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Bill to OK driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants advances in Minnesota

Minnesota House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler appears at a state Capitol news conference on Friday, April 5, 2019. (Associated Press)

Minnesota lawmakers advanced legislation Friday that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, highlighting the debate in the state over immigration and access to social benefits.
“Immigrants, whether they are documented or undocumented, are Minnesotans. They are part of the fabric of our communities,” said Democratic House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler. “It is time that we helped take away this shadow of not having a driver’s license.”

“Immigrants, whether they are documented or undocumented, are Minnesotans. They are part of the fabric of our communities. It is time that we helped take away this shadow of not having a driver’s license.”
— Minnesota House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, a Democrat

The 74-52 vote came after nearly five hours of highly charged debate in the state's Democrat-led House. The bill now advances to the Republican-controlled state Senate, where some say the plan would incentivize illegal immigration, voter fraud and reward people who violate the law, the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis reported.
GOP state Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen said the bill would “undermine our current values.”
“Minnesota shouldn’t be in the business of incentivizing illegal behavior, and by allowing illegal and undocumented immigrants access to driver’s licenses, that’s exactly what our state would be doing,” he said.

“Minnesota shouldn’t be in the business of incentivizing illegal behavior, and by allowing illegal and undocumented immigrants access to driver’s licenses, that’s exactly what our state would be doing.”
— GOP state Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen

Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka called the bill’s chances of passing “small,” the paper reported.
Supporters argue that granting driver’s licenses to immigrants, regardless of their legal status, will lead to safer roads and let the estimated 95,000 undocumented immigrants living the state live and work with dignity.
“It’s common sense,” said Democratic Rep. Samantha Vang. “This will allow people to simply open a bank account, to drive safely on the road to their jobs, to their school.”
Republican Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, said the bill is “one step closer to making Minnesota a sanctuary state.”
Should the measure advance through the state Legislature, Minnesota would become the 13th state in the nation to provide drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. Prior to 2003, immigrants – whether living in the country legally or not – could obtain driver’s licenses by passing a driving test and purchasing insurance.

Trump declares 'country is full' in Fox News interview, says US can no longer accept illegal immigrants

President Trump, in an interview with Fox & Friends that aired Saturday morning, declared the “country is full” and said the U.S. immigration system can no longer absorb a mass influx of illegal immigrants, but praised Mexico for stopping border crossings after his threat to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border.
“No, we're witnessing people that are going to be brought out of the country, the country is full,” Trump told Fox News’ Griff Jenkins after being asked whether the second generation of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is forming amid new immigrant arrivals, many accompanied by children.
“We have our system full. We can't do it anymore,” Trump continued, slamming the 1997 Flores settlement as “a horror show” for forcing the government to release migrant minors from detention after 20 days.
“We go by this horrible Flores situation. You know that decision is a horror show. We have to release after 20 days and we build big detention areas but they fill up immediately,” he said.
The comments come in the wake of an escalating immigration crisis, with data suggesting Customs and Border Protection is on track to apprehend almost 1 million illegal immigrants at the border this year, and threats to close the southern border.
Trump visited the border area in California on Friday, on his way to events in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He blamed the border situation on the current immigration system and the Democrats' opposition to his border security measures.
“There's never been so many people coming up and that's because they're gaming the system and the system is changed for the worse because of what happened with Democrats and what they've done in terms of Congress,” Trump said.

“There's never been so many people coming up and that's because they're gaming the system and the system is changed for the worse because of what happened with Democrats and what they've done in terms of Congress.”
— President Trump

“So if we change the laws it would be very easy. But in the meantime, Mexico, if they stop the people from coming in, we won't have a lot of people coming at the border.”
Trump said he’s not interested in having a summit with Latin American leaders, as Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has shown progress in helping to combat illegal border crossings.
“No, no I don't need a summit. I think we've done very well without the summit,” he said, adding that presidents of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador “understand” the seriousness of his administration and the aims to stop the illegal immigration.
“They understand we stopped. We're saving 550 million dollars. And I respectfully told and I thank him very much because for the last four days it's been great. You see that whole stream is drying up,” Trump said, referring to his warning days ago to close the southern border.
“They could stop them at the southern border, their southern border. And you look at what's happening now. They pulled in fifteen hundred, one thousand five hundred yesterday they brought them back. They pulled in over a thousand the day before. Over a thousand the day before that today I haven't gotten the number but I mean it's a lot.”
The full interview will be shown on "Fox & Friends," starting at 6 a.m. ET saturday.

Trump's threat to close border less crazy than Congress inaction on immigration: Mollie Hemingway

Inaction by Congress as the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border nears a boiling point is more damaging than any idea President Trump has floated in recent days, the Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway said Friday.
Last week, Trump threatened to shut down the border if Mexico refused to take action against the Central American migrants traveling through that country on the way to the U.S. to try and claim asylum. The president also floated the idea of using tariffs as a deterrent.
During Friday's All-Star panel segment of Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hemingway -- along with Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York and Washington Post opinion writer Charles Lane -- weighed in on Trump’s ongoing battle to reform immigration.
Hemingway began by pointing out that critics get upset when Trump tries to act “unilaterally,” without support from Congress.
“We really do have a crisis," Hemingway observed. "Congress did not want to address [immigration] seriously this year during the shutdown. They haven’t wanted to address it seriously for the past several decades.
“This is not just a Democrat problem or a Republican problem," she continued. "This is a bipartisan failure that goes back decades. So it sounds like Donald Trump is saying a bunch of crazy stuff -- shutting down the border, tariffs and whatnot. Why a lot of people think this is crazy is that nobody is doing anything to address the problem because the situation is fine. I mean, the open-borders policy is largely fine for a lot of the people who are elite and so they don’t feel the incentive to do anything.”

"This is not just a Democrat problem or a Republican problem. This is a bipartisan failure that goes back decades."
— Mollie Hemingway

Hemingway added that Trump’s threats were “finally incentivizing people” to make changes on immigration that they’ve been “reluctant to do for decades.”
York told the panel that Trump is “trying to get some sort of traction”  to address the “real” emergency taking place at the border, adding that the inaction led the president to celebrate the progress made on barrier construction.
Meanwhile, Lane noted that Trump’s trade agreements with Mexico have not made “great progress” in passing Congress and that they're being “held hostage” by “partisan deadlock.”
“It’s not just that they can’t come to an agreement, it’s not just that they have differences," he said. "Those differences are widening, the partisan differences are widening through this crisis."

House sues members of Trump administration over 'sham' border-emergency declaration

The U.S. House of Representatives is suing members of President Trump’s administration over his national emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border to divert funds for his signature border wall.
The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleges the administration “flouted the fundamental separation-of-powers principles and usurped for itself legislative power specifically vested by the Constitution in Congress,” Politico reported.
The complaint names as defendants Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and the departments they oversee. Trump is not named as a defendant.
"The House has been injured, and will continue to be injured, by defendants' unconstitutional actions, which usurp the House's appropriations authority and mean that the relevant funds are no longer available to be spent on the purposes for which they were appropriated," the complaint says.
Trump declared a national emergency in February, a move that came after a partial government shutdown and was met with outcry from members of both parties who claimed he was interfering with Congress.
The declaration allows Trump to divert extra funds needed to build his long-promised border wall. He had requested $5.7 billion for construction, but Congress has granted only a fraction of that.
House Speak Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced her intention to sue the administration Thursday, the Politico reported.
"The President’s sham emergency declaration and unlawful transfers of funds have undermined our democracy, contravening the vote of the bipartisan Congress, the will of the American people and the letter of the Constitution,” Pelosi said in a statement.
In March, Congress passed a measure to block Trump’s emergency declaration, prompting him to issue his first veto. Attempts by House Democrats to override the veto failed.

Avocado on the Border Cartoons

Calif. County sues Dept. of Homeland Security over cost of asylum seeking migrants

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:32 AM PT — Thursday, April 4, 2019

San Diego County is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the rising cost of asylum seekers. The Southern California county filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the heads of the agencies within the department, claiming the county has suffered from the release of asylum-seeking migrants.
Many illegal immigrants can not be immediately deported and must be allowed to stay in the country to wait out their court case, because of loopholes in immigration law.
Due to limited funds and housing resources, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were forced to stop implementing their “safe release” policy last fall, which provided asylum seekers assistance to reach destinations outside of San Diego.
The county is now left to front the bill for the upkeep of migrant shelters and medical care, which is estimated to cost millions of dollars.

“Our Border Patrol — the job they’ve done is incredible…the job that ICE is doing is incredible, and we have run out of space. We can’t hold people anymore and Mexico can stop it so easily.”

–President Donald Trump

County officials are seeking a permanent injunction, which would require ICE to resume their “safe release” policy and to reimburse them.
This lawsuit is a dramatic shift for San Diego as supervisors last April voted to back the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging California sanctuary laws.
San Diego County chairwoman Dianne Jacob claimed the lawsuit is not a matter of politics, but of the rising costs of asylum seekers in the county.

Court papers show Gillibrand’s father worked for Nxivm sex cult: report

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., speaks at an event in Washington on Monday. (Associated Press)

Court documents revealed this week confirmed that the father of 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand once worked as a lobbyist for a secretive sex cult, but left after the upstate New York group sued him, according to a report.
The documents backed up previous accounts that the New York Democrat's father, Doug Rutnik, worked for Albany-based Nxivm for four months in 2004 at a rate of $25,000 per month, Big League Politics reported.
Rutnik was sued when he attempted to distance himself from the group before reaching a settlement.
“Her father Doug Rutnik came to work as a consultant for NXIVM. ... He was fired, they sued him, and they had to pay him $100,000,” former NXIVM employee Frank Parlato told Big League Politics. “Her father’s wife, her stepmother, was also a member of NXIVM. ... Doug got her into the cult, Gillibrand’s father got Gillibrand’s future stepmother into the cult. Doug left the cult because he was sued. Clare Bronfman, after her father was sued, donated money to Gillibrand. Gillibrand accepted it.”
An unnamed witness described how Gillibrand once sat at a Nxivm table at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser, according to the political news site.
“Yeah the three front VIP tables were all brought by NXIVM and she was sitting with Nancy Salzman,” court documents said, referring to the former Nxivm co-founder who pleaded guilty in March to a single racketeering charge.
Gillibrand has sometimes been called a #MeToo champion for her advocacy on gender equality and women’s issues. She has denied having a connection to Nxivm and said she first heard of it through extensive media coverage.
"Senator Gillibrand had never heard of this group until she recently read about them in the newspaper," a spokesman for Gillibrand told the Washington Free Beacon in March 2018. "She is glad that federal and state prosecutors have taken action in this case."
The group and its leader Keith Raniere, known as Vanguard, have been accused by former members of forcing women to become sex slaves and branding women like cattle with Raniere’s initials. Some women said they were forced to hand over nude photos of themselves in case they disobeyed him and were forced to perform manual labor, according to the Post.
Other former members have described Nxivm as a “cult” centered around Raniere. Salzman admitted to a federal judge to spying on Nxivm’s perceived enemies and hacking into email accounts.
Her daughter Laura Salzman, 42, also entered a guilty plea last month to keeping her own personal female slave locked in a room for two years and threatening to deport her back to Mexico, court transcripts said.
Raniere was arrested in Mexico last year and is expected to go on trial in late April on multiple charges, including forced labor and possession of child pornography.