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ICE operation nets more than 1,100 arrests in five weeks

Federal agents announced Monday they swept up nearly 1,000 suspected drug traffickers, human smugglers, sex traffickers and murderers during a widespread five-week operation aimed at landing a punishing blow against transnational criminal gangs.

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Law enforcement officials inspect an arrested individual’s tattoos for signs of gang affiliation. (ICE)

The operation, dubbed Project Shadowfire, drew on cooperation between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as well as other state, local and federal law enforcement officers.
The resulting 1,133 arrests included: 1,001 criminal arrests; 915 gang members and associates; 239 foreign nationals from 13 countries in Central America, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean; 132 immigration violations.
“This operation is the latest example of ICE’s ongoing efforts, begun more than a decade ago under Operation Community Shield, to target violent gang members and their associates, to eradicate the violence they inflict upon our communities and to stop the cash flow to transnational organized crime groups operating overseas,” ICE Director Sarah R. Saldana said in a statement.
Agents also seized 150 firearms, more than 20 kilos of narcotics and more than $70,000, according to an ICE news release.

States' rights advocates eye convention to bypass Congress, amend Constitution

ATLANTA –  What if a supermajority of states could override a federal law or Supreme Court ruling?
That’s just one idea being proposed by advocates of a “convention of states” to amend the U.S. Constitution.
"The American people are mad and they’re looking for a way to say, ‘No more,’” said Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Our founders, in their brilliance, gave us a tool to do that. And it’s Article V.”
Article V of the Constitution allows a minimum of two-thirds of the states to call for a convention to propose amendments, in turn going around Congress.
The push to do so has proceeded in fits and starts over the last several years, driven by a desire for states to debate a range of constitutional changes dealing with everything from campaign finance reform to balanced budgets. So far, six states have signed on — Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Florida, Indiana and Tennessee. Indiana was the latest to sign on, approving a resolution endorsing the effort earlier this month.
But organizers would need another 28 to bring their plan to fruition, and call the convention. If they reach that level of support, states would be entering uncharted territory.
“It has never happened before in the history of the United States,” said Robert Schapiro, dean of Emory University School of Law.
In an election cycle that has defied conventional wisdom, though, supporters of a convention of states believe right now may be the very best time to try something different.
“The mood of the public is tired of business as usual,” said Buzz Brockway, a Republican state representative who sponsored Georgia’s convention of states resolution.
Brockway told Fox News he believes such a convention could achieve consensus on such issues as campaign finance reform, term limits and balanced budgets. Even if states fall short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to call for a convention to propose amendments (and the three-quarters required to ratify them), Brockway said the effort itself could encourage change.
“In the ‘80s, President Reagan actually came out and said he was in favor of a balanced budget convention,” Brockway said. “That spurred Washington to act. And they didn’t actually pass a balanced budget amendment, but they came extremely close. So, I think at the worst case, this will spur Congress to action. The best case, we’ll have actual amendments that are proposed that states can consider.”
Schapiro has doubts about how far the effort will go.
“There have been efforts before to have states call for a constitutional convention. And with regard to certain issues, states have come fairly close,” he said. “But, given the divided times which we face, and given the broad brush of these amendments, I think it’s unlikely to garner the kind of support that would be necessary actually to reach that two-thirds benchmark.”

Days after visit, Fidel Castro slams Obama, recounts history of aggression

Just days after Barack Obama concluded his historic three-day visit to Cuba, former leader Fidel Castro published an op-ed piece attacking the U.S. president.
In a 1,500-word bristling column published in the Communist government’s official newspaper on Monday, Castro, 89, recounts the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba. Referring to Obama, he wrote: "My modest suggestion is that he reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics."
Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro but met several times with his brother Raul Castro, the current president.
Obama's visit was intended to build irreversible momentum behind his opening with Cuba and to convince the Cuban people and the Cuban government that a half-century of U.S. attempts to overthrow the Communist government had ended.
But in his column, titled "My Brother Obama," the older Castro all but mocks the U.S. president's efforts. He goes over crucial sections of Obama's speech line by line, engaging in an ex-post-facto dialogue with the American president with pointed critiques of perceived slights and insults, including Obama's failure to give credit to indigenous Cubans and Castro's prohibition of racial segregation after coming to power in 1959.
“Obama delivered a speech in which he used the most honeyed words to say: ‘It's high time to forget the past, let’s leave the past behind, look to the future, let's look at it together, a future of hope. And it will not be easy, there will be challenges, and to those we will give time; but my stay here gives me further hope of what we can do together as friends, as family, as neighbors, together,’” Castro wrote in Granma, the government’s newspaper.
“We were supposed to risk a heart attack upon hearing these words of the President of the United States. After a merciless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years? And those who have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers detonated in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and force?’ Castro wrote.
He added: “Nobody should be under the illusion that the people from this noble and selfless country will renounce to the glory and the rights, and to the spiritual wealth it has earned with the development of education, science and culture.”
He ends with a dig at the Obama administration's drive to increase business ties with Cuba. The Obama administration says re-establishing economic ties with the U.S. will be a boon for Cuba, whose centrally planned economy has struggled to escape from over-dependence on imports and a chronic shortage of hard currency.
“I warn you that we are capable of producing the food and material wealth we need with the effort and intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire to give us nothing. Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because it is our commitment to peace and brotherhood of all human beings living on this planet.”

EgyptAir plane hijacked, flown to Cyprus after passenger claims to have bomb belt

BREAKING: A passenger claiming to be wearing a suicide bomb belt seized control of an EgyptAir flight from Alexandria to Cairo and ordered it flown to Cyprus Tuesday morning.
The Airbus A320 landed at the airport in Larnaka, on the southern coast of the Mediterranean island, at approximately 8:45 a.m. local time (1:45 a.m. ET).
Hours after the plane landed, all but four of the plane's passengers, as well as the cabin crew, had been allowed to leave the aircraft, according to EgyptAir. The airline described the four passengers still on the plane as foreigners, but did not give their nationality.
Egyptian state television identified the hijacker as Ibrahim Samaha, a professor of veterinary medicine at Alexandria University. It was not immediately clear what his motive may have been.
Egyptian government spokesman Hossam al-Queish told the private CBC TV network that Samaha initially wanted the plane flown to Istanbul, Turkey, but was told by the captain that he did not have enough fuel for the journey.

There were conflicting reports on the number of passengers and crew on the plane. An initial statement from Egypt's aviation authority said there were 81 passengers on board and five crew members on board. A revised statement reported by state media in Cyprus said that there were 55 passengers and seven crew members on board.
A Cypriot official told the Associated Press that 56 passengers had left the aircraft after the hijacker released them.
The director of the Alexandria airport, Hossni Hassan, told the Associated Press there were 26 foreigners on board, including eight Americans, four Britons, four Dutch, two Belgians, a French national, an Italian, two Greeks and one Syrian. He said three other foreigners could not be identified.

Sky News reported that the short-haul Flight 181 took off from Alexandria at 8 a.m. Cyprus time. The hijacker contacted the control tower in Lanarka 30 minutes later and was given permission to land.
Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for flight-tracking website FlightRadar24, told the Associated Press that the flight showed no signs of distress on its route to Cyprus.
"It looks like a completely controlled flight aside from the fact it was hijacked," Petchenik said.
Reuters, citing an Israeli military source, reported that Israel scrambled warplanes in its airspace as a precaution in response to the hijacking.
The hijacking will most likely bring to the fore again the question of security at Egyptian airports, five months after a Russian aircraft crashed over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula minutes after it took off from Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. All 224 people on board were killed in the crash. Russia later said an explosive device brought down the aircraft and the extremist Islamic State group (ISIS) said it downed the plane.