Archive for October 2006

Possibly one of the biggest people smuggling networks in Europe has been infiltrated by British police; it is the largest human smuggling ring investigated and prosecuted in the UK to date and its members were primarily of Turkish origin. 47 year old Turkish national Ali Riza Gün was the man in charge of it all. On Tuesday the 17th of October this week, Riza was sentenced by the Croydon Crown Court to 10 years imprisonment for his pivotal involvement in the network. Upon completion of his sentence Ali Riza from Barnet who had a forged Cypriot passport will be deported to his native Turkey. In total ten defendants have now been charged in the UK with Conspiracy to Facilitate the Illegal Entry of Illegal Immigrants into the United Kingdom.

The price for a new life in the UK

The investigation, which ultimately led to Ali Riza’s arrest along with his nine other accomplices was led by the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime Directorate under the codename Operation Bluesky and involved working with seven European law enforcement agencies. As was reported in an earlier article by Toplum Postası, other leaders in the network Recap Ramazan Zorlu was sentenced to 8 years 6 months in prison earlier this month, while Hassan Eroglu was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment in late July. Eroglu and Zorlu have also both been recommended for deportation upon completion of their prison sentence.

The network itself involved the large-scale facilitation of illegal immigrants into London from mainland Europe. The illegal immigrants, predominately from Turkey, were smuggled into various entry points in the UK by a variety of methods including cars, trains, ferries and light aircraft through ports in Holland, Italy, France and Belgium. Police revealed that those seeking access to the UK were routinely charged £3,500 to travel overland to Britain and a total of £14,000 for the total route from Turkey to the UK, all of which was paid to the main three conspirators

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NEWARK, NJ — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers fanned out across New Jersey targeting dozens of known fugitive aliens in an intensive seven-day operation that resulted in the arrest of 111 fugitives and illegal aliens. Dozens of ICE officers participated in Return to Sender, a national operation that targets, locates and apprehends immigration fugitives.

Sixty-five of those arrested were targets of the operation that have outstanding warrants of removal. Another 46 individuals were apprehended because they are illegally in the United States. Of the 111 people arrested 34 have criminal records.

Beginning on the morning of October 12, teams of ICE officers in New Jersey targeted fugitive aliens: those who have been ordered deported by immigration judges but who chose to defy the court’s order. Those arrested during the ICE operation come from 22 different countries, including: Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, Egypt, Guatemala, Ecuador, Syria, India, and Peru.

Leader of the movement against illegal immigration (MAI) Alexander Belov is to arrive in Krasnoyarsk on October, 24, as he reported to KNews. The aim of his visit is to meet with the regional department of MAI on the threshold of “Russian March”, which will be held in several regions of Russia on November, 4.

Belov is also going to discuss actions taken after the presidential order to struggle against organized ethnic groupings with Krasnoyarsk activists. ‘Being a public organization, we can help them,’ Belov said.

He noted that his visit program would be published on the organization’s website soon. The movement leader will be met by Legislative Assembly Deputy Oleg Pashchenko.

WICHITA — Five Mexican nationals are facing federal charges related to the production and sale of fraudulent documents to illegal immigrants in western Kansas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.

“This case began with an investigation targeting suspected document vendors in Dodge City,” U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren said in a news release. “Investigators from the Social Security Administration, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Garden City Police Department discovered that for $700 they could easily and quickly obtain a fraudulent Social Security card and a birth certificate.”

The indictment alleges document fraud, aggravated identity theft, unlawful possession of five or more identification documents and harboring illegal aliens.

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The low-earning, unskilled American worker took center stage at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday when Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies debated Daniel Griswold of the libertarian Cato Institute over immigration reform.

The two “number-crunching policy wonks,” as Griswold described them, were both frustrated with the state of immigration. They each had polar opposite views of how to handle it.

To Griswold, immigration is good for the United States, has always been good and has always been an unfounded source of worry for the American public. advertisement

By creating a legal flow of workers for the lower levels of a high-tech economy, a temporary-worker program could solve a lot of ills, Griswold said.

“The United States’ and Arizona’s economy continues to create thousands of jobs a year for people with low skills,” Griswold said.

“The Americans to fill these jobs are shrinking.”

Camarota shot back that only educated elitists share that view.

When factoring in the millions of unskilled Americans who have given up on the labor market, there are more than enough natives to fill the jobs, Camarota said.

They, and their wages, would suffer unbearably by allowing a huge wave of legal immigrants.

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An urban SUV is parked in front of the main door of the Rauhala holiday centre. The licence plate of the massive Volvo reads DAN-1.

The real parking area has slightly more ordinary family vehicles: Opels, Mazdas, and Toyotas. And one Jaguar.

It is champagne-coloured, and will not fit on the gravel road. The Jaguar has been driven into the middle of the unmowed lawn.

Judging from the cars, the people gathered here represent a somewhat varied group.

If the parking area is full, it is even more crowded in the small meeting room of Rauhala. It is there that the Parliamentary candidates of the True Finns are honing the party’s election themes, their image, and their campaigns.

Finland’s smallest Parliamentary party hopes to become the biggest winner in the elections in March. It wants to get as many as seven more seats, in addition to the three that it holds now.

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Paris - A year after riots rocked the nation’s suburbs, French police said on Sunday they were facing a fresh upsurge of violence that risked getting out of hand.

Police unions rang the alarm bell after a gang of hooded youths ambushed a police patrol late on Friday in a poor housing estate north of Paris, hurling rocks and tear gas at the officers as they went to investigate a reported robbery.

Demanding reinforcements and tougher sentencing for juvenile delinquents, police leaders warned that youth gangs in poor, multi-cultural suburbs were looking to create no-go zones for the security forces.

“These aren’t episodic events, they are generalised. The situation hasn’t improved since the riots,” Nicolas Comte, head of the FO police union, told Le Parisien newspaper on Sunday.

“We are calling on the administrators to open their eyes and ensure all the necessary measures are taken to guarantee the physical safety of the police.”

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The public opinion survey, conducted by an independent research firm commissioned by a Washington-based public policy group, shows immigration as a top issue for American voters. Pollster Kellyanne Conway.

“For 53 percent of the electorate, they say it [immigration] is the top issue or one of their top-three issues,” said Kellyanne Conway. “Immigration has never had this kind of primacy in previous elections.”

Likely voters were surveyed in 14 congressional districts spread across the country, as well as in four states with hotly-contested Senate races.

Sixty eight percent of respondents said US immigration levels are too high, and just two percent said they are too low. Seventy percent said they are less likely to vote for candidates that favor increasing legal immigration, and 64 percent said they would back measures that result in voluntary or involuntary repatriation of illegal immigrants.

Conway points out that, on the question of what to do with illegal aliens, most polls have provided only two choices: expulsion or allowing them to earn legal status. She says her poll provided a third option: strict law enforcement that makes it practically impossible for undocumented workers to secure employment and support themselves in the United States, leaving them no choice but to leave of their own accord.

“We find that when you add that third way, that is the policy prescription that has the most support,” said Conway.

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SANTA ANA, Calif. - Orange County supervisors approved a program Tuesday to train 24 sheriff’s deputies to conduct immigration checks at county jails under a tentative agreement with the federal government.

The board of supervisors voted 3-1 to allow the program, which will make the sheriff’s department the 8th county law enforcement agency in the nation to implement it, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Orange County plan is significantly scaled back from Sheriff Mike Carona’s original proposal, which called for 200 deputies trained in immigration law to check all inmates’ immigration status and identify those who should be deported.

Supervisor Lou Correa, who voted against it, questioned whether the effort would make the county safer. He said that by giving deputies federal law enforcement responsibilities, immigrants may grow fearful of them and reluctant to report crimes.

Training will start soon, and the program could launch in late December, said Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of the ICE office of investigations in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties already participate in the program. Since it started in Los Angeles County jails early this year, the deportation rate for arrested illegal immigrants soared to more than 65 percent, Kice said.

TUCSON, Ariz., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ — Knowledge Computing Corp. announced today that the Los Angeles Police Department will deploy COPLINK® — the proven tactical solution used by leading law enforcement agencies to solve and thwart crime in over 300 jurisdictions nationwide. The announcement was made at the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in Boston, MA.

LAPD is the third largest police department in the United States, with 9,300 sworn officers and 3,000 civilian employees charged with protecting citizens within the City of Los Angeles’ 468 square miles. Funding for the project was made possible by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant program.

“COPLINK’s rapid national expansion continues to be fueled by leading law enforcement agencies like LAPD that are spearheading intelligence-lead policing efforts,” said Robert Griffin, CEO of Knowledge Computing Corporation. “We are pleased to deliver one of the most powerful, end-to-end solutions available for generating tactical leads and actionable intelligence proven to help solve and thwart crime, gang activity and terrorism.”

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