Tag: Margaret Stock

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S UGLINESS IS EVERYWHERE IN AMERICA! – Beloit College Grad/Honorably Discharged Army Vet Target For ICE Removal Despite Mattis’s Assurances To The Contrary!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alex-horton

Alex Horton reports for the Washington Post:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement appears to have ignored a directive from  prevent the deportation of noncitizen troops and veterans, seeking to remove a Chinese immigrant despite laws that allow veterans with honorable service to naturalize, court filings show.

Xilong Zhu, 27, who came from China in 2009 to attend college in the United States, enlisted in the Army and was caught in an immigration dragnet involving a fake university set up by the Department of Homeland Security to catch brokers of fraudulent student visas.

Zhu paid tuition to the University of Northern New Jersey, created by DHS to appear as a real school, long enough to ship to basic training using the legal status gained from a student visa issued to attend that school.

Then ICE found him and asked the Army to release him for alleged visa fraud. He left Fort Benning, Ga., on Nov. 10, 2016, in handcuffs as an honorably discharged veteran. He was detained for three weeks and released.

Zhu is waiting for a Seattle judge’s ruling on his removal proceedings, which are based on allegations by ICE that he failed to attend classes in violation of his student visa. His attorney says his client is a victim of federal entrapment.

Zhu’s case comes amid Trump administration pressure on immigration judges to speed up deportation proceedings in an apparent move to adjudicate more removals, aligning with President Trump’s stated goals.

But it also comes after Mattis said he would protect certain immigrant recruits who enlist through a program designed to trade fast-tracked citizenship for medical and language skills. Those assurances followed sustained controversy over how the Pentagon has exposed more than a thousand foreign-born recruits to deportation. A background-screening logjam began in late 2016 when fears of insider threats slowed clearances to a glacial pace.

[ A deported veteran has been granted U.S. citizenship, after 14 years of living in Mexico ]

“Anyone with an honorable discharge … will not be subject to any kind of deportation,” Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon in February, describing exceptions for those who commit a “serious felony” and anyone who has been authorized for deportation in an agreement he said was made with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Zhu’s attorney, retired Army officer Margaret Stock, told The Washington Post those exceptions do not apply to him.

DHS referred questions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Spokesman Jonathan Withington declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. ICE declined to provide a comment attributable by name.

But through court documents, ICE has interpreted the Mattis directive applies to a narrow group of foreign recruits that exclude Zhu. It’s unclear whether ICE consulted with the Pentagon on the subject, or if the agency has moved to deport other immigrant recruits since Mattis spoke in February.

Xilong Zhu at Army basic training graduation in 2016. (Xilong Zhu)

Zhu graduated from basic training on June 9, 2016, and was handed over to ICE custody months later, after the Army lost a battle to retain him, Stock said. Zhu was included in a group of “holdovers,” an Army term he disdains that refers to soldiers who fail training.

That wasn’t him.

“It made me nauseous to be lumped into that group,” he told The Post.

How Zhu got in his predicament is a strange, bureaucratic odyssey after he graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin in 2013. He wanted to become a U.S. citizen, so he decided to enlist through the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program that his father in China had read about. It trades expedited citizenship for language and medical skills in short supply among U.S.-born recruits.

. . . .

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Gee whiz, I thought that spending a week with the grandchildren in Beloit, Wisconsin might get us away from most of the Trump zaniness. But, no such luck as this story about a Beloit College graduate hit during the week. No end to the ways that ICE can think up to waste taxpayer money, clog already overwhelmed Immigration Court dockets with cases that no responsible prosecutor would even file, and exhibit mindless cruelty and irrationality in the process. Small wonder that some pols are starting to suggest that American would be safer and better off without ICE.

PWS

04-06-18

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SHAFTING THE BRAVE!– U.S. Military Sticks It To Migrant Recruits — “It’s a dumpster fire ruining people’s lives. The magnitude of incompetence is beyond belief . . . . We have a war going on. We need these people.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/09/15/army-kills-contracts-for-hundreds-of-immigrant-recruits-sources-say-some-face-deportation/?hpid=hp_regional-hp-cards_rhp-card-national%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.780a7e57ba01

Alex Horton writes in the Washington Post:

“U.S. Army recruiters have abruptly canceled enlistment contracts for hundreds of foreign-born military recruits since last week, upending their lives and potentially exposing many to deportation, according to several affected recruits and a retired Army officer familiar with their situation.

Many of these enlistees have waited years to join a troubled immigration recruitment program designed to attract highly skilled immigrants into the service in exchange for fast-track citizenship.

Now recruits and experts say that recruiters are shedding their contracts to free themselves from an onerous enlistment process to focus on individuals who can more quickly enlist and thus satisfy strict recruitment targets.

The Pentagon and Army Recruiting Command, which oversees policy and guidance at its recruitment centers across the country, did not answer repeated requests for comment.

Margaret Stock, a retired Army officer central to the creation of the immigration recruitment program, told The Post that she has received dozens of frantic messages from recruits this week, with many more reporting similar action in Facebook groups. She said hundreds could be affected.

 

“It’s a dumpster fire ruining people’s lives. The magnitude of incompetence is beyond belief,” she said. “We have a war going on. We need these people.”

Stock said a recruiter told her there was pressure from the recruiting command to release foreign-born recruits, with one directive suggesting they had until Sept. 14 to cut them loose without counting against their recruiting targets, an accounting quirk known as “loss forgiveness.”

The recruiter told Stock the Army Reserve is struggling to meet its numbers before the fiscal year closes Sept. 30, and canceling on resource-intensive recruits is attractive to some recruiters.

Half a dozen recruits from across the country tell The Post their contracts have been or will be canceled. Some are now out of legal immigration status and fear deportation.

Lola Mamadzhanova, who immigrated to the United States from Kyrgyzstan in 2009, said she heard that Army recruiters in Evanston, Ill., texted immigrant recruits last week asking whether they still wanted to enlist, with an unusual condition: They had 10 minutes to respond. She never received the text message.”

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Read the full story at the link.

No wonder we can’t win wars; it’s a failure of leadership.

PWS

09-15-17

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  3. TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S UGLINESS IS EVERYWHERE IN AMERICA! – Beloit College Grad/Honorably Discharged Army Vet Target For ICE Removal Despite Mattis’s Assurances To The Contrary!
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