In a time when America’s immigration system is swamped – when illegal immigrants are routinely caught and released, many of whom are dangerous – it seems that one of ICE’s top priorities is public relations with illegal immigration advocates.  Yesterday, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait announced via the Department of Homeland Security website that he had been named ICE’s “first-ever public advocate.”

Lorenzen-Strait

His job will be to “serve as a point of contact for individuals, including those in immigration proceedings, NGOs, and other community and advocacy groups, who have concerns, questions, recommendations or important issues they would like to raise.” This new role, says Lorenzen-Strait, will help ICE “focus the agency’s immigration enforcement resources on sensible priorities” – code for doing less, since the Obama Administration consistently makes a big deal out of the notion that most illegal immigrants aren’t dangerous and therefore should be left to their own devices – and “implement policies and processes that priorities the health and safety of detainees in our custody.” And he has one more job, according to ICE Enforcement Director John Morton: he’ll have to explain to all of us why ICE lets illegal immigrants off the hook.

What did Lorenzen-Strait used to do? He’s been with ICE since 2008. Before that, he was a pro bono attorney in Maryland, doing child advocacy and divorce work via Community Legal Services. How does that qualify you for working in immigration, exactly? And then there’s the question of money spent. It’s more and more obvious these days that working for the government is the quickest road to a healthy paycheck – and Lorenzen-Strait’s salary proves it. In 2010, he was paid $112,224 by the feds. We can only imagine that the salary has risen since then. Not bad for being a public relations officer who does nothing to actually enforce immigration law.

We’re constantly hearing that the government has trouble finding places to cut spending. This seems like a good place to start.

Big Government has obtained exclusive excerpts of a book scheduled to be released next month, which outline problems with the federal government’s handling of the drug war.

The book, The Border Challenge, authored by T. Michael Andrews, a former adviser at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics office, is scheduled to be released in bookstores in early February.

Andrews has suggestions for how federal drug enforcement agencies can reshape their strategies along America’s northern and southern borders, and he explains how government bureaucracy and shifting goals have made winning the drug war impossible thus far.

“One of the problems with having so many offices in the federal government directed at a common cause is direction and leadership,” Andrews wrote. “The scope of bureaucracy can be overwhelming. If one department wants to take a different policy direction from another, this could lead to an immediate bureaucratic tie-up and in some cases pushback among the many agencies.”

According to Andrews, bureaucracy comes from partisan politics, lack of consistent focus, and jurisdictional conflicts within competing law enforcement agencies that are not working together.

“One of the problems we always had–even today, I’m sad to say, are that there are still problems between the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement),” he said during an exclusive interview conducted from his home in northern Virginia.

“Those are really the two agencies that have drug enforcement power. ICE is charged with stopping any and all contraband coming into the United States under Title 18, and the DEA is charged with both domestic and international drug enforcement under Title 21.”

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Illegal alien amnesty is no longer the theoretical consideration of federal immigration officials inside the Obama administration. No more musings by Obama administration bureaucrats on how best to bypass Congress and implement illegal alien amnesty in stealth.

The secret is now out. And, as reported by The New York Times, illegal alien amnesty is now the official policy of the United States of America, courtesy of the Obama administration:

The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday (November 17) of all deportation cases before the immigration courts and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal record.

The accelerated triage of the court docket — about 300,000 cases — is intended to allow severely overburdened immigration judges to focus on deporting foreigners who committed serious crimes or pose national security risks, Homeland Security officials said. Taken together, the review and the training, which will instruct immigration agents on closing deportations that fall outside the department’s priorities, are designed to bring sweeping changes to the immigration courts and to enforcement strategies of field agents nationwide.

First off, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should have but one priority: Protect American citizens by enforcing the law. The vast majority of American citizens believe if a law’s worth having it’s worth enforcing, including laws that prohibit people from sneaking across the border and living in the shadows, often on the taxpayer’s dime! But not this White House. This White House simply picks and chooses which laws it wishes to enforce based on its own whims and political and election needs. And that is a sure path to chaos, confusion and discontent.

And don’t believe for a second the Obama administration’s line that criminal illegal aliens won’t find themselves “outside the department’s priorities.”

Judicial Watch uncovered documents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) proving that immigration officials were urged to use “prosecutorial discretion” to dismiss deportation proceedings against a wide variety of illegal alien criminals — including those convicted of serious crimes such as sexual assault, solicitation of murder, aggravated assault, assaulting a police officer, and kidnapping, as well as numerous drug charges.

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The Obama administration stealth amnesty scandal that emerged last year is heating up. It all began with an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo outlining ways the Obama administration could bypass Congress to enact amnesty for millions of illegal aliens through “administrative means.”

And then the Houston Chronicle exposed an effort by the administration to suspend the deportations of illegal aliens that supposedly have not been convicted of any “serious” crimes.

JW filed two FOIA lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to get to the truth about this deportation plan. And according to documents our litigation recently pried loose, not only did Obama administration officials skirt congressional authority when implementing this unlawful scheme behind closed doors, but apparently they also lied about it when they got caught.

The documents, which we obtained from the Obama DHS, show that DHS officials misled Congress and the public about the scope of the immigration enforcement policy change which gave wide latitude to local immigration officials to dismiss illegal alien deportation cases.

And perhaps most shocking of all, officials considered the dismissal of charges against illegal alien criminals convicted of violent crimes!

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Governor Pat Quinn quietly announced Illinois’ formal withdrawal from Secure Communities in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security.  This program, administered through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is fully successful only when state prison systems cooperate with the ICE and the Department of Home land Security.  States can choose to participate by  enabling discovery of the residency status of convicts held in state prisons and alerting ICE of upcoming convict release dates.  According to ICE, this program targets the “worst of the worst”, ensuring that these offenders no longer remain in the United States following their release from prison.

According to the FBI, Illinois ranks near the top in violent crime—number 14 out of the fifty states.  Now instead of ensuring deportation of violent criminals, the governor is choosing to release them into Illinois communities.  Such a policy may also serve to attract more criminals to this state as the risk of deportation following a conviction in Illinois is now significantly reduced.

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The Obama administration was playing games with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to turn over a report detailing the agency’s investigation of an illegal alien, Carlos Martinelly-Montano, who is charged with killing a Virginia nun in a drunk driving accident in August 2010.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) promised a federal court it would release the report earlier this year, but then later claimed that the document was in “draft” form, and therefore would not be released. (Click here to read some of the emails back and forth we had with DHS.)

Judicial Watch received the edited “final” report on March 3, 2011. The final report, which we were told by DHS was still being “worked on” last month, is dated November 24, 2010. This lying game shows the Obama DHS is thoroughly mendacious. The DHS report details policies and actions of the Obama administration and local governments that allowed Montano, an illegal alien who committed a series of crimes, to remain on the streets despite being subject to deportation.

Here is a detailed chronology of events as described in the report, which we received through a FOIA lawsuit we filed on December 2, 2010. As you’ll see, even though the Obama administration scrubbed the report, there is more than enough evidence of the amnesty and sanctuary policy agenda of the federal government, local authorities and the courts:

On December 7, 2007, Montano was convicted for driving under the influence (DUI) in Prince William County, Virginia and was sentenced to serve 30 days of incarceration. The judge in Prince William County, however, suspended all 30 days of the jail sentence with the result that Montano was not jailed for his offense. Local authorities did not seek to determine Montano’s immigration status nor did they contact ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].…

Almost one year later, on October 4, 2008, Montano was booked into jail in Prince William County and charged with another misdemeanor DUI. At the time of this arrest, the local authorities determined that Montano was an illegal alien. Thus, ICE lodged an immigration detainer against him. As a result of the immigration detainer, immigration officers took him into custody. On October 7, 2008, Prince William County officials released him from custody.…

[Rather than detaining Montano,] ICE agents determined that Montano was a candidate for the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program and … monitored his whereabouts using GPS technology.…

On April 27, 2009, as a result of the October 2008 DUI arrest, the Circuit Court of Prince William County convicted Montano and sentenced him to serve 12 months and 3 days in jail. However, the judge in Prince William County suspended 11 months and 13 days of Montano’s sentence. As a result of the judge’s decision, Montano served less than two weeks in Prince William County for his second DUI conviction.…

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Lawmakers in New York and Illinois were quick to recognize that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial offered a new opportunity to secure billions of additional taxpayer funds.

Both states are reeling from the combined effect of economic slowdown and years of profligate spending on government, grown far beyond what the tax base will support.   Thanks to President Obama’s decision to transfer terrorists from GITMO to U.S. soil, both states, and the city of New York, are going to be paid almost $3 billion dollars to secure, transport, administer, house, and contend with the requirements associated with having these terrorists in the United States.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the four other terrorists and all Americans associated with the trial, will require rigorous, differentiated security measures: twenty-four hour a day surveillance, transportation, housing and judicial security.  Certainly, New York will be required to raise its threat level to better prepare and respond to the new threat of  sympathetic  jihadists using the trial, as a showpiece of their own, to make a violent, retaliatory public statement.

Federal security and law enforcement agencies, such as DHS, FBI and US Marshals  will be working round the clock to provide the appropriate security, but will be unable to do all of the work required. New York, state and city, law enforcement officers will be required to share the burden, and will expect compensation from the federal government to provide this level of support.  Heavily-unionized, public employees in both states, are about to receive the most coveted of all Labor Union prizes, unlimited overtime that extends for years.

Bringing KSM to trial will be hugely expensive and will essentially represent a federalization of much of the New York state and city law enforcement and public services for the 5+ years that the trial process is likely to run.

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Virginia’s state troopers should have the authority to enforce federal immigration laws against the most dangerous criminal elements, Bob McDonnell, the state’s Republican candidate for governor has argued. This policy stance has larger federalist implications and should curry favor with 10^th amendment proponents, but it has earned little media attention throughout the campaign.

An obscure provision of federal law makes it possible for local and state officials to be trained as federal immigration agents. Section 287 (g)  of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorizes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to form partnerships that can be shaped to suit local priorities. Although this option has been available since 1996, most partnerships have been formed in just the past few years, according to ICE.

In an interview, McDonnell said he favors state-wide application of the 287 (g) program  because in his view it would compensate for the lack of resources available to ICE. While serving as attorney general, McDonnell worked with local governments in Prince William, Herndon and Rockingham counties to establish 287 (g) agreements. Tim Kaine, the state’s Democratic incumbent governor, has resisted using the program on a state-wide basis.

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