Guatemalan Girl Was Smuggled to Iowa and Repeatedly Raped, Feds Charge

Posted on | July 19, 2019 | Comments Off on Guatemalan Girl Was Smuggled to Iowa and Repeatedly Raped, Feds Charge

Last month — on June 5 — police in Sioux City, Iowa, found a girl wandering the streets, saying she had been raped. It turned out the girl and her father had been brought from Guatemala by a couple who had been helping smuggle illegal aliens into the United States, according to an arrest affidavit filed this month by Department of Homeland Security investigators. The girl, identified in the affidavit as “ABF,” told authorities she had been locked in a room and repeatedly raped by Cristobal Francisco-Nicolas, 37. She escaped after the door was left unlocked. The girl said her mother died when she was 3 or 4 and she had been raised in Guatemala by her aunt, but she was brought to the United States by her father, Fernando Francisco.

The affidavit portrays this as part of a smuggling scheme masterminded by Francisco-Nicolas and his wife, Amy, who had allegedly advised immigrants to bring a minor child to the U.S. with them:

The father and daughter reportedly traveled from Guatemala, through Mexico where they crossed the border into the U.S. on May 29 by walking across the Rio Grande 18 miles west of the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso. Border Patrol agents arrested them and fingerprinted them. The agents released her and her father the following day due to processing center overcrowding, the complaint states. Officials released them on an Order of Recognizance and Supervision.
From their release in El Paso, the father and [the girl] ABF flew to Omaha, Nebraska where “Francisco” (later identified as Cristobal Francisco-Nicolas) and “Sofia” (later identified as Amy Francisco) picked them up and drove them to a house in Sioux City.
The father then reportedly “left her” with the couple in Sioux City. It is not clear where the father went or if he simply abandoned her after using her to exploit loopholes in U.S. immigration law to get past Border Patrol and immigration officials.
ABF reportedly told the investigators that Cristobal and Amy locked her in a room with a “metal bed and a bucket for bodily waste.” She stated that Cristobal began raping her and that Amy watched from the door to the locked room, the complaint continued.
After allegedly being raped five times, ABF managed to escape from the house after Amy left the door unlocked as she slept and Cristobal left for work. ABF said she fled from the house and found someone who could speak Spanish. . . .
During an interview with Amy’s father, he reportedly told investigators that Amy and Cristobal made arrangements for ABF and Fernando to travel from Guatemala to the U.S. They reportedly told Fernando that he must bring a child with him. He said they were to turn themselves in at the border and then, if released, contact Amy for flight arrangements to Iowa.
Once they arrived in Sioux City, they were expected to get a job with Amy’s assistance and help pay for rent and the food while they lived at the house. They were also to pay Amy and Cristobal and Amy back for the smuggling fees.
The other foreign nationals in the house also reportedly told investigators Amy and Cristobal helped smuggle them to the U.S. and they were also helping to pay household expenses and repaying smuggling fees, the complaint states.
All of the foreign nationals found in the house are reportedly under an Order of Supervision from immigration officials. . . .

Democrats in Congress refuse to pass any legislation that would close the loopholes in our immigration law that made this crime possible.

Category: Guatemala, Immigration, Iowa, Violence Against Women

Marianne Williamson Will Share CNN Debate Stage With Elizabeth Warren

Posted on | July 19, 2019 | 1 Comment

The lineup for the second round of Democrat presidential debates — July 30-31 in Detroit, televised by CNN — will feature Marianne Williamson on the first night, along with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Meanwhile the second night will feature a rematch between former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris.

Second-quarter fundraising showed five candidates — Buttigieg, Biden, Warren, Sanders and Harris — raise three-quarters of the money raised by the entire Democratic field. Buttigieg’s surge in the second quarter, raising nearly $25 million, was remarkable, as was the complete meltdown of former Texas Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke’s campaign. After raising $9.4 million in the first quarter of 2019, O’Rourke’s total slumped to $3.6 million in the second quarter, when he spent more ($5.3 million) than he raised. O’Rourke’s second-quarter “burn rate” of 146% was exceeded only by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who spent nearly twice as much (184%) as she raised in the second quarter. Having a high “burn rate” — spending more than the candidate raises — is usually a sign that a campaign has more paid staff than it can afford, which could eventually bankrupt a campaign.

Williamson’s second-quarter fundraising haul of $1.5 million came mostly (71%) from small donors, exceeding Sanders (70%) and Warren (67%) in the percentage of donors giving under $200. However, earlier this month, Williamson said she still needs 49,000 new unique donors to reach the 130,000 unique-donor threshold the DNC has announced for the third round of debates in September. Perhaps getting a celebrity endorsement from Alyssa Milano will help, and the candidate also made an appearance this week on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show.

Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson (D) ripped President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening for his “dangerous” rally that was out of the “fascist playbook,” warning Americans to think about how Hitler came to power in Nazi Germany.
“The president’s talk tonight was more than discouraging. The president’s talk tonight was dangerous. And it’s very important for Americans to see that talk and for all patriotic Americans, whether on the left or right, to be very clear that we don’t do that in America,” Williamson told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Our political opponents are not our enemies. You didn’t hear talk like that from Ronald Reagan or from George W. Bush or from George Bush Sr. when talking about Democrats. That’s not what we do here.”
Williamson, the spiritual adviser and author who has advised Oprah Winfrey, even suggested a link between Trump and the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany when speaking about the “send her back” chants directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
“And this is so far away from the traditions of democracy that when your former guests were trying to talk about has anything like this ever happened in America, the question is not has anything like this ever happened in America. We need to think about how it happened in Germany,” she continued. “We need to be very, very serious and take this very seriously because the president has said this is how he’s going to run this campaign. The way he was talking about four elected officials, these women are U.S. Congresspeople. We don’t do this in America.”

Remember: This is about Democrat primary voters. You may not believe Trump is a potential Hitler, but Democrat primary voters do.

Category: Debates, Democrats, Election

In The Mailbox: 07.18.19

Posted on | July 18, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.18.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

As EBL points out, Kirby McCain needs some help as well.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Seattle’s Recipe For More Crime
EBL: Adobe Walls & Kirby McCain Need Help
Twitchy: CNN’s Acosta Says “Video Doesn’t Lie”, Which Is Why He Needs To Correct His Earlier Tweet

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: The New Face Of The Democratic Party
American Power: Trump Has The Moral High Ground
American Thinker: The Left’s Demonization Of Conservatives Becomes Dangerous
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Stoned Vikings News
Babalu Blog: “Send Them Back!” When The NYT Cracked The Whip Against Uppity “Law-Breaking” Refugees
BattleSwarm: Impeachment Motion Tabled
Camp of the Saints: “A Great Moral Failing” On Our Part
CDR Salamander: “You Can Sleep In The Grave” Isn’t All That Funny Any More
Da Tech Guy: And The Award For The Best Economics Book Goes To…, also, Parody Or No? Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Trump’s Hamilton Distraction
Dustbury: Wrong On Both Counts
First Street Journal: This Man Did Nothing Wrong But Faces 49 Years In Prison
Fred On Everything:
The Geller Report: Muslims Rape, Stone 60-Year-Old Syrian Woman To Death, also, How Ilhan Omar Desperately Tries To Explain Marriage To Brother
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, The Marx Sisters
Hollywood In Toto: Why Liberal Netflix May Have Dug Its Own Streaming Grave
Joe For America: President Trump Has A New, Shorter Name For AOC And She’s Already Losing Her Mind Over It
JustOneMinute: Send Back “Send Her Back”
Legal Insurrection: House Approves Bill To Double Fed Minimum Wage To $15, also, CO State “Inclusive Language Guide” Suggests Avoiding “America”, “American”
Power Line: Tying Up Lose Threads In The Curious Case Of Ilhan Omar, also, Democrats Can’t Take Their Own Medicine
Shark Tank: Pro-Israel Democrats Challenged by “Progressives”
Shot In The Dark: Squad Level Tactics
The Political Hat: Transgender Violence – Dead Baby, Murdered Boy, Offended Trans-Boy
This Ain’t Hell: Fake SEAL Behind Memorial Effort, also, USS Independence
Victory Girls: No, I Won’t Stand With Ilhan Omar – EVER
Volokh Conspiracy: MS Gubernatorial Candidates Out Billy Grahaming Each Other
Weasel Zippers: Ted Cruz Calls Out How Google Swung Millions Of Votes To Hillary In 2016, also, Students Say Obama Immigration Quote Is Racist – When They Think It’s From Trump
Megan McArdle: Why The Wheels Are Coming Off Obamacare’s “Cadillac Tax”
Mark Steyn: Wokers Of The World Utd.

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Is the ‘Baseless Rumor’ True? Why Don’t Journalists Do Some Actual Journalism?

Posted on | July 18, 2019 | 1 Comment

The question of whether Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) married her brother is an interesting question and, earlier this year at CPAC, I covered a press conference by bloggers who said the answer is “yes.” The persistent accusations that her marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a fraud finally prompted the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to investigate, and they could not rule out the possibility that Elmi is indeed her brother:

New investigative documents released by a state agency have given fresh life to lingering questions about the marital history of Rep. Ilhan Omar and whether she once married a man — possibly her own brother — to skirt immigration laws.
Omar has denied the allegations in the past, dismissing them as “baseless rumors” first raised in an online Somali politics forum and championed by conservative bloggers during her 2016 campaign for the Minnesota House. But she said little then or since about Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, the former husband who swept into her life in 2009 before a 2011 separation.
The questions surfaced again this month in a state probe of campaign finance violations showing that Omar filed federal taxes in 2014 and 2015 with her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while she was still legally married to but separated from Elmi.
Although she has legally corrected the discrepancy, she has declined to say anything about how or why it happened.
The new documents also detail the Omar campaign’s efforts to keep the story of her marriage to Elmi out of the press, arguing that detailed coverage would legitimize the accusations and invade her privacy.

Well, if the Star-Tribune could find nothing to debunk the “baseless rumors,” how do we know they’re baseless? And the investigation raises questions about the purpose of this marriage, which appears to have existed only as a matter of paperwork and might have constituted fraud.

Yesterday, Donald Trump challenged reporters to pursue this story:

President Trump on Wednesday repeated the claim that Rep. Ilhan Omar committed immigration fraud by illegally marrying her brother.
Trump made the statement while responding to a question from a reporter from the One America News Network before leaving for a campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina.
Reporter Emerald Robinson asked the president “if the administration was looking into possible immigration fraud committed by Ilhan Omar for possibly marrying her brother.”
“Well, there’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it,” Trump said.
“I hear she was married to her brother. You’re asking me a question about it. I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s somebody who will be looking at that,” he added.
Trump’s statement comes amid his ongoing feud with a group of freshman congresswomen known as “the Squad,” which includes Omar. . . .
The claim that Omar illegally wed her brother so he could gain American citizenship first surfaced on conservative blogs in 2016, when she was running for the Minnesota state legislature.
In a statement that year, Omar called it “baseless rumors” that “are absolutely false and ridiculous.”
Omar then said she had married her current partner, Ahmed Hirsi, in the eyes of her Muslim faith in 2002 — but never legally married him. Their partnership ended in 2008.
Omar then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, but that union ended in 2011, according to her statement.
“Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive,” she said at the time.

The question is not whether the “insinuations” are “offensive,” but whether they are true, and why couldn’t the staff of the Star-Tribune determine this question one way or the other? It would seem simple enough: Who are Ahmed Nur Said Elmi’s parents? But good luck finding a definite answer to that question, because Somalia is notoriously a failed state, destroyed by civil war and Islamic fundamentalism, and a reporter can’t simply book a flight to Mogadishu, stroll into a government office and walk out with a Xerox copy of a birth certificate for Ahmed Elmi — or Ilhan Omar, for that matter. We are told that she was born in 1982, and that her mother died when she was 2, and while I’m not saying I doubt any of the specifics about her early life in Somali as related by Wikipedia, I’d suspect that finding documentary evidence to verify these details would be difficult. What we know is that she arrived in the United States as a refugee in 1992, when Somalia was being torn apart by rival warlords, and that her subsequent career as a politician puts her on the extreme left-wing fringe of American politics. But let us ask a very simple question: Where is Ahmed Nur Said Elmi now?

If reporters want to debunk the “baseless rumors,” wouldn’t Ahmed Elmi be the obvious source to put an end to this controversy?

Go ask Brian Stelter or Jake Tapper: Where is Ahmed Elmi? Why can’t CNN reporters find this mystery man who once married Ilhan Omar? Wouldn’t it be the biggest scoop of the year if CNN could locate this man, interview him on camera and thereby vindicate Ilhan Omar’s innocence?

What explains the mainstream media’s lack of curiosity about Ahmed Elmi? Why isn’t a crew from 60 Minutes doggedly trying to find him? Doesn’t it seem like these journalists don’t want to know the answer?

Or perhaps they’ve just been “hypnotized.” Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

Category: Democrats, Donald Trump, Media Bias, Minnesota, Somalia

In The Mailbox: 07.17.19

Posted on | July 17, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

As Bob at The Camp Of The Saints says below, Adobe Walls needs our help.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Another Local Municipality Makes Ransomware Payment
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #684
EBL: Hot Dog!
Twitchy: PJ Media Editor Promises New “Smoking Gun” Evidence On Ilhan Omar’s Shady Past
Louder With Crowder: Anti-ICE Protester Goes On Vulgar Tirade Against Troops

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: It’s Guerrilla Warfare
American Thinker: A Different Take On Trump’s Tweetstorm About #TheOddSquad
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Sixteen Years After The Queen Of Salsa’s Death, The Castro Regime Still Bans Her Music
BattleSwarm: Democrats File Articles Of Impeachment Against President Trump
Camp of the Saints: Adobe Walls Needs Our Help
CDR Salamander: Yemen – A Long Way To Go
Da Tech Guy: Battle Of Fitchburg – The Drag Queen Counterattack
Don Surber: No, Trump Should Not Apologize
Dustbury: Low Comprehension
First Street Journal: Democrats Table Impeachment Resolution
Fred On Everything:
The Geller Report: Here’s A List Of Racist, Jew-Hating Statements From #TheOddSquad, also, Ilhan Omar Introduces Resolution To Boycott Jews, Announces Trip To Israel
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, What Buzz Aldrin Saw
Hollywood In Toto: How Timothy Lim Avoids Comic Industry Blacklisting
Joe For America: Occasional Cortex Has A New Challenger – A GOP Immigrant From Jamaica
JustOneMinute: Bracing For 2020
Legal Insurrection: Gibson’s Bakery Awarded $6.5 Million In Legal Fees & Expenses Against Oberlin College, also, Facebook Labels St. Augustine Quote As “Hate Speech”
Michelle Malkin: Defund Lutherans For Open Borders Now!
The PanAm Post: Brazil Will Collect More Money Than All Governments Since 1990 If It Privatizes, also, Maduro’s Regime Protects ELN, FARC Terrorists, Says Colombia’s Duque
Power Line: Scenes From The Democratic Panic Room, also, Anarchy
Shark Tank: No Sanctuary City Violations Found In Florida
Shot In The Dark: Double-Dog Gun-Free Zone
The Political Hat: The Sad & Pathetic Degeneration Of Society, One Jar At A Time
This Ain’t Hell: Delaware Man Charged With Impersonating A Veteran, also, No Deal For Turkey
Victory Girls: Creepy Porn Lawyer Tries To Slither Back Into The Spotlight
Volokh Conspiracy: Justice John Paul Stevens, RIP
Weasel Zippers: Ilhan Omar – “I Do Not Regret My Earlier Antisemitic Comments”, also, Of 22 MS-13 Gangers Charged With Grisly Murders & Racketeering, 19 Are Illegals
Megan McArdle: Marianne Williamson Is The Only True Anti-Trump
Mark Steyn: The Cancelling Of Lindsay Shepherd

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Category: Linkagery

Wes Pruden, R.I.P.

Posted on | July 17, 2019 | Comments Off on Wes Pruden, R.I.P.

He was 83 years old, and died after spending a full workday in the offices of the Washington Times. He was the last of the old-time newspapermen, and the word “journalist” was prohibited from appearing in the pages of the Times during his tenure as editor-in-chief.

That rule was one of several variations from the AP Stylebook known as “Prudenisms,” reflecting Mr. Pruden’s preference for plain English and his hostility to euphemism, jargon and lazy writing. For example, “controversial” was prohibited, as were “alleged,” “allegation” and “allegedly.” If someone was accused of wrongdoing, then you had to cite a source making that charge, rather than just saying the person allegedly did whatever it was. Also, under Mr. Pruden’s rules, “gay” was not an acceptable synonym for homosexual, which meant that, as an assistant editor on the national desk, I had to change this in AP wire stories.

The Times used courtesy titles, so the President would be “Mr. Trump” and the Speaker of the House “Mrs. Pelosi” on second reference, and we were not allowed to use “Ms.,” so that on second reference a certain New York Democrat would be Miss Ocasio-Cortez. Also, we did not use “Dr.” as the honorific for a Ph.D., but only for an M.D. This was because doctorate degrees were a dime a dozen in D.C., and even many high-school principals could demand a “Dr.” if we ever let that get started. This particular Prudenism really ruffled the feathers of James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who had a Ph.D. in psychology and always insisted on being called Doctor Dobson, but the editor’s rule was unbending and on second reference he was always “Mr. Dobson.” I seem to recall Ralph Z. Hallow on the phone with Dobson’s people, getting an earful of complaints about this, as the “Doctor” thing was part of Dobson’s brand, as it were, but it was Mr. Pruden’s paper, and complaints were useless.

Some of my colleagues at the paper grumbled about Mr. Pruden’s curmudgeonly ways, but having an old-fashioned editor was in many ways a great blessing, because he was utterly invulnerable to any kind of political correctness or manufactured “controversy.” Of course, every liberal on the planet hated the Washington Times, so there was never any shortage of “activist” types indignant about our coverage, but there was no pressure they could bring to bear on Mr. Pruden that would make him flinch. A reporter whose story touched off a firestorm of outrage knew that, as long as he had the facts right, Mr. Pruden had his back. As long as the Old Man was happy with your work, it didn’t matter who else might be angry about it. He had courage, and a sense of honor.

Did I mention he hated blogs? It’s true. Mr. Pruden despised amateurism of the kind where every crackpot with a laptop can pretend to be an “investigative journalist,” e.g., Jason Leopold. Mr. Pruden believed in hierarchy, in paying your dues and sticking to the facts. One of the rules in Mr. Pruden’s newsroom was that you could not base a story entirely on anonymous sources. An over-reliance on “sources say” tends to undermine the reader’s confidence, and rightly so. No intelligent person believes a word of anything published under the byline of Jason Leopold, who would have been thrown down the stairs by Wes Pruden.

There is no shortage of “journalists” nowadays who deserve to be thrown down the stairs by an old-fashioned editor, but I probably shouldn’t start naming names. Let’s just say that if you’re a pudgy “media critic” with fewer viewers than Spongebob Squarepants, you should probably be grateful you never had to work for Wes Pruden. God bless his soul.