A nation without sovereign and protected borders is no nation at all. It becomes a dangerous no-man’s-land where laws are irrelevant and good and decent citizens and lawful residents fear for their safety.
Unfortunately, our borders are now under daily—and if the truth is allowed to be told, hourly—attack.
Judicial Watch’s commitment to upholding the rule of law has led it to become the most effective litigator in the country supporting enforcement of our nation’s laws against illegal immigration. These laws are under sustained attack by a range of well-funded (many by radical billionaire George Soros) groups… and politicians in both parties… who are willing to sacrifice our national sovereignty in preference to “open borders,” cheap illegal labor, and for raw political advantage. Today, we continue to successfully meet challenges to the enforcement of our laws against illegal immigration across a broad range of fronts, including:
Judicial Watch is currently scheduled to go to trial against the city and county of San Francisco, challenging their deadly sanctuary policy, which prohibits local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. This taxpayer lawsuit arose out of the shocking death by shooting of Kathryn “Kate” Steinle on a San Francisco pier in 2015. The killer, an illegal alien from Mexico, had been released from custody on a drug charge by San Francisco police; even Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were seeking him to begin deportation proceedings.
San Francisco’s sanctuary policy received national attention on July 1, 2015, when Steinle was gunned down at one the city’s most popular tourist spots, allegedly by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate (formerly known as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez), an illegal alien who had been released from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department despite a request from ICE that he be detained for possible deportation. Though there was no doubt he shot Steinle, a San Francisco jury acquitted Zarate of murder.
In its court filing opposing then-sheriff Vicki Hennessy’s effort to dismiss our lawsuit, Judicial Watch argued:
Sheriff Hennessy’s refusal to share basic information about the release of deportable criminal aliens in her custody—the date, time, and place of their scheduled release—plainly frustrates Congress’ clear purpose in enacting section 1226(c). By refusing to share release information, Sheriff Hennessy allows deportable criminal aliens in her custody—aliens Congress plainly intended to be detained upon release from the custody of [law enforcement agencies] such as SFSD—to escape federal immigration officials’ grasp. Her restrictions enable aliens who have committed aggravated felonies or other crimes deemed sufficiently serious by Congress to warrant detaining them and denying them bond or conditional parole to remain at large pending removal. Not only might such persons pose a further danger to the community—which was one of Congress’ main concerns—but federal immigration officials must spend additional time and resources and assume unnecessary risk to themselves, the aliens, and others locating and apprehending them.
In rejecting the attempt to end the lawsuit, presiding Superior Court judge Harold Kahn wrote there is “sufficient support at this stage of the case for Ms. Cerletti’s allegation that the Sheriff’s policy prohibiting or restricting release information about suspected priority aliens stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment of Congress’ asserted purpose of enabling federal immigration officials to gain access to inmates who may have violated federal immigration laws.”1 Though there is a new sheriff, our lawsuit continues and is now in discovery.
And we found a shocking disregard for the rule of law. The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department (SFSD) admitted to the following jaw-dropping numbers:
As of October 17, 2019, SFSD was unaware of any instances in which SFSD staff gave ICE information about an individual’s citizenship or immigration status despite Title 8, Sec. 1373’s requirement that state and local govts not restrict sharing such information with ICE.
Between April 11, 2016, and October 17, 2019, ICE sent SFSD 2,401 requests for notification about a prisoner’s release from SFSD’s custody.
As of October 17, 2019, only six prisoners in SFSD’s custody satisfied the requirements of SFSD’s policy for when to respond to an ICE request for notification about a prisoner’s release. This doesn’t mean ICE will be notified about the prisoner’s release because, after it is determined a prisoner meets the requirements of the policy, the Sheriff reviews the prisoner’s file to determine, in the exercise of her discretion, whether ICE should be notified of the release.
Then-sheriff Hennessy admitted in her deposition to our Judicial Watch legal team that of the six prisoners who satisfied the requirements of the sanctuary policy, the number of times ICE has been notified of the prisoner’s release was zero. However, only three of the six were released. The other three remained in custody and were unlikely to be released.
What a public safety nightmare that breeds contempt all around for nation’s borders. We hope to go to trial as scheduled this year, but this being California, we will be lucky to get this issue fully adjudicated even with our dramatic evidence of sanctuary lawlessness.
We’ve also focused on illegality in Santa Clara County, the heart of California’s Silicon Valley.
We filed another taxpayer lawsuit. Santa Clara County Board Policy 3.54(B) requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to obtain a “judicial arrest warrant” in order for the county to transfer custody of an alien. Federal law, however, does not require “judicial arrest warrants” for federal authorities to detain aliens, especially for those who had been incarcerated or arrested by local authorities.
Judicial Watch is asking the court to grant an injunction against the sanctuary policy because:
It is an “illegal local regulation of immigration,”
It is “preempted by federal law,” and
It is “barred by the doctrine of intergovernmental immunity,” which prevents a state from intruding on the federal government’s sovereignty.
On February 28, 2019, Bambi Larson, a Santa Clara County resident, was murdered inside her San Jose home. According to court documents, she suffered extensive and deep wounds consistent with a cutting tool. A few weeks later, Carlos Arevalo-Carranza was arrested and charged with Larson’s murder. Arevalo-Carranza reportedly had multiple prior convictions in Santa Clara County, including a conviction for burglary in 2015, convictions for battery of an officer, resisting arrest, and entering a property in 2016, and a conviction for false imprisonment in 2017.
He also reportedly had multiple, prior arrests in 2015–18 in both Santa Clara County and Los Angeles County, including arrests for possession of drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine, prowling, and false identification. At the time of Larson’s death, Arevalo-Carranza reportedly was on probation for possession of drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine, false imprisonment, and burglary.
ICE officials sent six separate requests to Santa Clara County, when Arevalo-Carranza was about to be released from its custody, asking that he be detained long enough for federal immigration officials to take him into custody for removal proceedings. Each request was ignored because of Santa Clara County’s sanctuary policies.
In March 2019, San Jose officials reportedly “criticized so-called sanctuary policies they say prevented federal authorities from detaining a gang member in the country illegally before he allegedly killed a woman.” The murderer was a “self-admitted gang member,” with a “long criminal history in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles spanning five years.”
Sanctuary policies are illegal and deadly. They encourage more illegal immigration and undermine our borders.
The outcomes of these lawsuits will have national repercussions and may well create models for overturning sanctuary policies across America.
While complete anarchy may be the goal of the Left, it is the enemy of every law-abiding citizen who believes in the values of our nation and the sovereignty of our borders.
President Trump has taken strong action to control the assault on our sovereignty, but he’s faced dishonest opposition from anti-Trump activist judges and sanctuary politicians who placed politics over public safety.
But the rule of law is continuously under assault from all quarters. The Supreme Court just ruled this summer that it is illegal for the Obama administration to end Obama’s illegal amnesty for so-called Dreamers! The Supreme Court undermined the Constitution by protecting, for now, Obama’s decision to provide amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA is unlawful, and the court interfered with the President Trump’s duty and absolute right to rescind it.
This is the Alice-in-Wonderland approach to judicial decision-making. Threats to the rule of law come not only from rioters and looters in the streets, but also from activist judges on the bench.
Only Congress can amend the law, not President Obama nor the courts. One cannot help but conclude that this decision is driven more by politics than the rule of law.
Judicial Watch has previously exposed how DACA is not only illegal but a threat to public safety. For example, we uncovered how the Obama administration granted DACA amnesty without the promised background checks.
How about this idea for immigration reform: Enforce the law! Almost everyone who is here illegally should go home.
Instead we have sanctuary cities and states where police and other officials are told not to cooperate with federal law enforcement trying to enforce the law. These sanctuary policies are illegal and dangerous.
And I was glad to see the attorney general announce potential criminal investigations of politicians who aid and abet illegal aliens and abuse their offices to protect criminal aliens!
One of the most crucial lessons taught to us by the Wuhan COVID-19 pandemic is that it is essential that first, our borders be more secure than ever, and second, that we know exactly who is crossing them into our nation. The main reason of course is that if we have control of our borders, we can ensure that no one who is infected with this virus or any other disease can enter. I’d suggest that a “wall” and secure border are as essential to the public health as any requirement to wear a mask!
There can be no safety and no United States of America without borders. Period.
The Left knows this truth. No borders means no sovereignty—and the end of our republican system of government. And so the organized Left has made it its mission to undermine our borders.
In 2018, America faced an unprecedented assault on its borders from organized caravans of illegal aliens posing as asylum seekers. After initially being overwhelmed and subjected to the propaganda press encouraging the sustained attack on our borders, the Trump administration tightened and more strictly enforced the rules under law and pressured our southern neighbors. The courts tried to intervene to prevent President Trump from defending America but eventually the judicial system vindicated the president’s constitutional prerogatives to defend our borders.
Most asylum seekers are now turned back at the border and are required to reside in Mexico (or go home). The border remains largely unsecure, but new wall is being built every day, and President Trump’s aggressive response to the caravan crisis saved our southern border from complete collapse, while also saving the lives of the children and other innocents victimized by the drug-cartel-run human smuggling operations that had pervaded the caravans.
Our Judicial Watch team is second to none on expertise on border issues. So when the crisis erupted we began digging and reporting.
My colleagues Chris Farrell and Irene Garcia flew down to Guatemala and partnered with investigative journalist Sara Carter. They began a series of reports that drove the national response to the crisis and angered the Left, which wanted to control the flow of fake information about the caravan assault on our nation. Here is their first report that blew the lid off the caravan crisis:
“Elaborately Planned” Caravan Brings Human Traffickers & Violent Gangbangers to Guatemala
The migrant caravan marching northbound through Central America is an “elaborately planned” movement that’s benefiting human smugglers and bringing disturbing numbers of violent gang members and other criminal elements through Guatemala, according to government sources in the capital city. “MS-13 gang members have been detained and coyotes (human smugglers) are joining the march with clients who pay to get smuggled into the United States,” a Guatemalan official told Judicial Watch. People from Asian countries waiting to get smuggled into the U.S. through Central America are also integrating with poor Hondurans in the caravan, a high-level Guatemalan government source confirmed. Among them are nationals of Bangladesh, a south Asian Islamic country that’s well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). “There are lots of dirty businesses associated with this,” Guatemalan authorities told Judicial Watch. “There’s lots of human trafficking.”
Sandwiched between Honduras and Mexico, Guatemala has been overrun with the onslaught of migrants that began their journey last week in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. At last count around 7,000 have participated in the trek, a great deal of them rowdy, angry men ages 17 to 40. President Jimmy Morales has ordered the military and police to detain all of the migrants and facilitate their safe return back to Honduras, though thousands have already reached the Mexican border. In a morning interview with Judicial Watch at the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense, Secretary of Defense General Luis Miguel Ralda Moreno said more than 2,000 Hondurans have been sent back home on buses. “We’re doing everything possible to stop the caravan while still respecting human rights,” General Moreno said.
During an afternoon interview at the National Palace, President Morales said that Guatemala has absorbed the huge cost of mobilizing police and military to return thousands of people to Honduras. He would like the United States to help him find the organizers of the caravan so they can face legal consequences. “Mass immigration like this endangers lives,” Morales said. “This is unprecedented. We are in the process of investigating who is behind the caravan.” Morales assures that Guatemala is doing everything possible to curb illegal immigration and asked for cooperation from the United States.
It has been a delicate and complicated task, Guatemalan officials say, because the caravan is a very organized movement that has been well orchestrated. There are rest points along the route with food, water and shelter for the migrants as well as medical care in some areas. “It’s very strategic and extremely organized,” a Guatemalan government source told Judicial Watch. “It is very complex, not a simple march. There is nothing spontaneous about it.” During a visit to the Guatemalan-Honduran border this week Judicial Watch interviewed multiple migrants who repeated the same rehearsed line when asked who organized the caravan, insisting it was a spontaneous event even though there were clearly organizers shouting instructions in Spanish and putting select persons in front of cameras for interviews. All of them said the caravan was not about politics but rather poverty.
Guatemalan officials disagree, estimating that the caravan is a movement of radicalized forces to destabilize Central American countries. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a conservative, echoes that assessment. In a local newspaper report published last week Hernández asserted that leftist interests seeking to destabilize the country are manipulating migrants. Women and children are being used without regard to the risks to their lives, Hernández said. “The irregular mobilization was organized for political reasons to negatively affect the governance and image of Honduras and to destabilize the peace of neighboring countries,” the president said, adding that many have returned to the country after realizing they’ve been fooled.
We also angered the Left by daring to do our own reporting, in addition to researching and disseminate Spanish language reporting from the region—all to educate the American people about what we found in terms of the potential terrorist threat from the caravan crisis. For instance, our popular Corruption Chronicles online blog made waves with the following report:
100 ISIS Terrorists Caught in Guatemala as Central American Caravan Heads to U.S.
In a startling revelation, Guatemala’s president announced in the country’s largest newspaper that nearly 100 ISIS terrorists have been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation. Why should Americans care about this? A caravan of Central American migrants is making its way north. Let’s not forget that Guatemala is one of the countries that bombarded the U.S. with illegal immigrant minors under Barack Obama’s open border free-for-all. They came in droves from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala through the Mexican border and for years Uncle Sam rolled out the welcome mat offering housing, food, medical treatment and a free education.
A terrorist could have easily slipped in considering the minors, coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), were not properly vetted and some turned out to be violent gangbangers who went on to commit heinous crimes in their adopted land of opportunity. In fact, the nation’s most violent street gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), was energized by the barrage of UACs. The Texas Department of Public Safety even issued a report documenting how the MS-13 emerged as a top tier gang in the state thanks to the influx of illegal alien gang members that came with the UACs. At the time more than 60,000 UACs—many with criminal histories—had stormed into the United States in a matter of months.
Tens of thousands more eventually made it north.
Guatemala has long been known as a major smuggling corridor for foreigners from African and Asian countries making their way into the United States. Last year Guatemala’s largest paper, Prensa Libra, published an in-depth piece on the inner workings of an international human smuggling network that moves migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh to the United States. Individuals are sent to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates then flown to Brazil before heading to Colombia. Once in South America, the migrants are transported to Panama, before moving on to Costa Rica then a central point on Guatemala. One Spanish news report refers to Guatemala as a human smuggling paradise because it’s so easy to get fake passports. A few years ago, the head of Guatemala’s passport division got arrested for selling fake passports to a group of Colombians, according to a government announcement.
All this makes ISIS terrorists operating in Guatemala incredibly alarming. President Jimmy Morales confirmed it during a recent security conference attended by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as well as the presidents of Honduras and El Salvador and other Latin American dignitaries. Morales said that his administration has captured “close to 100 persons completely involved with terrorists, with ISIS and we have not only detained them within our territory, but they have been deported to their country of origin.” Several of the terrorists were Syrians caught with fake documents, according to Guatemala’s head of intelligence. At the same event, President Morales also revealed that Guatemalan authorities captured more than one thousand gangbangers, including members of the MS-13.
Many more probably make it into the United States via the Mexican border and a lot of them get released inside the country. In fact, Border Patrol agents in Texas have been ordered to release illegal immigrants caught entering through Mexico because detention facilities have no bed space, according to a news report. Earlier this year Judicial Watch exposed a secret program—started by Obama and continued by Trump—that quietly relocates illegal immigrants to different parts of the country on commercial flights. Years earlier Judicial Watch uncovered a similar DHS initiative that transported illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and released them without proper processing. The government classified them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and transferred them 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station, where they went their separate ways. The OTMs were from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala and a security company contracted by the U.S. government drove the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, where they were in custody, to Phoenix. Some could have been ISIS operatives.
And after the anti-Trump media moved on from the caravan crisis to the impeachment phase of the coup, Judicial Watch persisted in its vigilance, continuing to expose the ever-present national security threat on our border with Mexico, as reported by our investigative team:
A recent U.S. alert warning Mexico of armed Iranians planning to enter the country through the southern border didn’t faze a busy Mexican border city’s police chief, who confirms the region is full of Middle Easterners, Africans and Asians heading north. In a Latin American news report published shortly after the U.S. issued the bulletin, Mexicali Police Chief María Elena Andrade Ramírez matter-of-factly said the arrival of people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia as well as the rest of the Americas is “normal” in her California border city of about a million residents. Nevertheless, the chief, who affirmed receiving the U.S. government bulletin, said she planned to cooperate and coordinate with state authorities to “reinforce security.”
The alert was issued a few days ago by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and largely ignored by the American and Mexican mainstream media. Only a few conservative media outlets in the U.S. reported about the warning after one obtained a DHS document outlining the threat. The document, issued by the Border Patrol’s regional intelligence operation center in Arizona, says that a Guatemalan national may try to smuggle five Middle Easterners—including a suicide bomber—into the U.S. through Mexico. The smuggler and four other men and a woman transited through Guatemala and Belize before reaching Veracruz, Mexico, according to the bulletin. The Guatemalan, whose name is redacted in the government document, was deported from California a year ago. The Spanish-language article linked above elaborates that American intelligence officials received the threat after picking up recordings distributed via social media. A Mexicali news story cites Mexican authorities downplaying the situation by assuring citizens that the arrival of people from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and the rest of the Americas is “something normal.”
This new norm creates a serious national security crisis along the famously porous southern border, though Islamic terrorists have long been present in Mexico. Judicial Watch has investigated and reported on it for years, uncovering several operations involving Mexican drug cartels joining forces with Islamic terrorists to enter the U.S. and carry out attacks. Back in the spring of 2015 Judicial Watch broke a story about an ISIS training facility just a few miles from the U.S. border near Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. At the time sources, including a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector, confirmed that “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling—and working for the Juárez Cartel—help move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border between Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, New Mexico. A few months later Judicial Watch exposed a separate scheme in which Mexican cartels smuggled foreigners from countries with terrorist ties into a small Texas rural town near El Paso, Texas.
A few years ago Judicial Watch obtained State Department documents showing that the government has long known that “Arab extremists” are entering the country through Mexico. Among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his cross-border jaunts. More recently, federal statistics show that unprecedented amounts of migrants from terrorist nations, labeled Special Interest Aliens (SIA) by the government, are entering the U.S. via Mexico. A congressional probe completed in early 2019 found an astounding 300% increase in Bangladeshi nationals attempting to sneak into the country through Texas alone. Bangladesh is a South Asian Islamic country well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Before the year ended, Mexico confirmed that large groups of migrants from terrorist nations are in Tapachula awaiting asylum in the United States. Also, federal authorities in Houston arrested a Mexican-based Bangladeshi smuggler and charged him with bringing in fifteen fellow countrymen through the Texas-Mexico border.
When the Central American caravan got started in the fall of 2018, Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales confirmed that nearly one hundred ISIS terrorists had been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation. Guatemala has long been known as a major smuggling corridor for foreigners from African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries making their way into the United States like the Iranians identified recently by the feds. No wonder Mexican authorities are unfazed.
The border crisis on the best of days simmers. On the worst of days (or weeks) it boils over and we’re overwhelmed. But there are threads that are uniform throughout:
The drug cartels run the caravans and human smuggling operations.
The caravans are aided and abetted by left-wing interest groups.
The caravans are humanitarian nightmares.
The largely unsecure border is a national security threat.
In January 2019, the Department of Homeland Security reported:
There are thousands of individuals on the terrorist watch list that traveled through our Hemisphere last year alone, and we work very hard to keep these individuals from traveling on illicit pathways to our country.
We work with foreign partners to block many of these individuals and prevent them from entering the United States. But effective border security is our last line of defense.
The threat is real. The number of terror-watch-listed individuals encountered at our Southern Border has increased over the last two years. The exact number is sensitive and details about these cases are extremely sensitive. But I am sure all Americans would agree that even one terrorist reaching our borders is one too many.
Overall, we stop on average 10 individuals on the terrorist watch list per day from traveling to or entering the United States—and more than 3,700 in Fiscal Year 2017. Most of these individuals are trying to enter the U.S. by air, but we must also be focused on stopping those who try to get in by land.
Additionally, last year at our Southern Border, DHS encountered more than 3,000 “special interest aliens”—individuals with suspicious travel patterns who may pose a national security risk—not to mention the many criminals, smugglers, traffickers, and other threat actors who try to exploit our borders.
Think about that—3,000 special interest aliens who may pose a national security risk. DHS goes on to define this category further:
Generally, an SIA is a non-U.S. person who, based on an analysis of travel patterns, potentially poses a national security risk to the United States or its interests. Often such individuals or groups are employing travel patterns known or evaluated to possibly have a nexus to terrorism. DHS analysis includes an examination of travel patterns, points of origin, and/or travel segments that are tied to current assessments of national and international threat environments.
Despite the death and lawlessness of sanctuary policies, despite the humanitarian catastrophes associated with open borders, the organized Left has doubled down in attacking our sovereignty. The radical Left now supports voting rights for aliens, welfare and free health care for illegal aliens, the decriminalization of the border (no criminal sanction for crossing the border illegally), and the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Never before have we had such extreme support for open borders and the absolute erasure of distinctions under law between citizens and noncitizens. This is a fundamental threat not only to our constitutional republic but to the very nationhood of the United States.