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Established: In 1973 by Joseph Coors (of Coors Beer) and Paul Weyrich
Heritage Foundation's president, Edwin Feulner, who co-founded Belle Haven Consultants, a company with business interests in Malaysia, In 2005, the foundation stated that Malaysia was "moving in the right economic and political direction with some recent bold moves.

Think Tank's Ideas Shifted As Malaysia Ties Grew
Business Interests Overlapped Policy

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 17, 2005; Page A01

For years, the Heritage Foundation sharply criticized the autocratic rule of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, denouncing his anti-Semitism, his jailing of political opponents and his "anti-free market currency controls."

Then, late in the summer of 2001, the conservative nonprofit Washington think tank began to change its assessment: Heritage financed an Aug. 30-Sept. 4, 2001, trip to Malaysia for three House members and their spouses. Heritage put on briefings for the congressional delegation titled "Malaysia: Standing Up for Democracy" and "U.S. and Malaysia: Ways to Cooperate in Order to Influence Peace and Stability in Southeast Asia."

Heritage's new, pro-Malaysian outlook emerged at the same time a Hong Kong consulting firm co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage's president, began representing Malaysian business interests. The for-profit firm, called Belle Haven Consultants, retains Feulner's wife, Linda Feulner, as a "senior adviser." And Belle Haven's chief operating officer, Ken Sheffer, is the former head of Heritage's Asia office and is still on Heritage's payroll as a $75,000-a-year consultant.

Now back to the awesomeness of 287 (g) program



Local law enforcement backs away from punitive 287g programs
By Caroline Fan, Progressive States Network



Local communities are increasingly rejecting punitive anti-immigrant law enforcement policies such as 287g from the previous administration. They are walking away from agreements to have local police serve as federal immigration authorities, rejecting both their budgetary costs and the way they damage relationships and trust between police and the communities they serve. The program has been opposed by over 521 organizations, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Government Accountability Office, and the Police Foundation for being out of control, full of abuses, and not actually fulfilling its stated mission of catching criminals. Most recently, two localities in Massachusetts and Middlesex County, NJ, have dropped their controversial agreements with the federal government. The Framingham, Mass. police chief was quite clear on the importance of the local police authority's ability to set their own priorities:

"It doesn't benefit the Police Department to engage in deportation and immigration enforcement,'' Framingham's chief, Steven Carl, said yesterday...Carl said he signed up two years ago for the sole purpose of accessing federal computer databases to aid in criminal investigations. He assigned two officers to the program, and said the databases helped, but only two or three people were arrested as a result. He said he decided to withdraw over the summer after federal officials asked him to expand the officers' duties to detaining immigrants for deportation, transporting detainees, and having police testify in immigration cases.

Houston's Mayor Bill White has also decided to back off of a proposed 287g agreement after being accepted into the federal program, in another victory for advocates for public safety and immigrant rights. However, he is still open to participating in the Secure Communities program which has less oversight than the 287g program, and is harder to track as it does not necessitate formal Memorandums of Agreement with the federal government. Legislators can take proactive stances against such intrusive and unnecessary policies by passing bills to encourage victims and witnesses of crime, particularly those suffering from domestic violence, to come forward without fear of police inquiry into their immigration status.

A Negative Lesson from Maricopa County: Local law enforcement have taken a lesson in what not to do from Arizona's Maricopa County, where one sheriff has flagrantly violated civil rights and liberties under the guise of immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security's newly revised 287g agreement with Maricopa County's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio finally curtails his dubious authority to conduct wide-ranging "street sweeps" of entire communities. Arpaio has used his power to terrorize neighborhoods and engaged in massive racial profiling, resulting in a track record of over 2700 lawsuits -- 50 times as many prison-related suits as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston combined -- costing the county over $40 million. Moreover, a local newspaper's investigative series found that Arpaio's single-minded focus on immigration shortchanged the general public safety and resulted in slower response times to emergency calls and decreased arrests. The revised agreement comes shortly after the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) Southwest Border Task Force, a government body, recently recommended that the federal Department of Homeland Security scale back the 287g initiative that allows local authorities to enforce the country's immigration law.