The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: dhs
Migrants S

Migrants Say DHS Agents Aided DeSantis Human Trafficking Stunt

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ inhumane and depraved stunt keeps getting worse as more facts emerge. On Wednesday, DeSantis loaded 48 migrants—who are asylum-seekers mostly from Venezuela—onto planes in in San Antonio, Texas. They then flew to Florida, then eventually on to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, where there are no refugee services. Officials there had no warning, but the community rallied in support of the incomers -- to the point where officials received so many donations and volunteers that they had to turn them away.

That’s the heartwarming part of the story. The part that makes this so much worse than we even knew before is emerging as the story comes from the migrants themselves through the immigration attorneys who have mobilized to help them. That includes the allegation that U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents assisted DeSantis in this stunt.

Here’s immigration attorney Rachel Self relating what she heard from her new clients.

According to the migrants, DHS agents met the migrants as they were boarding the plane. The agents gave them false addresses of homeless shelters from all over the country—from Tacoma, Washington, to Florida—and told them to use those locations as their contact addresses. “According to the paperwork provided to them, the migrants are required to check in with the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] office nearest to the fake address chosen for them by DHS, or be permanently removed from the United States,” Self said. Some are required to check in as early as Monday morning.

“It could not be clearer that this is an attempt to have these people ordered to be removed even if they try as hard as they can to comply with the instructions provided to them,” Self told a group of reporters.

“Their biggest concern today is that many of them have dates to appear in San Antonio Monday morning. Tacoma, Washington Monday morning. Washington, D.C. Monday morning,” Self said. “Their biggest concern is compliance.” Tallahassee immigration attorney Elizabeth Ricci told the Orlando Sentinel on Friday that DHS and ICE had to be involved. “ICE likely conspired with the governor’s office to pull off the stunt,” Ricci said. “It couldn’t have been done without their direct involvement.”

DHS officials haven’t responded to the allegation yet.

The migrants were lured onto the planes thinking they were getting jobs and housing. Emmanuel, a 20-year-old Venezuelan migrant, told the San Antonio Report that he had been paid $200 in cash by a woman who identified herself as “Perla” to recruit fellow migrants to board the flights. He said Perla told him the migrants would be sent to “sanctuary states” where the government would help.

She told him an “anonymous benefactor” was funding the operation, including his payment. “Perla informed me that in those sanctuary states, the state has the benefits to help migrants,” Emmanuel told the Report. “I’ve just been the mediator because I like to help people.”

“A lot of people really come without plans, they want to come and just work and they have a hand that’ll provide them shelter,” he said. “I just saw it in that way, like a sweet way, doing it for good.”

Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is based in Boston, is providing free legal services to the migrants. The group also says that it is investigating claims by migrants that they were tricked or sent against their will into taking the flights by DeSantis, making it a possible violation of human trafficking laws.

DeSantis remains belligerent and promises this outrage will continue. He says he has people in Texas who are intercepting Venezuelans seeking refuge in Florida, where they likely have family they want to rejoin. “What we’re trying to do is profile, ‘OK, who do you think is trying to get to Florida?’ You’re trying to identify who’s most likely to come.” Are DeSantis’ “people” in Texas the DHS agents who allegedly helped him essentially kidnap these 48 people, including families with children?

The Department of Justice needs to be investigating this now. That was true before the allegations emerged that federal employees—agents of the DHS—were complicit in DeSantis’ monstrous stunt. Those allegations make a federal investigation imperative, and urgent.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump's DHS Inspector Concealed Deletion Of Secret Service January 6 Texts

Trump's DHS Inspector Concealed Deletion Of Secret Service January 6 Texts

The Department of Homeland Security scandal is growing larger, with its embattled inspector general increasingly appearing to be at the center of what one noted political scientist is calling a “coverup of treason.”

DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2019, was aware of Secret Service agents’ deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, as well as deleted texts from top Homeland Security officials, months earlier than first disclosed, according to reports from CNN and The Washington Post.

“Earlier this month, Secret Service officials told congressional committees that DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, the department’s independent watchdog, was aware that texts had been erased in December 2021,” CNN reports. “But sources tell CNN, the Secret Service had notified Cuffari’s office of missing text messages in May 2021, seven months earlier.”

That means that four months after the January 6 insurrection the DHS watchdog office knew Secret Service agents’ text messages, from the day before and day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, were missing and did not inform Congress or the National Archives, which is required by law to retain those records.

The deleted Secret Service texts are not the only missing data at DHS.

“Text messages for President Donald Trump’s acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol,” The Washington Post was first to report, on Thursday night.

As with the missing Secret Service texts, Cuffari knew early on – as early as May – but did not inform Congress or the National Archives.

Earlier this month the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), a nonpartisan independent watchdog, reported on Cuffari, Wolf, and Cuccinelli.

“Cuffari’s actions shielded high-level DHS political appointees, including then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his acting deputy secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, from fuller questioning by investigators, according to government records and interviews,” a POGO press release stated.

Back in February POGO reported that Cuffari “faces a previously undisclosed and escalating investigation — one that will apparently address persistent questions about whether he illegally ‘retaliated’ against former high-ranking employees. As such, the probe signals the latest phase of a nasty internecine battle that refuses to fade away, despite Cuffari’s successful bid to force out his former top deputy, as other internal critics left amid bitter recriminations.”

That investigation, according to the POGO report, began in May of 2021, more than one year ago.

In. April POGO sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to remove Cuffari from his role as DHS IG.

Late Thursday night noted political scientist Norman Ornstein, who sits on the POGO board, called the situation a “coverup of treason.”

POGO, Ornstein tweeted, “has been calling for a long time for the resignation of DHS IG Joseph Cuffari. He sat on the information of missing texts from the top DHS ‘acting’ officials, put there by Trump to do his bidding. Stinks to high heaven. Coverup of treason.”

Appointed by Trump, Cuffari assumed office on July 25, 2019. Less than one year later, in May of 2020, The Washington Post reported, “DHS inspector general’s office nearly dormant under Trump as reports and audits plummet.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Chad Wolf

Top DHS Official Delayed Crucial Report On Kremlin 2020 Election Meddling

Chad Wolf, former acting secretary of Homeland Security for the Trump Administration, delayed the dissemination of a crucial intelligence report on Russia’s intervention in the 2020 elections by demanding changes, creating the perception that the report was politicized, according to a new report by Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) watchdog.

In its redacted report — titled “DHS Actions Related to an I&A Intelligence Product Deviated from Standard Procedures” — the DHS Office of Inspector General underscored the department’s failure to follow “its internal processes and comply with applicable intelligence community policy standards and requirements when editing and disseminating an Office of Intelligence and Analysis [I&A] intelligence product regarding Russian interference in the 2020 US presidential election.”

At issue was Wolf’s unorthodox decision to interfere in the report, which raised “objectivity concerns,” according to the OIG report. The acting secretary’s politically-charged effort appeared to have been intended to aid then-President Trump’s bid for reelection, the OIG’s office inferred in the report.

"The acting secretary participated in the review process multiple times despite lacking any formal role in reviewing the product, resulting in the delay of its dissemination on at least one occasion," the DHS inspector general report stated. "The delays and deviation from I & A (the DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis) standard process and requirements put [them] at risk of creating a perception of politicization."

“This resulted in a delay in the dissemination of an intelligence product intended to inform stakeholders about foreign influence efforts relating to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election,” the OIG report added.

This intelligence product was a report that analysts in the Cyber Mission Center (CYMC) of the DHS began drafting in April 2020 to warn officials at the local and state levels of a significant rise in covert and overt efforts by “Russian malign influence actors” to spread unsubstantiated claims about then-Candidate Joe Biden’s mental health after Super Tuesday, to erode voters’ confidence in the democratic candidate for president.

However, before the release of the Russian report, the former DHS analyst for intelligence and analysis, Brian Murphy, filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Wolf, his predecessor Kirstjen Nielsen, and deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli had interfered in the report.

Murphy alleged that, in May 2020, Wolf had asked him “to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran,” according to the Guardian.

The analyst — who, according to the OIG report, “believed foreign efforts questioning a candidate's health were worth exploring” — also said that Wolf had in July 2020 ordered him to delay the intelligence report because “it made the president look bad,” but Murphy refused to comply.

In his whistleblower complaint, Murphy said that obeying Wolf’s directives would have “put the country in substantial and specific danger."

"Russian disinformation was something [DHS leadership] didn't want to report on," Murphy told CBS News in October 2021. "It mattered. It had a material impact on life and safety of how the events unfolded during 2018 and forward," he added.

A representative for the DHS denied Murphy’s claims at the time.

I&A planned to circulate the intelligence report on July 9, 2020, but delays postponed its release until September 8. Even then, according to news media reporting, the I&A didn’t use its traditional channels to distribute the intelligence, delaying the report’s full publication yet again until October 15.

The OIG report found that, after months of delay, analysts included additional text in the intelligence report about efforts by China and Iran to amplify phantom narratives questioning then-President Trump’s mental capacity.

When pressed on its decision to include a “tone box” (the additional information) in the intelligence report, the DHS contradicted itself, reports CBS news.

"[The CYMNC Manager] told us it was a feature intended to draw a contrast between the actions of Russia and those of Iran and China, but also described the tone box as a 'blunting feature' meant to balance the product. When asked whether intelligence products require balancing, he said the addition of the tone box was not politicization, yet also said it showed I & A's political savviness, as the state and local customers of their products tended to be political," the OIG report said.

Wolf now leads a far-right, pro-Trump thinktank, America First Policy Institute. In a statement to NBC News, he said the DHS watchdog “did not find any credible evidence that I directed anyone to change the substance of the report because it ‘made President Trump look bad.’”

However, the Inspector General’s office disputed Wolf’s claim on page 11 of its report, saying, “Based on our interviews with relevant officials, as well as our document review, it is clear the acting secretary asked the acting USIA [under secretary for intelligence and analysis] to hold the product from its pending release.”

The watchdog added that Wolf and others named in its report had denied the claims.

'People's Convoy' Truck Protest Drives Pointless Laps Around Washington

'People's Convoy' Truck Protest Drives Pointless Laps Around Washington

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of trucks, recreational vehicles and cars were circling the outskirts of Washington on Sunday, threatening to cause traffic backups around the capital as part of a protest against COVID-19 restrictions.

The so-called "People's Convoy," which originated in California and has drawn participants from around the country, is calling for an end to all pandemic-related restrictions. It was inspired by demonstrations last month that paralyzed Ottawa, Canada's capital city.

The convoy's message has been undercut in recent weeks as major U.S. cities have rolled back mask mandates and other measures against COVID-19. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signaled in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday that the country was entering a new, more controlled phase of the pandemic without business lockdowns or school closures.

But that did not stop hundreds of vehicles from gathering on Friday and Saturday at the Hagerstown Speedway, a racetrack in Maryland about 80 miles (129 km) northwest of downtown Washington.

On Sunday morning, many left in convoy to drive slow laps around the Beltway, a highway that encircles the city. They honked their horns as they set off, while onlookers waved American flags, according to a Reuters witness.

It remained unclear whether the convoy would drive into downtown Washington. Organizers said the plan for Sunday was to stay on the Beltway then head back to Hagerstown.

At the racetrack on Friday night, one participant who described himself as the lead trucker told a cheering crowd he would drive his truck into the heart of the American capital.

"D.C., the government, whomever, can claim that they have all this opposition for us waiting in D.C.," the man said. "But that flag on the back of my truck will go down to Constitution Avenue between the White House and the Washington Monument."

Federal law enforcement agencies have been coordinating with state and local authorities for weeks in preparation for the possible arrival of the convoy, according to one U.S. official who requested anonymity to discuss internal operations.

A February 26 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bulletin to law enforcement reviewed by Reuters said trucker convoys could hinder emergency responders depending on the size of the protest.

(Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez, Gabriella Borter and Ted Hesson; Editing by Daniel Wallis)