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Police chiefs, sheriffs blast ICE over policy they say frees violent illegal immigrants

A California toddler fighting for her life Thursday after a brutal beating at the hands of an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record is the latest case to rile California sheriffs and police against a U.S. immigration policy they say is forcing them to release dangerous criminals out on the street.
Francisco Javier Chavez, the live-in boyfriend of the unidentified two-year-old's mother, is out on bail after being charged in the late July attack, which left the San Luis Obispo County girl with two broken arms, a broken femur, a compressed spine, a urinary tract infection and a fever of 107 degrees. Chavez's criminal record includes assault and drug convictions and arrests for violent acts including kidnapping, car jacking and cruelty to a child.
A disgusted San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson told FoxNews.com Chavez should have been locked away or deported long before he had the chance to inflict "horrific injuries" on the little girl, but said conflicting federal policies leave his department handcuffed. Instead, Chavez is now free, awaiting a court date for which he may not even show up.

"The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them. That is why we are united in California and asking that this be fixed and changed, because at end of the day, we are the ones who have to let them out the door.”
- San Luis Obispo Sheriff Ian Parkinson

“The truth is, if we had any legal right to hold him, we would, because of the concern that, not being a U.S. citizen, he will bail out and flee the country and flee prosecution,” said Parkinson, who suspects Chavez may have already fled the county.
The issue, says Parkinson and dozens of other sheriffs and police chiefs across California and Arizona, is that, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement routinely asks departments to hold prisoners like Chavez until they can take custody of them for deportation, the local law enforcement officials believe doing so will expose them to lawsuits. They cite court cases including the March, 2014, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruling in Galrza v. Szalczyk that held states and localities are not required to imprison people based on ICE "detainer" requests, and that states and localities may be held liable if they participate in wrongful immigration detentions.
“I am not aware of any County in California that is honoring detainers, simply because we can’t,” Parkinson said. “We have to follow the law or the threat of violating the law ourselves,” Parkinson said, citing a Court decision issued approximately one year ago. “The law actually does not give us the right to place an ICE hold, unless there is a warrant for them. That is why we (local law enforcement) are united in California and asking that this be fixed and changed, because at end of the day, we are the ones who have to let them out the door.”
The Arizona Sheriffs’ Association agrees, noting every day ICE asks local sheriffs to ‘detain’ an inmate, yet don’t provide “rational, legal authority to do so,” putting sheriffs at enormous risk for legal liability. When the local authorities let an illegal immigrant criminal free on bail, they do so reluctantly - and they blame ICE.
ICE maintains there is no requirement that it obtain a judicial warrant to compel law enforcement agencies to hold suspects and that a detainer is sufficient. A spokesperson for ICE said the agency continues to work “cooperatively” with local law enforcement partners and is implementing a new plan, the Priority Enforcement Program – PEP, to place the focus on criminals and individuals who threaten the public safety and ensure they are not released from prisons or jails before they can be taken into ICE custody.
Martin Mayer, legal counsel to sheriffs and chiefs of police in 70 law enforcement agencies throughout California for the last 25 years, and general counsel to the California State Sheriffs’ Association, told FoxNews.com the U.S. Department of Justice, the California Office of the Attorney General, and ICE all take the position that the detainer is only a request and the law does not give sheriffs authorization to hold illegal immigrant suspects ordered released by a judge.
If ICE agents are present when suspects are ordered released, and if they have the legal basis to take custody of them, they can, but local law enforcement does not have the authority to hold them in the absence of ICE, the California Sheriffs Association recently said in letter to Congress.
The American Civil Liberties Union's California chapter has been vocal in pressuring city police chiefs to honor the court rulings that said ICE detainers are mere requests, not mandates, and that honoring them would violate suspects' Constitutional rights.
“This (ACLU) letter to the cities states that ‘Your police department should immediately cease complying with immigration detainers, or else risk legal liability for detaining individuals in violation of the Fourth Amendment,’” Mayer said.
The ACLU did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
A string of murders across the country by criminal aliens has spotlighted the conflict between ICE and local law enforcement, and in recent days, caught the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. After one of the cases, the July 24 murder of Marilyn Pharis, a 64-year-old Air Force veteran, Santa Maria Police Chief Ralph Martin blamed the state and federal governments for a convoluted policy that leaves local law enforcement holding the bag.
“I am not remiss to say that from Washington D.C. to Sacramento, there is a blood trail to Marilyn Pharis’ bedroom,” Martin said.

Lerner, in newly released emails, calls GOP critics 'evil and dishonest'

Newly released emails from Lois Lerner show the former IRS official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal calling Republican critics “evil and dishonest,” and even “hateful.”
The emails -- part of a report released Aug. 6 by the Senate Finance Committee -- offer a revealing look at Lerner, who used to head the division that processes applications for tax-exempt status and was at the center of the scandal over the alleged targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
The bipartisan report found evidence that both the Obama administration’s political agenda, and the personal politics of IRS employees, including Lerner, impacted how the IRS did its job, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee.
A deeper look at the communications, first reported by Politico, shows Lerner taking aim at lawmakers for their tough questioning, particularly following a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in 2014.
“Yesterday was a doozy. They called me back to testify on the IRS ‘scandal,’ and I tool (sic) the 5th again because they had been so evil and dishonest in my lawyer’s dealings with them,” Lerner told a friend in a March 6, 2014 email, adding “this is very bad behavior from our elected officials.”
She had tough words for the press as well, complaining in a June 26, 2014 email about pictures taken of her during an appearance in front of Congress: “I looked like crap. I don’t look like that anymore, but it serves their purposes of hate mongering to continue to use those images.”
OPINION: Gross mismanagement at the IRS: Time for a special counsel
Most of her complaints, however, are reserved for Republicans, whom in the same email she accuses of being motivated only by political gain and having a “hateful” message.
"I was never a political person—this whole fiasco has only made me lose all respect (sic) politics and politicians. I am merely a pawn in their game to take over the Senate,” Lerner wrote.
“Every time they get some email they see as incriminating, they roil up their base and get lots of contributions and spread their hateful message about how the government is out to get people,” she wrote.
On the subject of her lost emails, Lerner wrote that she begged IRS IT staff to retrieve the emails wiped from her server, and didn't know why they couldn't.
“As to the lost emails—there is a whole trail of emails from me begging IRS IT folks to try and recover the emails -- I’m guessing you haven’t seen those,” Lerner wrote. “Why the IRS was unable to retrieve them when my computer crashed, I have no clue -- I’m not an IT person.”
In the emails, Lerner also took a swipe at Texas, which she said “is just pathetic as far as political attitudes are concerned,” and faulted Abraham Lincoln for not letting the South secede.
"Look my view is that Lincoln is our worst president not out (sic) best. He should‘be (sic) let the south go.”

Veterans fight for Conn. city to replace tattered American flags

They fought for their flag and now they’re fighting City Hall.
Veterans in Derby, Conn. have convinced officials to replace tattered American flags on display in the town.
Robert L. Federico, a Vietnam veteran, was among the group that contacted City Hall earlier this week after someone found a ripped flag lying on a street and brought it to the local senior center.
Federico said the sight of the torn flag literally made him cry.
And the problem isn’t just one flag. It turns out many of the two-dozen flags that line Derby’s Main Street are shredded and filthy. Many of the poles from which they hang are held together with tape.
Federico called City Hall. The initial response was to pass the buck: Mayor Anita Dugatto’s secretary told Federico to call Derby’s department of public works.
“Why should I be doing their job when that should come from the mayor’s office?” Federico told the New Haven Register.
A city crew began to fix the problem Wednesday, taking down the damaged flags, but local station WFSB reports that it could be weeks before any new flags are installed along Main Street.

'Top secret' emails on Clinton server discussed drone program, may reference classified info

WASHINGTON –  The two emails on Hillary Rodham Clinton's private server that an auditor deemed "top secret" include a discussion of a news article detailing a U.S. drone operation and a separate conversation that could point back to highly classified material in an improper manner or merely reflect information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press.
The sourcing of the information could have significant political implications as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state, and Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement as a sign that she was either negligent with the nation's secrets or worse.
On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 emails in a random sample of the 30,000 emails Clinton gave the State Department for review contained information deemed "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information," one of the government's highest levels of classification.
The two emails were marked classified after consultations with the CIA, which is where the material originated, officials said.
The officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity work in intelligence and other agencies. They wouldn't detail the contents of the emails because of ongoing questions about classification level. Clinton did not transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the emails she received makes clear reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.
The drone exchange, the officials said, begins with a copy of a news article that discusses the CIA drone program that targets terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. While a secret program, it is well-known and often reported on. The copy makes reference to classified information, and a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation, they said. Several officials, however, described this claim as tenuous.

More on this...

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• Sen. Grassley discusses contents of Hillary Clinton's server

• Napolitano: Clinton's emails on home server against the law

But a second email reviewed by Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, appears more suspect. Nothing in the message is "lifted" from classified documents, the officials said, though they differed on where the information in it was sourced. Some said it improperly points back to highly classified material, while others countered that it was a classic case of what the government calls "parallel reporting" -- different people knowing the same thing through different means.
The emails came to light Tuesday after Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, reported that McCullough found four "highly classified" emails on the unusual homebrew server that Clinton used while she was secretary of State. Two were sent back to the State Department for review, but Grassley said the other two were, in fact, classified at the closely guarded "Top Secret/SCI level."
In a four-page fact sheet that accompanied a letter to Clinton supporters, Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri stressed that Clinton was permitted to use her own email account as a government employee and that the same process concerning classification reviews would still be taking place had she used the standard "state.gov" email account used by most department employees. The State Department, meanwhile, stressed that it wasn't clear if the material at issue ought to be considered classified at all.
Still, the developments suggested that the security of Clinton's email setup and how she guarded the nation's secrets will remain relevant campaign topics. Even if the emails highlighted by the intelligence community prove innocuous, she will still face questions about whether she set up the private server with the aim of avoiding scrutiny, whether emails she deleted because she said they were personal were actually work-related, and whether she appropriately shielded such emails from possible foreign spies and hackers.
Clinton says she exchanged about 60,000 emails in her four years as secretary of state. She turned over all but what she said were personal emails late last year. The department has been making those public as they are reviewed and scrubbed of any sensitive data.
The State Department advised employees not to use personal email accounts for work, but it wasn't prohibited. But Clinton's senior advisers at the State Department would have been briefed upon basic protocol for handling classified information and retaining government records. In Clinton's time, most officials saved their emails onto a separate file or printed them out when leaving office. Only recently has the department begun automatically archiving the records of dozens of senior officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry.
In the emails, Clinton's advisers appear cognizant of secrecy protections.
In a series of August 2009 emails, Clinton aide Huma Abedin told Clinton that the U.S. point-man for Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, and another official wanted "to do a secure" conversation to discuss Afghan elections. Clinton said she could talk after she received a fax of a classified Holbrooke memo, also on a secure line. Later, Abedin wrote: "He can talk now. We can send secure fax now. And then connect call."
But other times, the line was blurred. Among Clinton's exchanges now censored as classified by the State Department was a brief exchange in October 2009 with Jeffrey Feltman, then the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East. Both Clinton and Feltman's emails about an "Egyptian proposal" for a reconciliation ceremony with Hamas are marked B-1.4, classified for national security reasons, and completely blacked out from the email release.
A longer email the same day from Clinton to former Sen. George Mitchell, then Mideast peace envoy, is also censored. Mitchell responds tersely and carefully that "the Egyptian document has been received and is being translated. We'll review it tonight and tomorrow morning, will consult with the Pals (Palestinians) through our Consul General, and then I'll talk with Gen. S again. We'll keep you advised."