Opa-locka Fruit and Produce Market didn’t just sell fruits and vegetables.
Instead, owners Karla Rodriguez Diaz and Luis Marzo Machado allegedly used their produce market inside the Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market to bilk the government out of $2.4 million, Wifredo A. Ferrer, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said Wednesday.
Diaz and Machado were two of 22 people charged in 15 cases Wednesday in “Operation Stampede,” organized to bust business owners and their employees who allowed customers to use their government-issued EBT food stamp card as a means to get cash, in exchange for a cut. In total, Ferrer said there were more than $13 million in fraudulent food stamp transactions stemming from markets throughout South Florida, the largest food stamp fraud take-down in U.S. history.
Baltimore, Maryland – In August 2016, a federal grand jury returned nine indictments charging 14 retail store operators in the greater Baltimore area with food stamp fraud and wire fraud in connection with obtaining over $16 million from the United States Department of Agriculture by illegally trading food stamp benefits for cash. Twelve of the fourteen charged defendants have pleaded guilty, and two defendants were sentenced this week to federal prison.
Today, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Mohammad Shafiq, age 51, of Baltimore, Maryland to 46 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Judge Bennett ordered Shafiq to pay restitution in the amount of $3,712,353.00.
In a separate sentencing hearing held on May 18, 2017, Judge Bennett sentenced Mohammad Irfan, age 59, of Baltimore County, Maryland, to 51 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Judge Bennett also ordered Irfan to pay restitution in the amount of $3,550,662.00.
Sami Deffala, who's managed a corner store in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood for 13 years, said he hears that every day from customers vying for a private moment in hopes of using their Link cards to exchange SNAP benefits, the modern-day version of food stamps, for cash — an illegal practice called trafficking by federal regulators. And every day, Deffala said, he hears them out but refuses to take part in the scheme.
When foodstamps can be used at McDonalds (http://firstquarterfinance.com/what-fast-food-places-take-ebt-food-stamps-snap/) and to support tarragon rabbit habits of hipster foodies who won't stoop to eating Ramen noodles to get by, there's something seriously wrong with the system. Not to mention the fact that there appears to be a correlation between foodstamps and obesity, it hardly seems that a "supplemental nutrition program" is needed for people for whom foodstamps may just be adding to their already-overly large calorie intake.
I've no desire to see people starving in the streets, but would not cry a tear for hipster foodies if their foodstamps were good for only bags of rice and and bags of beans. Maybe some small amount of lean protein and some multivitamins. Rice and/or beans may be monotonous, but you won't starve. You want something different, that's up to you. Not a lot of arbitrage value in rice and beans, so that type of fraud would likely be reduced, too.
Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding — and her usual gigs — to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she’s used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.
“I’m eating better than I ever have before,” she told me. “Even with food stamps, it’s not like I’m living large, but it helps.”
Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.
“I’m sort of a foodie, and I’m not going to do the ‘living off ramen’ thing,” he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he’d prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. “I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it’s great that you can get anything.”
Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.
The DREAM Act was first introduced in Congress in 2009, again in 2010, again in 2011, again in 2012. It was defeated each time. Similar bills (or sections of other bills) were introduced in 2001, 2007, and 2008. Defeated each time.
In 2009 and 2010, Democrats had a majority in both houses of Congress. It's how they passed Obamacare and the stimulus.
To say "he did what he could" means he went out and created policy that is in conflict with duly authorized (and signed by Pres. Clinton) immigration law AND ignores *multiple* votes in Congress that said "no we're not going to do that", including two such votes while his own party controlled Congress and the Presidency.
Sorry, I thought I was addressing your apparent position that the immigration law was ill-specified and Obama was just filling in the gaps the way Congress wanted him too. I was trying to point out that a) immigration law hasn't really been changed much since the 90's and b) it wasn't just "No illegal immigration" and give the executive the job of implementing it--immigration law such as what I presented was quite detailed in the expectations Congress had for the executive.
"Considering the number of executive orders President Trump signed in his first few weeks of office, as well as Congress not explicitly legislating away the ability to create a different far reaching executive order, I'm increasingly convinced overreaching executive orders will continue for the forseeable future."
And true enough, but somehow to me one President striking a previous President's executive order doesn't rise to the level of "overreaching". That is, this specific case is not executive overreach.
I ignored your talk of how much it costs to deport someone as a "yeah but" moving goalpost. It costs a lot of money to try someone for assault and put them in jail, too, but I don't think we should stop doing that. The list of reasons why Trump action may be stupid is probably pretty long (same can be said of Obama's original orders), but the simple legality of it should hardly be a question: again, what one President did with the stroke of a pen, another can undo just as easily.
I'm not holding the IIRIA out as some sort of good thing, but it is a concrete example of immigration law passed by Congress. You obviously didn't even bother to look at it. It runs some 252 pages of law. It's filled with statements like " the Attorney General shall not grant such waiver unless...", "the Attorney General shall not make an adverse determination...", "The Attorney General shall not permit an alien to...", "The Attorney General may waive the penalties imposed by this section...", "The Attorney General has sole discretion to waive clause...", and "NO COMPROMISE.—The Attorney General may not compromise the amount of such penalty under this paragraph."
So while there is a provision for discretion at times, the limitations and applicability is pretty clearly spelled out and likewise spelled out when discretion is not permitted by the law.
It is hardly "waving hands". You're acting like Congress passed a law that said "No illegal immigration." and left all the rest up to interpretation.
And you're also ignoring the part of DACA where work permits were created out of thin air. Congress wrote some laws that clearly defined who may receive work permits, the conditions under which they may be granted, their duration, etc. DREAMERs/DACA/DAPA people are not among them. Providing them work permits (something only Congress can do) and the similar actions in DACA/DAPA are the problematic areas, not the deferred prosecution.
But ultimately, if Obama can create the program with a stroke of his pen, Trump can dismantle it the same way.
A side note [insert lawyer joke]...the DOJ lawyers who argued Obama's DAPA case in 5th Circuit were ordered to take ethics classes after the judge found them to collectively be "intentionally deceptive".
"A federal judge ordered the Justice Department to send its lawyers back to remedial ethics classes Thursday after finding that the administration repeatedly misled the court in the high-profile challenge to President Obama’s deportation amnesty. Judge Andrew S. Hanen said the lawyers knew the administration was approving amnesty applications but actively hid that information both from him and from the 26 states that had sued to stop the amnesty. Worse yet, even after the court ordered a halt to the whole amnesty, the Department of Homeland Security approved several thousand more applications, in defiance of the court’s strict admonition, Judge Hanen said, counting at least four separate times the government’s attorneys misled him.
"In a blistering order, Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville accused the Justice Department lawyers of lying to him during arguments in the case, and he barred them from appearing in his courtroom. He also demanded that Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch provide a “comprehensive plan” within 60 days describing how she will prevent unethical conduct in the future, as well as making sure the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility effectively prevents misconduct among its lawyers. He also said that any Justice Department lawyer who wants to appear in a state or federal court in any of the 26 states who filed suit to block Mr. Obama’s executive actions should be required to take an annual three-hour ethics course for the next five years.
An investment consortium (I forget exactly, but I recall that the Chinese had a large hand in it as did the CIA) has realized that Africa is a resource-rich continent, and that the only problem with it is, well, it's run by Africans (i.e., warlords and tin-pot dicatorships). So they've created an engineered and weaponized virus that kills only Africans and are surreptitiously releasing it into areas, killing the local populations--whole countries, basically--and then moving in with First World industry and First World people willing to move there for the jobs. Imperialism without the pesky natives.
FDR's government rounded up 120,000 Japanese an put them in internment camps and held them there for years. And used an Executive Order to do so! And required all immigrants of Japanese, German, and Italian descent to register with the DOJ and get their Certificates of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality.
DACA is not a law to be unmade. DACA was an executive policy (and very likely unconstitutional in its full scope) promulgated by the Obama administration. Trump's policy here boils down to "We're gonna stop ignoring the laws Congress wrote."
There's not really much question that Obama could chose to direct his Justice Department and AG to simply put all other actions above enforcing immigration laws on children brought here illegally. But that's not all DACA did. It gave them work permits (a violation of laws which Congress duly enacted). It created an administrative agency that said it was not under Congress's budgetary control because it self-funded through fees, even though the Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
Absent Trump's order the 10 states threatening to sue over DACA are quite likely to succeed. With respect to the similar action on DAPA, the 5th Circuit "majority found that the plaintiff states were likely to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration and Nationality Act."
In short, whatever Obama did with a stroke of his pen (legal or not, Constitutional or not) can be undone with a stroke of Trump's pen. The legality/Constitutionality of such actions can only be determined by Congress and/or the Courts.
Of course, where Obama chose to use discretion to place DACA people at the very bottom of any prosecution priority list, Trump could just as easily choose to make then public enemy #1. Just an example of how living by the pen means you can die by the pen.
Obama and Democrats are surely regretting having said a few things along the way:
Obama: “Elections have consequences and at the end of the day, I won."
"We're not just going to be waiting for legislation," Obama announced. "I've got a pen and I've got a phone...and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions."
Tim Kaine: “We will change the Senate rules to uphold the law, that the court will be nine members,” Kaine said, pointing out that he will be serving in the Senate at least into January. “I was in the Senate when the Republicans’ stonewalling around appointments caused Senate Democratic majority to switch the vote threshold on appointments from 60 to 51. And we did it on everything but a Supreme Court justice,” Kaine said. “If these guys think they’re going to stonewall the filling of that vacancy or other vacancies, then a Democratic Senate majority will say, ‘We’re not going to let you thwart the law.’”
DACA did a lot more than just not prosecute people. It provided work visa to people to whom Congress had explicitly denied said work visas (by defining who *could* get visas, it excluded all others). It created an administrative body that claimed to be outside the scope of Congresses budgetary authority because it "self-funded" through fees. If it *only* been a "rolling pardon" you could maybe make a good case that Obama's administration was just prioritizing enforcement efforts. But that's just not the case.
Many here have pointed out that DACA is *not* just not enforcing deportation orders against illegal aliens who came here as children. It created a whole new class of work visa (controlling immigration, including defining who gets work visas, is a Congressional power). It created an administrative branch that is self-funded through fees in an attempt to bypass the Constitutional requirement that "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
Obama: “This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And Congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic.... [W]e've kind of stretched our administrative flexibility as much as we can[.]”
Obama: “My job in the executive branch is supposed to be to carry out the laws that are passed. Congress has said ‘here is the law’ when it comes to those who are undocumented, and they've allocated a whole bunch of money for enforcement. And, what I have been able to do is to make a legal argument that I think is absolutely right, which is that given the resources that we have, we can't do everything that Congress has asked us to do. What we can do is then carve out the DREAM Act folks, saying young people who have basically grown up here are Americans that we should welcome. But if we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that's not an option. What I've said is there is a there's a path to get this done, and that's through Congress.”
True. However regarding the 5th Circuit, " the majority also found that the plaintiff states were likely to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration and Nationality Act. "
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and officials from nine other states on Thursday urged the Trump administration to end an Obama-era program that’s allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to live and work in the country without fear of being deported.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Paxton urged the White House to rescind the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. DACA applies to undocumented immigrants that came to the country before they were 16 years old and were 30 or younger as of June 2012. It awards recipients a renewable, two-year work permit and a reprieve from deportation proceedings.
"On November 20 and 21, 2014, President Barack Obama announced a series of administrative reforms of immigration policy, collectively called the Immigration Accountability Executive Action. The centerpiece of these reforms is an expansion of the current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) initiative for the parents of U.S citizens and lawful permanent residents who meet certain criteria."
"On May 26, 2015, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request for an emergency stay of the preliminary injunction, with the result that the hold on implementation of DAPA and expanded DACA remained in place while the Fifth Circuit considered the appeal of the preliminary injunction itself.
"On November 9, 2015, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s order granting the preliminary injunction. The majority accepted the lower court’s findings that Texas has standing to bring this lawsuit based on the additional costs it would incur to issue driver’s licenses to beneficiaries of expanded DACA and DAPA. The court acknowledged that judicial review is unavailable under the APA where a matter is committed to agency discretion and that the government’s immigration enforcement priorities fall squarely within this category; nonetheless, the majority also found that the plaintiff states were likely to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Actually, the related DACA for Parents order was ruled to have been done in violation of required notice-and-consent laws. The Constitutionality was not addressed, just that Obama had not followed the technical rules. The larger Constitutional question was sidestepped for the moment. The DACA order iteself has not been litigated, but something like 19 states are signed up ready to go if Trump had not begun to dismantle it. They are all arguing, and argued in the DACA for Parents order case, that the work visas and expenditures are not authorized by Congress and thus unconstitutional. But that hasn't been decided yet.
Powers of the Executive are in fact quite limited per the Constitution.
Section 2
1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section 3
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
'It was more of a "We're not going to enforce the law under this narrow set of circumstances, which we can justify because aside from anything else we don't have the power to fully enforce the law against everyone, and we have quite a bit of discretion."'
No, it wasn't. It created a work visa where Congress had not authorized it. It spent money that Congress had not appropriated--Obama tried to bypass Congress by trying to make the program funded from the application fees but the Constitution is pretty clear on that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
What is this magical flimsy law that you're referencing here?
The DREAM Act (in various incarnations) has been introduced multiple times and never passed Congress.
Some of the last significant immigration laws were passed back in the 90's.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) represents an effort by Congress to strengthen and streamline U.S. immigration laws. The Act was designed to improve border control by imposing criminal penalties for racketeering, alien smuggling and the use or creation of fraudulent immigration-related documents and increasing interior enforcement by agencies charged with monitoring visa applications and visa abusers.
Employment eligibility verification guidelines are also incorporated into the Act, including sanctions for employers who fail to comply with the regulations and restrictions on unfair immigration-related employment practices, as well as provisions governing the dispersement of government aid to aliens.
It lists a lot of things such that "The Attorney General is directed..." but not a lot of executive discretion is in the text.
I suggest you go off and read the US Code as it relates to Aliens.
8 U.S. Code 1324 - Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
8 U.S. Code 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
8 U.S. Code 1324a - Unlawful employment of aliens
None of those say anything about letting the Executive branch hammer out the details. The law provides specifics, when the executive are expected to implement faithfully.
Also consider that when Congress chooses to *not* do a thing, that's doing a thing. E.g., in 2007, when the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 was discussed in the Senate, which would have given a path to eventual citizenship to a large majority of illegal entrants in the country, significantly increased legal immigration and increased enforcement. The bill failed to pass a cloture vote, essentially killing it. That's not ignoring the need to do something, that's actively not doing it. Congress spoke and the President doesn't get to just go off and make up his own laws.
The President must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This clause in the Constitution imposes a duty on the President to enforce the laws of the United States as they were intended.
It's not "as they see fit"...it's "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed".
Anyway, if DACA had only been "enforcement discretion" you'd have a point. The executive could choose to devote limited prosecutorial resources along lines that would leave undocumented kids alone.
But DACA did a lot more than that. It provided work authorizations, travel authorizations (allowing illegal aliens to reenter the country), and created a self-funded agency without Congressional authorization (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law").
It was shot through with Constitutional problems. That DACA for Parents order was enjoined for just those reasons and the various States threatening to go to court over DACA would have based their arguments on the same reasons and likely would prevail on the same grounds.
DACA as a program, had it been done as an act of Congress, would almost certainly be all the good things people want it to be. But as a whim of Obama's pen, it was always suspect and subject to being undone at the whim of some other President. Indeed, Obama is seeing all his legacy being unwound simply because he spent so much effort bypassing Congress that he built his house on sand.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 places the power "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" as one of the roles of Congress.
The powers of the executive (the President) are actually pretty limited in the Constitution:
Article 2
Section 2
1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section 3
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.miamiherald.com/new...
Opa-locka Fruit and Produce Market didn’t just sell fruits and vegetables.
Instead, owners Karla Rodriguez Diaz and Luis Marzo Machado allegedly used their produce market inside the Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market to bilk the government out of $2.4 million, Wifredo A. Ferrer, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said Wednesday.
Diaz and Machado were two of 22 people charged in 15 cases Wednesday in “Operation Stampede,” organized to bust business owners and their employees who allowed customers to use their government-issued EBT food stamp card as a means to get cash, in exchange for a cut. In total, Ferrer said there were more than $13 million in fraudulent food stamp transactions stemming from markets throughout South Florida, the largest food stamp fraud take-down in U.S. history.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-m...
Baltimore, Maryland – In August 2016, a federal grand jury returned nine indictments charging 14 retail store operators in the greater Baltimore area with food stamp fraud and wire fraud in connection with obtaining over $16 million from the United States Department of Agriculture by illegally trading food stamp benefits for cash. Twelve of the fourteen charged defendants have pleaded guilty, and two defendants were sentenced this week to federal prison.
Today, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett sentenced Mohammad Shafiq, age 51, of Baltimore, Maryland to 46 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Judge Bennett ordered Shafiq to pay restitution in the amount of $3,712,353.00.
In a separate sentencing hearing held on May 18, 2017, Judge Bennett sentenced Mohammad Irfan, age 59, of Baltimore County, Maryland, to 51 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Judge Bennett also ordered Irfan to pay restitution in the amount of $3,550,662.00.
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/352...
NBC2 started tracking local court cases to see how Heacock’s team is doing.
From 2012 to 2014, 31 people were charged with welfare fraud in Lee, Charlotte, and Collier counties.
That number has nearly doubled in recent years. Since 2015, 71 people have been charged with welfare fraud, almost all of it from false reporting.
“We're pursuing it more,” Heacock said.
“We don't go after misdemeanor cases. We only go after felony cases.”
The results are easy to see.
DPAF discovered $20,719,036 in fraud in FY 2015-16. Compare that to just $5,527,677 in FY 2010-11.
But there’s another area of food stamp fraud that Carroll would like to see better enforced.
Food stamp trafficking, as it’s called, consists of retailers trading cash for government benefit dollars. Here’s how it works:
Store customer offers retailer food stamps for cash;
Store charges $100 of food stamps then gives customer $50 cash;
Store receives $100 reimbursement from government and makes $50 profit.
“It's organized crime,” Carroll said.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Sami Deffala, who's managed a corner store in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood for 13 years, said he hears that every day from customers vying for a private moment in hopes of using their Link cards to exchange SNAP benefits, the modern-day version of food stamps, for cash — an illegal practice called trafficking by federal regulators. And every day, Deffala said, he hears them out but refuses to take part in the scheme.
"I have peop
When foodstamps can be used at McDonalds (http://firstquarterfinance.com/what-fast-food-places-take-ebt-food-stamps-snap/) and to support tarragon rabbit habits of hipster foodies who won't stoop to eating Ramen noodles to get by, there's something seriously wrong with the system. Not to mention the fact that there appears to be a correlation between foodstamps and obesity, it hardly seems that a "supplemental nutrition program" is needed for people for whom foodstamps may just be adding to their already-overly large calorie intake.
I've no desire to see people starving in the streets, but would not cry a tear for hipster foodies if their foodstamps were good for only bags of rice and and bags of beans. Maybe some small amount of lean protein and some multivitamins. Rice and/or beans may be monotonous, but you won't starve. You want something different, that's up to you. Not a lot of arbitrage value in rice and beans, so that type of fraud would likely be reduced, too.
http://www.salon.com/2010/03/1...
Magida, a 30-year-old art school graduate, had been installing museum exhibits for a living until the recession caused arts funding — and her usual gigs — to dry up. She applied for food stamps last summer, and since then she’s used her $150 in monthly benefits for things like fresh produce, raw honey and fresh-squeezed juices from markets near her house in the neighborhood of Hampden, and soy meat alternatives and gourmet ice cream from a Whole Foods a few miles away.
“I’m eating better than I ever have before,” she told me. “Even with food stamps, it’s not like I’m living large, but it helps.”
Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.
“I’m sort of a foodie, and I’m not going to do the ‘living off ramen’ thing,” he said, fondly remembering a recent meal he’d prepared of roasted rabbit with butter, tarragon and sweet potatoes. “I used to think that you could only get processed food and government cheese on food stamps, but it’s great that you can get anything.”
Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.
Beat me to it. Just saw this episode last week.
The DREAM Act was first introduced in Congress in 2009, again in 2010, again in 2011, again in 2012. It was defeated each time. Similar bills (or sections of other bills) were introduced in 2001, 2007, and 2008. Defeated each time.
In 2009 and 2010, Democrats had a majority in both houses of Congress. It's how they passed Obamacare and the stimulus.
To say "he did what he could" means he went out and created policy that is in conflict with duly authorized (and signed by Pres. Clinton) immigration law AND ignores *multiple* votes in Congress that said "no we're not going to do that", including two such votes while his own party controlled Congress and the Presidency.
Sorry, I thought I was addressing your apparent position that the immigration law was ill-specified and Obama was just filling in the gaps the way Congress wanted him too. I was trying to point out that a) immigration law hasn't really been changed much since the 90's and b) it wasn't just "No illegal immigration" and give the executive the job of implementing it--immigration law such as what I presented was quite detailed in the expectations Congress had for the executive.
"Considering the number of executive orders President Trump signed in his first few weeks of office, as well as Congress not explicitly legislating away the ability to create a different far reaching executive order, I'm increasingly convinced overreaching executive orders will continue for the forseeable future."
And true enough, but somehow to me one President striking a previous President's executive order doesn't rise to the level of "overreaching". That is, this specific case is not executive overreach.
I ignored your talk of how much it costs to deport someone as a "yeah but" moving goalpost. It costs a lot of money to try someone for assault and put them in jail, too, but I don't think we should stop doing that. The list of reasons why Trump action may be stupid is probably pretty long (same can be said of Obama's original orders), but the simple legality of it should hardly be a question: again, what one President did with the stroke of a pen, another can undo just as easily.
I'm not holding the IIRIA out as some sort of good thing, but it is a concrete example of immigration law passed by Congress. You obviously didn't even bother to look at it. It runs some 252 pages of law. It's filled with statements like " the Attorney General shall not grant such waiver unless...", "the Attorney General shall not make an adverse determination...", "The Attorney General shall not permit an alien to...", "The Attorney General may waive the penalties imposed by this section...", "The Attorney General has sole discretion to waive clause...", and "NO COMPROMISE.—The Attorney General may not compromise the amount of such penalty under this paragraph."
So while there is a provision for discretion at times, the limitations and applicability is pretty clearly spelled out and likewise spelled out when discretion is not permitted by the law.
It is hardly "waving hands". You're acting like Congress passed a law that said "No illegal immigration." and left all the rest up to interpretation.
And you're also ignoring the part of DACA where work permits were created out of thin air. Congress wrote some laws that clearly defined who may receive work permits, the conditions under which they may be granted, their duration, etc. DREAMERs/DACA/DAPA people are not among them. Providing them work permits (something only Congress can do) and the similar actions in DACA/DAPA are the problematic areas, not the deferred prosecution.
But ultimately, if Obama can create the program with a stroke of his pen, Trump can dismantle it the same way.
A side note [insert lawyer joke]...the DOJ lawyers who argued Obama's DAPA case in 5th Circuit were ordered to take ethics classes after the judge found them to collectively be "intentionally deceptive".
"A federal judge ordered the Justice Department to send its lawyers back to remedial ethics classes Thursday after finding that the administration repeatedly misled the court in the high-profile challenge to President Obama’s deportation amnesty. Judge Andrew S. Hanen said the lawyers knew the administration was approving amnesty applications but actively hid that information both from him and from the 26 states that had sued to stop the amnesty. Worse yet, even after the court ordered a halt to the whole amnesty, the Department of Homeland Security approved several thousand more applications, in defiance of the court’s strict admonition, Judge Hanen said, counting at least four separate times the government’s attorneys misled him.
"In a blistering order, Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville accused the Justice Department lawyers of lying to him during arguments in the case, and he barred them from appearing in his courtroom. He also demanded that Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch provide a “comprehensive plan” within 60 days describing how she will prevent unethical conduct in the future, as well as making sure the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility effectively prevents misconduct among its lawyers. He also said that any Justice Department lawyer who wants to appear in a state or federal court in any of the 26 states who filed suit to block Mr. Obama’s executive actions should be required to take an annual three-hour ethics course for the next five years.
I point you to a novel Viral http://www.jameslilliefors.com....
An investment consortium (I forget exactly, but I recall that the Chinese had a large hand in it as did the CIA) has realized that Africa is a resource-rich continent, and that the only problem with it is, well, it's run by Africans (i.e., warlords and tin-pot dicatorships). So they've created an engineered and weaponized virus that kills only Africans and are surreptitiously releasing it into areas, killing the local populations--whole countries, basically--and then moving in with First World industry and First World people willing to move there for the jobs. Imperialism without the pesky natives.
FDR's government rounded up 120,000 Japanese an put them in internment camps and held them there for years. And used an Executive Order to do so! And required all immigrants of Japanese, German, and Italian descent to register with the DOJ and get their Certificates of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality.
And this action was upheld by SCOTUS.
What one President can wave into existence at the stroke of a pen, another can undo the same way.
DACA is not a law to be unmade. DACA was an executive policy (and very likely unconstitutional in its full scope) promulgated by the Obama administration. Trump's policy here boils down to "We're gonna stop ignoring the laws Congress wrote."
There's not really much question that Obama could chose to direct his Justice Department and AG to simply put all other actions above enforcing immigration laws on children brought here illegally. But that's not all DACA did. It gave them work permits (a violation of laws which Congress duly enacted). It created an administrative agency that said it was not under Congress's budgetary control because it self-funded through fees, even though the Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
Absent Trump's order the 10 states threatening to sue over DACA are quite likely to succeed. With respect to the similar action on DAPA, the 5th Circuit "majority found that the plaintiff states were likely to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration and Nationality Act."
In short, whatever Obama did with a stroke of his pen (legal or not, Constitutional or not) can be undone with a stroke of Trump's pen. The legality/Constitutionality of such actions can only be determined by Congress and/or the Courts.
Of course, where Obama chose to use discretion to place DACA people at the very bottom of any prosecution priority list, Trump could just as easily choose to make then public enemy #1. Just an example of how living by the pen means you can die by the pen.
Obama and Democrats are surely regretting having said a few things along the way:
Obama: “Elections have consequences and at the end of the day, I won."
"We're not just going to be waiting for legislation," Obama announced. "I've got a pen and I've got a phone...and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions."
Tim Kaine: “We will change the Senate rules to uphold the law, that the court will be nine members,” Kaine said, pointing out that he will be serving in the Senate at least into January. “I was in the Senate when the Republicans’ stonewalling around appointments caused Senate Democratic majority to switch the vote threshold on appointments from 60 to 51. And we did it on everything but a Supreme Court justice,” Kaine said. “If these guys think they’re going to stonewall the filling of that vacancy or other vacancies, then a Democratic Senate majority will say, ‘We’re not going to let you thwart the law.’”
DACA did a lot more than just not prosecute people. It provided work visa to people to whom Congress had explicitly denied said work visas (by defining who *could* get visas, it excluded all others). It created an administrative body that claimed to be outside the scope of Congresses budgetary authority because it "self-funded" through fees. If it *only* been a "rolling pardon" you could maybe make a good case that Obama's administration was just prioritizing enforcement efforts. But that's just not the case.
Many here have pointed out that DACA is *not* just not enforcing deportation orders against illegal aliens who came here as children. It created a whole new class of work visa (controlling immigration, including defining who gets work visas, is a Congressional power). It created an administrative branch that is self-funded through fees in an attempt to bypass the Constitutional requirement that "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
As Mexico does.
Obama: “This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And Congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic. ... [W]e've kind of stretched our administrative flexibility as much as we can[.]”
Obama: “My job in the executive branch is supposed to be to carry out the laws that are passed. Congress has said ‘here is the law’ when it comes to those who are undocumented, and they've allocated a whole bunch of money for enforcement. And, what I have been able to do is to make a legal argument that I think is absolutely right, which is that given the resources that we have, we can't do everything that Congress has asked us to do. What we can do is then carve out the DREAM Act folks, saying young people who have basically grown up here are Americans that we should welcome. But if we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that's not an option. What I've said is there is a there's a path to get this done, and that's through Congress.”
He should have listened to Himself.
True. However regarding the 5th Circuit, " the majority also found that the plaintiff states were likely to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration and Nationality Act. "
Regarding DACA, that would be heard if something wasn't done.
https://www.texastribune.org/2...
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and officials from nine other states on Thursday urged the Trump administration to end an Obama-era program that’s allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to live and work in the country without fear of being deported.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Paxton urged the White House to rescind the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. DACA applies to undocumented immigrants that came to the country before they were 16 years old and were 30 or younger as of June 2012. It awards recipients a renewable, two-year work permit and a reprieve from deportation proceedings.
DAPA was not legislation.
"On November 20 and 21, 2014, President Barack Obama announced a series of administrative reforms of immigration policy, collectively called the Immigration Accountability Executive Action. The centerpiece of these reforms is an expansion of the current Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) initiative for the parents of U.S citizens and lawful permanent residents who meet certain criteria."
"On May 26, 2015, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the request for an emergency stay of the preliminary injunction, with the result that the hold on implementation of DAPA and expanded DACA remained in place while the Fifth Circuit considered the appeal of the preliminary injunction itself.
"On November 9, 2015, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s order granting the preliminary injunction. The majority accepted the lower court’s findings that Texas has standing to bring this lawsuit based on the additional costs it would incur to issue driver’s licenses to beneficiaries of expanded DACA and DAPA. The court acknowledged that judicial review is unavailable under the APA where a matter is committed to agency discretion and that the government’s immigration enforcement priorities fall squarely within this category; nonetheless, the majority also found that the plaintiff states were likely to prevail on their claim that the federal government should have pursued notice-and-comment rulemaking because DAPA and expanded DACA determinations are non-discretionary. In addition, the majority held that the new deferred action initiatives are arbitrary and capricious because the federal government did not have authority to promulgate them under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
https://www.americanimmigratio...
Actually, the related DACA for Parents order was ruled to have been done in violation of required notice-and-consent laws. The Constitutionality was not addressed, just that Obama had not followed the technical rules. The larger Constitutional question was sidestepped for the moment. The DACA order iteself has not been litigated, but something like 19 states are signed up ready to go if Trump had not begun to dismantle it. They are all arguing, and argued in the DACA for Parents order case, that the work visas and expenditures are not authorized by Congress and thus unconstitutional. But that hasn't been decided yet.
Powers of the Executive are in fact quite limited per the Constitution.
Section 2
1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section 3
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
'It was more of a "We're not going to enforce the law under this narrow set of circumstances, which we can justify because aside from anything else we don't have the power to fully enforce the law against everyone, and we have quite a bit of discretion."'
No, it wasn't. It created a work visa where Congress had not authorized it. It spent money that Congress had not appropriated--Obama tried to bypass Congress by trying to make the program funded from the application fees but the Constitution is pretty clear on that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
What is this magical flimsy law that you're referencing here?
The DREAM Act (in various incarnations) has been introduced multiple times and never passed Congress.
Some of the last significant immigration laws were passed back in the 90's.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA) represents an effort by Congress to strengthen and streamline U.S. immigration laws. The Act was designed to improve border control by imposing criminal penalties for racketeering, alien smuggling and the use or creation of fraudulent immigration-related documents and increasing interior enforcement by agencies charged with monitoring visa applications and visa abusers.
Employment eligibility verification guidelines are also incorporated into the Act, including sanctions for employers who fail to comply with the regulations and restrictions on unfair immigration-related employment practices, as well as provisions governing the dispersement of government aid to aliens.
It lists a lot of things such that "The Attorney General is directed..." but not a lot of executive discretion is in the text.
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/de...
I suggest you go off and read the US Code as it relates to Aliens.
8 U.S. Code 1324 - Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
8 U.S. Code 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
8 U.S. Code 1324a - Unlawful employment of aliens
None of those say anything about letting the Executive branch hammer out the details. The law provides specifics, when the executive are expected to implement faithfully.
Also consider that when Congress chooses to *not* do a thing, that's doing a thing. E.g., in 2007, when the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 was discussed in the Senate, which would have given a path to eventual citizenship to a large majority of illegal entrants in the country, significantly increased legal immigration and increased enforcement. The bill failed to pass a cloture vote, essentially killing it. That's not ignoring the need to do something, that's actively not doing it. Congress spoke and the President doesn't get to just go off and make up his own laws.
The President must "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." This clause in the Constitution imposes a duty on the President to enforce the laws of the United States as they were intended.
It's not "as they see fit"...it's "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed".
Anyway, if DACA had only been "enforcement discretion" you'd have a point. The executive could choose to devote limited prosecutorial resources along lines that would leave undocumented kids alone.
But DACA did a lot more than that. It provided work authorizations, travel authorizations (allowing illegal aliens to reenter the country), and created a self-funded agency without Congressional authorization (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law").
It was shot through with Constitutional problems. That DACA for Parents order was enjoined for just those reasons and the various States threatening to go to court over DACA would have based their arguments on the same reasons and likely would prevail on the same grounds.
DACA as a program, had it been done as an act of Congress, would almost certainly be all the good things people want it to be. But as a whim of Obama's pen, it was always suspect and subject to being undone at the whim of some other President. Indeed, Obama is seeing all his legacy being unwound simply because he spent so much effort bypassing Congress that he built his house on sand.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 places the power "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" as one of the roles of Congress.
The powers of the executive (the President) are actually pretty limited in the Constitution:
Article 2
Section 2
1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section 3
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Not to mention the government subsidies for rich people to buy his luxury cars.