Thursday, March 9, 2017

Sanctuary City Cartoons





Hawaii sues to block Trump's revised travel ban

Hawaii’s Attorney General Doug Chin, a Democrat

Lawyers for the State of Hawaii on Wednesday asked a federal judge to temporarily block President Trump’s revised executive order on immigration. The move could signal a wave of lawsuits expected to follow over the constitutionality of the proposal.
Hawaii’s Attorney General Doug Chin, a Democrat, filed the legal challenge in federal distict court in Hawaii. Lawyers for the state argued that “the new executive order is resulting in the establishment of religion in the State of Hawaii contrary to its state Constitution.”
The filing also says the revised ban will damage Hawaii’s “economy, educational institutions, and tourism industry; and it is subjecting a portion of the state’s citizens to second-class treatment and discrimination, while denying all Hawaii residents the benefits of an inclusive and pluralistic society.”
Lawyers for the state said they will move for a temporary restraining order on March 15, a day before the new executive order is supposed to take effect.
"This new executive order is nothing more than Muslim Ban 2.0," Chin said in a statement Monday. "Under the pretense of national security, it still targets immigrants and refugees. It leaves the door open for even further restrictions."
The new order bars new visas for people from six predominantly Muslim nations and temporarily shuts down America's refugee program, affecting would-be visitors and immigrants from Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Libya.
Hawaii was among several states that took the Trump administration to court over the first ban that was rolled out hastily by the White House.
In all, more than two dozen lawsuits were filed to the original travel ban. One suit, filed in Washington state, succeeded in having the order suspended by arguing that it violated constitutional protections against religious discrimination.
After a federal appeals court upheld the Washington State Judge’s nationwide restraining order early last month, the Federal District Court in Hawaii hit the pause button on its initial lawsuit. The same federal appeals court, the 9th Circuit, has jurisdiction over Hawaii and would handle any appeal stemming from a ruling there.

San Francisco asks federal judge to block Trump's executive order on sanctuary cities

City Attorney Dennis Herrera

San Francisco asked a federal judge Wednesday to block President Trump’s executive order threatening to cut off federal funding for sanctuary cities.
San Francisco argued that Trump’s executive order steamrolled state sovereignty and that the president overstepped his authority, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The motion asked the court to prohibit Trump from withholding federal funds and rule that San Francisco’s sanctuary city status complies with federal law.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera accused Trump of “bullying” sanctuary cities by his threats to withhold funds that would be used for programs that provide meals and medical care for seniors and families.
“These entitlement programs are not the president’s to take away from those in need, and San Francisco is not one to back down from a bully,” Herrera said.
San Francisco is one of numerous cities nationwide that have sued to have Trump’s order blocked. More than 400 cities and counties have refused to comply with federal agencies’ requests to detain residents who have immigrated to the U.S. illegally or participate in immigration raids.
The city’s suit claims it will lose $1.2 billion funds over the executive order.
A hearing on the request has been scheduled for April 5.

Illegal border crossings decrease by 40 percent in Trump's first month, report says


The number of people illegally crossing the U.S. southern border has dropped 40 percent in President Trump’s first full month in office, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Wednesday.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported that the number of illegal border crossings dropped from 31,578 to 18,762 persons. Kelly said border agents usually see a 10 to 20 percent increase in illegal immigrant apprehensions from January to February.
“The drop in apprehensions shows a marked change in trends,” Kelly said. “Since the administration’s implementation of executive orders to enforce immigration laws, apprehensions and inadmissible activity is trending toward the lowest monthly total in at least the last five years.”
The new numbers are welcoming news for Trump who campaigned on illegal immigration crackdown.
Trump signed an executive order increasing border security and authorizing the construction of his promised border wall along the southern border in the first few days of his presidency. Trump also seeks to hire about 5,000 additional border patrol officials and 10,000 ICE agents and seeks to fast-track deportations.
“We will remain vigilant to respond to any changes in these trends, as numbers of illegal crossings typically increase between March and May,” Kelly said. “However, the early results show that enforcement matters, deterrence matters, and that comprehensive immigration enforcement can make an impact.”

FBI's specialized mole-hunting team deployed to catch CIA leaker


Less than 24 hours after WikiLeaks published what it described as the “entire hacking capacity of the CIA,” a federal criminal probe by a specialized FBI unit has begun, Fox News confirmed.
But while tracking down moles is nothing new for the FBI or the CIA, experts are suggesting that this search could prove to be particularly difficult.
The 2010 leak perpetrated by Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, inspired President Obama to create a group dedicated solely to tracking down & catching government leakers. Manning was caught after revealing the extent of her actions to an American hacker, who later testified against her. A short time later, Obama would announce the creation of the National Insider Threat Task Force.
The NITTF was formed "to prevent, deter and detect compromises of classified information by malicious insiders," according to its website. Despite the group’s singular focus on this issue, the NITTF was pointing out in a foreboding Tweet earlier this week that "all of the firewalls in the world won’t stop an insider who is already on the inside of these firewalls."
The formation of the group also did little to stop NSA leaker Edward Snowden from giving WikiLeaks a trove of documents on government surveillance back in 2013. In Snowden's case, he actually unmasked himself as the leaker, and has been on the run ever since.
FBI Director James Comey didn't address the WikiLeaks dump specifically during remarks he made at a cybersecurity conference at Boston College today. However, he made clear that since Snowden's infamous leak, technology has made the search for criminals of all kinds, cyber or otherwise, much more difficult.
"There's always been a corner of the room where the FBI operates where sophisticated actors were who had access to encryption," Director Comey said. "What's happened to us since Snowden… is that more and more of that room has gotten dark as encryption has become the default."
WikiLeaks claims that there are more than 5,000 employees working in the breached unit, the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI). And while security experts tell Fox News that number may be "a bit high," others are pointing out that this is the first hack of its kind at the famously clandestine agency.
Gregory Keeley, an expert in the security of digital devices and co-founder of the consulting company Phosphorus, says “what we have to understand is… the CIA’s never been hacked like this before. With 5,000-plus users in that particular unit, how will they track that leak?"
Potentially even more concerning, Keeley added, is the fact that “it wasn't just documents and data that was stolen, it was actual software and that’s a much bigger deal… If you're someone using things like Google Chrome or McAfee anti-virus software on your devices, this hack is potentially the keys to that kingdom. And once the bad guys can access that, it's going to be very difficult to shut that door.”

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