Bottoms Transfers ICE inmates; Gwinnett Eyes Taking Them
by Phil Kent | Sep 7, 2018 |

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms yesterday signed an executive order ending the city’s contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and calling for all remaining illegal alien detainees to be transferred out of the Atlanta City Detention Center. Critics say it basically turns Atlanta into a “sanctuary city” for illegal immigrants and prompted neighboring Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway to tell InsiderAdvantage: “I am open to take a look at holding these ICE prisoners and willing to talk to ICE about it.”

The federal ICE agency, tasked with not just arresting and deporting illegal aliens but also sex and drug traffickers, pays for the housing of criminal immigrants. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the lost revenue represents one-fifth of the Atlanta’s jail’s budget.

Atlanta, though, has enough money to fund a legal defense fund for illegal aliens. Just last November, the city set aside $150,000 of taxpayer money for legal defense for people who are accused of running afoul of federal immigration law under a program with the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice.

Bottoms turned to an advisory board for advice on the executive order and a look at the membership reveals it is heavy with former inmates, self-described left-wing activists and Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck.

“The new mayor has set up an advisory board consisting of well-known corporate-funded, anti-enforcement immigration activists and seems to have adopted the leftist open borders agenda and run with it,” says D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society. “It raises the question: is the city getting too much funding from taxpayers? Mayor Bottoms has enough taxpayer funding to offer legal assistance to illegal aliens facing deportation and enough to end a program that reportedly represents a fifth of the revenue for jail funding. Add to that the family separation hardship she has inflicted on the families of illegal aliens who are captured in the future and will now be transferred to distant south Georgia holding facilities instead of being close by in the Atlanta jail.”

Phil Kent is the CEO and publisher of InsiderAdvantage and a regular panelist on Fox5Atlanta’s Sunday Georgia Gang broadcast. Here.

Photo: Bensbiltong.com

AJC

July 30, 2018

Lawyer: State’s immigration board members serving on expired terms

By Chris Joyner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Decatur city attorney has asked the Attorney General’s office to look into whether members of the Georgia Immigration Enforcement Review Board have overstayed their term in office and should be removed.

In his letter, Brian Downs said five of the seven members have served since the board’s creation in 2011, despite a state law that limits members to two terms of two years each.

“If these board members are not supposed to be serving under the law, then they need to step aside,” Downs said in an interview Monday.

It is the latest development in the city’s fight against Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle’s accusation that Decatur is violating state laws outlawing “sanctuary” cities.

The letter singles out Chairman Shawn Hanley and board member Phil Kent, both outspoken activists for tighter immigration controls, for replacement. Hanley and Kent were appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal.

But Downs also notes Cagle appointees Boyd Austin and Coweta County Sheriff Mike Yeager, along with Moultrie farmer Terry Clark, who was appointed by House Speaker David Ralston, have also served since 2011 without ever being reappointed.

“Expedited action on this situation is critical,” Downs said. “The IERB has multiple pending cases in which each of these individuals have no legal right to participate.”

Cagle filed a complaint against Decatur in November claiming that by prohibiting police from holding suspected illegal immigrants solely on a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement the city broke a state law forbidding “sanctuary cities.” Cagle filed the complaint from the lieutenant governor’s office, but it came amid his campaign against Secretary of State Brian Kemp for the Republican nomination for governor.

Both Cagle and Kemp sparred over who could be toughest on immigration, among other issues. Kemp defeated Cagle in a primary runoff July 24.

Decatur has denied its policy violates the state law. Downs has repeatedly said Decatur is not a sanctuary city in sometimes heated exchanges with immigration board members…. More here.

GALEO Inc. lobbyist Maria Palasios testifies against illegal alien drivers license reform legislation – March, 2018. Photo: Georgia state senate

 Insider advantage Georgia

Lawsuit from former illegal alien, anti-enforcement lobbyist candidate raises questions

May 23, 2018

D.A. King

As IAG Publisher Phil Kent recently noted here, a former illegal alien, Maria Palasios, is suing to reverse a decision from Secretary of State Brian Kemp that she is ineligible to run for a seat in the General Assembly. The story creates several important questions and probably exposes another lie from the Obama administration on the illegal executive DACA amnesty.

In their own coverage of the story, the AJC reports that Palasios “was brought by her parents to the United States from Mexico as an infant without authorization, and she became a U.S. citizen in 2017.”

Exactly how, we should ask, did an illegal alien become a U.S. citizen? Naturalization requires lawful status.

When he rolled out the DACA amnesty during the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama assured the nation: “now, let’s be clear — this is not amnesty, this is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship.”
It is likely that Palasios was given DACA status, and given the possibility she will be elected to lawmaker status, that should be an integral part of the story. It is also likely that she exploited a process called “advance parole” in which an alien obtains permission to leave the U.S., then reenters with permission – that is to say lawfully. After that there can be a path to a “green card” and to citizenship.

As the Washington Post reluctantly explained in September, according to Senator Charles Grassley and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, 59,778 DACA recipients had applied for green-card status — and 39,514 had been approved.

Of the illegal aliens who had received green cards, 1,056 had become U.S. citizens as of September, 2017.

It is also quite relevant that would-be lawmaker Palasios is employed by the corporate-funded, anti-borders GALEO Corporation to lobby against immigration enforcement under the Gold Dome. You can see her in action (here 9:07 on the counter) in an official Senate Public Safety Committee video from March lobbying against former state Sen. Josh McKoon’s illegal alien drivers license reform bill that would have stopped the current practice of giving some illegal aliens the exact same drivers license as legal immigrants.

Note: This is the same hearing noted by IAG last month in which Dalton state Sen. Chuck Payne, R-Dalton, asked how McKoon’s bill would be enforced “out of state” before he voted against it. Payne was re-elected in his primary race yesterday.

In the lawsuit Palasios – and the ACLU – claim she has been a “citizen” of Georgia since 2009, which was three years before Obama’s DACA amnesty. It looks like the “New Georgia” may be a place where illegal aliens can be considered “citizens.”

We’ll see.

D.A. King is president of the Dustin Inman Society   Here

photo: DIS

Renegade GOPers Sabotage Official English Bill

Insider Advantage Georgia

by Phil Kent | Mar 1, 2018

Capitol sources indicate that state Sens. P.K. Martin, R-Lawrenceville, and Renee Unterman, R-Buford, kept complaining to the GOP Senate caucus leadership that they would be hurt in their districts if they supported a constitutional amendment by Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, and 30-plus co-sponsors to designate English as the official language of government operations. This caused Senate leaders to back away from holding even an up-or-down floor vote on the amendment.

The measure passed the state Senate with a two-thirds vote in 2016 but observers say reluctance by the two Republicans and the loss of former Sen. Hunter Hill’s district to a liberal Democrat soured passage chances for this year.

The amendment, subject to ratification by a statewide referendum if passed by the legislature, would provide “that official state actions be in English” and “prohibit … any language other than English be used in any documents, regulations, orders, transactions, proceedings, meetings, programs or publications” as well as “prohibit discrimination, penalties or other limits on participation against persons who speak only English.”

“Georgia has an official English-in-government statute but it contains loopholes that would be closed with this amendment,” says Stephen Guschov, executive director of the Washington-based ProEnglish organization. “For example, the Georgia Department of Driver Services administers the permanent resident driver’s license test in 11 foreign languages. That ought to end because it undermines public safety, since all road signage is in English.”

“There are also common-sense exceptions for the state and its political subdivisions. They include the teaching of languages other than English, the promotion of diplomacy, trade, commerce and tourism with other languages, the protection of the rights of crime victims and criminal defendants if other language usage is required and continued use of terms and phrases from other languages that are commonly used,” Guschov noted. “Perhaps Senators Martin and Unterman didn’t read that section.”   Here.

NPR

February 13, 2018

How Metro Atlanta Became A ‘Pioneer’ Of Immigration Enforcement

Arrests by federal immigration agents are way up.

Local law enforcement agencies are eager to help.

And judges rarely side with immigrants fighting deportation.

This is metro Atlanta. By almost any measure, it’s one of the toughest places in America to be undocumented.

A Father, A Husband, An Immigrant: Detained And Facing Deportation
NATIONAL
A Father, A Husband, An Immigrant: Detained And Facing Deportation
“I hope it’s true,” said Phil Kent, a member of the Georgia Immigration Enforcement Review Board. “I would hope that Atlanta is one of the tougher places.”

Georgia has some of the strictest immigration laws in the country. Driving without a license, for instance, is a jailable offense here. So undocumented immigrants who get behind the wheel in this sprawling state risk arrest.

“We were a pioneer state … almost every year in our legislature trying to tighten up with regard to immigration enforcement,” said Kent, whose board is charged with ensuring that the state laws are enforced. More here.

GALEO’s Jerry Gonzalez – photo, DIS

“Shorter: The SPLC says the Nation of Islam is a “hate group” and Jerry Gonzalez of GALEO Inc. is partners in the anti-enforcement Cobb United for Change Coalition with the Nation of Islam.

_______

Brown supremacist Jerry Gonzalez: An ethnic hustler with ties to “hate group”

By his own mindless standards, the Executive Director of GALEO, Jerry Gonzalez, has ties to at least one “hate group.” Which makes his latest race-baiting hissy fit, smear-shot at my pro-enforcement friend Phil Kent all the more obvious and comical.

Under Jerry (Gerado E.) Gonzalez’s leadership, the anti-enforcement immigration corporation GALEO partnered up with several marginal groups in 2008 to form what they called the “Cobb United for Change Coalition” here in Cobb County, Georgia.

The groups and their leaders involved in this coalition included the Nation of Islam (headed nationally by the Rev. Louis Farrakhan), the corporate-funded Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (Jerry Gonzalez), the New Order National Human Rights Organization (Gerald Rose), the Cobb Immigrant Alliance (Rich Pellegrino), the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (Mexican citizen and former Atlanta Mexican Consul General Teodoro Maus), the Cobb Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the Rev. Dwight Graves), the Family Life Restoration Center (Luther Washington Jr.) and according to an Marietta Daily Journal editorial, the National Council of La Raza (Janet Murguía).

For the readers who do not understand Spanish, a translation: The last group mentioned above translates as “The National Council of the Race.” After forty-six years, La Raza has changed it’s name.

When they aren’t smearing Christian groups and caring for its off shore bank accounts, the SPLC hucksters, put out a “hate map” of “hate groups” which has included the Nation of Islam, one of GALEO’s partners in the Cobb United for Change Coalition.

Shorter: The SPLC says the Nation of Islam is a “hate group” and Jerry Gonzalez of GALEO Inc. is partners in the anti-enforcement Cobb United for Change Coalition with the Nation of Islam.

For mainstream Georgians who have the pleasure of not being familiar with “Angry Jerry” Gonzalez, it may help to know that he is one of the ethnic hustler, hard leftists who uses the endless smears from the discredited SPLC to attempt to keep pro-American dialogue out of the immigration debate. But he is also a wanna be tough guy when he doesn’t like what you have to say. Example: A 2011 Rome News-Tribune report (“Immigration discussion gets heated during panel”  recounts Gonzalez’s antics at a mainstream event in that lovely Georgia city.

Apparently, Gonzalez was “uninvited” as a panel member on a scheduled meeting focused on Georgia’s E-Verify law.

According to the Rome news report, Gonzalez showed up anyway, angrily shouted at Rome’s diminutive and well-liked state Representative, Katie Dempsey, from the audience during and after the event and ended up being escorted out of the event, the building and off the property by Rome police officers. Dempsey was a cosigner on the bill that created the E-Verify requirement for private employers, HB 87. Word around Rome is that the meeting organizers learned of Jerry’s involvement in a lawsuit against the governor and the state to overturn stop enforcement/HB 87 and concluded that Gonzalez wasn’t the best choice for a rational, unbiased discussion.

We agree. And we wonder if Angry Jerry will chase and scream at Phil Kent at the coming event. In the spirit of the leftist smear artists, somebody may want to ask Jerry if he still beats his husband. 

Led by Gonzalez, GALEO toxic for federal judge nominee

Angry Jerry is likely still hysterical over the fact that the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee tossed consideration of a GALEO board member, Dax Lopez, after Barack Obama nominated him for a federal judge seat here in Georgia. Georgia Senator David Perdue, a committee member, made it clear that Lopez’s ties to the radical, Jane Fonda-funded GALEO Inc. caused enough concern to reject Dax Lopez.

If Angry Jerry’s years of marching in the streets of Georgia and Washington D.C. demanding an end to voter ID and enforcement of American immigration laws wasn’t what illustrated the anti-American nature of Jerry Gonzalez, GALEO and it’s mission, maybe it was the fact that Gonzalez is a former employee of the radical MALDEF.

To get an idea of the ideology involved in rabid haters like Gonzalez, it helps to know what a MALDEF founder, Mario Obledo, made it quite clear on the radio in 1998: “California is going to become a Hispanic state and if anyone doesn’t like it they should leave. They ought to go back to Europe.” 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Jerry Gonzalez, race-baiting hater.

AJC

Photo: AJC

Atlanta fined $1,000 for violating Georgia immigration law

July 21, 2017

Georgia’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board this week issued its first fine, imposing a $1,000 penalty against Atlanta for violating a state law for verifying the lawful presence of people applying for public benefits.

At issue is a Georgia statute that says government agencies that administer public benefits must require applicants to submit affidavits verifying they are legally present in the U.S. Those agencies are required to screen noncitizen applicants using the federal Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlements program, or SAVE.

Filed in August of 2016 by anti-illegal immigration activist D.A. King, the complaint alleged Atlanta did not use the SAVE program while renewing the Atlanta Historical Society’s nonprofit business license. The board notified Atlanta about the penalty in a letter this week.

In a May 18 response to the complaint, the city said it approved the Atlanta Historical Society’s initial business license before the state’s SAVE requirement took effect. City officials argued the complaint about the license renewal became moot after they requested and received a SAVE affidavit from the Atlanta Historical Society on May 10. They said they have done the same thing for all “similarly situated nonprofit entities.”

“The city is disappointed with the board’s decision because the city complied with the spirit and letter of the law, and took remedial steps at the board’s request,” Jenna Garland, a spokeswoman for Mayor Kasim Reed, said in a prepared statement. “The city is reviewing the decision and considering its options.”

RELATED: Enforcement of Georgia’s immigration law will vary

IN-DEPTH: Large police agencies aren’t enforcing state immigration law

Phil Kent, a member of the Immigration Enforcement Review Board, issued a statement Friday about the board’s 4-2 decision.

“Last year D.A. King filed a complaint to the IERB against the city of Atlanta because it refused to protect public benefits according to state law,” he said. “The IERB voted to agree with King that Atlanta was in violation — so the $1,000 fine speaks for itself.”

King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates enforcement of U.S. immigration and employment laws. In all, King has filed 18 of the 19 complaints the board has received since it was formed following the 2011 passage of House Bill 87, Georgia’s comprehensive anti-illegal immigration law, according to the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts.

This is not the first time King has set his sights on the city. In 2012, he alleged Atlanta violated state law by allowing people to use Mexican matricula consular ID cards in city government transactions. Georgia law says city officials may not accept the cards when people apply for public benefits. Atlanta officials asked the state board to dismiss the complaint after the City Council repealed an ordinance at the heart of the dispute.

HERE 

A unit of the Technical College System of Georgia

Michelle Siniard
Vice President of Administrative Services

Administrative Financial Services Division

80 Cohen Walker Drive

Warner Robins, GA 31088

P: (478) 218-3330

C: (478) 542-4617

Correction from CGTC received today:

My apologies, the exception is OCGA 50-18-72 (a)(1) and (37).

__

From: D.A. KING [mailto:Dking1952@comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2017 3:49 PM
To: Siniard, Michelle <msiniard@centralgatech.edu>
Cc: Benjamin Vinson <ben.vinson@dentons.com>; James Balli <jballi@slhb-law.com>; Boyd Austin <boydaustin@dallas-ga.gov>; Mike Yeager <myeager@coweta.ga.us>; Shawn Hanley <shawnhanley@icloud.com>; Terry Clark <tdlfarms@yahoo.com>; Phil Kent <philkent@philkent.com>
Subject: Citation you sent – pls help me find those paragraphs? Re: Open Records Request – Adult Education – also, Ga law makes a clear difference between Adult Education and postsecondary education which is covered in FERPA

Ms. Siniard,
Thank you for your response. I will ask the Immigration Enforcement Review Board to subpoena the requested records. In the meantime, can you pls highlight the paragraphs you cite in OCGA 50-18-71? ( I paste the text of that law below)
I am familiar with reading Ga code, but cannot seem to find either paragraph. I am sure I am overlooking it.
Thanks.

D.A. King

Original request HERE 

XLS Attachment:  6.30.17 Copy of ESL for 2015 2016 and 2017

Note: The FERPA mentioned in the below letter seems to apply to children’s education and “post secondary education”. Not Adult Education. See it HERE.

And I need help finding the cited sections/paragraphs in OCGA 50-18-71 cited in the letter.

Sent today to IERB and the Georgia AG office:

To the members of the Immigration Enforcement Review Board and the AG office,

I am requesting that the IERB and or the AG office subpoena copies of SAVE affidavits and verifiable ID that should have been collected by Central Georgia Technical College for the Adult Education classes that school has conducted.
I also point out that in OCGA 50-36-1, Post Secondary Education and Adult Education are two different public benefits. The FERPA Act cited in the reply from CGTC seems to apply to children and post secondary education. Also, I cannot see the two paragraphs CGTC cites in OCGA 50-18-71.

I believe that the SAVE records should be provided for inspection as I requested, now that we are told they exist.

Thank you,

D.A. King

SPJ Ethics Committee Publications

AJC reporter Sheinin criticized for “fake news”

by IAG Staff | Feb 23, 2017 | James Magazine

State Rep. Jesse Petrea, R-Savannah, and a number of immigration control activists are upset with Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Aaron Gould Sheinin and his editors for printing what they call “fake news” in an article yesterday describing Petrea’s House Bill 452 dealing with criminal aliens.

Sheinin wrote: “Legislation filed in the state House on Wednesday would require the GBI to create and maintain a website listing any unauthorized immigrant currently in Georgia.”

Longtime activist D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society brands it as “false” (as does Petrea and others) and demanded an AJC retraction. As this is written, the newspaper hasn’t done so.

In response to an email from King calling him out, however, Sheinin claimed Petrea “introduced a bill that does more than he says it means.” But then, after speaking with Petrea, Sheinin backed down and wrote in an email that “am going to change the story to reflect what he intends the bill to do, instead of what it says in plain language it would do.”

“This happens all too often. The AJC sometimes rewrites new versions of political stories when they are originally inaccurate– rather than just simply publishing a formal clarification or correction,” says Phil Kent, CEO of InsiderAdvantage Georgia and the governor’s appointee to the state Immigration and Enforcement Review Board.

What is accurate, by the way, is that Petrea’s bill would require the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to share information it has been receiving from the Department of Homeland Security for over a year regarding the release from federal custody of criminal aliens onto the street.

IAG is a subscription website. We post here by permission. Many thanks to Mr. Phil Kent, IAG publisher.

Insider Advantage Georgia

February 23, 2017

AJC reporter Sheinin criticized for “fake news”
by IAG Staff | Feb 23, 2017 | James Magazine

State Rep. Jesse Petrea, R-Savannah, and a number of immigration control activists are upset with Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Aaron Gould Sheinin and his editors for printing what they call “fake news” in an article yesterday describing Petrea’s House Bill 452 dealing with criminal aliens.

Sheinin wrote: “Legislation filed in the state House on Wednesday would require the GBI to create and maintain a website listing any unauthorized immigrant currently in Georgia.” Longtime activist D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society brands it as “false” (as does Petrea and others) and demanded an AJC retraction. As this is written, the newspaper hasn’t done so.

In response to an email from King calling him out, however, Sheinin claimed Petrea “introduced a bill that does more than he says it means.” But then, after speaking with Petrea, Sheinin backed down and wrote in an email that “am going to change the story to reflect what he intends the bill to do, instead of what it says in plain language it would do.”

“This happens all too often. The AJC sometimes rewrites new versions of political stories when they are originally inaccurate– rather than just simply publishing a formal clarification or correction,” says Phil Kent, CEO of InsiderAdvantage Georgia and the governor’s appointee to the state Immigration and Enforcement Review Board.

What is accurate, by the way, is that Petrea’s bill would require the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to share information it has been receiving from the Department of Homeland Security for over a year regarding the release from federal custody of criminal aliens onto the street.

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