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Houston Chronicle
Jan. 25, 2005, 11:53PM
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush plans to ask Congress to spend more to crack down on undocumented workers and arrest and deport illegal immigrants. But he wants to fund only a fraction of the new Border Patrol agents called for in a bill he signed last year.

Bush's budget plan will call for spending $23 million, nearly five times the current level, on work site investigations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a government official familiar with the spending plan said Tuesday. The money would be used to conduct audits on employers, investigate violations and prepare cases.

The administration also wants to increase spending for detentions and deportations of immigrants to $1.2 billion, 18 percent more than in fiscal year 2005, the official said. In addition to paying for more staff, the money would go to apprehending fugitives and providing alternatives to detention for low-risk illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy declined to comment on the numbers because the 2006 budget has not been released. He warned that figures can change up until it is actually sent to Congress.

Bush plans to ask lawmakers to increase the Border Patrol by 210 agents. The intelligence overhaul law he signed last year authorizes, but does not pay for, the department to hire 2,000 agents a year for five years.

That would nearly double the number of agents guarding U.S. borders to almost 21,000 and would be the largest buildup of border guards in the nation's history.

Outgoing Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson, who oversees transportation and border security, has said paying for the 2,000 agents would require a substantial investment from Congress.

"It appears, perhaps, the administration is looking a bit more comprehensively on immigration enforcement. For too long we have focused only on the border, and many people have indeed been calling for renewed attention to the hiring of undocumented workers because that is the primary draw," said Deborah Meyers, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that tends to favor immigration.

In fiscal 2004, immigration authorities returned a record 157,000 illegal immigrants to their home countries from the United States.

ICE deported 8,282 undocumented immigrants from the Houston area that year, including 4,828 who had been arrested on criminal charges, according to a local agency spokeswoman. That also included nearly 500 people who had ignored a judge's deportation orders. In fiscal 2003, the Houston office deported 10,766 undocumented immigrants.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3009530

Posted by Konrad at 09:55 AM | Permalink

Law enforcement officials arranged to meet the anonymous tipster, who didn't show up. In the meeting place were four photos and the corresponding names of two Chinese women and two Chinese men.

On this basis, the FBI released a statement along with their photos, saying they were wanted for questioning on a "dirty bomb" plot.

Every law official who has spoken about this investigation admits there is no corroborating evidence whatsoever to tie these four people to anything. Yesterday, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan of Boston said these people are "not wanted at this point in time for any crimes because there's no evidence at this point in time that they've committed any crimes."

Nonetheless, since yesterday, we've been getting headlines like this:

So if you ever want to sic the FBI on someone and brand them in the national media as a "terrorist," just call in an anonymous tip and leave their name and photo. At least if the person is a non-white foreign national.

Posted by Konrad at 11:07 AM | Permalink

The New York Times

By JULIA PRESTON

A defense lawyer in the trial of Lynne F. Stewart, a lawyer charged with conspiring with Egyptian terrorists, accused the government yesterday of trying to play on jurors' fears by repeatedly referring to Osama bin Laden and the Sept. 11 attacks during the trial.

The sharp criticism of the prosecutors came on the first day of closing arguments by Kenneth A. Paul, a lawyer for one of Ms. Stewart's co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar. The prosecutors in the trial, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, have emphasized that Mr. Sattar had numerous telephone conversations with Egyptian Islamic militants who were in close contact with Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Sattar is a Staten Island postal worker who worked as a court-appointed paralegal aide with Ms. Stewart.

Mr. Paul said the prosecutors had "so blatantly attempted to tug and play upon those fears" of "the No. 1 enemy of the United States." He told the jurors that the government had tried "to scare you into thinking" that the case involved "a direct threat to the national security of the United States."

Judge John G. Koeltl has often reminded the jury during the six-month trial that Mr. bin Laden is not part of the case. But Mr. bin Laden still appeared repeatedly in the government's presentation, most notably in a videotape, recorded somewhere in Afghanistan and broadcast on television in the Middle East in September 2000, in which he threatened to attack the United States to win the release from prison of a client of Ms. Stewart's. The client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, is a blind Islamic cleric who is serving a life sentence in an American prison for a thwarted plot to bomb landmarks in New York.

Two Egyptian Islamic militants who, the evidence has shown, had frequent telephone conversations with Mr. Sattar appear on the video with Mr. bin Laden.

But the prosecutors never showed that Mr. Sattar had anything to do with making the videotape. The main evidence in the trial was drawn from about 85,000 secretly recorded intercepts of Mr. Sattar's home telephone made by the F.B.I. between 1995 and 2002. Mr. Sattar is facing a charge of conspiracy to kill and kidnap in a foreign country, which carries a maximum life sentence.

The government presented no evidence that Ms. Stewart knew in any detail about Mr. Sattar's calls with the Egyptian militants.

Mr. Paul said Mr. Sattar had followed guidance from Ms. Stewart and other lawyers for Mr. Abdel Rahman when he sent letters to the sheik in prison with messages from Egyptian Islamists. Mr. Sattar did not help to disseminate any message from the sheik that he understood to be a call for violence, Mr. Paul said.

Posted by Konrad at 10:15 AM | Permalink

Torture Is Not Quaint.
Act with the Center for Constitutional Rights
To Oppose the Gonzales Nomination!

Dear friends and supporters,

This is the week to make your voice heard! Confirmation hearings on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General begin Wednesday, January 5. If you haven't already contacted your representatives, click here to send a letter (or paste http://www.ccr-ny.org/actionalert into your browser).

Two weeks ago, we called on people to oppose the nomination of one of the chief architects of this Administration's lawless torture policy to the highest law enforcement office in the land. Last Thursday night, right before New Year's Eve, the government quietly posted a new torture memo that repudiated the memos Gonzales wrote and commissioned as White House Counsel and omitted his most radical recommendations: even they don't think his legal opinions on these crucial questions stand up to scrutiny.

Please take a minute to send a letter to your representatives urging them to do more than ask difficult questions. Ask them to stand up and oppose the Gonzales nomination. The time to start fighting is now.

And please forward this widely and quickly!

Sincerely yours,

Ron Daniels
Executive Director
Center for Constitutional Rights

P.S. We appreciate your help in our efforts to hold this Administration accountable for its extremist actions and policies. If you do not wish to receive emails from CCR in the future, please respond to this email with "remove from list" in the subject line. And if you would like to learn more about the important work CCR does on Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the Patriot Act, corporate accountability and more, please visit our website: www.ccr-ny.org.

Tough Questions Are Not Enough

In their scathing editorial on the nomination, The Washington Post linked Alberto Gonzales directly to the torture at Abu Ghraib and called his legal positions "damaging and erroneous." Newsweek wrote that "Gonzales ultimately signed off on all of the administration's most controversial legal moves."

In his infamous torture memo, Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions "obsolete" and "quaint" and paved the way to the systematic abuse of detainees at Guant?namo and Abu Ghraib, many of whom are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights. At CCR, we have seen the terrible effect of his policies on human beings first hand.

Even though experts in interrogation have long known that torture elicits false confessions and bad intelligence, Gonzales and his circle discussed the use of specific torture techniques like mock burial and water boarding, and approved the use of dogs, hooding, and extreme sensory deprivation, all forbidden by the Geneva Conventions and the International Covenant Against Torture. Americans can now no longer expect to be protected by the Geneva Conventions: the policies devised by Mr. Gonzales have endangered our own troops the world over for decades to come.

Despite all this, many members of Congress have said they will not oppose Mr. Gonzales's nomination and that he will only be made to answer tough questions before sailing through the confirmation process.

We at the Center for Constitutional Rights object to giving an architect of torture a promotion. Tough questions are not enough. Please ask your Senators, Representatives and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to stand up and oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.

Confirmation hearings begin this Wednesday. Please send a message to the Bush Administration and the world that the American people do not condone torture.

Posted by Konrad at 10:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (12)