Touted by the Obama Administration as key to overhauling the nation’s immigration detention system, a program that monitors illegal aliens instead of jailing them regularly loses track of offenders and the government distorts records to cover it up.

Operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the intensive monitoring program allows illegal aliens to check in by phone, wear ankle monitors and obey a curfew rather than go to prison while they wait for court appearances. ICE claims the alternatives-to-detention program is a huge success and Obama assures it’s a great model for his plans to create a more humane immigration detention system.

But records and statistics obtained by a Houston newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) tell a much different story. Nearly one in five illegal immigrants who participated in the tracking project absconded while under supervision during the last five years, according to the records. Authorities were unable to locate nearly 20% of 6,373 illegal aliens enlisted in the program during that time. About 5% were subsequently rearrested for other matters.

ICE brags about a near perfect success rate because it simply erases those who absconded from the records as if they never existed. The Department of Homeland Security’s largest investigative agency, with about 20,000 employees and 400 offices worldwide, includes only active participants when it calculates its heavily altered statistics. 

Based on the blatantly misleading data, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is working to expand the alternatives-to-detention program, which currently has about 20,000 participants. The former Arizona governor, who has a documented history of opposing immigration enforcement, will submit a proposal to Congress before year’s end in hopes of accomplishing that goal.

It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s plan to pass a “compassionate” and “comprehensive” immigration overhaul that aims to legalize an estimated 12 million undocumented aliens. The legislation is currently being drafted by the chairman of a key congressional task force, Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez, and promises to offer undocumented immigrants U.S. citizenship and humane treatment in prisons.

Keeping with the infamous Clinton tradition of selling coveted White House access for political donations, Barack Obama rewards wealthy contributors with exclusive visits, parties and other intimate activities at the executive mansion.

The deep-pocketed contributors and bundlers are being aggressively courted by the commander-in-chief and his Democratic Party to raise large sums for congressional candidates in the 2010 elections. To thank them for giving generously to his presidential campaign—and inspire them to keep the dollars flowing—Obama has promised high-dollar fundraisers VIP White House access, private briefings with advisers and invitations to important speeches.

The secret Obama deals were made public this week by a Washington D.C. newspaper that obtained internal Democratic National Committee documents, including advisory board and finance committee papers. They reveal that high-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to personally donate $30,400 or to raise $300,000 for the 2010 midterm elections. 

Droves of Democratic fundraisers and donors have already been graciously thanked with special invitations to quaint White House functions, private bowling at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, special banquets and private time with the president. A couple of bundlers even caught a flick with Obama in the White House movie theater. 

Obama is hardly the only commander-in-chief to unscrupulously use the White House to raise cash, though he’s the first to promise Americans he’d end the practice as part of his highly publicized change rhetoric. George W. Bush rewarded his top donors, known as “Pioneers,” with overnight stays and parties.

In the 1990s Bill Clinton sold Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers and other White House perks for millions of dollars. Contributors were also ushered into the Oval Office for coffees, lunches and other meetings with the former president and First Lady and taken for rides on Air Force One. Many of those donors also gave hefty sums to Hillary’s failed presidential campaign. 

The House committee that oversees the nation’s financial services sectors has quietly voted to give regulatory power to a famously corrupt community organization that rakes in millions of dollars from the very institutions it will monitor. 

Weeks after Congress cut the public funding of the fraud-infested Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the House Committee on Financial Services has actually approved an amendment that will give the Chicago-based group a role in setting regulations for the country’s financial institutions. 

Here is the best part; ACORN receives millions of dollars annually—in direct corporate contributions and other arrangements— from the businesses it will supposedly oversee. While this may sound like a bad joke, considering ACORN is a renowned criminal enterprise, it’s very real. Giving this sort of authority to a notoriously crooked organization was the brilliant idea of California Democrat Maxine Waters, currently under investigation for steering federal bailout funds to her husband’s bank.

The veteran congresswoman, considered the Golden State’s most powerful black lawmaker, added the measure to a pending bill that aims to overhaul the country’s financial regulations. That legislation will establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) with the authority to examine, supervise and enforce consumer financial protection laws. The newly created agency would have jurisdiction over mortgages, credit cards, student loans and auto loans. 

The Waters amendment adds an oversight board of five representatives from the fields of “consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgages" to join federal banking regulators in advising the CFPA’s director.

An illicit enterprise that has received tens of millions of tax dollars over the years, ACORN would be among those groups. The nonprofit with offices across the nation has a documented history of embezzlement, fraud and cooking the books and has been criminally prosecuted for voter registration fraud in various elections. Recently, ACORN was exposed in a now world-famous video for advising prostitutes and pimps on how to skirt housing and taxing laws.

It’s pathetic enough that ACORN continues to get tax dollars disguised as Homeland Security grants and it defies logic that federal lawmakers give it any sort of regulatory authority, especially over the companies that pour money into its bulging coffers. 

Click here to see Judicial Watch’s extensive investigation of ACORN, including public records and litigation related to the ongoing probe. 

Officials in a Midwest state knowingly ignored tens of thousands of fraudulent vehicle registrations for more than a year at the request of influential Latino business owners who intercepted a crackdown because the offenders are illegal immigrants.

It was only after a local newspaper exposed Ohio’s abhorrent disregard for the law that its Bureau of Motor Vehicles quietly began cancelling thousands of registrations filed by illegal aliens throughout the state. The agency recently sent out nearly 50,000 letters to vehicle owners informing them that their registrations will be revoked unless they prove legal U.S. residency, as state law requires, by December 8. 

Ohio officials have known for more than a year that about 47,000 vehicles have been registered without listing a driver’s license, legal identification card or valid Social Security number as required by law. That means illegal immigrants hired legal U.S. residents known as “runners” to register their vehicles. Runners collect fees and use falsified power-of-attorney forms to register vehicles for illegal aliens. 

For years state officials simply looked the other way as the scam boomed, even after the implementation of tougher regulations that require so-called runners to provide the driver’s license or state ID numbers of persons for whom they register vehicles. Ohio’s former Public Safety Director postponed enforcing the stricter regulations after meeting last year with dozens of concerned Latino business owners and runners who requested an indefinite delay.

When the media exposed the preposterous secret deal, the state’s new Public Safety Director ordered that the law finally be enforced to shut off the flow of license plates to illegal immigrants, stating in a memo that she was unconvinced “that everything that could be done is being done" to prevent fraud.

The powerful chairman of a renowned Ohio Latino advocacy group (Ohio Hispanic Coalition) claims the state is illegally intruding into immigration issues, which are a federal responsibility. He added that enforcing this particular policy will inevitably make it more difficult for undocumented workers to support their families. 

A Baltimore charity created to finance programs for the underprivileged largely serves as a slush fund for city officials who routinely dip into its multi million-dollar coffers to pay for projects unrelated to the foundation's tax-exempt purposes.

A local news report reveals that, with virtually no oversight, the foundation (Baltimore City Foundation) regularly violates Internal Revenue (IRS) rules by spending nonprofit contributions on political purposes and by serving as a secret account where taxpayer funds can be stashed without public scrutiny. 

Among the unscrupulous things funded by the Baltimore City Foundation was the corrupt mayor’s lavish inauguration bash at a local ice skating rink. Criminally indicted Mayor Sheila Dixon’s “Winter Wonderland” festivities cost more than $15,000 for rental of a temporary ice rink at the War Memorial Plaza, musical entertainment, a fancy ice sculpture of a reindeer and security. 

Earlier this year Dixon, a former Baltimore City Council president, was charged with a dozen felony counts, including theft, perjury, fraud and misconduct in office for accepting bribes from developers with city contracts. She also used gift cards donated to the city’s poor families to buy herself expensive electronic equipment, fur coats and other items. 

Last year Dixon had the Baltimore City Foundation, which has no staff and uses the city finance clerk on taxpayer time for bookkeeping, pick up the hefty tab for her fancy Christmas cards. The nonprofit has also been used to illegally store state funds intended for local projects as well as to sidestep a ban on no-bid contracts.  

The private charity was formed in 1981 to provide much-needed programs for poor residents in the notoriously crime-infested city. Last year it raised more than $7 million, supposedly to pay for things such as a summer jobs program for youths, funeral expenses for murder victims and smoke alarms for those who can’t afford them. However, large sums of cash are routinely withdrawn by city officials with no questions asked. 

Keeping with its well-documented history of waste and mismanagement, the Department of Defense has awarded tens of millions of dollars in federal stimulus contracts to half a dozen companies under criminal investigation for defrauding the government.

The deals mark the latest of many scandals associated with how the Pentagon misspends billions of tax dollars by regularly awarding lucrative no-bid contracts to politically-connected firms and severely mismanaging Middle East military operations rife with waste, fraud and abuse. 

A new database of federal contracting reveals that the Department of Defense has awarded nearly $30 million in stimulus contracts to six companies while they were under federal criminal investigation for cheating the government. The information was disclosed in a report published this week by an independent investigative journalism group that links the database to its story.

The companies defrauded U.S. taxpayers by falsely claiming to be small, minority-owned businesses that are granted special preferences when bidding on coveted government contracts. Instead, they are part of a larger enterprise that makes them ineligible for the federal deals and have been suspended from receiving new contracts. Never the less, the Pentagon still awarded the companies 112 stimulus-funded projects at U.S. military bases. 

This sort of contempt for public funds is par for the course at the massive agency with an annual budget that exceeds $530 billion. Just last month the Department of Defense reported spending more than one-fourth (around $242 million) of its stimulus funds on hundreds of no-bid contracts that will end up costing tens of millions more than if the work was competitively bid.  

Additionally, several government reports have detailed how the Pentagon has blown tens of billions of tax dollars by miserably failing to address the seemingly endless corruption in contracts for military operations in the Middle East. A few months ago a bipartisan legislative commission established to study wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan determined that much of the $830 billion the U.S. has pumped into the wars is susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse. 

A new stimulus-funded task force targeting criminal illegal immigrants in Utah has helped rid the state that has long offered sanctuary to the undocumented of violence, gangbangers, weapons and other serious public safety threats.

Created by the state legislature a few months ago, the SECURE Strike Force pursues only illegal aliens who commit major crimes and not the hard-working “housemaids” or “lawn workers,” according to Utah law enforcement officials. This, they claim, has made the operation popular among most of the sate’s immigrant communities.

In four months the strike force—staffed by six investigators and a prosecutor—has experienced phenomenal success, seizing substantial amounts of narcotics, weapons and thousands of fake identification cards. Dozens of violent gang members have also been arrested, many of which will be deported and others criminally charged in U.S. courts.  

The magnitude of the criminal activity among illegal aliens in his state has surprised Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who says "the impact of violent and major financial crime committed by undocumented aliens is even more serious and profound than originally believed."  

The Beehive State has always been quite friendly to illegal immigrants with at least two major cities—Provo and Salt Lake City—offering them official sanctuary or protection from federal immigration authorities. Utah also offers illegal aliens special Driving Privilege Cards and discounted college tuition—usually reserved for legal state residents—at public colleges and universities. 

But a surge in the illegal alien population in the last few years and a major increase in violent crimes—including murder, rape and robbery—among the undocumented, pushed state lawmakers to take action. They chose to create the special task force and finance it with nearly $2 million in federal stimulus funds allocated to the state. 

Immigration advocates predictably opposed and fought the idea, spewing the all too familiar discrimination and racial profiling rhetoric coined by the influential La Raza movement. It’s difficult to argue with the program’s success, however. 

A veteran Illinois congressman embroiled in a big-city corruption scandal last year unscrupulously pressed the federal government to bail out a Puerto Rican bank operated by his wife and several major political donors.

Eight-term Democrat Luis Gutierrez conveniently omitted his longtime close ties to the failing Banco Popular when he directed the Treasury Department to save it, claiming it was a special case in need of an urgent rescue. In a letter to the nation’s Treasury Secretary Gutierrez said it’s in the best interest of the U.S. government and Puerto Rico that the failing bank continues providing services to maintain a safe and sound financial system.

He actually tells the Treasury Secretary that helping Banco Popular is of “utmost importance” to 4 million American citizens in Puerto Rico and minority communities across the country. The once-secret correspondence was obtained, under the Freedom of Information Act, by a news publication dedicated to covering Capitol Hill. 

Thanks to Gutierrez’s intervention, the government gave the Puerto Rican bank $935 million although it continues to struggle, losing $361 million in the last nine months, according to the newspaper that broke the story. In ardently advocating for the taxpayer bailout, Gutierrez never mentions his close association with Banco Popular or that his wife, Soraida, was a senior vice president at the problematic financial institution. He also leaves out that bank executives have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his political campaigns.

Last year Gutierrez was embroiled in another scandal involving a political donor who benefitted from his influence in obtaining suspicious zoning changes in Chicago. Gutierrez heavily lobbied the city's mayor to back a controversial multi million-dollar development for a campaign donor who had just given him $200,000.

Earlier this week the popular legislator, who chairs a key congressional immigration task force, offered a sneak preview of the “compassionate” and “comprehensive” law the Obama Administration is having him craft to legalize the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented aliens. Long an advocate of illegal immigrants, Gutierrez wants them to have a pathway to citizenship, guaranteed humane treatment in U.S. prisons and discounted tuition at public colleges and universities.