Follow the money: Baltimore to spend $200,000 to help illegal aliens fight deportation

Fellowship of the Minds – by DCG

The city of Baltimore faces many challenges, mainly a very high crime rate. See our following blog posts:

• Baltimore sets record for killings per capita
• Baltimore lawmaker’s grandson killed in Labor Day weekend violence
• Baltimore’s “Don’t kill anybody” weekend: 3 shot, 2 fatally
• “Don’t kill anybody”: Murder-free weekend urged in Baltimore
• Baltimore mayor: Murder rate out of control
• 78% increase in homicides in Baltimore since Freddie Gray riots
• Baltimore residents blame record-high murder rate on lower police presence
• Baltimore’s rising violence claims the lives of seven students from same school

So now, according to the Baltimore Sun, the city officials’ priority is to spend taxpayer money to help illegal aliens.

Last Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh said the city will pay a team of lawyers to represent immigrants illegal aliens facing deportation. From the Baltimore Sun story:

The city’s spending panel on Wednesday approved spending $200,000 to pay for the attorneys, who the Democratic mayor said will get to work within weeks defending immigrants illegal aliens against federal deportation lawyers.

“We hope that everyone gets due process,” Pugh said.

Halfof the $200,000 is funded by a grant from the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit. The other half will come from the city’s budget.

The combined pot of money is expected to help about 40 people obtain legal representation.

The Vera Institute also will provide the mayor’s office with technical assistance and support, including help identifying lawyers, providing research and data and sharing best practices.

The funding is part of a broader effort to help immigrants illegal aliens that city officials, charity leaders and advocates launched after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Under the Republican president, federal immigration authorities have increased deportations.

In September, federal immigration officials arrested 28 people in Maryland during a nationwide sweep targeting immigration violations in what Trump has labeled “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Five were arrested in Baltimore, one was arrested in Baltimore County, 11 in Prince George’s County and 11 in Montgomery County, federal officials said.

Immigrants Illegal aliens who face deportation charges are far more likely to lose their cases when they do not have a lawyer, advocates say. Cities and counties around the nation have been setting up funds to help pay for those lawyers because the Constitution’s guarantee of legal representation does not extend to people facing immigration charges.

After the city’s five-member spending board voted, Pugh compared having taxpayers fund such lawyers to taxpayer funding for public defenders who represent people who cannot afford attorneys in criminal cases.

“We’re not making a decision as to their status, we’re making the decision to be supportive of individuals who live in our city,” Pugh said.

Read the rest of the story here.

Take a guess, just one, as to who has ties to the Vera Institute of Justice. It will come AS NO SURPRISE to you…

The Vera Institute of Justice, as described by Wikipedia:

“Founded in 1961, the Vera Institute of Justice is an independent nonprofit national research and policy organization in the United States. Based primarily in New York City, Vera also has offices in Washington, D.C.. Vera describes its goal as “to tackle the most pressing injustices of our day: from the causes and consequences of mass incarceration, racial disparities, and the loss of public trust in law enforcement, to the unmet needs of the vulnerable, the marginalized, and those harmed by crime and violence.”

The founder of this nonprofit “research” organization Louis Schweitzer, was a Russian-born United States paper industrialist and philanthropist whose philanthropic activities included the donation of 1% of his annual income to the United Nations. More from Wikipedia:

In 1961, he founded the Vera Foundation, later renamed the Vera Institute of Justice, to reduce the numbers of poor people awaiting trial on New York City’s Rikers Island. Under Schweitzer’s leadership, Vera pioneered the use of controlled, experimental design research methods in state courts. When, in 1966, these experiments convinced the federal government to rewrite the laws governing bail in criminal cases, President Lyndon Johnson credited Schweitzer.

Schweitzer also proposed a “juvenile disarmament” resolution to the UN whereby toy guns and water pistols would be prohibited as an initial step towards effective disarmament and arms control. In response to criticism that this was a naive and quixotic proposal, Schweitzer stated, “The naive should inherit the earth because the realists have done such a lousy job.”

And here are the ties between George Soros and the Vera Institute of Justice(Those which I could find on my Yahoo and Google searches. I’m sure there are many more that were not made available during my search):

• The former president of Open Society Foundations, Christopher Stone, spent a decade as director of the Vera Institute of Justice.
• In 2010, the Vera Institute of Justice, with support from the Open Society Foundations and other funders, worked with New Orleans city government and community leaders to help reinvent the city’s criminal justice system.
• In 2006, the Open Society Foundations awarded the Vera Institute of Justice $400,000 to “continue the work of The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons.”
• In 2010, the Open Society Foundations awarded the Vera Institute of Justice a $200,000 grant to “continue working with local government and community leaders in New Orleans, Louisiana, to continue its efforts to: develop and implement a pretrial release system; expand expedited screening; and transform the New Orleans Municipal Court.”
• In 2005, the Open Society Foundations awarded the Vera Institute of Justice a $350,00 grant to “develop and implement a research and media strategy on prison conditions in the United States, anchored by a blue-ribbon commission.”
• In 2011, the Open Society Foundations award the Vera Institute of Justice $500,000 to New York to “support the Center on Sentencing and Corrections and the Center on Youth and Justice.”

You knew Soros had his evil fingerprints ALL OVER this Baltimore project to ensure that “everyone” gets their “due process.”

DCG

Fellowship of the Minds