GALEO Commends Fulton County Commissioners for urging Sheriff to decline ICE hold requests
2014-09-03

GALEO Commends Fulton County Commissioners for urging Sheriff to decline ICE hold requests

PRESS Statement: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Media Contact: Jerry González, GALEO Executive Director Tel.: (404) 745-2580 / Email: Jerry@galeo.org

September 3, 2014 (ATLANTA, GA)- Fulton County Commission scheduled a vote today on a Resolution urging the Fulton County Sheriff to “implement a policy to decline detainer requests from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Jerry Gonzalez, Executive Director of GALEO, testified today before the Fulton County Commission urging them to adopt the proposed resolution which was co-sponsored by four County Commissioners and led by Commissioner Joan Gardner. The Fulton County Commission had heard from community members of SONG, GLAHR and 9 to 5, in previous weeks of public comment period educating the commissioners on the issue and why the immigration holds were bad public policy and bad for our communities.
Gonzalez, issued the following statement after the Fulton County Commission passed a resolution, 6-0, today urging the Fulton County Sheriff to decline ICE hold requests:

“On behalf of GALEO, I would like to commend Fulton County Commissioners’ leadership and resolution urging the Fulton County Sheriff to stop honoring the ICE hold requests in order to keep families together but to also enhance public safety. We urge the Fulton County Sheriff to move forward quickly and implement the recommendation.

Since Fulton County is the first jurisdiction in the state with such a recommendation, GALEO would also like to encourage other jurisdictions in the state to adopt similar policies and stop honoring the hold requests from ICE.”

About Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO)

GALEO’s mission is to increase civic engagement and leadership of the Latino/Hispanic community across Georgia.

CORE BELIEFS: Inclusive, Non-Partisan, Diversity, Responsive

Atlanta ICE office monitoring 30,000 immigrants
VIDEO 

ATLANTA — An El Salvadoran woman that took refuge in a Lilburn church for two weeks is back in her metro Atlanta home, laying low to avoid deportation. But 11Alive has learned she’s only one of nearly 30,000 people being monitored by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Atlanta office right now.

Claudia Juardo was being monitored by ICE through an ankle bracelet. She cut it off to avoid deportation, claiming she feared for her family’s life if forced to return. She says she left when violent gangs in her home country tried to extort her for money.

ICE policy discourages agents from going inside a church or school to detain someone, unless the person poses a serious safety risk. Now that Juardo has left the church, ICE seems content to continue to look the other way.

“I was taught that our country was based on the rule of law. We should recognize that concept is diminished if not gone now,” said D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society.

11ALIVE
El Salvadoran woman seeks sanctuary inside metro Atlanta church

King is an advocate for tougher immigration laws and better border security to prevent situations like Juardo’s in the first place.

ICE won’t comment on Juardo’s case, but we talked with a spokesperson in 2012 while getting a rare inside look at the largest immigration detention facility in the country. Right now, Vincent Picard says there are about 1,900 people at the facility in Lumpkin, Georgia.

“As long as we’re reasonably confident that somebody does not pose a threat to public safety and is going to comply with immigration law, show up in court, it’s likely we’re going to release that person,” said Picard.

That was the trust given to Juardo before she cut off her ankle bracelet – and the trust she is still being given now.

According to our open records request, the Atlanta field office which covers Georgia and the Carolinas, monitored 628 other people through ankle bracelets last month. 571 people checked in by phone. But there were roughly 28,000 other unauthorized immigrants out on bond or released on their own recognizance as their immigration status is worked out.

“We have to make a whole new set of standards. And when people come in, they have to come in legally,” said Presidential candidate Donald Trump in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

He made no apologies as he explained his new immigration plan, which would send people like Juardo home as soon as they were detained. Trump also wants to triple the number of ICE officers and make Mexico pay for a wall on the US border.
“They’re sending drugs and they’re taking money out. They’re making a lot of money,” said Trump defending his belief Mexico has the money and the responsibility to pay.

Juardo is seven months pregnant. Her child, if born here, would be a U.S. citizen, further complicating the issue. That’s another controversial issue Trump is taking out on the campaign trail. He believes the constitution should be amended to prevent what he calls ‘birthright citizenship.’

Many candidates have been quick to criticize his plan.

“I’ve talked to the Southwest Governors. Nobody thinks that we should be building a fence as the solution to security,” said Jeb Bush on a campaign stop.

“This plan on immigration is just literally gibberish,” argued Lindsey Graham.

But Trump still leads in the polls and some candidates admit, Trump has hit on a sore spot.

“Clearly the immigration issue is one that drives a lot of emotion and passion in the Republican primary. It’s why I think the #1 goal of the next president is to bring a secure border. People are frustrated,” said Mike Huckabee before a fundraiser in Atlanta.

The Atlanta field office did deport 12,222 people last fiscal year – most of them convicted criminals. Juardo is now technically an immigration fugitive. But whether that’s a crime in our culture depends on who you ask.

“There are people I would rather see as President, but those of us who go on fighting to have our immigration laws enforced or even recognized in Republican politics, one more time, thank you Donald Trump,” said King.

A new analysis of monthly Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that the na- tion’s immigrant population (legal and illegal) hit a record high of 42.1 million in the second quarter of this year — an increase of 1.7 million since the same quarter of 2014. Growth in the immigrant popula- tion in the last year was led by a 740,000 increase in the number of Mexican immigrants. After falling or growing little in recent years, the number of Mexican immigrants again seems to be growing significantly. The monthly Census Bureau data, referred to as the Current Population Survey (CPS), is released before other data. As more information becomes available, it should confirm the findings from the CPS.1

Among the findings:

• The nation’s immigrant (foreign-born) population, which includes legal and illegal immigrants, grew by 4.1 million from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2015 — 1.7 million in just the last year.
• Immigrants are 13.3 percent of the nation’s total population — the largest share in 105 years.
• Growth in the last year was led by a rebound in the number of Mexican immigrants, which increased by 740,000 from 2014 to 2015 — accounting for 44 percent of the increase in the total immigrant population in the last year.
• The total Mexican immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached 12.1 million in the second quarter of 2015 — the highest quarterly total ever.
• Prior research has indicated that net migration (the number coming vs. leaving) from Mexico had fallen to zero; the recent growth indicates that the period of zero net migration has ended.
• In addition to Mexico, growth in the immigrant population was led by a 449,000 increase in the last year from countries in Latin America other than Mexico.
• The Department of Homeland Security and other researchers have estimated that eight in 10 illegal im- migrants are from Mexico and Latin America, so the increase in immigrants from these countries is an indication that illegal immigration has begun growing again.
• The number of immigrants in the United States is now enormous, but it must be recognized that most immigrants, including those from Latin America, are in the country legally. Absent a change in legal im- migration policy, the immigrant population will continue to increase.

More HERE.

Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies.
1629 K Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20006 • Phone 202.466.8185 • Fax 202.466.8076 • www.cis.org

This latest mindless attempt to eliminate the inconvenient words from the English language only serve to remind the rest of us that California is the illegal immigration capital of the world and is going bust because of its ridiculous and deadly liberal laws and policies.
– D.A. King

In another of a seemingly endless shake-your-head series of jump-the-shark politically correct attempts at distraction from the state’s massive wall of debt crisis, Governor “Moonbeam” Jerry Brown and the Democrat legislature have decided to strike the English word “alien” from California labor laws.

Not the legal and accurate term for non-citizens here in violation of American immigration laws – which is “illegal alien” — just … “alien.”

Democrat state Senator Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia), author of the bill, says “alien” is now commonly considered a derogatory term for a foreign-born person and has very negative connotations. Note to Mendoza from mainstream America: No, it isn’t.

The executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, Tim Paulson, reportedly told the San Francisco Chronicle that “the word ‘alien’ has incredibly racist and un-American connotations.” Got that?

Merriam-Webster contains several definitions for the English word “alien.” Among them: “a person who was born in a different country and is not a citizen of the country in which he or she now lives; “a foreign-born resident who has not been naturalized and is still a subject or citizen of a foreign country; and “a creature that comes from somewhere other than the planet Earth.”

It seems that even with English as the official language of California, there are exceptions for full usage.

We anxiously await the headline announcing the official scrubbing of the word “alien” in any discussions or studies at Caltech’s center of astronomical research, Mt. Palomar Observatory, as “racist.”

A quick look at several online translator sites and queries to my native Spanish-speaking friends informs me that “alien” en Espanol is “extranjero.” So, a question for the language police in Sacramento: Is alien “racist, derogatory and un-American” in any language … or only English?

Maybe the entire California legal code can be soon re-written in Emojis?

Meanwhile, back here on planet Earth, curious readers should know that “alien” is still really a word. As a matter of fact, it is usefully combined with the English word “illegal” quite often.

One wonders at the sleepless nights and fits of rage from the California government officials when they hear that “illegal alien” is used in federal law, various state laws, by the IRS, in multiple presidential Executive Orders, by federal immigration law enforcement and by the United States Supreme Court — including by that self-described “wise Latina” Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

“The concern is that the use of the word ‘alien’ would dehumanize the people affected” and lead to “lack of protections under the law,” claims Kevin R. Johnson, dean of Public Interest Law and professor of Chicana/Chicano Studies at UC Davis.

The quotes from California’s sensitive elite bring up yet another question. Is it “dehumanizing” or “derogatory” to use the word “alien” when noting the murder of Kate Steinle by an illegal alien who was a convicted criminal and who had been deported multiple times? We wouldn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.

Is it “un-American” or hurtful when Americans Billy and Kathy Inman of Woodstock, Georgia tell the story of an illegal alien killing their only child, Dustin – age sixteen, fifteen years ago in his own country because he was welcomed into the USA by mindless politicians and rewarded with an officially-issued drivers license, a job, and various public benefits?

Is it “dehumanizing” when Kathy Inman explains from her wheelchair that she has been there ever since the illegal alien looking for a better life put here there for the rest of her life when he killed her son?

This latest mindless attempt to eliminate the inconvenient words from the English language only serve to remind the rest of us that California is the illegal immigration capital of the world and is going bust because of its ridiculous and deadly liberal laws and policies.

One more definition from Merriam-Webster: “Fool: a person who lacks good sense or judgment: a stupid or silly person.”

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society and is an independent voter. He describes himself a “pro-enforcement” on immigration and borders. Twitter:@DAKDIS

HERE.

It started with in-state tuition. Then came driver’s licenses, new rules designed to limit deportations and state-funded healthcare for children. And on Monday, in a gesture heavy with symbolism, came a new law to erase the word “alien” from California’s labor code.

Together, these piecemeal measures have taken on a significance greater than their individual parts — a fundamental shift in the relationship between California and its residents who live in the country illegally. The various benefits, rights and protections add up to something experts liken to a kind of California citizenship.

The changes have occurred with relatively little political rancor, which is all the more remarkable given the heated national debate about illegal immigration that has been inflamed by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

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“We’ve passed the Rubicon here,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist. “This is not an academic debate on the U.S. Senate floor about legal and illegal and how high you want to build the wall…. [The state] doesn’t have the luxury of being ideological…. The undocumented are not going anywhere.”

Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists, with diminishing opposition from the GOP, continue to seek new laws and protections. These measures include cracking down on employers withholding pay from low-wage workers and expanding state-subsidized healthcare to adult immigrants without papers.

These new initiatives face obstacles, but backers say such hurdles center on the hefty price tags of the programs, not political fallout from the immigration debate.

California officials have been spurred into action in part by the lack of action in Washington to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. The stall in Congress has motivated advocates to push for changes in state laws. But they acknowledge that their victories are limited without national reform.

“The reality is, despite the bills that we’ve done, there are up to 3 million undocumented immigrants that still live in the shadows,” said Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville), chairman of the Latino Legislative Caucus. “Their legal status as immigrants does not change — only Congress can do that.”

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a public policy professor at UC Riverside, calls what’s emerging “the California package”: an array of policies that touch on nearly every aspect of immigrant life, from healthcare to higher education to protection from federal immigration enforcement.

[The state] doesn’t have the luxury of being ideological…. The undocumented are not going anywhere.
– Republican strategist Mike Madrid
Other states have adopted components of the package; Connecticut, for example, offers in-state tuition and driver’s licenses, and passed legislation known as the Trust Act to help limit deportations before California did.

But Ramakrishnan said California is unique in how comprehensive its offerings are.

Most of these laws were passed after 2000, and became especially plentiful after 2012, when President Obama took executive action that shielded from deportation people who were brought to the country illegally.

California was one of the first states to authorize driver’s licenses for those affected by Obama’s order; two years later, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law enabling all immigrants in the U.S. illegally to seek licenses. The same year, the state expanded in-state tuition for more students in the country illegally and allowed people without legal status to obtain law and other professional licenses.

There have been symbolic wins too, such as a law last year to repeal vestiges of Proposition 187. The initiative, which overwhelmingly passed in 1994, denied immigrants in the country illegally access to public services; it had been mostly overturned by the courts. And on Monday, Brown signed a measure striking the word “alien” — seen as derogatory to those not born in the U.S. — from the state’s labor laws… READ THE REST HERE.

Mr. King,

I hope you’re doing well today… you may remember me from my many years as managing editor of the Cherokee Tribune.

I’m writing to alert you that the WSB-TV article you have forwarded via social media includes false allegations that are so serious that we are responding not only to you, but also copying the elected officials who were tagged in your Twitter post.

The WSB-TV story posted online contains a complete fabrication in regard to operations at Canton Elementary School STEM Academy, a 2014 Georgia School Bell Award winner. There is no program, initiative, policy, practice, etc. for older students to translate for younger students.

The school has ample English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and bilingual staff to teach, translate for and assist in all ways the students who come from non-English speaking homes. To be clear, 42% of the school’s students are classified as ESOL, but that does not mean the children do not speak English… as you know, it means they come from homes where English is a second language, so they do not necessarily have the same exposure to vocabulary, advanced sentence structure, etc. as all of their classmates. Older students stay in their own classes; younger students stay in their own classes. There likely are instances of children in the same class at Canton Elementary School STEM Academy voluntarily helping a child in a neighboring desk with reading… just as there as instances in every school around the world of children helping classmates in classes in every subject every day – this is and always has been a part of school… I’m sure you remember this from your own childhood.

When I brought the report’s inaccuracy to the attention of WSB-TV, news managers apologized and immediately ensured all broadcast reports were accurate and pulled the story from its Facebook page; the web story was initially overlooked in this correction process, but managers advise that it will be pulled down today.

This appears to be a case of a reporter looking for drama where it didn’t exist; if you have not read coverage of the event that the station covered and somehow led to this story, there is a report in the Cherokee Tribune posted here, as well as a story with photos on the CCSD website here and Facebook page here. The Welcome Back Bus Tour was an extremely positive, innovative idea developed by teachers and Principal Beth Long to better engage the community, and it was billed a success by all parties.

Barbara Jacoby
Director, Public Information, Communications and Partnerships
Cherokee County School District
P.O. Box 769, Canton, Ga. 30169
770.704.4228; barbara.jacoby@cherokee.k12.ga.us

Insider Advantage Georgia – a subscription news and opinion outlet

Reject Obama’s Federal Judge Pick Dax Lopez

by Phil Kent | Aug 4, 2015

President Barack Obama’s nomination of DeKalb County State Court Judge Dax Lopez to be a federal district court judge — subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate– is causing a stir in Republican and conservative circles. On last Sunday’s Fox5Atlanta “Georgia Gang” broadcast, for example, host Dick Williams asserted that Lopez’s board membership on the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) “and its extreme positions on open borders is problematic and has to be answered.”

It is laughable that Lopez is being packaged as somehow being a “Republican,” as evidenced by the headline over a fawning August 3 Daily Report article: “As a Latino Republican, Federal Judge Nominee has Bipartisan Connections.” It’s time for a reality check. Just consider the radical positions of the illegal alien lobby group that Lopez has presided over since 2004 (positions opposed by most Republicans in Georgia, by the way). Note that, according to its website, GALEO:

* Supports amnesty for illegal aliens.
* Lobbied against Georgia sheriffs’ cooperation with federal immigration control officials and even commended the Fulton County sheriff for not cooperating with Immigration and Control Enforcement officials.
* Fought the state voter identification law.
* Denounces the state’s official English-in-government law.
* Supports in-state tuition for illegal aliens.
* Opposed passage of the 2011 Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act (which passed both houses of the General Assembly by large majorities).

This writer spoke with Lopez at a reception during his judgeship campaign in 2012. He was unapologetic for the group opposing the 2011 immigration control act. That was the same year that GALEO joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and other left-wing groups in a class action lawsuit to overturn the law. (How many taxpayer dollars did Lopez’s organization cost the state’s taxpayers in defending that law?)

When asked why he was a board member of an advocacy/lobbying group, he told me it was because he believed in its mission. That begs the question: Should any serving judge be a board member of an advocacy/lobbying group? Also, can Lopez be an “impartial” federal judge at a time when his benefactor Obama has been bypassing Congress with unconstitutional executive actions granting amnesty and “deferred status” to illegal immigrants?

Remember, too, that Lopez had a big patron during his 2012 election campaign. It was none other than last year’s failed Democratic gubernatorial nominee and son of former President Jimmy Carter. In a July 27, 2012 Tweet, Lopez said: “I cannot begin to thank my good friend and fellow DeKalb public servant Sen. Jason Carter for hosting a meet and greet for me at the home of his parents. I am humbled to have his support and endorsement.” Lopez was also endorsed in his campaign by former Democrat Gov. Roy Barnes and the homosexual lobby Georgia Equality.

Yes, Lopez was originally appointed to his DeKalb judgeship by GOP Gov. Sonny Perdue as part of a public relations-type “outreach to Hispanics.” But waving a magic wand and sprinkling pachyderm powder over Lopez didn’t automatically make him a “Republican,” no matter how many times dishonest media types make the claim.

Marietta attorney Robert Ingram, a member of U.S. Sen Johnny Isakson’s judicial nominating committee, babbled to the Daily Report that “both the committee and Senator Isakson enthusiastically support him.” However, that’s not what Isakson or his office say. They aren’t saying anything, for now. Georgia’s other U.S. senator, David Perdue, has not made up his mind as to whether he will confirm this Obama pick.

Lopez will undergo thorough questioning about his judicial philosophy when he comes before the U.S. Senate. And if Republicans in the GOP-controlled Senate are true to their word, and they oppose activist judges who support Obama’s unconstitutional overreaches, they will ultimately reject this presidential acolyte.

Phil Kent is the CEO of InsiderAdvantage and is also Gov. Nathan Deal’s appointee to the state Immigration Enforcement and Review Board.

* Georgia state Senator Josh McKoon’s February, 2015 column on Townhall  “Unlike Mexico, Georgia is issuing drivers licenses to illegal aliens”

* Please ask anyone who cares about what goes on in the super-majority Republican state senate to read this newspaper column on Georgia driver’s licenses for illegal aliens and unrecorded votes?

* What makes illegal aliens migrate out of Georgia? Two minute video HERE.

* Short humanitarian report from the Gwinnett County sheriff on the “rich tapestry” of illegal immigration HERE.

* Please use this link to the sign-up page for the Dustin Inman Society action alert/newsletter list available?

BONUS: IN ADDITION TO THE FREE FAX SERVICE TO CONGRESS THROUGH NumbersUSA – UNLIMITED INFO ON IMMIGRATION HERE.

dak