John Podesta

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta claimed Monday that “forces within the FBI” worked against the Democratic presidential nominee.

“There are at least forces within the FBI that wanted her to lose,” Podesta said in a taped NewCo. Shift discussion with John Heilemann.

“I’m not sure they really understood the alternative, but they wanted her to lose. I think that’s one possibility.”

Still, Pedesta offered no new evidence to back up his claim. He said FBI Director James Comey used “bad judgment” by notifying Congress just 11 days before the election that the FBI was reviewing emails that may have been related to Clinton’s use a private email server.

Comey “ended up dropping this bombshell in the middle of the election against the advice of the Justice Department, against the long-term practice of Democratic and Republican administrations,” Podesta said.

He added: “If you look at the polling at that period time, that’s when the race began to tighten in that week.”

Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI arrested a 25-year-old Army veteran who is accused of plotting what he believed was a Presidents’ Day attack with ISIS.

Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr., a Missouri-born U.S. citizen, was communicating with an undercover FBI agents for months, believing they were terrorist operatives, the Huffington Post reports. 

The FBI was alerted to Hester after he posted on social media that he’d “converted to Islam, expressed animus towards the United States, and posted photos of weapons and the ISIS flag.”

According to affidavits, Hester told undercover agents that he wanted the government to be “overthrown” and hoped for a “global jihad.” The feds also allege that he identified potential targets for attack.

Hester, who was discharged from the Army after less than a year of enlistment in 2013, “attempted to provide material support to ISIS by assisting in what he believed would be a murderous terrorist bombing and gunfire attack committed in the name of the foreign terrorist organization,” the Justice Department said in a press release.

File photo of a Border Patrol agent.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

President Trump’s hardline attitude toward immigration has helped boot morale among border patrol agents, according to the union representing the agents.

“There’s definitely been a shift in attitude, different shift in expectations, agents are feeling empowered to do their job. We see a President who is enforcing laws already on the books,” said Art Del Cueto, president of the Local 2544 border patrol union, according to ABC15.com.

The union representing the agents endorsed Trump during the presidential election.

Del Cuerto said agents felt they were “handcuffed” under President Obama’s administration and were frustrated with “catch and release” policies that put undocumented immigrants back onto the streets until their day in court.

Those policies, Del Cuerto said, encouraged immigrants not to show up at hearings.

“If they didn’t have any prior [arrests] you would basically release them back out into the shadows, even though they didn’t have any documentation to be here in the country legally,” said Del Cueto.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Homeland Security released two memos on Tuesday that address how federal authorities will implement two executive orders on border security and immigration law enforcement, Business Insider reports.

President Trump signed the executive orders in January.

Federal authorities will now have more power to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The memos also called for “expired removal” in an attempt to bypass court proceedings.

The memos also indicate Border Patrol and ICE may hire 10,000 officers and agents.

White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said the memos satisfied “another major campaign promise of the president.”

The memos indicate that an increase in apprehension at the border has “significantly strained DHS resources.”

“The surge of illegal immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly wrote in the memos.

“Thousands of aliens apprehended at the border, placed in removal proceedings, and released from custody have absconded and failed to appear at their removal hearings.”

Donald Trump, via Wikipedia

By Editorial Board
New York Post

Team Trump’s newest immigration orders definitely toughen enforcement, but they’re a far cry from mass roundups.

If the administration sticks to this approach — prioritizing the serious criminals for apprehension and deportation, while also making it harder to succeed at immigrating illegally — it’ll have broad public support.

Over-the-top approaches (deporting law-abiding moms) will mean big trouble.

In that regard, it’s worth noting that Trump still hasn’t touched Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives safe harbor and work permits to those brought here illegally as young children, a k a “the dreamers.”

The Department of Homeland Security also sought to provide instant clarity this time ’round, with background briefings even as DHS chief John Kelly issued his latest orders.
In a conference call with reporters, one official noted, “We do not have the personnel, time or resources to go into communities and round up people and do all kinds of mass throwing folks on buses. That’s entirely a figment of folks’ imagination.”

Yet Trump is moving to actually enforce US law, reversing the across-the-board Obama-era slowdown of enforcement actions. Violent criminals remain the top priority, but are no longer the only priority.

Now plea-bargaining a felony down to a misdemeanor won’t leave you automatically exempt from immigration enforcement, nor will DHS officials wink at an illegal immigrants’ fraudulent filing for welfare benefits.

To read more click here. 

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