The 912 Project, The 912 Patriots, Lake County, Transparency, Constitution

Illinois to Release Illegal Aliens Convicted of Violent Crimes Rather than Deport

Governor Pat Quinn quietly announced Illinois’ formal withdrawal from Secure Communities in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security. This program, administered through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is fully successful only when state prison systems cooperate with the ICE and the Department of Home land Security. States can choose to participate by enabling discovery of the residency status of convicts held in state prisons and alerting ICE of upcoming convict release dates. According to ICE, this program targets the “worst of the worst”, ensuring that these offenders no longer remain in the United States following their release from prison.

According to the FBI, Illinois ranks near the top in violent crime—number 14 out of the fifty states. Now instead of ensuring deportation of violent criminals, the governor is choosing to release them into Illinois communities. Such a policy may also serve to attract more criminals to this state as the risk of deportation following a conviction in Illinois is now significantly reduced.

Not only has Governor Quinn made life more expensive for middle class citizens with an enormous income tax hike, this new policy will make life less safe in Illinois as well.

by: Pepe Lozano

May 6 2011

tags: immigration, Illinois, Chicago

CHICAGO - The immigrant rights movement got a double boost here this week after state lawmakers approved a bipartisan measure that would aid undocumented youth in attending college. Also, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn officially withdrew from the controversial "Secure Communities" federal immigration program.

On Wednesday, May 4, the Illinois Senate passed the Illinois DREAM Act with a strong bipartisan 45-11 vote. The bill, SB 2185, would establish a state "Dream" commission to administer privately funded scholarships to as many as 95,000 students of immigrant parents.

The measure aims to amend current law so that Illinois residents, and not just citizens may access the state's college savings program. It would also require high school counselors to get trained on dealing with the challenges and hurdles that undocumented youth face in accessing higher education opportunities.

Further, the law would allow undocumented youth aged 18 to 29 with taxpayer identification cards to invest in the state's Bright Start and College Illinois programs. Supporters note no taxpayer dollars would be used.

"We are simply saying they should be treated as other children are, who want to go to college," said Senate President John Cullerton, a Democrat and the bill's main sponsor, to the Chicago Sun-Times.

State Sen. Tom Johnson, one of the Republicans who voted for the measure, said the bill represents an "American value issue" and that immigrant youth "are our future and our fellow residents of Illinois."

Lawrence Benito, an associate director with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which helped push the Illinois DREAM bill said, "Here in the land of Lincoln, open minds and big hearts prevail, and this was a step in the right direction."

Support for the Illinois Dream Act came from 34 Democrats and 11 Republicans. Those opposed included every other Republican in the Illinois Senate.

The bill gets its name from a federal piece of legislation also known as the DREAM Act, which almost passed in Congress last winter. That measure would have allowed millions of undocumented students higher education opportunities, including a path toward citizenship if they attend college or join the military.

Although the Illinois version cannot include a path to citizenship for undocumented youth, activists say it's a move other state's could follow in countering some of the anti-immigrant measures being proposed.

Cindy Agustin is a student at the University of Chicago and an activist with the Illinois Immigrant Youth Justice League. "The passage of the (Illinois) DREAM Act shows that our efforts are not in vain," she said. "It gives us hope and strength to continue working for our right to an education."

The bill now moves to the House, where it will see a vote in the next several weeks. If it passes there, then it goes to Gov. Quinn, who has said he supports the measure.

Previously, Gov. Quinn has made Illinois the first state in the nation to opt-out of the controversial federal immigration program known as Secure Communities.

Quinn sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security declaring the state's formal withdrawal from the federal deportation program, which resulted in the deportation of 72,000 people nationwide last year.

Secure Communities was initiated to target hardened criminals or suspected terrorists. But nearly a third of all immigrants deported because of Illinois's participation in the fingerprint-sharing program have never been convicted of any crime, noted Quinn in the letter. And only a small minority of those deported from the country had ever been convicted of a serious crime.

Quinn suspended the state's role in the program in November amid concerns about its effectiveness.

Activists say the program targets the immigrant community and allowed local police in areas where the program was enforced to detain and deport people for misdemeanor crimes.

"With the termination of the memorandum of agreement, Illinois State Police will play no role in Secure Communities, either actively or as a pass-through for information," said Quinn.

Quinn's office said in a statement that, "During the suspension, we voiced our concerns to ICE and asked them to prove that Secure Communities can and will be implemented as agreed to. After review, we were not satisfied and determined that ICE's ongoing implementation of Secure Communities is flawed."

In a statement, Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said, "Governor Quinn took the state of Illinois one step forward toward sensible solutions for our broken immigration system."

Pepe Lozano/PW

Crimes, Corruption, and Lies in Grayslake D46

By Paul Mitchell

The Cost of Corruption – This is not something you will read for fun. But it’s something you must read, as a parent or taxpaying citizen. It’s a sordid story about crime and corruption where anyone would least expect to find it: In a suburban elementary school district.

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, activists of the Lake County Tea Party organization have received over 300 pages of emails. The tale they tell is grim.

“Don’t Let Them Turn Us In” – The April 5th election was a hard-fought race in which five candidates (two incumbents and three challengers) were vying to fill three seats. The two incumbent candidates were strongly pro-union: Noting that the three challengers had been linked on the Lake County Tea Party website, incumbent candidate Mary Garcia wrote, “I think that all members of both Unions should be apprised of this information… There will be no collective bargaining with those 3 on the board. I am very afraid that Sue and I will not have the funds necessary to fight a ‘party’.” This email, sent to D46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barkley, union leaders Christine Wilson and Diane Elfering, and fellow incumbent candidate Sue Facklam, was sent, like virtually all of the information we have, from Garcia’s email account in District 30 (Wed., Feb. 23rd, 11:34 AM), where Garcia works as a teacher and is president of the teachers’ union. Campaign fundraising activity like this, using D30 public resources have already landed Garcia in front of a review board scheduled to meet Monday, May 2nd.

In another telling email, Facklam, a voter registrar, writes about registering high school students to vote, and giving them gift cards: “Don’t let them turn us in; gifts to register to vote is probably illegal! I did offer Erika [Garcia’s 18-year-old daughter] more gift cards if she can gather up more friends!” (Wed., March 2nd, 10:14 AM to Mary Garcia at her D30 account.) It is a felony to offer remuneration to anyone for voting or registering to vote.

“Lie and pay me cash” – The emails reveal evidence of extensive contributions, expenditures, and in-kind contributions that, by law, ought to have triggered formation of a campaign committee, and been reported to the State Board of Elections. Garcia and Facklam’s campaign manager, Alex Finke, in one of the more egregious examples of their efforts cloak their campaign in secrecy, wrote, “Anything you spend counts towards the 1999.99 that you and Mary would be allowed to spend. The only way around it, would be to lie and pay me cash. Then I could claim that I am volunteering for you.” (Mon., March 7th, 3:55 PM, to Sue Facklam.)

The Superintendents Get Involved – D46 Superintendent Ellen Correll, who receives a compensation package worth over $200,000 per year to educate students, evidently spent quite a bit of her compensated time on election activities: “Mary Garcia is wondering how many signs or flyers you would take?” (Ellen Correll, on her D46 email account, to North Chicago D187 Superintendent Douglas Parks and to Mary Garcia on her D30 email account, Thurs., Mar. 10th, 3:24 PM.) As a custodian of federal and state education funds, Correll is prohibited by law from participating in political activity of any kind.

It’s important to recognize that this is not an article about politics. And it barely scratches the surface. This is not about whose policies are best and whose are wrongheaded. It’s about how elected officials and employees of School District #46, the elementary school district in Grayslake, Illinois, have abused their positions and their access to benefit themselves at taxpayers’ expense, and at the expense of the children entrusted to them.