Man arrested after wife writes to Obama asking for help

Not everyone expects a response when they write a letter to the president of the United States. But Caroline Jamieson got much more than she expected when her husband ended up in jail and afraid he would be deported.

Jamieson, vice president of marketing at a new-media advertising company, wrote President Barack Obama in January because her husband, Hervé Fonkou Takoulo, was facing deportation to his native Cameroon. Takoulo failed in a bid before political asylum almost a decade ago, and a judge issued a deportation order after they were married.

After he and Jamieson married on 2005, Takoulo applied for a green card based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. But immigration law requires that the deportation order be lifted before the couple can appear before immigration officials to argue their case that the marriage is legitimate and not a ploy to legalize Takoulo's presence in the United States. "We want to be given the chance to interview and prove that we are a married couple, so Hervé can get a green card, and that has proven extremely difficult to do," Jamieson told CNN.

They never received a direct response to the letter. But they did get two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers waiting outside their East Village, Manhattan apartment on June 3 when Takoulo was leaving the apartment to go to the gym.

Jamieson told CNN that the officers cornered her husband and asked him if he had written a letter to the president. "He said 'No, but my wife did.' And they explained that with that letter -- when it was brought to their attention -- that the Obama administration wanted them to resolve this quickly,'" Jamieson said.

Her husband was held at ICE headquarters for six hours, alone in a room, until he was chained at the wrists, around his stomach and his ankles and taken to the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey, she said.

For the next two weeks, a frantic Jamieson wrote letters to politicians and anyone else who might be able to help. She got responses, she said, but none seemed to lead anywhere. Takoulo was allowed to call his wife once a day at designated times but he knew little about his situation. He spent his days with repeat sex offenders and men accused of felonies, fearing imminent deportation.

"I did everything I could and went into survival mode and pushed for all these connections to the press," she said. "We are fortunate to have that leverage. What about the people in the country who don't have access to those means?"

Then, on Thursday, he was brought to an immigration processing jail in Manhattan and released. There was no explanation offered for his release, but Takoulo is now wearing an electronic ankle monitor while his case is being reviewed.

ICE spokesman Brian P. Hale said the circumstances of Takoulo's arrest were undergoing an internal review and he was released as "an alternative to detention pending a review of his case."

Investigators are looking to determine whether "appropriate separation" between Jamieson's letter to the president and Takoulo's deportation case were violated. If so, he said, the case will go to the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general for "immediate and appropriate action."

Takoulo graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with an engineering degree in 2008 and received several job interview offers after graduation. But the deportation order hung over his head and prevented any followup.

"All he wants to do is contribute to this economy," Jamieson told CNN. "We want to be a productive couple. He's been dying to work."

The couple has been following Barack Obama's rise in the political world since 2004.

"I felt a special kinship to him because I'm of mixed race, and my husband obviously has a similar background," Jamieson told CNN.

Regardless of whether or not her letter was mishandled, the incident has deeply affected the couple's faith in the Obama administration.

"I feel really confused, I don't understand how something like this is possible. I can't imagine that at the top of the Obama administration that they realize that something like this is happening," Jamieson told CNN. Source Read more......

Arizona's Brewer: Most illegal immigrants are 'drug mules'

A labor union representing nearly 20,000 border patrol agents and staff Friday disputed comments made by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer that most illegal immigrants coming across the southern border are smuggling drugs.

Brewer initially made the comments earlier this month during a debate of Republican gubernatorial candidates. She repeated them Friday when asked by a reporter for the basis of the claim.

"Well, we all know that the majority of the people that are coming to Arizona and trespassing are now becoming drug mules," Brewer said. "They're coming across our borders in huge numbers. The drug cartels have taken control of the immigration. "So they are criminals. They're breaking the law when they are trespassing and they're criminals when they pack the marijuana and the drugs on their backs."

When pressed, Brewer explained that many are simply coming to the United States to look for work but "are accosted, and they become subjects of the drug cartels."

T.J. Bonner of the National Border Patrol Council told CNN that Brewer's claims were "clearly not the case." Bonner said that some undocumented immigrants caught by border patrol agents have drugs on them, and that they sometimes blame pressure from the drug cartels.

But, he said, those claims have little credibility because drug smugglers are typically transporting much larger quantities of drugs. And besides, he said, if what Brewer said were true, there would be many more prosecutions for drug smuggling.

Brewer's comments, Bonner said, don't "comport with reality -- that's the nicest way to put it."

Brewer doubled down on the comments later Friday, however, issuing a statement reiterating them.

"The simple truth is that the majority of human smuggling in our state is under the direction of the drug cartels, which are by definition smuggling drugs," Brewer's statement said, according to the Associated Press as reported in the Arizona Republic. "It is common knowledge that Mexican drug cartels have merged human smuggling with drug trafficking."

Brewer said the "human rights violations that have taken place (by the cartels) victimizing immigrants and their families are abhorrent."

Brewer's statement is the center of a controversy over a recently passed law that requires law enforcement officials to ascertain the citizenship of the subject of any investigation if they have reason to believe their suspect is in this country illegally. The U.S. Department of Justice is considering whether to file suit against the law. Source Read more......

Feds, locals have their own battles with oil spill

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill enters its 65th day, the confirmed suicide of an Alabama fisherman served as a reminder Thursday of how the effects of the disaster can be felt from the national level to the neighborhood level.

While the powers in Washington wrangle over the fate of a drilling ban, residents on the Gulf coast are fighting their own battles with the oil.

"He was 55 years old. He was a charter boat captain," Stan Vinson, coroner for Baldwin County, Alabama, said of the fisherman, Allen Kruse.

After the oil began spilling into the areas where Kruse would take people fishing, the fishing grounds were closed, leaving him out of work.

According to Vinson, Kruse took a job helping BP fight the oil, making his boat a so-called "vessel of opportunity.""He was on the boat alone, and he had been with the deckhands," Vinson said Wednesday. "He was loading the boat this morning just like he normally would. They were supposed to go out today, (and) he told the deckhands to go get some ice for the boat, that he was going to pull it around."

After the deckhands went to run their errands, though, the boat never pulled around and they came back to the boat to find him dead, Vinson said.

The deputy coroner, Rod Steade Sr., confirmed Thursday that Kruse's death was a suicide and he died of a single gunshot wound to the head.

On the frontlines of the oil spill, the battle seems more personal.

In a press briefing with reporters Thursday, Coast Guard Capt. Roger Laferriere, Incident Commander for Houma, Louisiana, spoke passionately of the work being done on the coast.

"This is a battle for a way of life, this is a battle for the people of Louisiana, and we will continue to fight this until all the oil is removed and that the people of Louisiana can go back to their way of living," he said.

The Coast Guard deployed 20,000 gallons of dispersants into the water Thursday, he said, and more than 1.3 million feet of boom are deployed around the state.

There are currently 670 vessels of opportunity like Kruse's helping skim the oil, Laferriere said.

Meanwhile, in the bigger picture, attention was on the resumption of deepwater drilling in the Gulf.

Paving the way for drilling to resume, a federal judge on Thursday denied a request to keep a six-month moratorium in place pending a government appeal.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans, Louisiana, issued a preliminary injunction against the ban Tuesday. The government had asked Feldman to delay lifting the ban until an appeals court reviewed the issue later this summer.

The moratorium was imposed by President Obama on May 27 after the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the coast of Louisiana triggered an underwater oil gusher. The moratorium prohibited drilling in more than 500 feet of water and prevented new permits from being issued.

In an emergency hearing Thursday, the judge denied the government's motion to stay his decision pending appeal "for the same reasons given" Tuesday for issuing the injunction.

Government lawyers did not file an appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday, though the expected move could come as soon as Friday.

In Tuesday's ruling, Feldman wrote, "An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs (oil drilling support companies), the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country."

The government now has 30 days to show it is beginning to comply with Feldman's order and start accepting permit applications and issuing permits. The appeals process can continue, but until the appeal, the government must act as if Feldman's order will be upheld.

Meanwhile, the full Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee met Thursday to consider bills related to Minerals Management Service reform and to offshore drilling. Committee member Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, said the Obama administration is putting ideology over scientific integrity.

"The administration put together a group of experts to review safety recommendations for offshore oil and gas exploration," Barrasso said. "The administration proudly stated that the safety recommendations were peer reviewed. Well, afterwards, the American people found out that the most significant recommendation -- which was the moratorium -- was not actually peer reviewed. The moratorium was added after the experts had been consulted. The majority of the experts consulted say that their names were used to justify a political decision made by the administration."

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, responded, "When your team was in charge, which would be under the previous administration, you didn't leave a very clear instruction book as to how to do this. And in defense of this administration ... the president is trying to rise above partisanship. And I think we all have to make our best effort to do this. This is not a time to try to take what I would consider a cheap shot." Source Read more......