Help Save Maryland- ACTION ALERT - More Sanctuary State Legislation in Annapolis, Tuesday, February 25, 1PM
Here we go again! The Citizens of Maryland need your immediate help to draft testimony and to testify in person in Annapolis on Tuesday, February 25, 1pm. Contacting committee members is a big help too if you can't make it to Annapolis. Spread the Word!
Last Tuesday, February 11, Maryland citizens fought two lawless sanctuary bills in Annapolis by testifying at the House Judiciary Committee, sponsored by the illegal alien hugging Dems:
Prohibiting a certain law enforcement agent from making a certain inquiry about an individual's immigration status, citizenship status, or place of birth or transferring an individual to federal immigration authorities under certain circumstances; prohibiting, without a warrant, a certain law enforcement agent from transferring or detaining an individual, notifying federal immigration authorities with an individual's location information, or using law enforcement resources to further civil immigration enforcement; etc.
HB0403 - Immigration Enforcement - Public Schools, Hospitals, and Courthouses - Policies
Requiring the Attorney General, in consultation with certain stakeholders, to develop guidelines to assist public schools, hospitals, and courthouses to draft policies that limit civil immigration enforcement activities on their premises in order to ensure these facilities remain safe and accessible to all; and authorizing public schools, hospitals, and courthouses to establish and publish policies that limit immigration enforcement on their premises to the fullest extent possible; etc.
Seems the Annapolis Democrat strategy is to make Maryland a sanctuary state with passage of the main bill, HB388. Then further restrict the number of places ICE can detain and arrest illegal aliens (schools, hospitals and courthouses) ---- and probably Illegal Alien Day Laborer Centers, CASA of Maryland Headquarters, Home Depots and fast food joints if AG Brian Frosh has his way, with HB403.
The latest bill, HB677 puts up a further roadblock to ICE activities. If passed, this bill would force ICE to transport arrested Hispanic and other illegal aliens out of the state as public (other than federal facilities) and private incarceration institutions would be off limits to ICE agents. This would cause a backlog and slowdown in detaining and arresting illegal aliens as there would literally be nowhere to park them before they are ready to ship back south of the border.
Guess what? Last year, California became the first state in the nation to pass legislation like HB677 (see article link below). Now our friends at CASA of Maryland, the ACLU and our drone legislators want Maryland to become the 2nd state to outlaw private incarceration facilities for ICE useage.
In summary, if these bills pass and become law, it means wanted illegal alien criminals will be free to wander the streets across Maryland, inflicting crime, rape and carnage on our fellow citizens. That's the way it is in California as well as in Montgomery, Prince George's and Baltimore City (murder capital of the nation). Criminals and rapists run amok while the Police just watch the illegals frolic free.
Its not like that in Frederick, Harford or Cecil Counties. Not yet anyway. Those jurisdictions work with ICE, protect their citizens and enforce the law. Break up families in the process? If you are a criminal, illegal or not, and you get arrested for a crime and do jail time, your family is "broken up". Fact of life and caused by the criminal perpetrator. Not our problem if you are an illegal alien criminal and you get deported back to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala or Nicaragua. Feel free to take the family with you while being deported and family separation is no longer an issue.
ICE holds thousands of illegals in private California facilities. And the same should happen in Maryland as we are in the top ten states for aiding and abetting illegal aliens. The well-being of our citizens is more important then this farce legislation HB677- "Dignity Not Detention Act".
If the Annapolis crowd wants to wants to push legislation, I would suggest the "Dignity Through Deportation Act" as a replacement for HB677.
How You Can Help?
-Draft a short 1-2 page statement that you can present in person on Tuesday or have others submit to the committee on your behalf. Include your name, and city/county as well as your phone number.
-Touch on the issues of public safety, crime, the 9 person young girl rape spree last year in Montgomery County that made national news, the need to work with Federal ICE to deport illegal alien criminals already in our jails.
-If ICE arrests a wanted illegal on our streets ICE should have the capability to use private institutions in Maryland to hold these criminals. It makes all of use safer in our communities. In addition, how horrible if the illegal alien' family would have to travel hundreds of miles away to a federal detention facility outside of Maryland to visit their loved ones! Where is the dignity in that?
-Also mention how Montgomery County Public schools and public services are being overrun by the ever increasing number of illegals being drawn to the county by being a sanctuary. If you don't live in Montgomery County, demand that your jurisdiction be kept sanctuary free. Enforce the law and rid our state of illegal aliens and their families. They have no moral or legal right to be in our state. We respect and welcome LEGAL IMMIGRANTS, not CASA of Maryland groupies and little girl rapists from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. No more MS-13 gang members and their trainees either.
-At a minimum, contact ALL the Maryland legislators below by phone and e-mail and tell them you oppose HB 0677. Insist on leaving you name and number. Be brutally frank but polite on what you think of this bill.
CONTACT BRAD BOTWIN, HELP SAVE MARYLAND, FOR ANY ASSISTANCE AND QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE ON THE ABOVE. MORE INFO NEXT WEEK ON WHERE TO ARRIVE IN ANNAPOLIS AND HOW TO PRESENT TESTIMONY.
OUR LAW ABIDING MARYLAND SHERIFFS OPPOSE MARYLAND BECOMING A SANCTUARY STATE!
"Maryland Sheriffs Push Back Against Proposed 'Sanctuary State' Legislation"
Sandy Malone
Sheriffs went to the state capital on Tuesday to testify against making Maryland a so-called "sanctuary state."
Annapolis, MD - Three Maryland sheriffs are actively opposing proposed legislation that would prohibit law enforcement in the state from doing any federal immigration enforcement.
Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, and Cecil County Sheriff Scott Adams are ardently against making Maryland a so-called "sanctuary state," the Bel Air Patch reported.
Sheriffs Gahler, Jenkins, and Adams oppose Maryland House Bill 388 which would make it illegal for law enforcement agencies to inquire about a person's immigration status, notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that a person they wanted was in custody, or to transfer a prisoner to federal immigration authorities without a warrant.
The three sheriffs were in Annapolis on Tuesday to testify before lawmakers about the success of the federal programs that their counties participate in with ICE, the Bel Air Patch reported.
Since 2016, some employees of the Harford County Sheriff's Office have been trained by ICE to screen people being booked into the county's detention center to determine if they were in the United States illegally and met removal criteria.
Officials said the screeners found 44 illegal immigrants - four of whom were members of the MS-13 gang - in the first year of the program, the Bel Air Patch reported.
"This program allows local detention center officers, working under ICE supervision, to identify and process for removal those individuals who are in the country illegally and booked for another crime," Sheriff Gahler said. "Once an individual is identified, ICE determines the course of action related to any immigration action. Those individuals identified as having the highest priority are those individuals who present a threat to public safety."
All three counties - Harford, Cecil, and Frederick - participate in the federal 287(g) program through which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deputizes local law enforcement to perform limited immigration enforcement, the Bel Air Patch reported.
ICE said that 79 law enforcement agencies in 21 states have participated in similar programs.
The sheriffs also opposed Maryland House Bill 67 which would prohibit the state from facilitating immigration-related detention and would require the state to end any contracts with facilities that hold ICE detainees, according to the Bel Air Patch.
"During my first term as sheriff, I was pleased to announce that crime had fallen each year and at the end of last year to another all-time low for our county," Sheriff Gahler said. "I credit our crime reduction success to our complete public safety approach to crime fighting and our priorities which are inclusive of the 287(g) program."
"Returning these offenders back into our community to further victimize our citizens is certainly not an effective strategy to reduce crime and keep law-abiding citizens safe. Becoming a sanctuary state is not the way to focus on public safety," the sheriff added.
Even sheriffs from jurisdictions who don't already work with ICE are against Maryland becoming a "sanctuary state," WTOP reported.
"State and local officials cooperate with federal law enforcement in every aspect such as gun control, drug laws, working close with the FBI, the DEA ... Immigration should not be an exception," Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis said. "Shielding criminal aliens needlessly endangers our innocent lives."
Frederick County Sheriff Jenkins pointed a finger at neighboring Montgomery County as an example of a failure of sanctuary policies, WTOP reported.
"Last year, Montgomery County in the late summer experienced nine rapes and sexual assaults of minor children by removable criminal aliens, most of whom had been in custody by Montgomery County, which failed to cooperate with ICE," the sheriff said.
He said that in the last 12 years, no illegal immigrant detained in Frederick County who was eligible to be deported has ever been freed to re-offend, WTOP reported.
MORE EASTERN SHORE MARYLAND SHERIFFS SPEAK OUT AGAINST SANCTUARY!
"Wicomico County Sheriff speaks out against bill to make Maryland a sanctuary state"
Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis has expressed strong opposition to legislation that would make Maryland a sanctuary state, a proposal he claimed would protect MS-13 gang members from criminal arrest or prosecution.
Sheriff Lewis attended a press conference on Tuesday alongside State Senator Mary Beth Carozza, Somerset County Sheriff Ronnie Howard and Chief Deputy Paul Keplinger where the local leaders all expressed strong opposition to the bill.
Speaking with our Mike Bradley Friday morning, Sheriff Lewis raised strong concerns over the gang MS-13 and how the legislation would effectively protect them from criminal arrest or prosecution.
"Now you have MS-13, a gang who is notorious for not just killing and murdering, but they've dismembered bodies and spread these body parts all over Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Prince George's County, Maryland, and Montgomery County, Maryland," Sheriff Lewis said. "These are three counties that we know for a fact at least a dozen murders and dismemberment of bodies have occurred in the last 12 months alone."
Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1970s and 1980s. The gang is currently active in many parts of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America. Most of its members are Salvadorans.
Sheriff Lewis strongly condemned the lawmakers who introduced the legislation. One of the bill's would effectively prevent police from informing federal authorities of an immigration status.
"These individuals, these lawmakers, are trying to protect these particular aliens from not just criminal arrest but from prosecution and deportation," Sheriff Lewis said strongly. "It's absolutely unconscionable that we would have to deal with legislation in the State of Maryland to protect these individuals but we're dealing with it everyday."
One of the proposed pieces of sanctuary legislation would prohibit governmental entities in Maryland, including Worcester County, from housing immigration-related detainees as of October 1, 2021.
The Maryland Police Chiefs and Sheriffs Association and the Worcester County Commissioners are unanimously opposed to the legislation.
"Making Maryland a sanctuary state would threaten public safety and put Maryland and Worcester County at risk of losing millions of federal dollars. I will continue to oppose all efforts to make Maryland a sanctuary state," State Senator Carozza stated in a press release issued after the press conference on Tuesday.
One of the bill's was discussed in the Judiciary Committee last Tuesday and the other is set to be considered later this month.
By Victor Davis Hanson Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College Courtesy of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/
Today, many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.
The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.
American citizenship is eroding in three ways.
First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today-the largest absolute number we've ever had. There's no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship-although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.
But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship-the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases-are being blurred.
Where I live, in California, if you're here illegally, you can de facto go back and forth across the border as you wish. In San Francisco, you can vote in some school board elections (the same is under consideration in some places in New England). And as we see with the DACA program, illegal residents can de facto live in the U.S. indefinitely.
Some policies even discriminate against citizens. An illegal resident in California who is charged with a crime is not subject to federal immigration law to the full extent, whereas a citizen who flies into Los Angeles from overseas without a passport will be detained. If you are in California as an illegal resident, you can obtain a driver's license as citizens have in the past; whereas for citizens, starting next year, there will be an extra burden: to travel by commercial air, they will have to provide at least three sources of proof of citizenship to obtain a valid ID-given the apparent devaluation of the driver's license.
People who come to the U.S. illegally and in great numbers usually do not have the degree of investment citizens do in our constitutional documents and are often unacquainted with our national story. Candidates from south of the border today fly into California's Central Valley to campaign. Illegal residents vote in their home countries' elections-and yet are unacquainted with political issues and candidates here in the U.S.
To avoid a fragmentation of society based on racial and ethnic chauvinism takes an extra effort to keep the melting pot working. We're no longer making that effort. Indeed, we're doing the opposite, encouraging diversity rather than unity.
Second, we're becoming a country of tribes. The idea of multi-racialism-the notion that we're of different races but we share a common culture-is eroding.
At many colleges and universities today, you can choose in advance the racial background of your roommate. Campuses have "safe spaces" that are reserved for people of particular races. There are dorms where students segregate according to race. Ethnic studies departments thrive by emphasizing racial exceptionalism.
Do we wonder why Elizabeth Warren chose to be a Native American, which, according to her own logic-the power of white privilege and systemic racism-would put her at a disadvantage? The answer is that she sought a careerist advantage. And Harvard was happy to comply: the law school bragged that she was its first "woman of color" faculty member.
I went to a grammar school that was about 90 percent Mexican-American. Some people who I went to first grade with later changed their names from Juan to John and dropped the accent on their last names. Now in their 60s, they're changing back to Juan and adding back the accents. Why? Because there is now a disadvantage in identifying as an un-hyphenated American, and an advantage to belonging to a tribe. And the danger is that this logic of tribalism leads to the kind of social breakup and civil discord that we saw in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq.
Third, the middle class, which had been encouraged and celebrated since the time of the American Founding, is now under sustained attack.
A solid, property-owning middle class anchors the nation. Traditionally, its members show the sobriety and judgment to achieve autonomy. They don't look to government for help. They stand as a barrier against both property redistribution and crony capitalism.
Today, America's middle class is threatened. Homeownership is down to about 62 percent from 71 percent just over ten years ago. The percentage of a family budget that goes to housing has risen from 20-30 percent in the 1950s to 30-40 percent today, especially in coastal corridors. Middle class wages, until an annual increase of three percent under President Trump, had been frozen for ten years. And we have an aggregate $1.6 trillion in student debt.
If the middle class continues to erode, we will become a nation of peasants and oligarchs. In California, more than one out of five people live below the poverty line-despite the fact that California has one of the highest number of zip codes of America's most affluent people and the highest number of billionaires. If you drive through Palo Alto, you'll see people living in RVs because they can't afford to buy or rent a home-and these are people working for Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Oracle, and Apple, with a total market capitalization of nearly $4 trillion.
Additionally, we are seeing a formal assault on the Constitution by our elites.
Consider the nullification of federal law through the creation of sanctuary cities, in direct defiance of the immigration statutes. (Of course, such nullification seems to go only one way: otherwise, imagine how our elites would respond if the people of Provo, Utah, decided within their municipal jurisdiction to nullify federal handgun registration or the Endangered Species Act.)
Almost every single Democratic candidate for president is in favor of abolishing the Electoral College, which is in the Constitution to ensure equal representation to people living outside big cities, and to prevent the splintering of the electorate into several small parties.
There is also a growing academic attack on the mode of electing the U.S. Senate-"Why should North Dakota or Wyoming have the same number of U.S. Senators as New York?" progressives ask, in their eagerness to make U.S. Senators proportionally elected in the manner of House members.
This insidious assault on the Constitution results from the fact that popular elections haven't been going the Left's way, and the Left believes that its superior moral agenda justifies using any means necessary.
Ancient authors from Plato and Aristotle to Petronius and Tacitus have suggested that affluence combined with leisure paradoxically creates a laxity that leads to the kind of societal and institutional disintegration we are currently seeing. Another major ingredient of our current crisis is the failure of our education system to offer disinterested instruction, following from the post-1960s takeover by the Left of our colleges and universities.
In response, we need to support colleges that continue to teach the principles and practices of liberty. We must support policies that recognize the distinction between citizens and non-citizens and that bolster the middle class. And we need to defend the Constitution, our last great hope to ensure American continuity and security.
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