Victims of Released Criminal Immigrants to Testify Against Obama Policies
Victims of Released Criminal Immigrants to Testify Against Obama Policies
by Joel Gehrke February 24, 2015 7:17 PM
Family members of people who were murdered by illegal immigrants after those immigrants had previously been detained and released pursuant to President Obama’s policies will testify before House lawmakers Wednesday morning.
The testimony is intended to illustrate a pattern of the Department of Homeland Security releasing criminal immigrants rather than deporting them, according to a Republican congressman who said that DHS had released 36,000 convicted criminal illegal immigrants since 2013.
“Of those 36,000, already now 1,000 of them have already been convicted of new crimes,” the lawmaker. “These are people who have gone through the court system, even. And yet, rather than them get repatriated, they’re released, and now there are new victims because of the recklessness of the policy.”
With that in mind, a House Oversight and Government Reform panel will hear from Jamiel Shaw, whose son was murdered by a gang member in the country illegally, and Michael Ronnebeck, whose nephew Grant was allegedly murdered by a man who faced deportation but was released by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement. “
We want Grant’s death to be a force for change and reform in the immigration policies of this great nation,” Michael Ronnebeck says in prepared testimony obtained by National Review, after detailing how ICE released the alleged murderer twice: once, after after he pled guilty to a burglary, and a second time when he was waiting for a deportation hearing.
“I am asking you, our elected scholars, lawyers, and community leaders, to make these changes; to rise above your political differences, to set aside your personal interests, and to use your resources to make sensible immigration reform a reality in the coming months, so that tragedies like this might not ever occur again,” Ronnebeck says in the prepared remarks. Republicans hope the testimony will help win the public-relations fight over the Department of Homeland Security funding bill, which Senate Democrats have filibustered because it contains language barring the implementation of Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...es-joel-gehrke
Father Of Son Murdered By Illegal Testifies To Congress: ‘Do Black Lives Matter?’
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by Caroline May
25 Feb 2015
The father of an American murdered by an illegal immigrant made an impassioned plea to Congress Wednesday to adopt policies to prevent it from happening again.
“My family’s peace and freedom were stolen by an illegal alien from Mexico. He was brought here by his illegal alien parents and allowed to grow up as a wild animal,” Jamiel Shaw testified before an Oversight and Government Reform panel about the murder of his son Jamiel Shaw II at the hands of Pedro Espinoza.
Shaw said that while some ascribe good qualities to illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, they are not all good.
“Some people believe that if you are brought over by no fault of your own that it makes you a good person. They want us to believe that DREAM Act kids don’t murder. I am here to debunk that myth. Kids brought over the border by no fault of their own do kill Americans. How many American’s killed by illegal aliens are too many?” Shaw said, explaining that as a parent of a murder victim, “one is too many.”
Shaw described how his son was murdered while walking on the street three doors away from his home by an illegal immigrant recently released from jail.
“He shot my son in the stomach and then in the head. Killing him. Do black lives really matter? Or does it matter only if you are shot by a white person or a while police man? The district attorney proved in court that my son was murdered because he was black and wearing a spiderman backpack,” Shaw said.
The grieving father said that he believed that the death could have been prevented. “Jameil shouldn’t be dead,” he testified.
“Why was this violent illegal alien allowed to walk the streets of America, instead of being deported?” Shaw asked. “Why was ICE not called to pick up this violent invader? We were promised that the federal government would keep us safe from violent illegal aliens.”
Shaw referenced the recent uproars over the murders of young African American men and the meme “Hands up. Don’t shoot,” that some have adopted as a rally cry.
“I see in here black politicians, black athletes, black stars say ‘hands up don’t shoot.’ My son was shot in the head by an illegal alien gang banger, while he lay on his back with his hands up. He still shot him through his hand and to his head and killed him,” Shaw said.
He continued, explaining that his son believed he was safe from such violence.
“My son thought he could walk down the street and not be murdered by an illegal alien. That he could depend on the government to secure our borders and keep the bad people out. Yes black families matter, yes military families matter, all families matter. But the duty of the U.S. government is to always put American families first,” he said.
Shaw went on to call on Congress to consider Rep. Walter Jones’ (R-NC) Jamiel Shaw, Jr. Memorial Act requiring states to report and track immigrant crimes and the FBI to publish those statistics.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...-lives-matter/
Father Of Black Teenager Murdered By Illegal Alien Asks ‘Do Black Lives Really Matter
Father Of Black Teenager Murdered By Illegal Alien Asks ‘Do Black Lives Really Matter?’
12:21 PM 02/25/2015
Chuck Ross
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The father of a black teenager murdered by an illegal immigrant asked “do black lives really matter?” in a House hearing to review the Department of Homeland Security’s policies towards “non-citizens unlawfully present in the United States.”
That father, Jamiel Shaw, and Michael Ronnebeck, the uncle of another man murdered earlier this month by an illegal immigrant, testified at Wednesday’s hearing in front of a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Both men asserted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) lax detainment policies contributed to the death of their family members. ICE came under intense scrutiny last year when it was revealed that in 2013 the agency had released over 36,000 convicted criminal aliens from its custody. Of those, nearly 200 had committed murder.
Shaw told of his son, Jamiel Shaw II, who in May 2008 at the age of 17 was gunned down by Pedro Espinoza, a 19-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant.
“My family’s peace and freedom were stolen by an illegal alien from Mexico. He was brought here by his illegal alien parents,” Shaw told the hearing, chaired by Florida U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis.
Shaw described that his son, a standout football and track star in Los Angeles, was walking down his own street when he was accosted by Espinoza and a friend.
Shaw said that it was proved in court that Espinoza — who was in a Latino gang — targeted his son because he was black.
“Do black lives really matter? Or does it matter only if you are shot by a white person or a white a policeman?” the elder Shaw asked during his testimony, referencing a phrase that became popular following the police-involved deaths of two black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Espinoza — who was eventually sentenced to death in the murder — had three gun charges on his record and had served only four months of an eight month sentence for assault with a deadly weapon and battery of a police officer. He was released from jail the day before he murdered Shaw.
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Jamiel Shaw II
“Why was this violent illegal alien allowed to walk the streets of America instead of being deported?” Shaw asked.
“Why was ICE not called to pick up this violent invader? We were promised that the federal government would keep us safe from violent illegal aliens?”
“I see in here black politicians, black athletes, black stars say ‘hands up, don’t shoot,”" Shaw said referencing another slogan adopted by Brown and Garner protesters. “My son was shot in the head by an illegal alien gangbanger while he lay on his back with his hands up. He still shot him through his hand and into his head and killed him.”
“The duty of the U.S. government is to always put American families first,” Shaw concluded.
The House panel then heard testimony from Ronnebeck.
His nephew, 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck, was murdered last month while working an overnight shift at a Mesa, Ariz. convenience store.
Apolinar Altamirano, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant who claimed to have ties to the Mexican Mafia, shot Ronnebeck in the face while purchasing a pack of cigarettes.
In Aug. 2012 he was arrested along with two others after kidnapping, sexually assaulting and burglarizing a woman in her apartment.
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Grant Ronnebeck
He pleaded guilty to felony burglary and was sentenced to two years probation and turned over to ICE.
But ICE released him on bond pending a deportation hearing.
In that time, he had two orders of protection filed against him — one of which was by a women who claimed Altamirano threatened to kill her and pointed a gun at her boyfriend.
ICE was notified of the protection orders, but Altamirano “was still allowed to be free in our country,” Ronnebeck said.
“ICE should be doing its job for the American people with the America people’s safety and security first and foremost in mind,” Ronnebeck said in emotional testimony.
Also testifying Wednesday was Jessica Vaughan, a policy director at the Centers for Immigration Studies, who called ICE’s detainment policies and procedures nothing more than a “catch and release program.”
She also blamed the Obama administration for further weakening the agency’s resolve to detain and deport dangerous illegal immigrants.
“The vast majority of illegal aliens residing in the interior face no threat of deportation, regardless of when or how they arrived, or if they have been deported before,” Vaughan said in a prepared statement. “Many deportable aliens who are encountered and apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are released soon after, even if they have come to ICE’s attention after being arrested by local authorities.”
“This state of affairs can be traced directly to policy changes put in place by the Obama administration. While administration officials claims that these policies are ‘smarter and more effective’ and allow the agencies to better focus on aliens who represent a threat to the public, in reality the intent, and certainly the result, has been the dismantlement of effective enforcement.”
http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/25/fa...really-matter/
Father of slain QT clerk: why was criminal migrant free?
Laurie Roberts, The Republic | azcentral.com 8:09 p.m. MST April 7, 2015
He died when he was just 21 years old, the victim of an evil man and an incompetent government.
It hasn't been even three months since Grant Ronnebeck was murdered over a pack of cigarettes, cut down because the people we elect either can't or won't do their jobs. Yet already his story has faded from public view.
"He was there for five seconds and now he's gone," his father, Steve Ronnebeck, told me.
Ronnebeck is hoping that the sacrifice of his son might amount to more than an early grave and a few moments of outrage. He's hoping that we might finally get fed up enough to demand that an entirely new principle be added to our border and immigration policies.
Common sense, that is.
Grant was one of those young men who loved life, with a big heart and a ready smile. His dad says he had big plans for his future.
He'd worked at QuikTrip since he was 16 and would have made it a career, his dad says. Meanwhile, he and his friends had begun making plans to get into real estate, to buy their first house and turn it into a rental property.
Those plans died at 4 a.m. Jan. 22, when 29-year-old Apolinar Altamirano walked into a Mesa QuikTrip, dumped a jar of change on the counter and demanded a pack of cigarettes.
When Grant said he'd need to count the money first, police say Altamirano pulled a gun. When Grant handed him the cigarettes, police say Altamirano pulled the trigger anyway. Then the gunman stepped over Grant's body to grab two packs of cigarettes and left.
Just another day, awaiting deportation in the USA.
Altamirano had been arrested in August 2012 after a home invasion in which a woman said she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by Altamirano and two others – associates of her boyfriend, who was in jail on drug charges.
The Maricopa County Attorney's Office allowed Altamirano to plead guilty to a low-level burglary charge. He was sentenced to two years' probation and in January 2013 was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Four days later, ICE released him on a $10,000 bond, to await his deportation hearing.
For two years, this guy was allowed the walk the streets with no supervision. It didn't matter that he was a convicted felon. It didn't matter that two orders of protection were filed against him, including one from a woman who said he's threatened to kill her and pointed a gun at her boyfriend.
Tragically, the only way to get this criminal off the streets was over Grant Ronnebeck's dead body.
The Obama administration has said the deportation of criminals is its highest priority yet more than 66,000 convicted criminals were released by ICE in fiscal 2013 and 2014, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, Arizona has the eighth largest backlog of pending cases in Immigration Court, with an average wait time of 695 days, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
Grant Ronnebeck died on Day 749 of Altamirano's wait.
ICE has never explained why it freed Altamirano.
"That's a question we need to have answered," he said. "And it's been asked. There was no reason for this man to be on the street."
Someone really ought to explain it to Ronnebeck and to us all.
Explain why tens of thousands of criminals who are here illegally are free to walk among us. Explain why our immigration courts are so woefully understaffed that it takes years to deport a criminal who wasn't supposed to be here in the first place.
It may be yesterday's news to politicians but not to a man who recently celebrated a beloved son's 22nd birthday at his grave.
"He was an amazing kid," Ronnebeck told me. "It's a nightmare that doesn't end and the only thing that me and my family can do is try to make a change somewhere. That's the best way for me to honor my son. To try and make sure that this doesn't happen again."
Really, is he asking so much? That we figure out a way to quickly deport felons who are in our country illegally? That we refuse to allow them to wander our streets for years while awaiting their walking papers?
That we, the greatest nation on earth, figure out a way to promptly kick them out and keep them out?
http://www.azcentral.com/story/lauri...-out/25381993/
