Burien Jimmy Matta

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

Three weeks after the city of Burien’s first Latino mayor said he was attacked by a man angry about his policies supporting immigrants, no charges have been filed.

Now the FBI is stepping in after several law enforcement agencies have failed to charge the 62-year-old Burien man who Mayor Jimmy Matta said attacked him at a block party in this suburb city in King County, Washington.

Matta told police that a man in his 60s put him into a headlock and pulled him to the ground on July 21, whispering to the mayor, “We’re not going to let you Latino illegal take over our city,” the Seattle Times reported at the time. 

The attack is

Both the King County prosecuting attorney and state attorney general said they have conflicts of interest.

A spokesman for Attorney General Bob Ferguson said state prosecutors are waiting for the FBI to complete the investigation.

“We’re still waiting to receive the investigation file,” the spokesman said in an email to the Seattle Times.  “Hard to guess at a timeline when we’re not sure when we’ll get the file, but I’m sure the team will need some time with it to review the evidence before making a recommendation.”

Matta has been an outspoken supporter of making Burien a so-called sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.

Former FBI Director James Comey

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Fired FBI Director James Comey, in Ireland to promote his book, “A Higher Loyalty,’ said in Dublin he was ashamed.

“I am ashamed of the way my country has acted with respect of those children,” Comey said Friday in Dublin, according to the Irish Times. “I am disgusted, I am horrified, I am embarrassed, I’m ashamed.”

“My wife and I were joking, not really joking; we wanted to tell the people on the customs line coming here that we were Canadian. And we were joking but it’s funny because it reveals a truth: I’m ashamed.”

USA Today reported on the remarks in the Irish press.

Distant border fence in the desert near El Paso and its Mexican neighbor Juarez.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

President Trump boldly signed a proclamation Wednesday directing National Guard troops to the southwest border in what he falsely called an unprecedented move to crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

President Barack Obama deployed 1,200 members of the National Guard to the border in 2010, President George W. Bush’s decision in 2010 to send up to 6,000 National Guard members to increase military presence at the border in a two-year operation dubbed “Jump Start.”

Under the previous presidents’ plans, the guard members built infrastructure and conducted surveillance but left the arrests and enforcement up to Border Patrol agents who were trained in border enforcements.

Trumps plans, which lacks details about the operation, would not allow troops to come into physical contact with immigrants, three administration officials told NBC News. 

Homeland Security announced the policy in a statement Wednesday afternoon that read, “To secure the border and make America safe, we need to deploy the National Guard. Deploying the National Guard will serve as an immediate deterrent while dramatically enhancing operational control of the U.S. border.”

The statement added the troops would “support federal law enforcement personnel … and that federal migration authorities “will direct enforcement efforts.”

Trump’s announcement, which caught some of his advisers by surprise, pledged Tuesday, “Until we can have a wall and proper security, we are going to be guarding our border with the military.” 

Details like the number of troops to be involved and how long they will stay there remain unknown and are expected to be hammered out in the coming days, officials said.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Francisco resigned over what he called “false” and “misleading” statements by the Trump administration and top-ranking immigration officials.

James Schwab told media outlets on Monday evening that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan were peddling a false narrative that hundreds of “criminal aliens” eluded arrest because Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned immigrants of a forthcoming ICE raid.

Schwab said his concerns about the misleading statements were dismissed, and ICE instructed him to “deflect” questions from the media.

“I quit because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I asked them to change the information. I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”

After 232 people were detained in the raid, Sessions and Homan claimed as many as 800 “criminals” evaded arrest and were a danger to the public.

Schwab said top officials painted a misleading portrait by inflating the number of people who may have avoided arrest and sensationalizing the danger that each poses.

“I didn’t feel like fabricating the truth to defend ourselves against her actions was the way to go about it,” Schwab said. “We were never going to pick up that many people. To say that 100% are dangerous criminals on the street, or that those people weren’t picked up because of the misguided actions of the mayor, is just wrong.”

In fact, Schwab told Oakland Fox affiliate KTVU that the raid netted more arrests than initially planned.

An ICE agent.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions accused Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf of endangering federal agents by warning the public about a forthcoming immigration sweep.

“Here’s my message to Mayor Schaaf: How dare you?” Sessions said Wednesday in Sacramento. “How dare you needlessly endanger the lives of law enforcement just to promote a radical open-borders agenda?”

Thursday, Trump said, “What she did is incredible and very dangerous … She really made law enforcement much more dangerous than it had to be.”

During the four-day enforcement operation, no ICE agents were hurt. In fact, ICE “has experienced relatively few line-of-duty deaths and assaults,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The Chronicle wrote:

According to federal records, a handful of ICE officers are injured in assaults each year, on average. James Schwab, an agency spokesman in San Francisco, said agents face “the same dangers as any other law enforcement officer out in the field.”

No ICE officers were injured or killed in line-of-duty assaults in 2016, the last year in which FBI data are available. In 2015, four officers were injured and none killed in assaults. Seven officers were injured in assaults and none killed in 2014, records show.

However, the FBI records do not appear to reflect some on-duty deaths. Absent, for instance, was the death of San Francisco-based deportation officer Brian Beliso, who according to the agency died of a heart attack he suffered during a foot pursuit in Redwood City on June 8, 2016. And a special agent in New Orleans, J. Scott McGuire, died Jan. 24. 2016, after being injured in a hit and run in Miami Beach, the agency stated on its website.

The reported injuries to ICE officers were among the lowest in federal law enforcement, FBI figures show. In 2016, 484 Customs and Border Protection officers were assaulted. The Bureau of Indian Affairs saw 504 assaults, while the Marshals Service saw 266 assaults.

Other Stories of Interest

• FBI Investigates 142 Threats at San Antonio Schools Since Parkland Shooting
• Mass Shootings: Why Do Authorities Keep Missing Warning Signs?
• Slain Border Patrol’s Brother Pleads for Trump, Sessions to Reopen ‘Fast & Furious’ Case
• Mueller’s Pace Measures Up with Best Prosecutors in ‘Modern History’
• Video of Mother Being Pulled Away from Daughter Calls ICE Tactics into Question

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

Attorney General Jeff Sessions set off an unusually heated battle between California and the Trump administration after filing suit against the state over laws that impede the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

During a contentious, sometimes misleading speech in California’s capital, Sacramento, on Wednesday, Sessions accused California lawmakers of recklessly putting its residents at risk by obstructing federal immigration laws, the New York Times reports. 

California Gov. Jerry Brown responded by saying the Trump administration was “full of liars” and that Sessions was “basically going to war against the state of California.”

Brown added that Sessions was engaging “in a political stunt” with “wild accusations” meant to sow discord over immigration.

During Sessions’ speech, he said the lawsuit is designed to overturn laws designed to obstruct federal immigration agents from operating there.

Politifact.com called out Sessions for making a number of misleading comments. 

ICE official, via ICE.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Jorge Garcia was only 10 years old when an undocumented family member brought him to the U.S. from Mexico.

Three decades later, after raising two teenage children with his beloved wife, the 39-year-old landscaper from suburban Detroit was forced to say goodbye  to his weeping family and return to Mexico under President Trump’s stiff crackdown on illegal immigration, the USA Today reports. 

Garcia, who appears to have a clean criminal record, was too old to qualify for Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era policy that protected children of undocumented immigrations from deportation. Immigrants who want to qualify for DACA status DACA must be 31 or younger as of June 15, 2012.

Garcia routinely checked in with ICE but was never forced to leave.

That changed in November during his last check-in, when immigration agents told him he must leave the country.

On Sunday night, a heavy-hearted Garcia said he was sad and worried.

 “I got to leave my family behind, knowing that they’re probably going to have a hard time adjusting, me not being there for them for who knows how long,” he said, his hands pressed against his forehead. “It’s just hard.”