Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious

From: CNSNews.com

Dennis K. Burke, who as a lawyer for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1990s was a key player behind the enactment of the 1994 assault-weapons ban, and who then went on to become Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s chief of staff, and a contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, and then a member of Obama's transition team focusing on border-enforcement issues, ended up in the Obama administration as the U.S. attorney in Arizona responsible for overseeing Operation Fast and Furious.

When Obama nominated Burke to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Burke told the Arizona Capitol Times he believed he understood what the president and his attorney general wanted him to do.

“There’s clearly been direction provided already by President Obama and Attorney General Holder as to what they want to be doing, and this is an office that is at the center of the issues of border enforcement,” said Burke.

Over the course of several days, CNSNews.com left multiple telephone messages with Burke for comment on this story. He did not respond.

Dennis K. Burke has had a long career working as an aide and political appointee to Democratic elected officials. From 1989 to 1994, he was a counsel for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, working in that capacity for several years on an assault-weapons ban, which was finally enacted on Sept. 13, 1994 as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. That act expired on Sept. 13, 2004. (See NYT: Dennis Burke, Sen. DeConcini, Weapons Ban.pdf)

From 1994-95, Burke served in the Clinton Justice Department in the Office of Legislative Affairs, and in 1997-99, he was an assistant U.S. attorney in Arizona.

From 1999 to 2003, Burke was chief deputy and special assistant to Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano.

In 2003, when Napolitano became governor, Burke became her chief of staff. He stayed in that job until the fall of 2008, when he left to help Democratic political campaigns, including then-Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that on Jan. 9, 2008, while working as Gov. Napolitano’s chief of staff, Burke contributed $2,000 to then-Sen Obama’s presidential primary campaign. Since 1997, according to FEC records, Burke has contributed a total of $16,350 to various Democratic candidates.
After Obama was elected in November 2008, Burke joined his presidential transition team, serving on the Immigration Policy Working Group.

Eight days before Obama’s inauguration, on Jan. 12, 2009--while Burke was working on the transition team--Obama met with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, D.C. At that meeting, Obama “pledged” to take action to stop the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico.

Obama also decided to put Burke’s old boss, incoming Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, in a leadership role in making the gun-trafficking problem a top priority.

“President-elect Obama expressed support for efforts in the border states in both the United States and Mexico to eradicate drug-related violence and stop the flow of guns and cash,” incoming White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement at the time. “He told President Calderón that he intends to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead an effort to increase information sharing to strengthen those efforts. He pledged to take more effective action from the United States to stem the flow of arms from the United States to Mexico.”

When Napolitano became Homeland Security secretary, Burke moved from the Obama transition team to become her senior adviser. On Feb. 25, 2009, a little more than a month after Obama had made his “pledge” to Calderon, Napolitano testified in the House Homeland Security Committee. She stressed that stopping the flow of guns to Mexico was a top priority of the Obama administration and key focus of her work.

Responding to a question about violence on the border, Napolitano said the administration was going to work with the Mexican government on the issue. Then she said: “Secondly, it is looking at, government-wide, at what we can do to stop the southbound export of weaponry, particularly assault-type weapons and grenades that are being used in that drug war.”

Napolitano further noted that drug cartels were targeting Mexican government officials and law enforcement officers, and that, given the seriousness of the threat, Obama’s national security adviser, the attorney general, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Customs (of which the Border Patrol is part) would all be working on the issue.

Homeland Security suspends immigration agreements with Arizona police

From: Washington Times

The Obama administration said Monday it is suspending existing agreements with Arizona police over enforcement of federal immigration laws, and said it has issued a directive telling federal authorities to decline many of the calls reporting illegal immigrants that the Homeland Security Department may get from Arizona police.

Administration officials, speaking on condition they not be named, told reporters they expect to see an increase in the number of calls they get from Arizona police — but that won’t change President Obama’s decision to limit whom the government actually tries to detain and deport.

“We will not be issuing detainers on individuals unless they clearly meet our defined priorities,” one official said in a telephone briefing.

The official said that despite the increased number of calls, which presumably means more illegal immigrants being reported, the Homeland Security Department is unlikely to detain a significantly higher number of people and won’t be boosting personnel to handle the new calls.

“We do not plan on putting additional staff on the ground in Arizona,” the official said.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Arizona may not impose its own penalties for immigration violations, but it said state and local police could check the legal status of those they have reasonable suspicion to believe are in the country illegally.

That means police statewide can immediately begin calling to check immigration status — but federal officials are likely to reject most of those calls.

Federal officials said they’ll still perform the checks as required by law but will respond only when someone has a felony conviction on his or her record. Absent that, ICE will tell the local police to release the person.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said the court’s decision frees police up to perform immigration checks. In anticipation of the ruling, she issued an executive order calling for guidance to be issued to every police department on how to fairly carry out the law.

“We will move forward, instructing law enforcement to begin practicing what the United States Supreme Court has upheld,” she said.

But the Obama administration is under pressure from immigrant-rights groups to cut down on the number of people it is deporting and has taken a number of steps to try to limit deportations of rank-and-file illegal immigrants and focus instead on those with criminal records or repeated immigration violations.

Last week, Mr. Obama said he would halt deportations for most illegal immigrants under 30 who were brought here as children.

On Monday the administration officials also said they are ending the seven 287(g) task force agreements with Arizona law enforcement officials, which proactively had granted some local police the powers to enforce immigration laws.

The task forces, named for the section of law that allows them, have proved popular among many localities but have been a political headache for the Obama administration, with immigrant-rights groups saying they led to abuses.

On Monday the administration officials said they had concluded the seven agreements they had signed with various departments in Arizona weren’t working and took the Supreme Court’s ruling as a chance to scrap them.

Obama knew about Gun Walking in March, 2009

Napolitano tells Rick Perry to ask Congress for money to house illegal immigrants

From: Rick Perry

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said today that Texas Gov. Rick Perry should ask Congress — and not the Obama administration — for money to cover the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants.

At a breakfast meeting with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, Napolitano, a former federal prosecutor and Arizona governor, said she sympathizes with border state governors who are seeking to offset some of the costs of illegal immigration. But she added that Congress must supply the funding to transfer money to the states — and the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate have declined to make such aid available.

“This is not something Congress has been willing to appropriate for,” she said.

Napolitano said she made a similar reimbursement request of the George W. Bush administration when she, too, was running a border state a few years ago.

“I think he copied our letter when I was governor of Arizona,” he said.

In an Aug. 10 letter to Napolitano, Perry blamed the federal government for failing to secure the border and burdening county jails and state prisons with the costs associated with housing illegal immigrants.

“Therefore, on behalf of all the taxpaying citizens of Texas, I am respectfully submitting a reimbursement request in the amount of $349,283,453 for state and local costs of incarcerating illegal immigrants who are in the United States as a result of the federal government’s failure to properly secure our international borders,” Perry wrote.

Napolitano, who failed to get her requested assistance from the Bush administration, said she has sympathy for border governors who bear the costs of federal immigration policy.

“I get it,” she said.