On Sunday, April 19, 2009, Secretary Napolitano went on CNNs State of the Union and proclaimed that crossing the border illegally is not a crime. This statement left a lot of folks scratching their heads given that U.S. lawthe law Napolitano is sworn to upholdsays quite the opposite. Section 8, Title 1325 of the U.S. code clearly states that those who enter the U.S. illegally are committing a crime.
This interpretation of the law by Secretary Napolitano seems to be the latest in an effort by the Obama Administration to scale back interior immigration enforcement efforts in the United States. As recently as March 28th, Napolitano made the decision to delay a series of immigration raids and other workplace actions aimed at finding illegal workers. At the same time, both President Obama and Secretary Napolitano have announced new initiatives intending to send the message that they take the issues at the southern border seriously. But the Administration cannot fight cartels while ignoring illegal immigrationpeople smuggling is part of the problem, not a separate issue. Legalization will only make matters worse. Granting the people here illegally asylum will only encourage more illegal border crossing. Likewise, failing to enforce workplace and immigration laws will only encourage more to ignore the law.
The fight has to go beyond the border. Just adding inspections on people heading south is not going to work. Homeland Security will inconvenience everyone but the smugglers who dont care if some of their loads get caught and will seek alternative routes. On the U.S. side, there has to be a robust integrated response of federal, state, and local law enforcement at the regional level (meshing with is going on in California, Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico) that targets the cartel and transnational gang networks. At the local level, the U.S. needs more community policing that targets criminal elements in the border community. That means more support and assistance for border county sheriff departments.
Secretary Napolitanos job is to follow and enforce the lawnot to use her authority to undermine it.
Officer, I took this Ferrari off the lot illegally, but it is not a crime. Janet Napolitano, mouthpiece for President Obama, says so.
Posted by: ed ||
04/21/2009 10:34 Comments ||
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#3
I guess it's OK for anybody from anywhere in the whole wide world to just come on in then. Come on, folks! You're all welcome! Get your welfare checks. Free welfare checks! Hurry while they last.
#6
Obama campaigned and was elected largely on an illusion. It shouldnt come as any big surprise that his administration would set policy any different.
Come one come all and witness The Amazing Obama as he performs the famous Rhams-Crisis mirage.
Folks as you can plainly see theres nothing up his sleeve as his lovely assistant Hillary shares the blame for border violence and a Mexican economy in the dumper.
Watch as he waves his magic wand. And presto more ICE agents are sent to the border to combat the banditos.
For the grand finale Abracadabra the skeleton resources needed for interior operations end up performing the interdiction duties reserved for the Mexican border authorities.
And the applause from the Latino special interest groups is deafening.
#7
Let me get this stright. The Secretary of Homeland Security - this is the department responsible for securing our homeland - is claiming that violating our borders is *not* a crime?
This is The Onion right? Please let it be The Onion
I wonder what will be her excuse when (not if) another 9/11 type attack is successful.
#8
Jan "Bigfoot" Napolitano does not have the role of interpreting the law, just enforcing it. She should wait until AG Holder determines that the law doesn't say what it says and then not enforce it.
#9
This is not surprise except by the brazen nature of the assertion. Just plain and simple, this administration only plans to enforce the laws that it choses. This is the beginning of the Imperium, not another presidency. These folks feel they are above the law, and above the constitution and above the oath each one took to support and defend the Constitution and "enforce the law." This screams for response in the courts, and punishing public reaction against this idiot at DHS.
#10
Bad choice of words, but Napolitano is half right. That is, unless you have been *observed* illegally border crossing, it has long been regarded as a "non-prosecutable misdemeanor offense."
And once you are an illegal alien inside the US, it is a civil, not a criminal offense to be here. The serious felonies are both for human traffickers, and individuals who have been legally barred from reentry.
#15
Newc:
youre right. alternate definition of rake:
"debauchee, libertine, rounder - a dissolute person; usually a man who is morally unrestrained" She is a man trapped inside a woman's body, a rake.
#18
Anonymoose, think about the logic of what you said. Not the legal flatulence, the logic. If a person is here with no evidence of legal entry, but no one saw them enter, you assert it is a cicl matter becasue there is no proof of crime. Horse manure. It is like the way everyone is saying the "alledged pirate". Insane, and just because it is wrapped in legal jargon, still insane. The little shit was in the g-d boat and only came on board the Bainbridge to get free medical attention. What can any reasonable person draw from to support "alledged"? This kind of specious reasoning dressed up as law is killing us....
The reasonable answer is...no papers, deport, pirate - hang, in both cases with as little cost to the over-burdened American taxpayer as possible!
#19
The real reason for this Napolitano assertion just screams from the page - if they aren't illegal, there can be no barrier to AMNESTY, and 12-15million new Democrat voters to permanently fleece the American people through tranfer of wealth programs........and oh by the way, amke the Democrats the ruling elite for as long as the nation lasts until it stumbles and falls, like Rome done in by soft-headed twits, social progressives and lawyers.....
#20
Iblis
Yes, not all men are rakes. I meant it in the sense Janet might be one. I do think her morals are at issue. She doesn't seem to think keeping illegals out is a priority which is pure hogwash.
Chris Hill is slowly overcoming GOP opposition that has delayed his nomination as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, but it's still unclear why the Obama administration revoked the offer they gave to someone else first General Anthony Zinni.
Zinni told CNN Monday he hasn't been given any explanation about why the offer he got in January for the post, which he accepted, was abruptly taken back.
Zinni confirmed in an e-mail that he was asked to take the job by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and even congratulated by Vice President Joe Biden. But then, the offer was revoked and extended to Hill a development Zinni says he heard on the news.
Zinni is a retired four-star Marine general and former head of Central Command. Like President Barack Obama, he was an early critic of the Iraq war.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, told CNN he would have wholeheartedly supported Zinni for position because of his knowledge of the region. Graham, along with Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, have led the opposition to Hill, citing his "controversial legacy" as point man in the six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear program and his lack of experience in the Middle East.
Graham, however, voted Monday to move Hill's nomination forward, while McCain did not vote. Brownback voted against Hill.
A State Department spokesman had no comment on Zinni.
A senior Democratic congressional source, who would not be quoted speaking about private deliberations, called the decision to nominate Hill over Zinni one of the "great mysteries" of the early days of the Obama administration.
#3
I ran into General Zinni a few times when he was mentoring exercises down at Joint Forces Command.
He was retired by then but didn't seem like a bad sort to me.
#4
Best "Charlie Brown' cartoon I ever saw, he's running towards Lucy and the football, when he gets there he kicks lucy out of the picture.
Ball stays there spinning from his passing wind.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/21/2009 21:32 Comments ||
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#5
I heard Zinni speak as a young butter bar when he was still active. Good Marine General. I disagree w/him on iraq & not sure of all the state dept stuff but he was critical of Bush, although I know a lot of top brass that don't like either Bush or BHO.
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.
Mrs. Feinstein's intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn't a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars.
Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) - the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman - had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.
About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum's private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE's stock closed Monday at $5.14.
Spokesmen for the FDIC, Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum's firm told The Times that there was no connection between the legislation and the contract signed Nov. 13, and that the couple didn't even know about CBRE's business with FDIC until after it was awarded.
Senate ethics rules state that members must avoid conflicts of interest as well as "even the appearance of a conflict of interest." Some ethics analysts question whether Mrs. Feinstein ran afoul of the latter provision, creating the appearance that she was rewarding the agency that had just hired her husband's firm.
"This clearly gives the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Kent Cooper, a former federal regulator who specializes in government ethics and disclosures. "To maintain the people's trust in government, it is incumbent on a legislator to take the extra steps necessary to ensure that when she introduces any legislation that it does not cause people to question her motives or the business activities of her spouse."
Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum, a wealthy investment banker, are a power couple in both Washington and California who sat behind President Obama during his inauguration in January. Mrs. Feinstein also is mentioned as a candidate for California governor.
The FDIC contract "highlights the problem of a senator with a spouse who has extensive business interests that intersect frequently with the federal government," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). "Even if there is no actual conflict of interest, it often has the appearance of a conflict."
#1
The FDIC contract "highlights the problem of a senator with a spouse who has extensive business interests that intersect frequently with the federal government,"
Do you mean like...Michelle Obama being appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals?
She resigned from the Military Construction committee where she bestowed contracts on her husband's firm so that she could do other 'good works' for him elsewhere.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Chris Hill is slowly overcoming GOP opposition that has delayed his nomination as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, but it's still unclear why the Obama administration revoked the offer they gave to someone else first General Anthony Zinni.
On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms. 
