JW Files Suit For ‘Refugee Travel Loans’ Information
Tightening our immigration and refugee programs is a matter of national
security (despite what some out-of-control
judges may
think), and it is also a matter of cost.
In
this regard, we have filed a lawsuit against the State Department for records
on the number of “Refugee Travel Loans” issued by State’s Bureau for
Population, Refugees, and Migration to the United Nation’s International
Organization for Migration from 2010 to the present.
We
are also seeking the number of loans defaulted upon and the amount of money
written off on each defaulted loan. We filed the suit on January 24, 2017, in
the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of
State (No.
1:17-cv-00157)).
Judicial
Watch filed the suit after the State Department failed to respond to a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request on February 5, 2016, seeking the following:
- All records reflecting the number of Refugee Travel
Loans furnished by the State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees,
and Migration (PRM) to the International Organization for Migration (IOM)
per year; the number of travel loans that are defaulted upon per year; and
the amount of money written off per defaulted loan.
The
Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration provides funding for aid and
relief work abroad and the bureau’s admissions office handles settling refugees
in the United States. According to the agency’s website, it spent
nearly $545 million “to provide new beginnings to the world’s most vulnerable
refugees” in 2016 and more than $2.8 billion to “humanitarian assistance
overseas.” It provided $103 million directly to the UN’s International
Organization for Migration.
The
International Organization for Migration, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland,
has an annual budget of $1.4 billion and (as of
2014) a staff of 9,000 throughout the world. According to the International
Organization for Migration website, the
organization provides interest-free loans “furnished by the Department of
State” to “all refugees arriving in the United States:”
All
refugees arriving in the United States are offered interest-free travel loans
by IOM. Refugees who accept these travel loans are required to sign a
promissory note prior to departure, committing themselves to repayment of the
debt within 46 months after arrival in the United States.
IOM
arranges for refugee travel using funds furnished by the Department of State,
and is mandated to subsequently effect collections on behalf of the Department
of State. Repayments made by refugees toward their loans are returned to
the Department of State for use by the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration
(PRM) to defray the cost of future refugee travel.
In
July 2016, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution making
the International Organization for Migration part of the UN.
Even The Washington Post reported that
the nine resettlement agencies contracted by the
State Department to help resettle refugees in the U.S. actually make more than
$5 million a year in commissions on refugee debt collection.
The
State Department has stonewalled our request for refugee loan information and
associated taxpayer losses for a year – an unlawful delay that screams “cover
up.” This is an opportunity for the Trump State Department to come clean
and clean up this refugee welfare program.
And
there’s a lot more for the Trump administration to clean up when it comes to
“refugee loans.” In June 2016, Judicial Watch reported:
The
U.S. government gives refugees on public assistance special “loans” of up to
$15,000 to start a business but fails to keep track of defaults that could
translate into huge losses for American taxpayers, records obtained
by Judicial Watch reveal. The cash is distributed through a program called
Microenterprise Development run by the Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement.
***
HHS
is not the only government agency doling out huge sums of cash for this cause,
though its focus on refugees appears to be unique. Others, such as the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Labor (DOL) also dedicate hundreds of
millions of dollars to various microenterprise causes. For instance, in one
recent year alone USAID spent $223 million on
microenterprise development activities, according to figures released by the
agency. The USDA also allocates large sums to provide loans and grants to
microenterprise development through a special “Rural Microloan
Revolving Fund” and
the DOL regularly pours lots of money into various microenterprise projects
that are promoted as workforce investments in areas with high rates of poverty.
So
the debate about refugees is more than about keeping dangerous refugees out,
but there is also the matter of asking just how much it costs to make
politicians to feel good about themselves by using our tax dollars to provide
special assistance to these foreign nationals.
Mexican Drug Cartel
Operating in U.S. Suburb More than 1,500 Miles from Border
President
Donald Trump made it clear during his campaign that one of the reasons for
building a wall along the Mexican border is to disrupt the flow of heroin into
the United States. This heroin is killing Americans in record numbers, according to
the Centers for Disease Control.
The crisis isn’t limited to areas adjacent to
the border; it has now spread to communities far beyond, as our Corruption Chronicles
blog reports this
week:
Illustrating that the Mexican drug crisis is
having a far-reaching impact on the U.S., a heroin ring operated by a Mexican
cartel was recently busted in an American suburb more than 1,500 miles from the
southern border. In the last few years Judicial Watch has reported extensively
on the massive amounts of drugs—especially heroin—that get smuggled into the
U.S. by Mexican traffickers who later use street, prison and outlaw motorcycle
gangs to distribute them throughout the country. Undoubtedly, these enterprises
benefitted tremendously from the Obama administration’s open border policies.
Now
we have confirmation that these illicit drug operations have penetrated areas
far from the border. This case comes out of Rowan County, North Carolina, where
a local news report
reveals that authorities began targeting large-scale heroin distribution
in 2013. Last week three people with ties to a Mexican drug cartel were
arrested in the county. Large quantities of heroin, handguns, a rifle,
ammunition, numerous telephones, cash and drug paraphernalia were confiscated
by police. Authorities say the Mexican heroin trafficking ring was based in the
Charlotte-Matthews area and has been supplying heroin to Rowan County for more
than a decade. “Over the past two months, investigators purchased large amounts
of heroin from two people working for this Mexican National Drug Trafficking
Organization,” the news report states.
This
is hardly earth-shattering news. A number of federal audits have documented the
enormous amounts of drugs that annually enter the U.S. through the porous
southern border, even as Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary famously
proclaimed the region to be as secure as it’s ever been. One report, published
just a few months ago, referred to western states as a “heroin transit zone”
because Mexican cartels move such large amounts of drugs through the
Southwest border. That government assessment disclosed that there at least
eight major Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating in the United
States with the Sinaloa Cartel being the most active. Heroin is the most
popular drug and it’s entering the country through Mexico in record numbers.
From 2010 to 2015 heroin seizures in the Mexican border region more than
doubled from 1,016 kg to 2,524 kg, according to government figures.
The
trend mirrors the increase in overall seizures throughout the U.S. as well. For
instance, federal arrests and prosecutions of heroin traffickers have
skyrocketed with 6,353 heroin-related arrests in 2015. Additionally, the number
of individuals sentenced for heroin trafficking offenses in federal courts has
increased by almost 50%, the government confirms. In 2015 the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) issued a report disclosing
that the majority of illegal drugs in the United States come from Mexico and
Mexican traffickers remain the greatest criminal threat to the United States.
They’re classified as Transitional Criminal Organizations (TCOs) by the
government and they’ve long smuggled in huge quantities of heroin, cocaine,
methamphetamine and marijuana.
A
big part of the problem is that the drug trafficking is being leveraged by
corrupt public officials in the U.S., a years-long Judicial Watch investigation
has found. Undoubtedly, cartel violence is real but truckloads of drugs are
getting across the country because U.S. officials at the municipal, state and
federal level are turning a blind eye or actively participating and cooperating
with cartels. As part of an ongoing probe, Judicial Watch has provided the
Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General and Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Chuck Grassley with evidence, including the sworn testimony of law
enforcement officers, of this corruption and criminality in all levels of
government. Learn more about Judicial Watch’s probe here.
Do not imagine that our porous border is a
problem for someone else because you don’t live there. The quadrupling of
deaths from heroine overdosing has occurred in
every part of the country and among every race and age group. We have covered
this extensively, as you can see here, and we will not let
up.
California Crony
Corruption Costs Taxpayers
Americans of almost every political stripe –
liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican – hate the “revolving door,”
which is the shuttling of former government officials into private jobs where
they use their formerly official connections to enrich themselves.
This
week, we released documents that the Washington revolving door extends all the
way to Sacramento, California, and back again. JW pried loose records from
the California Legislature Joint Rules Committee revealing that the legislature
will pay former Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm $25,000 a month for 40
hours of work each month for providing “legal strategies regarding potential
actions of the federal government that may be of concern to the State of
California.” The contract precludes requiring the Holder firm to do any
other litigation or advocacy work.
The
records came in response to a January 9, 2017, Legislative Open Records
Act request for:
All
contracts between the California Legislature and former U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder Jr. or Covington and Burling.
All
communications between the California Legislature and former U. S. Attorney
General Eric Holder Jr. or Covington and Burling about the Legislature’s
retention of Holder and/or Covington and Burling.
On
January 4, California legislative leaders announced that
they had hired Holder to assist them in anticipated federal challenges to
several state policies, including those on climate change and immigration.
In
a statement, Kevin de
Leon, California Senate President Pro
Tempore said, “With the upcoming change in administrations, we
expect that there will be extraordinary challenges for California in the
uncertain times ahead.” The California attorney general, who represents
the State’s interest in court, already has a budget of
$190 million. So, yes, taxpayers are being double-charged for lawyers
they don’t need!
In
the Covington contract provided to Judicial Watch, Holder’s firm limited its
activities to providing “legal strategies” and stipulated that it would require
a “new engagement letter” for any activities beyond providing such advice:
We
are pleased to confirm that we will serve as Special Counsel to the California
State Senate and the California State Assembly (collectively “the Legislature”)
in helping the Legislature develop legal strategies regarding potential actions
of the federal government that may be of concern to the State of California…
Should
the Legislature wish to retain us to work on any particular litigation or other
matter or public policy advocacy work, that would not fall within the scope of
this undertaking and would require a new engagement letter.
Holder
was one of Obama’s longest-serving and most crooked Cabinet members. On
June 28, 2012, he became the first U.S. Attorney General to be held in contempt of
Congress on
both civil and criminal grounds. The contempt charge came in connection with
Holder’s refusal to turn over documents on Operation Fast
and Furious, the Obama administration’s gunwalking scandal. Judicial Watch
has since exposed numerous atrocities associated
with this scandal.
Under
Holder the Justice Department dismissed its voting rights
case against the New Black Panther Party. The Justice Department
originally filed its lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party following an
incident that took place outside of a Philadelphia polling station on November
4, 2008. According to multiple witnesses, members of the New Black Panthers
blocked access to polling stations, harassed voters and hurled racial epithets.
A video of the incident, showing a member of the New Black Panther Party
brandishing police-style baton weapon, was widely distributed on the Internet.
In
March 2011, we sued the Holder Justice Department for records detailing
its contacts with NAACP about the dismissal of the lawsuit.
In
2013, the Holder Justice Department was caught spying on The Associated Press by
collecting months’ worth of phone records of reporters and editors. Fox News’
James Rosen was among those targeted by
Holder’s Justice Department. Holder left the Justice Department in 2015 to
rejoin Covington & Burling.
So
you can see why many are outraged. California state legislators are
wasting tax dollars to bankroll another corrupt politician – Eric Holder – under
the pretense of attacking the Trump administration. This expensive
contract is crony corruption pure and simple.
The
swamp of public corruption has taken over California.
We aren’t finished with our investigation, so stay tuned.
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