Many Homeland Security initiatives are called flops

Some high-tech systems, including the Real ID Act and a "virtual fence" on the border, were rushed into use without being tested or proven, experts say.

By Ken Dilanian, Tribune Washington Bureau

May 14, 2010

Reporting from Washington

A high-tech "virtual fence" to catch illegal border crossers. Next-generation nuclear detectors at ports. Tamper-proof driver's licenses in every state.

These were signature Bush administration initiatives to protect the country against terrorism and secure its borders. All have been proven to be flops, according to government and outside experts, and expensive ones at that.

The Department of Homeland Security paid defense contractor Boeing Co. $1.1 billion to build what is sometimes called the virtual border fence. But the system of radars and cameras can't consistently tell terrorists from tumbleweed, according to the Government Accountability Office. In March, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano froze funding on the project.

In February, she overhauled plans to install so-called Advanced Spectroscopic Portal radiation detectors to screen cargo at ports. The units were prone to false alarms and hadn't proved themselves in testing, according to the accountability office. Developed by defense contractor Raytheon under a $1.2-billion program, the $822,000 detectors will now be relegated to a secondary screening role.

Last May, the Transportation Security Administration removed 37 explosive trace detection machines — or "puffers" — that had been deployed at airports to screen airline passengers at a total cost of $30 million. The machines had maintenance problems and didn't work consistently.

"DHS was pushing technology pretty hard under the Bush administration, and we were willing to risk failure because of the risks," said Stewart Baker, the former Homeland Security policy chief and author of a forthcoming memoir, "Skating on Stilts." "I'd put all of those things in the category of course corrections based on new data, perhaps made easier because this administration had not started the projects and so it could declare them failures without taking blame for the failure."

Napolitano aides say they don't blame their predecessors, who were under intense pressure to prevent another terrorist attack, for attempting fixes that ultimately didn't pan out. But outside analysts say the failures were the predictable result of an agency with too little experience at making major purchases and of contractors peddling untested products.

"Before they did the puffers, everybody told them it wasn't going to work," said Richard Roth, an aviation security expert with CTI Consulting in Maryland. "The only guy that said it was going to work was the lobbyist for the company."

Corporations "have figured out that a whole lot of money has been budgeted for homeland security and counter-terrorism, and they're really eager to market all sorts of gigantic technological solutions," said Charles Faddis, a former CIA officer and author of "Willful Neglect: The Dangerous Illusion of Homeland Security."

"We end up in a situation where there's all sorts of very straightforward things that we don't do, because there's no money to be made in it," he said.

For example, Faddis said, the government should make greater use of explosive-sniffing dogs at airports and should counter vehicle bombs by requiring simple steps at industrial plants that store dangerous chemicals. Napolitano told Congress recently that she supports expanding the use of bomb-sniffing dogs.

The Department of Homeland Security is hampered by a shortage of procurement officials experienced in buying complicated systems, said Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, a homeland security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

The department says it has been hiring more experts to better evaluate contract proposals and oversee projects.

The virtual fence, radiation detectors and the puffer machines each had something in common, the accountability office says: All three technologies were selected before having been proven to work.

Sometimes that's a reasonable way to deploy new security measures, said Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corp., who has advised the government on homeland security measures. "In some cases, you are going to deploy some technology with the objective of 'Let's see how well it works in the field,' " he said.

Still, he said, the Homeland Security Department is overly reliant on technology.

"We are constantly searching for a silver bullet. We think that can solve all problems with superior technology," he said. "I don't think that's true."

Boeing disputes the notion that its virtual fence project has been a failure. Roger Krone, the company's president for network and space systems, told a House committee in March that it had been "a difficult and challenging program." But the original idea of providing "timely and actionable situational awareness to Border Patrol agents" remains sound, he said.

Technology aside, some major Homeland Security initiatives have buckled in the face of political and fiscal resistance.

Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, last year called for the repeal of a 2005 tamper-proof driver's license law, known as Real ID, which was opposed by cash-strapped states that had to pay for it. In the meantime, she extended the deadline for states to comply until May 2011. Napolitano said last year that she favored "something else that pivots off of the driver's license but accomplishes some of the same goals."

Napolitano also told Congress that her department could not meet the 2012 deadline for screening 100% of ship cargo coming into the United States. That was also the position of her predecessor, Michael Chertoff. Many experts, and the shipping industry, believe 100% screening would bog down international commerce.

To screen the 10 million containers that enter the country each year, Napolitano told Congress, her department "would need significant resources for greater manpower and technology, technologies that do not currently exist, and the redesign of many ports," she said. "These are all prohibitive challenges."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-homeland-flops-20100515,0,5640818,print.story

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Money woes come at Boyle and Homeboy high points

Father Gregory Boyle's latest book got good reviews and his Homeboy Industries, which aims at getting people out of gangs, has a taker for mass-producing a product. But the revenue just isn't there.

By Hector Becerra, Los Angeles Times

May 15, 2010

This should be a triumphant moment for Father Gregory Boyle.

The founder of Homeboy Industries just published a memoir that has been well reviewed, and focused more attention on his decades of work using jobs to get young people out of gangs.

A major supermarket wants to mass-produce Homegirl Cafe's salsa, and the priest dreams that it could become Homeboy Industries' version of Newman's Own salad dressing. The cafe is even in the running to expand into a new wing at LAX, Boyle said.

But on Friday, he was struggling to keep Homeboy Industries alive.

The day before, Boyle had announced that Homeboy was laying off 300 employees, including all senior staff and administrators, and that he had stopped collecting a paycheck.

"If you look at the trajectory of Homeboy, it's unbelievable. And that's the irony," the 55-year-old Boyle said Friday. "This place has never been healthier in terms of its vision. And we have no money."

For all the accolades Homeboy Industries has garnered for its work taking gang members off the streets and training them for jobs, generating the revenue to pay for its services has proved increasingly difficult.

The organization actually receives little funding these days from local government, which instead is focusing more on gang intervention programs that focus on reducing violence among current gang members, he said.

The recession has hurt Homeboy in several ways. The private donations that typically help balance the budget are down. And there are fewer jobs for graduates of Homeboy's various programs.

"A lot of good workers lost their jobs," Boyle said. "So when there's an opening for something, who are they going to pick, one of my guys who's tattooed and is a felon, or somebody with a good work history?"

Boyle said L.A.'s dramatic drop in crime — and gang violence — may have in its own way contributed to Homeboy's financial problems. With less gang violence, he said, helping reformed gang members feels less urgent to some donors.

Boyle started his work when L.A.'s gang mayhem was at its worst. In the early 1990s, slayings totaled more than 2,000 in the county, twice as many as in recent years. In 1992, L.A. alone had 1,092 killings; two years ago, that number dropped to 382 homicides.

At first, Boyle delved into some of the most dangerous neighborhoods on the city's Eastside, gaining a reputation as a charismatic but forceful priest with a knack for moving gang members, even if police officers thought he just protected them. In the early days, he even attended some gang parties.

But years ago, concerned about giving gangs too much respect, he changed his approach. Rather than dealing directly with gang activities, Boyle began to focus on gang members trying to leave the life. Homeboy specializes in job training and mental health counseling, as well as tattoo removal and job placement.

This shift, however, has hurt Homeboy's ability to get local government anti-gang funds. Local officials in recent years have been more interested in on-the-ground gang intervention programs that attempt to defuse dangerous gang feuds.

"I don't believe in that approach. I used to do it. I'll never do it again," Boyle said. "License to operate means you will be given permission by the gang to work in a neighborhood. Pick a reason why that's a dumb approach."

In recent years, Homeboy has expanded significantly, symbolized by the new headquarters near Chinatown that has become a local landmark. When the recession hit two years ago, the demand for training and counseling also increased. But at the same time, revenuedeclined, and Homeboy has struggled to keep its finances afloat. It's now serving 12,000 current and former gang members a year but has a $5-million deficit.

Boyle said that even if someone comes forward to rescue Homeboy Industries, he knows he may have to make some changes in the way his group does business. The organization's own board members and funders have told him for years that Homeboy's budget is not sustainable. It could mean even fewer employees.

The priest said that he's open to change, even if it means thinking more like a businessman.

"I guess so. The board wants me to make changes," Boyle said. "But right now, we need bridge money to get around this corner."

Outside his office, as TV crews and callers with surefire ways to get out of this mess vied for Boyle's attention, Brian Moon, a tattooed 22-year-old from Koreatown, said that he may have lost his paycheck, but not his faith in the group, or the priest.

"There's nowhere else but up," he said. "I'm not worried."

Asked if he was as optimistic, Boyle smiled.

"I'm always more hopeful than I am optimistic," he said.

"Hope comes from the soul; optimism comes from observable evidence. And this place is soaked with hope."

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/callocal/la-me-0515-homeboy-boyle-20100515,0,1420732,print.story

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Families of John Gardner's murder victims tell him he should 'burn in hell'

Amid anguished and angry comments from the parents of his victims, registered sex offender John Albert Gardner III was formally sentenced Friday to life in prison without the chance of parole for the murder and rape of two teenage girls in northern San Diego County.

The families of Amber Dubois, 14, and Chelsea King, 17, spoke in court of the bright, hopeful, innocent lives that were violently destroyed by Gardner and how their broken bodies were discarded like trash.

The courtroom in San Diego County Superior Court was packed with family members, investigators and reporters -- many of whom had tears in their eyes.

Dubois' family showed a video of their daughter, accompanied with recorded music, and described her as a loving teenager who enjoyed reading and "was kind beyond measure" and "not about the mall or being self-involved." The day she disappeared, she was carrying money to buy a lamb for a 4-H project.

King's family spoke of their daughter as a perfect child, an honor student at Poway High School destined for college and a career helping others. A video was shown with comments from her school friends about their loss and their memories of her laugh and selflessness.

Gardner, shackled and with armed sheriff's deputies standing near him, kept his head down during the family statements and wept. He looked up only briefly when King's mother, Kelly, twice demanded, "Look at me," and waited for his response.

Gardner, 31, pleaded guilty last month to murdering the teens, both during rape attempts. He admitted strangling King and stabbing Dubois. As part of a plea bargain, he was spared the death penalty.

“There are not enough words to describe the agony my family has gone through minute by minute" since her daughter's abduction, said Dubois' mother, Carrie McGonigle.

King's father, Brent, said she ‘looked for the good in everyone. I'm not sure she could comprehend the pure evil that sits before use.... I am filled with a rage that I didn't know I possessed."

Dubois disappeared in February 2009 while walking to class at Escondido High School. King vanished a year later while jogging near Lake Hodges. A pair of panties found on the jogging path two days later led investigators to Gardner, whose DNA was in a state database after his five-year prison sentence for attacking a 13-year-old girl.

After his arrest in the King murder, Gardner admitted killing Dubois and led investigators to her remains northeast of Escondido. In a television interview while in jail, Gardner said he was seized by an uncontrollable rage and could not stop when he began attacking the two victims. He blamed a life full of disappointment and maltreatment.

Both families have called for changes in how the criminal justice system treats sex offenders. The King family, with the backing of a state legislator and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has called for a “Chelsea's Law” that would give life sentences to sex offenders who attack minors, and also requiring a lifetime of GPS monitoring for sex criminals.

Dubois' parents have criticized the system for letting Gardner out of prison early and for not putting him back behind bars when he was found to be violating his parole, among other things, by living close to a school.

King's father called Gardner “a monster and an animal." Dubois' father, Maurice, said Gardner was an animal-like “predator” that should never have been let loose.

Maurice Dubois and Kelly King said Gardner should "burn in hell." Brent King said he hopes Gardner while in prison lives in fear everyday from other prisoners.

“Unlike you, Chelsea was no coward. I'm sure she showed more courage in her last moments than you have your entire life," he said.

Brent King said he hoped that Gardner, after his death, "goes to the deepest level of hell as described in the classics as 'a burning lake of blood.' "

He also criticized Gardener's mother, a psychiatric nurse, for not turning her son into authorities after Dubois disappeared.

Candice Moncayo, 22, a jogger who Gardner attempted to abduct just weeks before King was killed, said she still has nightmares about his attack. She escaped his grasp after punching him in the nose, a fact she mockingly recalled as she stared at Gardner and asked about his nose.

“I have spent countless hours terrified and nauseated like a scared rabbit," she said, her voice breaking with tears and sobs.  “…I came here to stand as witness for Chelsea and Amber."

The parents of both murder victims said their families have been shattered.

"People who've known us all our lives do not recognize us at times," Kelly King said.

The case also has occasioned a confrontation between the local media and the court system and law enforcement agencies. The King and Dubois families have pleaded with the courts and law enforcement to restrict the information provided about the attacks.

Superior Court judges have required court hearings before releasing search warrants, normally a routine event. The San Diego County Sheriff's Department, Escondido Police Department and county medical examiner have all declined to release documents about their investigation, the arrest of Gardner and the autopsies done on the victims.

Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis has asked officials not to discuss the case with reporters. Such official silence has left unanswered the questions about how diligently the Escondido police searched for Dubois and what considerations led Dumanis to decide to accept a plea bargain.

Before Dumanis' request to be silent, Escondido police told the North County Times that they had had several contacts with Gardner before and after Dubois' appearance and apparently knew he was a sex offender but did not consider him a suspect.

A search warrant filed after his arrest indicated that Escondido police stopped Gardner just days after Dubois' disappearance a few blocks from Escondido High after a woman reported that he was following her.

In his interview with KFMB-TV Channel 8, Gardner said the idea of a plea bargain was brought to him by his attorneys and that he had not requested it.

In his interview with the television station, Gardner said, “I hate myself, I really do. There is no taking back what I did, and if I could, yes, I would.

"But I was out of control. If I was able to stop myself in the middle of it, I would have, and I could not. I was out of control."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/05/families-of-john-gardners-victims-tell-him-he-should-burn-in-hell-.html#more

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British actress says Roman Polanski forced her to have sex with him in 1982 when she was 16

Charlotte Lewis, who appeared in Polanski's 1986 film "Pirates," told reporters that the Oscar-winning director "forced himself" upon her in 1982 in Paris as they worked on the film.

Lewis did not report the incident at the time in 1982, and it's unclear why she chose to hold a press conference now.

Lewis, now 42, alleges the incident occurred in a Paris apartment. The legal age of consent in France is 15, according to French law.

The actress was a child star in Britain on the TV show "Grange Hill" and also appeared in some movies.

She made the statements during a news conference with her Los Angeles attorney, Gloria Allred.

The Los Angeles district attorney's office confirmed Lewis met with prosecutors on Thursday but declined to comment further. L.A. prosecutors want Polanski to be extradited from Switzerland to California to face sentencing for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl more than three decades ago.

Polanski is now under house arrest in Switzerland and is fighting efforts to be brought to Los Angeles.

One legal expert said it was possible prosecutors could use Lewis' statements if Polanski does come to the U.S. for sentencing -- but it remains unclear whether they would.

"Other bad acts are something prosecutors can highlight," said Dmitry Gorin, a defense attorney and former deputy district attorney who prosecuted sex crimes. "It is my gut instinct that they will be able use this information unless there is something specific in the statutes preventing it."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/05/british-actress-says-roman-polanski-forced-her-to-have-sex-with-him-in-1982-when-she-was-16.html#more

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What price hope?

Homeboy Industries is hurting; it's time for L.A., rich and poor, to step up and help.

Tim Rutten

May 15, 2010

Does Los Angeles have a conscience?

Does it have a heart?

If the answer to either one of those questions is yes, then we ought to share a common anguish over the crisis that threatens to cripple Homeboy Industries, the phenomenally successful gang intervention program founded 18 years ago by Father Gregory Boyle at East L.A.'s Dolores Mission. More than simply wringing hands, this county's wealthiest men and women need to step up and help put this invaluable program back on its feet.

Homeboy, which occupies a strikingly vibrant headquarters near Union Station, operates successful cafe, bakery and silk-screening businesses. It also provides job training, work, counseling, educational programs, legal assistance and tattoo removal to 12,000 young men and women formerly involved in gangs from all over Los Angeles County. It is what every social service organization purports, or aspires, to be: an effective program with a soul.

However, as the demands for its services have risen, Homeboy has been pinched by the general drop in charitable contributions that have followed from the grim economy. Since last fall, when the organization's problems surfaced, Boyle and his staff have been relying on a stream of small donations to cobble together their payroll. On Thursday, they had to lay off 330 of the 427 people they employed. Boyle and his staff will continue to work without pay, and the profitable cafe, bakery and silk-screen businesses will go on as usual.

Essentially, Homeboy needs $5 million in what amounts to bridge funding to carry it through until, as planned, the growing revenues from those successful businesses can support the rest of the program. This is an organization that has saved thousands of lives and demonstrably contributed not only to the lives of the young people it serves but also to our collective public safety. That's why Boyle and his work are supported strongly by both Police Chief Charlie Beck and Sheriff Lee Baca. What, moreover, is $5 million in a city that spends $25 million annually on gang intervention programs of dubious efficacy? What is it in a city with eight billionaires and millionaires by the thousands?

Boyle and I have been friends for more than 20 years, and though he doesn't do bitter, he does do bemused. That was his mood Thursday, when he wondered how a city and county that "wouldn't close an animal shelter ever," that has rallied to save its Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hollywood sign, could stand by and let Homeboy nearly go under. "A Warhol, a sign on a hillside, any puppy are more valuable to the city and county of Los Angeles than all the 12,000 gang members who come through our door every year," he said. "Part of my sadness is that the poor get this place, but the rich just don't. Too many of them believe that there are some lives that matter more than others, and our kids matter least of all."

Boyle pointed out that Homeboy's core businesses never have been more successful. "Ralphs is now taking our Homegirl salsas for all its stores. We've got a shot at opening another cafe in the renovated LAX, and even Patina now is a client of our bakery. We're the opposite of a sinking ship."

For the sake of its soul, this city and county need to show the young people who have found hope at Homeboy that we don't believe that they're dispensable, that their lives matter less than others. That's why I called former Mayor Richard Riordan, whose experience as a successful venture capitalist has made him a particularly effective and hardheaded philanthropist, and asked him whether he was willing to step in and help out Boyle and his staff.

He agreed without hesitation, reminding me that a few years ago, he personally contributed $50,000 to Homeboy, a sum he helped persuade billionaires like Cheryl Saban and Stewart and Lynda Resnick to match. "There's no question Greg Boyle is a saint," Riordan said, "but even saints need good businessmen who can recruit other wealthy businessmen to keep them going.... I can help with that. Give them my home phone number."

And so I have. Once Boyle and Riordan have their mutual efforts on behalf of these young people underway, you can look to this column to see who has responded and what more needs to be done.

Friday morning, Boyle reminded that "Martin Luther King said once, 'I have felt the power of God transform the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope.' That's what every homie, and anyone else who visits, experiences in our place."

What price can Los Angeles put on hope?

WHAT'S the key to success in the United States?

Short of becoming a reality TV star, the answer is rote and, some would argue, rather knee-jerk: Earn a college degree.

The idea that four years of higher education will translate into a better job, higher earnings and a happier life — a refrain sure to be repeated this month at graduation ceremonies across the country — has been pounded into the heads of schoolchildren, parents and educators. But there's an underside to that conventional wisdom. Perhaps no more than half of those who began a four-year bachelor's degree program in the fall of 2006 will get that degree within six years, according to the latest projections from the Department of Education. (The figures don't include transfer students, who aren't tracked.)

For college students who ranked among the bottom quarter of their high school classes, the numbers are even more stark: 80 percent will probably never get a bachelor's degree or even a two-year associate's degree.

That can be a lot of tuition to pay, without a degree to show for it.

A small but influential group of economists and educators is pushing another pathway: for some students, no college at all. It's time, they say, to develop credible alternatives for students unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree, or who may not be ready to do so.

Whether everyone in college needs to be there is not a new question; the subject has been hashed out in books and dissertations for years. But the economic crisis has sharpened that focus, as financially struggling states cut aid to higher education.

Among those calling for such alternatives are the economists Richard K. Vedder of Ohio University and Robert I. Lerman of American University, the political scientist Charles Murray, and James E. Rosenbaum, an education professor at Northwestern. They would steer some students toward intensive, short-term vocational and career training, through expanded high school programs and corporate apprenticeships.

“It is true that we need more nanosurgeons than we did 10 to 15 years ago,” said Professor Vedder, founder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity , a research nonprofit in Washington. “But the numbers are still relatively small compared to the numbers of nurses' aides we're going to need. We will need hundreds of thousands of them over the next decade.”

And much of their training, he added, might be feasible outside the college setting.

College degrees are simply not necessary for many jobs. Of the 30 jobs projected to grow at the fastest rate over the next decade in the United States, only seven typically require a bachelor's degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics .

Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor's) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor's degree.

Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor's degrees, according to a 1999 federal study.

“Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.

Professor Lerman, the American University economist, said some high school graduates would be better served by being taught how to behave and communicate in the workplace.

Such skills are ranked among the most desired — even ahead of educational attainment — in many surveys of employers. In one 2008 survey of more than 2,000 businesses in Washington State, employers said entry-level workers appeared to be most deficient in being able to “solve problems and make decisions,” “resolve conflict and negotiate,” “cooperate with others” and “listen actively.”

Yet despite the need, vocational programs, which might teach such skills, have been one casualty in the push for national education standards, which has been focused on preparing students for college.

While some educators propose a radical renovation of the community college system to teach work readiness, Professor Lerman advocates a significant national investment by government and employers in on-the-job apprenticeship training. He spoke with admiration, for example, about a program in the CVS pharmacy chain in which aspiring pharmacists' assistants work as apprentices in hundreds of stores, with many going on to study to become full-fledged pharmacists themselves.

“The health field is an obvious case where the manpower situation is less than ideal,” he said. “I would try to work with some of the major employers to develop these kinds of programs to yield mastery in jobs that do demand high expertise.”

While no country has a perfect model for such programs, Professor Lerman pointed to a modest study of a German effort done last summer by an intern from that country. She found that of those who passed the Abitur, the exam that allows some Germans to attend college for almost no tuition, 40 percent chose to go into apprenticeships in trades, accounting, sales management, and computers.

“Some of the people coming out of those apprenticeships are in more demand than college graduates,” he said, “because they've actually managed things in the workplace.”

Still, by urging that some students be directed away from four-year colleges, academics like Professor Lerman are touching a third rail of the education system. At the very least, they could be accused of lowering expectations for some students. Some critics go further, suggesting that the approach amounts to educational redlining, since many of the students who drop out of college are black or non-white Hispanics.

Peggy Williams, a counselor at a high school in suburban New York City with a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, understands the argument for erring on the side of pushing more students toward college.

“If we're telling kids, ‘You can't cut the mustard, you shouldn't go to college or university,' then we're shortchanging them from experiencing an environment in which they might grow,” she said.

But Ms. Williams said she would be more willing to counsel some students away from the precollege track if her school, Mount Vernon High School, had a better vocational education alternative. Over the last decade, she said, courses in culinary arts, nursing, dentistry and heating and ventilation system repair were eliminated. Perhaps 1 percent of this year's graduates will complete a concentration in vocational courses, she said, compared with 40 percent a decade ago.

There is another rejoinder to the case against college: People with college and graduate degrees generally earn more than those without them, and face lower risks of unemployment, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even those who experience a few years of college earn more money, on average, with less risk of unemployment, than those who merely graduate from high school, said Morton Schapiro, an economist who is the president of Northwestern University .

“You get some return even if you don't get the sheepskin,” Mr. Shapiro said.

He warned against overlooking the intangible benefits of a college experience — even an incomplete experience — for those who might not apply what they learned directly to their chosen work.

“It's not just about the economic return,” he said. “Some college, whether you complete it or not, contributes to aesthetic appreciation, better health and better voting behavior.”

Nonetheless, Professor Rosenbaum said, high school counselors and teachers are not doing enough to alert students unlikely to earn a college degree to the perilous road ahead.

“I'm not saying don't get the B.A,” he said. “I'm saying, let's get them some intervening credentials, some intervening milestones. Then, if they want to go further in their education, they can.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/weekinreview/16steinberg.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

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New Qaeda ‘War Minister' Warns of ‘Days Colored in Blood'

BAGHDAD – A man purporting to be the new military commander of the Islamic State of Iraq, the front for Al Qaeda in Iraq, has warned of “a long gloomy night and dark days colored in blood,” according to a statement circulated on Friday.

The statement, translated by the SITE Intelligence Group , was the first indication that the group had replaced its leadership after its two senior figures were killed in an American and Iraqi raid near Tikrit nearly a month ago.

The group's new “war minister” signed the message with the name Al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman, a nom de guerre that translates as Defender of God's Religion, Father of Suleiman.

The statement vowed revenge for the death of his predecessor , Abu Hamza al-Muhair, an Egyptian known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, and the Islamic State of Iraq's ideological leader, who went by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

“March on what the two sheiks were killed for,” he said in the statement, addressing the group's followers and referring to the two slain leaders. “Let none of you become accustomed to having a loose hand on the trigger.”

The statement came after a series of attacks in the last week that began with a coordinated assault across Iraq on Monday that included ambushes of police and military checkpoints in Baghdad and catastrophic bombings in Suwayra, Hilla and Basra. More than 100 people were killed, and hundreds more wounded. ??

On Friday a car bomb exploded outside Shiite Muslim mosque in Hilla, the scene of the deadliest violence five days ago. The bomb exploded as worshipers finished Friday Prayers; at least 18 people were wounded. In Tal Afar, in northern Iraq, a triple suicide attack at a local soccer stadium on Friday evening killed at least nine and wounded hundreds.

“What happened to you these days is the beginning of the blood,” Abu Suleiman wrote, according to SITE's translation.

It remains to be seen whether the elevation of a new leader will help Al Qaeda in Iraq regroup after a series of defeats, but the statement, along with the latest attacks, appeared to undercut in part claims by American and Iraqi military officials that the network was now in disarray after the killings or arrests of scores of its fighters.

“These arrests have resulted in eliminating key elements of the supporting network, including A.Q.I. operators responsible for financing, ‘propaganda' capabilities, couriers, Internet communication, recruiting, bomb building and planning attacks,” the senior American military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, said in a statement last week.

Mohammed al-Alwai, a spokesman for Iraq's minister of national security affairs, Sharwan al-Waili, said the authorities were aware of the existence of the leader, but he declined to elaborate.

In florid language, Abu Suleiman slurred Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, criticized “the men of the State” and appeared to refer to the recent revelation that the government had held hundreds of Sunnis from Nineveh Province in an undisclosed prison in Baghdad.

The statement included what could be read as oblique references to the challenges the group is facing.

“Beware of weakness of heart and comfort of body or that Satan finds a way into you to weaken your certainty, or that disquiet-sowing devilish fatwas, false media hype and the disappointed and unjust military machine affect you,” he wrote.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/new-qaeda-war-minister-warns-of-days-colored-in-blood/?pagemode=print

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A Haitian Influx Startles the North Country

BURLINGTON, Vt. — The United States District Court here hired a Creole translator on an on-call basis in February. Three months later she is putting in 10-hour days, working so much that she does not have the time to search for a full-time job.

The workload for the translator, Chrissy Etienne, 24, reflects the unexpected and unusual circumstances playing out in northern Vermont near the Canadian border: More and more people are trying to enter the United States illegally, and nearly all of them here are Haitian, law enforcement officials said.

Soon after an earthquake devastated Haiti in January, the Obama administration announced that all Haitians in the United States would be allowed to stay and work in the country for 18 months, regardless of immigration status. Rumors that all Haitians would be welcome began circulating in Canada, although the order applied only to Haitians in the United States as of Jan. 12, the day of the quake.

Since Jan. 23, at least 150 Haitians living in Canada have tried, under cover of night, to slip over the border and navigate the dairy pastures and dense forest of northern Vermont.

“This activity is definitely one of the larger groups, if not the largest of any focused nature, that we've had on our border,” said Tristram J. Coffin , the United States attorney in Vermont.

The sudden influx of immigration cases has swamped the federal courthouse, where clerks are learning how to pronounce Creole names and filings are being waived to expedite proceedings.

“I remember jokingly saying I'll never be called because there's no one who speaks Creole here,” said Ms. Etienne, a native of Haiti who was hired after volunteering at an African community center here. “But this is practically full time.”

Mr. Coffin's office has charged about 40 Haitians with the federal crime of re-entry after prior removal. The authorities released the others on orders of supervision or under their own recognizance, an official said.

Most of the Haitians caught crossing the border were ordered deported from the United States years ago, Mr. Coffin said, which is unusual for such a large number of cases.

“Almost all of these people have been removed from the U.S. before,” Mr. Coffin said.

And they wanted to return to the country, according to interviews with Haitians in Canada, lawyers and refugee advocates.

“People thought that the United States were going to receive all the Haitians,” said Jean Ernest Pierre, president of CPAM Radio Union , a Haitian station in Montreal. “And as they saw that they had no chance to become Canadian permanent residents and because some of them received negative decisions, some people decided to return to the United States.”

Marjorie Villefranche, program director at Maison d'Haiti , a community center that serves the nearly 200,000 Haitians living in Montreal, said most knew that crossing into the United States was illegal but were willing to take the chance. Many, she said, had trouble finding work and adjusting to life in Montreal.

“They are desperate,” Ms. Villefranche said. “They don't have family with them, they live alone. They probably think it's better for them to go back into the States, get a better job and make money.”

Many arrived in Canada in 2006 and 2007, according to American and Canadian refugee advocates, seeking refugee status there after Haitians in Florida complained of stepped-up immigration raids and a group in Florida started directing them to Canada. The Haitians were allowed to stay in Canada even if their applications were denied because of an immigration policy that later changed. The group, which charged Haitians for help with asylum applications, was later shut down by the Florida attorney general's office for deceptive practices.

Felicier Edmond was hoping to return to family and a construction job in Florida, said his lawyer, David Watts. Mr. Edmond was ordered deported from the United States in 2001 and later went to Canada, joining his wife and son.

Mr. Edmond and a companion were arrested the evening of Feb. 5, when Border Patrol agents spotted them walking south on a Vermont road, trying to flag down a car and “ask for a ride to Vermont,” according to court documents.

Mr. Watts said he was unsure whether Mr. Edmond understood the severity of recrossing with an outstanding deportation order.

“Did he really understand the implications of the order and that he would be charged with a felony?” Mr. Watts said. “He just wants to get back to pay his mortgage. How patriotic is that?”

After discussions with Mr. Coffin's office, Mr. Edmond pleaded guilty to a lesser charge Tuesday and was living with his wife and son in Florida by Friday, said Mr. Watts. He added that his client was released under the supervision of the federal immigration agency.

Mr. Edmond's wife said in a telephone interview that she also crossed the border with the couple's 3-year-old son. She took a taxi to the border and walked over before being caught by agents. She was released 16 hours later.

“I don't have another way to come back,” she said. “I don't have no parents to fill the green card for me, my husband don't have nothing.”

James Guillaume, 41, was caught on the border in Highgate, Vt., on Feb. 26 and, according to the charges, had previously come into the country through Florida with a fake passport and admitted to agents in Vermont that he crossed into the United States from Canada. Last month a lawyer for Mr. Guillaume tried to convince a judge that he should be released to the custody of his girlfriend.

Mr. Guillaume, clad in jeans and a brown polo shirt with a skull flanked by angel wings and the words “Damage Case” on the back, was led into court with his hands cuffed. He was the sixth Haitian to appear in court that week.

His lawyer, Bud Allen, argued that Mr. Guillaume should be released from detention and live with his girlfriend and other family members in New Jersey. Judge Christina Reiss denied the request, saying that Mr. Guillaume could pose a flight risk and that it could be difficult for him to attend hearings in Vermont.

Mr. Allen said he and his client were considering a number of avenues, including whether he should plead guilty, which might make officials more likely to sentence him to time served.

The cases continue to wind through the court, and Ms. Etienne's phone is still ringing. The flow, however, may be slowing. Mr. Coffin said it had been a few weeks since he charged a Haitian national with a felony, though more have been caught coming over.

“We took some law enforcement steps on both sides of the border,” Mr. Coffin said.

Haitians in Canada said the number of people who have been caught is making others reconsider, but many are still planning to cross.

“They are determined,” said Erwin-Joseph Jean-Louis, a Haitian who has been granted asylum in Canada. He said that the practice was well-known in Montreal, and that residents helped one another raise money to cross. He knows of few people who have crossed successfully, and thinks more will try.

Some initially came to the United States by raft from Haiti and, Mr. Jean-Louis said, think nothing of stepping over a border.

“They risked their lives and they succeed, so why not crossing this border? It is nothing in comparison,” he said. “Living in the United State is a great life. Even if it is illegally, at least you can live well in America.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/us/15border.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Student's Arrest Tests Immigration Policy

ATLANTA — Jessica Colotl, a 21-year-old college student and illegal Mexican immigrant at the center of a contentious immigration case, surrendered to a Georgia sheriff on Friday but continued to deny wrongdoing.

Ms. Colotl was arrested in March for driving without a license and could face deportation next year. On Wednesday the sheriff filed a felony charge against her for providing a false address to the police.

The case has become a flash point in the national debate over whether federal immigration laws should be enforced by local and state officials. And like Arizona's tough new immigration law, it has highlighted a rift between the federal government and local politicians over how illegal immigrants should be detected and prosecuted.

“I never thought that I'd be caught up in this messed-up system,” Ms. Colotl said Friday at a news conference after being released on $2,500 bail. “I was treated like a criminal, like a threat to the nation.”

Civil rights groups say Ms. Colotl should be spared deportation because she was brought to the United States without legal documents by her parents at age 11. They also note that she has excelled academically and was discovered to be here illegally only after a routine traffic violation.

Supporters of immigration laws and the sheriff's office in Cobb County say she violated state law, misled the police about her address and should not receive special treatment for her age or education.

Ms. Colotl was pulled over March 29 by a campus officer at Kennesaw State University in suburban Atlanta, where she is two semesters from graduation, for “impeding the flow of traffic.” After she presented the officer an expired Mexican passport instead of a valid driver's license, she was arrested and taken to a county jail, where she acknowledged being an illegal immigrant.

On May 5, she was transferred to the Etowah Detention Center in Alabama to await deportation to Mexico.

But after protests by Latino groups, demonstrations at the Georgia Capitol by her sorority sisters and a letter of support from the university's president, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency granted a one-year deferral on her deportation so she could finish college. The “deferred action” means she could still be deported, but will be allowed to apply for an extension next year.

Her ultimate goal, Ms. Colotl said at the news conference, is that proposed legislation called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — known as the Dream Act — will become law, providing students without legal immigration status a path to become legal.

She and her lawyer declined to discuss the immigration status of her parents.

In Georgia, the case has become intensely political. Ms. Colotl received in-state tuition, substantially reducing her cost of attending Kennesaw State. The university will charge her out-of-state rates in the future, but Republican politicians are calling for new legislation to make attendance more expensive, or impossible, for illegal immigrants.

One Republican candidate for governor, Eric Johnson, has said that if elected he will mandate that all college applicants demonstrate their citizenship. The chancellor of the state university system says that would be prohibitively expensive, costing $1.5 million, for roughly 300,000 students.

Under a program by the Department of Homeland Security , known as 287(g), local sheriffs are permitted to handle federal immigration law enforcement. The Cobb County sheriff's office was the first in Georgia and one of the first in the United States to apply for the program. Immigration is a hot topic in the largely conservative county, where Hispanics make up 11 percent of the population, census figures show.

Mary Bauer, the legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is assisting in Ms. Colotl's defense, said Cobb County had a history of using federal laws designed to detect dangerous criminals for arresting illegal immigrants for minor offenses. A review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that from 2007 to 2009, the main crime for which immigration detainees were arrested in the county was traffic offenses.

“This is a civil rights disaster,” said Ms. Bauer, who called the county's application of the law “mean-spirited and very probably illegal.”

“We call on the Obama administration to end 287(g),” she said.

Supporters of strict immigration legislation say Ms. Colotl's case was handled legally.

The sheriff, Neil Warren, said Ms. Colotl provided a false address to the police, a felony charge. Her lawyers say that she provided the address of the residence where she used to live and to where her car insurance is registered, and that she also provided her current address.

No exception should be made, however admirable the offender, said Phil Kent, a spokesman for Americans for Immigration Control, a national group opposed to illegal immigration.

“Ironically, she says she wants to go on to law school, but she's undermining the law,” Mr. Kent said. “What's the point of educating an illegal immigrant in a system where she can't hold a job legally or get a driver's license?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/us/15student.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Trying to Take a Bite Out of Crime via Felons' Dogs

When drug agents in southeast Tennessee tried to arrest people suspected of dealing methamphetamine last month, they ran into an all-too common obstacle: a large, snarling dog on the front porch.

As the officers persuaded the homeowner to come out and chain the animal, the main suspect and her partner flushed away the drugs, the agents say. “The delay wiped out the chance for a conspiracy case against the man she was with,” said Mike Hall, director of the district drug task force in Charleston, Tenn.

While menacing characters with dogs in spiked collars are nothing new, the use of aggressive animals as sentries and weapons by drug dealers and gangs has reached new heights in some regions. They threaten innocent neighbors, police officers and, as this example showed, enforcement of the law. One of four drug searches and arrests in Mr. Hall's four-county district now involves a house with guard dogs, he said.

“These dogs are the gang-member version of buying a home-security system,” said Carter F. Smith, a gang expert and professor of criminal justice at Middle Tennessee University, protecting dealers from predatory human rivals as well as arrest.

Now Tennessee legislators, at the urging of law enforcement officials and even animal-welfare advocates, have passed new measures aimed at curbing the use of mean dogs by criminals.

A bill awaiting Gov. Phil Bredesen's signature would bar felons convicted of violent or drug-related crimes from keeping “potentially vicious” dogs for 10 years after being released from prison or probation. Based on studies showing that unsterilized dogs are most apt to be aggressive, it would also require that any dog owned by felons be spayed or neutered and implanted with a microchip for identification.

Many communities have tried to limit the presence of large, aggressive dogs, sometimes singling out pit bulls and Rottweilers. That provokes complaints from animal lovers, who say there are no bad breeds, just bad masters.

The Tennessee proposal, modeled on a 2006 law in Illinois that was the first of its kind, focuses just on felons and also avoids naming breeds. A dog of any kind, even a Chihuahua, could be branded as potentially vicious if it has been reported twice for lunging at people or biting.

“Breed-specific laws do not get at the root of the problem, which is the owners,” said Sherry L. Rout, a legislative advocate in Memphis for the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which helped draft the bills in Tennessee and Illinois.

Laws nearly everywhere allow for the seizure and destruction of dogs that attack people or animals. In the new bill, if a dog is labeled as potentially vicious, the felon must give it away or turn it over to animal control. “The thought is that a dog in the hands of the wrong person can be dangerous,” Ms. Rout said. “But a dog that's walking the line may not be dangerous in the hands of the right person.”

In Illinois, officers have used the sterilization requirement as a way to build cases against suspected dealers. If they spot an apparently intact male dog, for example, officers can justify stopping suspects for questioning or even searching their homes.

Mr. Hall, the Tennessee drug agent, said that when the canine threat is known in advance, one member of the raiding team carries a fire extinguisher for fending off an attack. If that does not work, they try a Taser. In a couple of cases each year, he said, officers have to shoot the animal.

In one case last year, he recalled, the agents missed seizing $150,000 in illegal cash because of a dog that growled from his outdoor doghouse. They arrested a man suspected of dealing drugs, who later told them that he had buried the cash under the doghouse, just like in the movie “American Gangster.” When they went back to look, the stash was gone. It had been retrieved and taken abroad by the man's wife.

“We didn't think to look there,” Mr. Hall said. “And to be honest, I don't think any of us wanted to try to look there.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/us/15dogs.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Proposal Would Delay Hearings in Terror Cases

WASHINGTON — President Obama 's legal advisers are considering asking Congress to allow the government to detain terrorism suspects longer after their arrests before presenting them to a judge for an initial hearing, according to administration officials familiar with the discussions.

If approved, the idea to delay hearings would be attached to broader legislation to allow interrogators to withhold Miranda warnings from terrorism suspects for lengthy periods, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed last week.

The goal of both measures would be to open a window of time after an arrest in which interrogators could question a terrorism suspect without an interruption that might cause the prisoner to stop talking. It is not clear how long of a delay the administration is considering seeking.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is still being developed, cautioned that it was not clear what the final proposal would include. Several aides to leading Democratic members of Congress said the administration had not approached their offices for detailed discussions of the matter, and the administration declined to comment on the internal deliberations.

Benjamin Wittes, a terrorism policy specialist at the Brookings Institution , said the issue of the timing of a Miranda warning was generating much more political attention because people were familiar with Miranda rights from television shows. But, he said, the need for an early “presentment” hearing is even more likely to disrupt an interrogation because it involves transporting a suspect to a courtroom for a formal proceeding.

“I would be very surprised if, when we see the proposal that they are cooking up, there weren't a significant component of it that is about a window of detention,” said Mr. Wittes, who argued in favor of delaying initial hearings in an opinion column published by The Washington Post on Friday.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union , assailed the Obama administration for considering such ideas. He noted that the administration of President George W. Bush , which was heavily criticized by civil-liberties groups, never proposed such modifications to criminal procedures.

“It's highly troubling that the Obama administration might propose to lengthen the time in which a potential defendant would come before a judge,” Mr. Romero said. “Both proposals would severely undercut the Obama administration's assertion that they believe in the rule of law.”

The administration's flirtation with the ideas follows the arrest last week of Faisal Shahzad , the suspect in the failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square. Federal interrogators questioned Mr. Shahzad for several hours before warning him that he had right to remain silent and consult a lawyer, citing an exception to the Miranda rule for immediate threats to public safety.

Officials have said that Mr. Shahzad waived those rights, as well as his right to a quick initial hearing before a judge, and has continued cooperating with interrogators. But, worried that suspects in future cases may not do likewise, or that law enforcement officials will be confused about the rules, the administration has decided to push for changes.

There is a federal rule of criminal procedure that requires law enforcement officials to take a prisoner to a judge for an initial hearing “without unnecessary delay.” But specialists in criminal law said it would be a fairly simple matter for Congress to pass a statute exempting terrorism cases.

But they said it would be trickier to get around a Supreme Court precedent that governs when people must get initial hearings before a judge in cases in which the police have arrested someone without a warrant. The court has ruled that such prisoners must generally get a hearing within 48 hours to ensure there is probable cause to believe they committed a crime.

Congress has no authority to override the Supreme Court's constitutional rulings. But several legal specialists said the court might be more willing to approve modifications if lawmakers and the executive branch agreed that the changes were necessary in the fight against terrorism.

One idea, Mr. Wittes said, would be for prosecutors to ask a judge for permission to continue holding a terrorism suspect who had been arrested without bringing the prisoner to the courtroom. As a safeguard, he said, Congress could require a high-level Justice Department official to certify that delaying the suspect's initial appearance in court was necessary for national-security reasons.

The Obama administration's consideration of the proposal comes against the backdrop of Republican attacks for its decision to handle some terrorism cases in the criminal justice system instead of declaring the suspects to be “enemy combatants” and holding them in military detention.

Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia University law professor and a former federal prosecutor, said the administration might be considering such a bill as much for the political message it would send as for any substantive changes it would make.

“It may well be that the law could use some clarification on these points and that courts would be receptive to a more detailed framework for how to handle these cases,” Professor Richman said. “But what's certainly true is that the public could use a signal from the administration that criminal procedure is a lot more flexible in handling terrorism cases than critics have suggested.”

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Mr. Holder emphasized that the administration envisioned changes that would affect only a small number of terrorism cases.

“We now find ourselves in 2010 dealing with very complicated terrorism matters,” Mr. Holder said. “Those are certainly the things that have occupied much of my time. And we think that with regard to that small sliver — only terrorism-related matters, not in any other way, just terrorism cases — that modernizing, clarifying, making more flexible the use of the public safety exception would be something beneficial.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/us/politics/15miranda.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Strict Reading of Visa Rule Trips Up More Couples

They met on the eHarmony dating site — the pretty, dark-haired psychologist from Los Angeles and the blond German theologian at Kings College, London, writing his Ph.D. dissertation on why Protestants had stopped believing in miracles.

Their wedding last June capped more than two years of trans-Atlantic trips for the couple, Diana Ali, 27, and Karsten van Sander, 33. They settled in Plainsboro, N.J., near the Princeton hospital where she has an internship. And with his application for a green card pending, they soon felt at home, joining a Christian fellowship group run by Princeton University's chaplain.

But all that harmony was abruptly fractured last week, when three immigration agents showed up at their apartment and took Mr. van Sander away in handcuffs. Held in an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., Mr. van Sander, a dual British and German citizen, faced deportation without a hearing and a 10-year ban on returning to the United States.

His offense: an error in his green card paperwork, which he filed after he entered the country under the visa-waiver program. That program, used by millions of travelers from 36 favored nations, including Germany and Britain, allows a 90-day stay, but includes a little-noticed provision requiring foreign visitors to give up any right to contest summary deportation, except in a claim for asylum.

In practice, however, a more lenient law has long governed the way immigration authorities treat foreigners who marry American citizens: Even if they overstayed, as long as they originally entered the country legally, they had been allowed to “adjust” their status to permanent resident.

Mr. van Sander, whose original paperwork would have stopped the 90-day clock if it had not been flawed, seemed to be on track for such an adjustment in March, when the couple refiled all the papers on the advice of an immigration officer.

But on April 22, a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in a separate case changed the legal landscape for such couples in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Virgin Islands. Lawyers say the van Sanders are among thousands of couples who could be adversely affected by the decision, which leaves the foreign spouses no defense against deportation if immigration authorities, at their discretion, decide to expel them.

The decision echoes and sharpens recent rulings in 6 of the 12 regional circuits across the country (but not the one that covers New York), holding that after a 90-day stay, foreigners who enter the country under the visa-waiver program cannot fight summary deportation based on their marriages to American citizens.

“It's surreal,” said Ms. van Sander, who went to immigration court with the Princeton chaplain and a lawyer on Tuesday to plead for her husband's release. The judge told them that the appeals court's decision left her no jurisdiction over Mr. van Sander, and that he was not entitled to a bail hearing.

But on Friday, Mr. van Sander's 10th day in jail, the government responded to inquiries from The New York Times by announcing that he would be released. Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency was using its discretion to let Mr. van Sander try to repair his case.

Under the appeals court's decision, the larger issue remains. In the Third Circuit, Citizenship and Immigration Services will no longer approve green cards based on marriage if the application is made more than 90 days after the foreign spouse entered on a visa waiver, officials said.

Until now, even in states in other circuits that have issued similar rulings, immigration authorities have generally used the more-lenient law and their discretion to approve such cases, rather than order deportation, immigration lawyers say. But the van Sander case shows that the outlook is dire for couples already in the pipeline for a green card, said Eric E. Olson, an immigration lawyer who has followed the issue closely.

“It's crazy,” he said, adding that it might provoke a public outcry, because “it's going to affect a lot of white people, too, not just brown people.”

Coming as the Obama administration says its immigration enforcement priority is deporting dangerous criminals, Mr. van Sander's arrest bewildered many in the couple's 40-member Christian fellowship group, said the chaplain, the Rev. B. Keith Brewer.

“They're both lovely people, not exactly the criminal types,” said Mr. Brewer, who visited Mr. van Sander several times in the detention center, which is run by Corrections Corporation of American in a former warehouse. “Just out of nowhere, three people showed up, put him in handcuffs and took him away,” the chaplain added.

In light of 9/11, the chaplain said, he cannot blame the government for following the letter of the law. But, he added, it was absurd to lock up the young theologian, without his books, at a cost of $175 a day.

“Our tax dollars are paying to fly him back to London,” he said. “It's ridiculous.”

Unlike the plaintiff in the Third Circuit case, Heathcliffe John Bradley, a New Zealander who arrived in 1996 and had overstayed his visa by 10 years by the time he married, Mr. van Sander always returned to Britain or his parents' home in Solingen, Germany, before the 90 days were up, his wife said.

After their wedding, they visited his parents, returned to the United States in August and filed his immigration paperwork in September, which should have stopped the 90-day clock. All seemed to be in order, Ms. van Sander said, because her husband was sent a work authorization, and began teaching at a local Christian college.

Not until their immigration interview on March 9, she said, were they informed that they had omitted a crucial document known as the I-130, her petition as an American citizen on his behalf. Without it, his application to become a permanent resident was not valid, and the clock had been running; officially, he had overstayed by four months.

“We tried to do everything right,” Ms. van Sander said, recalling the four forms they filled out without a lawyer. “We made a mistake, but if two Ph.D. students can't figure it out, it shows the paperwork is really confusing.”

The couple quickly refiled, paying the $355 in fees a second time, and canceled a trip to London, as the immigration officer directed.

“He told us as long as we filed immediately and as long as Karsten entered legally (which he did), that we were safe,” Ms. van Sander said in an e-mail message.

Instead, the case was apparently referred to agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On May 4, Ms. van Sander received a text message at work from her husband saying he was in immigration custody.

Daniel L. Weiss, a lawyer the couple hired Thursday evening, said he was grateful that by Friday afternoon officials in both agencies were scrambling to reopen it and fix it. By 3:30 p.m., a shaken Mr. van Sander walked out of jail into his wife's arms.

“But this is much bigger than just them,” Mr. Weiss said. “The larger question is government policy, and why do we treat these waiver people worse than we treat other people?”

From New Jersey's Italian- and Irish-American families alone, he added, “there are going to be a hundred stories like this coming into my office.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/nyregion/15visa.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Details Emerge About 3 Men Detained in Bomb Case

The three Pakistani men detained by federal authorities who are investigating the failed Times Square car bombing came from varied backgrounds: one was a computer programmer, one a gas station attendant and one a cabdriver.

The men were taken into custody on Thursday as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and the local police executed search warrants on Long Island, in the suburbs of Boston and in New Jersey, as part of an effort to track the financing that bankrolled the unsuccessful attack, officials have said.

They have not been charged in connection with any crime, but on Friday were still being held on administrative violations by federal immigration authorities.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday that investigators believed the three men had provided money to the naturalized Pakistani immigrant who admitted driving a sport utility vehicle packed with a crude bomb to Times Square. But he said it was unclear if they knew the funds were going to be used for an act of terrorism.

One of the three men, Mohammad Shafiq Rahman, a computer programmer who was taken into custody in Portland, Me., told his employer days earlier that he knew the accused would-be bomber, Faisal Shahzad , but had not seen him in nearly a decade.

The connections between the other two men, Pir Khan, 43, who until recently drove a cab in the Boston area, and Aftab Khan, who was in his 20s and worked in a gas station in Brookline, and Mr. Shahzad were unclear.

Mr. Rahman's employer, Larry Adlerstein, owner of Artist & Craftsman Supply in Portland, said he was shocked that the authorities were interested in his employee.

Mr. Adlerstein said he had asked his employee how he felt about all the negative news about his native land.

Mr. Adlerstein recalled Mr. Rahman's saying, “ ‘It's hard. As a matter of fact I happen to know the guy accused of being the bomber in Times Square. I haven't seen him for eight or nine years, but back then he was a pretty simple person, had no dogma, no theory, just went with the flow.' ”

He said that Mr. Rahman added, “ ‘So it's hard for me to understand this, but maybe that's what they look for, what terrorist organizations look for.' ”

Mr. Adlerstein said he hired Mr. Rahman about eight or nine months ago to work as a computer programmer, after Mr. Rahman answered Mr. Adlerstein's Craigslist employment advertisement.

Pir Khan, a taxi driver, recently sold his medallion, said Pir Khan's brother-in-law, Fida Muhammed. (Pir Khan and Aftab Khan are not related.)

Pir Khan would often go to New York to pick up friends who recently arrived from Pakistan and would drive them back to the Boston area, Mr. Muhammed said.

Mr. Muhammed said that Aftab Khan was engaged to an American soldier he met on a base in Kuwait and that they recently broke up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/nyregion/15terror.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Still Homeless in Haiti

Of the more than 1.5 million Haitians left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake, about 7,500 have been moved from the most dangerous areas of crowded tent cities to new resettlement sites. The conditions in those tent cities are grim. Thunderstorms are fierce, and the plastic sheets and tarps distributed after the disaster are fraying, along with the people's patience.

Meanwhile, the demand for secure housing keeps growing as people who fled the capital, Port-au-Prince, move back, because that's where most of the aid is.

Why is it so bad? The reasons are partly understandable and partly maddening.

When the United Nations, donor countries and aid organizations rushed to Haiti's aid, the first priority was water, food and medical care. With the rains coming, they raced to distribute emergency shelter materials to more than a million people, and, almost miraculously, they succeeded. They also sent engineers out to mark structurally sound homes with green paint. Many people still aren't going home. They are afraid of more quakes, or can't afford rent, or have no jobs to return to.

The biggest problem — the worst frustration to relief organizations ready and eager to build homes — is the lack of land to build on. Haiti's government has been far too sluggish in finding and acquiring sites to build new housing.

Property ownership and land titles were a messy business in Haiti in the best of times, and now, with records destroyed and many landowners reluctant to cooperate, the problem is excruciating. Some communities take a not-in-my-backyard stance toward indigent newcomers because it seems obvious to them that new “transitional” settlements will likely be permanent.

Central to the ambitious plans for rebuilding Haiti is the goal of creating new population centers outside the cripplingly congested capital, with new jobs, schools and clinics to go along with new housing. Aid organizations can help in this by moving their rebuilding and redevelopment efforts out to the provinces to give displaced people the reasons and opportunity to relocate.

They can't get started until President René Préval and his team make up their minds about where new communities will go. They need to acquire property, by eminent domain if necessary, to meet the urgent need to safely shelter the displaced and to ease the pressure on Port-au-Prince.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/opinion/15sat2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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An Overdue ‘Welcome Home'

Watching a new documentary about Vietnam War veterans, I was surprised at how old they looked and how worn their faces had become. These were fellows who had once laughed and danced to the music of the Beatles and Motown.

I was also struck by how many of these men, now approaching retirement age in civilian life, broke down and began to weep as they told the stories about what it was like to be thrown at a tender age into the flaming sewer of combat.

It's no longer widely understood — now that war is kept largely out of sight and out of mind — just how dreadful warfare is, and the profound effect it has on the participants and their loved ones.

John Dederich of De Pere, Wis., recalled stepping on a land mine in Vietnam and being blown high into the air. “My right leg went one way, and my left leg went the other way,” he said.

Roy Rogers of Menasha, Wis., also was badly wounded. “They couldn't put me back together like Humpty Dumpty,” he said, managing a chuckle. “But they did the best they could.”

“Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories” is a collection of moving and often very powerful reminiscences produced by Wisconsin Public Television, the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs and the Wisconsin Historical Society. But the project has become more than simply a documentary.

A major public screening will be held next Saturday at Lambeau Field in Green Bay and some 25,000 to 30,000 veterans and their families are expected to attend — one of the largest gatherings ever of Vietnam vets in the United States.

The goal is to give the veterans the kind of “welcome home” that many missed when they returned to the states from a war that by the late 1960s had become extremely unpopular.

Sam King, a Marine from New Richmond, Wis., remembered being called a baby killer when he came home and being told by opponents of the war that he should have died in Vietnam.

It hurt. It was a “hard thing” to endure, he said. “All us 18-, 19-, 20-year-old Marines and soldiers, airmen and Navy guys, we didn't know all the damned politics of the thing. Most of us hadn't been old enough to vote hardly, you know.”

But they were old enough to suffer, and the suffering inevitably had to do with loss — the loss of close friends and mentors, the loss of cherished illusions, the loss of vitality in bodies that just a moment ago were in perfect health.

The tears on camera almost always had to do with something that had happened to somebody else. Will Williams of De Forest, Wis., speaking slowly, as if the words had to fight their way through his emotions, said, “I don't know how you can make one understand what it means to lose someone, if it's not you getting hit but someone you've known — to see them die.”

The documentary (to be shown at various times on several public television outlets) and an accompanying book are meant as tributes to those who served in Vietnam. But for viewers and readers, they should also resonate as a commentary on the awful reality of all wars, including today's conflicts, which are taking a terrible toll but are touching just a small percentage of American families.

The war in Afghanistan is not going well (no light at the end of the tunnel there), and the young people fighting under the flag of the U.S. are not any better-informed about the politics involved than the young people who fought and suffered and died for no good reason in Vietnam.

If more Americans understood the real horror of war, and if more families were in danger of being touched by it, we'd see a dramatic falloff in our willingness to go to war.

On Thursday, the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, a loose cannon who presides over an incompetent and terminally corrupt government, visited the Arlington National Cemetery. That evening, the “NewsHour” on PBS listed 10 more United States service members who had died in Afghanistan (and one in Iraq). As always, most of them were young: 19, 21, 20, 22, 21. ...

A Marine at the end of the first part of the Wisconsin documentary summed up this phenomenon perfectly.

Speaking of Vietnam, he said, “A lot of the vets tried to justify, rationalize for all the death and dying. But there is really no explanation to it. Figuring it out is a waste of time. It's just another war that's started by old men and fought by young boys.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/opinion/15herbert.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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President Obama Honors TOP COPS for Being True Heroes

This morning, President Obama honored the 2010 National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) TOP COPS award winners at a ceremony in the Rose Garden.  The President was joined by Attorney General Eric Holder and President of NAPO Tom Nee.

The President commended the TOP COPS as “men and women who stand as shining examples of the bravery, persistence and good judgment that so many members of out law enforcement community display each and every day.” He congratulated them for their extraordinary service in the face of great challenges:

I think it's fair to say that the folks behind me never imagined they would be here today.  If you asked them, these officers would say they were just professionals doing their jobs as best they could.  And they'll tell you that there are thousands of law enforcement officers in every corner of this nation who are just as brave, just as dedicated and just as capable as they are -– and who would do the same thing if given the opportunity.

And that's all true.  But that's exactly what makes these officers  –- and all of our men and women in uniform -– real heroes.  It's the ability to put on a badge and go to work knowing that danger could be waiting right around the corner.  It's the understanding that the next call could be the one that changes everything.  And it's the knowledge that, at any moment, they could be called upon to stop a robbery, to participate in a high-speed chase, or to save a life. 

The President recognized that honoring TOP COPS means more than simply thanking them but also supporting the entire law enforcement community, “because we've seen the results of that work.” He talked about ways the Administration is working to give state and local law enforcement the resources they need, including $3.5 billion from the Recovery Act and $1 billion for the COPS program alone.

[W]e are incredibly proud of the courage that all of you have shown in the conditions that we can only imagine.  It's a distinction that none of you asked for, but all of you accepted.  And I promise that we will stand by you, and everyone who wears the badge, as you continue to keep us safe.

BACKGROUND ON 2010 NAPO TOP COPS AWARD WINNERS

COLORADO
Colorado Springs Police Department
Officer Ryan Jacobsen

Case: Officer Jacobsen responded to a home burglary-in-progress call and found two suspects inside. As Jacobsen grabbed one, the burglar spun around, revealing a pistol. Jacobsen fired his own weapon, striking the suspect. Outside, Jacobsen saw the other suspect, tasered him, took him down and cuffed him.   

FLORIDA
Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office
Lieutenant Marcos Martinez
Deputy Sheriff Peter Tapia
Deputy Sheriff Chris Wolf

Case: A woman's former boyfriend kidnapped her and held her at knifepoint. The deputies surrounded the car at a freeway entrance ramp. As the kidnapper began to press the knife into the victim's throat, the three deputies fired into the car. Deputy Wolf then jumped into the vehicle and pulled the victim to safety.

ILLINOIS
South Holland Police Department
Officer Todd Koster

Case: A disturbed employee hijacked a school bus, taking another driver hostage. Officer Koster responded and pursued the bus. The suspect continued, crashing the bus into several police cars. Koster was able to leap to the front of the bus, stop the suspect with three shots and free the hostage. Three months earlier, Koster had donated 60% of his liver to his neighbor, saving her life.

MISSISSIPPI
Union County Sheriff's Office
Chief Deputy Jimmy Edwards

Case: Chief Deputy Edwards initiated a homicide investigation following the beating death of a two year old.  He discovered the child's parents had adopted seven children who were living in deplorable, cage-like conditions, with evidence of torture and abuse. Edwards took a personal interest in the case, reaching out to the U.S. Marshals Service to catch the fugitive parents. He also worked closely with Social Services to make sure all the children were placed in safe homes. He and his wife eventually adopted one of the children themselves and made the boy a part of their own family.

MONTANA
Bureau of Land Management, Department of the Interior
Ranger Alexandra Burke

Glasgow Police Department
Patrolman Tyler Edwards
Patrolman Peter Glowacki
Patrolman Robert Weber

Roosevelt County Sheriff's Office
Deputy Sheriff Dan McKee

U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Border Patrol Agent Phillip Wright

Valley County Sheriff's Office
Deputy Sheriff William Soper

Wolf Point Police Department
Lieutenant Brian Erwin

Case: A woman was shot down in a hospital parking lot. The couple who tried to help her were also shot. When the officers arrived, they engaged the shooter but he was too far away to take down quickly. As darkness fell, the shooter fled. For the next six hours the manhunt continued. When finally cornered, the sniper pulled a knife and started toward the officers, at which point they were forced to fire, bringing him down.

NEW JERSEY
New Brunswick Police Department
Officer Michael Coppola
Officer John Langan
Officer Gregory Liszczak
Officer Adam Ramirez
Officer Gary Yurkovic Jr.

North Brunswick Township Police Department
Detective Steve Dunkel

Case: Bank robbers, fleeing in a van, were shooting at the officers in pursuit. At a dead end street, an intense firefight began. The officers managed to bring down all four robbers, and retrieved the crooks' guns as well as the loot from the robbery.

NEW YORK
Syracuse Police Department
Detective Richard Curran
Detective Edward Falkowski

Case: Detectives Curran and Falkowski were assigned to arrest career criminal James Tyson. Tyson resisted arrest so violently that even after Det. Falkowski tasered him, he managed to pull his pistol and shoot the detective at point blank range. Before Det. Curran could take cover, he too was shot. Yet despite their wounds both cops engaged Tyson in a firefight until their bullets took Tyson down.

OHIO
Warren Police Department
Patrolman Douglas Hipple

Case: An arsonist set a fire at a group home for mentally handicapped adults. Officer Hipple was first on the scene, before any firefighters were able to arrive.  He battled smoke, flames and intense heat, trying to get the women to safety. By the time firefighters arrived, Hipple and the three women were unconscious and had to be pulled from the building. Hipple had refused to leave them, even though he could have saved himself. All three were all treated for severe burns but, thanks to Officer Hipple, two of the three survived.

VIRGINIA
Virginia State Police
Trooper Kurt Johnson

Case: Trooper Johnson was on routine patrol when he happened upon the crash and saw the overturned vehicle on fire. Johnson crawled in through the passenger window. The interior was completely filled with smoke and flames. Johnson found the little girl wedged under the front dash and pulled her to safety just seconds before the entire car was engulfed in fire. That day, February 6, 2009, turned out to be the child's third birthday.

FEDERAL
Directorate of Emergency Services, Ft. Hood Police Department
Sergeant Kimberly Munley
Sergeant Mark Todd

Case: Maj. Nidal Hasan entered the U.S. Army's Readiness Center at Fort Hood and proceeded to shoot down his fellow soldiers. Sgts. Munley and Todd responded and engaged Hasan in a firefight.  Munley took three bullets in her efforts to end the rampage, but she and Todd were able to put a stop to the assault.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/05/14/president-obama-honors-top-cops-being-true-heroes

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Operation Shield

Proactive Security Measures Meet Dynamic Threat Environments

As representative symbols of U.S. strength and leadership, federal facilities have always been labeled as attractive and strategically important targets for terrorists. A potential attack on these facilities can result in substantial consequences. Due to the high profile and necessary access of these facilities, they operate within a very dynamic environment, requiring a constant flow and monitoring of reliable information regarding active threats to facilities and associated assets, systems, networks, and functions.

Operation Shield is a comprehensive operation that combines physical security expertise and law enforcement authority into an enhanced security team to provide a visual deterrent at FPS-protected facilities. The goal of Operation Shield is to demonstrate the preparedness and agility of FPS' response to the current threat environment within our federal community. Operation Shield includes the following objectives:

• Enhance security posture intended to disrupt terrorist/criminal activity
• Maintain a friendly, productive, and helpful customer service-oriented relationship
• Target deployment based on current threat assessment or intelligence
• Reduce social and physical disorder
• Enhance the quality of life for employees, visitors, and community members

Assault rifles and drugs seized in Detroit following search warrant

Three AK-47s and other rifles seized

DETROIT - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office announced Friday the seizure of nine weapons, 70 grams of cocaine and 145 grams of high-potency marijuana, including 150 marijuana plants as part of a suspected drug-growing operation.

The seizure occurred late Thursday as Wayne County Sheriff's Office deputies executed a local search warrant in southwest Detroit at the residence of a suspected Latin Count gang associate. ICE agents, Detroit Police officers and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents executed the search warrant. This operation was part of Operation Community Shield, an ICE initiative to target transnational gang members and their criminal operations.

A suspect who was in the home is in custody as charges are pending.

Seized during the operation were six fully loaded rifles, three handguns, and three AK-47 semi automatic assault rifles (a .22 caliber, a .9 mm, a .45 caliber), one of which was outfitted with a 100-round drum magazine which has been confirmed stolen, and three additional high-powered rifles. Agents also seized eight boxes of merchandise stolen earlier this week from a local retailer.

"Every ICE special agent carries the statutory authority to enforce the criminal and administrative laws of the United States as they pertain to both customs- and immigration-related offenses," said Brian M. Moskowitz, ICE special agent in charge Michigan and Ohio. "These are powerful tools in the fight against organized criminal groups and especially gangs in Detroit."

Transnational street gangs have significant numbers of foreign-national members and are frequently involved in human smuggling and trafficking, narcotics smuggling and distribution, identity theft and benefit fraud, money laundering and bulk cash smuggling, weapons smuggling and arms trafficking, cyber crimes, export violations, and other crimes with a nexus to the border.

The National Gang Unit at ICE identifies violent street gangs and develops intelligence on gang members and associates, gang criminal activities and international movements. NGU's goal is to deter, disrupt and dismantle gang operations by tracing and seizing cash, weapons and other assets derived from criminal activities.

Operation Community Shield partners with existing federal, state and local anti-gang efforts to share intelligence on gang organizations and their leadership, share resources and combine legal authorities to arrest, prosecute, imprison and/or deport transnational gang members.

Since inception in 2005 to date, ICE agents working in conjunction with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies nationwide have arrested more than 16,000 street gang members and associates. Almost 40 percent of those arrested had a violent criminal history. More than 200 of those arrested were gang leaders and more than 2,800 were MS-13 gang members or associates. Through this initiative nationally, ICE has seized 949 firearms. To date, of those arrested, more than 6,800 have been charged criminally, and more than 9,000 have been charged with immigration violations and processed for removal.

This effort was also conducted as part of the Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative (CAGI) which was launched in 2006, by the Department of Justice. The program is a comprehensive approach to address gang crime. Detroit was named a CAGI Site in 2009 and encompasses funding for law enforcement, prevention and state and federal re-entry task force programs. Participating agencies in this operation included: the Wayne County Sheriffs Office, Detroit Police Department and the ATF.

To report suspicious activity, call ICE's 24-hour toll-free hotline at: 1-866-347-2423 or visit http://www.ice.gov .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1005/100514detroit.htm

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From the DEA

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Defendants Receive Lengthy Sentences in Methamphetamine Trafficking Conspiracy That Generated $5 Million in Proceeds

MAY 14 -- FORT WORTH , Texas — The final defendant convicted in a methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy that operated in the Fort Worth area since 2005, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge John McBryde, announced DEA Special Agent in Charge James L. Capra and U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas.  Herbert Philip “Andy” Anderson, 46, of Fort Worth, was sentenced to 360 months in prison.  He was convicted at trial in January 2010 of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine and of money laundering.           

“Today's sentencing marks the final blow reflecting the successful dismantlement of this large scale methamphetamine trafficking organization.  The head of this organization was a retired member of the Bandidos Outlaw Motorcycle Club and had ties to the Aryan Brotherhood.  Additionally, several members of this methamphetamine distribution organization were classified as armed and dangerous and one was on parole for a homicide conviction.  This group was organized, dangerous and deadly.  The communities in Parker and Tarrant County are safer and can rest better with members of this malicious organization behind bars,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge James Capra.

The convictions stem from charges outlined in two indictments returned by a federal grand jury in Fort Worth that charged a total of 19 defendants with felony offenses related to their roles in the conspiracy.  Anderson and John Reginald Holt, 55, of Palmer, Texas, were convicted at trial, 15 defendants pleaded guilty, one was acquitted and one remains a fugitive.

U.S. Attorney Jacks noted, “Five of the defendants in this case had a total of 36 prior felony convictions.  Removing these career criminals from society makes us all safer and we are indebted to each of the law enforcement officers who contributed to this successful prosecution.”

Convicted defendants and their sentences are:

                Alfredo Medina, 49, of Dallas, 480 months

                Marisol Perez-Leon, 30, of Dallas, 327 months

                Thomas L. Gerry, a.k.a. “Hammer,” and “Zeke,” 61, of Bedford, 360 months

                Steven Ray Adams, a.k.a. “Duck,” 51, of Euless, 400 months

                John Reginald Holt, 55, of Palmer, Texas 360 months

                Wade Phillip Smith, 48, of North Richland Hills, 360 months

                Roger George Flittie, 61, of Euless, 120 months

                Juan Gloria Cruz, 44, of Corpus Christi, 235 months

                Brian Eugene Perryman, 52, of Fort Worth, 97 months

                Robert Leslie Bays, 54, of Azle, 100 months

                Farrell Coleman, 49, of Grand Prairie, 188 months

                Robin Berthelot, 46 of Fort Worth, 120 months

                Kent Daniel Burton, 43, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 108 months

                Lydia Faye Cedillo, 34, of Ennis, 42 months

                Gabriel Hernandez, 37, of Ennis, 78 months

                Miyoshia Wylynn Nance, a.k.a. “Yodie,” 40, of Bedford, 240 months

The Court determined that the conspiracy generated $5 million in proceeds and ordered that the defendants forfeit an equivalent amount of property.  As a result of this prosecution, the defendants have collectively forfeited seven firearms; four motorcycles and 13 cars and trucks valued at more than $170,000; assorted jewelry worth approximately $198,000; more than $72,000 in cash; four properties in Tarrant and Dallas Counties valued at more than $350,000; and the corporation “Tazz Man, Inc.,” which has been operating in Arlington, Texas, as two sexually- oriented businesses or “strip-clubs” under the names “Hardbody's” and “Peep-N-Tom's.” 

As required by law, the Court granted defendant Anderson's application to stay the forfeiture of his property pending the appeal of his criminal convictions and sentence.  Defendant Anderson's property includes the business operating as the “Hardbody's” and “Peep-N-Tom's” strip-clubs.  Therefore, forfeiture of that property will not be final until and unless defendant Anderson's conviction and sentence are affirmed on appeal.

According to evidence presented in the case, Gerry became involved in the sale and distribution of controlled substances as early as 1989.  He was imprisoned in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice from 1990 until he was paroled on January 5, 2005.  He again began dealing methamphetamine in 2007 and organized a drug trafficking organization (DTO) which operated until August 20, 2009, when its members were arrested on federal charges.      

From fall 2007 until their arrest in August 2009, Gerry and the members of his DTO obtained and sold, on average, approximately one kilogram of methamphetamine each week, for an average of $50 per gram.  During this time, Gerry and the members of his DTO used local residences —  2116 San Fernando, Bedford; 5516 Emerald Court, North Richland Hills; 715 Vine Street, Euless; and an apartment at 3716 Gazebo Court, Fort Worth, to distribute the methamphetamine

Gerry was known as a large-scale drug trafficker and was a former national sergeant-at-arms of the Bandidos motorcycle gang.  Steven Ray Adams and Wade Phillip Smith met Gerry in the 1990s when they were in prison together in Texas; Adams was Gerry's cell mate.   When Smith was paroled in October 2007, he contacted Gerry and met Gerry's daughter.  For a while Smith lived with the daughter at Gerry's home, but in January 2009, they moved to a residence on Emerald Court in North Richland Hills, where they sold and distributed methamphetamine they had obtained from Gerry.

By June 2009, Adams was working for Gerry's DTO.  Adams would pick up methamphetamine from Gerry's residence in Bedford and take it to his residence on Vine Street in Euless and to an apartment on Gazebo Court in Fort Worth.  On August 20, 2009, officers and agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) executed a search warrant at Adams' residence and, among other things, found firearms and methamphetamine.  They also seized a computer from the residence which was found to contain more than 1000 video clips, taken by the camera attached to the computer, showing numerous events where Adams can be seen using, packaging or distributing methamphetamine in the residence.

Alfredo Medina and his wife, Marisol Perez-Leon, were major suppliers to Gerry.  Both were natives of Apatzingan, Michoacan, Mexico and were in the U.S. illegally.  They were, in turn, supplied by elements of the Mexican drug cartel, La Familia Michoacana.  Medina and Perez-Leon were indicted and arrested in October 2009 as part of a DEA-coordinated strike against La Familia elements in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Miyoshia Wylynn Nance lived with Gerry, was aware of his drug trafficking and assisted in his sale and distribution of the methamphetamine by counting the money paid to Gerry by methamphetamine purchasers. 

In June 2009, Juan Gloria Cruz, and associates of his, came to Fort Worth to sell two kilograms of methamphetamine.  They were introduced to Smith, who introduced them to Gerry.

Gerry derived several million dollars from using various locations to distribute the methamphetamine.  This money was used, among other things, to acquire real property located at 2022 Cherry Circle, Grand Prairie.  In addition, Gerry delivered approximately $50,000 in drug trafficking proceeds to Anderson to hold for Gerry in case Gerry was arrested.  Gerry also gave Anderson approximately $160,000 in drug trafficking proceeds in June 2009 for Anderson to use to acquire property that Anderson leased and where Anderson operated a business known as “Hardbodies.”  However, on June 11, 2009, after the proposed acquisition of the “Hardbodies” property failed to come to fruition, Anderson returned approximately $60,000 of the drug money to Gerry, who used it to purchase methamphetamine.

Over time, Gerry also invested approximately $250,000 with Brian Eugene Perryman for Perryman to use in the operation of “Phazar AeroCorp LLC,” a company that re-fitted, modified and refurbished large privately-owned jets.  Gerry also gave Perryman $35,000 in drug trafficking proceeds so that Perryman would deposit it into a bank account he controlled and then transfer the money to “Hammer Time Custom Remodeling LLC,” for which Gerry was the sole managing member, to purchase the property located at 2022 Cherry Circle in Grand Prairie.

In February 2009, at Gerry's instruction, some of his DTO members moved all of the household goods belonging to an individual renting an apartment on Gazebo Court in Fort Worth so that the apartment could be used as a place for the DTO members to package and repackage methamphetamine and distribute it to others.  Although the lease remained in that individual's name, Gerry provided cash proceeds from his drug trafficking business for that individual and others to purchase money orders to pay the rent.

The investigation was conducted by the DEA Fort Worth Multi-Agency Task Force, including the DEA, Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Office, Arlington Police Department, Bedford Police Department, Fort Worth Police Department, North Richland Hills Police Department, Weatherford Police Department, Parker County Sheriff's Office, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office and the Texas National Guard Counter Drug Task Force.  Other agencies who assisted in the investigation include:  Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation, Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol, Canton Police Department, Denton County Sheriff's Office, Euless Police Department, Haltom City Police Department, Hurst Police Department, Wise County Sheriff's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation - Fort Worth.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Frederick M. Schattman. Assistant U.S. Attorney Walt Junker pursued the asset forfeiture.

http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/2010/dallas051410.html

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Task Force Operation Leads to Arrest of 27 Linked to Ontario Street Gang with Allegiance to Mexican Mafia

APR 21 -- (LOS ANGELES) - A joint federal-state law enforcement operation this morning led to the arrest of 27 members and associates of an Ontario street gang who are named in federal racketeering and narcotics indictments that allege the gang has engaged in violent crimes and wide-ranging narcotics trafficking that helped fund the Mexican Mafia.

Today's arrests are the result of two indictments returned by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles in recent weeks. The main indictment names a total of 50 defendants, 36 of whom are charged under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. In addition to the RICO charges, the indictment alleges violent crimes in aid of racketeering, conspiracies to distribute heroin and methamphetamine, and firearms violations. A second indictment charges another 10 defendants with narcotics trafficking violations.

Today's operation targeting the Black Angels street gang involved approximately 400 law enforcement personnel. In addition to the 27 arrested this morning, 25 defendants were already in custody. Authorities are continuing to search for the additional eight defendants named in the indictment.

“Our citizens deserve to live without fear and intimidation inflicted by violent drug gangs,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Timothy J. Landrum. “Today's arrests should significantly impact the violent drug related activity spreading throughout the Ontario area. This investigation is an example of the continued commitment of law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels to get violent drug traffickers and street gangs out of our communities.”

The federal indictments that led to this morning's takedown focuses on the Black Angels gang, a Latino street gang that was formed in Ontario more than 50 years ago. The Black Angels claims the entire city of Ontario as its turf, and is comprised of approximately 450 members, which includes full members of the gang and younger members in subgroups called Ontario Varrio Sur and Junior Black Angels. The indictment alleges that leaders of the Black Angels gang recruited and initiated juveniles to join the gang in a process that included visiting local high schools in search of potential members. The Black Angels is aligned with the Mexican Mafia, and there are at least four Mexican Mafia members in the Black Angels, according to the indictment.

The Black Angels main criminal activity is the distribution of narcotics, specifically methamphetamine and heroin, according to the indictment, which also alleges that leaders of the gang extort drug dealers – or, in gang parlance, collect “taxes” – who are then allowed to operate in gang-controlled territory. The gang's drug trafficking activities extent to smuggling narcotics into prisons for the benefit of incarcerated Mexican Mafia and Black Angels members, according to the indictment.

The RICO conspiracy count in the indictment alleges a series of specific overt acts, including the possession of one pound of methamphetamine, transporting narcotics from Mexico into the United States, shooting at police during a high-speed chase, an armed robbery of a convenience store, and the murder of a Black Angels member who ran afoul of the gang.

The lead defendant in the racketeering case is Armando “Mando” Barajas, a Mexican Mafia member who allegedly controls the gang's activities, including the narcotics distribution activities in the gang's territory. Another Mexican Mafia member, Juan “Nito” Gil, who is currently serving a 10-year federal prison sentence, allegedly exercised control of gang by communicating directions through co-defendants Juan “Swifty” Diaz; his wife, Virginia Gil; and David “Plucky” Navarro, who allegedly supervised the gang's extortion activities.

Those taken into custody this morning will begin making their initial appearances today at noon in United States District Court in Riverside.

“Today's arrests of members of the Black Angels on RICO charges that include allegations of extortion, narcotics trafficking, and firearms violations is evidence of law enforcement's resolve to methodically disrupt and dismantle criminal street gangs and put their members and associates in prison,” observed Leslie P. DeMarco, Special Agent in Charge of IRS - Criminal Investigation's Los Angeles Field Office. “IRS - Criminal Investigation plays a unique role in federal law enforcement's counter-drug and anti-gang effort in that we target the profit and financial gains of these criminals, enabling increased criminal prosecutions.”

This case is the result of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Ontario Police Department. The Riverside-based task force operates within the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, and includes agents and officers from DEA, IRS-Criminal Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, the Riverside Sheriff's Department and the Riverside Police Department.

In addition to the agencies involved with HIDTA, several law enforcement agencies assisted in this morning's takedown, including the Chino Police Department, the Pomona Police Department, the Rialto Police Department, the Upland Police Department and the Fontana Police Department.

http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/2010/la042110.html

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