Grenade Found In Carry-On Baggage In Denver-But Smells Good

Traveling by air requires special preparations.  It is always wise to think about what you are carrying on an airplane.  Even if you have the very best of intentions, you could find yourself in hot water with law enforcement if you are not careful.

TSA Week in Review

In Denver, Colorado, TSA agents found what looked like a grenade (3rd item from left) in the carry on luggage of a passenger.  It turned out, the grenade was full of cologne.  However, a flight crew might have a hard time ascertaining that fact in a heated situation.  No one can be sure their carry on baggage won't fall into the wrong hands on a flight.  Therefore, no matter your intentions, it is illegal to carry objects that resemble bombs and grenades.

You would think this is just plain common sense.  However, the TSA encounters these kinds of things all the time.  How about a loaded weapon with a bullet in the chamber?  Should that be allowed as a carry-on item?

TSA Photos

How about a knife concealed in a belt buckle?  In Kennedy Airport, a knife was recovered from a passenger.  An object like this could easily be used to threaten flight crew or passengers.  Although the TSA is tight lipped about who gets arrested and who gets a ticket, when items are concealed indicating the carry on of the item was not a mere accident, you can bet agents are more likely to arrest the person.

After GermanWings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, locked the captain out of the cockpit and steered the aircraft he was flying into a gradual descent until it crashed into the Alps, perhaps passengers have a stronger argument for arming themselves with certain tools while flying.  The better solution is for more safeguards to be put into place to prevent distraught pilots from taking similar actions.  Passengers with weapons are usually the least able to help in an emergency.  More likely, the weapon will be used for nefarious purposes.

The lesson here, don't bring weapons onto planes.  If you have a pistol that must be transported, along with ammunition, you must declare it.  The item, if approved for transport, must not be in your carry on luggage.

Change.org To Feature Brothers Valenzuela In Email Campaign

San Francisco, California - Change.org selected a petition to the President of the United States to stop deporting U.S. Veterans and Bring deported veterans home.  

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Specifically, the petition is designed to stop the unfair harassment of two Viet Nam veterans, Manuel and Valente Valenzuela.  The Valenzuela Brothers found themselves in removal or deportation proceedings after applying to renew their driver's licenses.  The Brothers have lived in the U.S. nearly all of their lives and have a U.S. citizen mother.

Valente Valenzuela arrived in 'Nam shortly after the Tet offensive.  Valente soon found himself working in a section of the military whose activities remain secret today.  Valente says he still suffers nightmares from his experiences.

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Manuel soon followed Valente to serve the U.S. performing rescue services for at-risk military teams.  Like his brother Valente, Manuel put his life on the line in active duty combat situations.  Many soldiers never returned from theater, others returned severely maimed.  The brothers took that chance supporting the country they call home.

Upon return from Viet Nam, both Valenzuela Brothers suffered the disgrace placed upon them by U.S. citizens angry at the Johnson Administration for it's escalation of the war.  A soldier who places his life on the line has no say in how and where he is deployed, yet one of the brothers remembers clearly having human feces thrown at him upon his return to the U.S.

Please sign the petition to stop deporting veterans and bring deported veterans home!  Stop the injustice to the Valenzeula Brothers and all veterans!

Life continued for the Valenzuela brothers for many years.  Each brother encountered minor skirmishes with the law as they dealt with their memories and trauma of life and death in a war zone. Each brother worked hard to follow the rule of law set down in the U.S., especially in the 911 environment.  What a surprise was in store for the brothers when they renewed their driver's licenses.  They received a notice to report to Homeland Security.  From there, deportation cases were opened on the elderly Viet Nam vets.

That is when the Brothers Valenzuela, as they like be called, found out they are not the only soldiers to face the wrath of aggressive actions by the Department of Homeland Security.  Many soldiers have been deported.  Homeland Security says they don't really know how many, because they don't keep statistics on who is a veteran and who is not, when they institute deportation proceedings.

Fabian Rebolledo, Getty Images

I had the chance to meet Fabian Rebolledo when I traveled with the Valenzuela brothers to the border to conduct a protest over the deportation of veterans.  

I will never forget the interview I did with Fabian's son who had an extremely difficult time talking about what could happen to his father.







   You can help return deported veterans by signing the petition from Change.org

Dannels: Feds Won't Prosecute "Illegals" With Child Pornography

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Washington, D.C.  The Honorable Sheriff Mark Daniels testified the federal government is not prosecuting "illegals" crossing the border with child pornography.

Dannels was one of five witnesses who testified to a mostly Republican led U.S. Senate hearing in front of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Tuesday, March 17th, 2015.

"I was talking with the Sheriff in Yuma, Sheriff Wilmont, last night, uhhh" Dannels said at approximately 2 hrs 14 minutes into the hearing.

"There is an issue right now, uhh, with those illegals that have child, er, pornography, that...pornography, child pornography, they won't prosecute."

Speaking of abusing children, the Sheriff was quick to note his county, Cochise County, in Arizona, was quick to categorize juveniles carrying marijuana across the border as adults.  Once categorized as adults, these wayward youths are ripe to serve stiff prison sentences as if they had the wisdom of adults.  In the old days, categorization of a juvenile as an adult offender was generally reserved for extremely serious criminals who are unlikely to be rehabilitated, for example, murderers.  Hungry children who are convinced to ferry drugs across the border lack the guilty mind necessary for adult-length prison sentences.

Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrerra says when it is a four-day weekend, some Border Patrol agents won't bother doing the paperwork on drug smuggling cases.  Instead, they do an administrative seizure on the vehicle, release the immigrants and let the non-four-day weekend crew come get the vehicle.  The apprehending agents then return to more important tasks than prosecuting drug smugglers.

Chris Cabrerra

Cabrerra, who is the Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) Local 3307, claims his superiors who say the border is secure don't know what they are talking about.  While the Department of Homeland Security says they are 70 percent effective, they only really catch 30 to 40 percent of the "illegals" who cross the border.  The percentage is even lower for drug smugglers, Cabrerra claims.

Of course, if agents are not bothering to do the paperwork on drug smugglers, the statistics won't be very high.

"I heard, we are not even prosecuting, for example, uhhh marijuana smugglers, unless they have at least five hundred pounds of marijuana....was that an accurate assessment," Senator Ron Johnson, (R-Wis) the head of the Committee, queried Sheriff Dannels.

"Again, so the drug traffickers use teenagers because?" Johnson prompted Sheriff Dannels.

"They won't prosecute," Dannels parroted back.

Senator Kelly Ayotte, (R-New Hampshire) spent her time making immigrants out to be heroine traffickers.  In doing so, Ayotte failed to mention an important part of the solution to the undocumented immigrant problem, Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which Senator Johnson had at least managed to mention.

Eva Millona, Executive Director of Massachusetts Immigrant and Advocacy Coalition (MIRA) responded to Senator Ayotte's remarks by saying, "Senator Ayotte's outrageous bogeyman statements today discredit her longstanding, serious work toward bipartisan solutions that benefit the people of New Hampshire and make our nation safer."

The witnesses for the hearing were clearly stacked in favor of the Republican supported border-security-first proposition.  Interestingly enough, none of the witnesses, including Cabrerra, had any clue about what percentage of the cross-border traffic were people seeking relief from starvation and what percentage were drug traffickers.  One common theme was popular with most of the witnesses:  More boots should be on the ground searching for drug traffickers and terrorists.

Senator Carper (D-Del) was one of the few in the hearing who made the point about the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrerra could have his extra boots chasing drug dealers if he was not so busy chasing poor people through the desert.  Cabrerra made Carper's point when he used the example of a team of Border Patrol agents being tied up with 90 to 100 immigrants sent by traffickers as decoys so the traffickers could do an end run around the agents with drugs.

Comprehensive Immigration Reform was passed in the U.S. Senate, but a few conservative U.S. House of Representative leaders refused to allow the bill to come to a vote.  One of the provisions of the law was to increase the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents, already the biggest law enforcement agency in the U.S.  The NBPC opposed the senate bill.

Monica Weisberg-Stewart Rio Grande Guardian 

Unfortunately, today's hearing was so political with rhetoric and inflated figures, the seriousness of border security and immigration reform was quickly lost.  Senator Johnson was running a kangaroo court.

If the Securing the Southwest Border: Perspectives from Beyond the Beltway hearing was a serious effort, the Senators from Wisconsin and New Hampshire would have been considering a plan to give every single immigrant in the nation one last opportunity to come out of hiding.  That would include all criminals but with a pot at the end of the rainbow for national security hawks:  In exchange for identifying themselves, a critical element in security, immigrants would get one last chance to remain in the U.S. and help balance the budget.   So long as the immigrants stayed out of trouble, the U.S. would provide a long term path to paying taxes and eventual citizenship.  The only exception would be those on terrorist watch lists.  National security demands the nation identify immigrants with criminal histories, yet neither party is talking about this simple goal.

Even Senator Johnson recognized some of the foolish statements made in the hearing when he called witness Monica Weisberg-Stewart on the carpet for her claim the majority of drugs were coming through the port of entries, to which she replied:

"So we believe that this goods (drugs) are coming through because we have not accurately as a government facilitated the trade and travel and given them (the Border Patrol) the funds necessary in order to be able to cartel the drugs coming through."

We are not sure what facilitating "trade and travel" in relationship to drug trafficking is, or what "cartel the drugs" means.  Mrs. Weisberg-Stewart was unhappy about 4 hour waits to cross the border into the second biggest trading partner with the state of Wisconsin, which Senator Johnson represents.  That trading partner is... Mexico.

ICE Chases Drunk Drivers In National Raid

Reuters/Joshua Lott

ICE continues to deport a near record number of undocumented immigrants.  Amongst them are some of the people who have caused lots of problems in the U.S.  Those include drug dealers, child pornographers, drunk drivers, drug abusers and dealers and gang members.

Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced the results of a nation-wide sweep collecting immigrants in the problem category.  More than 2,000 people were arrested in a 5 day sweep in operation "cross check".

While ICE likes to shine the spotlight on serious offenders, only slightly more than 50% of their nation-wide sweep netted "serious" offenders.  The rest of the unlucky 2,000 immigrants who got caught in the sweep, nearly half, may have had no offense at all, or only minor offenses.

It does not take much to get on the "serious offender" list, including being convicted of a DUI or mere possession of a controlled substance not involved in "dealing".  If this is what ICE considers a serious offender, including 991 of the 2,000 people ICE picked up in it's raid, then it is clearly targeting the wrong people.

It is the arresting of the completely innocent immigrant in these nation-wide man hunts which troubles activists the most.  ICE is perfectly happy to arrest any immigrant they come across while looking for the "serious offender", and in their "knock and talks" despite knowing the President has prioritized enforcement efforts.  To justify it's knock in the wee hours of the morning, ICE releases propaganda claiming to arrest the "worst of the worst" when the majority of the people they arrested had misdemeanor DUI changes.

ICE makes no distinction how long ago an offense occurred.  People with 30 year old DUI charges are hardly a risk to U.S. society, as the passage of time and a clean record since their conviction shows they are rehabilitated and no risk to citizens.  More recent offenders are under court ordered rehabilitation programs.  Their arrest removes them from the supervision of the court and may be robbing them of the opportunity to resolve their addictions.

Some wonder who is better to manage serious criminals: the U.S. or a third world country?  When ICE dumps immigrants into the hands of gangs in central locations, like Ciudad Juarez, then it is destabilizing those nations.  These "dangerous" people are now on the loose, free to offend, when they would have been better managed by the U.S. justice system.  Offending from afar is much easier these days with the Internet, especially for child predators.  Dumping serious gang members into the hands of cartel members just increases the working rants of drug cartels.

The targeting of drunk drivers is also troubling.  Most of these drivers have gone through or are in court ordered rehabilitation programs that last a year or more.  The solution to alcoholism is not deportation.  Alcoholism and drug addiction are better solved from the social scientists rehabilitation point of view combined with a strict dose of the criminal justice system to help people find a solution to their addictions.  Catching and removing people from these rehabilitative processes degrades the effectiveness of court ordered rehabilitation.  

The prospect behind homeland security is to make America safer and stronger.  National raids targeting "serious" criminals, but catching mostly D.U.I. offenders and innocent immigrants, is not a step towards making America stronger.  Pulling people out of their rehabilitation support systems and dropping them in high crime recruitment areas does not protect national security or make the world a safer place.  Sending the true hard criminal to a third world where they can offend with impunity, likewise does not make any country safer.  The U.S. is the best place for them as we manage to institutionalize more people per capita than any other nation.  

ICE has a vital role to play in the security of our nation.  Their efforts stopping sex tourism and sex trafficking are nothing short of noble.  They protect the copyright of private industry.  They help prevent terrorist attacks.  Yet their praying on everyday common immigrants who have done nothing more than drink and drive, and mostly nothing at all, is destabilizing other countries, dividing families and making America an unsafe place to live.  It is also directing the precious resources of a national law enforcement agency towards chasing drunk drivers rather than chasing threats to national security.

U.S. Veteran Ask Senator Bennet To Help Stop Deporting Veterans

Stop deporting U.S. veterans
Bring Deported Veterans Home

Manuel and Valente Valenzuela fought in Viet Nam.  Years later, after applying to renew their driver's licenses, little could they know they would have to fight the very country for which they offered their lives to during the Viet Nam war.

The Valenzeula Brothers ask the White House to issue an executive order to halt the deportation of veterans and to bring deported veterans home.

Both brothers put their lives on the line in active duty.  Valente arrived in 'Nam just after the Tet Offensive.  His brother came later. Valente was recruited by a special services division.  He says he cannot talk about what he was required to do, even to this date.  However, the activities give him nightmares.

Manuel was part of a team that rescued soldiers in trouble.  Both he and Valente got into the thick of fighting in support of an unpopular war.  

When they returned to the U.S. they had human waste tossed on them.  There was no respect for the sacrifice soldiers had been making.  After living in the U.S. nearly all of their lives, they each went to the Driver's License bureau to renew their licenses.  It was post 911, and the country had changed.

Manuel hid his notice of removal for fear it would devastate his brother and closest friend, Valente.  Little did Manuel know, Valente had also hid his notice of removal.  Soon, the secret was out and both Valenzuela brothers were in a fight for their right to stay in the country for which they fought.

The brothers want the President to issue an executive order halting the deportation of veterans and to bring those veterans who have been deported, home.