn’t kill me weakens me to the point where I can be much more easily killed the second time around.

Trump is now floating a trial balloon, whereby he replaces Sessions with Ted Cruz. That’s crazy. No other politician in America understands the gamut of related issues the way Sessions does, and no other politician, save for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, would be as true to the patriotic vision that got Trump elected. However, there’s no good reason to have to choose between Sessions and Kobach. Trump should have appointed Kobach secretary of DHS, and told saboteur senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham to go suck wind.

Some observers suspect that Trump is using Sessions as part of some diabolical scheme, in order to rid himself of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. In this scenario, a new AG will be free to fire Mueller, whereas Sessions wears invisible handcuffs.

Forget it. The new guy will also wear invisible handcuffs.

If there’s anyone who should be fired, it’s Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, who was an Obama guy, to begin with. Rosenstein, the guy who argued for firing James Comey, is apparently surrounded by a force field.

If Trump fires Sessions, not only will he lose political and moral credibility, but he will be at sea, surrounded by the likes of his feminist daughter Ivanka, and a bunch of other people who do not support the vision that got him elected: Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster, Mike Pence, et al.

Trump’s move yesterday to end the experiment permitting the sexually insane to take over the military was a card he’d had up his sleeve for a crisis, in order to divert attention from his problems with the Russia Game and his war on his attorney general. He needed put a stop to the war games, anyway, but that won’t dress his self-inflicted wound in the matter of Jeff Sessions.

If the President insists on publicly eviscerating the finest man in public life today, he can kiss the mid-terms goodbye.

I have no idea what the future will bring, but the way I feel right now, I may never say another good word about Donald Trump, even when he’s in the right, and even if he should come up with a stroke of genius. That’s how deep his betrayal runs.

Donald J. Trump may yet end the answer to a trivia question: “What firebrand Presidential candidate miraculously won, when hardly anyone thought he would, and came into power with both houses of government and the Supreme Court, only to throw it all away via vanity, and spend most of his first and only term as the lamest of lame ducks?”

 


An American heel?

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

In Debate on Gun Bill, Baltimore City Councilmen Express Their Rabid Support for… Black Killers

By An Old Friend

Check out the video clips. The Congoids obviously are not serious about doing anything to curb violence in Baltimore.

Baltimore gun bill (Google Search).

Under New White House Communications Chief, Anthony Scaramucci, Heads are Already Rolling

 

Anthony Scaramucci
 

By Nicholas Stix

I suspect that President Trump hired Scaramucci expressly because the latter had recently been libeled by a CNN fake news story that the cable network had been forced to retract, and which then forced the three operatives responsible for it, “The reporter, Pulitzer-Prize nominee Thomas Frank; assistant managing editor Eric Lichtblau (who recently joined from the New York Times and is a Pulitzer winner himself); and Lex Haris, the executive editor in charge of investigations,” to resign.

At the Conservative Tribune. 

Follow the Money, Not the Climate Claptrap! Investigative Editorial Exposes “Cap-and-Trade” Scam

 

 

By Nicholas Stix

This is the first I've heard of Susan Shelley. This is great stuff--an investigative editorial, full of facts, along with her position. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Shelley's work.

At the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

 

Gosinya

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

A Rogues’ Gallery of “Student” Thugs at Evergreen State College in Washington

 


 


 

At Narrative Collapse.
Corrected on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, 9:40 p.m.



UK Saboteurs Succeed at Killing Brexit!

By Nicholas Stix

At The Daily Mail.

James Matthew Bradley Jr.: The Black Trucker Who Killed 10 Mexican Illegal Aliens in His Trailer, is a Violent, Career Criminal, Who Has Benefited for 20 Years from Affirmative Action Criminal Justice

 


Two of James Bradley's many mug shots over the years; these are from 2005 and 2004, respectively
 

By A Texas Reader

“James Bradley Jr., who also uses the name James Bear Bradley, has a criminal record dating back to at least 1997, with arrests in multiple states on charges including menacing, assault, grand theft, escape and several traffic offenses, online court records show.

“He was arrested in 1997 in Arapahoe County, Colorado, on charges of felony menacing, menacing with a deadly weapon and third-degree assault. [God only knows what his real crime was—attempted murder?] He pleaded guilty in 1998 to the felony menacing charge and the others were dropped. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail and two years of probation.

“The probation was revoked in 2003 and he was arrested a year later in 2004 on a felony escape warrant while in Hillsborough County, Florida. He was also charged in Florida with grand theft, but the charge was dropped after he spent more than a month in jail. He was then extradited to Colorado, where he received one year in prison on the escape charge.

[“The probation was revoked in 2003…” That can’t be. Bradley’s two-year probation from 1998 would have run out in 2000. My hunch is that Bradley was convicted of yet another felony and put on probation again, between 2000 and 2003, but that the Heavy.com writer, Tom Cleary, didn’t find it. This guy Cooper is in constant trouble with the law.]

“His probation was revoked again in 2005 and he was again sent to prison in Colorado, court records show.

[Probably yet another conviction and probation. You only get a sentence of probation revoked once.]

“He has also been convicted of several driving offenses, including speeding, being overweight on axle 1st/3rd, misuse of equipment and driving without evidence of financial responsibility.

“Bradley, who has been married twice, has most recently lived in Louisville, Kentucky, according to public records, though federal officials have identified him as being from Clearwater, Florida. He has also lived in Sacramento and Rancho Cordova, California, along with Denver, Aurora, and Broomfield Colorado.”

N.S.: Bradley’s story about the incident at the WalMart, where police found him and the eight corpses, was full of transparent lies.

Bradley asserted that his job was to drive the truck, which he did not own and which had been “sold,” from Schaller, Iowa, to Brownsville, Texas. But he wasn’t caught in Brownsville, he was caught in San Antonio.

He said he was to deliver the sold truck in Brownsville, but that he had no delivery address.

He said he had no knowledge that he was carrying people in the trailer, but when he heard people inside, opened the truck, and saw what looked to be corpses and other sick people, and a total of 38 people, he did not bother calling 911. Not calling 911 was already a crime, but a lesser one than mass murder.

He said that instead of calling 911, he called his wife, who didn’t answer.

He said that no vans appeared to pick up app. 28 people from his truck and drive away.

Police found Bradley in the “camper” section behind his truck cab, with eight corpses lying in his trailer, as well as two desperately ill people who would later die at area hospitals.

Here’s what I think happened. Bradley was working for coyotes, which he had probably done for years, and got paid anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 for the load of illegals. His trailer had refrigeration, but he never turned it on, because running the refrigeration system would have required a few more dollars’ worth of gas. He also didn’t provide bottles of water to his passengers/captives, because that would have cost a few dollars that he had no intention of paying.

The illegals were inside for 12 hours. It was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside that day, and probably 120 degrees inside.

Bradley’s instructions were to pull up at the WalMart, and call the coyotes, which he no doubt did.

When the cops found him, he was doubtless waiting for the coyotes to send a truck to remove and dispose of the eight corpses in the back, as well as the two people who were still alive.

Although Bradley was surely not guilty of first-degree, premediated murder, his crimes are death penalty-eligible.

He’s committed ten counts of second-degree murder, in terms of depraved indifference to human life. However, because he committed mass murder while committing the separate felony of human trafficking, he is guilty of felony murder, which is legally equivalent to Murder One, and thus eligible for the death penalty, in the event of a conviction. That’s assuming Bradley doesn’t enjoy yet more affirmative action criminal justice, in which case he could be out again in a few years.

At Heavy (updated since I wrote this post).

Washington Post: District Court Judge Allows Presidential Commission on Voter Fraud to Proceed

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix


TITLE: Federal judge allows Trump commission’s nationwide voter data request to go forward
By Spencer S. Hsu
July 24 at 4:50 P.M.
Washington Post

A federal judge on Monday allowed President Trump’s voting commission to go forward with seeking voter data from 50 states and the District, ruling that the White House advisory panel is exempt from federal privacy review requirements, whatever additional risk it might pose to Americans’ information.

[That last clause sounds like Washington Post operative Spencer S. Hsu editorializing.]

The ruling averted a public setback for a president who has claimed that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote in November. The commission’s request for the [public] voting information of more than 150 million registered voters remains controversial, with many state leaders from both parties voicing objections about its potential to reveal personal information, suppress voter participation [that’s a bald-faced lie] and encroach on states’ oversight of voting laws.

The panel’s June 28 letter to the states requested that they turn over “publicly-available voter roll data,” including names, addresses, dates of birth, party registrations, partial Social Security numbers and voting, military, felony and overseas histories, among other data.

On July 10, the White House clarified that it had scrapped plans to use a Pentagon-operated website to accept the data and had designed a system inside the White House to take the submissions.

Those changes appeared crucial in a 35-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of Washington.

“The mere increased risk of disclosure stemming from the collection and eventual, anonymized disclosure of already publicly available voter roll information is insufficient” to block the data request, she wrote.

Kollar-Kotelly , who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997, ruled against the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group that sought to block the commission’s data request because the panel had not conducted a full privacy impact statement [?!] as required by a 2002 federal law for new government electronic data collection systems.

She concluded that although the watchdog group had the right to sue under the law for a privacy review, the commission was a presidential advisory panel, not a federal agency subject to the privacy law.

“Neither the Commission or [sic] the Director of White House Information Technology — who is currently charged with collecting voter roll information on behalf of the Commission — are ‘agencies’ ” of the federal government subject to the court’s review in this matter, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

“To the extent the factual circumstances change, however — for example, if the . . . powers of the Commission expand beyond those of a purely advisory body — this determination may need to be revisited.”

Kollar-Kotelly wrote that the only added risk to privacy was if the White House computer systems are more vulnerable to security threats than those of the states, or that its de-identification process would be inadequate.

The commission is led by Vice President Pence, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) as vice chairman.

In a statement Monday, Kobach called the ruling “a major victory for government accountability, transparency and the public’s right to know about the integrity of our elections processes,” adding, “We look forward to continuing to work with state election leaders to gather information and identify opportunities to improve election integrity.”

Marc Rotenberg, the president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in a statement that the group “will push forward. The Commission cannot evade privacy obligations by playing a shell game with the nation’s voting records.”

The court order was not a final ruling on the commission’s work, with other groups filing lawsuits and one appealing to a higher court to block its action under open records and meeting laws.

But Monday’s ruling removed one legal obstacle even as the commission faces other political head winds. The commission had asked states to hold off submitting the voter data the panel had requested pending the court decision.

At least 44 states have indicated that they won’t provide all their voter data, with some saying they would give nothing and others offering what information they could under state laws.

The vice president’s office has said 20 states have agreed to share at least some data and 16 more are reviewing the request.

Trump has said that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote in November, although critics say the claim is unsubstantiated and a pretext for federal laws to suppress voter participation, including by racial minority groups and poor people.

[“Suppress voter participation” is a blood libel long propagated by those who support massive voter fraud. “Racial minority groups and poor people” all have photo identification.]

Trump has championed the commission’s work as a way to “strengthen up voting procedures” by identifying “vulnerabilities . . . that could lead to improper voter registrations and improper voting.” Conservative board members have advocated stricter federal election laws, alleging that a bias in U.S. enforcement has benefited liberals.

Republicans such as Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan had called the commission’s request a “hastily organized experiment,” or a “federal intrusion and overreach,” as Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler (R) put it.

Democratic New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo refused “to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election,” while Vermont Secretary of State James C. Condos (D) called the commission “a waste of taxpayer money.”

In court filings, Rotenberg called the privacy implications of creating “a secret database stored in the White House” of hundreds of millions of voter records from across the country “staggering” and lacking legal authorization.

The watchdog group said the proposal would increase privacy risks to every registered voter, “including in particular military families whose home addresses would be revealed,” people whose partial Social Security numbers are used as passwords for commercial services, and people with felony convictions.

[Only a moron would use his partial Social Security number as a password, unless forced to do so, which is illegal.]

Trump formed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after repeatedly suggesting that millions of illegal voters cost him the popular vote against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Studies and state officials of both parties have found no evidence of widespread voting fraud.

Led by Pence, the panel’s other members are Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson (R); New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner (D); Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D); former Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell (R); Christy McCormick (R), commissioner with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission; former Arkansas state representative David Dunn (D); Mark Rhodes, clerk of Wood County, W.Va. (D); Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow of the Heritage Foundation (R); J. Christian Adams (R), a conservative columnist; and Alan Lamar King (D), a probate judge in Alabama.

Kobach said in the court filing that McCormick is not serving in her official capacity as a member of the EAC. Kobach said the Trump commission has “no legal relationship with the EAC,” and that while the president can appoint additional members to the newly formed advisory commission, to Kobach’s knowledge, no other federal agency officials are under consideration.

Although the May 11 executive order stated that the commission would be supported by the General Services Administration — a federal agency subject to privacy requirements — the administration said in fact data would be downloaded onto White House computers, with an employee of Pence’s office and White House information technology staff responsible for collecting and storing it.

Heather Mac Donald: Seeing Today’s Illegal Aliens Straight

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

Seeing Today’s Immigrants Straight

Advocates of “comprehensive immigration reform” let ideology blind them to the dispiriting facts on the ground.
By Heather Mac Donald
Summer 2006
City Journal

The immigration debate has divided the conservative movement, with each side accusing the other of betraying core conservative principles. Amnesty proponents argue that America’s best traditions require legalizing the 11 to 12 million illegal aliens already here and opening the door wide to would-be migrants the world over. Illegal immigration, these conservative advocates say, is the inevitable and blameless consequence of misguided laws that foolishly—and vainly—seek to prevent willing workers and labor-hungry employers from finding each other. Hispanics—the vast majority of aliens and the real center of the immigration debate—bring much-needed family values and a work ethic to the American polity; refusing to grant them legal status would destroy Republican hopes for a large new voting bloc. Since popular opposition to large-scale Hispanic immigration stems from economic ignorance and nativist fear, policymakers should protect America from its own worst impulses and ignore the anti-immigration revolt.

Conservative opponents of amnesty and liberalized immigration respond that the rule of law is at stake. Rewarding large-scale lawbreaking with legal status and financial benefits will spark further violations. The mass amnesty protests of the spring were part of a growing international movement challenging national sovereignty. Conservative respect for facts should encourage skepticism toward claims of superior Hispanic values. And the conservative preference for local decision making cautions against dismissing the popular backlash against illegal immigration; it is just possible that people closest to the problem know something that Beltway insiders do not.

Vexing the debate further, the popular revolt is not just against illegal immigration but against high levels of unskilled Mexican immigration per se. As political scientist Peter Skerry observes, the public dislikes the effect on local communities of large numbers of poor Mexicans and their progeny, legal or not. Some of

the effects, such as crime, worsen dramatically from the first to the second generation of Mexicans, who not only are legal but are American citizens.

Since criticizing illegal immigration often draws charges of racism, few relish going further and challenging the wisdom of our current immigration flows, legal or not. Yet unless we accurately diagnose the immigration problem, any legislative fix that merely converts the current illegal flow to a legal one will fail both as policy and as politics.

Herewith—in an effort to sharpen the internal debate—are the conservative principles that militate against amnesty, for immigration-law enforcement, and for a radical change in immigration priorities.

Principle 1: Respect the law. This year’s illegal-alien demonstrators put forward a novel theory of entitlement: because we are here, we have a right to be here. Protesters in Santa Ana, California, shouted: “We are here and we’re not going anywhere,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Anger at the widespread contempt for American law contained in such defiant assertions drives much of the public hostility toward illegal aliens. Conservatives, with their respect for the rule of law, and appreciation for its fragility, would ordinarily honor this gut reaction, rather than dismissing it as some atavistic tribal impulse. Poverty and other grounds for victim status do not, in the conservative worldview, create a license for lawbreaking.

The rule of law ensures that like cases are treated alike and unlike cases distinguished. But if the immigration protesters have their way, someone who ignored all the procedures for legal entry will achieve the same status and benefits as someone who played by the rules. During the Senate’s immigration debates in the spring, amnesty proponents claimed that it was unfair that people who have worked for American employers be forced to “live in the shadows.” Left out of the equation was the question of justice to people who have waited for years in their own countries for permission to enter lawfully.

Protecting one form of lawbreaking may require protecting others as well. The city of Maywood in Los Angeles County declared itself a sanctuary zone for illegal aliens this year. Then it got rid of its drunk-driving checkpoints, because they were nabbing too many illegal aliens. Next, this 96 percent Latino city, almost half of whose adult population lacks a ninth-grade education, disbanded its police traffic division entirely, so that illegals wouldn’t need to worry about having their cars towed for being unlicensed.

Principle 2: Protect sovereignty. Today’s international elites seek to dissolve “discriminatory” distinctions between citizens and noncitizens and to discredit border laws aiming to control the flow of migrants. The spring amnesty demonstrations are a measure of how far such new anti-national-sovereignty ideas have spread. The last large-scale amnesty in 1986 was not preceded by mass demonstrations by illegal aliens but was rather a bargaining chip among American legislators, negotiated in exchange for employer sanctions and a national worker-verification card. Predictably, the card never materialized, and the sanctions were never enforced; only the amnesty lived on.

By contrast, this year’s protesters spoke the language of the anti-sovereignty intelligentsia. This increasingly influential discourse was on display at a May conference of Latin American diplomats at the Library of Congress, which spun endless variations on the identical theme: migration is a fundamental human right. As Nicaragua’s minister of foreign affairs, Norman Caldera Cardenal, put it: “It is the responsibility of all nations to respect the dignity, integrity, and rights of all migrants.” (The delegations dutifully acknowledged the U.S. prerogative to decide its own immigration policy, but these ritual genuflections were insignificant compared with the invocations of migrants’ rights.) In less diplomatic language, Mexico’s bicameral permanent legislative commission calls American immigration policy “racist, xenophobic, and a profound violation of human rights,” reports George Grayson in The American Conservative.

Less than a week before the Library of Congress conference, illegal aliens on the streets of Southern California were making the identical demands: “We just want some respect and human rights,” a Santa Ana protester told the Los Angeles Times. “We’re fighting to give [immigrants] equal rights,” explained a marcher in Riverside, California, holding a “Legalize, Not Terrorize” sign.

This call for “human rights” is a clever one, for it hides its radical status in a rhetorical safe harbor. What, exactly, are the “human rights” that the U.S. is denying illegal aliens? They have unfettered access to free medical care, free education, welfare for their children, free representation in court when they commit crimes, every due-process protection during criminal prosecution that the Constitution guarantees citizens and legal immigrants, the shelter of labor laws, and the miracles of modern industrial society like clean water, the control of infectious diseases (including the ones that they bring with them), and plumbing. The only putative “right” that they lack—and that, of course, is the “human right” to which they and their ambassadors refer—is the right to legal status regardless of illegal entry.

So when the illegal-alien demonstrators and their government representatives demand respect for migrants’ “human rights,” they are asserting that U.S. immigration laws must fall before a more powerful claim. Despite the nondiscriminatory procedures for entry that Congress established, merely subjecting an illegal alien to an unequal status compared with legal migrants or citizens violates his human rights. Simply creating in his mind the teeniest thought that he may be penalized for his violation of American sovereignty is itself a callous abuse. The director of a Hispanic social-services agency in Georgia complained to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the federal government’s modest immigration arrests in April have “created a mental sickness, where people are depressed. Who wants to be thinking any minute you’re going to be arrested.” Mexico’s consul general in Austin, Jorge Guajardo, echoed this sense of outrage at the “fear” the immigration arrests had caused: “It doesn’t help society or anyone to have these people running scared,” he told the Austin American-Statesman.

The Bush administration and its conservative supporters have defended American law against international claims to override it. To the applause of conservative pundits, the administration has unsigned the International Criminal Court treaty and withdrawn from the Kyoto global-warming protocol. It refused to wait for UN Security Council approval to start the invasion of Iraq. It has claimed the right to interpret international human rights laws for itself during the war on terror, rather than defer to nonelected bodies like the UN or the International Committee of the Red Cross. Conservative pundits have supported Israel’s right to erect a security fence, despite the protestation by the UN International Court of Justice that the fence is illegal. Yet when it comes to immigration law, conservative open-borders advocates and the White House adopt the identical position as the growing anti-sovereignty movement, downplaying the violation of our border law and elevating the “rights” of the illegal migrant to sovereign status.

The illegal-alien rights movement has deployed another powerful contemporary rhetoric: ethnic victimology. As frequent as the demands during the protests to recognize illegals’ “human rights” were the demands for “respect.” “People have to learn to respect Mexicans, to respect immigrants and the work we do here,” an L.A. demonstrator told the Los Angeles Times. “Respect for the migrant is fundamental,” Costa Rica’s minister of foreign affairs told the Library of Congress conference. According to this perspective, immigration policy insults aliens by subjecting them to different statuses according to whether they obeyed the law or not. While the rhetoric of wounded ethnic pride is long in the tooth by now, what is new about today’s protests is not only the sense of entitlement with which lawbreakers strike such an attitude, but also that many conservatives back them.

If the Bush administration and its supporters believe that they can reassert the supremacy of American immigration law after yet another amnesty, they are fooling themselves. No one will take the assurance that “this time we mean business” seriously. If the executive branch is not willing to enforce the current law against violators, a new set of laws will not suddenly strengthen its resolve.

The fictions of the proposed guest-worker law are particularly self-deluded. No AWOL guest worker is going to think that he faces the slightest risk of deportation, knowing that the government won’t even penalize people who entered the country illegally from Day One. If the proposed amnesty becomes law, expect illegal immigration to explode, just as it did after the 1986 amnesty, when illegal entry increased fivefold.

Principle 3: Support law enforcement. Come-and-get-it immigration advocates endlessly assert that immigration enforcement can’t work. This claim ignores the most important demonstration of conservative principles in the last 20 years.

Elite wisdom for decades held that the police cannot affect crime. The social forces pushing criminals to break the law—poverty, racism, addiction—were too powerful; policing could at best try to solve crimes after they happened. New York’s Mayor Giuliani and his first police chief, William Bratton, rejected that fatalism. They empowered the New York Police Department to enforce aggressively laws that had long lain moribund. The targets of the new public-order push complained bitterly that it was unfair to arrest them for marijuana sales and other crimes after years of de facto decriminalization. The NYPD continued its enforcement drive anyway and brought crime down 70 percent in a decade. It turns out that the well-founded fear of getting caught changes behavior.

Conservative open-borders advocates do not explain why policing brings domestic crime down but can have no effect on border crime. Nor can they point to any evidence to support their claim, since immigration laws have never been enforced in the interior of the country. To be sure, border defenses have been fortified over the years, but the drill has been: if you can get past the border patrol, you are home free. The most important action the government could take to end illegal immigration would be to penalize employers that unlawfully hire illegal aliens, but in 2004, it issued fine notices to only three companies. With such a negligible risk of punishment, the law’s deterrent effect has been zero. Illegal aliens, for their part, know that in none of their interactions with state services will anyone check their status—including, in most cities, when they are arrested for a crime—nor, if their illegal status is obvious, will anyone report them to the federal government.

Not only is the claim that enforcement doesn’t work based on no evidence whatsoever, but in fact what evidence there is runs in the opposite direction. The merest hint of enforcement leads employers and illegal aliens to make different calculations about the advantages of breaking the law. Employers in Gwinnett County, north of Atlanta, have grown reluctant to hire illegals after highly publicized federal raids on an international pallet company in April and the passage of an omnibus Georgia law that, among other measures, punishes employers for breaking the immigration rules. The state law has not been enforced yet, but already fewer employers are seeking illegal day laborers. A Mexican from Guanajuato told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is going back home if the jobs picture doesn’t pick up soon; others like him may be making similar plans.

Phoenix teaches the same lesson. Home Depot, on the city’s central business artery, for years tolerated the hundreds of illegal Hispanics congregating outside the store and in its parking lot. Neighboring businesses complained bitterly about lost customers and the constant littering, trespassing, and public urination. This May, Home Depot posted signs against trespassing and picking up day laborers, and hired off-duty police officers to enforce the rules. Since then, the day laborers have almost completely disappeared.

Federal agencies have designated a stretch of the Texas border a zero-tolerance zone for border trespassing since December 6, 2005. Rather than releasing illegal entrants upon capture, the feds jail them for their border crime, then deport them. One Border Patrol agent told the Washington Post that the 51 percent drop in apprehensions since the operation began are “the most dynamic results” he had seen in 19 years on the force. The Post concluded: Operation Streamline II “has shown what it takes to stop the flow of illegal immigrants: aggressive enforcement of the laws on the books.”

After 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security deported 1,500 illegal Pakistanis. An additional 15,000 then left voluntarily, reports Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies. There is no reason to think that this enforcement-through-attrition strategy won’t work as well for Hispanic illegals. Simply requiring employers to verify the status of their workers would deny jobs to 3 million illegal workers, which should lead many to leave.

Immigration liberalizers wield the threat of mass deportations as the only alternative to amnesty. By now this argument borders on bad faith, since it has been refuted so many times. The attrition strategy—relying on illegal aliens to leave voluntarily as their access to American benefits diminishes—would work just as effectively, without coercion.

Many open-borders boosters are hawks in the war on terror. But since many of the methods that maintain the border’s integrity overall are essential to keeping terrorists out of the country, these boosters should explain why they think we can wink at immigration-border violations and still protect the public against foreign enemies. Either we should give up on keeping immigration lawbreakers and terrorists from entering the country, or we should remain vigilant against both, since border security is key to terror protection.

Principle 4: Pay attention to facts on the ground. If someone proposed a program to boost the number of Americans who lack a high school diploma, have children out of wedlock, sell drugs, steal, or use welfare, he’d be deemed mad. Yet liberalized immigration rules would do just that. The illegitimacy rate among Hispanics is high and rising faster than that of other ethnic groups; their dropout rate is the highest in the country; Hispanic children are joining gangs at younger and younger ages. Academic achievement is abysmal.

Conservatives pride themselves on reality-based thinking that rejects utopian theories in favor of facts on the ground. Yet when it comes to immigration, they cling, against all contrary evidence, to the myth of the redeeming power of Hispanic family values, the Hispanic work ethic, and Hispanic virtue. Even more fanciful is the claim that it is immigrants’ children who constitute the real value to American society. The children of today’s Hispanic immigrants, in fact, are in considerable trouble.

Without doubt, many Latinos are upwardly mobile. But a significant portion of their children are getting sucked into street life, as a trip to almost any urban high school and some conversations with almost any Hispanic student will verify. In the field, the conservative fact-finder would learn that teen pregnancy is pervasive and that Hispanic boys increasingly regard fathering children as the prerequisite to becoming a “playah.”

Conservatives have never shrunk from pointing out that dysfunctional behavior creates long-term poverty among inner-city blacks. But when Hispanics engage in the same behavior, they fall silent. From 1990 to 2004, the number of Hispanics in poverty rose 52 percent, accounting for 92 percent of the increase in poor people. The number of poor Hispanic children rose 43 percent, reports Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson. By contrast, the number of poor black children has declined 17 percent since 1990. The influx of dirt-poor Mexicans drives the Hispanic poverty increase, of course, but their behavior once here doesn’t help.

Our immigration policy is creating a second underclass, one with the potential to expand indefinitely if current immigration rates merely stay the same, much less treble, as they would under the Hagel-Martinez Senate bill. Given the rapid increase in the Hispanic population, the prevalence of the following socially destructive behavior among Hispanics should be cause for serious concern.

Illegitimacy. Half of all children born to Hispanic Americans in 2002 were illegitimate, twice the rate for American whites and 42 percent higher than the overall American rate. The birthrate for Hispanic teens is higher than that for black teens. In Santa Ana, California, which has the highest proportion of people who speak Spanish at home of any large U.S. city—74 percent—the teen birthrate was twice the national teen average in 2000. This predilection for out-of-wedlock childbearing among Hispanics cannot be blamed solely on corrosive American culture, since the illegitimacy rate for foreign-born Hispanics is 40 percent. The illegitimacy rate in Mexico is 38 percent; in El Salvador, it is 72 percent.

It is hard to reconcile these statistics with the durable myth of superior Hispanic family values. A random walk through Santa Ana encountered ample evidence of Hispanic family breakdown. Livia came illegally from Mexico six years ago and then bore two illegitimate children; she now sells fruit from a pushcart on Main Street. A few blocks away, a 23-year-old illegal unmarried mother from El Salvador is protesting for smaller class sizes (an irony lost on her) outside a Santa Ana school board meeting. She came to the U.S. at age ten, dropped out of high school, and had her son “really young.” He is now on welfare. This unwed mother prides herself on not having had any more children. “So many Latinas are having so many kids,” she says disapprovingly. “Kids are having kids.”

Even the mainstream media can’t help stumbling across the Hispanic illegitimacy epidemic. Reporting on this spring’s illegal-alien protests in downtown L.A., the Los Angeles Times turned up Guadalupe Aguilera, the mother of five illegitimate children. Aguilera thinks herself self-sacrificing for putting her children only on the WIC federal food program. If she had documents, she said, she could take advantage of a far greater range of welfare benefits. “I lose money that I could give my children,” she complained to the Times. Increasingly, Hispanic family values mean collecting welfare for out-of-wedlock children.

Academic failure. It would be useful for open-borders optimists to spend some time in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is 73 percent Hispanic, and where just 40 percent of Hispanic students graduate. (Nationwide, 53 percent of Hispanics graduate from high school, according to the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene—the lowest rate among all ethnic groups.) Of those Hispanic students who do graduate, just 22 percent have completed the course work necessary for admission to a four-year state college—which means that of all Hispanic students who enter in ninth grade, fewer than 15 percent will graduate ready for college. Immigrant advocates have fiercely opposed in court a long-deferred California high school exit exam, which would require students to answer just over 50 percent of questions testing eighth-grade-level math and ninth-grade-level English. The California Research Bureau predicts that if the exam becomes a reality, Hispanic graduation rates would drop well below 30 percent.

A recent Los Angeles Times series on high school dropouts put some faces on the numbers. Eleven male Hispanic friends entered Birmingham High School in Van Nuys together in 2001; only three graduated. Because the boys spent so much time cutting classes—usually hanging out at fast-food restaurants—most failed to log any academic progress and saw no sense in staying enrolled. Drugs, turf rivalries, and fathering children also contributed to their failure to graduate. Birmingham’s teachers despair at their students’ lack of academic commitment and at their belief that seat time should entitle them to a passing grade. Reports Ronald Fryer in Education Next, hostility toward academic achievers is even higher among Hispanics than among blacks.

Schools spend huge sums trying to improve the Hispanic graduation rate, even hiring “outreach consultants” for dropout prevention. One Santa Ana consultant’s approach is predictably multicultural. “We need to teach teachers that students need to be proud of where they are coming from,” she told me. But of course Hispanic school failure derives not from ethnic neglect—the Santa Ana schools glorify the Hispanic heritage to a fault—but from parents who don’t demand rigorous academic application and don’t stand up to corrosive popular influences. At Santa Ana High School, I spoke with a former student, Julio, who had been expelled as a troublemaker in ninth grade, then returned briefly in the tenth grade but didn’t take a single class. “Me and my friends ditched; our parents didn’t know.” It is the cultural capital that immigrants bring with them that most determines their success; the work ethic of poor Mexicans does not carry over to their children’s schooling, and we are all paying the price.

The more-immigrants-the-better proponents counter that early-twentieth-century Italian immigrants were also indifferent to schooling but eventually joined the middle class. But by contrast with the economy of a century ago, today’s knowledge-based economy values education above all else. College-educated workers have seen a 22 percent increase in real income since 1980, while high school dropouts lost 3 percent of their wages. High school dropouts will almost certainly remain poor, imposing huge welfare and health-care costs on taxpayers while lowering tax receipts. Native-born Hispanics collected welfare at over twice the rate as native-born whites in 2005; the foreign-born Hispanic welfare rate was nearly three times that of native-born whites.

Gang culture. In his prime-time May radio address promoting amnesty, President George Bush invoked a marine, Guadalupe Denogean, as the embodiment of immigrant values. Like Denogean, today’s immigrants are willing, said Bush, “to risk everything for the dream of freedom.” Many immigrants do share Denogean’s patriotic ethic. But for every immigrant soldier, there are as many less admirable counterparts. A selection of Hispanic portraits could just as well have picked out Connie Retana, a 38-year-old Anaheim, California, resident, who in February egged on her 18-year-old son, Martin Delgado, as he and his gang friends raped a 23-year-old for seven hours in retaliation against the young woman’s boyfriend. A survey of Hispanic family values might also include the Santa Ana mother who threatened in 2004 to kill her neighbors if they testified against her gangster son in a gun-assault case. Then there’s the extended family of criminals in Pomona, California, who raised Valentino Arenas: the 18-year-old sought membership in Pomona’s 12th Street gang by killing a California highway patrol officer in cold blood in April 2004. Following a sweep in May of the gang, which specializes in large-scale drug trafficking, murder, and extortion, Los Angeles district attorney Steve Cooley excoriated the families across the California Southland who are “aiding and abetting murders in Los Angeles County” by refusing to cooperate with authorities or curtail their children’s crimes.

Open-borders conservatives point to the relatively low crime rate among immigrants to deny any connection between high immigration and crime. But unless we can prevent immigrants from having children, a high level of immigration translates to increased levels of crime. Between the foreign-born generation and their American children, the incarceration rate of Mexican-Americans jumps more than eightfold, resulting in an incarceration rate that is 3.45 times higher than that of whites, according to an analysis of 2000 census data by the pro-immigrant Migration Policy Institute.

California, with one-quarter of the nation’s immigrants and its greatest concentration of Mexicans and Central Americans, is the bellwether state for all things relating to unbridled Hispanic immigration, including crime. The Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, conducted by sociologists Alejandro Portes of Princeton and Rubén G. Rumbaut of the University of California, Irvine, followed the children of immigrants in San Diego and Miami from 1992 to 2003. A whopping 28 percent of Mexican-American males between the ages of 18 and 24 reported having been arrested since 1995, and 20 percent reported having been incarcerated—a rate twice that of other immigrant groups. Anyone who speaks to Hispanic students in immigrant-saturated schools in Southern California will invariably hear the estimate that 50 percent of a student’s peers have ended up in gangs or other criminal activities.

Gang life—both Hispanic and black—immediately asserted itself last July when the Los Angeles Unified School District opened a model high school to ease overcrowding. Despite amenities that rival those of private schools—a swimming pool, Mac computers, a ballet studio, a rubber track, and a professional chef’s kitchen—it instantly gained the distinction of being one of the most violent campuses in the system. Shots rang out in front of the school on the second day of classes, reports the Los Angeles Times, and three days after opening ceremonies, police arrested a student with an AK-47 on the campus perimeter. Brawling students attacked safety officers and tried to grab their guns in December, while cops pepper-sprayed a dean breaking up a gang fight in March. Students sell meth in the classrooms, graffiti covers the stairwells, textbooks, and high-design umbrella-covered picnic tables, and a trip to the bathroom requires an adult safety escort.

Uncertain assimilation. Multicultural cheerleaders argue that assimilation is proceeding apace by pointing to the fact that virtually all third-generation Hispanics can speak English. Even so, linguistic and cultural segregation among Hispanics is increasing. The percentage of Hispanics living in Hispanic enclaves rose from 39 percent in 1990 to 43 percent in 2000, reports Robert Samuelson, and as more and more aliens from Mexico and Central America enter, the size of Spanish-speaking-only areas expands. Livia, the unmarried mother selling fruit on Santa Ana’s Main Street, says that no one she associates with speaks English. A coffee-shop owner down the block observes that it’s too easy in Santa Ana not to learn English. “It’s all Spanish-speaking here,” she says. In California, the academic achievement gap between students with little English and English speakers is widening.

Meanwhile, taxpayers are footing the bill for interpreters across a host of government functions and for the translation of countless government documents. California spends $82.7 million a year on criminal-court interpreters for those 40 percent of its residents who speak a language other than English at home. At the same time, Spanish may be developing into a language of cultural assertion and opposition. A Hispanic resident of El Paso told New York’s radio station WNYC in May that teen workers in fast-food and other retail outlets regularly refuse to answer her in English when she addresses them. At a city council meeting this March in Maywood, California, the illegal-alien sanctuary, a resident suggested that a council member was using English as a sign of disrespect. All this adds up to a significant, and accelerating, transformation of American culture.

Pro-amnesty forces promote the Ellis Island conceit that illegal immigrants “risk everything for the dream of freedom,” as President Bush put it in his May address. The president’s assessment, while flattering, is not particularly accurate. However lousy the Mexican economy, there are few if any political freedoms enjoyed by Americans that Mexico denies. It is the Yanqui dollar, not untasted freedom, that brings the vast majority of illegals here. “The dream that most of us hold on to is the Mexican dream,” Efrain Jimenez, an official with the Federation of Zacatecan Clubs of Southern California, told me last year. “The Mexican dream is to make enough money to go back and own your own business. Four-fifths of Mexicans here would say that if they had a job in Mexico, they’d go back right away.” Most Mexican immigrants do not intend to become Americans; they come wanting to return to their home country, but end up staying out of inertia. They naturalize at half the rate of Asians or Europeans. This is not a recipe for assimilation.

Mexico’s Posturing Elites

The immigration mess has produced one compensation: the pleasure of watching the blowhard posturing of Mexico’s elites. Molière’s comic buffoons never achieved the sheer perfection of hypocrisy, gall, and self-abasement on almost daily display from the Mexican diplomatic and political corps.

The obsession with the Yanqui imperialist next door is Mexico’s most serious wasting disease. Keeping the specter of Yanqui interference alive means blaming the U.S. for all of Mexico’s problems and asserting Mexico’s incapacity to solve those problems on its own. Yet this renunciation of agency does not entail humility. To the contrary, the more insistent the claim that Mexico can do nothing for itself, the louder its leaders roar, and the more aggressively they denounce their savior and nemesis.

A recent entry in this ongoing performance is a May 4 New York Times op-ed by Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican foreign minister and currently a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University. As foreign minister, Castañeda played hardball, arguing that unless the U.S. gave Mexico what he called the “full enchilada,” that is, amnesty for its illegal migrants and a much higher immigration ceiling, it would . . . it would . . . well, in truth it would do nothing but increase its furious criticism of American abuses.

In his Times op-ed, Castañeda continues his “amnesty or else” theme, but this time he has actually come up with an “or else”: the further leftward lurch of Mexico and Latin America.

Castañeda distinguishes between two kinds of leftism: the “wrong” nationalist Left and the good “progressive” Left. (We will pass over his classically Latin American belief in the good Left.) The “wrong part of the Left” is gaining ground in Latin America, Castañeda says, in the persons of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a candidate in Mexico’s July 2 presidential race. If López Obrador were to take the Mexican presidency (which as of this writing he apparently has failed to do, though he has not conceded), the “wrong” Left could end up “controlling a 2,000-mile border with the United States,” Castañeda declares.

Whose responsibility is it to prevent the bad Left from taking over Mexico? America’s, of course! After warning of a return of the “corrupt authoritarian machinery that governed Mexico for 70 years,” Castañeda follows with a non sequitur: “This is where leadership on immigration reform from George W. Bush and broad-minded Republican senators comes in.” Someone not stricken with Yanqui obsession might think that it is up to Mexicans to keep a destructive ideology out of their own house. But that hypothesis assumes agency on the part of El Norte’s oppressed southern neighbor. Castañeda knows better. Rather, it is up to the U.S. to “strengthen support for Mexico’s policies of the last decade” by passing “sensible” immigration reform and thus blocking the rise of López Obrador.

Castañeda notes more in sorrow than in anger that after Mexican president Vicente Fox “staked much of his prestige on President Bush’s commitment to fix immigration policy”—meaning, of course, opening the American border up further—”Mr. Bush left Mr. Fox empty-handed.” Castañeda is willing to forgive, however, so long as the U.S. lives up to its responsibility to “give Mr. Fox a huge boost” by granting an amnesty and liberalizing its immigration rules.

One can think of many ways in which President Fox could have given himself—and his party’s designated successor, Felipe Calderón—a huge boost. Purging corruption in the police forces and throughout government, freeing entrepreneurs from crippling regulations, ending state control of vital industries, and encouraging and protecting foreign investment are but a few. Such actions, however, would require dismantling the status quo. It is much easier to demand that the U.S. open the border safety valve further, so that millions of surplus Mexicans, unable to find opportunity for advancement in the lethargic, overregulated Mexican economy, can escape rather than revolt.

As a former diplomat, Castañeda can snarl as well as wheedle and whine. He warns that nothing could offer “better proof” to the wrong Left of “America’s not-so-benign neglect and imperial arrogance as further paralysis on immigration.” Oh, dear. Here Castañeda has been playing the good leftie to Hugo Chávez’s and Evo Morales’s bad leftie, and now it turns out that there is not much difference between them. Both kinds of leftie at heart view the U.S. as a malign imperial force, despite its billions in foreign aid and the blanket of security protection that it offers Latin America.

Like the maestro that he is, Castañeda saves his most brilliant move for the end. After a column devoted to the proposition that it is America’s responsibility to keep the bad lefties out of Mexico’s presidential palace, Castañeda pulls out that hoariest of conspiracy theories: American meddling in Mexican sovereignty! By opening its borders fully, Castañeda explains, the U.S. would encourage Mexican political “continuity . . . without interfering in its neighbor’s political process.” Just when you thought that Castañeda’s combination of chest-thumping bravado, cultivated helplessness, and hypocrisy could not get any more shameless, he tops himself. Hardly a day goes by when Mexican officials don’t hand out identification cards to illegal Mexicans in the U.S. and promote the cards as a de facto legalizing device, don’t advise their citizens about safe illegal travel into the U.S., and don’t berate American policymakers for distinguishing illegal from legal migrants. Yet here is Castañeda snappishly warning against American political interference, even as he demands that America guarantee President Fox’s political legacy.

A more economically and psychologically stable southern neighbor would benefit the U.S. enormously, but it would come at a considerable cost in entertainment value.
 

Principle 5: Prefer local decision makers over remote elites. Illegal immigration has prompted a powerful grassroots democratic reaction, as people in areas most affected by Hispanic immigration try to regain control of their communities. Cities, counties, and states have passed laws to regulate day-laborer sites, to push employers into compliance with immigration laws, to allow police officers to cooperate with federal immigration agents, to prevent illegal aliens from collecting welfare and from voting, and to tighten driver’s-license requirements, among other initiatives.

After appeals from illegal-alien advocacy groups, judges have struck down many of these laws. Ordinarily, conservatives would deplore such thwarting of the people’s will. When it comes to illegal immigration, however, they side with the elites in robes and on Capitol Hill who dismiss the public as know-nothing rubes. Open-borders conservatives denounce California’s Proposition 187 as vehemently as any Hispanic activist, even though the judicially overruled referendum—which denied nonemergency free health care and free public education to illegal aliens—was simply a cry for help from California taxpayers, struggling with the enormous strains that illegal aliens were putting on their state’s social welfare systems.

Conservatives have historically trusted local decision making over distant Washington solutions. The tradition of federalism holds that people closest to a problem are best able to assess and resolve it. Yet the open-borders Right waves away the fervent local lawmaking around illegal immigration as merely an outbreak of xenophobia. Would such conservative legalizers argue that the 63 cities and counties that founded the Coalition of Mayors and County Executives for Immigration Reform, a movement trying to alert Washington to the burdens of illegal immigration, have been taken over by racists? Do they really think that they themselves see matters more clearly than angry local residents whose local hospital has gone bankrupt under the strain of serving immigrants with no insurance, or than parents who no longer feel welcome in their local schools, or than business owners harmed by the crowds of day laborers on the sidewalk who scare their customers away?

Connecticut’s Greenwich Hospital recently treated an illegal Guatemalan with severe drug-resistant TB, after his local hospital in Port Chester, New York, had gone bust from uninsured immigrants. The uncompensated bill for two and a half months of in-patient treatment totaled $200,000, not including the fees for the numerous specialists on the case, which probably added another $100,000 to $150,000. One surgery alone to remove a crippling accretion on his spine—a condition unknown outside the Third World—lasted an entire day. All of the Guatemalan’s associates tested positive for TB, and all worked in restaurants, reports his surgeon, Dr. Katrina Firlik, in the Wall Street Journal. Such episodes, invisible to conservative elites, make a deep impression on local taxpayers and insurance policyholders.

Arizona and California lawmakers want to free taxpayers from the nearly $1 billion a year burden of detaining illegal criminals—and the even costlier burden of detaining those illegals’ children. In Fresno, now 45 percent Hispanic, 20 percent of the county jail inmates are illegal immigrants, as are about one-quarter of emergency-room patients. No wonder Fresno’s mayor called in November 2005 for securing the border. The county of Riverside, California, voted in April to start turning in its illegal-alien jail inmates—who make up between 12 and 25 percent of its inmate population—to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, joining a handful of jail systems now abandoning the long-standing taboo against checking criminals’ immigration status. Naturally, immigrant advocates in Southern California have branded the new policy a civil rights violation.

Lived experience fuels these citizen movements for immigration control. If conservatives dismiss them as delusional, the Republican Party will pay dearly at the polls. Rather than dismissing the public’s anguish over large-scale lawbreaking, conservatives should honor the public’s commitment to the sanctity of the legislative will.

The proponents of amnesty have manufactured an artificial crisis. They say that it is imperative to legalize the millions of illegals here now, so that the illegals can “come out of the shadows.” In reality, the minor inconveniences imposed by illegal status are nothing more than what the illegals bargained for. Illegal aliens have no legitimate claim to be legalized before the country makes sure that its border control is working. Enforcement must precede a liberalization of immigration rules—which is why “comprehensive” immigration reform (the conservative code word for amnesty and increased levels of immigration) is not the solution to our border crisis but rather a guarantee of continued anarchy. Amnesty and the impossibility of enforcing a complicated new immigration scheme will undermine border control, just as they did in 1986. The first item of business on the conservative agenda should be enforcing the law already on the books.

But the most important value that conservatives can bring to this debate is honesty. Many of the costs imposed by Mexican immigrants are a function of their lack of education, their low incomes, and their own and their children’s behavior, not their legal status. Without question, we must balance those costs against the immigrant generation’s admirable work ethic. But immigration reform that institutionalizes the present immigration mix—or, worse, increases its volume by three to five times—is certain to expand the Hispanic underclass. There are many educated foreigners patiently waiting for permission to migrate to the United States. The United States can better honor its immigrant heritage by accelerating their entry rather than by continuing to favor the most low-skilled of our neighboring populations.