President Obama's Anti-Gun Agenda Shows No Sign of Stopping

By John Lott

President Obama keeps pushing for gun control. "I just want you to know that we are working on [gun control]. We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar,” President Obama told Sarah Brady, the former president of the Brady Campaign, this past spring. 

His push as been quiet but relentless. 

Just this past week Obama signaled that he was going to just ignore two new parts of the 2012 Omnibus Spending bill. Although he signed the spending bill into law, he simultaneously issued a so-called "signing statement," a note that presidents have started attaching to legislation stating how they interpret the law they are signing or whether they believe part of it is unconstitutional. 

Obama’s statement claimed that Congress couldn’t put restrictions on how he wanted to spend to fund lobbying for gun control and the National Institute of Health studies of gun control. 

But why should the federal government use taxpayer dollars to pay for lobbying? 

Obama has had numerous false starts on gun control. Just in November, his administration moved to ban target practice on public lands, but the opposition was so swift and strong they immediately backtracked. 

A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration suffered another embarrassment. It was discovered that the Obama administration oversaw the sale of guns to Mexican drug gangs in its Fast & Furious program to bolster statistics of guns crossing over to the border to these very drug gangs. 

This scandal is quite incredible as the Obama administration ordered gun dealers to make sales to Mexican drug gangs against their wishes to help the administration’s push for more gun control. And this follows the revelation in July that the Obama administration had pushed federal agents involved in the Fast & Furious scandal to support gun control regulations during their congressional testimony. 

It doesn’t help that the Obama administration started pushing these sales at the same time they wanted to bolster their case that America was supply illegal guns to Mexico backfired. All this undercut any justification for new regulations and destroyed any support that they might have had. 

With 90 congressmen signing a "no confidence" resolution in Attorney General Eric Holder’s handling of “Fast & Furious,” last week Holder lashed out against his critics. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American,” Holder told the New York Times. Holder seems unwilling to recognize the genuine outrages the administration’s gun-control agenda has produced. 

Still the administration has successfully manage to push through gun control regulations in many, less visible ways: -- The Obama administration instituted a ban on importing "historic" semi-automatic rifles into the US. -- In sharp contrast to the Bush administration, President Obama strongly supports the UN Arms Trade Treaty even though he knows that any such treaty are unlikely to obtain the two-thirds vote in the Senate needed for ratification. What the regulations will do is lead to severe restrictions on private gun ownership around the world. 

The administration instituted new rules on selling "high-powered rifles," defined as a caliber of greater than .22. -- The administration nominated Andrew Traver, someone who supports gun bans, as the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. 

Obama has stuck by Traver despite his nomination being stalled in the Senate for a year and the fierce opposition it has generated. 

Obama’s most lasting impact on gun control is likely to be through the federal court judges he appoints. His most visible appointments have been the gun-control advocates he has made to the Supreme Court. 

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan headed up President Clinton’s push for gun control when she worked for his White House during the 1990s. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor has signed on to a Supreme Court opinion stating that there is no individual right to "private self-defense" with guns. 

The pro-gun control views of Obama’s nominees have played a role the Senate filibustering of two Appeals Court nominees. Caitlin Joan Halligan was particularly controversial when nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit because she opposes an individual’s right to self defense and – even more damning -- she was one of the trial lawyers who had sued gun makers. Thus in New York v. Sturm & Ruger, she argued that gun makers should be liable for the criminal acts of third parties but not given any credit for the benefits from self-defense. 

If elected to a second term, Obama will end up appointing over half the federal judges. That sure can make a big difference. 

Most importantly, the Supreme Court is only one vote away from reversing the 5 to 4 decisions that so narrowly struck down the handgun bans in Chicago and the District of Columbia. 

Two of the Justices who voted to strike down the bans, conservative Antonin Scalia and moderate Anthony Kennedy, will be well into their 80s during the next administration. 

While a couple of Justices have made it to 90 while serving on the court, remember the rare glimpse into Obama’s views during the 2008 campaign when he referred to those “bitter” Americans who “cling to their guns, cling to their religion.” 

It surely fits his earlier statement: “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.” 

Yet, despite all this evidence of an anti-gun agenda, recent articles by the Associated Press and other news media paint Obama as a moderate on guns and as somebody who wants to "protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens” and merely support so-called “gun safety” measures. 

Of course, they are wrong. Unfortunately, Obama’s patient “under the radar” campaign seems to be working. He is fundamentally changing the courts and leaving them much more hostile to gun ownership. If Americans catch on, this could still be a major issue in the 2012.

 John R. Lott, Jr. is a FoxNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of the third edition of "More Guns, Less Crime" (University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Obama’s imperial power grab on immigration

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Joe Jacquot, Tuesday, December 27, 4:57 PM

David Rivkin served in the Justice Department during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He represented the 26 states in their challenge to the 2010 Affordable Care Act before the trial and appellate courts. Joe Jacquot is a former deputy attorney general of Florida and a former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration.
 

The Obama administration has taken federal-state relations to a new low in its quest for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power. In response to Arizona’s efforts to identify and arrest undocumented immigrants, the president claims that he can preempt state law whenever its enforcement might irritate a foreign government. This unconstitutional power grab cannot stand.

While the challenge by 26 states to the 2010 Affordable Care Act seeks limits on Congress’s powers, the Arizona law defends the fundamental authority of states to act in contravention of the president’s preferences.

There is genuine controversy over the Arizona immigration policy of penalizing illegal immigrants , designed to drive down their numbers and reduce the burdens on the state budgets and institutions, but the case the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear poses broader legal questions that go to our Constitution’s most fundamental principles, executive power and state sovereignty.

Under the Constitution, some powers are exclusive to the federal government or the states, while others are shared. By limiting the federal government’s reach to authorities found in specific, enumerated grants of power, the Constitution reserves broad authority for individual states. States retain traditional “police power” to legislate on issues of public safety and welfare.

Arizona relied on its police power in passing the immigration-related law the Obama administration has challenged. That law’s most controversial provisions make Arizona state and local law enforcement responsible for investigating possible violations of federal immigration law. If an officer has reasonable suspicion that a person encountered during a police stop or detention is in this country illegally, the officer must check the person’s immigration status. If immigration authorities confirm that the person is illegal, the officer must arrest him or her.

No one disagrees that Congress could preempt state efforts to enforce immigration law, under its constitutional power to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” But Congress actually rejected that approach. Instead in the 1996 statute, it afforded the states broad flexibility to address immigration-related matters consistent with federal statutory requirements. The Supreme Court held as much last year when it approved another Arizona law that revokes the permits of businesses that hire illegal workers.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration claims that federal power preempts Arizona’s law in two ways. First, it has argued, in court filings intended to strike down the Arizona law under the Constitution’s “supremacy clause,” that federal law prevails when state law conflicts with it. The administration argues that, as Congress has authorized the executive branch to identify and detain illegal immigrants, the president’s decision not to enforce the law creates a conflict.

But no precedent suggests that the president’s refusal to carry out Congress’s wishes, as expressed in law, somehow prevents a state from doing so or renders its actions contrary to congressional intent, which is the appropriate standard for preemption. And that argument is especially ludicrous in this instance, where Congress specifically required federal officials to inform state and local law enforcement of a person’s immigration status when requested. In this way, federal law actually supports and facilitates Arizona’s enforcement approach. Congress’s intentions could hardly be clearer.

The administration’s fallback argument is simply that the president has unilateral power under the Constitution to nullify Arizona’s law respecting immigration. Mexico, the administration explains, has lodged complaints regarding Arizona’s law, and this implicates the president’s power over foreign affairs, which in turn trumps Arizona’s immigration-related actions.

This is a stunning and audacious power grab, far more expansive than the legal theories that prompted critics of President George W. Bush to argue that he established an “imperial presidency.” It simply cannot be that, despite all the Constitution’s limitations on federal power and executive action, the president’s powers become absolute whenever another nation complains.

Indeed, the Supreme Court recently rejected even a more limited version of that argument advanced by the Bush administration. In Medellin v. Texas , the court rejected Bush’s attempt to enforce U.S. treaty obligations by blocking Texas’s execution of a Mexican national who had not been given his consular-notification rights. Yes, the court explained, the president is well-placed to resolve sensitive foreign policy decisions, but that status does not confer “unilateral authority to create domestic law” or override state law.

Nearly 60 years ago, in the Youngstown case that famously reversed President Harry S. Truman’s efforts to seize the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War, Justice Robert Jackson explained that “when the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb.” When those measures are also incompatible with the basic precepts of federalism, his power is nonexistent. The fact that the Supreme Court granted swift review of this case suggests that it will repudiate the Obama administration’s imperial power grab.

Post Opinion 

Feds Accuse Police Of Discriminating Against Latinos

In a matter of days the Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that federal investigations of law enforcement agencies in different parts of the country uncovered a pattern of discrimination against Latinos in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

This appears to be part of a much bigger Obama Administration plan to crackdown on local governments that try to curb illegal immigration. The DOJ has legally challenged immigration control laws in Arizona and Alabama and the administration has made it clear that it’s keeping a close eye on law enforcement agencies that may be viewed as targeting illegal aliens.

Just read this week’s findings involving the police department in the tiny Connecticut town of East Haven, population around 29,000.  According to a lengthy federal probe the East Haven Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of discrimination against Latinos by intentionally and disproportionally targeting them for traffic enforcement and treating them “more harshly than non-Latino drivers after a traffic stop,” the DOJ found.

Furthermore, the East Haven Police Department has failed to remedy a history of discrimination and deliberate indifference to the rights of minorities, the DOJ says. The department also fails to collect and report traffic stop data in accordance with state racial profiling laws. Among its many offenses over the years is failure to provide “limited English proficient Latinos with appropriate language access” and a failure to abide by individuals’ consular rights. This appears to refer to illegal aliens who may want to contact their country’s consular office after getting in trouble with the law.  

Last week it was the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona that got blasted by the DOJ for engaging in a pattern of unconstitutional policing. Specifically, the DOJ’s “extensive” investigation found that the Maricopa County Sherriff’s Department engages in racial profiling of Latinos, unlawfully stops, detains, and arrests Latinos and unlawfully retaliates against individuals who complain about these racist practices.

The feds took it a step further by also saying that the Maricopa agency has discriminatory jail practices against Latino inmates with limited English proficiency by punishing them and denying them critical services. Officers also follow “police practices that have the effect of significantly compromising” the agency’s “ability to adequately protect Latino residents,” according to the DOJ.

The Maricopa Sheriff’s “systematic disregard for basic constitutional protections has created a wall of distrust between the sheriff’s office and large segments of the community, which dramatically compromises the ability to protect and serve the people,” said Thomas Perez, the Assistant Attorney General Obama appointed to run the DOJ’s bloated civil rights division.

Ironically, it was less than a year ago that a top Obama immigration official defended the Maricopa Sheriff’s program to crackdown on illegal immigration, which clearly triggered the DOJ racial profiling investigation. Dozens of illegal aliens with criminal records have been apprehended, restoring law and order in a large Phoenix business district rife with solicitation, trespassing, loitering and public health ordinance violations created by day laborers.

Earlier this year the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (John Morton) said there was no evidence of racial profiling by deputies in Maricopa County and that the majority of the illegal immigrants arrested have been convicted of serious crimes. “Sixty nine percent of the people we receive in Maricopa County have been convicted of Level 1 and Level 2 offenses, which are serious felony offenses, drug trafficking, assaults, rape,” Morton said during a meeting with editors of a local newspaper. He added that the Maricopa program has been consistent with meeting his agency’s priority of arresting illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes. 


Judicial Watch

Renewed hope for sheriff

By Laurie Roberts, columnist
The Arizona Republic

"I'm going to continue on. If they think they're going to scare me away, I'm going to be more aggressive as time goes on. ... They're going to have to contend with this sheriff."

That was Joe Arpaio. Though it sounds like something he might have said (and probably did) last week, it was January 1994.

He'd just finished his first year as Maricopa County's sheriff, having knocked off the previous sheriff who had botched a murder investigation. A campaign, by the way, in which Arpaio pledged to serve only one term and to work to change the position of sheriff from elected to appointed.
Already, after a year in office, he was being called a buffoon and a blowhard, a sheriff who spent most of his time staging publicity stunts.

But he was also a sheriff who played to an appreciative audience. And so inmates were put into stripes and tents, and R-rated movies gave way to the likes of "Old Yeller." Suddenly, the bologna was green and the underwear was pink and ol' one-term Joe laughed all the way to a fifth term.

But things haven't gone so well for Arpaio in this, his 19th year in office. Headlines have focused on mismanagement and corruption and a sheriff who curiously knows nothing about what's been going on right under his own nose. Or so he says.

Add to that the recent furor over 432 potential sex crimes ignored and suddenly people were wondering (privately, for the most part) whether it was time for America's most dumbfounded sheriff to retire.

Then, Christmas came early for Arpaio. The Department of Justice last week accused the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office of sweeping civil-rights violations, saying Arpaio has promoted a "culture of bias" that illegally targets Latinos and punishes inmates who don't speak English.

If Arpaio seemed played out before, the Justice case provided a chance to return to the glory days when illegal immigration was a hot topic and so was the sheriff.

"By their actions today, President Obama and a band of his merry men might as well erect their own pink-neon sign at the Arizona-Mexico border saying, 'Welcome all illegals to the U.S., our home is your home,' " Arpaio proclaimed, just hours after federal officials announced their findings.

Never mind that the Justice investigation began during the Bush administration. Never mind his own botched cases or rogue operations or the rumblings that maybe it was time, after two decades, for a new sheriff in town.

Now, when his opponents talk about lawsuits and an agency run amok, Arpaio can talk about the open-borders crowd that longs to get rid of him.

Now, when the feds talk about abuse of power and racial profiling, he can talk about Attorney General Eric Holder and his fiendish plot to divert attention from "Fast and Furious" (a botched operation in its own right that allowed guns to flow into Mexico).

Now, when talk turns to 432 sex-abuse cases tossed onto a shelf, he can talk about how the media have been out to get him all along.

Oh sure, plenty of people are calling for his head. The thing is, they're the same people who've been calling for his head since the early days when the posse and pink underwear were all the rage.

Meanwhile, the choir is tuning up. State Rep. John Kavanagh immediately dismissed the Justice Department findings as a "smear job." Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu pronounced it a diversion from Fast and Furious.

The go-Joe faithful, too, are lining up.

"Thank God for Sheriff Joe," Larry told me, in an e-mail. "I will read the editorials in your paper when you go after the unionists like (Phil) Gordon or (Mary Rose) Wilcox the way you attack conservatives. We have one voice left in this state and illegal-using businesses and liberals want to shut that voice."

Music, no doubt, to the sheriff's ears and just in time for 2012, a year in which the avowed one-term sheriff will go for an encore -- his sixth. A week ago, I would have said he didn't stand a chance.
And now?

Arpaio will either delay or he'll settle with the feds, just as he did 14 years ago after another federal investigation. He just won't change.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has put Arpaio back in his wheelhouse with a renewed chance to mount an offensive rally that has less to do with rounding up illegal immigrants than it does with rounding up support.
The question is: Will it work? Again, that is.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8635.

ATF now hiding behind a law that forbids them from disclosing where the weapons came

ATF now hiding behind a law that forbids them from disclosing where the weapons came from and who purchased them after traced... Like Fast and Furious maybe?.... How convenient!..
Law states... 

Releasing the information serves no useful purpose. Yea, might put Holders (et al) azz'z deeper in the sling?

Traced guns aren’t always “crime guns”; firearms may be traced for reasons unrelated to any armed crime.
  But these are "crime guns"!

Dimes to donuts... some are 'Fast and Furious' weapons

and this was a double hit... drugs coming north and weapons and ammo headed south.

 

 

 Alert Nogales resident leads police to stash of guns, ammo & drugs

 

NOGALES, Ariz. - It's one of the biggest busts Nogales has seen in quite some time. 43 Assault rifles, nearly 20,000 rounds of ammunition, high capacity magazine clips and $150,000 worth of marijuana that police believe was on its way to Mexico, and into the hands of violent cartel members.

 

9 On Your Side wanted to know, are these weapons linked to the government's Fast and Furious scandal? "Certainly you could gamble and say that it is a possibility but at this point I don't know. ICE has the weapons and they'll be able to find out if there was any involvement in that." ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Referred KGUN 9 to ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms). ATF confirmed that they are tracing the guns but can't answer KGUN 9's question.

"I cannot comment with respect to where the guns were traced because it's a violation of the Tiahrt Amendment which prohibits us from commenting on guns that were seized and traced" said Tom Mangan, ATF spokesman.

http://www.nraila.org/issues/factsheets/read.aspx?ID=208

9 On Your Side got in touch with Congressman Darrell Issa's office of California. He is the chairman of a committee that's investigating the Fast and Furious program. His office is asking investigators to look into whether this stash is connected to Fast and Furious. Those same investigators were able to link Fast and Furious to hundreds of deaths along the border, including Agent Brian Terry and the family of a high ranking Mexican official.

 

 

http://www.kgun9.com//135965873.html

 

Official Says High-Tech Planes on Border No Substitute for Manpower

Some of the 287 soldiers assigned to the Texas border are gone Tuesday night and won't be back. Seventy-five percent of them will be gone by March. High-tech planes will do their jobs. Two powerful unmanned planes may be in the sky over our border.

"It's a more cost-effective way of spending our Homeland Security dollar," says Congressman Henry Cuellar.
Cuellar says the border doesn't need as many National Guard soldiers guarding it now.

"If you look at the number of people trying to cross into the United States, it's the lowest since 1972; 1.6 million used to cross. Last year, we saw 300,000 that passed," says Cuellar.

The president wants to pull 75 percent of the 1,200 National Guard soldiers on the entire southwest border by March. Only 300 will patrol the southwest border after that. A Texas National Guard spokesman says he hasn't been told what their mission will be. Cuellar says 1,100 more Border Patrol agents will fill the gaps the soldiers leave.

"You had National Guard troops doing the office work so agents could be on the ground. Now we'll have to pull back. It's just the wrong thing to do when cartel violence is up," says Cuellar.

Valley lawmaker Aaron Pena says Border Patrol agents need more help to protect the border, not less. He says the eyes in the sky are not enough.

"What we need most is intelligence, human intelligence. You can have drones flying over all you want; we're not going to be able to get the bottom of it," says Pena.

He says more apprehensions at the border doesn't mean cartels aren't still coming into Texas.

"We have a war going on to the south of us at the border. If we don't take care of the problem, the cancer is going to affect the rest of the United States," says Pena.

He says less boots on the ground makes the border less safe.

The 300 soldiers who will stay on the border after March will only be there until the end of 2012 unless the president decides to keep them longer.

KRGV.COM 

DOJ indicts gundealer for Fast&Furious-like sales

ByJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer

What rhymes with "pot" and "kettle"? How about "Fast and Furious"?

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a complaint requesting "forfeiture of property" belonging to a New Mexico gun dealer charged with knowingly selling weapons to straw purchasers operating on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. This crime occurred during the same time frame in which DOJ conducted its own gunwalking scheme, Operation Fast and Furious, encouraging gun other gun dealers to do exactly the same thing.

Rick Reese of New Deal Shooting Sports, according to DOJ, "sold firearms and ammunition to individuals, knowing that these firearms and the ammunition were being illegally sent to Mexico." DOJ claims that "the Reeses sold firearms and ammunition to confidential sources who were working with law enforcement and to undercover law enforcement agents posing as straw purchasers, believing that the confidential sources and agents intended to illegally smuggle the firearms and ammunition to Mexico."

"I hope my guns go to Mexico," DOJ quotes Reese -- who was arrested August 30th -- as saying in the complaint requesting a forfeiture judgement. "I hope they use them to shoot those [Mexican police officers]."

The Mexican Attorney General, Marisela Morales, has offered strong criticism for the traffic of weapons from the United States to Mexican drug cartels. "It is an attack on the safety of Mexicans," said Morales. But she wasn't talking about Reese's alleged crime.

Morales was referring to the now-infamous gunwalking scheme conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which instructed American gun dealers to sell weapons to straw purchasers, in the hopes that those guns could later be traced to drug cartels. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered just over one year ago by someone who had a weapon purchased through Operation Fast and Furious.

"I have no intention of resigning," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress last week during testimony about the program run under his watch, and about which he received memos throughout 2010.
Rick Reese, who allegedly did the same thing, faces 60 years in prison if he is convicted.

The Washington Examiner has asked DOJ if Reese was ever involved in Fast and Furious gun sales, and whether DOJ is considering prosecutions against gundealers who participated in the program.


Washington Examiner

Former US Border Patrol agent who shot and wounded a colleague in 2010 is acquitted in case

TUCSON, Ariz. — A former U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot and wounded a colleague has been acquitted.

The Arizona Daily Star (http://bit.ly/vCONV3) says Ricardo Lanza was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the April 4, 2010 incident.

Authorities say another agent in training told Lanza that their friend Robert Reynaga was being stupid and he should be shot.

The trainee then handed Lanza's duty weapon to him after ejecting the magazine.

When Lanza pointed the gun at Reynaga, he was told it was clear. He pointed the gun at Reynaga's chest and pulled the trigger, striking him in the upper chest.

Reynaga recovered after spending a week in the hospital. Lanza was placed on administrative duty, but was fired once he was indicted three months after the shooting.
___
Information from: Arizona Daily Star, http://www.azstarnet.com

Pro-Second Amendment Measure Pre-Filed in New Mexico Legislature!

State Representative Bill Rehm (R-ABQ) has pre-filed House Bill 32, legislation that would repeal Section 30-7-9 of the New Mexico Criminal Code, for the upcoming 2012 thirty-day legislative session.  This section of state law limits the purchase of rifles and shotguns by New Mexico residents to their home state and contiguous states.  Repeal of this law would eliminate this restrictive language and would enable residents of New Mexico to purchase long guns in non-contiguous states, and residents of non-contiguous states to purchase long guns in New Mexico.   Please contact your state Representative and Senator and urge them to support HB 32 when the Legislature convenes in Santa Fe next month! Contact information for your state Representatives and Senators can be found by clicking here.

Copyright 2011, National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action. This may be reproduced. It may not be reproduced for commercial purposes. 11250 Waples Mill Road, Fairfax, VA 22030    800-392-8683

Obama prepares to trim National Guard on U.S.-Mexico border

National Guard soldier scans U.S.-Mexico border

President Barack Obama will reduce the 1,200 federally paid National Guard troops deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border amid questions about the cost and fading impact of a marquee operation to back the U.S. Border Patrol, the Houston Chronicle has learned.

The Obama administration will revamp the way it deploys military personnel along the boundary, shifting from “boots on the ground” to stop people from crossing illegally to a broader mission that relies on aerial detection and additional border intelligence analysis.
The change in mission — a response to a steep drop in apprehensions along the border — is expected to gradually trim the number of National Guard troops on border-related active duty in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where 274 National Guardsmen are on duty.

“The National Guard has acted as a critical bridge while the administration brought new assets online dedicated to effective border management and security,” Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said.
Administration officials declined to specify the number of guardsmen who will remain on the border. The shift is expected to be announced before Dec. 31 when the tour of duty for the 1,200 guardsmen is scheduled to come to an end.

National Guard troops manned towers to spot illegal border crossings.

Ground troops will be replaced by Army National Guard and Air National Guard personnel carrying out surveillance by aircraft, helicopters and unmanned drones. Department of Homeland Security officials say the troop reduction is not a sign of a reduced commitment to border security but rather the result of lessons learned about border enforcement.

The focus on aerial surveillance “represents a historic and unprecedented enhancement in our ability to detect and deter illegal activity at the border,” said one federal official involved in administration planning. “If people concentrate on the number of troops on the ground, they’re sort of missing the point. This is next-generation border security.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s investigations subcommittee, called the administration’s pending move “a step in the right direction toward technology and intelligence-based efforts along the border.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin

McCaul said, however, that he remained “concerned that the administration is decreasing overall manpower” with the shift along the border. “While the National Guard is not the long-term solution and has its hands tied, they are necessary until we permanently increase our Border Patrol presence.”

Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, a veteran member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he supported “revamping and changing” the National Guard mission. “We’ll use the National Guard in a more efficient and effective way so we can be more accountable to taxpayers.”

The Pentagon has long sought to end the roughly $10 million-a-month National Guard ground operation, which comes from the defense budget at a time when the administration and Congress are trying to curb federal spending.

But the White House and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection agency have wanted the National Guard operation continued until additional U.S. Border Patrol agents join the force and high-tech surveillance extends beyond sectors in Arizona and occasional border flights by unmanned surveillance drones.

“The president has been in a no-win situation,” says Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, a counterterrorism expert. “Pulling the 1,200 troops off the border would send the wrong message. But keeping them on duty has been very expensive in this budget-tight environment.”

The changes in National Guard operations come as the Border Patrol has added staff and seen greater success.

The administration now has almost 18,200 U.S. Border Patrol agents along the Southwestern border — double the 9,100 on duty in 2001.

Border apprehensions have plummeted to historically low levels, from 1.6 million in 2000 to 340,252 in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The number of undocumented immigrants attempting to cross the border has also declined dramatically in recent years amid the economic downturn that created U.S. joblessness.

National Guardsmen working border assignments since June 2010 as part of $160 million Operation Phalanx assisted in barely 6 percent of the apprehensions of undocumented aliens during the opening 11 months of the operation. That was down from playing an indirect role in 12 percent of apprehensions during the 24-month, $1.2 billion Operation Jump Start that ended in mid-2008.

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Texas On The Potomac 

Are Zetas operating as police impersonators in the United States?

Editor's Corner
with PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie

Whether or not Zetas are conducting paramilitary, police-impersonation operations here in the US, the incident in Houston is a watershed event indeed

 

The news out of Houston today that a group of criminals is staging armed raids on illegal gaming rooms in that city contains a very important wrinkle for our consideration — these violators are also police impersonators, and by all indications in the video these thugs have stepped things up quite considerably in their tactics — and tactical training. We’ve reported extensively here on PoliceOne in recent months on the variety of issues related to police impersonators, but today’s news presents us with an array of additional considerations to contemplate — not the least of which is the idea that HPD investigators are considering the possibility that these perpetrators are Zetas.

This is a very significant episode, whether or not it is found out that Zetas are conducting these types of operations here in the Untied States. At best, these offenders are ‘frequent fliers’ who have witnessed firsthand the movements and procedures of a tactical team taking down a room. At worst, well, we’re seeing a watershed event indeed.

Lest we forget, the Zetas did not start out as an independent cartel — they began as hired guns for the OTHER cartels. Many of those who self-identified as Zetas were retired from various branches of the Mexican military — most notably the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE) special forces soldiers who had received excellent tactical training and conducted extensive operations in which their combat experience refined their skills to very high levels of effectiveness.

Check out this video, and then resume reading below.

 

Spillover in Tactics This afternoon I connected via phone with my friend Fred Burton, who has written a number of outstanding columns for PoliceOne, and has a wealth of knowledge related to the Mexican drug cartels as well as major trends and issues affecting American cops.

“We have a lot of problems in Texas in general — with gang violence and spillover crime. When you look at that kind of event — much like we had with the three-car ambush of the undercover informant the week before last in Houston — this is just indicative of the kind of criminal enterprise that we’re seeing,” Burton told me. “I don’t think this is actually Zetas, but what you do have is a lot of copycat activity with street gangs claiming to be Zetas because of that ‘street cred’ if you know what I mean.”

Think about that for just a moment. You have one group, pretending to be another group, pretending to be another — an American street gang, claiming to be Mexican Zetas, dressing up and presenting themselves as United States law enforcers.

“In reality, that kind of scenario as you saw [in the above video] we’ve seen in Mexico in the past. What you’re seeing is a lot of spillover in tactics. If you rewind a couple of weeks before this incident, you’ve got the ambush of the undercover informant, and now you have this MO where they look like cops — we see that fairly regularly in Mexico. ...No city is immune to this as we all know, but the closer you get to the border, I think you have more likelihood that you’ll have similar modus operandi coming across, bleeding across, because of the drug supply chain.”

Not Just Zetas
While there is a very real possibility that the individuals in that video are Zetas — their tactical acumen and their location near to the Mexican border do increase such a possibility — we must also be mindful of the fact that a variety of groups have been working hard on their training.

Let’s remember that street gangs in the United States generally — and in the American-Mexican border specifically — are frequently just one (or none!) degree of separation from those Cartels proper. Even the street gangs not directly affiliated with the Cartels are dealing the drugs those Cartels have sent across the border. Furthermore, these criminal enterprises — both American gangs and Mexican Cartels — do not limit themselves to drug trafficking. They’re into extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, stolen vehicles, you name it.

“What you’re seeing here is just a spillover in tactics” from Mexico to the United States, Burton reiterated.

“This is an emerging threat that 2012 law enforcement needs to be cognizant of — and on top of — not only tactically but also in terms of firepower as well. When you think about it in context, it’s not just Zetas or Zeta wannabes, you also have a tremendous number of potential US military, combat-trained soldiers that are rotating back into the Unites States.”

It’s not news that a number of individuals now known to be affiliated with criminal gangs have joined the United States military so they can be trained and sent overseas to get battlefield experience which can subsequently be brought back to the streets. We know there are “training camps” all over the country in which “Militias” of Sovereign Citizens are working on their tactics and throwing thousands of rounds downrange to sharpen their skills. And we know that through the broad availability of surplus police vehicles, look-alike and actual police uniforms and equipment, as well as unscrupulous or unwitting trainers providing bad guys with training, we have a serious problem looming ahead.

SWAT Versus SWAT
Imagine the scene in which you have a legitimate law enforcement SWAT team called out to that incident in Houston. The TV news reporters viewing the footage would be tempted to report that sort of an event as a SWAT team versus a SWAT team.

“Due to the fact that our tactics and uniforms are known to everyone, copying us is quite easy,” said my friend and colleague Marty Katz. Katz said. “Anyone can buy whatever they need to look just like a police office.

To make matters worse, some police academies will teach people not hired already by an agency. Change is needed with limited ability to copy uniforms. Movies and television have become reality and reality looks just like film. We gave away our secrets and until we enhance what we do, we are in trouble.”

“This is going to be one of those emerging issues that nobody really likes to talk about, but the street cops in 2012 are going to have to be ready to deal with,” Burton concluded.

About the author

Doug Wyllie is Editor of PoliceOne, responsible for setting the editorial direction of the website and managing the planned editorial features by our roster of expert writers. In addition to his editorial and managerial responsibilities, Doug has authored more than 400 feature articles and tactical tips on a wide range of topics and trends that affect the law enforcement community. Doug is a 2011 Western Publishing Association "Maggie Award" Finalist in the category of Best Regularly Featured Digital Edition Column. Doug is also a member of the Public Safety Writers Association and an honorary member of the California Peace Officers' Association. Even in his "spare" time, he is active in his support for the law enforcement community, contributing his time and talents toward police-related charitable events as well as participating in force-on-force training, search-and-rescue training, and other scenario-based training designed to prepare cops for the fight they face every day on the street.

Read more articles by PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie by clicking here.

Contact Doug Wyllie

MCSO: Man deported from the United States fourteen times

Juan Ramos-Alegria.
Photographer: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office

• By: Bryan Pahia

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office arrested five suspected undocumented immigrants Monday night, including a man who has been deported from the United States 14 times.

According to MCSO, Juan Ramos-Alegria was the driver of the group. MCSO said that just one week ago, he had been deported from Colorado. It was reportedly the 14th time that has happened to him.

It was determined that the group had paid between $1,500 and $2,000 each to be smuggled into the US, according to MCSO. The group was reported to be headed for Arkansas and Georgia.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said, “I will continue the crackdown on illegal immigration despite the threats and intimidation of my critics and certain politicians. We will enforce all the illegal immigration laws by raiding private businesses, human smuggling and crime suppression operations. This is unconscionable and irresponsible to continue to allow these smugglers to return to the U.S. after being deported."

Arpaio also said, “Yesterday Representative Raul Grijalva called for my resignation over some 2005 criminal investigations. In turn, I am asking for his resignation for calling for a boycott of Arizona due to my enforcement of SB 1070."

According to MCSO, the Sheriff’s Office continues to make arrests, contrary to claims from federal officials that there has been a decrease in drug and human trafficking at the US-Mexican border.

In the last two weeks, MCSO has reportedly arrested 18 suspected undocumented immigrants, and the Sheriff’s Human Smuggling Unit has booked nearly 2,600 undocumented immigrants on human smuggling charges since the unit was formed.

Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

More US drones patrolling above border with Mexico

inShare

The MQ-9 Predator B, an unmanned surveillance aircraft system, is unveiled by US Customs and Border Protection at Libby Army Airfield on Oct. 30, 2006 in Sierra Vista, Ariz. (Gary Williams/AFP/Getty Images)

 

 

 

 Teri Schultz

 

 

LUNA COUNTY, New Mexico — Raymond Cobos, the sheriff in these parts, said the horrors of Mexico’s drug war aren’t limited to the big cities of Juarez or Tijuana, and are creeping closer and closer to the United States everyday.

Just across the border sits Puerto Palomas, a Mexican town where Americans used to go — in relative safety — to shop, eat out and seek low-cost medical procedures.

But last years things began to change. And then, Cobos said, shocking events began happening on his doorstep.

“We saw the violence first-hand: the bodies, the tortures, the decapitations. People going to church found three heads displayed there in the plaza,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any single town anywhere of any prominence in Mexico that hasn’t had at one time a series of horrible criminal events in which people have been murdered, tortured, mutilated.”

Now fear is growing that such violence will spill over onto American soil and some officials are hoping that an increased reliance on unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, will help stem the tide.

More from GlobalPost: Complete coverage of the Drone Wars
Although the number of Mexicans illegally crossing into the United States is declining, the potential for drug-related violence — especially as an ongoing war among Mexican drug cartels continues to spiral — has reestablished border security as a hot-button issue, and made the use of drones along the border ever more popular.

The Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, commonly known as the Drone Caucus, is a congressional group that works to promote the use of drones both domestically and abroad. It has doubled its membership since January while the number of drones used on the border to track illegal immigrants and drug activity has also steadily increased.

A bipartisan group formed in 2009, the Drone Caucus argues that UAVs are a peerless asset whose use should be amplified not only in weaponized strikes against extremists abroad, but also for the surveillance and tracking of those trying to breach US borders.

Drones now troll the southern border from California to Louisiana, and the northern border from Washington to Minnesota. With a potential flight time of more than 20 hours, the drones make it feasible to cover vast expanses of difficult terrain, while "pilots" split the shifts on the ground.

The first Predator drone was assigned to the southwest border in 2005. Four more soon followed, with the fifth delivered in October to the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, in the district of Rep. Henry Cuellar, who is a co-chair of the Drone Caucus. A sixth will soon arrive in Sierra Vista, Ariz., and two more monitor the northern border out of North Dakota’s Grand Forks Air Force Base.

More from GlobalPost: Are the drone wars legal?
Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, a retired Air Force pilot who has been working with unmanned technology since the 1990s, said that in his current post as assistant commissioner for the US Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Air and Marine, the drones could prove an invaluable tool.

“If you look at how important the UAVs have been in defense missions overseas,” Kostelnik said from Washington, DC, “it’s not really rocket science to make adjustments for how important those things could be in the homeland for precisely the same reasons.”

Other than the fact that border patrol aircraft do not carry weapons — and despite the presidential campaign rhetoric, Kostelnik said they don’t intend to weaponize them — the units are identical to those used in Pakistan and elsewhere in terms of intelligence collection and real-time interdiction support for agents on the ground.

Tucson Border Patrol Division Chief John Fitzpatrick said it was difficult to put into numbers just how valuable the drones could be for border security.

“Whenever the aircraft shows up, the agents on the ground are more successful and more efficient in what they do,” he said. “It gives us a lot of capabilities we didn’t have before.”

He acknowledged that there was some discomfort with the technology from people living in the area, who worried that the government would be looking into their backyards.

More from GlobalPost: The rationale behind the Drone Wars
“We reassure them there’s accountability in everything we do,” Fitzpatrick said.

For now, supply appears to be outweighing the need and on Capitol Hill, the Drone Caucus appears to be in overdrive. The last three UAVs purchased for border patrol — at a price tag of $32 million from the 2010 budget — were not even requested by Customs and Border Protection, according to an official from the Department of Homeland Security who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Congress sent no extra money for missions or maintenance, despite reports that planes already in service remain grounded at times due to a shortage of pilots, spare parts and other logistical restraints.

Customs and Border Protection reported that drones have been responsible for the apprehension of 7,500 illegal immigrants since they began operating six years ago — a tiny fraction of the total number of arrests that have been made over the same period. Using other means, in six years, the agency has apprehended almost 5 million people.

T.J. Bonner, head of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union representing border patrol agents, said the low numbers prove that money is better spent on manned aircraft and boots on the ground.

More from GlobalPost: The people behind the drones
“People play with the facts around this stuff,” Kostelnik said with frustration, acknowledging that high-profile, targeted killings overseas have politicized even unweaponized missions.

When asked what help he needed most back in Luna County, Sheriff Cobos said he would prioritize “boots on the ground,” but wouldn’t object to a little unmanned help.

Unlike Texas and Arizona, New Mexico doesn’t have a facility to receive data from drones, so it has had to rely primarily on a low-tech approach — manually tracking known routes with a night-vision scope, searching abandoned houses and sidling along the border, watching for Mexicans climbing and jumping off the 12-foot high border fence.

The other states are “banging their drums while we’re using a popsicle stick,” Cobos said about New Mexico.

“Sooner or later the cartels are going to say, ‘Hey, why aren’t we utilizing this space? Why are we trying to shove it through Arizona and Texas?’” he said. “The possibility [there’s] going to be a catastrophic civil war in Mexico is pretty high, and I have to face the probability that at some point I have to deal with it.”


GlobalPost 

Justice Dept. Caught in Lie About 'Fast And Furious'

Justice Dept. Caught In Lie About 'Fast And Furious'

Investors Business Daily | Posted 12/05/2011 06:04 PM ET

Scandal: The Justice Department has formally withdrawn a letter to Congress denying it sanctioned or allowed guns to be transferred to Mexico because it contained "inaccuracies." That's one way of putting it.

Back in February, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun "walking" program run out of ATF's Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the "allegation that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons is false."

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Welch contended, "makes every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico." Another Friday document dump has confirmed what agent testimony and other information have already shown — this letter, and almost everything in it, was a complete fabrication.

Coincidentally on Friday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, in another letter to Congress, wrote: "Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies." In other words, the Department of Justice lied to Congress.

Arizona farmer outfitted with Glock, bullet-proof vest for safety

by Crystal Cruz

azfamily.com

Posted on December 6, 2011 at 7:00 AM

Updated today at 7:02 AM

Related:

Promises, promises: Securing US border impossible

SAN TAN VALLEY, Ariz. -- There was a time when farmers were just concerned with protecting their animals. That's no longer the case.

"Now I'm worried about am I going to come home at night after work," said Scott Blevins. The farmer and father has every reason to worry. What Blevins witnessed out here last summer was a game changer.

"The Maxima came around here and drove into our farm and knocked out some borders at a high rate of speed," Blevins recalled.

The farmer said Border Patrol stopped the car and insider were drug smugglers carrying a hefty load.

"To have it actually occur on my property, it’s getting way to close to home," Blevins said.

That's why this farmer isn't playing around. For safety he wears a bullet proof vest and pack a handgun and rifle to work.

"I’m convinced somebody’s going to see something they shouldn’t see and somebody’s going to die," Blevins said.

Steve Henry, the chief deputy in the Pinal County Sheriff's Office, agreed.

"It’s not a stretch of the imagination," he said. "I think Mr.Blevins is onto something."

Henry said it's no secret drug smugglers use farms to evade deputies.

"It happens all the time, matter of fact three times yesterday," Henry said.

Despite the danger he believes is imminent, Blevins refuses to leave.

"I want my daughter to have the same opportunities I had and if I have to stand up to be a voice I think that would make my daughter proud," Blevins said.

Henry said his office is doing their best to combat the problem, but the office is understaffed by 100 deputies.

Pinal County Sheriffs INTERCEPTORS

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is in the national spotlight once again following the release of a documentary that focuses on smuggling efforts through Arizona’s fastest growing County.



“Interceptors,” featured in the National Rifle Association's Life of Duty television series, was released on Friday and documents the constant fight of human and drug trafficking facing PCSO and the citizens of Pinal County.



Featured in the 20 minute video are Sheriff Paul Babeu, Lieutenant Matthew Thomas, Deputy Samuel Pacheco and Deputy Marc Miller.



Producers with the NRA spent several days conducting interviews and were given access during a multi-jurisdictional operation to combat anti-smuggling operations that included members of PCSO.



PCSO also provided the NRA with video taken during the recent drug takedown know as Operation Pipeline Express; a muti-agency effort which targeted the Sinaloa Cartel organization from Mexico.



Sheriff Babeu stated, “This documentary is a true depiction of the border crimes we see 75 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border. I’m grateful to the NRA for giving my office a chance to showcase what we’re all about and if there’s any doubt regarding the real problems facing our nation when it comes to border security, this documentary helps expose what’s really going on.”