ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Deportation Proceedings in 12 U.S. Cities

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin (R) arrives at the U.S. District Court Ninth Circuit to present his arguments after filing an amended lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s new travel ban in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. on March 15, 2017

By Julia Edwards Ainsley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is developing plans to temporarily reassign immigration judges from around the country to 12 cities to speed up deportations of illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes, according to two administration officials.

How many judges will be reassigned and when they will be sent is still under review, according to the officials, but the Justice Department has begun soliciting volunteers for deployment.

The targeted cities are New York; Los Angeles; Miami; New Orleans; San Francisco; Baltimore, Bloomington, Minnesota; El Paso, Texas; Harlingen, Texas; Imperial, California; Omaha, Nebraska and Phoenix, Arizona. They were chosen because they are cities which have high populations of illegal immigrants with criminal charges, the officials said.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which administers immigration courts, confirmed that the cities have been identified as likely recipients of reassigned immigration judges, but did not elaborate on the planning.

The plan to intensify deportations is in line with a vow made frequently by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year to deport more illegal immigrants involved in crime.

The Department of Homeland Security asked for the judges’ reshuffle, an unusual move given that immigration courts are administered by the Department of Justice. A Homeland Security spokeswoman declined to comment on any plan that has not yet been finalized.

Under an executive order signed by Trump in January, illegal immigrants with pending criminal cases are regarded as priorities for deportation whether they have been found guilty or not.

That is a departure from former President Barack Obama’s policy, which prioritized deportations only of those convicted of serious crimes.

The policy shift has been criticized by advocate groups who say it unfairly targets immigrants who might ultimately be acquitted and do not pose a threat.

The cities slated to receive more judges have more than half of the 18,013 pending immigration cases that involve undocumented immigrants facing or convicted of criminal charges, according to data provided by the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review.

More than 200 of those cases involve immigrants currently incarcerated, meaning that the others have either not been convicted or have served their sentence. The Justice Department did not provide a breakdown of how many of the remainder have been convicted and how many are awaiting trial.

As part of the Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Justice Department is also sending immigration judges to detention centers along the southwest border. Those temporary redeployments will begin Monday.

‘AIMLESS DOCKET RESHUFFLING’

Former immigration judge and chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Schmidt said the Trump administration should not assume that all those charged with crimes would not be allowed to stay in the United States legally.

“It seems they have an assumption that everyone who has committed a crime should be removable, but that’s not necessarily true. Even people who have committed serious crimes can sometimes get asylum,” Schmidt said.

He also questioned the effectiveness of shuffling immigration judges from one court to another, noting that this will mean cases the judges would have handled in their usual courts will have to be rescheduled. He said that when he was temporarily reassigned to handle cases on the southern border in 2014 and 2015, cases he was slated to hear in his home court in Arlington, Virginia had to be postponed, often for more than a year.

“That’s what you call aimless docket reshuffling,” he said.

Under the Obama administration, to avoid the expense and disruption of immigration judges traveling, they would often hear proceedings from other courthouses via video conference.

The judges’ reshuffling could further logjam a national immigration court system which has more than 540,000 pending cases.

The cities slated to receive more judges have different kinds of immigrant populations.

Imperial, California, for example, is in one of the nation’s largest agriculture hubs, attracting large numbers of immigrant farmworkers from Mexico and Central America.

Bloomington, Minnesota, near St. Paul, is home to a large number of African immigrants, many of whom traveled from war-torn countries like Somalia to claim asylum in the United States.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Editing by Sue Horton and Alistair Bell)

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-immigration-judges-headed-12-u-cities-speed-215551535.html

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Military Nudity Investigation Expands

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., joined at left by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., questions Marine Gen. Robert B. Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on March, 14, 2017. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

WASHINGTON — The military scandal involving sharing of sexually explicit images of troops has expanded beyond the private social media site Marines United to a slew of gay pornography web pages with images of men wearing military uniforms engaged in sex acts, USA TODAY has learned.

The broadened investigation to an increasing number of websites underscores the complexity of policing social media sites where sensitive images can be uploaded in an instant for all to see. In the case of the sites with gay pornography, military investigators will be tasked with determining whether active-duty troops were involved in conduct that could bring discredit on their service, a potential violation of military law.

The Marine Corps is not the only service affected. Images of men in the uniforms of sailors, soldiers and airmen also appear on an array of Tumblr sites. Similar to the Marines United case, it is unclear whether men appearing in the images — some photographed engaging in sex — provided consent to have their images shared publicly. Victims of so-called revenge porn in the Marines United case have limited protection under military law if the photographs or videos were taken originally with their consent.

The Pentagon has established a joint military task force to handle the growing investigation, said MaryAnn Cummings, a spokeswoman for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Navy, Marine, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard investigators have “established a multi-service task force to expand the investigation,” she said.

Read more:

Senators rip top Marine over online nude photo sharing

Marines nude photo scandal involves all branches of military:  Lawmakers condemn explicit photos of female Marines posted on social media

Military officials briefed Congress on Thursday about the Marines United scandal, in which hundreds of active-duty Marines have viewed photos of servicewomen taken without their consent and cyber bullied some of them.

On some of the gay Tumblr sites, fully dressed troops appear in photos with their name tags visible. At least one such Marine did not agree for his photo to be republished amid a sea of images of men having sex, according Lt. Col. Eric Dent, a Marine Corps spokesman.

Air Force investigators also are now combing through a number of websites to look for victims, said Col. Pat Ryder, an Air Force spokesman.

“The Air Force Office of Special Investigations is investigating information and photographs from web sites hosting inappropriate photos of service members without prior consent,” Ryder said. “As part of that ongoing criminal investigation, airmen identified will be contacted directly by AFOSI to determine whether they are victims.”

Determining whether the men in the photos, many involved in group sex, are active-duty troops is possible, said a congressional source on a military oversight committee who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. NCIS has dedicated dozens of investigators to the matter, the source said. They can comb through the photos and identify troops with the use of facial-recognition software.

The revelation of the expanded investigation drew swift response from Capitol Hill. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat and member of the Armed Services Committee, called on Congress to intervene. Earlier this week, she blasted Marine and Navy officials for failing to hold commanders accountable for the problem.

“This scandal is out of control and the Department of Defense needs to get a handle on it immediately,” Gillibrand told USA TODAY in a statement. “Congress needs to demand accountability from the chain of command as to how so many service members, both women and men now, could be so easily exploited. Commanders have told us for decades that they can handle these issues, clearly they cannot, and Congress should step up and do its job and bring professionalism and accountability to the military justice system that has ignored predators for far too long.”

“The Department of Defense has to get to the bottom of this,” McCaskill said. “Our military leaders have a responsibility to prevent and address every kind of degrading behavior and harassment, regardless of whether it happens in the barracks or on the internet.”

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told the Senate this week that Marines need “to commit to get rid of this perversion to our culture.”

Punishment, including court martial, is possible if active duty troops can be identified on the pornographic websites, said Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, an advocacy organization for victims of sexual abuse in the military.

Precedent exists for booting troops from the ranks for posing nude in men’s magazines, said Christensen, who was also the top prosecutor for the Air Force. Court martial would be possible for troops who posted images of themselves in uniform exposing themselves or having sex.

“That wouldn’t fit the image the military wants to project, especially sexual activity in uniform,” Christensen said.

There is a defense for free speech and freedom of expression, he said. But the military has wide latitude in disciplining or dismissing troops for conduct that affects good order and discipline. Photos such as these, he said, certainly fill that bill.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/17/marine-corps-commandant-robert-neller-marines-united-pornography/99306778/

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Isis Hacker who is Responsible for the “Kill List” was Shot down by Drone Strike

The leader of a notorious ISIS hacking group responsible for distributing so-called ‘kill lists,’ has reportedly been killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Osed Agha, head of United Cyber Caliphate (UCC) hacking group was allegedly targeted by a U.S. drone strike on the Islamic State’s de-facto capital Raqqa, according to encrypted Telegram messages observed by The Foreign Desk.

Though jihadis initially remained skeptical at the news of Agha’s death, the group’s Telegram channel posted a video Thursday acknowledging “Our leader Osed Agha has been killed by a U.S. airstrike.”

The White House has not yet confirmed the strike.

The UCC group routinely posts ‘kill lists,’ containing names and addresses of Americans, ranging from ordinary citizens to police officers and State Department employees. Experts contend that much of the data is obtained from publicly available databases, though officials disagree whether these lists pose a serious threat or are intended to instill fear and panic among Americans.

 In recent months, the group touted achievements including the hacking of hundreds of social media accounts as well as carrying out several DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, targeting numerous websites and taking them offline.

The group previously posted vivid images expressing their desire to carry out attacks on the West, including a poster featuring U.S. President Donald Trump saying, “Will bring the war of America and raise the flag of tawheed (oneness) on the your lands by Allah’s will”

In a video message, the group now urges followers to continue Agha’s work, displaying a U.S. flag followed by an explosion and the word “soon,” likely a veiled call for jihadis to target the U.S. in revenge.

The UCC posted a message eulogizing Agha as a ‘Martyr’ and someone who “would leap with a sword in his hands to cut-off the heads of the kufar. He would attack the apostate’s Web Sites reaping their data and ruining their plans.”

“You are either with us or against us”

Recently, the UCC published a video urging Muslims hackers in the West to join its ranks and fight a war against the kufar (non-believers) and also posted a video aiming a direct threat against a leading online counter extremism organization

Background

Several jihadi hacking groups pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014, the most famous of them “Cyber Caliphate,” whose team included Junaid Hussain, a British-Pakistani hacker who fled the U.K. to Syria in 2013.

Hussain, a high profile recruiter for ISIS who hacked CENTCOM’s Twitter and YouTube accounts, was considered the second ranked British jihadi behind Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John). Hussain was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Syria in August 2015.

In April 2016, four hacking groups consolidated as one under the name United Cyber Caliphate (UCC).

Agha routinely posted videos threatening to target websites of Western countries and U.S. coalition partners and urged Muslims in Western countries to “use skills that Allah has allowed them to gain in order to defend Islam and the oppressed Muslims by targeting the enemy’s websites and cyber-systems.”

Little personal information is known about Agha, though he may have been of Indonesian origin, according to some social media posts.

ISIS hacker who published ‘kill lists’ reportedly killed in U.S. drone strike

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New York Assemblyman Unveils Bill To Suppress Non-Government-Approved Free Speech

David Weprin

In a bill aimed at securing a “right to be forgotten,” introduced by Assemblyman David I. Weprin and (as Senate Bill 4561 by state Sen. Tony Avella), liberal New York politicians would require people to remove ‘inaccurate,’ ‘irrelevant,’ ‘inadequate’ or ‘excessive’ statements about others…

  • Within 30 days of a ”request from an individual,”
  • “all search engines and online speakers] shall remove … content about such individual, and links or indexes to any of the same, that is ‘inaccurate’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘inadequate’ or ‘excessive,’ ”
  • “and without replacing such removed … content with any disclaimer [or] takedown notice.”
  • “ ‘[I]naccurate’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘inadequate’, or ‘excessive’ shall mean content,”
  • “which after a significant lapse in time from its first publication,”
  • “is no longer material to current public debate or discourse,”
  • “especially when considered in light of the financial, reputational and/or demonstrable other harm that the information … is causing to the requester’s professional, financial, reputational or other interest,”
  • “with the exception of content related to convicted felonies, legal matters relating to violence, or a matter that is of significant current public interest, and as to which the requester’s role with regard to the matter is central and substantial.”

Failure to comply would make the search engines or speakers liable for, at least, statutory damages of $250/day plus attorney fees.

As The Washington Post’s Eugene Volokh rages, under this bill, newspapers, scholarly works, copies of books on Google Books and Amazon, online encyclopedias (Wikipedia and others) — all would have to be censored whenever a judge and jury found (or the author expected them to find) that the speech was “no longer material to current public debate or discourse” (except when it was “related to convicted felonies” or “legal matters relating to violence” in which the subject played a “central and substantial” role).

And of course the bill contains no exception even for material of genuine historical interest; after all, such speech would have to be removed if it was “no longer material to current public debate.” Nor is there an exception for autobiographic material, whether in a book, on a blog or anywhere else. Nor is there an exception for political figures, prominent businesspeople and others.

But the deeper problem with the bill is simply that it aims to censor what people say, under a broad, vague test based on what the government thinks the public should or shouldn’t be discussing. It is clearly unconstitutional under current First Amendment law, and I hope First Amendment law will stay that way (no matter what rules other countries might have adopted).

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/new-york-assemblyman-unveils-bill-suppress-non-government-approved-free-speech

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White House backs down from Claim that Britain Assisted Obama in Wiretapping

The White House has assured Number 10 it will not repeat claims that GCHQ spied on Donald Trump, Theresa May’s spokesman has said.

He said allegations that British spies had helped Barack Obama eavesdrop on Mr Trump during the presidential campaign – cited by the White House press secretary – were “ridiculous”.

“We’ve made clear to the administration that these claims are ridiculous and they should be ignored and we’ve received assurances that these allegations will not be repeated,” the spokesman told reporters.

“We have a close special relationship with the White House and that allows us to raise concerns as and when they arise as was true in this case.”

The spokesman added that it would be impossible for GCHQ to spy on Mr Trump as both countries are members of the Five Eyes alliance – a joint intelligence co-operation agreement which also includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

“I would add, just as a matter of fact, with the Five Eyes pact, we cannot use each other’s capabilities to circumvent laws,” he said.

“It’s a situation that simply wouldn’t arise.”

Previously, GCHQ had also dismissed the claim as “utterly ridiculous”.

The original accusation was made by US media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano, and was then repeated by White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Mr Spicer spoke out after the US Congress rejected Mr Trump’s claim that the Obama administration “tapped his wires” before the election.

He said the President “stands by” his claim, but no evidence has yet been produced to back it up.

Mr Spicer identified a report on Fox News as the source of the allegation, saying that three intelligence sources had informed the broadcaster that Mr Obama went outside the chain of command.

“He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice, he used GCHQ,” said Mr Spicer.

The British intelligence organisation took the unusual step of responding by saying: “Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense.

“They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”

http://news.sky.com/story/white-house-backs-down-from-claim-gchq-spied-on-trump-10804677

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The House will Vote on Obamacare Replacement Thursday!

House Republicans will vote Thursday on Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement bill, two senior GOP sources told POLITICO.

The move shows that GOP leaders are confident they have the 216 votes needed to pass the bill, even as as the far-right and centrist Republicans continue to press for changes.

GOP leaders and President Donald Trump spent much of Friday morning talking to critics of the plan. Trump called a number of lawmakers concerned about the bill to the White House, where Majority Whip Steve Scalise and his chief deputy whip Patrick McHenry also huddled with wary members.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/house-to-vote-thursday-on-gop-obamacare-replacement-236168