Somali gangs on the move across Canada, guns coming from the US

This is a story mostly about Somali drug gangs in Canada (focusing on Edmonton where there have been many Somalis murdered in recent years), but there is some interesting information about the US as well,   Did you know that there is a Lewiston, Ohio and Somalis are moving there?

From the Vancouver Sun:

EDMONTON – Somali drug gangs appear to be highly mobile and loosely organized without the hierarchy of traditional criminal gangs, says Staff Sgt. Jim Peebles of Edmonton city police.

These gang members work a circuit — Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary to Fort McMurray and Ottawa, Peebles said in a recent interview, moving cocaine and guns around the country.

“The group is in Edmonton one day, then they turn up in Ft. McMurray and next week we see them in Toronto or Ottawa,” he said.

Guns are coming from the US and the gangs are highly mobile.

Police here believe gang guns are imported from Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

Unlike most criminal organizations, Somali gangs also don’t have strict territories they protect. The activity is “all commodity based,” he said. The fight is over selling more drugs or conflicts between new operators and established groups. Also, unlike street gangs that identify publicly with gang colours and membership rules, Somali gangs keep a low profile. Membership is not about establishing group identity but rather about getting fast cash, he said. “This is all driven by money.”

From the Minneapolis police, watch out Lewiston, Ohio!

As for guns, “it’s possible” guns move across the border to Canada from Minneapolis. Three guns stores were recently robbed by Somalis and only a few of the guns have turned up.

The Somali community is mobile, moving to where there are jobs, good public assistance, housing and an openness to immigrants, she (Officer Jeanine Brudunell, the Minneapolis police department’s liaison officer for East Africa communities) said. A group is now moving to the smaller community of Lewiston, Ohio, for instance, she said.

Interesting!  We all know that Lewiston, Maine was (still is!) a Somali magnet and now it is Lewiston, Ohio!   Doesn’t it make you wonder if a bunch of Somalis were saying go to Lewiston and they didn’t know there was more than one!

For new readers:

The US has admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US since the early 1990′s (they were trickling in in the 1980′s).   To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years.   In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.  The “teen” would-be bomber in Oregon was one of the refugees.

Also, after being closed for nearly two years, the US State Department is on the verge (has been on the verge for months and months!)  of resuming the fraud-ridden family reunification program that admitted as many as 36,000 Somalis fraudulently to the US between 2003 and 2008.  See the latest on new regulations, here.

Now, also, Somalis are coming illegally across our borders and ironically asking for asylum because of the radical Islamic Jihadists (including Americans!) in Africa.

Uzbek “student” arrested in Alabama for threatening to kill Obama

Update August 14th:  Uzbek “student” pleads not guilty, here.

Once again, I’m behind in posting.  This story is now a few days old.   How many of you heard it on the national news?  I didn’t.  Every day we’ve heard about the US Army Muslim who went AWOL and planned a reenactment of the Fort Hood massacre, but nary a peep about this Muslim wanting to kill Obama.

(Update: Here is a tiny peep at the Washington Post four days ago, but LOL! the “M” word is missing.  Can you just see those Post editors saying, damn we have to mention the story but let’s leave anything incendiary out?  The Post surely had access to all the details from the US Attorney’s office in Alabama, here.)

This guy was here on a student visa (he didn’t come in the mystery shipment of extremist Muslim Uzbeks who were airlifted here against their will by the US State Department a few years ago and dubbed refugees.)*

Here is a tip to extremist Muslims (on student visas) who are here to do us harm—at least make some effort to go to school!  Not signing up for a  few college classes is a surefire tip-off to Homeland Security (of course the big question for the general public is, how long does it take the feds to figure out you aren’t in school?).

I thought Muslims liked Obama?

From the Birmingham News:

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — An Uzbekistan native was indicted by a federal grand jury today for threatening the life of President Barack Obama and illegally possessing weapons, including a fully automatic weapon and a grenade, federal authorities announced.

Ulugbek Kodirov, 21, of Uzbekistan, was charged with four counts of threatening the president – on July 9, July 10, July 11 and July 13. He also was charged with being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and unlawfully possessing a fully automatic weapon. Both of those weapons counts refer to a Sendra Corporation Model M15-A1 rifle which he bought from undercover law enforcement agents before his arrest on July 13, according to court documents.

The indictment, filed in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, also charges Kodirov with receiving and possessing an unregistered grenade on July 13. He had four grenades, but the powder was not in them, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

A very strict Muslim

According to an affidavit by a Secret Service agent supporting issuance of the search warrant, Kodirov had contacted an FBI confidential reliable source on July 9 and July 10 and made an inquiry “regarding possible ways to kill President Obama, including shooting the President from a long distance, and asked the CS#1 (confidential source) to assist him.”

“Kodirov further stated that he did not care if he lost his own life killing President Obama,” according to the search warrant.

Kodirov told a second confidential source on or about July 11 that he wished to kill Obama. That second confidential source said that Kodirov was a “very strict Muslim, who has previously expressed support for Islamic extremists.” That second source also stated that Kodirov views Jihadist websites.

Came to the US in 2009 on a student visa!  (you know, another one of those LEGAL immigration programs)

Kodirov came to the United States in June 2009 and remained in the country on a student visa. His student visa was revoked April 1, 2010, for failure to enroll in school, according to the arrest affidavit.

* At some point I need to look more closely at the case of the Uzbek refugee airlift to the US in the wake of the Andijan uprising.  In a thumbnail, Uzbekistan’s President is a secular Muslim (if there is such a thing) and a group of fundamentalist Muslims were working on an uprising, so supposedly government soldiers, at President Islam Karimov’s direction, open-fired on a demonstration and killed many (the 2005 Andijan massacre).  The survivors went to nearby countries to escape and thus became “refugees.”

Please remember this is a very simplified version of events.  So, they were designated refugees but wished to stay in Europe (they were initially taken to camps there and wanted to stay near their families still in Uzbekistan).  The US State Department, in its infinite wisdom, said, NO, we are taking you to American towns and cities and dropping you off whether you like it or not!  So, we actually expedited the process and flew an unknown number to your neighborhoods.

We first learned about the  Refugee Program as a strategic political weapon when we looked into this story (here) about a couple of Uzbek young men who died mysteriously in Boise, ID.   Somehow, maybe for access to their airbase, we were helping solve Uzbekistan’s little problem by just removing the people.  Heck we are doing it with the Burmese, the Bhutanese, the Bosnians, the Iraqis, and the Meshketian Turks (others too, those are just some off the top of my head).  We will just bring them to the magical American melting pot and help solve some other government’s problem!

It’s a win-win-win-win!  The caring class will be happy for more refugees to love, the governments we help with their problems will be happy, the federal resettlement contractors will be happy to keep their money coming in, and the Democrats will be happy with new voters!  Only the American taxpayer loses—both in personal security and in the pocketbook!

Norway update: Not your ordinary kid’s summer camp

More here, you might say what goes around comes around.

Seems in between swimming and other summer games, the “kids” at the camp in Norway were working on some Palestinian projects—even having fun in boats reenacting the Gaza Flotilla.   Debbie Schlussel sums it all up in Karma #1 and Karma #2.

Fewer refugees will come to the US this year because of security concerns

We’ve reported this on several previous occasions, but here we have Eric Schwartz, Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration telling us so again in what I guess is his swan song report to the “stakeholders” who depend on refugee funding for their livelihoods.  He says the flow of refugees into the US  is slow due to enhanced security screening especially for Iraqis.

You can bet your booties that they have more security problems than the two Iraqis arrested in Kentucky last month on terrorism charges that they aren’t letting the public know about.

Schwartz (a protegee of George Soros) is leaving his job as head of the refugee program to go to a university job in Minnesota.  My first thought is that he might be one of the first rats to leave the sinking Obama Presidency ship.  Or, the program is unraveling and Schwartz is getting out while the getting is good!

Read Schwartz’s report for an overview of where the program is as he heads for the exit (LOL! try really hard to leave out all the schmaltzy humanitarian mumbo jumbo as you read).

A couple of things I want to highlight:

Schwartz says that Congress and the contractors want more Africans and so they are going to try to bring more from the Horn of Africa (aka Somalia):

Members of Congress and the NGO community have long expressed concerns about our limited capacity to process refugees from Africa, where refugee processing is extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming. Though we made considerable progress between fiscal years 2009 and 2010, with resettlement from Africa increasing from 9,670 in 2009 to 13,305 in 2010, arrivals have dropped in 2011 and significant challenges remain. Thus, we plan to augment our refugee coordination offices in the Horn of Africa and in Central Africa, which will further improve our capacity to resettle vulnerable refugees.

The African fraud in the family reunification program (P-3) has still not been solved.  The program was closed in 2008 and still isn’t open!  They must be having some huge mess behind the scenes on this.

The P-3 component of our refugee admissions program provides for refugee adjudications and resettlement of family members of previously admitted refugees. This P-3 component is important, as it provides protection to vulnerable people while also promoting the principle of family unification. It was suspended in 2008 due to concerns about fraud, and resuming the program has been a priority for me and for the PRM Bureau. We have sought to establish procedures that will permit resumption while ensuring the integrity of the program, and have consulted closely with the NGO community and others. While we believe that establishment of DNA testing will be necessary to permit resumption of the program, we have been seeking to implement such a program in a way that would not create financial burdens for genuine refugees – as testing can be expensive.

Readers, don’t you think DNA testing is a whole heck of a lot cheaper then admitting someone fraudulently and giving them welfare into the foreseeable future (not to mention the possible security risk someone who is lying poses for us)?   Just imagine how much it is costing the US taxpayer at this moment for legal and investigative work with all the Somali refugees running off to Africa for terror training (surely some of those came in fraudulently in the P-3 program).

With much fanfare, in 2009 the Obama Administration launched a reform initiative in the White House on the refugee program.   There is some verbiage here about the great strides they have made, but citizens out in the resettlement towns and cities aren’t seeing it.

Since July 2009, the White House has led a multiagency effort designed to identify ways to enhance the effectiveness of the Refugee Admissions Program.

We are told they discussed the “capacity of agencies and communities to receive refugees.”   But, did anything change?  We note that Manchester, NH has asked for a moratorium on refugee resettlement and is experiencing resistance!  And, then the feds and the whole national resettlement network is having fits and conference calls about what to do with the Tennessee “Refugee Absorptive Capacity Act” where the state took the initiative on the issue of CAPACITY since the federal government wasn’t doing anything to curb the numbers.

Here it is—the announcement near the end that the number of refugees resettled this year will be much smaller than Obama wishes.

We’re proud of all these efforts, as they reflect a commitment to sustain and strengthen the U.S. Refugee Admissions program. But we are also well aware of deep concern about a significant reduction in the number of refugees that will be resettled in the United States in 2011. While we do not yet know just how many new arrivals we will have, the number will be well below last year’s figure of 73,311 – and well below the 2011 ceiling of 80,000 established by the President.

This reduction reflects processing challenges that have resulted from additional, multi-agency security screening measures that have recently been established, and which augment long-standing multi-agency clearance procedures that have long been in effect. The enhanced procedures are the product of an evolving understanding of security threats.

The refugee lobby and the now deceased Senator Ted Kennedy had pushed very hard for “in-country” processing of Iraqis.  You see normally a refugee must have left the country where he believes he is persecuted before claiming refugee status, but the NGOs and Kennedy pushed for a person in Iraq (still living in the country) to claim he is a refugee and be processed into the US.   This must be one of the places where they are finding the “security threats.”

Last year, we resettled 3,762 from the in-country program in Iraq, and this year, the number is likely to be much lower.

UN delegation will lobby Congress next week on refugees (will bring refugees as props)

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as part of its 6oth anniversary celebration, will bring a Refugee delegation (Refugee Congress they call it) to visit the US Congress next week to make sure they get the message that refugee resettlement is a good thing (because they are getting lots of messages that we can’t afford the welfare and job demand for refugees and besides terrorists are getting in through the program).    To counter the growing negative perceptions of the program they will have some grateful refugees to parade around the Hill.

From the Asylumnist:

As part of UNHCR’s 60 year anniversary, the agency is hosting a Refugee Congress in Washington, DC on August 3 and 4, 2011.  The Congress will focus on refugees in the United States, and will provide an opportunity for the refugees themselves to share their experiences and help ensure that people still in need are not forgotten.  In the end, the Refugee Congress plans to create recommendations for the U.S. Congress and to generate a report for a Ministerial Meeting in Geneva later this year.

Coincidentally they will be in Washington for the big refugee pow-wow that is held each year where all the contractors and the government agencies schmooz and plan (behind closed doors!).  You see the word “stakeholder”—-that doesn’t mean you!  As the taxpayer, you might think you are a stakeholder but you aren’t in their eyes.  The meeting is closed to the general public!

The Refugee Congress will be held in conjunction with the National Consultation, the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s annual stakeholder meeting.  According to ORR, “The annual Consultation provides a unique opportunity for stakeholders throughout the network to share ideas, engage in discussion, and expand the partnerships that form the backbone of the [refugee resettlement] program.”

Visit the Asylumnist from time to time and learn some interesting information from asylum lawyer Jason Dzubow.

Lewiston mayor testifies in Senate: Everything is going great with Somali “energy” in Lewiston…..

…..the town benefits culturally and economically, BUT we need more federal money!  

From the Morning Sentinel:

WASHINGTON – Lewiston’s experience with an influx of Somali immigrants shows the economic energy they can bring, but also the need for the federal government to do more to help the new residents settle into their new life, says Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert.

Gilbert testified Tuesday at a Senate hearing on immigration reform, a session that mostly focused on the system for attracting and retaining high-skill foreign workers in fields such as computer sciences and engineering.

But Gilbert was one of three mayors from around the country invited to address the broader topic of the economic impact of legal immigrants on local communities.

“Fixing a broken immigration system is not just about highly skilled immigrants,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, refugees and border security. “An immigrant comes here wanting to make a better life for his family” and in the process helps pump vitality into the U.S. economy.

About 5,000 immigrants, primarily from Somalia but also from Sudan and Djibouti, have moved since 2001 to the Lewiston-Auburn area and they are “bringing new life and energy” with them, Gilbert told the committee. Lewiston’s population in the 2010 census was 36,592, an increase of 2.5 percent since 2000, according to the U.S. Census website.

In downtown Lewiston, formerly vacant storefronts are occupied by immigrant-owned businesses, from restaurants to clothing stores to tax preparation companies. Many downtown apartments in large buildings that used to be occupied by Franco-American mill workers are now home to Somali and other immigrant families, Gilbert said. [I have to laugh over the 'tax preparation companies'---they are learning how to get money they never put into our tax system through the Earned Income Tax Credit---ed]

“Our immigrant population is having a positive impact on the social fabric of our community and our local economy,” Gilbert said.

Which is it Mr. Mayor?  If the large African Muslim population is helping the local economy, then why do you need more federal taxpayers’ money?

But more support, some of it from the federal government, is needed to help the immigrants living in Lewiston in areas such as workforce training and learning English, Gilbert said.

[.....]

The “inadequate federal funding associated with a refugee resettlement program simply does not meet the many needs of our refugee residents,” Gilbert said.

Readers, we have written dozens of posts on Lewiston, ME and its problems.  Use our search function for ‘Lewiston’ to learn more.  You might first wish to visit this post about Maine as the welfare magnet.

Norway terror attack used to distract King hearing on Somali radicalization

If you want to learn more about what happened surrounding Rep. Peter King’s hearing this week on the recruitment of US and Canadian Somali refugees by the Islamic terror group Al Shabaab, I encourage you to google around—there are tons of reports and commentary.  I’m too weary of the subject to pull it all together for you!

But, since I mentioned the hearing previously, I felt obligated to give you some report.  Here is one from WNYC radio in New York, seems the New York Times has made some equivalency between the Norway horror and King even asking questions.  And, so it is, the Left will use Norway from now until doomsday to shut people up.

From WNYC:

Rep. Peter King conducted the third in his series of hearings examining radicalization in the Muslim American community, this one focusing on the recruitment of Somali-American youth by the terrorist group Al-Shabaab. But the hearing frequently went off-track, with Democrats using the occasion to attack the very premise of the hearing and King pushing back against criticism from the media in recent days, namely The New York Times.

“I note that certain elements of the politically correct media,” said King in his opening remarks, “most egregiously the vacuous ideologues at the New York Times—are shamelessly attempting to exploit the horrific tragedy inNorway to cause me to refocus these hearings away from Muslim-American radicalization.”

“Let me make this clear to the New York Times and their acolytes in the politically correct, moral equivalency media,” he continued. “I will not back down from holding these hearings.”

The hearing featured just one Somali witness, Canadian Ahmed Hussen. He said that low employment within the Somali diaspora allowed some to become alienated “and fall victim to a narrative that turns them against Canada and the United States.”   [It's never about the Jihad imperative, just give them jobs and it will all go away!---ed]

“This dangerous and constant anti-western narrative is fed to them by radicals in our community,” said Hussen, “who do not hesitate to use these vulnerable youth as gun fodder in their desire to establish a base for the Al Qaeda terrorist group in Somalia.”

Read on.

For new readers:  We’ve been reporting on the Somali-youths-going-to-Jihad-training story since it first broke in 2008 here.

And for your information, the US has admitted well over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US since the early 1990′s (they were trickling in in the 1980′s).   To check out the numbers visit this post, one of our most widely read posts over the last few years.   In FY2010 which ended September 30th the US State Department resettled 4,884 Somalis (here) to towns near you.  The “teen” would-be bomber in Oregon was one of the refugees.

Also, after being closed for nearly two years, the US State Department is on the verge (has been on the verge for months and months!)  of resuming the fraud-ridden family reunification program that admitted as many as 36,000 Somalis fraudulently to the US between 2003 and 2008.  See the latest on new regulations, here.

Now, also, Somalis are coming illegally across our borders and ironically asking for asylum because of the radical Islamic Jihadists (including Americans!) in Africa.

Happy 4th birthday to us!

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been writing about refugees for 4 years this month!  I almost missed our birthday month until I noticed today that we had some time ago passed the One Million Viewers mark—we have had 1,010,143 viewers at RRW over four years!   Now, that is not much by popular blog standards, but for a blog devoted to a rather arcane subject, it’s not bad.

Also in 4 years we’ve written 3,785 posts in 48 categories.    Just a reminder to readers that our search function is really good, just enter a few key words on a subject you are searching and see if we’ve written about it.  You might also enter your city or state to see if we have something from where you live.

Thanks to all of our readers and commenters for your continuing interest in the issue of refugee resettlement and in learning more about Legal immigration in general.

Rohingya refugees being resettled in New Hampshire

I was interested in this story—Nashua, NH fretting about whether it would get more refugees if Manchester gets a moratorium—anyway.  But, then I note that we are quietly resettling Rohingya refugees in New Hampshire.

For years I followed the story of Rohingya Muslim refugees leaving Burma and it interested me because for years the US State Department resisted the pressure from NGOs to resettle them here. (The Rohingya are also among the illegal aliens trying to get into Thailand and Australia).   But, at some point in 2010 we started resettling Rohingya in American towns and cities and so I gave up posting much on them—it was kind of hopeless.

BTW, here is one of 98 posts I’ve written on Rohingya in a special category entitled Rohingya Reports.  It is a post from April 2010 about how the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) was pushing hard to add Rohingya to their collection of ethnic groups to add diversity to your town!  If anyone in New Hampshire wants to know more about Rohingya, just read through those 98 posts going back to 2007.

USCRI is the federal contractor that subcontracts the International Institute of New Hampshire. operating in Manchester.   Incidentally, another USCRI subcontractor was closed by the US State Department in Waterbury, CT after a real (honest to goodness) investigative reporter found the refugees living in squalor and dared to write a series of articles about it.

Lutheran Social Services is a competing contractor.  If Manchester gets a moratorium, presumably Lutheran Social Services will get the job (and the per head payment!) since they must control the Nashua turf.

So that is some of the background, now here is the story from the Nashua Telegraph from last week:

As Manchester city officials attempt to put a halt on new refugees being placed in the city, it’s unknown what the impact would be on Nashua if the moratorium were granted.

Manchester Mayor Ted Gatsas submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of State requesting a two-year moratorium on new refugees being resettled in the city.

The state’s largest city has been the primary resettlement location for refugees in New Hampshire. Between 2002 and 2009, Manchester received 1,807 of the state’s 2,966 new refugees, or roughly 60 percent.

By comparison, Nashua, the state’s second-largest city, received only 70 refugees during that same period, much fewer than Concord and Laconia, which received 778 and 260, respectively.

The most recent group of refugees to come to Nashua were roughly a dozen Rohingya people, seeking refuge from the Burmese government. More are expect to be resettled in Nashua in the coming year.

[....]

Amy Marchildon, who oversees refugee resettlement in New Hampshire for Lutheran Social Services, said Nashua is in line to receive another 50 to 70 Rohingya refugees over the next year, but there’s no way to know for sure whether those numbers will pan out.

I wonder why the states cower so and don’t just tell the US State Department NO!  Or, at least do what Tennessee has done and start to take more local goverment control of refugee resettlement.

Furor over Australia/Malaysia immigrant swap

Australia will take 4000 processed ‘legitimate’ refugees and in exchange Malaysia will take 800 boat people.  The theory is to discourage all those asylum seekers from getting in boats and heading for Australia.  Human Rights Watch objects calling Malaysia a “dumping ground.”

From Aljazeera (be sure to see the photo of demonstrators in Malaysia):

Australia and Malaysia have signed a deal to send 800 asylum seekers in Australia to Malaysia in exchange for the resettlement of 4,000 refugees.

The 4,000 refugees are to be resettled in Australia over a four year period, with that country bearing the cost of their transfer and settlement.

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s interior minister, and Chris Bowen, Australia’s immigration minister, formally signed the deal at a Kuala Lumpur hotel on Monday.

The 800 asylum seekers sent to Malaysia will be placed in a “holding centre” for six week before being allowed into the community, Hussein said.

From midnight on Monday, the next 800 asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat will not be processed there, but will be transferred to Malaysia, Julia Gillard, the Australian prime minister said.

The government said they would receive no preferential treatment in the processing of their claims or arrangements for resettlement.

‘Dumping ground’

Ahead of the signing, Brendan O’Connor, Australian’s interior minister, said the deal represents “an historic and innovative approach” to undermining the people-smugglers’ business model.

“We want to treat people fairly,” he told ABC Television, but refused to confirm a report that those shipped to Malaysia would be allowed to work.

However, the deal has drawn criticism because Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees.

“Australia is using Malaysia as a dumping ground for boat people it does not want and in the process walking away from its commitments to follow the 1951 Refugees Convention,” Phil Robertson, the deputy director at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said.

I’ve mentioned Malaysia a bunch.  Here in 2009 we had a report on how badly this Muslim country treats its co-religionists who seek shelter there.