Thread: Obama gives amnesty to known gang member, ‘Top Model’ murder suspect

20 other suspected gang affiliates get admin’s approval

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, April 21, 2015

The man accused of murdering a former contestant on "America's Next Top Model" was already a known gang member when he was approved for President Obama's amnesty for so-called Dreamers, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed Tuesday.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency charged with approving amnesty applications, admitted it broke its own rules in approving the gang member for tentative legal status, agency chief Leon Rodriguez said in a letter to Sen. Charles E. Grassley.

"Based on standard procedures and processes in place at the time, the [deferred action] request and related employment authorization should not have been approved," Mr. Rodriguez said in admitting his agency's catastrophic error in approving Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez.

Mr. Rodriguez said Mr. Rangel's immigrant's status was revoked March 5 — but that was a month after he'd already been arrested by police and accused of killing Mirjana Puhar, a contestant last year on the "Top Model" program, and three others.

The admissions are a serious black eye for Mr. Obama's amnesty program, which the president has insisted would allow generally law-abiding illegal immigrants to live and work without fear, while weeding out serious criminals.

USCIS admitted in its letter to Mr. Grassley that another 20 immigrants with potential gang ties have also been approved, and officers are now going back and trying to figure out whether rules were broken in those cases as well. Mr. Rodriguez said his officers will also face retraining so they know which applications to deny.

But Mr. Grassley said the approvals exposed the holes with the amnesty, which Mr. Obama announced in 2012 and which has approved more than 600,000 Dreamers for tentative legal status under his program, officially known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

"It's no secret that USCIS staff is under intense pressure to approve every DACA application that comes across their desk, and based on this information, it's clear that adequate protocols are not in place to protect public safety," Mr. Grassley said. "The fact is that this tragedy could have been avoided if the agency had a zero tolerance policy with regard to criminal aliens and gang members."

DACA was viewed as a test run for Mr. Obama's broader amnesty, announced late last year, but which has been halted by a federal court.

The revelation that criminals got approval could dent the president's legal argument to re-start the new amnesty, with the appeals court judges hearing the case showing deep interest in how well the background checks work.

According to the immigration agency, several hundred people have had their amnesty revoked for gang ties: 28 in 2013, 131 in 2014 and 123 so far in 2015.

Mr. Grassley raised the case of Mr. Rangel earlier this year after he learned that the man had previous run-ins with the law in North Carolina, and was facing deportation until the administration granted him amnesty.

Dreamers are the young adult illegal immigrants who are viewed as the most sympathetic figures in the immigration debate. But they are increasingly turning up in the criminal justice system.

The Homeland Security Department acknowledged last month that it had snared 23 Dreamers in an operation designed to arrest thousands of serious criminals.

Puhar, the model contestant Mr. Rangel is accused of killing, was an immigrant herself, having been born in Serbia but fleeing with her family at age 5 after the Kosovo war, the Charlotte Observer reported.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...n-gang-member/

Wow, the hits just keep rolling in!

By Franco Ordoñez
McClatchy Washington Bureau
April 21, 2015


Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration officials admitted this week that the suspect in the February slayings of four people in Charlotte, N.C., was granted special immigration status – shielding him from deportation two years ago despite being listed in a federal database as a gang member.

Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez, 19, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder in connection with a three-day shooting spree that included the death of one-time “America’s Next Top Model” contestant Mirjana Puhar.

The revelation casts a shadow on the Obama administration’s efforts to expand the controversial immigration program that’s intended to protect one of the most sympathetic groups of immigrants in the country illegally – young people brought here as children.

Federal authorities have since found 13 other cases in the same federal crime database of people were approved for protection from deportation. Those cases are now being reconsidered.

Rangel-Hernandez never should have received the protective status and likely would have been deported had U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services followed proper procedures and protocols, federal officials said in a letter Friday to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who had been questioning the case.

In 2013, Rangel-Hernandez applied for and was granted the special protective status, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, despite the fact that he was listed in a federal crime database as a known gang member.

It’s unclear whether his background check failed to discover the record in the database or whether an adjudicator approved the application despite knowledge of the gang ties.

Rangel-Hernandez was slated for deportation as a result of a 2012 arrest for possession of marijuana. The charges were eventually dismissed after he was granted deferred action, but the removal proceeding continued until December 2013.

Grassley and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., highlighted the case after a federal whistleblower told them the U.S. government had records of Rangel-Hernandez’s gang ties.

“The flawed implementation of the president’s blanket deferred action program has created a loophole that allows dangerous criminals who came here illegally – even known gang members – to stay in the country,” Tillis said in a statement Tuesday.

Citizenship and Immigration Services officials admitted in the letter to Grassley’s office that federal officials should not have granted Rangel-Hernandez deferred action.

“Based on standard procedures and protocols in place at the time, the DACA request and related employment authorization should not have been approved,” León Rodríguez, the Citizenship and Immigration Services director, wrote in the letter.

More than 600,000 people have received protection from deportation and granted work permits through the 2012 deferral program, according to Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Rafael Prieto, an editor and columnist with Charlotte’s Que Pasa Mi Gente Spanish-language newspaper, said Tuesday that Citizenship and Immigration Services messed up. It should never have given Rangel-Hernandez deferred action, but the mistake doesn’t detract from the benefits of a program that has “transformed the lives” of hundreds of thousands of young people.

Prieto noted that Rangel-Hernandez had to pass several different background checks and was not listed on a North Carolina gang database.

He described the efforts by Grassley and Tillis as politically motivated with a single objective: to damage a good program.

“The majority of these kids are good people,” Prieto said in an interview. “They’re contributing to the country.”

But North Carolina’s senior senator, Republican Richard Burr, called the revelations “chilling.”

“The administration has promised Americans that those who qualify for their executive order would fully meet a set of guidelines meant to keep criminals out of the country,” Burr said in a statement. “We now know that isn’t true.”

http://www.sunherald.com/2015/04/21/...it-murder.html

Originally Posted by MW

Wow, the hits just keep rolling in!

Unfortunately will keep rolling in for years, if not generations. Congress and President's should be prosecuted for "tinkering" with good law. Ooooops, who would we have trustworthy enough to do the investigations?

APRIL 24, 2015

In the latest scandal to rock President Obama’s controversial executive amnesty initiative, a known gang member charged with murder and drug-related crimes was shielded from deportation under the administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The illegal immigrant’s name is Emmanuel Jesus Rangel-Hernandez and he was in the process of being deported when U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) shielded him from removal under DACA, even though the agency knew he was a member of a violent street gang. USCIS was also aware that Rangel-Hernandez had been arrested in 2012 for possession of drugs but rubber-stamped his amnesty petition anyways last August.

Earlier this year, months after our commander-in-chief granted him amnesty, the 19-year-old gangbanger was charged with four counts of first-degree murder in connection with a three-day shooting spree in Charlotte, North Carolina. One of the victims was a model who appeared in a popular reality television show, according to a local news report that confirms authorities knew Rangel-Hernandez was listed in a federal database as a gang member when they approved his amnesty. Under DACA illegal immigrants are also rewarded with work permits.

This month the Homeland Security agency implementing Obama’s massive amnesty program admitted that the gangbanger’s “DACA request and related employment authorization should not have been approved.” Americans would never know about this egregious case if it weren’t made public by a federal lawmaker who demanded answers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The legislator, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and has long expressed concern about how individuals who are allowed to remain in the U.S. under Obama’s deferred action are vetted. Earlier this year the senator pressed USCIS for information related to the process and, specifically, about Rangel-Hernandez.

A few days ago the agency responded by admitting that it erroneously shielded Rangel-Hernandez from deportation considering his criminal history and gang ties. In a letter to Senator Grassley, USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez writes that “based upon the derogatory information in the background check, the outcome of the resolution process and final decision did not comply with USCIS policy.” The agency’s Background Check Unit (BCU) should deny consideration of DACA for a known street gang member, the letter confirms, further stating that “given the fact that the individual was identified as a known gang member, his request should have been denied by the adjudicator.”

But it wasn’t denied and that creates many questions about the process. It’s bad enough that the administration is rewarding millions who have entered the country illegally with all sorts of benefits, but now we must wonder how many dangerous criminals are benefitting from this broad amnesty. The newspaper report cited above says that federal authorities have since found 13 other cases in the same crime database of people who were approved for protection from deportation. This means that, more than likely, there are a lot more. Unfortunately, the public may never hear about them until they commit a serious crime.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/20...obama-amnesty/