By Juan Mann
04/12/2004
[Also by Juan Mann: South Florida Confidential: Upper Keys Times Blows The Whistle On Refugee Scam]
Now that a local newspaper in Key Largo has documented how a group of Cubans faked an illegal entry in the Florida Keys — in order to get on a fast-track for refugee benefits — the bigger picture of refugee benefit fraud and abuse is coming into focus.
And guess who’s involved? — all the usual suspects of the permanent Treason Lobby, as well as its most notorious accomplice: the federal government.
As always, when it comes to inspecting failed immigration policy, all roads lead to a two-headed bureaucratic monster:
A VDARE.com reader helps to unravel the Florida Keys Cuban refugee fraud mystery. The reader reports:
"Cubans don’t just enter by sea, they also fly to Mexico, walk right up to any port of entry and demand asylum — and are promptly let in under parole after a brief interview. This way they still qualify for the same benefits as rafters, whereas virtually any Mexican doing the same thing would be turned back to Mexico.
Exactly! At land border ports of entry and airports, most aliens who say the magic word "asylum!" ultimately are released from immigration detention and paroled into the United States — in the hope they may, someday, show up for EOIR Immigration Court hearings.
But as I've reported before, a staggering 97 percent of all asylum-seekers from ANY country who were released from immigration custody were never apprehended again by the federal government. And, of course, were never deported.
The "brief interview" — my reader’s term — that the aliens undergo at land border ports of entry is required under the "credible fear" review process of Section 235(b) of the Immigration Act.
[For an airport scenario, read the DeportAliens.com anonymous report: Credible Fear and Loathing — Real Life in the Airport as Aliens Drop from the Sky]
According to DHS sources, 93 percent of all aliens who ask for asylum through the "credible fear" review process are found to have a "credible fear" of persecution.
A nationwide 93 percent pass rate — what a bureaucratic joke!
With numbers like that, the majority of the rubber stamp-wielding asylum officer corps at Eduardo Aguirre’s Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) probably never met an alien they thought wasn’t credible.
Though the "credible fear" interview is required by current immigration law, releasing the aliens from immigration detention is not. And yet Secretario Ridge’s minions keep releasing more aliens into the U.S. anyway … every day.
The informed VDARE.com reader also reports even more fraud once the intrepid asylum-seekers are released from detention:
"A few years ago, I participated in a raid on a house of Cubans involved in large-scale alien smuggling, an increasingly popular line of work. I was assigned to evidence gathering. This family had been in the U.S. for all of five months. I gathered stacks of benefits they were collecting, everything from free medical to refugee assistance checks to incredibly, checks for a number of government loans designated for refugees.
"The most shocking thing I found were airline tickets scheduled for the next month — to Cuba! Of course, they were routed through Mexico, so as not to trigger suspicion, fines or refusal of entry back into the U.S. Heaven forbid they be denied entry — since they are supposedly 'fleeing persecution' and they couldn’t go back to Cuba — unless of course, it’s with a government reentry permit or green card in hand.
"Another shocker [is that] state government agencies are so easily duped into automatically believing that people from certain countries are automatically refugees.
"My team arrested a Haitian who entered the U.S. as a stowaway — and was subject to expedited removal. [He had] injured his leg jumping off the ship to try to escape the immigration officer. After we paid for treatment, he was paroled in for a hearing. [VDARE.COM note: That’s a hearing before the dreaded EOIR Immigration Court, of course.]
"When he was arrested — after he lost all appeals after several years — we found in his wallet cards for the state taxpayer-paid Refugee Medical Assistance Program and receipts showing the reduced medical and dental care he was receiving. I said, 'You aren’t a refugee — you're a stowaway!' The card listed him as a refugee and that he was sponsored by Catholic Social Services — a complete fraud and abuse of state funds as he was not brought to the U.S. as a refugee by any agency.
So there you have it — the federal government, state agencies and the helpful Treason Lobby making it easier for aliens to commit refugee and asylum fraud every step of the way.
The fraud will continue unabated until the DHS finally puts some teeth back into Immigration Act Section 235(b) — putting an end to the ridiculous 93 percent favorable "credible fear" charade. But even more importantly, the so-called "homeland security" department must STOP RELEASING ILLEGAL ALIENS FROM DETENTION, even if they pass the current "anyone with a pulse" standard of "credible fear" review.
So let’s review. Why is the DHS releasing "credible fear" asylum applicants from immigration detention in the first place?
Here’s the illogical but true answer: they're being released so they can supposedly show up for EOIR Immigration Court hearings and continue hiding in the EOIR briar patch of perpetual litigation. In fact as we've seen, 97 percent of asylum applicants released from detention can disappear without a trace, never to be deported.
But remember that, regardless of whether or not the aliens have a bona fide asylum claim, as long as they're free inside the United States (courtesy of the DHS and EOIR), they'll be feeding at the public trough.
A great deal for the Treason Lobby and their alien charges!
Juan Mann is a lawyer and the proprietor of DeportAliens.com.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.