Atlanta Journal Constitution editors still mum on Georgia law in yet another celebratory infomercial on demise of 287(g) in Cobb & Gwinnett - AJC

AJC publisher and senior editors. Photo: DIS from sources as noted.

From the opening paragraph of a February 2, 2021 AJC report (Cobb, Gwinnett end 287(g) immigration programs, work to build trust) which was one of several celebratory ‘news’ hits since Democrat sheriffs ended 287(g) in two metro-Atlanta counties.

“Maria hasn’t seen her son since he was deported to Mexico in 2009 after an arrest for driving without a license. She’s never met her two granddaughters. She doesn’t know if she ever will.

Like thousands of others in Gwinnett County, Jorge Alejandro Pineda was deported through a program known as 287(g). The program allows jailers to check inmates’ immigration status and share that information with U.S. customs officials, who can initiate deportation proceedings regardless of whether a crime was committed.”

The February 8, 2021 front page, dead tree version is headlined “Cobb, Gwinnett shift immigration priorities.” The anti-enforcement lobby’s moldy objection to jails – the only place 287(g) was used in either Cobb or Gwinnett counties – checking immigration status of incoming prisoners somehow inhibits victims of crime on the street from reporting those crimes is embedded throughout. It’s an infomercial. Again.

The editors at the liberal Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) have apparently finally seen the most recent stats from ICE on the 287(g) program. Taking care to omit a very relevant fact they desperately want to keep silent (further down), they have come up with yet another biased and incomplete, anti-enforcement celebratory gift to the crazies. Crime will increase in these counties as a result. We do not expect the AJC editors to allow coverage of that eventuality.

The Center for Immigration Studies put the 287(g) ICE data up weeks ago and we have already reposted it (From CIS: New Numbers Show Effectiveness of Cancelled 287(g) Program in Two Georgia Counties). We regarded the stats as a positive. Not so much at the “credible, compelling, complete” AJC.

As Americans trying to save lives and the rule of law on the crime of illegal immigration, we were pleased to have successfully fought to implement 287(g) in Georgia.

The latest AJC piece looks like a response requested by the Gwinnett and Cobb sheriffs to our pro-enforcement education piece recently posted statewide on the subscription outlet IAG. That opinion began:

“In 2011, Aurelio Mayo Perez, an illegal alien, was booked into the Cobb County jail for no driver’s license but released due to an immigration enforcement reduction edict from then-President Barack Obama. Two years later, Mayo Perez was charged with aggravated child molestation and rape. The name of the ten-year old girl he was convicted of repeatedly molesting is not available.”

We headlined our work with one of the facts the AJC and the Associated Press have so far kept secret Ga. Law: Jailers must report incarcerated illegal aliens to feds and re-posted it on the Dustin Inman Society website.

Led by Editor-in-Chief Kevin Riley, Managing Editor Mark Waligore, Deputy Managing Editor Leroy Chapman Jr. and publisher Donna B. Hall, the AJC is an agenda-driven liberal newspaper with zero pretenses. But it’s more than that. In the political battle to protect illegal aliens – potential Democrat voters – they struggle to stay away from the stats that show how many murders, rapes, kidnappings and child molestations for which illegal aliens are jailed. American lives mean little at the AJC.

They are happy to hide the reality that additional crime or not, all illegal aliens are removable and to promote the dangerous “let’s wait until the victims of borders actually hurt or kill someone before we start talking about deportation – wouldn’t want to separate illegal alien families…”

Kevin Riley & Co. is careful to stay away from the fact that 287(g) jail records reveal immigrants not deported after minor crimes later commit worse ones.”

With the election of Joe Biden and the Riley’s growing arrogance, the days of the AJC allowing pro-enforcement dissent on their pages with published letters to the editor or guest opinion pieces are over.

It takes a long memory and the Wayback Machine to find examples, but there was a day when the AJC would report on 287(g) successes. Like this one: “Gwinnett says immigration program is working.”

We’ll add this note of the most recent AJC victory-lap write up to our file.

The AJC’s brazen anti-enforcement agenda is as responsible for the permanent separation of innocent American families in their own country and our state’s slide to having become Georgiafornia as anything else – including Gov. Brian Kemp and his #BigTruckTrick ©.

The Georgia Department of Corrections has a 287(g) agreement in the prison system. We predict it’s only a matter of time until the liberal AJC goes after that arrangement.

Center for Immigration Studies

DREAMers’ are just the bait; “citizenship for all 11 million, or however many” illegal aliens there are here is the hoo

By Andrew R. Arthur on November 17, 2022

On November 16, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) held a press conference in front of the Capitol in which he called for amnesty for “DREAMers”, aliens brought illegally to the United States as children. As he did so, however, he pulled back the curtain on his end game – to “get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here”. The DREAMers are the bait, while a full and total amnesty is the hook.

DREAMers, In Brief. Amnesty legislation for aliens who arrived in their youth has a long, but not particularly successful pedigree. Here’s a brief recap.

In August 2001, then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced a bipartisan “DREAM Act”, which included 18 cosponsors. That bill would have granted amnesty to aliens unlawfully present for five years who entered under the age of 21, and who met certain work and educational requirements.

The timing of that bill could not have been worse, because less than six weeks later, the September 11 attacks showed how foolhardy such blanket amnesties were. Nonetheless, similar “DREAM Acts” were subsequently introduced in later Congresses.

One bears special note. In March 2009, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) offered up the “DREAM Act of 2009” during the 111th Congress.

At that time, Barack Obama was president, Democrats held an overwhelming majority in the House, and from September 24, 2009 (when Democrat Paul Kirk was appointed to fill the seat of the late Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy) through February 4, 2010 (when Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill Kennedy’s seat), Democrats held a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats in the Senate.

Obama’s fellow Democrats could have passed any bill they wanted – including and in particular the DREAM Act of 2009 – without any Republican votes at all. But that bill went nowhere. Cosponsor and then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) did not even bring it up for a vote in committee.

That said, two Republican senators – Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) – were cosponsors of the DREAM Act of 2009, so they probably would have blocked a filibuster even during the months Democrats only controlled a measly 59 seats in the upper chamber.

Obama blamed Republicans for the failure to pass a DREAM Act, but the fault really lies with him and congressional Democrats alone – DREAM Act legislation simply was not a priority for a party that held a hammerlock on the legislative process.

The popularity of legislation to “protect” the DACA population has been a key talking point for years (I was the punching boy for Democrats at a House hearing on the issue in March 2019), but let’s face it – if it really were all that popular, it would have been a shoo-in in the 111th Congress.

DACA. The failure of DREAM Act legislation led to a program called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” or DACA. It grants quasi-legal status to aliens who entered the United States while under the age of 16 before June 15, 2007, who are currently under the age of 41, who meet certain educational standards, and have not been convicted of certain crimes.

DACA was not created by Congress, or even by executive order or executive action (for what that is worth). It’s the product of a memo issued by then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on June 15, 2012. In my considered legal opinion, Napolitano lacked the authority to create DACA (the Fifth Circuit ruled in October that the program is unlawful, but the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in), but in any event, it sets a bad precedent.

Want proof? Here’s what the editorial board of the Washington Post had to say when President Obama was considering expanding DACA to include parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents in 2014:

The president should think twice. Some of the same Democrats and pro-immigrant advocates urging him to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation would be outraged if a Republican president took a similarly selective approach to enforcing the laws — say, those that guarantee voting rights or prohibit employment discrimination.

Obama ignored the Post editorial board and created something called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). DAPA proved to be a bridge too far for Texas and several other states, who successfully sued to block its implementation.

Despite all of this, DACA continues, and the Biden administration recently issued a new rule, effective October 31, “to preserve and fortify” the decade-old program.

A Sympathetic Population. The DACA population is admittedly sympathetic. The vast majority of the approximately 650,000 current DACA beneficiaries were removable a decade ago, but in the intervening years they have been living in a quasi-legal status thanks to some questionable administrative actions.

Even President Trump, in his 2018 State of the Union address, offered up a plan to legalize not just DACA recipients but also a total of 1.8 million “DACA-eligible” aliens – more or less the same individuals covered by the DREAM Act…. please read the rest here at the CIS website.