The Excuse is Immigration, But Federal Checkpoints Violate Everyone’s Rights

Via The Daily Bell

Federal agents set up shop in New Hampshire last week. They ran a Constitutionally-illegal checkpoint, violating the Fourth Amendment rights of countless Americans.

The big reward? They arrested 25 illegal immigrants, seven of them children. More than half of those detained had overstayed visas. That means they came to the U.S. legally in the first place and did not leave when their visa expired.

What could have spurred this callous disregard for the law? Well, a personal anecdote could shed some light on the situation.

A friend of mine from Brazil had a six-month visiting visa to the United States. He would come and stay with his uncle who had permanent residency. The way the rules work, it that my friend could use the visa as often as he wanted to travel to the United States, but couldn’t stay for longer than the six month period.

It was literally completely legal for him to fly to Brazil, spend the night, and fly back to the United States the next day. Then he could stay for another 6 months.

Being a rule follower, he did what the law said and flew back to Brazil where he stayed for about four months. The ticket to get back to the U.S. cost about $1,000. But when he arrived, he was denied entry to the United States. He was sent back to Brazil, and his visa was suspended for five years.

Why did this happen? After all, he followed all the rules. Officials said if he was staying 6 months at a time, he must have been working. Yes, because he stayed within the legal limits of his visa, the federal officials surmised that he must have violated the conditions of his visa.

Perhaps this unpredictability of U.S. Customs creates an incentive to overstay visas. Maybe the $1,000 plane tickets make it tempting to overstay a visa. Because maybe even if you follow the rules, you will arbitrarily be denied anyway, wasting your time, burning your money, and being separated from the rest of your family still in the States. Speaking of family, maybe the fact that many of the detained immigrants have kids in school in the U.S. means it is a ridiculous burden to make them leave every six months.

Yes, they broke the law. They broke complicated and restrictive immigration laws.

But why is it so important to follow immigration laws, while immigration officials completely disregard the Fourth Amendment?

Great job! Agents enforced immigration law by breaking Constitutional law. They stopped every car on I-93, without suspicion or probable cause. Generally, occupants of the vehicles are asked whether or not they are an American citizen.

If they refuse to answer, exercising their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, that is considered evidence of a crime, and they are detained for further questioning and possible search. Exercising a right is used as evidence of a crime. That is the point we have gotten to in the U.S.A. police state.

Using these illegal stop and search tactics, police found evidence of other crimes as well, unrelated to immigration.

The checkpoint also resulted in the seizure of two pounds of marijuana, as well as smaller amounts of cocaine, mushrooms and hash oil, all of which were seized from U.S. citizens, according to the Woodstock Police Department. In addition to the immigration detentions, 32 arrests were made for a range of infractions.

So there you have it, Americans’ Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were violated so that federal agents could prosecute victimless crimes. The only true victims in this whole checkpoint situation were all the people stopped by the agents.

Perhaps you aren’t concerned with the illegal immigrants’ treatment. What you should be concerned about is the convenient excuse increased immigration enforcement gives federal agents to trample your rights.

The harder they go after illegal immigrants, the more Americans will be ensnared, and have their rights violated. They will be stopped at checkpoints, subjected to illegal searches, and forced to be a witness against themselves.

This is how the government operates. Whether it is under the guise of a drug war, illegal immigration, or terrorism, their guns are truly only aimed at one target. The American people.

Senate Letter Reveals Staggering Number Of Murders By Illegal Aliens With Previous Criminal Convictions

A letter written by the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2015 to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General Loretta Lynch reveals news facts about the number and nature of crimes committed by illegal immigrants who had already been convicted of other crimes but were released back into the public either because their home country would not accept their deportation and/or because they exceeded a Supreme Court mandate prohibiting detention of deportable foreign nationals beyond six months. 

According to the letter, published by the Miami Herald, statistics provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials confirm that 121 homicides were committed in the U.S. between 2010-2014 by illegal immigrants who had already been convicted of a crime but were released back into society due to limitations on their detention.  In addition, ICE confirmed that of the 36,007 criminal aliens released from custody in 2013, 1,000 of them had already been convicted of new crimes as of June 2015.

“This disturbing fact follows ICE’s admission that, of the 36,007 criminal aliens it released from ICE custody in Fiscal Year 2013, 1,000 have been re-convicted of additional crimes in the short time since their release,” according to the letter, dated June 12, 2015.

The Senate Judiciary Committee letter revealed that 121 immigrant convicts were charged with homicide following their release from ICE custody between 2010 and 2014. It also noted that in 2014, ICE released 2,457 immigrant convicts because of the Supreme Court ruling prohibiting detention of deportable foreign nationals beyond six months.

Most of these immigrant convicts are nationals of 23 countries described by ICE as “recalcitrant” because they routinely refuse to take back deportables. The bulk of these immigrant convicts in 2014 — 1,183 — were from Cuba, according to the letter. The other “recalcitrant” countries include Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Zimbabwe, according to ICE.

A committee spokeswoman did not provide additional information on the letter when contacted by el Nuevo Herald last week.

But in response to the letter, Sarah Saldaña, then-director of ICE, stated that 33 of the 121 immigrant convicts accused of “homicide-related offenses” had been released on bond at the discretion of immigration courts. Another 24 were released because ICE was unable to obtain approval to deport them to their countries within the 180-day deadline set by the Supreme Court in 2001.

Of course, throughout the campaign cycle Trump was very clear about his intentions to deport the ~2 million illegal aliens currently residing the country with criminal convictions on their records. 

One weapon Trump has suggested he could wield to compel countries to take back their deportable nationals is halting the issuance of visas to visitors and immigrants from those nations.  While this has yet to happen, and would almost certainly result in additional legal challenges from the Left, it is certainly easy to imagine a scenario in which additional non-compliant countries could simply be added to his existing temporary immigration ban.

In a speech in Phoenix during the campaign, Trump vowed to deport immigrant criminals regardless of whether their countries agreed to take them back.

"There are at least 23 countries that refuse to take their people back after they’ve been ordered to leave the United States,” Trump said. “Including large numbers of violent criminals. They won’t take them back. So we say, ‘Okay, we’ll keep them.’ Not going to happen with me, not going to happen with me.”

Of course, Trump"s appearances with the families of victims murdered at the hands of illegal immigrants was a common occurrence on the campaign trail.

In his Phoenix immigration speech Aug. 31, Trump recalled the case of 21-year-old Sarah Root of Des Moines, Iowa, whose death in January 2016 was blamed on an undocumented immigrant who had been released after having been in custody despite being in the country illegally and having failed to show up in court for prior alleged crimes. Eswin Mejía, a Honduran, was charged in connection with Root’s death in a vehicle crash, was freed on bail and fled.

Trump also cited the case of Grant Ronnebeck, a 21-year-old convenience store clerk from Mesa, Arizona, whose murder was also blamed on an undocumented immigrant who had been previously convicted of burglary and had been released from federal custody.

Ronnebeck was killed allegedly over a pack of cigarettes in January 2015, and the murder was linked to Apolinar Altamirano, a Mexican national who was in deportation proceedings but who had been released on bond by an immigration court judge.

A third case Trump mentioned was that of Kate Steinle, gunned down in San Francisco by an undocumented Mexican, Juan Francisco López Sánchez, who had been deported five times previously but had managed to cross the border again undetected.

ICE officials have told Congress that they tried to prevent López Sánchez from bonding out of jail but failed to do so because authorities in San Francisco, a so-called “sanctuary city,” ignored an immigration detainer for the defendant.

Not surprisingly, and despite the damning data provided by ICE officials, Obama"s former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson told the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2015 that he did not believe visa sanctions against recalcitrant countries was the right policy, saying "I don’t necessarily believe that we ought to suspend immigration, travel from any of these countries because of this particular issue."

Somehow we suspect the Trump administration disagrees with the former DHS Secretary on the seriousness of this "particular issue."

The full letter from the Senate Judiciary Committee can be read below: