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Nationwide Unrest And Riots Drive Jewish Veterans To Arm Themselves And Protect Their Own

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I received an unexpected message this week that gave me a new sense of hope that I wasn’t, in fact, alone in my thinking about the current tension in our country posing a threat to the Jewish community. The Twitter Direct Message came from Leibel Mangel, someone I have admired for so long.

Mangel served in the Israel Defense Forces as a combat soldier. He was a lone soldier, meaning he chose to serve as an American. He enlisted at 19, leaving his hometown of Cincinnati to fight terrorism and antisemitism on one of the most hostile battlefields.

What’s more, Mangel’s grandfather is one of the youngest living survivors of Auschwitz. The issue of antisemitism is personal for him and he’s made it his life’s mission to be outspoken against it.

https://twitter.com/LeibelMangel/status/1123994199647506436

His battle didn’t end when he hung up his IDF uniform and returned to the States. Rather, Mangel’s fight was now to be fought, although differently, on his home soil.

Directing a new organization under “Magen Am” called “The Lone Soldier Veterans Program,” Mangel has set out to train Jewish veterans from both the U.S. military and IDF to protect Jewish communities and institutions.

“As anti-semitism and civil unrest continues to rise at alarming rates, we have made the decision to stop relying on others to protect us,” Mangel told me.

Over a period of twelve months, the veterans learn security tactics including training in firearms and Krav Maga, a self-defense system used by the IDF. The program also gives a purpose to those returning from their service, which is often very difficult and contributes to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, commonly seen in veterans.

The group mobilized trained security from within the Jewish community when rioters in Los Angeles targeted entire Jewish neighborhoods and many local Kosher stores and synagogues. According to reports, the group responded to 10 break-ins and received hundreds of Whats-App alerts at the time. The group also reportedly stopped vandals from destroying a local synagogue. Unfortunately, many others were ruined.

“History has not been kind to those who can not secure and protect their own community from within. We will utilize our most skilled protectors, our military veterans, to ensure the safety of our community and the future of our people,” he added.

Although many rioters have called for defunding the police, the Jewish community sees the police as an ally amid the uptick in violence and chaos. Mangel is one of them and his organization works in concert with local police departments to ensure community safety.

“We are very proud of our relationship with our Police Departments. Our local police play a vital role in the safety of our Jewish community. We have been in constant communication and look forward to continuing to coordinate with law enforcement at every level to keep our community safe,” he explained.

What happened in Los Angeles is just part of the story and it’s a reason why Mangel hopes to not only bring security to the Jewish community in California, but to Jewish communities across the nation.

When riots started in the streets of D.C. after the tragic death of George Floyd, the groups targeted my favorite stores and neighborhood restaurants, but also my spirit, my synagogue. I still walk by the building to see the shadow of a hateful phrase spraypainted on the historic building that I don’t think will ever come off unless repainted.

We always had a guard at the front to protect us and I never felt unsafe even after similar instances of vandalism. In fact, looking back on my childhood, it wasn’t at all abnormal to have bomb threats to our Jewish schools or community centers. That was normal.

Only recently, as I came to learn what those groups taking aim at my synogague truly want to achieve, I decided to take a course on personal protection and safety. I never felt compelled to, I sometimes floated the idea among my non-Jewish friends who encouraged me to, but I never even took the time to understand why I needed to. I think that’s a flaw of my community and sometimes it’s not even a flaw, but just that we are optimistic and try to see the good in this world.

When Mangel called me, it was when I realized this.

As we’ve learned throughout our history, reality hits us often when it’s too late when things are already dangerous. Right now, there are calls to defund the police and anti-law enforcement rhetoric is at an all-time high. This, combined with a rise in Jew-hatred, makes it difficult to know who will be there for us. I’ve come to realize that it may be us that needs to save our own.

I’ve spoken with European Jews, the ones who haven’t yet fled to Israel but certainly consider it, who struggle to get full support from their governments in defending their synagogues, schools, and businesses. Often, they’re funding the majority of their own security.

In the Netherlands, for example, 2019 saw a 35 percent increase in antisemitic incidents. Still, the Jewish community’s calls for extra support have fallen on deaf ears in the Dutch parliament. And although the House of Representatives voted in July to establish a national antisemitism coordinator, and passed a number of initiatives to combat the hate, a motion to fund security for synagogues failed.

“Usually, us Jews in the European diaspora, we in a way, look up to American Jews where a community seems to be a lot more vibrant, established, bigger of course, for obvious reasons. But, now, with antisemitism making a comeback in the United States, this is something that, ironically, we in Europe have more experience with in many ways,” Aron Vrieler, a spokesman for the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) told me.

Vrieler added that there is some support from many municipalities such as Amsterdam and the central government allocates funds for security as well. But a majority of the funds, which is roughly estimated to be about 70 percent (1.5 million Euros) of the Jewish community’s security costs, comes from the community itself, he said.

He explained, “As you may understand, this is hardly an unnecessary luxury in Europe. The Netherlands was spared fatal antisemitic terrorist attacks in the recent years, unlike Germany, France and Belgium. However, borders are completely open. The risks here are hardly different than in those countries.”

With three major antisemitic attacks in 2019 on a Jewish business in Jersey City, a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, and a synagogue in Poway, gathering as Jews as a community is under threat in America, and it’s a threat to our lives. Antisemitism is happening at a rate that feels like on a daily basis. Luckily, our situation is still better than in European countries.

As the amazing Bari Weiss once said, “Jews here have experienced the best diaspora experience that we’ve ever had in all of Jewish history.” Our founders, she said, viewed themselves “as new Israelites starting a new promised land” and supported the full integration of Jewish people in America.

That very Jewish experience in America our founding fathers set to create for us is exactly what Mangel wants to protect. If you want to learn more or get involved with Magen Am and the Lone Soldier Program, click here.

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Mayorkas Border Manifesto: Why the DHS Secretary must be impeached

If this isn’t a reason to impeach Mayorkas, I don’t know what is.

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Alejandro Mayorkas

Listen to “The Smoking Gun: The Mayorkas Memo Telling Border Patrol to Stop Doing Its Job” on Spreaker.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memorandum to top DHS officials on Sept 30, 2021, that set the stage for an open border policy that has resulted in the most dangerous national security situation the United States has ever confronted. That seven-page letter, written by Mayorkas and obtained by this columnist, is an open borders blueprint and reveals his purposeful failure to secure the southern border. Numerous retired and current DHS officials said it is sufficient enough for Congress to impeach him.

The Mayorkas policy, which has perpetuated a tsunami of people from all over the world to illegally enter the United States, is simplified and made clear in his memorandum. It is so direct that it is easy to see why the policy overrides almost all U.S. immigration laws by pushing all federal immigration agencies under DHS to exercise  “prosecutorial discretion” [ not the law ] to assess whether those who enter the country illegally should be given the right to stay, despite any criminal background or failure to qualify for asylum.

Some of the memo’s contents have been openly discussed by Mayorkas under questioning by lawmakers at hearings. Even parts of the policies have been exposed in reports but what makes this memo unique is that it is the roadmap the Biden Administration used to implement this failed open border policy that has become the biggest concern for most American voters.

And Mayorkas is the architect of the policy. It is a policy that fails to uphold the Constitution, and current immigration laws and turns Federal law enforcement officers and agents into de facto human traffickers.

“In exercising our discretion, we are guided by the fact that the majority of undocumented noncitizens who could be subject to removal have been contributing members of our communities for years,” states Mayorkas, as he goes on to list all the possible jobs illegal aliens are doing in the nation. “The fact an individual is removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them. We will use our discretion and focus our enforcement resources in a more targeted way.”

Those ‘targeted resources’ Mayorkas was referring to have mostly been directed at processing illegal migrants into the country and not deporting those breaking the law, according to lawmakers and DHS officials who spoke with me. I’ve documented for the past three years on both Fox News’ Sean Hannity and on SaraACarter.com the enormous resources used not to deport but to import illegal aliens into the country.

Rep. Andy Biggs, who is currently co-chair of the Border Security Caucus and the House Judiciary Committee, where he is the Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance. told me Sunday that the memo in its entirety is Mayorka’s ideological push for open borders and it’s “his philosophy, cobbled together in place…the letter reflects his distorted thinking on border security.”

Mayorkas’ ‘distorted thinking’ has now led to calls for his impeachment. There are currently two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas. The articles charge him with “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and a “breach of public trust.” This memo alone is evidence of that breach with the American public.

In the first article, the Republicans with the House Homeland Security Committee state that Mayorkas “has repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security…His refusal to obey the law is not only an offense against the separation of powers in the Constitution of the United States, it also threatens our national security and has had a dire impact on communities across the country.”

Republicans accused Mayorkas in the second impeachment article of “knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people and avoiding lawful oversight to obscure the devastating consequences of his willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law and carry out his statutory duties.” And although the feckless Senate may not have the votes to make the impeachment stick, it will expose those Republicans who truly are open borders advocates from those who believe in the Constitution and the rule of law. It would require a two-thirds majority to convict and remove Mayorkas from office.

If there was ever a reason for impeachment, Mayorkas fits the bill. His impeachment will send a clear message to the Biden Administration and Senators on both sides of the aisle that gig is up and that our nation’s security must be the priority.

Mayorkas ushered in the administration’s expansive use of  “prosecutorial discretion”  that allowed our borders to become an open gateway for our adversaries, drug cartels, terrorists and people from all over the world, stated Joel Maldonado, a recently retired Border Patrol Supervisor, who spoke for the first time about the memo to me on, The Sara Carter Show podcast Sunday.

“When we are not upholding the law but being forced to commit treason it puts everyone at risk, it’s demoralizing and they are lying to the American people,” said Maldonado, who published his first book on his 28 years with the Border Patrol, A Binding Oath: A Border Patrol Journey and the Mayorkas Effect. 

Maldonado, who retired in March 2023, had never seen the Mayorkas memo until this year. He said it coincided with the policy his station in Texas had to abide by and a dangerous policy “that continues to this day.”

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Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“The memo itself is a smoking gun, it’s proof that the administration usurped the law with this prosecutorial discretion policy, along with so much more,’ he said. He described how he and other supervisors would put agents out on the border to conduct enforcement instead of using them all for processing illegal aliens into the country when directed to do so by DHS. He said “We would do this out of sight of Washington D.C. and DHS but then be scolded later if we increased our apprehensions. They wanted us to process and they didn’t care how many more people came in or what the consequences would be.”

The seven-page memo was emailed from Mayorkas to Director Tae Johnson, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Acting Commissioner Troy Miller, U.S. Customs and Border Protection; Director Ur Jaddou, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; Robert Silvers, Under Secretary of Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans; Katherine Culliton-Gonzalez, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Lynne Parker Dupree, Chief Privacy Officer with the Privacy Office.

Many areas of the memo are striking but one that stood out was the list of reasons and excuses that Mayorkas gives can be used when attempting to not deport illegal aliens that clearly present a danger to the nation or have violated U.S. law.

This memo “brings to the forefront the official policy of Alejandro Mayorkas to open wide our southern border,” Biggs stated, adding that he believes Congress has the votes to impeach the DHS Secretary.

One of the most stunning parts of the memo refers to the ‘threat to public safety.’  Mayorkas said those threats possibly posed by illegal aliens are ‘not to be determined according to bright lines or categories. Instead, it requires an assessment of the individual and the totality of the facts and circumstances.’

He lists reasons for enforcement action, such as, “sophistication of criminal offense, use or threatened use of a firearm or dangerous weapon, serious prior criminal record” but then follows with mitigating reasons as to what could constitute a reason not to deport them.

He states,  “There can be mitigating factors that militate in favor of declining enforcement action: 

  • advance or tender age
  • lengthy presence in the United States
  • a mental condition that may have contributed to the criminal conduct, or a physical or mental condition requiring care or treatment
  • Status as a victim of crime or victim, witness, or legal party in legal proceedings,
  • the impact of removal on family in the United States, such as loss of a provider or caregiver,
  • whether the noncitizen may be eligible for humanitarian protection or other immigration relief
  • military or other public service of the noncitizen or their immediate family;
  • time since an offense and evidence of rehabilitation;
  • conviction was vacated or expunged

Maldonado said the list of excuses to allow illegal criminals to stay “is basically a strict warning to supervisors” in Border Patrol, ICE and other agencies that deportation was no longer a priority. The priority was ensuring that those who came in illegally stayed in the country, regardless of status, asylum claims or failure to properly vet them for national security threats.

What’s more disturbing in the Mayorkas border manifesto – is not just how he ties the hands of federal agents and risks the national security of our nation – but how he exonerates himself and the Biden Administration from any possible repercussions due to a dangerous open border policy.

“The civil immigration enforcement does not compel an action to be taken or not taken. Instead, the guidance leaves the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to the judgment of our personnel,” Mayorkas states.

Maldonado, and numerous other retired and current Border Patrol supervisors and agents, told me this guidance gives the federal officials – including Mayorkas – cover,  by putting the onus on the federal law enforcement officers who are forced to process people into the nation, and not the administration’s policy.

One current ICE supervisor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, summed it up by saying, “It means if anything goes wrong – if there’s a terror attack or something of that magnitude because of what Mayorkas has done – it will be the poor BP agent or ICE officer that will be blamed…Even though we have been the ones forced to let in the criminals and terrorists because of Mayorkas’ policy.”

If that isn’t a reason to impeach Mayorkas, I don’t know what is.

Follow Sara A. Carter on X at @SaraCarterDC 

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