U.S. Government to Open 3 New Centers to House Migrant Children

WASHINGTON – U.S. officials said Monday that the government will open three new centers to house undocumented migrant children who cross the country’s southern border alone with an eye toward dealing with the increase in those arrivals in recent months.

Officials with the departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security told EFE that the opening of the centers, two in Texas and at least one more in California, is scheduled for this month.

The total capacity of the Texas centers will be 1,000 migrants, while the one in California will house 400, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Normally, the number of undocumented immigrants coming to the United States across the southern border increases in summer and then falls off, but this year authorities are seeing that the high levels of entries during the summer months has remained relatively high during the subsequent months.

In October, at least 4,973 unaccompanied children crossed the border with Mexico, a 97 percent increase compared with the same month last year, according to Customs and Border Protection figures.

In November, the crossings totaled 5,622, up 115 percent from that month in the previous year.

In response to the increase in detentions of minors crossing the border alone, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement has begun a process of “expanding” its capacity to temporarily house those children, DHS spokeswoman Marsha L. Catron said in a statement sent to EFE.

In accord with that program, the office has increased the number of beds available for migrants in November from 7,900 to 8,400 and has asked for help in providing an additional 5,000 beds within the next 30 days, if necessary.

Authorities in fiscal 2015, which ended Sept. 30, detained 39,970 unaccompanied minors along the border with Mexico, 42 percent fewer than during the preceding fiscal year, according to CBP.

During fiscal 2014, an unprecedented immigration crisis broke out on the southwestern border with the number of unaccompanied minors trying to cross into the United States doubling to at least 68,541.

Most of the children came from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

President Barack Obama closed the immigrant detention centers in 2009, shortly after taking office, but he decided to reopen them after the 2014 crisis.

Despite criticism, the government has maintained its intention to keep the centers operating, although along the lines of the reform announced in June by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to reduce the time that immigrant families remain in those facilities.

Russia proves " Turkey is moving oil for ISIS "?

The real shadow over Syria is cast by the mullahs of Iran

By Christopher Booker

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

In all the coverage given to unravelling who is for or against whom in the unspeakable shambles of Syria, one key bit of the jigsaw too often gets forgotten. We know Russia is pro-Assad but anti-Isil and other assorted Syrian rebels. Turkey is anti-Assad and Isil, but also Russia and the Kurds. The Kurds are anti-Assad, Isil and Turkey. The US-led coalition is anti-Isil but pro the Kurds, Turkey and the other Syrian rebels.

The other crucial player too easily overlooked, however, is that major power in the region without whose military support Assad would long ago have vanished: the dictatorship run by the Shia mullahs in Tehran. Ever since his country fell apart, Assad’s main support has been the Quds Force, the extra-territorial arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. For years it has been fomenting terror across the Middle East, from Lebanon to Afghanistan and not least in Iraq, where its backing for Shia militias posed the most deadly threat to US and British forces throughout their post-2003 occupation.

At the forefront of the fighting since Assad’s army crumbled has been the Quds Force, led by some of its most senior officers, along with 25,000 of the Hizbollah allies they support in Lebanon and paid mercenaries from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Their main target, as in the ongoing battle for Aleppo, has not been Isil but those other Syrian rebels.

But in recent months, as we learn from the well-informed National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the main group working in and outside Iran to replace the tyranny in Tehran with a secular, democratic government, the Quds Force in Syria has taken a very serious hit. Many of its senior officers, including its commander, Brigadier-General Hossein Hamedani, have been killed – and even the Force’s overall commander, Qassem Suleiman, has reportedly been injured.

The NCRI is adamant that Syria cannot return to peace until Assad is ousted. The Western allies claim that this can only be done by the “Free Syrian Army”. But they have to equivocate over the “Free Syrians’” chief enemy, Iran, because they were so bucked by the recent pledge of Iran’s “moderate” President Rouhani that his country would no longer pursue its plans to build nuclear weapons: a deal by which the NCRI (which first alerted the West to Iran’s nuclear plans in 2002) claims the West was hoodwinked. Nor can we afford to risk further conflict with Assad’s other main ally, Russia. So we continue just to bomb Isil, while the Syrian people continue to endure the most terrifying and dangerous tragedy of our time.

Turkey says ISIL oil trade accusations are old-style Soviet propaganda

Islamist militant kills his mother and wife in Lebanon blast

NCRI -Iran regime’s secret committee to deceive IAEA on PMD Probe revealed

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) network inside Iran has obtained reliable information that a top-secret committee is in charge of drafting the answers to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding the Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of Tehran’s nuclear program, according to the revelations made by Iranian opposition in a conference in Washington on Wednesday.

Top officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Defense Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) comprise the committee’s key members, said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the U.S. representative office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

According to the revelations, the officials have been tasked with drafting the responses to IAEA’s PMD inquiries working to cover up the military dimensions, thus resolving and terminating the PMD dispute by forging suitable scenarios for non-military usage of the program, which would seem plausible to the IAEA, and to falsely convince the international community that Iran has never been after the nuclear bomb.

This committee prepared the PMD answers delivered to the IAEA on August 15, 2015.

Among the foremost issues related to the PMD question are the explosive detonators called EBW (Exploding Bridge Wire) detonator, which is an integral part of a program to develop an implosion type nuclear device.

In its September 2014 report, IAEA stated that Iran has offered “information and explanations to the Agency on Iran’s work after 2007 related to the application of EBW detonators in the oil and gas industry which was not inconsistent with specialized industry practices.”

Tehran forged documents and exchanged communication between the Oil Ministry and the Defense Ministry to prove that the EBWs were produced and used by the oil industry.

But according to an exhaustive investigation by the Iranian Resistance involving dozens of sources, the National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC), which is responsible for all oil and gas drilling, has not received even one of EBW detonators that had been produced by the Ministry of Defense. This renders the regime’s claims utterly false.

16 Die in Riot at Guatemalan Prison

GUATEMALA CITY – At least 16 inmates died in a riot at the Canada prison farm on Guatemala’s southwestern Pacific coast, authorities said Monday.

Penitentiary system spokesman Rudy Esquivel told reporters that up to now the deaths of 16 prisoners have been confirmed.

Esquivel said that in the early hours, security forces regained control of the prison, located 59 kilometers (37 miles) south of the capital, in Escuintla province.

The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon and the possibility that some of the victims were prison guards has been dismissed.

Security forces did not enter the facility Sunday night because of the danger it represented, not only for them but also for the inmates, Deputy Security Minister Elmer Sosa told reporters outside the prison.

Up to now authorities have taken 12 bodies to the National Institute of Forensic Sciences, or Inacif, in Escuintla, while several police units remain posted outside the prison.

Family members of the inmates have also gathered at the scene and are waiting to hear a report on exactly what is happening.

Guatemala’s penitentiary system has responsibility for operating 22 prisons, in which some 4,000 guards keep watch on more than 19,000 inmates.