Trump Picks Mark Morgan to Head ICE

WASHINGTON—Filling another gap created by a big Department of Homeland Security shake-up, President Donald Trump has tapped former Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “I am pleased to inform all of those that believe in a strong, fair and sound Immigration Policy that Mark Morgan will be joining the Trump Administration as the head of our hard working men and women of ICE,” Trump wrote on Twitter on May 5. “Mark is a true believer and American Patriot. He will do a great job!”

Morgan served as former President Barack Obama’s Border Patrol Chief at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. He is also a 20-year veteran of the FBI. Trump removed Morgan six days after taking office in January 2017 and replaced him with Ronald Vitiello. Subsequently, Vitiello moved to acting director of ICE after Tom Homan retired in June 2018. And now, Morgan will replace Vitiello. Morgan has been in the public eye about border security in the last few months, vociferously supporting a border wall and the need for Congress to change legal loopholes that are allowing for hundreds of thousands of bogus asylum claims.

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times on April 24, Morgan said the current crisis on the border is the “worst in our history.” “The border is still 60 percent wide open, meaning it doesn’t have enough infrastructure, technology, and personnel,” Morgan said. “And because anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of Border Patrol resources are being pulled away and dedicated to the humanitarian side, the border is even more wide-open for the cartels to do what? Exploit. To bring drugs, contraband, and bad people in.” Morgan’s new job is focused on interior enforcement, investigations into trafficking, and preventing terrorism.

In our recent interview, Morgan touched upon several things he thinks ICE can do to stem the flow of illegal immigration, especially the huge influx of economic migrants from Central America. “I think we need to pass a regulation that will actually give ICE the ability to detain family units while they’re going through the immigration process,” Morgan said. “At the same time, let’s reinstitute what they used to do called ‘port courts.’ That means we shoot all the assets, a whole government approach down to the border, everything that you need, soup-to-nuts, to be able to have the immigration hearing and do that quickly. And then, if those claims are found to be substantiated, then they’ll be allowed in. If not, we remove them immediately. “And so the last part of that is we need to ramp up our interior enforcement. There are over a million illegal immigrants who entered the country illegally, filed a false claim, have received due justice through the immigration proceedings, and they’ve found to be false, and they’ve received a deportation order removal. A million, and they still remain here illegally. We can’t wait for Congress. We need to act ourselves.”

Trump removed Vitiello from his post at ICE early April, saying the agency is “going in a little different direction.” “Ron’s a good man. But we’re going in a tougher direction. We want to go in a tougher direction,” Trump said April 5. Two days later, Kirstjen Nielsen left her post as Secretary of Homeland Security, and then-CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan assumed the mantle of acting secretary.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-picks-mark-morgan-to-head-ice_2875007.html

Trump Administration Blocks States From Skimming Medicaid Payments for Unions

The Trump administration on May 2 finalized a Medicaid rule that will cut off states from skimming Medicaid payments for home caregivers and diverting them to labor unions. While federal law requires Medicaid payments to be made directly to the service providers, several states began flouting the requirement in the 1990s, by diverting portions of the payments toward union dues.

In 2017, eight states took approximately $150 million in Medicaid payments from the wages of more than 350,000 caregivers, according to a report by the Freedom Foundation, a non-profit that has led the fight to curtail the practice. “Caregivers deserve to be able to choose how to spend their wages after they’ve been paid in full for their services,” said Maxford Nelsen, the director of labor policy at the Freedom Foundation. “If they wish to support a union, that’s up to them. But giving unions access to caregivers’ paychecks has enabled them to exploit caregivers, using an array of unethical and illegal schemes, up to and including forging signatures on membership forms.”

The Supreme Court in 2014 struck down mandatory union dues requirements for home caregivers as unconstitutional. The same year, the Obama administration attempted to retroactively legitimize the practice by adding an exception to the direct payment requirement. The Trump administration’s Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced in July 2018 that it intends to undo the Obama-era rule. The final rule will be effective in July 2019. The CMS found that the federal Medicaid law didn’t allow the Obama administration to order an exception to the provision concerning direct payments. The law “provides for a number of exceptions to the direct payment requirement, but it does not authorize the agency to create new exceptions,” CMS noted. “Kudos to the Trump administration for ending this shameful Obama-era policy,” said Ashley Varner, a vice president at the Freedom Foundation. “This move by the Trump administration will put as much as $150 million per year back in the pockets of families who need it most.” California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington diverted up to $1.4 billion to unions since 2000.

Brad Boardman, a caregiver from Washington state, opted out of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in 2014 on the heels of the Supreme Court decision that struck down mandatory union memberships for caregivers. In a statement for the Freedom Foundation, he said that the new CMS rule “is a big step towards giving caregivers control of their own money again.” “In recent years, SEIU and state governments have concocted a host of schemes to keep skimming dues from caregivers’ wages for the union to use on its political agenda,” Boardman said. “They’ve lied to and pressured caregivers. They’ve forged signatures on membership forms. They’ve even spent our money on lawsuits and deceptive ballot measures to keep caregivers in the dark about their rights,” he added.

In a statement, the SEIU criticized the Trump’s administration’s rule, saying that it attacks “roughly 800,000 home care workers’ ability to use common paycheck deductions for health insurance contributions, union dues, and other expenses.” Loren Freeman, a Washington state caregiver, said that the CMS decision upholds the rule of law and helps caregivers. “Many live-in providers like myself pay as much as $1,300 a year in union dues for dubious representation,” Freeman said. “All caregivers deserve to be able to decide for themselves whether to hand over part of their wages to a union.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-administration-blocks-states-from-skimming-medicaid-payments-for-unions_2907345.html

Multi-State Child Exploitation Operation Busted; 82 Arrested, 17 Children Rescued

An investigation into the possession and distribution of child pornography covering eight southeastern U.S. states culminated in the arrest of 82 people and the rescue of 17 child victims, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). The four-month-long investigation, dubbed “Operation Southern Impact III,” resulted in three days of investigative actions including “search warrant executions, undercover operations, arrests, and sex offender compliance verification visits.” In total, 171 law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies were involved. The ages of those arrested range from 20 to 70, the GBI said May 3. Occupations of arrestees included a “non-profit employee, small business owner, store clerk, mechanic, daycare administrator, youth group leader, former high school band director, freelance photographer, construction worker, and painter.”

As part of the operation, 861 digital devices were previewed and 1,613 digital devices were seized. Included among those devices were 203 mobile phones. The investigation stemmed from cyber tips received from the ICAC Task Force of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In Georgia alone, 31 people were arrested, mostly for the possession or distribution of child pornography. Investigators said they targeted those distributing “the most violent sexual abuse material involving infants and toddlers” which the bureau itself noted, “is not uncommon.” “The Georgia ICAC Task Force consistently finds this type of content,” the release stated.

Of those arrested in Georgia, seven traveled for the goal of meeting and having sex with a minor. Investigators say predators often visit chat rooms and sites on the internet to arrange such meetings. The arrested perpetrators targeted both boys and girls. Four of those arrested in Georgia were registered sex offenders. One offender previously had been arrested during a similar operation in 2015. “The dedicated law enforcement professionals that are part of the Georgia ICAC Task Force will not cease searching for those who are producing, trading and collecting this graphic material,” Debbie Garner, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit said. “We will continue to work together to find, investigate and prosecute these predators.” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr also praised the efforts of those behind the operation.

In April 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill dubbed the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017.” The act makes it easier to take legal action against individuals who use websites to facilitate sex trafficking, while also aiding victims to fight back against websites that profit from their exploitation. In the same month, sex-trafficking website Backpage.com—the largest human-trafficking portal in the United States—was taken down by the FBI. Trump has made combating human trafficking a focal point of his administration. A report shared with The Epoch Times last month found the demand for online sex-trafficking dropped following the shutdown of Backpage, as the operators of smaller sites struggled to stay afloat. The report by Childsafe.ai—the world’s first artificial intelligence platform for monitoring, graphing, and modeling child-exploitation risk on the web—detailed how the industry has since been fragmented across dozens of websites, all competing fiercely for market share. Web traffic to advertising websites selling sex drew only 5 to 8 percent of the total unique visitors that Backpage drew at its height in 2016.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/82-arrested-in-multi-state-child-exploitation-operation-17-children-rescued_2907412.html