Revealed: how US immigration uses fake social media profiles across investigations

Records from the Department of Homeland Security show it sought to expand undercover operations online despite pushback from Facebook

Revealed: how US immigration uses fake social media profiles across investigations

Related:

DHS Continues To Violate Facebook Policies By Allowing CBP, ICE Officers To Create Fake Social Media Profiles

Meanwhile, social media surveillance continues uninterrupted. The documents show CBP is still allowed to create fake profiles to passively monitor public Facebook posts. ICE can go a bit further. It has been given explicit permission to create fake accounts to engage in undercover investigations as long as the tactics used online are somewhat analogous to undercover activities carried out in the real world.

Florida’s DeSantis puts billboards in Illinois to recruit officers

Florida is putting billboards in Illinois’ “Greater Chicago area” to recruit law enforcement officers from the state, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday.

Florida’s DeSantis puts billboards in Illinois to recruit officers

Related:

No, new Illinois law will not let people in US illegally become cops, deputies

The law says noncitizens applying for those jobs must be legally allowed to possess guns. People living in the U.S. illegally don’t qualify because federal law bars them from owning guns, according to experts and lawmakers.

People living in the country illegally may not legally obtain firearms, a federal appeals court ruled in 2012, and both experts and lawmakers say that makes them ineligible for law enforcement positions.

“Anyone who is saying that an illegal alien can become a police officer or sheriff’s deputy is either, one, misinformed, or two, giving you a baldfaced lie,” said state Rep. John Cabello, a Republican co-sponsor of the law and a Rockford police officer.

Illinois will allow some non-citizens to be police. But only those authorized to work and own a gun

DOJ eyeing Americans ‘like ATMs,’ spending over $6 billion to aid civil asset forfeitures, watchdog says

The Department of Justice is shelling out more than $6 billion to private companies to manage its asset forfeiture investigations, raising alarm from one nonprofit law firm that accuses police of “treating ordinary Americans like ATMs” and seizing their cash.

DOJ eyeing Americans ‘like ATMs,’ spending over $6 billion to aid civil asset forfeitures, watchdog says

H/T: Steve Lehto

Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners.

Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

Related:

Archived: How Ukraine’s Surrogate Mothers Have Survived the War

Archived: In War, Who Is a Surrogate Responsible to First?

The Scandal-Plagued Company behind Stranded Surrogacy Babies is Also Promoting a Controversial IVF Technique

Human trafficking and forgery of documents: the police accused the largest surrogate motherhood clinic in Ukraine

Bombing Mexico to stop drug cartels from supplying US with fentanyl is a terrible idea

The early stretch of the 2024 presidential campaign is underway — and with it a boatload of bad ideas and policy initiatives. One of the worst but increasingly popular proposals, uttered by several politicians aspiring for the highest office in the land, is to use the military to combat the drug cartels that have smuggled gargantuan amounts of fentanyl into the United States and turned swaths of neighboring Mexico into a war zone.

Bombing Mexico to stop drug cartels from supplying US with fentanyl is a terrible idea

Maybe they should call the Taliban for help?! /s

RAIR Research

Screenshot.

Unmasked anti-Muslim troll Amy Mekelburg connected to Chris Gaubatz

Information published on social media and reviewed by Hatewatch show that RAIR’s president is Chris Gaubatz, a well-known anti-Muslim figure previously affiliated with the hate group Understanding the Threat. …

Though not the most outspoken anti-Muslim figure, Gaubatz has presented Islam as a violent religion and subscribes to a variety of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. In 2016, he joined up with former FBI agent turned anti-Muslim conspiracist John Guandolo. Up until April of this year, Gaubatz served as vice-president of Guandolo’s consulting firm Understanding the Threat (UTT). During that time, Guandolo and Gaubatz traveled the country providing training seminars about the “jihadi threat” to law enforcement and civilians. …

Trump’s Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec

Siino, meanwhile, moved to Los Angeles to launch a doomed internet media startup called WeMash with Quincy Jones III, son of the famous music producer. …

Mekelburg had also been trying to make inroads into what Ibrahim Hooper calls “the cottage-industry of Islam haters,” which is run by bigots such as Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, David Horowitz, Brigitte Gabriel and Frank Gaffney — several of whom have close ties to the Republican establishment and the Trump administration. Their efforts can be remunerative, thanks to generous funding from conservative and libertarian foundations such as the Donors Capital Fund.

Mekelburg’s best connection to this world was through Anni Cyrus, who produces The Glazov Gang, an Islamophobic talk show that can be found on YouTube. Host Jamie Glazov is the editor of one of Horowitz’s anti-Muslim publications. Mekelburg asked for Cyrus’ help in launching her own anti-Muslim organization. Cyrus, who did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment, greeted Mekelburg’s overture with enthusiasm. …

Mekelburg named her organization Resistance Against Islamic Radicals (RAIR). She created a website, set up a Facebook page and a Twitter handle, and recruited Cortez to design artwork from behind bars, according to Galasso. RAIR’s mission would be “to stop the Jihadi infiltration in our American communities.” Mekelburg didn’t mention herself anywhere on the organization’s website. Under an “accomplices” section, however, she posted the names, photos and contact information for people and groups she believed were collaborating with jihadi terrorists. That could mean anyone with a connection to Islam.

Connections:

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