So much for the sob stories about the ‘unaccompanied minors’ (sometimes referred to as unaccompanied alien children) who enter the US without Mommy or Daddy and end up in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Here at least four of this MS-13 gang once held that status.
Sixth suspect arrested in Montgomery homicide involving MS-13, police say
Police arrested and charged a sixth suspect in a May 26 homicide that Montgomery County police said involved members of the MS-13 gang.
Think about it! Four of these little darlings were once ‘unaccompanied minors’ in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. From left: Carlos Andres Orellana, Daniel E. Huezo Landaverde, Oscar Effrain Zavala-Urrea, Romeo Almengor Oxlaj-Lopez and Victor Alfonso Cruz-Orellana.
Jose Luis Lainez-Martinez, 26, is being held without bond on a first-degree murder charge. No attorney was listed for him in court records.
According to court documents, the homicide occurred when Francisco Medrano-Campos, a painter, left his Wheaton apartment and was ambushed by MS-13 gang members who had watched his movements and knew what time he left for work. He was shot multiple times at 7:06 a.m. and died on the scene, police said.
Weeks before the incident, Medrano-Campos had gotten into an argument with one of the suspects who had broken into his apartment and stolen $3,000 in cash and two video-game systems, court documents allege. Medrano-Campos reportedly fought back, demanding the suspect return what he stole and beating him with a lead pipe, the documents state.
“By all accounts, he was a hard-working guy who was headed to work that morning,” said Capt. Edward Pallas, director of the major crimes division at the Montgomery County Police Department, of Medrano-Campos.
Monday’s arrest of Lainez-Martinez is the latest related to the killing. On June 10, police arrested and charged five suspects — ages 19 to 21 — with one count each of first-degree murder. All were accused of playing different roles in the slaying, from lookouts to shooters, according to court documents. The suspects, Carlos Andres Orellana, 21, Daniel E. Huezo Landaverde, 19, Oscar Effrain Zavala-Urrea, 19, Romeo Almengor Oxlaj-Lopez, 20, and Victor Alfonso Cruz-Orellana, 21, are all being held without bond.
Four of the suspects — Orellana, Zavala-Urrea, Oxlaj-Lopez and Cruz-Orellana — entered the country illegally from Central America as unaccompanied minors and were transferred to the custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman previously told The Washington Post. ICE asked Montgomery jail officials to notify the agency if any of the four will be released from custody, a process known as a detainer that can lead to deportation.
Deportation! It is more likely they will get years behind bars and you will be paying for their care with your tax dollars!
I once lived in this county that is a sanctuary for scum like this. So glad I got out when I did!
The gist of the piece is how Bloomberg goes into certain selected cities and Congressional districts and pours money into propaganda to change the minds of elected officials and business leaders about the need to import and welcome ‘new Americans.’ He has been at this for ten years already!
Now he wants to be sure to get all you xenophobes to see the light. By the way, the reason he has to use the word xenophobia instead of racism is that, as we have been chronicling for years, many black ‘new Americans’ don’t like our longtime African Americans (and vice versa).
The same goes for African Americans and Hispanics. Nor is there any love lost between Asians and African Americans.
On the Left, while the anarchists are busy tearing down America and American culture, moneybags like Bloomberg are working away as Robbins describes:
Jeremy Robbins
President Trump has expanded his immigration ban to affect vital U.S. industries like tech, manufacturing and hospitality through the end of 2020. The latest executive order signed on June 22 further restricts immigration, following a less drastic measure made in April. This will slow our recovery with states now reopening, but it’s no surprise.
His platform of cracking down on immigration has been unflinchingly consistent. He has blocked immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, dismantled our refugee resettlement program, separated migrant children from their parents and attempted to end DACA.
But here’s the ugly truth that Americans forget: Blaming immigrants for bringing diseases, taking our jobs, making us unsafe and threatening American culture has been part of our politics since the country’s founding. It doesn’t matter that none of these impending immigration disasters have come to pass. Or that immigration is America’s greatest global competitive advantage. With each generation, new leaders claim that today’s immigrants are somehow different — less able to assimilate, more likely to take our jobs or commit crimes. And we believe them.
So why do we keep getting duped?
Both the social science literature and forward-looking leaders in deeply conservative parts of the country have an answer: It’s a mistake to focus just on President Trump’s most anti-immigrant rhetoric. We also need to focus on the millions of Americans — and not just the most xenophobic ones — who think the president may have a point.
As a country, we’re broadly in favor of immigration, but we’re also incredibly nervous about changes to our culture and our communities. When we’re unsure of what to believe, we look first to our local networks. Studies show that when we’re given information that contradicts what our friends and neighbors believe, we actually double down and become more strident. The more facts we throw at our opponents, the more polarized we become.
How we beat Rep. Steve King:
A prime example is the conservative Iowa district, which had been represented for 17 years by Congress’s most stridently anti-immigrant member: Steve King. To change the tenor of the debate at home, local residents took the initiative and formed a group called One Siouxland to “welcome and support every Siouxland resident” and help all “understand, appreciate and embrace our changing demographics.”
Together with New American Economy, One Siouxland wrote a strategic integration plan to establish community resource centers, a leadership development academy, small business loans and dozens of other programs and policies focused on giving underrepresented populations a seat at the table.
Most recently, One Siouxland used locally produced art to host dialogues between Trump voters and non-Trump voters about American identity. This welcoming attitude has allowed more businesses of all types to invest there, including some of the food processing plants [Meat packers changing America!—ed]now keeping our food supply chain functioning.
And now a district that was the stronghold of the anti-immigrant movement has said enough, and the business community successfully backed an opponent who recently defeated King in the Republican primary election.
See how Bloomberg’s money is working to change your minds while he and the hundreds of businesses he represents are changing America by changing the people.
Go here to see if the New American Economy is doing its propaganda work where you live.
Reader Tom sent me a story from Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse about how Elijah Majak Buoi has been busy amassing millions of dollars meant to help small businesses survive the Chinese virus crisis.
The Conservative Treehouse story ishere. And the press release from the US Justice Department is here.
There is lots of coverage of the “man” who I am guessing is a ‘new American’ from Africa (Sudan maybe?), but I was searching for a story that might have a photo and found this one atUniversal Hub:
Area man charged with $2 million in coronavirus loan fraud
Federal prosecutors today charged a Winchester man with wire fraud for his four applications for federal loans aimed at helping small businesses continue to make payroll despite losses related to Covid-19, alleging he made up employee numbers and that the few employees he does have are all based in India.
According to a federal complaint unsealed today, Elijah Majak Buoi of Winchester was rejected for three of his applications for Paycheck Protection Program loans – which can be converted to grants – but was granted $2 million on the fourth, despite giving different employee and payroll numbers on the applications.
In addition to having Buoi arrested today, the US Attorney’s office is asking a judge to freeze his bank accounts so he cannot transfer the money he received out of the country. At his arraignment, a federal magistrate judge in Worcester set cash bail of $15,000.
[….]
The affidavit*** states that Buoi first filed a PPP application with Bank of America in April for $7.5 million, based on the 353 employees he said he had, all allegedly in Massachusetts. After the bank rejected his request, he tried again with three other lenders, asking each for $2 million, with his employee count on applications ranging from 18 to 96 employees.
The first two lenders also rejected his requests, but the final one, to which he claimed he had 96 US employees, approved his request and he had $2 million deposited in his Bank of America checking account earlier this month.
According to the affidavit, Buoi’s LinkedIn page says he has just five employees, and all are in India, making them ineligible for PPP coverage.
[….]
According to the affidavit, Buoi transferred some $1.2 million of the PPP payment from one Bank of America account to another and has withdrawn $27,000 of it – $20,000 in a wire transfer to India.
“I’ll be honest, some of the worst micro and macro forms of racism I’ve experienced as a black Muslim have not been at the hands of white people but white Arabs/desis.”
(Remaz Khalaleyal, Sudanese-American activist)
Who knew!
Here is a further discussion about how the death of George Floyd is producing much soul-searching within the American Muslim community about the fact that Arab Muslims are often racists.
I told you about the issue herelast week, but was surprised this morning to see an opinion piece published at none other than the New York Timesexposing the hard truth.
Why Did Cup Foods Call the Cops on George Floyd?
Nuisance abatement laws force stores in low-income neighborhoods to operate almost as an arm of law enforcement.
Don’t be deterred by the subheading, it is interesting, but almost seems to me to be a way to turn off readers to the juicy part of this piece by Moustafa Bayoumi.
Ever since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officers on May 25 after a grocery store reported that he had used a counterfeit $20 there, Muslim Americans have been asking why the store’s workers called the cops in the first place.
Palestinian immigrant-owned Cup Foods where it all began!
Like many grocery stores in low-income neighborhoods, Cup Foods is owned and largely staffed by an immigrant Muslim family, and the police call has prompted some to see racist motives.
Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, the Palestinian-American owner of Cup Foods, the grocery store, was away when a 17-year-old worker made the call.
A statement from the store referred to a “state policy that requires stores” to notify the police about counterfeit bills and Mr. Abumayyaleh described the practice as “standard protocol” for businesses. He vowed that his store will no longer do so “until the police stop killing innocent people.”
For many small-business owners in low-income neighborhoods, the decision to not call the cops is not so easy. The problem isn’t that you will subject yourself to more crime without the police. It’s that the authorities often force the business owners to operate almost as an arm of the police. If they refuse, they risk being shut down by the city through nuisance abatement laws.
After a discussion about the stores that were once owned by Jews:
Today, many of these stores in major cities around the country are run by Arab-American and South-Asian-American merchants, but the justifiable resentments remain the same. [Resentments about how the owners go home to better neighborhoods at night.—ed]
Okay, enough of the nuisance laws etc. Here, fifteen paragraphs in, comes the admission that Arabs and South Asian Muslims are racist.
The facts of third-party policing do not take away from the need for conversations about anti-black racism within Muslim American communities. Although Muslim Americans routinely have to deal with the bigotry of Islamophobia, many have been in denial for far too long about the anti-black racism among the believers.
Remaz Khalaleyal
About a third of American Muslims are African-American and the history of Islam in the United States is deeply connected to the African-American story. Yet research by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, which studies American Muslims, shows that African-American Muslims still often feel unwelcome in South Asian and Arab Muslim circles.
In a powerful Instagram post, Remaz Khalaleyal, a Sudanese-American activist, addressed the owner of Cup Foods. “I’ll be honest, some of the worst micro and macro forms of racism I’ve experienced as a black Muslim have not been at the hands of white people but white Arabs/desis,” she wrote. (“Desi” refers to people from South Asia.)
She is right. Nonblack Muslims have a lot of anti-racist work to do.
And even if our current system of policing didn’t use crime and crime prevention as a way to pit stores and customers against one another, nonblack Muslims would still find ways to buy into anti-blackness. Racism isn’t limited to store owners, after all.
The death of George Floyd ought to show nonblack Muslim Americans two important things. As Americans, we must strive for better public safety for everyone. And as Muslims, we must find better versions of ourselves.
Read it all here. How great is that to know that white ethnic Europeans are off the hook for a change.
“How long did you think you were going to be able to run and operate a store that continued to harm and exploit black folks … without reaping what you sow?”
(Sara Hamdan, an IMAN organizer)
Who knew?
As I have said in a couple of previous posts, here andhere, we wouldn’t have known that Arab and Asian (New American!) shop owners in Black neighborhoods treated their customers badly, sold them booze, cigarettes and unhealthy food and then went home to nicer neighborhoods every evening if it hadn’t been for the death of George Floyd.
The tensions in ‘diversity-is-strength’ neighborhoods that led up to Floyd’s death is further explained in this story at Religious News Service yesterday.
It seems this isn’t a case of white vs. black racial tension, but one of immigrant Arab exploiters vs. African Americans.
Did you even know that the store that called police on Floyd was a convenience store owned by a Palestinian?
Minneapolis Cup Foods where George Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20.
Floyd’s death spurs debate on how immigrants should run stores in black neighborhoods
(Emphasis below is mine)
(RNS) — George Floyd was killed after employees at a convenience store owned by a Palestinian American Muslim — with a Muslim prayer space in its basement — called Minneapolis police over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill.
The role that the store played in Floyd’s death May 25 and in all that followed has been a bitter pill to swallow for many Muslim and Arab communities.
This moment has also reignited ongoing debates in Muslim communities over the ethical duties of immigrants who own businesses in black neighborhoods, from when and if they call the police to the role they can play in creating healthier food ecosystems.
“We know now that escalating situations to the police almost always does more harm than good, even for something as harmless as a fake bill,” Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, owner of the Cup Foods store that called the police on Floyd, wrote in a Facebook post.
Cup Foods, which has served customers in a largely black neighborhood for three decades, will no longer involve the police in nonviolent incidents, Abumayyaleh said.
“By simply following procedure we are putting our communities in danger,” he said in his social media post. Instead, he urged, “Work within your communities to find alternatives to policing, until the point that local and state officials decide to seriously hold police accountable once and for all.”
Food and liquor stores, often owned by Arab and South Asian immigrants, are common in mostly black, low-income neighborhoods. But the relationships between these store owners and the communities they serve have often been fraught with racial tension.
[….]
Rami Nashashibi
Rami Nashashibi, director of Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network, says a massive cultural transformation is needed for nonblack Muslim corner store owners to be allies for those they serve.
[….]
Since the police killing, IMAN has partnered with the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, a racial justice education organization, to launch “Corner Store Witnesses,” a new training curriculum aimed at nonblack Muslim business owners.
[….]
Imam Jihad Saafir, who heads Islah LA, an inner-city Muslim community center in South Los Angeles, said stores and restaurants run by Muslim immigrants were often the source of alcohol, cigarettes, drug paraphernalia and unhealthy foods that have taken a toll on locals’ health.
Beyond overpolicing, common concerns with immigrant-owned corner stores include gentrification; exploitative pricing; racist hiring practices; hostile security measures such as bulletproof glass and cages; the sale of alcohol and nicotine products; and the sale of junk food, as well as a lack of fresh produce and other healthy foods.
“In many ways, residents in those neighborhoods perceive those store owners in the same way those Palestinian store owners perceive Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” Nashashibi, who is Palestinian American himself, argued. “What justification are you using to be in that black community?”
Linda Sarsour: We have a long way to go to build relationships with the black community.
But we are marginalized so we can marginalize others!
RNS continues….
Many Arab and South Asian store owners respond to allegations of racism by pointing to their own marginalized identities and their need to protect their income. Many are working-class; some are undocumented.
Activist Linda Sarsour, whose father owned a store in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood for 38 years, urged Muslims not to blame Cup Foods’ owner for Floyd’s death, noting that the store has a positive relationship with locals.
“I understand that we have a long way to go to build transformative relationships between Arab/Asian store owners and local Black communities,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “These communities deserve business owners who are contributors to communities not just takers.”
A prime example is the conservative Iowa district, which had been represented for 17 years by Congress’s most stridently anti-immigrant member: Steve King. To change the tenor of the debate at home, local residents took the initiative and formed a group called One Siouxland to “welcome and support every Siouxland resident” and help all “understand, appreciate and embrace our changing demographics.”
