GOLIAD, Texas—Three stash house operators, a raft guide, two walking guides, a bush hiking guide, a taxi driver, and at least three other drivers were coordinated to smuggle Martin Lazaro Bieya from Reynosa, Mexico, to Houston—his first major city after running the gauntlet through U.S. Border Patrol and law enforcement.

His final goal was Detroit, where he said an uncle had a job lined up for him.

Bieya’s trip was cut short in Goliad County, some 200 miles north of the border and 150 miles shy of Houston, after the vehicle in which he was being smuggled crashed into a culvert as the driver attempted to flee local law enforcement.

He initially fled the scene, but was picked up by the sheriff that evening after walking to a road to look for water and food.

The Epoch Times spoke with 17-year-old Bieya through a translator on June 23 as he sat in the Goliad jail.

Bieya said he’s from Veracruz in eastern Mexico, where his family owns a small ranch, but he “can’t make enough money there.”

He says that in late May, he made the decision to come to the United States and called his uncle in Detroit.

“He told me he would get me to the United States,” Bieya said.

A couple of weeks later, Bieya and his father took a bus to Reynosa, a major city separated from McAllen, Texas, by the Rio Grande, which marks the international border.

In central Reynosa, the duo waited at a restaurant. They provided to the uncle their GPS location and what they were wearing, and a taxi soon arrived to take them to a stash house.

At the house, Bieya’s father bid him goodbye and got back in the taxi to return to Veracruz.

Inside the house, which Bieya said was good-looking, “not a trashy house,” four other Mexicans waited to be smuggled across the border. These weren’t the illegal crossers who turn themselves into Border Patrol for asylum, but rather, the “gotaways”—the tens of thousands who evade capture every month because they’re unlikely to qualify for any type of legal entry.

A Mexican man in his mid-20s was running the house, Bieya said. He said that he didn’t have to pay anything for food, accommodation, or transport at any stage, but suspects that his uncle paid about $7,000 to have him smuggled to Detroit.

“He said he paid a lot of money, but he never told me how much he paid,” he said.

Bieya said he spent the night in the house, and around noon the next day, the five migrants were transported by car to “the end of a long road,” after which he estimates they walked about three miles to the bank of the Rio Grande.

There, they crossed the river in an inflatable raft and disembarked into the United States.

Two Mexican Americans appeared and escorted them further from the river.

“They knew what they were doing. They were just there to pick us up,” Bieya said. The group walked until nightfall, then stopped for a while before resuming at about 1 a.m. They arrived at a stash house in McAllen, Texas, in the early morning, he said.

Three other illegal immigrants were already at the stash house, bringing their group to eight.

Several hours later, the group was transported to a second stash house in McAllen, where they waited until evening before squeezing into a Ford pickup truck. By now, there were 14 people to transport, including two Honduran nationals and one female.

“There were seven of us” jammed into the truck bed under a sheet of plywood to hide them, he said. “It was tight.”

“After about an hour on the road, the truck stopped and they told us to get out.”

Bieya said he didn’t know where they were, but the timing fits with where smugglers drop off illegal immigrants so they can walk through the brush to skirt the Border Patrol highway checkpoint near Falfurrias, Texas.

It’s one of the deadliest paths for illegal immigrants, where many die from heat-related issues. Guides, or “coyotes,” leave sick or injured people to fend for themselves.

The original two coyotes were still with Bieya’s group, and at this point, a third was present to lead them in their ensuing seven-night trek.

“We walked from 4 in the afternoon until 5 in the morning,” Bieya said. At the time, the temperature in South Texas was hitting the high-90s to 100s during the day, while the night cooled to the mid-70s.

The group carried 1-gallon jugs for water, and when they ran dry, they’d find a livestock trough to refill. They ate only once a day.

“We all talked about what we would do if we made it safe into the United States,” he said. “I wanted to work for a couple of years and hopefully get citizenship.”

Helicopters with spotlights passed over several times, and they had to scurry into the brush to hide. He said he also saw drones three times during the trek. Two rattlesnakes met their demise during the trip.

After seven nights, Bieya said the group arrived at a paved road and waited for the pickup vehicle to arrive. Within an hour, a Chevy Tahoe SUV stopped, and they all crammed in. The next stop was supposed to be Houston, but in Goliad County, Sheriff Roy Boyd spotted them and attempted to pull the vehicle over.

The driver tried to escape, but lost control and crashed into a culvert. All of the occupants, including Bieya, fled into the brush. But he was the last one to exit the vehicle and never saw the main group again. He said members of the group had told him they planned to go to New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Houston.

“I didn’t know what to do because I was so hungry, so thirsty,” he said. Later that evening, he said he decided to turn himself in.

Bieya found some workers near a road and asked them for water.

“They gave me two bottles of water and a beef taco,” he said. Not long afterward, the sheriff was passing by, saw him on the side of the road, and apprehended him.

Eight other members of the group were later apprehended in a nearby county. They were turned over to Border Patrol and taken back to Mexico, but Boyd has issued warrants for their arrests, should they reappear. The warrants include felony charges for engaging in organized crime, as well as several misdemeanors, including evading arrest, Boyd said.

The Cartel

The Gulf Cartel coordinates all the logistics of the human smuggling from the eastern part of Mexico right through the Texas corridor and deep into the United States, said Boyd.

“Just think of the logistics that go into it,” Boyd said. Bieya was just one person in a system that handles thousands of illegal aliens per day.

Officials in El Paso, Texas, recently estimated there were 60,000 people across the border in Ciudad Juárez waiting to enter the United States illegally. Boyd said he’s heard estimates of a half-million waiting to cross along the 1,254-mile Mexico–Texas border.

“As you move those people, where you’re moving them to has to be vacated by the people who are already there,” he said.

“It’s almost like warfare, the logistics of feeding and transporting and housing and having water and the toiletries and all of the things that are required. It’s a phenomenal task just on the logistics side.”

He said working factories and warehouses in Mexico are common locations that cartels use to stash people until they’re ready to take them across the border.

Boyd said the cartels pay the Mexican government each month for the use of the “plazas,” which are the staging and border crossing areas. The government will allow a certain volume of drugs or amount of people to flow through per month, and if it exceeds that, the cartel is taxed, or the government will raid a warehouse and sit on the commodity until the cartel pays.

“It’s how they work with the drugs, so I suspect they work the exact same way with humans,” Boyd said.

If too many people get stacked up waiting to cross, it causes a cash flow issue for the cartels, he said, “because now, the cartels have got to pay extra manpower, they’ve got to pay for water, they’ve got to pay for food, they’ve got to pay for toilet paper, they’ve got to pay for medicine—they’ve got to pay for all the things because it’s in the cartel’s interest to keep these people alive.”

“What these people don’t know at this point is that that payment to get across to Texas is not the final payment. The final payment gets told to them when they get to Houston,” he said.

Inside Texas, and beyond, the Gulf Cartel has an extensive network, with Atlanta being the next major hub beyond Houston.

“The cartel owns car dealerships, restaurants, various businesses, and it helps them launder their money, move their slaves, and maintain a foothold within the communities,” Boyd said. “That’s how it functions, and it’s very complex, but it ensures the cartel’s total control of their operational area within the United States.”

The smuggler drivers are now often recruited via social media such as TikTok, WhatsApp, and Facebook, Boyd said.

“They were targeting Hispanic teenagers from the metropolitan areas like Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas,” he said.

“They show wads of money. And so you have a teenager who sees somebody with $10,000, and they’re told, ‘You can drive down to Falfurrias, pick up eight people, drive up here, and you get this amount of money.’ It’s quick, easy money.”

Boyd said there’s a large Hispanic community in Houston, of which a portion “sympathizes with Mexico and works for the cartel—and so they’re the operatives that get hired to go back and forth.”

Boyd’s goal is to deter the cartel from entering Goliad County. Within the 852 square miles of the county, he monitors 16 cartel sites that are currently dormant, but tactics change quickly.

“We can’t stop it. The federal government wants it. The federal government encourages it through their policies and procedures,” he said.

“All I can do is try to make it as uninviting as possible for them to come into Goliad. And that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

Boyd started putting up large billboards on the county line last year.

“Warning! Drug and human traffickers: Turn around, do not enter Goliad County,” the signs read. “Go around. Or we will hunt you down and put you in Goliad County jail.”

He said they worked—when the signs were up, cartel activity decreased, and when the Texas Department of Transportation (DOT) removed the signs, cartel activity picked up again.

Boyd had to stop putting up the signs after an attorney general opinion came back saying a county isn’t authorized to place signs without approval from the DOT.

“We have a whole list of rules, we have a Constitution, we have laws,” Boyd said.

“The cartel only has one: to make money. So it makes them very quickly adaptable to whatever situation they find themselves in. They’re constantly morphing.”

Boyd arranged a deal with Bieya that if he gave him as many details about his journey as possible, he’d recommend that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) allow him to stay in the United States. Boyd said Bieya will likely be released—with the 3,000 pesos (about $150) he brought—within the next two weeks, to his uncle in Detroit.

“Hopefully, it’ll save him from winding up in indentured servitude [to the cartel],” Boyd said.

The Biden administration spent millions last year to halt the wall construction

The Biden administration is set to close four wide gaps in the U.S.-Mexico border wall in an open area of southern Arizona near Yuma, to “address operational impacts” and “immediate life and safety risks.”

The four gaps are within an incomplete border barrier project—the former Yuma 6 project area near the Morelos Dam, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The area has become one of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.

The border barrier project, which was operational under the Trump administration, was left incomplete after resident Joe Biden in 2021 sent back $2.2 billion in border wall funds to the Department of Defense to be used for overseas defense construction projects. The funds had previously been diverted by President Donald Trump to build the border wall, which at one time was going up at the pace of one mile a day. Completing the border wall was among Trump’s top campaign promises.

“Due to the proximity to the Morelos Dam and the swift moving Colorado River, this area presents safety and life hazard risks for migrants attempting to cross into the United States where there is a risk of drownings and injuries from falls,” the DHS stated on July 28. “This area also poses a life and safety risk to first responders and agents responding to incidents in this area.”

Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas authorized the project’s completion, which will be paid for out of the DHS’s fiscal year 2021 budget.

“Prior to construction, DHS will engage in standard environmental planning and conduct stakeholder outreach and consultation. DHS will move as expeditiously as possible, while still maintaining environmental stewardship,” the statement continued. “This project supports CBP’s and DHS’s priority to deploy modern, effective border measures and also improving safety and security along the Southwest Border.”

The U.S. Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector has quickly emerged as the third busiest of nine sectors along the border, with much of the traffic funneling through the Morelos Dam. Illegal immigrants arrive in the small town of Algodones and walk unencumbered across a concrete ledge on the dam to the United States, where they wait for U.S. Border Patrol agents to take them into custody.

In the Yuma sector alone, U.S. border agents stopped illegal immigrants 160,482 times from January through June, a figure nearly four times that of the same period in 2021, according to CBP data. The only other sectors with more traffic were Del Rio and Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.

The area has been especially attractive to Colombians, Venezuelans, and other nationalities who have flown to Mexicali, Mexico, and taken a short bus or taxi ride to Algodones to walk across the border before being released into the United States.

Biden halted further wall construction after he took office, but in the lead up to the 2022 primary elections, has since made closing the gaps just south of Yuma a priority.

A report by Senate Republicans in July 2021 said that Biden’s efforts to halt border wall construction was costing American taxpayers $3 million per day, and the administration is estimated to have spent at least $1.8 billion by July 2021.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With an expected GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, Republicans in the chamber are poised to launch a slew of investigations aimed at dialing up the pressure on the Biden administration over a range of issues—from border security to Hunter Biden to the origins of the pandemic.

Domestic concerns faced by everyday Americans—most notably a historic inflation rate—will be key priorities, according to Chair of the House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

House Republicans will take the administration to task on alleged “policy failures that have created an inflation crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, and crime crisis impacting every American family,” Stefanik told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices will also be scrutinized, she added.

On the foreign policy front, the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States and abroad, and U.S. strategy toward Iran are set to come under focus.

Republicans are already laying the groundwork to take on “an aggressive oversight role” next year by issuing preservation notices and document requests so a potential GOP majority “will be ready to hold the Biden administration accountable from day one,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Epoch Times in an email.

Oversight Committee

Many of the inquiries are expected to be spearheaded by the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the chamber’s main investigative panel that has broad authority to scrutinize various facets of the administration.

The committee’s ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to take the chair should the Republicans flip the House, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda by a GOP-led panel.

“[W]e will return the House Oversight and Reform Committee to its core mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding the Executive Branch accountable,” Comer told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Another committee member Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) had a clear message for the Biden administration via email to The Epoch Times: “Their days of corruption, fraud, and abuse will no longer be met with blind eyes.”

Hunter Biden

Chief among a GOP-led House Oversight Committee’s priorities is an investigation into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

For more than two years, the president’s son has been at the center of growing controversy over his overseas business activities, including in Ukraine, Russia, and China, conducted while Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.

Hunter is currently the subject of a federal investigation being run out of Delaware and, according to a recent CNN report citing unnamed sources, it is “nearing a critical juncture.”

Hunter has previously denied wrongdoing, and the elder Biden has maintained that he has never discussed Hunter’s business activities with his son.

The president’s son’s extensive financial dealings with foreign individuals and businesses, raise concerns about conflicts of interests, illegal lobbying, and whether his ties influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration, critics say.

Republicans have honed in on Hunter’s work for Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, while his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine, and Hunter’s dealings with several Chinese companies and businessmen with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will continue to conduct oversight of Hunter Biden and the Biden Family’s pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” Comer said.

“They have racked up over 150 suspicious activity reports for their foreign business deals, which is a national security threat,” the lawmaker said, referring to a CBS report saying that U.S. banks had flagged more than 150 financial transactions involving Hunter or the president’s brother, James, for further review by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the transactions involved large wire transfers, the report said.

“We need to know if resident Biden benefited financially from these deals and if he is beholden to the interests of foreign adversaries,” Comer said.

COVID-19 Origins

The ranking member highlighted that the committee would continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19, focusing on the possibility that the pandemic was the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

“Growing evidence shows COVID-19 likely originated from the Wuhan Lab and the Communist Party of China covered it up,” Comer said.

An array of circumstantial evidence has prompted some officials and scientists to point to the WIV as the most likely source of the pandemic. These include the WIV’s gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, reports that staff members became sick with symptoms consistent with both seasonal flu and COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese regime acknowledged the outbreak, and that a WIV public database of 22,000 samples and viral sequences was taken offline in September 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.

The Chinese regime’s persistent refusal to allow outside access to the lab and its data has made it nearly impossible to fully investigate the lab leak theory.

Domestically, the potential role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in aiding WIV’s activities has been viewed with particular alarm by Republicans, who are looking to intensify the inquiry. The NIH has previously funded WIV via New York-based health nonprofit EcoHealth, including one grant that amounted to what experts have described as gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

“We will seek to hold U.S. government officials accountable for any wrongdoing, and ensure Americans’ tax dollars aren’t being used on risky research at unsecure labs,” Comer said.

Other Key Priorities

The ongoing struggle by the administration to control the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border is set to become another focal point for Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee, and other panels.

“We will also continue our oversight of Biden’s border crisis that has led to historic illegal immigration, a surge of deadly drugs pouring across the border, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” Comer said.

With a GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, Biden’s energy policies amid a deepening global squeeze on oil and gas are expected to come under close scrutiny.

“We will build on our robust oversight over how the administration is censoring conservative speech, shutting down American energy and increasing gas prices, abusing its public health emergency powers, [and] colluding with political allies like teacher’s unions,” a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans told The Epoch Times in an email.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee would focus on probing regulatory agencies’ alleged efforts to impose a “far-left agenda” on the U.S. financial system, as well as the Biden administration’s implementation of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, said Laura Peavey, communications director for the House Financial Services GOP, in an email to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Border apprehensions recently topped 1.7 million, with three months of the fiscal year remaining. At the same time, the Biden administration has broken a long-standing policy of publicly releasing the number of illegal immigrants who die while crossing into the United States, or soon after.

The Rio Grande Valley in Texas and the Tucson Sector in Arizona have traditionally been the most deadly border sectors, as the river and the summer heat claim the most lives, and smugglers leave injured and sick aliens to die.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published on its website the number of migrant deaths along the southern border from fiscal 1998 to fiscal 2020, but stopped once the Biden administration took over the agency.

Over the course of three months, The Epoch Times made multiple requests to CBP for the missing data from fiscal years 2021 and 2022 to date. But CBP, to date, has declined to provide the information.

Previous CBP data show 247 illegal immigrants died near the border during fiscal 2020, while 300 died in fiscal 2019.

This June, according to unpublished CBP data obtained by The Epoch Times, 111 illegal immigrants died while crossing into the country, or soon after. An additional 53 died in a tractor-trailer unit outside San Antonio.

The highest number of deaths on CBP’s record was 492 people in fiscal year 2005. In the same year, Border Patrol apprehended about 1.2 million illegal immigrants.

The historical CBP data include a footnote indicating that the “data may be subject to change based on new discoveries of remains and possible dates of death as determined by a medical examiner.”

Not all migrant deaths are counted in the CBP data, as Border Patrol agents aren’t always involved in the discovery. Sheriff’s offices have their own tally of bodies discovered by ranchers, hunters, or others.

Brooks County in Texas accounts for many border-related deaths, and sheriff’s deputy Don White of Remote Wildlands Search and Recovery often finds the bodies. The illegal immigrants traveling through Brooks County have evaded law enforcement at the border and are walking on ranchland 70 miles farther north to skirt the Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 281.

So far this year, White has recovered 64 bodies and is set to break last year’s record of 119 recovered from the brush and 11 from nonpursuit traffic situations. In comparison, 34 bodies were found in 2020.

“A video has surfaced of two men supporting a third man. The third is environmentally stressed, and is not doing well,” White posted on Facebook on June 19. “The two men supporting him are cleaning out his pockets, and putting his personal items in their pockets. Then they walk him off the trail and lay him in the brush. Cruel, if found, the young man will not have an ID.”

He shares another story of a woman who was “stressed and lost.” White searched for the woman at a GPS location she had sent to her parents, but she had moved.

“She sent a new GPS location to her husband in Amarillo. He didn’t want authorities to be involved, so he drove down to get her. She was where the GPS he had said she was. Deceased,” White posted on Facebook on June 12.

“If he would have thought of her life first and called it in, the outcome would have been different. Shaping up to be a savage summer.”

In Arizona’s remote desert areas, the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (OME) works with nonprofit group Humane Borders to document illegal immigrant deaths.

So far this fiscal year, with three months remaining, the Tucson sector has recovered 128 bodies.

“Since January of 1990, over 3,600 undocumented migrants have died within the Pima County OME jurisdiction,” Humane Borders states on its website.

“And in any case, many remains will never be found or reported.”

The Pima County OME recorded the highest number of body recoveries (226) in fiscal year 2021, according to its annual report.

A Government Accountability Office report issued in April said CBP hasn’t “collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths or disclosed limitations with the data it has reported.”

The report evaluated the Missing Migrant Program implemented by Border Patrol in June 2017 “to help rescue migrants in distress and reduce migrant deaths along the southwest border.”

The program focuses on an area consisting of 45 counties on or near the nearly 2,000-mile international border with Mexico.

As of February this year, Border Patrol had placed 165 rescue beacons and more than 2,500 “911” placards along the southwest border, the report stated.

Resident Joe Biden’s administration has made two major changes to immigration policies by re-interpreting federal law.

Immigrants, many illegal, from certain countries are shielded from deportation and allowed to be legally employed if the secretary of homeland security decides their home country meets certain conditions.

The designation is known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

Fifteen countries are currently designated, including Afghanistan, El Salvador, Somalia, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of immigrants from those countries are protected.

Up until July, those protected by TPS had to remain in the country unless they received approval to travel.

If TPS beneficiaries did leave the country and returned, they’d have the same status—illegal or legal—when they returned, based on language from Miscellaneous and Technical Immigration and Naturalization Amendments, even though they could remain temporarily protected by TPS.

But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles the nation’s legal immigration system, has changed that policy.

Now, all beneficiaries that return will be “inspected and admitted,” a bureaucratic term that means one has entered the country legally. “This is true even if the TPS beneficiary was present without admission or parole when initially granted TPS,” USCIS said in an alert (pdf).

“That basically launders the fact that they came here illegally and that will put them on the path to a green card,” Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times.

“This is an end run on U.S. immigration law, and Congress,” added Emilio Gonzalez, who directed USCIS during the George W. Bush administration. “It really is a left-handed way of legalizing people.”

USCIS said in its alert that the change stemmed from a court decision, guidance from the lawyers at its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and an evaluation of current and past policy. The agency did not respond to requests for comment.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court in 2021 ruled that immigrants who receive TPS are not admitted for purposes of obtaining legal permanent residency.

“A grant of TPS does not cure a foreign national’s entry without inspection or constitute an inspection and admission of the foreign national,’” Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, wrote in the 9–0 decision.

But USCIS seized on a footnote in the ruling, in which the court said it was not expressing a view on whether a parole enables a TPS recipient to become a legal permanent resident. The secretary of homeland security can parole an illegal immigrant, which allows them to enter or remain in the country legally.

The USCIS also cited a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which said that the law mandates TPS beneficiaries who travel outside the country be inspected and admitted upon returning, and be treated as entering the United States legally, even if they originally entered illegally.

The DHS Office of General Counsel, on the request of USCIS, reviewed the rulings and the law and concluded that USCIS was “well within its authority” to rescind Trump era guidance and allow illegal immigrants to use leaving the country and coming back to become legal.

“This is just a transparent workaround that I believe is illegal, and almost certainly is going to be challenged,” Vaughan said.

Another Big Change

The Immigration and Nationality Act, says that immigrants who were illegally in the United States and left cannot re-enter for a certain period of time. Illegal immigrants who were in the country for less than one year have to wait three years to be able to re-enter the country; those who were present for one year or more would be inadmissible unless he or she waits 10 years to re-enter.

The immigrants were expected to wait outside the United States, to comply with the law.

USCIS, though, is now saying that an immigrant can be inside the United States, and that will not reset the clock.

“The statutory 3-year or 10-year period begins to run on the day of departure or removal (whichever applies) after accrual of the period of unlawful presence. This statutory period continues to run, without interruption, regardless of whether or how the noncitizen returned to the United States during the 3-year or 10-year period. Thus, it is immaterial whether the noncitizen has spent the applicable statutory 3-year or 10-year period in or out of the United States,” USCIS says in its policy manual.

The change was made on June 24 to be consistent with two recent court rulings and an unpublished Department of Justice Board of Appeals decision, the agency said in an alert on the alteration.

“This is basically an invitation for any deported alien to pay the cartels to smuggle them back into the U.S. while they let the clock run out,” Rob Law, who headed the USCIS policy office during the Trump administration and directs the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Homeland Security and Immigration, told the Washington Times, which first reported on the update.

Court Decisions

The move stemmed from two 2020 rulings.

In the first, a Japanese woman overstayed her nonimmigrant status by five years. She left voluntarily in 2003 but returned just two years later, well before the 10-year period mandated in the law.

While she didn’t follow U.S. immigration law, her lawyer argued she shouldn’t have been denied permanent residency when she applied for it in 2019 because she was married to a United States citizen and because over 10 years had elapsed.

Government lawyers said that aliens to whom the law applies “must remain outside of the country for the entire duration of the inadmissibility period” and, if they do not, they cannot be admitted.

U.S. District Judge Consuelo Marshall, a Carter appointee, ruled for the plaintiff, agreeing on the argument that over 10 years had gone by before Yayomi Kanai asked for residency.

“This policy change would be great for our client. That means she could have been granted adjustment of status by the USCIS and she wouldn’t have had to go through all these problems,” Michael Piston, who represented Kanai, told The Epoch Times.

“It feels very, very good that they’re doing the right thing,” Mario Urizar, a lawyer who represented the man in the other case, told The Epoch Times.

In that case, a Brazilian national overstayed a tourist visa and was ordered deported in 1994. He left the United States in 2000.

Two years later, the man re-entered, even though the 10 years had not elapsed. When he went to adjust his status later, in 2016, authorities noted he violated the law and thus remained inadmissible.

U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty, an Obama appointee, ruled that the law “is silent” on the time after 10 years elapses. He said imposing what amounted to a lifetime ban from the United States was wrong.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Vicente Gonzalez’s South Texas district has long history of cartel activity

Before joining Congress, Vicente Gonzalez agreed to legally represent drug smugglers and gang leaders who flooded his border community with illegal drugs. Now, the Texas Democrat stresses the need to stop the flow of drugs and maintain “law and order.”

In 1997, Gonzalez founded his law firm, V. Gonzalez and Associates, through which the multimillionaire Democrat still earns tens of thousands of dollars a year. One year later, Gonzalez was retained to represent Richard Contreras, who pleaded guilty to federal charges after he conspired to import more than 2,200 pounds of marijuana from Mexico, court documents show.

In 1999, meanwhile, Gonzalez was retained to defend Frank Tijerina, the leader of a Texas street gang called the “Corrupt Criminal Mob.” Tijerina was sentenced to 30 months in prison on federal drug charges after conspiring to distribute nearly $420,000 worth of marijuana. Tijerina later pleaded guilty to selling large quantities of meth in a scheme that also started in the late 1990s. In total, Gonzalez agreed to represent an array of felony drug dealers who conspired to distribute eight pounds of MDMA, nearly half a pound of cocaine, and more than 4,000 pounds of marijuana, easily worth millions of dollars.

Gonzalez’s decision to represent high-level drug dealers in his South Texas border community—long a hotspot for Mexican cartels working to traffic narcotics into the United States—is at odds with the Democrat’s rhetoric as a member of Congress. In June 2018, Gonzalez called himself a “law and order member” who “believe[s] in strict border security.” Two months later, the Democrat said he was working to “bring security to our border” and ensure “drugs are not coming across as freely as they are now.” The issue could haunt his campaign as voters sour on resident Joe Biden’s border policies amid record-high illegal immigrant encounters—according to a February Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, just 32 percent of voters approve of Biden’s handling of immigration.

A former Border Patrol agent who served in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which Gonzalez represents, criticized the Democrat for the “stark inconsistencies” between “where he’s at today versus what he did before.” “Most South Texas Democrats act as if they’re not threatened to lose their jobs,” the former agent told the Washington Free Beacon. “[Gonzalez] is on that list—he’s been very comfortable, at least until now.”

Gonzalez’s campaign, which touts his record as an attorney, did not return a request for comment. 

McAllen, Texas, where Gonzalez lives, is no stranger to cartel activity. The city borders the Mexican city of Reynosa, which is known as a “key trafficking point” for “cartel violence.” As a result, the New York Post reported in 2019, McAllen is “‘ground zero’ in the border crisis between the U.S. and Mexico” and even features “a new Maserati dealership and ads for Rolex and Cartier watches” as cartel traffickers look to launder their cash. Roughly two decades earlier—as Gonzalez defended drug dealers in the area—federal agents arrested individuals in McAllen and nearby Brownsville who were implicated in a Mexican trafficking ring that held more than 5,200 kilograms of cocaine, nearly 10,000 pounds of marijuana, and roughly $11 million in cash, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration press release.

Despite the long-standing flow of cartel drugs into McAllen, Gonzalez has criticized former president Donald Trump’s border wall, which he called “useless” and “wasteful.” Instead of funding the wall, the Democrat argued, Congress should send billions of dollars to Central American countries to slow illegal immigration. Gonzalez also said the idea that the wall would “stop illegal drugs from coming to our country” is a “myth.” Former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Ronald Vitiello disputed that claim, calling the wall an “important” tool that “makes the work of agents safer.”

“It provides an anchor for the operation, it provides an anchor for technology, and it makes the agents safer, because they have the ability to slow people down and have this base of operations,” Vitiello told the Free Beacon. “So saying that doesn’t work is not an informed opinion. It doesn’t comport with my experience and wisdom.”

Gonzalez made big money from his legal career, his financial disclosures show. The Democrat owns an array of rental properties—his latest disclosure lists eight in McAllen, two in Washington, D.C., one in Monterrey, Mexico, and one in Madrid, Spain. Those properties earned Gonzalez at least $235,000 in 2020. Gonzalez also earned a combined $280,000 in “attorney fees” income from his law firm in 2019 and 2020, according to his disclosures.

Gonzalez in 2020 narrowly defeated Republican challenger Monica De La Cruz in Texas’s 15th Congressional District. One year later, he announced his decision to run in the 34th Congressional District in 2022, as the state’s redistricting process made that area considerably more blue. Still, Republicans are hopeful that Republican congresswoman Mayra Flores can give Gonzalez a run for his money in November. 

Flores in June became both the first Mexican-born woman elected to Congress and the first Republican to represent parts of the 34th Congressional District since 1870 after she won a special election against Democrat Dan Sanchez. That race saw Flores best Sanchez in historical Democratic strongholds—the Republican, for example, won in Cameron County, which is 90 percent Hispanic and voted for Biden by double digits less than two years ago. After her win, the New York Times said Flores’s win marked “the rise of the far-right Latina,” citing the Republican’s support for religiosity, strong borders, and traditional values.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

DEL RIO, Texas—The U.S. Border Patrol agents who were falsely accused of striking illegal immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border have had their careers “ruined” by resident Joe Biden, the head of the agency’s union told The Epoch Times.

“Their careers were ruined by this president,” said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

A slew of media outlets in the fall of 2021 claimed that Border Patrol agents on horseback had whipped Haitian aliens who were entering the United States by crossing the Rio Grande at Del Rio, Texas. The outlets later backtracked on the claims.

But multiple government officials, including Biden, used similar language.

Biden told reporters he observed that the agents had “strapped” the immigrants, calling what happened “outrageous.”

“I promise you, those people will pay. They will be—an investigation is underway now, and there will be consequences. There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment. But beyond an embarrassment, it’s dangerous; it’s wrong. It sends the wrong message around the world. It sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are,” he said at the time.

However, an internal review released on July 8 said there was “no evidence” that agents “struck any person, intentionally or otherwise.” Further, U.S. prosecutors declined to charge any of the agents involved, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed.

“The president accused them of a criminal act. He has not apologized for that,” Judd told The Epoch Times.

He said he doesn’t expect Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who said she was “outraged” by the treatment of illegal immigrants, to apologize.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The agents were quickly placed on administrative duty after the widespread coverage of the incident on Sept. 19, 2021. At the time, as many as 30,000 mostly Haitian illegal immigrants had entered the United States and created a makeshift camp under a bridge that connects Del Rio, Texas, and Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña, while waiting to be processed by Border Patrol. Rumors of a riot had been circulating as conditions deteriorated.

Four agents are facing disciplinary charges, CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus told reporters during a briefing on July 8. According to the report, that includes an agent who acted unprofessionally by shouting at an illegal immigrant and nearly coming into contact with a small child on the concrete ramp leading out of the river.

On multiple occasions, mounted agents “used force or the threat of force to drive migrants back into the Rio Grande River despite the fact they were well within the territorial boundary of the United States,” the report stated.

“We’re not going to be discussing specifics of the disciplinary proposals today. But when it’s appropriate to do so, we will make the final disciplinary actions public consistent with the privacy rights of the individual employees,” Magnus, a Biden appointee, told reporters.

The Border Patrol union is representing three agents; the fourth person facing discipline is a supervisor, according to Judd.

He said he fears investigators “had no choice but to find some sort of fault” given the quick condemnation from Biden, Harris, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“And the fault that they found is some of the flimsiest I’ve ever seen in my 25-year career. In seeing disciplinary proposals time and time again, I have never seen a more flimsy proposal,” Judd said.

He said the situation has been “absolutely demoralizing” to agents because the agents involved were performing a legitimate law enforcement operation.

A Border Patrol agent in the Del Rio Sector, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of repercussions, told The Epoch Times that agents on the ground were set up by leadership for failure in a “no-win situation,” because of a lack of manpower and capability to effectively handle the flood of illegal aliens who were entering the United States on the day in question.

“With regard to the horse patrol, we know what happened. Agents know what happened. Leadership knows what happened. And instead of backing their agents for doing the best they could with what little they had, our leaders ‘Monday morning quarterbacked’ from their comfy offices and went on a fishing expedition, looking for reasons to get agents in trouble to appease those in this administration,” the agent said. “Our leaders need to quit saying Honor First and start living Honor First.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

GOLIAD, Texas—Sheriffs in Texas are experiencing the impact of the border crisis in their counties every day—whether it’s armed cartel operatives smuggling illegal immigrants, vehicle pursuits resulting in crashes and deaths, or drug overdose deaths from fentanyl brought across the southern border.

In Goliad, Sheriff Roy Boyd sits 200 miles from the Texas–Mexico border, between McAllen and Houston—a major transport corridor of illegal immigrants and illicit goods.

As a 29-year law enforcement veteran in the region, Boyd said he’s never seen a border crisis so bad or border-related crime so egregious.

“There’s no end to it,” he told The Epoch Times on June 23. He monitors 16 cartel-operated sites in his county that are currently dormant, but have been used to stash illegal immigrants on their way to Houston. Currently it’s mostly carloads of illegal immigrants being smuggled straight through his county to the city.

“It’s a movement of individuals from third world countries, all over the place, into our country. But the farther you get into it, the more you realize it’s all done by design—and it’s at the design of the federal government.

“We’re in a transformation of America from a free Republic to moving to something that’s more of a Marxist state.”

Since resident Joe Biden took office in January 2021, border authorities have apprehended more than 3.2 million illegal border crossers, according to Customs and Border Protection data. An additional 800,000 or so have been detected, but evaded capture.

When asked how allowing millions of people from more than 160 countries through the southern border results in the transformation to communism, Boyd harkened back to the 1960’s and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty.”

“LBJ sold the war on poverty to the Democratic National Party … and the DNC’s response was, ‘Why would we give those people something for nothing?’” Boyd said.

LBJ responded by saying he’d have them voting Democratic for 200 years, Boyd said, paraphrasing an infamous quote that has been widely attributed to the former president.

“This is nothing but a replication of the soft enslavement of people through entitlement,” Boyd said. “Because if you understand psychology and you look at the history of things, this is how it functions. Once it starts, it’s hard to stop.”

Trevor Loudon, a communism expert and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in a previous interview that the communists’ main enemy is the United States.

“And if you can’t bring it down through nuclear weapons, you bring it down through illegal immigration, which is maybe just as effective in the long run,” Loudon said.

“This is an orchestrated, communist assault on America, to destroy America’s borders, to create confusion in America, to overwhelm the system politically.”

Loudon said an additional 15 million to 25 million Democratic voters would ensure perpetual Democrat control of government.

“You will have a one-party state in America. And that is the plan. That is why they are doing this,” he said.

“This is Marxist. This is Leninist. And this goes back to American politicians cooperating with hostile foreign powers in the destruction of America. And their No. 1 weapon is illegal immigration and overwhelming the border.”

Traditionally, noncitizens have voted about 80 percent Democratic and 20 percent Republican, according to a 2014 study by Old Dominion University.

“We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections,” the study concluded.

“Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.”

Now, the number of non-Hispanic illegal aliens entering the United States is increasing at the same time that Hispanics are skewing more Republican, as evidenced by Rep. Mayra Flores’s recent win in south Texas.

It’s illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections, however, for years there’s been a push for municipal elections to accept noncitizen voters, including visa holders.

Loudon said Eliseo Medina, a labor union activist and former immigration consultant to President Barack Obama, is a main driver of the illegal immigration movement.

In 2009, Medina spoke at the America’s Future Now progressives’ conference in Washington.

“[If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters,” Medina said. “Can you imagine … [even] if we get 8 million new voters that care about our issue and will be voting—we will create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

Fourteen municipalities currently allow noncitizens to vote, including 11 in Maryland, two in Vermont, and one in San Francisco.

A recent court ruling quashed a New York City law that would have allowed at least 800,000 noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams allowed the measure to become law on Jan. 9.

“I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,” Adams said in a statement at the time. “I believe allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process.”

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and former member of the Federal Election Commission, said allowing noncitizens to vote “cheapens and diminishes” the concept of citizenship.

“The whole point of the open borders crowd is to do two things: one, extinguish the line between legal and illegal aliens in this country. And second, to frankly get rid of the whole concept of citizenship,” Spakovsky said in a previous interview.

Biden has said he wants a pathway to citizenship for all illegal immigrants in the United States.

Boyd said the Biden administration is working hard to purge conservative and constitutional thinkers at the federal level and replace them with people with a socialist mindset.

“But always remember, as Stalin said, the aim of socialism is communism,” Boyd said.

He said his focus remains in Goliad to protect his county and make it an unwelcoming place for criminals. The sheriffs in the region try to work together to “help each other to fight this massive wave of criminal activity,” he said.

“We don’t deal with immigration, we’re not tasked with it, we’re not authorized with it, we don’t want anything to do with it.

“But we’re fighting all the felonies that are being brought to our doorstep as a result of the national policy that’s causing this problem. And to be quite honest with you, I have no faith in the federal government.”

“My faith is in our Lord and Savior. One day we’re going to meet the end and we’re going to have to answer for what it is we’ve done, and so I want to have a good answer when I get there.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Social media platform permits migrants to solicit dangerous smuggling services

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has not revised its policy allowing the solicitation of human smuggling after one of the worst mass casualty events of migrants in U.S. history.

In what the mayor of San Antonio called a “horrific human tragedy,” 51 migrants were found dead in a semi-truck on the side of a road hundreds of miles from the southern border on Monday evening. Local authorities said the surviving victims—at least four of whom are children—suffered from heat stroke and exhaustion.

The catastrophe prompted bipartisan calls for an investigation into the migrant deaths. Resident Joe Biden on Tuesday said “the incident underscores the need to go after the multi-billion dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants and leading to far too many innocent deaths.”

Yet the social media company Meta—which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—remains silent. In February, Meta announced in an internal memo it would allow the solicitation of human smugglers on its platforms out of fears that banning the practice would result in harm against those who “seek safety or exercise their human rights.”

It remains unclear whether the victims used a Meta platform. Law enforcement said on Tuesday that they detained three people “believed to be part of a human smuggling operation.”

Law enforcement and immigration experts have long said that cartel-connected smugglers, also known as coyotes, depend on Meta’s platforms to lure in migrants with false hopes of an easy journey to the United States. The resulting trip is often brutal, filled with physical and sexual abuse and little rations.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Critics of the Biden administration’s border policies like Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) say the deaths in San Antonio are a direct result of the lax policies of tech companies and the Biden administration.

“Meta has aided and abetted Joe Biden’s open border policies and this latest tragedy in Texas underscores the need to scrutinize corporate policies that have made the crisis at the border worse,” a spokesman for Hawley told the Washington Free Beacon.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R., Fla.) echoed Hawley’s criticism and said the loss of life was “entirely preventable.”

“This administration and Biden as the trafficker-in-chief are solely to blame for this horrific tragedy in Texas,” Cammack told Free Beacon. “Not only has Secretary Mayorkas and DHS done absolutely nothing in the way of border security to prevent something like this from happening, but their lack of action in preventing the open advertisement for human smuggling and trafficking services is deplorable.”

Federal authorities have not publicly identified where the truck carrying the migrants came from, or how long the victims were kept in the back before being discovered by a civilian who heard cries for help. Most of the migrants found in the truck were from Mexico. Some originated from Haiti and Guatemala.

“We’re not supposed to open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there,” the San Antonio fire chief said at a press conference Monday. “None of us come to work imagining that.”

In its memo, Meta said its decision to tolerate the solicitation of human smuggling came after consulting with a variety of unnamed parties including nongovernmental organizations.

The memo also announced that Meta “proposed interventions such as sending resources to users soliciting smuggling services” and permitting “sharing information related to illegal border crossing.” A spokesman for Meta at the time did not specify what kind of “information resources” it offers to migrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

The spokesman said the platform would only tolerate human smuggling, not human trafficking. The latter is defined by individuals brought to foreign countries for the purposes of forced labor or sexual abuse. The spokesman did not say how the company can distinguish between the two in practice, particularly when such high numbers of migrants are abused during their journey to the United States.

Meta said in its memo that allowing the solicitation of human smuggling brings “tradeoffs.” By allowing the practice, criminal networks can “identify and connect with vulnerable people,” the company said.

Migrants left to die by smugglers is not uncommon. In the 2022 fiscal year, Customs and Border Protections have undertaken more than 14,000 search and rescue missions along the southern border. The agency recorded nearly 13,000 search and rescue missions in 2021, compared with around 5,000 in 2019 and 2020.

In December, a U.S.-bound truck smuggling more than 200 migrants crashed in Mexico, injuring at least 50 and killing 55, the Free Beacon reported.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/facebook-mum-on-dead-migrants-after-greenlighting-soliciation-of-trafficking/

A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol report has revealed that criminal organizations smuggling illegal aliens into America have been relying on social media platforms to recruit minors to carry out their operations.

The report from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley Sector (RGV) Border Patrol notes a “trend of Transnational Criminal Organization’s (TCO) using social media to recruit minors for their smuggling operations.”

The agency links the reliance on social media to the record-breaking numbers of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally under resident Joe Biden. “RGV agents have encountered more than 137K migrants between Oct. 1, to Dec. 31, 2021, which is a 163 percent increase over the same reporting period of the previous year,” revealed the agency.

“With an increase in illicit activity, TCOs require more manpower to carry out their operations. Social media has become an avenue for human smugglers to target juvenile drivers. TCOs are luring minors to smuggle migrants across border towns in the Rio Grande Valley and into the U.S. interior with the promise of fast cash,” explained Customs and Border Patrol.

“TCOs convince juvenile drivers that they will not face the same consequences as adults if apprehended or that law enforcement will disengage a pursuit if dangerous conditions are present,” adds the report.

Authorities have arrested drivers working on behalf of TCOs as young as 13-years-old.

RGV Chief Patrol Agent Brian S. Hastings stated: “This is an alarming trend, because many of these teenagers underestimate the severity of the crime. Not only can they be prosecuted and sent to jail, but they also endanger lives through their actions. I encourage parents to talk to their children and educate them on the potential consequences and dangers of this trend.”

The intersection between social media and illegal border crossing follows reports that platforms such as China’s TikTok and Facebook were allowing content from human traffickers on their platforms.

Amid free-falling poll numbers for Vice President Kamala Harris and reports of White House infighting, Harris’ communications director is resigning.

Ashley Etienne, who served former President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will leave her post next month, according to Fox News.

Etienne’s departure produced a White House reaction to the effect that this was nothing special.

“Ashley is a valued member of the Vice President’s team, who has worked tirelessly to advance the goals of this administration,” a White House official said. “She is leaving the office in December to pursue other opportunities.”

But Etienne’s departure comes at a time when a recent USA Today poll gave Harris a 28 percent popularity rating, and even CNN is using the word “dysfunction” to describe Harris.

Tainted Jury? Juror Makes Telling Statement as She Walks Into Courthouse for Deliberations

The only person more unpopular than Joe Biden is Kamala Harris.

— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) November 18, 2021

In its reporting based on sources it did not name, CNN said one source said Etienne “was not a good fit” for Harris and did not play a highly active role in developing a strategy for getting the vice president out of the tailspin that has marked her first year.

According to CNN, “many in the vice president’s circle” think she is being inadequately positioned or prepared.Has Kamala Harris been the worst vice president ever?Yes No
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The network also quoted other unnamed sources as saying that the fault is not with Biden and his aides, but that Harris has not been well-served by her staff.

The role of family members in running the office was also cited as a factor in the problems Harris has experienced.

A cycle of reports focused on Harris and her problems brought her public praise.

People need to back off @VP Harris. She’s a powerful woman. She’s a powerful Black woman. She’s been given some of the toughest political assignments in the face of two Dem senators who—under the lie of being so-called “moderates”—have blocked $15/hr min wage, voting rights, etc.

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) November 17, 2021

Biden Transfers Power to Harris as He Undergoes Medical Procedure

“The president selected the vice president because — to serve as his running mate — because he felt she was exactly the person he wanted to have by his side to govern the country,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a Monday media briefing, according to an official White House transcript of her remarks.

As noted by the New York Post, Psaki says race and gender have been used wrongly to attack Harris.

“Some in the right wing who have gone after her because she is the first woman, the first woman of color. I’m not suggesting anyone will acknowledge that publicly, but I think there’s no question that the type of attacks — the attacks on her that certainly, being the first she is many times over — is part of that,” she added at a Wednesday event, according to Townhall.

Kamala Harris is not a victim of racism or sexism. She is unqualified to serve as Vice-President.

— TheLeoTerrell (@TheLeoTerrell) November 17, 2021

That has not stilled the drumbeat of criticism, however.

“It’s hard to screw up being vice president,” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wrote Thursday. “But after just 10 months in office, Kamala D. Harris has managed to make herself the least popular vice president at this point in at least 50 years.”

President Joe Biden’s administration released nearly 95,000 illegal immigrants into the U.S. interior between January and October without court dates, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Nov. 16.

Instead, the illegal aliens were given notices to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office within 60 days. Typically, aliens are given a notice to appear in court at a future date to try to convince a judge to let them stay in the country.

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, 94,581 illegal immigrants were given notices to report, Mayorkas told a Senate panel in Washington.

“We have discontinued issuing notices to report,” he said.

ICE had previously declined to say how many illegal immigrants received the lower-level notices, which directed aliens attempting to secure asylum to show up at an ICE office within 60 days of being released.

ICE told The Epoch Times earlier this month it was mailing packets, including notices to appear in court, to approximately 78,000 aliens who were released with notices to report.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declined to answer why the remaining 16,581 aliens weren’t getting the packets, referring The Epoch Times to ICE. An ICE spokesman referred comment to DHS.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who asked Mayorkas for the figure, noted that an untold number of additional aliens had evaded detection and are inside the country with no notice.

“We still have a lot of people that we do not know where they are in this country,” she said.

Under the Biden administration, illegal immigration has exploded. Apprehensions at the southern border have already set new records for a fiscal year and a calendar year. About 1.7 million arrests have already taken place in 2021. A number of aliens have been arrested and ejected multiple times.

Of those arrested, about 1 million were expelled or removed and about 375,000 remain in the country, Mayorkas estimated.

Matthew Tragesser, spokesman at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told The Epoch Times in an email that the figures Mayorkas laid out during the hearing were “alarming and unprecedented.”

“Mayorkas has eviscerated our interior immigration enforcement apparatus—meaning that once an illegal alien enters our country, they become virtually impossible to remove,” he wrote.

Mayorkas has issued a series of directives to ICE in recent months, including ordering them to not arrest illegal immigrants at “protected areas” such as food banks and shelters.

Approximately 1.2 million illegal immigrants in the nation have received final orders of removal, or deportation orders, from a judge.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mayorkas if they should be removed, given they have received due process.

“We cannot remove 1.2 million individuals, nor can we remove more than 11 million undocumented individuals unlawfully present in the United States who might not have final orders of removal,” Mayorkas said.

“I would not necessarily accept the fact that all of them have received due process,” he added. “I do believe individuals who pose a public safety, pose a national security threat, who pose a border security threat should be removed and we should be smart and effective in our use of resources.”

Grassley took to Twitter after the hearing, writing that the “rule of law requires enforcement of law,” and Mayorkas’s “refusal to do his job is one of the many reasons for Biden border crisis.”

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/nearly-95000-illegal-immigrants-released-into-us-without-court-dates_4109099.html

Alejandro Mayorkas ‘not familiar’ with Democrats’ favorite immigration talking point

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday claimed not to be familiar with one of the Democratic Party’s favorite immigration talking points regarding children held in “cages” at the U.S. border with Mexico.

“How many children have been in the Biden cages in calendar year 2021?” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) asked Mayorkas during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“Senator, I respectfully disagree with your use of the term ‘cages,'” Mayorkas responded.

Cruz was referencing the “kids in cages” talking point, which Democratic politicians relentlessly repeated during the Trump administration to describe the Obama-era practice of detaining immigrant children in cage-like structures while their parents were processed by the legal system. The practice has continued under President Joe Biden, despite his pledge to end it, as illegal immigration has surged to record levels on his watch.

“Fine, you can disagree with it,” Cruz said. “I’ve been to the Biden cages, I’ve seen the Biden cages. How many children have you detained at the Donna [Texas] tent facility in the cages you built to hold kids? How many children have been in those cages?”

Mayorkas insisted that he not only disagreed with the term, he also didn’t know what it meant. “I, respectfully, am not familiar with the term ‘cages’ and to what you are referring,” he said.

Perhaps this video will refresh his memory.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/kids-in-biden-cages/

It’s not hard to hide things in a 2,135-page document, and that is exactly what the Democrats tried to do in their new spending bill.

It has already been quite a fight for the Biden administration to get Democrats to back the $1.75 trillion bill. There was disagreement over the timing of the bill and its relation to the rest of the president’s Build Back Better plan.

But now the discovery of a provision, tucked on page 1647, may cause even more disagreement over the legislation.

The provision would end the requirement of a Social Security number in order to get child tax credits. This would mean that billions of dollars could be doled out in child tax to credit to just about anyone. Illegal immigrants would be able to claim child tax credits with this new provision.

“No credit shall be allowed under this section to a taxpayer with respect to any qualifying child unless the taxpayer includes the name and taxpayer identification number of such qualifying child,” current law regarding child tax credits stipulates.

Mistrial Motion Filed: Binger Withheld HD Drone Footage from Rittenhouse Defense

Steven Camarota, a researcher with the Center for Immigration Studies, told Fox News he estimates that repealing this requirement could lead to about an extra $2.3 billion in payouts to illegal immigrants for child tax credits.

Camarota also estimated a big payout for all the illegal immigrants who have U.S.-born children.

“[W]e estimated that illegal immigrants would receive $8.2 billion in cash payments from the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), which is part of budget reconciliation bill, also referred to as the Build Back Better (BBB) Act,” Camarota wrote for CIS.

This massive spike in payouts is also a result of the new program increasing the child tax credit maximum payment.

Should Congress pass this bill?

“The new program significantly increases the maximum cash payment, which is referred to as a ‘refundable credit,’ from $1,400 per child under the old ACTC to $3,600 for children under six, and $3,000 for children six to 17. The new CTC is only extended for one year in the BBB, after which the maximum for all children would be $2,000,” Camarota wrote.

But even if the CTC payout decreases again next year, the payouts will still be significantly higher if the requirement of a Social Security number is eliminated.

“The elimination of the SSN requirement also allows the more than 600,000 illegal immigrants encountered at the border in family units or as unaccompanied minors and released in FY 2021 to receive cash payments from the new CTC,” Camarota wrote.

These CTC payouts are not be confused, however, with Biden’s previous idea to pay those immigrant families that were separated at the border because they “deserve some kind of compensation.”

This amount of payouts for child tax credits is going to be damaging. Keeping the whole immigration argument out of it, just on the financial side this kind of extra spending is irresponsible.

Biden Tells Strange, Over-the-Top Tale in Desperate Attempt to Convince Americans the Infrastructure Bill Is Good

Biden’s whole bill is already $1.75 trillion, and the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the whole Build Back Better plan could massively increase the deficit.

“CBO estimates that enacting this title would result in a net increase in the deficit totaling $150.7 billion over the 2022-2031 period. That increase in the deficit would result from an increase in direct spending of $151.5 billion and an increase in revenues of $0.8 billion,” the CBO announced Monday.

Despite all this, though, Democrats still seem to be determined to pass this spending bill this week.

“Yes, we intend — that is our plan to pass the bill the week of Nov. 15, as is indicated in our statements that were made at the time of passing the infrastructure bill, and we’re very proud of that,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Nov. 9, according to the New York Post.

So in the midst of our economy still hobbled and recovering from COVID, and inflation hitting a 30 year high, Democrats want to throw billions more away.

The budget reconciliation package pushed by Democrats creates a new expanded child tax credit (CTC) that would pay illegal immigrants some $10.5 billion next year. All immigrants with children are eligible, regardless of how they got here and whether their children are U.S.-born. This includes the roughly 600,000 unaccompanied minors and persons in family units stopped at the border in FY2021 and released into the country pending a hearing. Cash welfare to illegal immigrants is not just costly; it also encourages more illegal immigration.

Although it is referred to as a “refundable credit,” the new CTC, like the old additional child tax credit (ACTC) it replaces, pays cash to low-income families who do not pay any federal income tax. The new program significantly increases the maximum cash payment from $1,400 per child to $3,600 for children under 6, and to $3,000 for children ages 6 to 17. After 2022, the maximum payment would be $2,000 per child, but advocates hope the much larger payments will be extended.

In an analysis conducted in October, my colleague Karen Zeigler and I estimated that illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children would receive $8.2 billion from the new CTC. However, we had assumed that the new program, like the old ACTC, would require children claimed as dependents to have Social Security numbers (SSNs). But reconciliation (page 1452, line 14) would permanently repeal this requirement.

Illegal immigrants are able to receive benefits on behalf of their U.S.-born children, who are American citizens. In the case of the old ACTC, they simply acquired an individual taxpayer identification number, which is not hard, and then claimed their payment. In practice, only illegal immigrants with U.S.-born children could receive payments under the old system, since as American citizens those U.S.-born children receive SSNs. The permanent elimination of the SSN requirement means that even illegal immigrants whose children are also illegally in the country can receive the new expanded credit.

If the reconciliation bill is passed, we now estimate illegal immigrants whose children are also illegally in the country will receive $2.3 billion from the new CTC, for a total of $10.5 billion in cash payments to illegal immigrant parents. This includes illegal migrants here in 2020 and those stopped and then released into the country in 2021. These payments are not related to the huge cash settlements the administration is planning to pay illegal immigrant families separated at the border during the Trump administration.

Receipt of payments under the new CTC would be all the easier because reconciliation also eliminates the work requirement of the old ACTC for next year. In the past, some illegal immigrants who worked off the books sometimes had trouble demonstrating employment income. Dropping the work requirement makes it even simpler for them to receive payments.

These payments represent an enormous inducement to illegal immigration. We estimate that 78 percent of illegal immigrants with children have income low enough to receive cash payments averaging $5,300 per family, or about $2,600 per child next year. To place these numbers in perspective, the median income in the current top illegal immigrant-sending countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador is $3,000 to $4,000 a year. The cash payment we are offering to virtually anyone who arrives with a child, whether they work in the United States or not, is roughly equal to—or in some cases exceed—what migrants could earn in their home countries in one year.

In addition to creating large costs for taxpayers and encouraging illegal immigration, the elimination of the SSN requirement would seem to be an invitation to fraud, as tax filers now simply need to provide a name and date of birth for a child. The only other requirement is that they check a box on their returns indicating they lived in the United States for half a year, though there is no enforcement mechanism for this provision. Partly in response to a 2011 report from the Inspector General for Tax Administration showing that illegal immigrants made extensive use of tax credits, Congress included provisions in both the 2015 PATH Act and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act designed to restrict illegal immigrant receipt of such programs. This included the requirement that the qualifying child have an SSN. The budget reconciliation effectively undoes those changes.

To be sure, most illegal immigrants who come to America do in fact work. But the welfare benefits we give to them certainly incentivizes even more illegal immigration. The list of things we have failed to do to enforce our immigration laws is so long that it can’t even be summarized here. But if we want to understand why a record 1.7 million people were apprehended at the border in FY 2021, we need to look no further than the large cash payments the House plans to give illegal immigrants.

From RealClearWire

https://www.theepochtimes.com/illegal-immigrants-would-get-10-5-billion-from-reconciliation-bill_4107512.html

‘Mark Kelly scares the hell out of us’

Top Arizona law enforcement officials say Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) is “completely absent” on public safety and border security, a situation that one police representative says “scares the hell” out of his officers.

Kelly has repeatedly criticized President Joe Biden’s lack of urgency on the southern border crisis as a record number of illegal immigrants attempt to cross into the country. For National Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd and Arizona Police Association president Justin Harris, however, Kelly has failed to match his rhetoric with action. Both Judd and Harris said Kelly has never reached out to their respective organizations, a snub that Judd called “concerning.”

“It appears that he’ll give lip service to a topic, but then when push comes to shove, he’s right in step with his party. And we know that as far as his party goes with border security, they’re missing in action,” Judd told the Washington Free Beacon. “He’s never reached out to us, and that is what’s concerning, because we have people reaching out to us all the time on both sides of the aisle.”

Harris accused Kelly of playing politics with the border crisis as he looks to secure reelection in 2022 in a state that has soured on Biden and his policies. Just 36 percent of Arizona voters approve of the president, according to a November Civiqs survey, and 63 percent “hold the Biden administration and its policies responsible for the current immigration and border crisis,” a July Federation for American Immigration Reform poll shows. Kelly’s own approval rating has taken a 12-point hit among the state’s suburbanites, a general voting block that has already helped deliver double-digit Republican gains in Virginia and New Jersey. 

“Mark Kelly scares the hell out of us, because it looks like he’s doing this for Mark Kelly,” Harris said. “My membership is scared that we’re one or two elections away from Arizona turning into a Chicago or a New York or a California. So when it comes to my association and our law enforcement communities and families, Mark Kelly scares the hell out of us.”

Kelly spokesman Jacob Peters called the Democrat a “son of two police officers” who “has been a consistent and effective advocate for Arizona’s border and law enforcement priorities.” Peters also said Kelly “looks forward” to meeting with the National Border Patrol Council in the near future. According to Peters, Kelly’s office reached out to the council “months ago” to schedule a meeting, a claim Judd disputed.

This is not the first time Kelly has reportedly ignored the National Border Patrol Council. During Kelly’s 2020 campaign, council vice president Art Del Cueto said the Democrat refused to shake his hand at a Tucson Veterans’ Day parade after Kelly identified him as “with the Border Patrol guys.” Kelly has disputed the claim.

While Kelly has looked to distance himself from Biden’s border policies, his “voting record is in lockstep” with the president, Judd said. Kelly in February voted against an amendment to protect former president Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces most migrants to wait in Mexico before their U.S. immigration court hearing. Just months later, Kelly voted down an amendment that would have prohibited the Biden administration from canceling border wall contracts for which federal funds have already been appropriated.

A number of well-funded Republicans have entered the race to unseat Kelly in next year’s midterm elections, including Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, tech executive Blake Masters, and solar power CEO Jim Lamon. Both Judd’s and Harris’s organizations have endorsed Lamon—for Judd, the decision stemmed from Lamon’s “regular communication” with the council.

“We sat down with Jim, we sat down with Blake Masters. From a policy standpoint, they’re both very good,” Judd said. “The difference was Jim was constantly reaching out. He would hear something in the news and say, ‘Hey, what do we need to do to fix that?’ He was very engaged on the issue of border security.”

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/completely-absent-arizona-law-enforcement-leaders-slam-mark-kelly/

Border patrol agents this week in Texas arrested four suspected MS-13 gang members, as well as two illegal migrants who were previously accused of sex crimes in the U.S.

Fox News reported the arrests occurred in the Rio Grande Valley in a 14-hour period. Two of the alleged gang members had been previously deported.

Fox, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, reported that the six people were taken into custody Friday near Roma, Texas. One of them was wanted on a warrant in Florida on a complaint he committed lascivious battery.

A 37-year-old Guatemalan national who entered into the U.S. near McAllen, Texas, was previously convicted of having engaged in lewd behavior with a child under 16.

The man spent 21 months in prison, but his identity was not released. None the men arrested were identified.

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Immigration officials made the announcement of the arrests Friday, but offered no further details abut their apprehensions or detainments. Other MS-13 members have been arrested at the border this year as the crisis there has raged on for nearly a year.

MS-13 is a violent gang with origins in Central America and in California. It has a large footprint in cities across the country. Texas has seen its share of violence with the gang operating in the state.

A man affiliated with MS-13 was sentenced to life in prison this week in Harris County.

KPRC-TV reported 26-year-old Luis Gonzalez Cruz will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering a teen boy who had agreed to testify against other members of the street gang.

Do you think the Biden administration is intentionally encouraging more illegal immigration?

Prosecutors said the teen, identified as Estuar Quinones, was shot by Cruz 15 times while he sat on a park bench in Missouri City, Texas, in 2016.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg hailed the conviction and sentencing as evidence that law enforcement officials in the area are going after gangs.

“Gang violence is an insidious and treacherous cycle of brutality and is particularly heinous when a cooperating witness is killed,” said Ogg. “It will never have a place in our city or county.”

Another man affiliated with the gang was sentenced to 40 years in prison over the killing of Quinones, KIAH-TV reported.

The outlet reported Darwin Josue Lopez-Ramos, who was 17 years old in 2016, helped to lure the victim to his death, along with several other MS-13 members.

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The Justice Department has estimated that there are up to 70,000 MS-13 members operating across the country.

“The MS13 is a largely urban phenomenon that has cells operating in two continents. The MS13 has between 50,000 and 70,000 members who are concentrated in mostly urban areas in Central America or locations outside the region where there is a large Central American diaspora,” the DOJ has said.

“In Honduras and Guatemala, the gang is still largely urban. In El Salvador, however, the gang has steadily spread into more rural areas. Expansion beyond urban areas has also happened in places in the United States, most notably in Long Island and North Carolina, and increasingly California,” the DOJ added.

Elements of MS-13 have been reported as far away as Spain and Italy.

KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—Charging an illegal immigrant with a misdemeanor such as criminal trespass sounds simple enough.

But throw 1,008 cases at a small county with a jail that has 14 spaces and a court system that usually handles six or seven cases per month—using Microsoft Word—and the wheels start to fall off.

On June 10, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed state troopers to start arresting illegal aliens—on charges including trespass, criminal mischief, and evading on foot—officials in Kinney County jumped on the idea.

County Sheriff Brad Coe was keen to stick illegal immigrants with any charges he could to deter them from coming to his county.

“We’re going to try to hold these people accountable,” Coe said. He also wanted to get them in the system because the illegal aliens captured in Kinney County have evaded Border Patrol, so they’re unknown.

Since January, ranchers and local law enforcement had seen an unprecedented increase in the number of illegal aliens traversing the county, and they’d given up on expecting federal solutions. Local ranchers, tired of cut fences and property damage, signed affidavits allowing the sheriff and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to press charges on their behalf.

Although Abbott announced the Operation Lone Star border security initiative in June, it took almost two months to secure enough jail space and for the DPS to work out the process. The state set up a temporary 100-bed detention center in neighboring Val Verde County and cleared out the 1,000-bed Briscoe Unit in Dilley.

Meanwhile, in July, almost 10,000 illegal aliens evaded Border Patrol in the Del Rio Sector, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection numbers.

By August, DPS was ready to start the initiative in Val Verde and Kinney counties. In Kinney, DPS assigned a small team to work the brush near the U.S.–Mexico border in areas of high foot traffic. The officers quickly started arresting an average of 25 illegal aliens per day from private ranches, often at night.

At the sheriff’s office, state troopers and local jail staff took about two hours to complete the paperwork and magistrate seven Mexicans who were arrested late on Aug. 7. They’d been walking for two days before being caught on a ranch.

Two said they had already tried crossing a month ago but got caught by Border Patrol and expelled. Another man, who said he was aiming to get to New York, said this was his third time trying to get through. He said his cousin intended to pay the $4,000 smuggling fee upon his delivery to New York.

Several said they’ll probably try again, while others weren’t as enthusiastic. They all said a “travel agent” on the Mexican side of the border directed them on where to cross, gave directions of where to walk, and had planned to coordinate a vehicle pick-up for them.

At first, Kinney County Justice of the Peace Narce Villarreal came down to the sheriff’s office in the middle of the night to magistrate the groups before DPS transported them the 30 miles to the Val Verde facility. But the hours became untenable and the sheriff’s office parking lot was overwhelmed with detainees, so the whole process was moved to Val Verde.

From Val Verde, the illegal aliens would eventually be transported 126 miles to the Briscoe Unit in Dilley while they waited for their court hearing. Subsequently, some were then transported another 200 miles to the Segovia jail facility in Edinburgh.

The Prosecution

Meanwhile, Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith was scrambling to take up the flood of new cases. He had started the job in January and was building the backend process on the fly. He had to go to the county commissioners to request a software system that would streamline the paperwork on the cases—Word documents had become too unwieldy under the volume. He contacted two other county attorneys to double-check that his complaints were solid.

Smith said he’s filed around 900 charges for criminal trespass since August, with more pending, and has had to rely heavily on Mason District Attorney Tonya Ahlschwede, who is part of Texas’s border prosecution unit, to keep up.

Former chief of the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector Austin Skero, who retired at the end of July, also joined the unit as an investigator.

After a misdemeanor arrest, Smith examines the evidence in the case file from the sheriff’s office or DPS. If it’s determined that trespass occurred, he’ll file a complaint against the individual for trespassing, which is a Class B misdemeanor. The charge is elevated if the individual has a deadly weapon, is found more than 100 feet past the property line on agricultural land, or if the alleged crime took place during a disaster (the county has been in a perpetual state of disaster since April).

Once charged, the suspect will make a plea, and if he pleads guilty, he’ll most likely get time served and be turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

It’s not a hefty penalty, but “we’re hoping they avoid our county,” Smith said.

The maximum punishment for a Class B misdemeanor in Texas is 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, whereas a Class A is one year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

As the cases have piled up, it has become a race against time for Smith.

“If they don’t make bail, they’re in jail the whole time until trial,” he said. From the time of the arrest, he has 30 days to file a Class A misdemeanor complaint against a detained individual before the habeas corpus statute requires a personal recognizance (PR) bond to be set and the individual released.

In some cases, Smith received the arrest files from DPS on day 29, or even beyond day 30. In other cases, the complaints were filed within the 30 days, but the inmate had bonded out of jail and was nowhere to be found.

Logistics and lack of manpower were the bottlenecks, he said.

“Because what the state did, when they planned on this process, they got the jails set up, they got defense attorneys funded, but not one prosecutor was there to get the prosecution set up for this,” he said.

“So we’re playing catch up, trying to get the resources at the same time to do everything—versus the defense had everything set up from the very beginning.”

On Oct. 14, Abbott announced $36.4 million in grant funding toward border prosecutions and 12 border counties, including more than $3.1 million in grant money to Kinney County, as part of Operation Lone Star.

But the money doesn’t just appear in the county bank account. It’s grant money that requires an application process, and the county must carry the costs in the meantime.

Smith has already spent more than his annual office supplies budget (about $1,200) on file folders for the trespass cases.

Court Proceedings

The first of Kinney County’s cases came up on the court docket during the last week of October. They were conducted over video conference with retired judges coming in to fill the gaps.

On Oct. 26, Judge Vivian Torres sat on the virtual bench. The cases proceeded slowly, with frequent pauses for the translator to ensure the defendant understood the goings-on.

Defense lawyer Sylvia Delgado had arranged a plea deal for several defendants that reduced their charge from a Class A to a Class B misdemeanor and a sentence of “time served,” with court costs being waived.

The defendants pleaded guilty, and the judge agreed to the plea deal terms, which included a 72-day sentence, which had been served.

Delgado said she’s been assigned about 190 cases so far by the Lubbock Public Defenders’ Office and has been focusing on getting the first ones out of jail because they’d been detained so long.

She said she meets her clients via Zoom video conference. “And I tell them specifically: ‘You have not been forgotten. I’m your attorney, I’m going to work to get you out,’” Delgado told The Epoch Times on Oct. 28.

Delgado said she lets them know that she’ll attempt to get them released on a no-fee PR bond, try to get charges reduced, and, if they want to plead guilty, ask for time served.

“And then, unfortunately, when I go back to see them before docket, a lot of them are gone,” she said. Of her 18 clients for the Nov. 2 court docket, she has only been able to follow up with the six who are still in jail.

“I met with Joselito, and Joselito had told me, ‘Well, Ms. Delgado, I just want to plead guilty and get sent back to Mexico. I just want to go back to Mexico.’

“So I was looking for Joselito. And he’s nowhere to be found.”

She was told by the other inmates that Joselito was transferred to ICE, while others had returned to Mexico after bonding out.

Other defense attorneys have also said they had no idea where their clients were after they bonded out.

The region’s district attorney, Suzanne West, told The Epoch Times that she believes inmates who bond out are released to ICE.

ICE didn’t confirm that it was taking custody of the inmates, or what happened next. A spokesperson said the agency is following the enforcement priorities set out by the Biden administration.

“In Texas and elsewhere, ICE conducts an individualized determination in each case to assess whether arrest and removal is warranted. This determination includes an assessment of aggravating and mitigating factors, as well as a determination of whether the person is removable under the law,” ICE spokesperson Monica Yoas stated in an email to The Epoch Times.

“ICE fully respects the civil rights and liberties of all people when conducting this assessment.”

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which operates the Briscoe and Segovia jails, said that as of Oct. 29, the Briscoe unit held 654 illegal alien inmates, with 536 from Kinney County, 105 from Val Verde, 10 from Zavala, and three from Frio County. In Segovia, all 291 illegal alien inmates are from Kinney County.

Delgado said she has asked for an investigator to help on the ground to find the missing people and has meanwhile obtained a continuance in court for their hearing dates.

“If they’re truly lost, like we don’t ever hear from them again, we don’t know what happened. If I can’t really find out, then they’re probably just going to keep getting reset,” she said.

“So I suppose a warrant may issue, but we’re not there yet. We’re just not there in that system yet.”

Most of the defendants on the next several dockets, totaling about 60 cases, had their cases dismissed because defense lawyers argued that the complaints were deficient as they lacked the landowner’s name.

Smith later said he was disappointed that the name of the ranch wasn’t sufficient for the court, as he was hoping to avoid naming the landowner in public records. The landowner’s name is usually included in the arrest file, which the lawyer can access.

“A lot of ranchers are concerned about cartel retribution, possibly, if their name comes up in complaint after complaint after complaint” he said.

“So we can still refile it and prosecute once we correct that information. But you know, they’re not going to show up.”

Smith’s office scrambled to amend the 900 complaints already filed to include the landowner name and the GPS location of the alleged offense.

Defense lawyers appeared to change tack on the Nov. 2 docket and entered “not guilty” pleas for all their clients who were still present.

The judge subsequently ordered the release of each defendant on a no-fee PR bond and set a pre-trial hearing for Nov. 18.

Ahlschwede, from the border prosecution unit, told the court on Nov. 2 that several illegal aliens who had been released from jail after paying a cash bond have since been arrested again for criminal trespass in Kinney County.

Smith said one man was released after paying a $4,000 cash bond. “Then we re-arrested him 10 days ago. And despite it being a multiple offense, they gave a $500 bond. Well, we filed the motion to revoke [the bond] once we got the case file—which was 10 days after it occurred,” Smith said.

The man had been released three days prior to receiving the motion.

“By the time we got the file, he was already gone. Who knows where he’s at now,” Smith said.

Coe said his office has been juggling a steady stream of people coming in to pay cash bonds with wads of crisp $100 bills.

“Some of them are $5,000. Where are they getting the money?” he said. At one point, he had more than half a million dollars in cash sitting in his vault.

“I’d bet there’s a 99 percent chance that they don’t show up [to court],” Coe said of the released illegal alien defendants.

“They’ll probably end up in places like Michigan, Missouri, West Virginia, Washington—we’ll never see them again. So are we doing this all in vain? I mean, it’s doable. It’s very, very new. It’s just getting the mechanism rolling.”

Impact

Coe said he hoped the convictions might be a roadblock for illegal aliens if they ever tried to file for some type of assistance or become U.S. citizens.

“That’d be a check mark against them. Some type of consequence has to be there,” he said.

However, in reality, having a trespass conviction on record will act more like a speedbump, according to former immigration judge Andrew Arthur, who is now a resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies.

“Generally, this isn’t going to have any effect on them from an immigration standpoint, but again, sleeping in a room with 30 guys for six months really does have a way of concentrating one’s attention,” Arthur told The Epoch Times on Oct. 27.

Even if the Texas legislature passes a bill that would enhance punishment to a third-degree felony for illegal alien trespassers, the impact on future immigration status would be negligible, Arthur said.

“But again, anything that impedes people’s ability to enter the United States, anything that’s going to require them to be detained pretrial, or imprisoned post-trial, is going to be a deterrent,” he said.

“Now, how strong a deterrent effect that is remains to be seen.”

Arthur said the deterrent effect was worth the taxpayer dollars spent on the trespass prosecutions.

“The problem is that Texas is doing the job that the federal government should be doing.”

Volume

The majority of Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border occur in Texas. Of the more than 1.6 million illegal alien apprehensions in fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol apprehended almost 958,000, or 58 percent, crossing into Texas.

Customs and Border Protection doesn’t publish the number of illegal aliens that Border Patrol agents have detected but who subsequently evade apprehension, but the internal numbers have sat at around 50,000 per month this year, according to an inside source. It’s impossible to estimate the number of those who aren’t detected at all.

Within the Operation Lone Star border effort, the DPS had made 7,744 criminal arrests as of Oct. 14, including 1,300 for criminal trespass and 6,339 on felony charges. State troopers had been involved in 822 vehicle pursuits, mostly chasing smugglers who were transporting illegal aliens.

Kinney County has charged significantly more illegal aliens with trespass than Val Verde County so far, which started the initiative at the same time. Other counties, such as Frio and Zavala started prosecuting more recently, while Uvalde and Brooks counties are considering getting started but are strapped with the same lack of resources that Kinney County has experienced.

Smith said the volume of prosecutions coming from Kinney County were a result of the county officials caring about the issue.

“They want to do something more about it than just close your eyes and not watch what’s happening to your county,” he said.

Smith said he’s been accused by a defense lawyer of being racist for prosecuting illegal aliens.

“The criminal complaints make no mention of immigration status or hinge on race. If you come down to Kinney County and trespass on private property, we’ll arrest you too,” he said in a statement on Oct. 26.

Delgado, the defense lawyer, said she hadn’t seen any malfeasance, despite the scramble to pull everything together.

“It’s a big ship and it’s making a large turn in a small canal. And so we are all working really hard to get things moving. And I believe it is starting to unclog,” she said.

Smith predicted that the system will be much more robust within a couple of months.

“What we’re working on right now is tweaking the language of the complaints, researching everything, making sure there’s nothing else they [the defense] can pick at,” he said.

“Now, will this Operation Lone Star continue for the next three years? Probably so. Unless the federal government decides to actually follow the laws passed by Congress—which at the moment they’re not doing.

“The only realistic solution to this crisis will require deploying all of the Texas military on the border and actually prevent the illegal entries from occurring. Right now, it’s like trying to build a dam after the flood gates have already been opened.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-pursuit-of-a-secure-border-small-texas-county-leads-charge-against-border-crime_4084276.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Syria were reportedly apprehended Wednesday crossing the Rio Grande River across the southern border of the U.S. into Texas as Border Patrol continues to encounter migrants from a growing number of nations.

The exclusive report by retired Border Patrol agent Randy Clark was released Thursday on Breitbart.

Four of the individuals among a group of seven people reportedly apprehended Wednesday identified themselves as citizens of Afghanistan, according to a Customs and Border Protection source.

EXCLUSIVE: Afghans, Syrians, Pakistanis Apprehended in West Texas near Border https://t.co/kCMWBUYRG6

— BreitbartTexas (@BreitbartTexas) November 11, 2021

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Two additional individuals were reportedly from India, while another was said to be a citizen of Pakistan.

Later the same day, the Del Rio Sector Border Patrol reportedly apprehended five more “significant interest migrants,” including four Syrian citizens.

Also on Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security released an updated National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.

The bulletin did not directly mention border crossings along the southern border.Should more National Guard troops be sent to the southern border?Yes No
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However, the update did note that “foreign terrorist organizations and [domestic violent extremists] continue to attempt to inspire potential followers to conduct attacks in the United States, including by exploiting recent events in Afghanistan.”

“As of November 10, 2021, DHS is not aware of an imminent and credible threat to a specific location in the United States.”

Concerns regarding migrants crossing the southern border continue to grow as the numbers have surged during President Joe Biden’s term in office.

An alarming 192,001 “land border encounters” were recorded by Customs and Border Protection in September. The number did not include migrants who alluded apprehension.

More than 1.7 million migrants have been apprehended at the southern border over the past year.

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In addition to the large number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S. in recent months, Biden authorized the entry of tens of thousands of Afghan refugees to live on U.S. military bases when the military departed Afghanistan at the end of August.

As of late October, more than 53,000 Afghans reportedly remained on eight American military bases. Nearly 6,700 additional Afghans have resettled within the U.S., according to an Oct. 25 Stars and Stripes report.

“Approximately 3,000 Afghans remain on U.S. military bases in the Middle East and another 463 are at U.S. bases in Europe, Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon,” the report said.

“Those evacuees are undergoing security screenings before they are taken to the U.S. to wait out their visa process.”

President Joe Biden’s administration is sending notices to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who were released into the U.S. interior without being given a date to appear in court, the government confirmed to The Epoch Times.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “is mailing charging documents to place noncitizens in removal proceedings who have been paroled or released under prosecutorial discretion by Customs and Border Protection,” an ICE spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email.

The illegal immigrants, numbering about 78,000, will receive packets of documents, including documents directing them to report to the ICE office closest to where they’re living, and that they will be processed for possible deportation.

Agents will log biometric information, take photographs, and inform them of future check-in requirements and court dates.

“Action will be taken against those that do not appear consistent with the law and department priorities. By mailing out these charging documents, ICE is initiating removal proceedings in a timely way,” the spokesperson stated.

Chad Wolf, former head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the move showed the Biden administration had been dysfunctional in its handling of immigration enforcement.

“Since this admin could not effectively manage the border, DHS must now expend considerable resources to track down illegal immigrants,” he wrote on Twitter.

The U.S. immigration system, already burdened by a backlog of more than 1.4 million cases, has seen unprecedented illegal border crossings since Biden entered office in January.

The previous fiscal year record of illegal immigrant apprehensions was broken in September, and a new yearly record is all but certain to be set.

Normally, when illegal immigrants are apprehended by Border Patrol and they wish to claim credible fear of returning to their home country, or the first step in the asylum process, an asylum officer will conduct a credible fear screening.

Illegal immigrants who pass the screening are released into the U.S. interior and given one year to formally apply for asylum—which a significant number fail to do.

Under the crushing volume of illegal entries this year, however, the Biden administration has released hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants without official documents, giving them a notice to report to a local ICE office within 60 days.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote on Twitter that it would be interesting to see how many of the notices to appear are returned to the government, not to mention how many illegal immigrants actually show up in court.

Those who don’t comply with the notices face deportation, but can appeal. However, with a bogged down court system, she said, deportation is unlikely to happen quickly, if at all.

Amy Fischer, advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, told CBS, which first reported the mass mailings, that she was concerned immigrants may not receive the notices from Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“We know that when people are entering, they give CBP an address and it’s typically an address of where they know somebody in the United States. But that doesn’t mean that it is where they will reside,” she said. “We also know that CBP has a long history of writing down inaccurate information.”

ICE has declined to say how many people were given the lower-level notices to report, and a Freedom of Information Act request for the data hasn’t yet been returned.

“Obviously, the better practice would be to have individuals be noticed to appear as opposed to noticed to report,” Chris Magnus, Biden’s nominee to head CBP, told a Senate panel last month.

Magnus, who said he wasn’t sure about the legal basis for issuing notices to report, blamed a dearth of asylum officers and immigration judges, and a “broken” immigration system on the change in policy.

Magnus also refused to say the situation at the border constitutes a crisis, a move that drew scorn from Republican lawmakers.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-administration-sends-notices-to-appear-to-tens-of-thousands-of-illegal-immigrants-inside-us_4094405.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The United States needs secure borders.

Sadly, the leftists currently overseeing our cultural and political institutions don’t seem to understand that fact.

If they did, 24-year-old Honduran immigrant Yery Noel Medina Ulloa never would have been able to allegedly stab a Florida father of four to death.

According to the New York Post, Ulloa entered the country illegally this summer, posing as an unaccompanied minor despite being 24 years of age.

On Oct. 7, police in Jacksonville, Florida, found Ulloa covered in blood after he allegedly killed Francisco Javier Cuellar, 46.

Seconds After Being Shot by Alec Baldwin, Here’s What Halyna Hutchins Told Someone Nearby

Nearly a week later on Oct. 13, after placing Ulloa in a juvenile detention facility, police discovered he was not in fact a minor, the Post reported.

#BREAKING: 24 yr old Yery Noel Medina Ulloa pleads not guilty to second degree not premeditated murder & tampering with evidence charges in connection to the death of 46 yr old Francisco Javier Cuellar. His pre-trial hearing will happen later this month.https://t.co/58ceI5wtGa pic.twitter.com/YxaOmS1Y4K

— Jessica Barreto (@BarretoReports) November 4, 2021

The outlet reported Cuellar had taken in Ulloa after the illegal immigrant had falsely told authorities he was 17 years old.

Has Biden kept the border safe?

Ulloa had previously confessed to his own mother that he planned on deceiving border authorities, according to the Post.

“When he entered [the U.S.] he told me, ‘Mommy, I didn’t go in with my name,’” Ulloa’s mother, Wendy Florencia Ulloa, told Univision.

“‘I went in with the name of another person because right there at the shelter they helped me.’”

Ulloa was then given a “Notice to Appear” before being released into the country, authorities told the Post.

According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, “When a child who is not accompanied by a parent or legal guardian is apprehended by immigration authorities, the child is transferred to the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) … These sponsors live in many states.”

As US Border Crisis Rages On, Kamala Harris Is Headed to Europe to Discuss the Border Crisis There

This policy is much like many of the left-wing border/immigration policies — it appears compassionate, but, in effect, is anything but.

After all, no one would call what happened to Cuellar an act of compassion.

In an effort to appear inclusive and welcoming, the left’s weak immigration policies have simply made it easier for illegal immigrants to skip in line and game the system.

It also allows dangerous criminals easy access to enter the country.

As President Joe Biden’s border crisis continues to devastate the country, more and more immigrants are gaming the weak system currently in place, like Ulloa reportedly did.

But Biden refuses to do anything about it.

The president refuses to admit he was wrong, to admit that tougher, Trump-esque border policies were the right move for this country.

Likely because of that, four children in Florida no longer have a father.

Illegal drug cartels and gang activity are taking over small Southern California towns and causing residents to flee their homes, according to a new investigative documentary released by Daily Caller reporter Jorge Ventura.

Cartelville, USA, released Nov. 4, documents Ventura’s investigation into the illegal marijuana growing operations popping up in Los Angeles County, particularly in his native Antelope Valley.

“I really wanted to shine a light on what was happening in my hometown,” Ventura said. “I felt that Americans living in these towns needed a voice on this story.”

Ventura said the drug cartels typically smuggle drugs from Mexico and distribute them inside the United States through various channels.

However, this operation’s marijuana is now openly grown and the cartels acquire the land for the operations by either squatting on land or buying properties in the rural Antelope Valley area.

“As this continues with these cartels … [they] are actually taking [the communities] over and turning them into ghost towns,” Ventura said in the documentary. “We’ve already seen three or four communities in the Antelope Valley and in San Bernardino County that have been completely taken over by these cartels and pushing families away.”

An anonymous resident told the Daily Caller that starting a year ago, the grows began popping up exponentially.

“Within five miles of my house, there are probably 50 grows … blatant, open operations,” said the resident, whose identity was hidden to protect privacy.

The presence of cartels also often leads to violence in communities. In July, an individual was killed and two others were injured at a Mariposa County marijuana cartel, according to the Merced Sun-Star.

Los Angeles Sherriff Alex Villanueva said in a June press conference that his department identified 150 illegal marijuana grows in Antelope Valley in 2020; and this year, the number grew to more than 500.

In the same month, a multi-agency law enforcement operation cleared many illegal marijuana operations in what the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) deemed “the largest operation ever to take place in the history of LASD.”

Over 200 locations were served with search warrants, while 375,000 marijuana plants and 33,000 pounds of harvested marijuana were seized.

The 10-day operation resulted in 22 felony arrests, 109 misdemeanor arrests, and 19 arrests, according to the LASD.

The cartels also smuggle undocumented migrants, often minors, from Mexico to work on the operations.

San Bernadino Sheriff Shannon Dicus told the Daily Caller that the department often sees human trafficking in some of these grows.

“[The cartels are] essentially making them work these grows and tend these grows so that they can get their citizenship or whatever the trade is,” Dicus said. “And it’s all about the grow, not about people.”

Ventura toured the inside of a San Bernadino grow operation that he said was worth $700,000.

The cartels use “grow kits” consisting of plywood, plastic, wire and tarp to construct the tent and an above-ground pool to mix chemicals. The grow kits allow the greenhouses to be built in a matter of days.

The operations also steal water from the communities’ water supply using trucks, Ventura said.

Ventura ultimately urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to revisit Proposition 64, which legalized cannabis use in the state and took the penalty for growing marijuana from a felony to a $500 misdemeanor fine.

Because the grow operations are lucrative, often yielding close to a million dollars, making the reward outweigh the risk for many people.

The investigative reporter also called on President Joe Biden to tighten enforcement at the southern border, which would lower the cartels’ source of labor.

Ventura has also been covering immigration at the Texas border for the past several months.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/cartelville-usa-exposes-illegal-drug-cartels-taking-over-small-california-towns_4087377.html

Rep. Troy Nehls, former Texas sheriff, applauds plan to use shipping containers as border barriers

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has begun taking matters into his own hands, installing makeshift border walls created from repurposed shipping containers in strategic locations where migrants are likely to cross.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, who previously served as a sheriff in the Rio Grande Valley for eight years, called the new border structures “a great idea” Thursday on “Fox & Friends.” 

“It’s a tool that the governor is using to try to help slow down, curb this invasion, this invasion that we’re seeing at our southern border,” said Nehls.

TEXAS GOV. GREG ABBOTT: ‘WE ARE BUILDING OUR OWN BORDER WALL’

Nehls described the border wall construction as a “defensive position” to “channel” migrants into areas with larger law enforcement and Border Patrol presences. 

“We have 1,250 miles of border in Texas. That’s a lot of area to cover and we’re doing the federal government’s job for them because they refuse to do it on their own,” Nehls added. 

Workers continue the assembly at the Mission Levee Phase II border wall construction site off Abram Road in Mission, Texas, Oct. 6, 2021. (REUTERS/Jason Garza)

The Texas representative said that inaction from the Biden administration and Congress has forced governors in southern states to “augment” border enforcement with their own resources. Texas’ Department of Public Safety [DPS] and National Guard have been dispatched to help overwhelmed Border Patrol agents.

Nehls said the current circumstances at the border are costing Texans billions of dollars. 

On Oct. 28, Abbott spoke with Tucker Carlson, where he laid out the specifics of the border wall plan. 

Workers continue the assembly of a border wall at a construction site in Pharr, Texas, Oct. 5, 2021.  (REUTERS/Jason Garza)

“We begin dropping these large containers that you see on 18 wheelers, you also see on these ships that are going across the ocean,” Abbott said. “We’re dropping them down on locations that could be crossings that would be used by these caravans to serve as a blockade to prevent them from coming across the border.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Abbott told Carlson that he has also dispatched 6,500 National Guard and DPS troopers to the border to contain the surge in migrant caravans crossing into the U.S.

The agents have been tasked with identifying possible points of entry and installing razor wire to deter those who wish to enter illegally, he explained.

Fox News’ Yael Halon contributed to this report.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-border-wall-shipping-container-troy-nehls

Two illegal immigrants who were previously deported for sexually assaulting children were arrested within two hours of each other in the Rio Grande Valley on Monday.

Customs and Border Protection disclosed that one of the illegal immigrant sex offenders originally hails from Guatemala and was found with a group of other migrants trying to enter the United States through the southern border near Rio Grande City, Texas. Following his arrest, Border Patrol agents found that he was arrested in 2019 by the Los Angeles Police Department for lewd or lascivious acts with a child under the age of 14. He served 180 days in prison for the crime before his deportation.

Roughly one hour later, according to CBP, officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety asked for assistance from Border Patrol agents in Fort Brown after a suspected illegal immigrant fled from his vehicle during a traffic stop. Following his detainment, Border Patrol officials determined he was a Mexican national who was convicted in 2011 for the sexual assault of a 12-year-old child in Brownsville, Texas. He was sentenced to six years in prison and deported earlier this year.

The news of the arrest of the two illegal aliens comes as President Joe Biden has failed to resolve the crisis at the southern border, which has seen an all-time-high number of illegal immigrants attempting to cross into the country. The White House says it is committed to reforming the nation’s immigration laws to be more liberal and welcoming. Since the beginning of his first term in office Biden has attempted to dramatically roll back a number of his predecessor’s policies designed to curb illegal immigration, such as eliminating the “Remain in Mexico” policy and creating a number of exemptions to Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control provision that allows the United States to turn away any migrant during a health crisis.

Border Patrol agents saw a total of 1,662,167 encounters with illegal immigrants in the 2021 fiscal year, compared with 405,036 in 2020. According to data provided by CBP, Border Patrol agents encountered 10,763 illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds in the 2021 fiscal year, up from 2,438 in 2020 and 4,269 in 2019. Border Patrol agents encountered 1,904 illegal immigrants with outstanding warrants in 2021, down from 2,054 in 2020.

Of the illegal immigrants apprehended with a criminal background in the 2021 fiscal year, 488 of them were for sexual offenses. That number is more than three times the amount of illegal immigrants apprehended with sex crime convictions when compared with the previous year.

The Rio Grande Valley Sector has transformed into the center of the immigration crisis under the Biden administration, where thousands of migrants attempt to enter the United States each month. No other sector along the southwest border saw as many illegal immigrants, with one-third of all illegal immigrant encounters taking place there. 

https://freebeacon.com/policy/border-patrol-nabs-two-illegal-immigrants-previously-deported-for-sexually-assaulting-children/

Drones, towers, license plate readers, and other surveillance tools comprise a “digital border wall” that threatens privacy and civil liberties, according to a new report from three immigration advocacy groups.

The Deadly Digital Border Wall report criticizes law enforcement’s surveillance of the U.S.-Mexico border, but the tools described in the report could be—and have been—used against all American residents as the government ramps up programs to counter domestic extremism.

The report—published by Mijente, Just Futures Law, and the Rio Grande Valley No Border Wall Coalition—details two main tools law enforcement uses to track migrations: drones and towers. Additionally, the government uses a wide array of surveillance systems and databases to track all people who cross U.S. borders—illegally or otherwise.

According to the report, there are at least 55 surveillance towers along with Southwest border. These structures are 80 to 140 feet tall and are equipped with day and night cameras and a radar that can identify people six miles away, the report said.

There are also more than 360 remote video surveillance systems—smaller, relocatable surveillance towers—and dozens of mobile surveillance systems. Each mobile system consists of a truck with telescoping poles in the bed that extend up to 35 feet in the air, outfitted with thermal and video cameras and a laser illuminator, the report explained.

Meanwhile, the government is rolling out its newest surveillance tool: an autonomous tower powered by artificial intelligence, which can be used without the direct control of a human operator, the report said.

“The relocatable towers are 33 feet tall and suited to work in remote environments with little maintenance, since they operate off the grid and around the clock, using solar panels for energy,” the report said, adding that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans on installing 200 of them by fiscal year 2022.

The growing number of towers is complemented by a fleet of drones along the border in the Southwest. The report said CBP has more than 135 drones, with plans to procure another 460.

“Nearly 600 operators were trained to fly them, and the agency aimed to double that number in 2021 with a training program in West Virginia,” the report said, adding, “Since 2016, CBP has expressed interest in developing drones with facial recognition capabilities.”

While the abovementioned tools are ostensibly designed to track illegal border crossings, the report also details numerous surveillance tools used to track all travelers crossing U.S. borders.

For instance, the report raised concerns about the forthcoming Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART), which the Department of Homeland Security is implementing to replace a legacy system.

“Hosted by Amazon Web Services, the new system will aggregate, link, and compare facial recognition images, DNA profiles, iris scans, digital fingerprints, and voice prints on unique profiles of hundreds of millions of people,” the report said.

“The planned database will collect this invasive personal data from diverse federal agencies like ICE, CBP, FBI, and the Department of Defense, as well as from local and state law enforcement, and from foreign governments including Mexico, the Northern Triangle countries of Central America, and the Five Eyes alliance.”

Another surveillance tool that has come under scrutiny is the automated license plate reader, which tracks plate numbers, precise dates and times, images, geolocation information, and other data.

“This data can be used to determine the travel patterns of individual drivers,” the report said. “Most importantly, the plate data can be matched with a car’s owner to track their movement, and stored and shared among different law enforcement agencies.”

Along with documenting the methods and tools used by the government, the report also tracks the private contractors that have been profiting off the growing surveillance state.

According to the report, Motorola Solutions has a $54.6 million contract with CBP for license plate reader technology, while ICE is paying Thomson Reuters $22.8 million for similar services through 2026. Israeli military contractor Elbit Systems, meanwhile, has a $239 million contract with CBP for surveillance tower development and maintenance, and General Dynamics has been awarded $153 million through 2023 to expand the system, according to the report.

The most expensive system in the report is the HART biometric database system at an estimated $4.3 billion. Military contractor Northrop Grumman has been awarded a $143 million contract to develop the first increment of this system, the report noted.

According to the report, government and big tech are becoming increasingly intertwined when it comes to border surveillance.

“The digital wall relies on cutting-edge, for-profit surveillance technologies developed by military contractors, big tech companies, and Silicon Valley start-ups,” the report said.

“As border enforcement agencies become increasingly reliant on technology to monitor, detain, and deport immigrants, multi-million-dollar contracts are being signed to develop tools for the region.”

Lest people think that these tools are solely being used to curtail illegal immigration, the report explained that entire populations are being swept up in the surveillance dragnet.

In 2017, for instance, CBP stationed a tower in San Diego to monitor a protest, according to the report. Last year, CBP drones were deployed on Black Lives Matter protestors in at least 12 cities, the report added.

“Border communities feel the impact of this surveillance acutely. The surveillance towers above their towns don’t just monitor the border, they monitor their backyards too. The drones flying overhead are an ever-present eye in the sky, watching people as they walk, bike, and drive in their neighborhoods,” the report said.

A recent lawsuit from the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation further backs the report’s claims, at least when it comes to license plate readers. The lawsuit revealed that one law enforcement department shared such information with more than 600 other agencies.

“Specifically, the sheriff’s office shares and transfers ALPR information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), 18 other federal agencies, and 424 out-of-state law enforcement agencies,” the lawsuit says. “This includes law enforcement agencies located as far afield as Enfield, Connecticut; St. Louis, Missouri; Lafayette, Louisiana; and Newton County, Georgia.”

The report warned that border surveillance is just a taste of what could come for the rest of the country.

“The proliferation of checkpoints is a constant reminder that the entire border region is, in the eyes of DHS, a warzone. Border communities have become a legitimate target for surveillance and enforcement—a taste of what may await the rest of the country as these technologies are rolled out nationwide.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/border-surveillance-tools-could-become-ubiquitous-nationwide-report_4075985.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan blasted the Biden administration for reportedly considering paying up to $450,000 per illegal immigrant separated from a family member during the Trump administration.

Jordan made the remarks during an interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning regarding a plan first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

The report said up to $450,000 could be given out per illegal immigrant who was separated from a family member during Donald Trump’s presidency.

“The U.S. Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million a family, though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Jordan condemned the idea, saying Democrats are now seeking to pay people to break the law.

“You’re going to pay people half a million dollars who broke the law at the same time the administration is getting ready to raise taxes on the hard-working families of this country,” Jordan told Fox News’ Steve Doocy.

pic.twitter.com/XejoakWruZ

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 29, 2021

“It makes absolutely no sense,” the congressman added.

Should the U.S. pay illegal immigrants who were separated from family members?

Jordan warned that once word gets out that illegal immigrants will be paid large sums after entering America, even more people will be encouraged to illegally cross the border.

“Think about this. First, you break the law, you get amnesty with Democrats. Now they’re going to pay you for breaking the law,” he said.

“You think we have a problem in a caravan coming towards the border now and what we’ve seen over the past several months? Wait until the word gets out that you actually get paid for breaking the law to come into our country,” the congressman added.

Jordan said the action was “one of the many stupid policies from this administration.”

Joe Biden:

-Drives up the cost of everything for Americans

-Wants to pay illegal immigrants nearly a half a million dollars

This is beyond lunacy. https://t.co/pl3zp7rybh

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 28, 2021

Massive Caravan Doubles to 4,000 Migrants, Including 500 Children, as Group Nears US Border

Later during the interview, the congressman also reminded viewers that for six months in a row, the numbers of Border Patrol encounters with illegal immigrants have increased.

“Remember, every single month for six months in a row, the illegal encounters on the border went up,” Jordan said.

More than 192,000 encounters took place at the southern border in September, according to Customs and Border Protection.

BRACKETTVILLE, Texas—Days after a militia made its presence known in a rural Texas town, the county sheriff said he received a call from a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) official who threatened to pull all its resources from the county.

Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe said that during the call, the official said they “didn’t know who these people were” who were wanting to come help on the border.

“He basically said, ‘I’ll pull all my resources out,’” Coe said.

Coe said he understood the call to mean that all state troopers assigned to the county would be relocated, and other resources including jail space could be made unavailable to Kinney County if militia personnel were operating in the county, even on private ranches.

“I said, ‘They’re not working for me. They’re not deputized. They’re just here on their own accord. And they have that right to be here,’” Coe told The Epoch Times.

Sam Hall, leader of the militia Patriots for America, said the group planned to operate as a deterrent in areas of high traffic.

“As a militia, we can’t detain or arrest people. We can disrupt and frustrate until the county or DPS can get there,” Hall told The Epoch Times.

Border Patrol agents recorded almost 4,000 illegal aliens who evaded capture in the Del Rio Sector in the seven days from Oct. 18, according to provisional Customs and Border Protection numbers provided to The Epoch Times. Most have to pass through Kinney County to get from the border cities of Del Rio and Eagle Pass to San Antonio.

“What we’ve seen is an invasion of this county,” Hall said during a county commissioner’s meeting on Oct. 18. “What we’ve seen is residents that are scared to death right now, and they don’t feel like they have support from the state.”

Coe said he had spoken to Hall and requested to know where they’d be operating, for safety purposes. The sheriff said he understood the concerns DPS might have of a “friendly fire” incident if they don’t know where people are working.

DPS has had a significant impact in Kinney County since the governor’s Operation Lone Star border enforcement effort began in March, especially with the extra state troopers on the roads arresting human smugglers and on the ranches apprehending illegal aliens for trespassing.

DPS didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Possible Kidnapping Charge

It’s not the first time DPS has threatened to pull back.

Rancher Cole Hill figured he was being proactive when he invited four men onto his ranch to help guard the property against trespassers one night in September. He was fed up with the constant illegal alien traffic, damage to his property, and slow (or no) response from overwhelmed law enforcement agencies.

The men ended up detaining a group of seven illegal alien men for DPS to subsequently pick up and charge with trespassing.

The next day, Hill told The Epoch Times, he received a phone call from DPS.

“Almost verbatim it was, ‘Look, you can’t do that. That’s not even legal what you guys did. That’s technically kidnapping. You cannot do anything to impede the travel of any other human being. And if you do so, if you try to detain somebody against their will, that is kidnapping, and you can be charged with kidnap for that,’” he said.

Hill said the DPS officer told him that they will no longer come to his ranch to pick up detained illegal aliens because it would reflect badly on the agency to transport illegal aliens that had been “technically kidnapped.”

Hill’s ranch sits about 35 miles from the U.S.–Mexico border on a main thoroughfare for illegal immigrants who have evaded Border Patrol and are traversing his land on foot to skirt a highway checkpoint. The usual plan is to then be picked up by a smuggler who will drive them to a big city, often San Antonio.

Hill said he’s dealt with illegal aliens traversing his land for years, but only about 25 people a year, on average;  sometimes months would go by with no activity.

Until January.

Since then, he’s had men in full camouflage clothing on his front porch; a group surrounding his house, banging on the walls and peering in the windows; his ranch worker house broken into; and his truck ignition destroyed during a theft attempt.

The damage to his property is also increasing. In the past few months, he’s had his perimeter fence cut seven times, most of the time from top to bottom, and in three cases, an entire section was pulled out.

“Sure, there’s probably some good apples in there as well. But I don’t think the good apples are 35 miles off the river trying to evade every law enforcement they can as aggressively as they are,” Hill said.

He said he’s lost count of the number of confrontations he’s had with groups of five or six men while working alone on his ranch. The idea of having a group of men out on security one night seemed appealing.

“All they were doing was giving me a better night’s sleep,” he said.

He was shocked to get the call from DPS.

Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith said ranchers have been detaining illegal aliens for years for Border Patrol and the sheriff’s office to pick up.

“No one’s ever brought this issue up until now with DPS,” Smith told The Epoch Times.

“Any citizen can arrest someone, or detain them, for breach of peace or a felony committed in their presence. And trespassing has been found to be a breach of peace before.”

Smith said that most of the time when a group of illegal aliens is walking through a ranch, one of them is the guide, or coyote, which constitutes a felony.

“So one of those guys is committing a felony. Can you detain all 10 of them until you find out who that one is? How do you know which one the guide is unless you detain them?” he said.

DPS didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment by The Epoch Times about this incident and about whether the agency has warned other ranchers in Texas that they could be charged with kidnapping.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/border-sheriff-says-state-threatened-to-pull-resources-if-he-didnt-stop-militia_4072144.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

President Joe Biden’s top homeland security official on Wednesday ordered immigration officers not to arrest illegal immigrants at a number of places, including food banks and shelters.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas detailed the safe spaces for illegal aliens in a memorandum to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

“Sensitive locations” where officers were barred from detaining people in the country illegally previously constituted of a small number of settings, including churches, hospitals, and schools.

The locations are now being referred to as “protected areas.” Mayorkas added social services establishments like homeless shelters, anywhere disaster or emergency relief is being provided, and places where children gather, including playgrounds, childcare centers, and school bus stops.

“When we conduct an enforcement action—whether it is an arrest, search, service of a subpoena, or other action—we need to consider many factors, including the location in which we are conducting the action and its impact on other people and broader societal interests. For example, if we take an action at an emergency shelter, it is possible that noncitizens, including children, will be hesitant to visit the shelter and receive needed food and water, urgent medical attention, or other humanitarian care,” Mayorkas told officers.

To the extent possible, he added, officers should avoid acting at or near a protected location.

“This principle is fundamental. We can accomplish our enforcement mission without denying or limiting individuals’ access to needed medical care, children access to their schools, the displaced access to food and shelter, people of faith access to their places of worship, and more. Adherence to this principle is one bedrock of our stature as public servants,” he wrote.

Since the president took office in late January, the United States has seen an unprecedented wave of illegal immigration. At the same time, deportations have dropped to record lows.

The widening of protected spaces follows Mayorkas limiting which illegal immigrants officers should pursue and narrowing or outright blocking enforcement actions in or near courthouses and at businesses.

Critics say the actions have curtailed the job of ICE officers.

“The agency still exists, but it has been stripped of all of its functions with regard to the enforcement of immigration laws. Nearly all illegal aliens are already off-limits to enforcement due to a Sep. 30 memo, and as a result of Mayorkas’ ‘expanded and non-exhaustive list of protected areas,’ where ICE agents are permitted to do their work, the secretary has essentially nullified an entire body of constitutionally enacted laws,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/biden-administration-expands-list-of-sensitive-places-where-immigration-officers-cannot-make-arrests_4072550.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-10-28-1&mktids=60eef43816ce50925f73a5861bd7e169&est=mc%2BzMJZtGk4H%2FtnfPfhXF2QJcrZ47KwHKsOGdao6kPxI5AlrIYpBwjZrF05kRoWtyQ%3D%3D

This week, the Supreme Court will consider whether it will hear a request from 13 states to be allowed to defend in court a rule designed to screen out would-be immigrants unable to support themselves, a regulation that the Biden administration refuses to defend.

The public charge rule, which has been heavily litigated in federal courts, requires applicants hoping to immigrate to the United States to be able to make their own way financially.

The case is Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco, court file 20-1775. The petitioners are the states of Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia.

Among the respondents are the states of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. San Francisco and Santa Clara, California, are also respondents, along with the federal government.

The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to consider the 13 states’ petition for certiorari, or review, on Oct. 29, after failing to come to a decision three times previously at their judicial conferences in recent weeks.

Over particularly robust left-wing opposition, the Trump administration breathed new life into the rule, which had fallen into disuse. Critics say the pro-taxpayer rule is xenophobic and discriminates against poor aliens.

The public-charge principle, the idea that immigrants should have to prove they can survive without becoming wards of the government, has been part of the American experience for centuries.

Public-charge provisions have been part of U.S. immigration law since at least 1882. One of the earliest known public-charge laws in colonial Massachusetts was enacted in 1645. By the end of the 1600s, many American colonies screened would-be immigrants and required bonds for those believed likely to become public charges.

But the Biden administration, in line with Democrats’ political base, opposes the rule and rescinded it in March.

At the time, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, spoke in favor of the rule.

“All we are trying to do is uphold common sense immigration rules that ensure that folks that come to this country can truly be self-sufficient,” Brnovich told The Hill newspaper.

“This policy ensures our government welfare programs won’t be overrun.”

The Supreme Court has dealt with the issue repeatedly in recent years.

The high court stayed a lower court’s injunction against the rule in January 2020, allowing it to be enforced pending disposition of the government’s appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Things changed after President Joe Biden took office. On Feb. 2, he issued Executive Order 14012, which directed government officials to review the rule. Days later, the Biden administration announced it would no longer defend the public charge rule.

On Feb. 22, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the federal government’s appeal of a lower court decision against the rule in the case of U.S. Department of Homeland Security v. New York, court file 20-449, which began when Trump was president.

The Biden administration dropped the appeal that came from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court ordered the case dismissed on March 9 after the parties to the legal proceeding signed a joint stipulation to dismiss.

On the same day, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit lifted its stay of a lower court’s decision vacating the public charge rule nationwide, a move that allowed the district court’s invalidation of the rule to take effect.

And the respondents fighting the rule acted.

“Without any prior warning, the existing parties sprung an unprecedented, coordinated, and multi-court gambit,” the petition states.

“Through it, they attempted to execute simultaneous, strategic surrenders in all pending appeals involving the Rule. That included the Second Circuit appeal that this Court had already agreed to hear, as well as the pending petitions for writs of certiorari in this case and the Seventh Circuit case.”

The Republican state attorneys general in the current litigation wish to continue defending the rule.

“The Petitioning States have significant protectable interests in the continuing validity of the Rule and that interest was no longer being represented at all,” the petition states.

It’s estimated that the rule “would save all of the states cumulatively $1.01 billion annually, and the Petitioning States here would save a share of that amount.”

Acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-may-consider-reviving-immigrant-self-sufficiency-rule_4072303.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

It’s no secret that Joe Biden is trying to create an open border. Over one million migrants flooded the country this year. Not only is Joe not sending them back, but he isn’t even giving them court dates for their cases.

The results are obvious. Drug cartels and smugglers have free rein. America is struggling with crime and a shattered economy. All so that Biden has a new welfare class he can exploit for votes. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is not staying silent.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy discusses the border crisis, Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, and rising inflation

While the media is silent about the true fallout of the border crisis, Kevin McCarthy is speaking out. He blasted Joe Biden’s obvious policies that are keeping the border open. He said Joe is turning all American cities into border cities.

This is due to the news that Biden is shipping migrants from the border to all corners of the country. He is dumping them into countless American communities.

These are total strangers, non-Americans who broke the law to come here. We know nothing about them, but they are down living in your town, many demanding government handouts.

The results are obvious but will be felt for years to come. Unless our government actually starts enforcing our immigration laws, nothing is going to stop more from coming. How long before our border is entirely eroded, our communities destroyed, and our livelihoods washed down the drain?

Perhaps it’s already too late?

Key Takeaways:

• Kevin McCarthy bashed Joe Biden over his open border policy.
• He claimed Biden is making every city a border city.
• This comes as over one million migrants flooded the country.

A massive migrant caravan traveling through Mexico toward the southern border of the U.S. has now grown to 4,000, including 500 infants and children.

Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins posted updates to Twitter on Wednesday as the migrant caravan continues to grow in size on its way to the border.

“Organizer Luis Garcia says this caravan is approximately 4000 strong with more than 400 children btwn the ages 7-18, 100 babies under 1 yo, 65 pregnant women (3 more than 8 months) and 4 wheelchair bound migrants,” Jenkins tweeted.

CARAVAN SIZE: Organizer Luis Garcia says this caravan is approximately 4000 strong with more than 400 children btwn the ages 7-18, 100 babies under 1 yo, 65 pregnant women (3 more than 8 months) and 4 wheelchair bound migrants @FoxNews #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/6Z0hc1Hfaf

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 27, 2021

‘Identifiable Harm’: Biden Kills JFK File Release, Issues Baffling Statement

An earlier post showed the size of the traveling group of migrants in a video from Wednesday morning. The group is ignoring warnings from Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard that they won’t be allowed to cross the border, as the Mexico Daily News reported.

DAY 5: As dawn breaks the Migrant Caravan marches again towards the US undeterred by Mexico’s FM Marcelo Ebrard @m_ebrard telling them they will not succeed @FoxNews #bordercrisis pic.twitter.com/Su8to02WIL

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 27, 2021

The caravan has doubled in size since Monday, when it included 2,000 migrants pushing north, with one migrant warning, “Tell Biden we are coming.”

“The Migrant Caravan has left Huehuetán heading North w one migrant named William from El Salvador saying ‘Tell Biden we are coming…’” Jenkins tweeted.

DAY 3 The Migrant Caravan has left Huehuetán heading North w one migrant named William from El Salvador saying “Tell Biden we are coming…” @FoxNews #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/Oqv1aLJ3I5

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 25, 2021

The crowd impeded much of the vehicle traffic that was passing through the area. Jenkins noted this was the third day since the group had departed from Huehuetán.

Jenkins posted a video update on Sunday after the group had walked approximately 15 miles on its second day to rest by a river.

FEMA Denies Abbott’s Emergency Declaration Over Border Crisis

Migrant caravan cools off in a river after day 2 of traveling towards the US @foxnews #bordercrisis pic.twitter.com/NUmDn5KniK

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 24, 2021

Jenkins also shared a video of the migrants from above on Sunday that shared the visual impact of the massive group.

Thousands of immigrants in #Mexico started to march from the city of #Tapachula to go to the #US. pic.twitter.com/wjXzwBJbTP

— gdh international (@gdhint) October 24, 2021

The migrant caravan departed on Saturday from Tapachula, Mexico. Some migrants carried signs with President Joe Biden’s name.

BREAKING: A large Migrant Caravan has departed Tapachula, Mexico carrying signs w ⁦@POTUS⁩ name on it ⁦@FoxNews⁩ #bordercrisis pic.twitter.com/iLCZeSRRPg

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 23, 2021

Tapachula is located in the southern part of Mexico near the border with Guatemala.

The caravan’s progress comes as Customs and Border Protection recently announced 192,001 encounters at the southern border in September. The number was a 9 percent decrease compared to August, but marked the third consecutive month of at least 170,000 encounters.

The number of unaccompanied children reported in September was 14,358. The number was a 24 percent decrease from August but remains high, with an average of 772 unaccompanied children taken into CBP custody per day.

The September numbers were also affected by more than 15,000 migrants who crossed at Del Rio, Texas.

UVALDE, Texas—A trio of small border locales have banded together in a bid to compel the state of Texas to provide the resources they need to secure their citizens against an unprecedented flow of illegal alien traffic.

Officials from Uvalde County, the city of Uvalde, and Kinney County formed a subregional planning commission on Aug. 2 under a unique Texas statute that gives small entities the teeth to force state agencies to the table to solve problems.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants pass through the area—via car or train, or on foot—to get from the border cities of Del Rio and Eagle Pass to San Antonio. The counties have declared themselves in a perpetual state of disaster since April.

Two officials from the Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) attended the commission’s first meeting on Oct. 21. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, tasked TDEM with providing resources to beleaguered border counties, after issuing a state disaster declaration on May 31.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has dedicated more state troopers to the area, but the 391 commission members complained to the two TDEM officials about nonaction and communication issues that have left them feeling ignored and frustrated.

Uvalde County Commissioner John Yeackle said one of his county’s biggest problems is finding jail space for illegal aliens and smugglers.

“We’re getting verbal commitments—as I understand from the sheriff’s office—for DPS to move them to Del Rio, but that’s not happening in reality,” Yeackle said. The facility in Del Rio is a temporary state-run detention center that’s holding illegal alien inmates arrested for trespass and other crimes, but it’s 70 miles from Uvalde.

Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe said several formal requests he’s made to TDEM and DPS have gone unanswered or unresolved, including radio communications between his deputies and state troopers while on duty.

“Right now, Kinney County seems to be at the epicenter of all this,” he said. Between Val Verde and Kinney counties, he said, 12 human smuggling loads had been intercepted in the previous 24 hours.

One case involved a 21-year-old U.S. citizen out of Brownsville, Texas, who was transporting three Guatemalans and one Mexican to San Antonio. While deputies were arresting him and the illegal alien passengers, another vehicle drove past that state troopers subsequently stopped. The driver and passenger—U.S. citizens out of Fort Worth, Texas—were transporting three Guatemalans to San Antonio from the border.

“To get to San Antonio, you have to go through Kinney County,” Coe said. While he said DPS has helped arrest 1,100 illegal aliens in Kinney County on trespass and other misdemeanor charges, he estimates that at least another 3,000 have slipped past.

Kinney County also has a jail space problem.

“I’ve got on my desk right now about 100 to 150 [arrest] warrants that I can’t serve because I don’t have a place to put these people. I’ve got a 14-bed facility,” Coe said.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said local schools went into lockdown 48 times in the spring because of high-speed vehicle pursuits and bailouts of illegal aliens. He said some citizens won’t let their children play in their yard unless an armed adult is supervising.

“We’re not getting any help. We’re not geared up for this. They’re doing a great job, but we need help,” he said, referring to DPS and local law enforcement.

“We’re still averaging three to four bailouts every day. And then they spend most of their time trying to round these people up.”

McLaughlin said law enforcement is finding firearms in smuggling vehicles, and some of the illegal aliens are murderers, pedophiles, and sex offenders.

The county reached out to TDEM over the summer to get extra capacity to store bodies after several illegal aliens died.

“We had two that jumped off the train that got killed. We found one in a farm field. We got another one that got run over by a combine,” he said.

Uvalde has the capacity to hold seven bodies, and McLaughlin said sometimes it takes up to six months before someone claims the body of an illegal immigrant.

TDEM Assistant Chief Tony Pena apologized during the commission meeting for the agency’s failure to respond to the request at the time. He said he would seek answers to all the complaints presented and promised better communication.

“This has to be likened to building an aircraft while it’s in the air,” he said.

“We didn’t create this problem as the state. It was created elsewhere and by somebody else, and the answer lies with them,” Pena said, referring to the Biden administration.

“All I can say is, the state of Texas is using the resources that they have available at the moment to at least slow down this invasion.”

The meeting took place as tens of thousands of illegal immigrants were traveling from southern Mexico on their way to the U.S. border.

“There’s a human tsunami on its way,” Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan said. “We do have a grave concern for Texas and our country.”

Four days after the meeting, McLaughlin told The Epoch Times that he had since talked to TDEM Chief Nim Kidd three times and was positive that things were moving in the right direction. He is submitting a new request for vehicles, extra personnel, and equipment. A temporary detention center is next on the list.

Meanwhile, the White House on Oct. 24 rejected Abbott’s appeal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse the state for millions of dollars it has spent on the border crisis.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-border-region-pushes-state-to-do-more-against-illegal-immigration_4069788.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The White House rejected Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s request that the federal government reimburse the state for millions of dollars on the border crisis, according to a letter sent to his office.

“After a thorough review of all the information contained in your initial request and appeal, we reaffirm our original findings that supplemental federal assistance under the Stafford Act is not warranted for this event. Therefore, I must inform you that your appeal for an emergency declaration is denied,” Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell told Abbott’s office in a letter dated Sunday.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in response to the letter, criticized the Biden administration.

Biden, the Republican official argued, “created the crisis on our southern border and now they refuse to pay for the endless and ongoing damage,” adding that “Texans should not have to foot this bill.”

Abbott had asked FEMA to reconsider a denial to approve a request for an emergency declaration, which would then free up federal funds. The Republican governor first asked the Biden administration for assistance in a letter (pdf) on Sept. 20 and sent a subsequent letter on Oct. 7, again asking for aid.

Immigration is solely within the purview of the federal Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Later in October, Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) issued a joint letter to President Joe Biden asking him for more federal assistance.

“State and local communities in Texas bear direct and indirect costs of the increasing volume of illegal immigration along the southwest border,” they wrote, “and federal assistance is necessary to further protect the lives, property, public health, and safety of the communities along the border.”

Biden’s recent denial of Abbott’s request comes as the CBP released data on Oct. 22 showing that Border Patrol agents apprehended a record-breaking total of 1,666,167 illegal immigrants along the southwestern border in the fiscal year 2021.

The number of illegal crossings has dramatically increased since Biden took office and after he dismantled many of President Donald Trump’s border security initiatives, including stopping border wall construction and stopping the “Remain in Mexico” program in January.

Amid the surge, Biden has received significant criticism from Republicans and some Democrats whose districts lie along the U.S.–Mexico border.

A day before the CBP report was released, Biden was asked by Anderson Cooper during a CNN interview about whether he is planning to visit the border. Vice President Kamala Harris visited El Paso, Texas, in June.

“I guess I should go down. But the—but the whole point of it is: I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down,” Biden said on Oct. 21.

New data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show the severity of the Biden border crisis reaching a new milestone with more than 1.73 million arrests made in the 2021 fiscal year, the highest ever recorded. More than 1.1 million were single adults.

Biden’s border crisis just made history.

CBP numbers for Sept: 192K arrests at the border.

That ends FY2021 at 1.73 million total arrests, the most on record, ever.

The vast majority, more than 1.1 million, were single adults.

More here – https://t.co/lWSfDFxds6 pic.twitter.com/iSMa1ySWHF

— John Daniel Davidson (@johnddavidson) October 22, 2021

“I’ve been there before,” President Joe Biden said of the southwest border in a CNN town hall Thursday when pressed whether he’d plan a visit. “I guess I should go down.”

Biden however, hasn’t been to the border in more than a decade. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki could only point to a “drive through” on the 2008 campaign trail.

DOOCY: “Why did President Biden say he has been to the border?”

Psaki: “There’s been reporting that he did drive through the border when he was on the campaign trail in 2008.” pic.twitter.com/pMPtyxCNUE

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 22, 2021

The schedule called for wheels down around noon, an hour drive to Mesilla, NM, and later back to El Paso five hours later.

Other than a motorcade ride at times near the border, there was no specific border-related stop

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) October 22, 2021

The escalating crisis of overwhelming migration has led Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott take matters into his own hands. On Wednesday, the Center for Immigration Studies reported Abbott gave some 3,000 Texas National Guard troops the authority to arrest illegal immigrants for the first time ever under “Operation Lone Star.” Guard members were granted arrest powers this week after completion of “40 hours of traditional police training in the use of deadly force.”

“Nobody’s ever really used the guard before in this capacity,” said Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw in an interview with CIS. “We’re going to use them to actually secure the border. The governor, the legislature, and the citizens of Texas have made it very clear; they want the border secure. It is good for our federal partner as well. The federal government should be thanking the state of Texas, and it’ll make the rest of the country safer as we increase the level of security.”

The National Guard will be focused on hot-spot areas such as Del Rio to minimized the surge of migration in the absence of federal leadership. Neither women, unaccompanied children, or entire family units will be subject to state arrest.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/22/new-immigration-numbers-prove-biden-border-crisis-is-worst-in-history/

Leaving the ineffectual resistance of Mexican federal police behind them, thousands of migrants streamed north toward America’s southern border on Saturday.

A caravan of 3,000 people briefly struggled with about 400 police near the city of Tapachula close to the Guatemala border, according to Reuters.

Video showed a brief resistance on the part of the authorities, who broke and allowed the migrants, some carrying children, to dash past them.

BREAKING: Migrant Caravan in Mexico encounters Mexico’s @INAMI_mx forces… #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/8RnFir1j7x

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 23, 2021

Biden Raises Eyebrows with Bizarre Moment Where He Can’t Figure Out What to Do with Hands

Irineo Mujica, who said he is among the caravan’s organizers, said a Mexico City protest is part of the plan, according to Reuters.

Mujica said migrants are protesting the fact that Mexico has tried to detain previous groups that have flooded into Mexico or demanded documents migrants do not have.

The migrants came from Haiti, South America and Central America.

The group is not the only one ready to stream into the U.S.

Should we deploy troops to stop these migrants?

A group of about 20,000 people is currently amassing near the northern Colombian town of Necocli, an unnamed Department of Homeland Security official reportedly told NBC.

Customs and Border Protection has said there were more than 1.7 million migrant encounters in Fiscal Year 2021, according to Fox News — a record high.

The leader of the caravan heading through Mexico had angry words for efforts to stop them and lashed out at Mexico.

BREAKING: The Leader of the Migrant Caravan Irineo Mujica marching and calling out @POTUS @VP @SecMayorkas #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/FxSXYWFbAH

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 23, 2021

CNN Steps in to Fact-Check Biden Over Town Hall Claim That Appears to Be Very False

“Money is not going to solve the problem, throwing it to governments like Mexico where they put people from the south border to the northern border is not the solution,” Mujica said in a video. “They should give them papers here; they should give them the opportunity to work here.”

“Because a lot of them don’t want to go to the U.S., but the Biden administration, with this administration, it’s like pulling them like cattle,” he said.

Immigration activist, Irineo Mujica says the current administration is in denial when it comes to the crisis at the border, “At least with Donald Trump, we knew what we had— with Biden, we don’t know.”
Goes on to call President @JoeBiden “Trump 2.0” #BorderCrisis pic.twitter.com/hKiDwWGJHf

— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) October 23, 2021

Mujica also has some harsh words for U.S. leaders, according to WKRN-TV.

“They’re just in denial of their own fault, you know? They haven’t been able to handle immigration,” he said.

“If I tell you the truth, I believe at least with Donald Trump we knew what we had. With Biden, we don’t know. He doesn’t seem to have a clue what to do with immigration because he says one thing and does another.”

More than 7,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested by Texas state agencies since Operation Lone Star began this spring, and thanks to the way the project works, not even the Biden administration can release them.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott created Operation Lone Star as a counterpoint to the feeble attempts by the Biden administration to curb the flood of illegal immigration that’s inundating Texas border communities.

Although immigration violations are the sole purview of the federal government, Operation Lone Star arrests illegal immigrants for the state crimes they commit – from trespassing to drug possession. That means that the Biden administration cannot simply allow these illegal immigrants to be charged and then released into the interior of the U.S.

Operation Lone Star personnel include the Texas Department of Public Safety as well as the state’s National Guard.

“The governor has directed DPS troopers to enforce all federal and state criminal laws, including criminal trespassing, smuggling, and human trafficking, and in July ordered National Guard soldiers to begin assisting DPS with arresting individuals for state charges related to the border crisis,” Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement Thursday to the Corpus Christi Caller Times.

Former NYPD Chief Calls Big Brian Laundrie Development ‘Very Strange,’ Suggests ‘Something Is Amiss’

Guard troops and officers with the Department of Public Safety have apprehended more 73,000 migrants since Operation Lone Star began, filing state charges against 7,700 of them.

Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw told the Center for Immigration Studies for a post published last week that 3,000 fully trained National Guard troops are now helping hold the border. The plan to divide responsibility envisions that the Guard will make arrests and turn those arrested over to the DPS to have charges filed.

“Nobody’s ever really used the guard before in this capacity,” McCraw said. “We’re going to use them to actually secure the border. The governor, the legislature, and the citizens of Texas have made it very clear; they want the border secure. It is good for our federal partner as well. The federal government should be thanking the state of Texas, and it’ll make the rest of the country safer as we increase the level of security.”

McCraw said that the unprecedented partnership will deter crime.

Should other states follow this model?

“We will soon be in a position to actually deter transnational crime, rather than react to it after it spreads throughout the state and nation,” McCraw said.

Guard members patrol the border fully armed, with training on the use of deadly force.

“It’s not like they’re out there by themselves,” McCraw said. “Our troopers will always be close and provide the necessary support when an arrest is made by a soldier and work closely with the local prosecutor where the arrest occurs.”

Since March, DPS officers with Operation Lone Star have seized over 10,000 pounds of marijuana; over 1,500 pounds of cocaine; over 1,500 pounds of methamphetamine; over 130 pounds of fentanyl; over 34 pounds of heroin and $5.3 million in currency, according to the website BorderReport.

“The Texas National Guard is surging personnel, equipment and capabilities to the Texas and Mexico border region in support of Operation Lone Star,” Brig. Gen. Monie R. Ulis, Operation Lone Star commander, said at a weekly briefing Thursday, according to a news release on the Texas Department of Public Safety website.

‘A Victory for Life’: Supreme Court Makes Major Announcement About Texas Abortion Law

“As we build our force, we remain ready to detect, block and apprehend individuals and groups conducting illegal activity,” he said.

At the briefing, Texas DPS officials noted two Oct. 15 arrests. In one case, a previously deported felon who was part of a group of five illegal immigrants was arrested with 32 package of cocaine. In the other, 34 firearms, 3.4 grams of cocaine, 12 ounces of marijuana, 21 ounces of methamphetamine, 8.3 grams of Xanax, 16 ounces of promethazine, 4.5 grams of LSD and 496 grams of THC oils and edibles were seized.

Republican and Democrat presidents alike typically get criticized for the amount of time they spend on vacation or the golf course.

Yet say what you will about Presidents Barak Obama and Donald Trump, if they were ever asked publicly about why they hadn’t made a visit to the scene of say, a mass humanitarian crisis of their own making, there was good chance they would have had a lightning-quick answer that could pass for something resembling a valid excuse.

Not so much for President Joe Biden, bless his heart.

No, even when pressed on his failings by CNN’s kid gloves, he couldn’t come up with a reason why he hasn’t made the short trip down south to visit the border where there is, in fact, a mass humanitarian crisis of his own making. He could only come up with the hollow excuse that he’s been “busy.”

Busy running the country so well, presumably.

Former NYPD Chief Calls Big Brian Laundrie Development ‘Very Strange,’ Suggests ‘Something Is Amiss’

Thursday night’s town hall with Anderson Cooper was the predictable fiasco for the awkwardly incoherent Biden, who struggled with a number of issues, such as completing sentences, remembering what he was doing, and standing like a normal human being.

I mean seriously, what is going on here?

🤡🌎 pic.twitter.com/r8E1wyK7AQ

— Clown World Today 🤡🌎 (@cwt_news) October 22, 2021

Meanwhile, when Biden was asked about whether he has plans to visit the southern border, which has been experiencing an influx of migrants throughout the whole of his presidency, the president, unsurprisingly, floundered.

“I’ve been there before, I haven’t, I mean, uh, I know it well,” he articulately began.

“I guess I should go down,” he continued (ya think?), “but the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down.”

“I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion damage done by hurricanes and floods and weather and traveling around the world,” he attempted.

BIDEN ON THE BORDER: “I guess I should go down, but the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down. I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion damage done by hurricanes and floods and weather and traveling around the world.” pic.twitter.com/mgWLxvf36d

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 22, 2021

Franklin Graham: Democrats Take Your Money and Give It to People ‘Not to Work’

“Now my wife Jill has been down,” Biden continued, brightening. He then gave a general description of Dr. Jill Biden’s visit to the border. FLOTUS saves the day yet again.

Ironically, Biden continued to claim that “you’re not seeing kids with what look like tarps over them,” a rather ironic possible reference to the notorious “kids in cages” photo that lit social media aflame back in 2018, which turned out to have been taken during the Obama — not Trump — administration.

That is, the administration in which Biden served as Vice President.

Is Biden blatantly lying about how he spends his time?

“But there’s much more to be done,” he continued, circling back to the whole reason that he was being asked about the dang border in the first place. Yes, thank you, Mr. President, that’s sort of what the country is looking to you for, and why the guy with the microphone on the stage with the bright lights was asking you about when you’re going to visit said border.

This is, in short, pathetic. A flight to El Paso, Texas, from Washington, D.C., is roughly four hours — not even half a day.

It would take Biden, like, one single day to travel down to a border town, make some comments with local politicians whose name he’d assuredly forget, visit a shelter, talk to reporters for the five seconds his handlers give him to field questions and go home.

He’s the President of the United States, and the crisis is mounting to the point that the mainstream media doesn’t even seem to be willing to cover for him anymore, even with all their fabricated outrage over border agents “whipping” migrants.

Biden doesn’t even have a smart-sounding reason for why he’s supposedly been so busy.

He might have cited his work on the economy, the ongoing negotiations over his Build Back Better agenda or the crisis in Afghanistan, of course, but in perhaps one of the few instances of quick thinking that Biden displayed during the town hall, Biden cited the only examples of work he’s been doing that didn’t draw to mind even more failings on his part.

Here’s the thing: Biden has puttered around the country a bit and has taken exactly one whole entire trip abroad to attend a meeting of the G7 nations in the United Kingdom — where he said he didn’t want to go home when he arrived, mind you — but he’s taken 25 trips to his home in Delaware since taking office.

This is in addition to several vacations.

And yet we’re supposed to believe he’s just entirely too busy to virtue signal interest in the raging border crisis?

According to a Wikipedia list of all of his presidential trips, President Biden has been to California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas once each; Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana and Wisconsin twice each; New York and Ohio each three times; Michigan four times and Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, respectively, six, nine and ten times.

His home in Delaware by far takes the cake, as NPR noted in August, before he observed the fall of Kabul from his vacation at Camp David.

In June, Biden skipped out on work on a Wednesday to enjoy some time off at his Rehoboth Beach estate, despite ongoing negotiations over the infrastructure bill back in the capital.

“Of the first 29 weekends of his presidency, Biden spent just six at the White House,” NPR reported at the time, explaining that Delaware is where the president feels “grounded,” pointing to his famous daily trips back to his home during his time in the Senate to be with his sons following the tragic death of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972.

The outlet noted that Delaware was also where he was headed for his vacation that month — go figure.

Later in the month, he would be criticized for remaining at Camp David as Kabul fell to the Taliban, briefly heading back to Washington D.C. to address the nation and then going back to Camp David before finally cutting his vacation short because — sigh — national crisis and all.

In September, as Americans were still trapped in Afghanistan following the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from the nation, which was completed on Aug. 30, Biden was — where else? — back on vacation in Delaware yet again.

NPR compared Biden’s Delaware weekends to Presidents Bush and Reagan spending time on their Texas and California ranches to unwind from the duties of the presidency.

To be fair, it’s certainly understandable that the president would need to unwind, assuming he does so at a better time than in the midst of a national crisis.

However, in Biden’s case, his penchant for unwinding so frequently gets rather problematic. Even beyond the terrible timing of his vacations, their frequency proves that he is not only perfectly capable of and accustomed to regular travel, but he has had plenty of free time to do so since taking office.

When it comes to giving the impression that he’s been working hard, President Biden has quite an uphill battle to face.

He is regularly shuffled around by his staffers, who angrily shoo away reporters so they can set him up in front of a teleprompter so he can halfway attempt to get through a speech without fumbling or forgetting where he is.

The work being done by Biden’s administration has indeed been fraught with failure, and it’s not just the border crisis: It’s Afghanistan, climbing gas prices and overreaching, authoritarian and dubiously constitutional vaccine mandates that are alienating and demoralizing the American workforce.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that the president who takes weekends off from his job and always seems to have time for a vacation, even in the middle of a complete and utter disaster like the fall of Afghanistan, doesn’t have time to visit the border?

It’s certainly not time that Biden is lacking. It’s the willingness to do his job.

Thousands of illegal immigrants in a caravan broke through a barricade of Mexican police dressed in anti-riot gear on Saturday, driven to action by what they say are impossible conditions in the overcrowded southern Mexican border city of Tapachula.

Around 400 Mexican interior police attempted to form a blockade to stop a flood of over 2,000 illegal immigrants as they attempted to leave the city, which lies on Mexico’s border with Guatemala.

The protesters easily broke through police lines and made their way north along a highway that leads to the nation’s capital.

There were minor scuffles, as one family was knocked to the ground in the rush of people. Their small child suffered a slight head wound, according to a Reuters video.

The city, which is in Mexico’s poorest state of Chiapas, is swollen with tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, and other countries, mostly in Central America.

The Migrant Crisis: A View From the Other Side of the Border

Illegal immigrants have been pouring into Mexico since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, following a promising a more “humane” approach to immigration.

Mexico allows those applying for humanitarian visas or asylum to stay in Chiapas while their case is processed, but those wishing to travel further north into Mexico and beyond must have a visa, or risk being deported to Guatemala.

But many in this caravan are willing to take that risk, said organizer Irineo Mujica. Mujica is an immigration reform activist with the organization Pueblos Sin Fronteras (People Without Borders).

He told Fox News that people in the caravan are calling on the Mexican government to “do their share” with the immigration crisis, adding that many would be content with Mexican papers and “the opportunity to work here.”

“A lot of them don’t want to go to the U.S.,” he said. “But the Biden administration, this administration, it’s like hauling them like cattle. We’re asking the Mexican government to give them papers to have a choice here, because Mexico, it’s a good place to live, to work.”

He said that most in the caravan were, for now, headed for the Mexican capital, although others may continue on to try their luck at the southern U.S. border.

José Antonio, a construction worker from Honduras, said that he was planning to travel with the caravan to the northeastern Mexican city of Monterrey, where he was hoping he would be able to find the work that has been hard to come by in Tapachula.

“They told me I had to wait because the appointments were full,” he said of the visa application process in the overwhelmed city. “There is no work there [in Tapachula], so out of necessity I joined this group.”

“We’ll go on, day by day, to get as far as we can,” he said, adding that he was worried his joining the caravan would negatively impact his visa application.

Mexican authorities have broken up smaller attempts at similar breakouts earlier this year.

One such caravan reached the U.S. border near Del Rio, Texas, in September. In January, a larger caravan was stopped further south in Honduras after it was blocked from entering Guatemala.

Recent caravans have not been as large as those that crossed into Mexico in 2018 and 2019. However, a record-breaking number of illegal immigrants are still reaching the southern U.S. border, with an all-time high of 1.67 million border apprehensions reported for fiscal 2021 by U.S. authorities.

The Biden administration has blamed factors like poverty, corruption, and violence as the root causes of the crisis, and has proposed spending significant taxpayer money in an attempt to combat these issues.

But Mujica said he believes the systemic problems plaguing Central America will be harder to solve. “Money’s not going to solve the problem, throwing it to governments like Mexico where they’re throwing people from the southern border to the northern border,” he said of Mexico’s reaction to the crisis.

Meanwhile, critics of Biden’s immigration policies have pointed to the rollback of Trump-era border policies as the problem—particularly the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which kept asylum seekers in Mexico as their cases were processed.

The Biden administration is currently in the process of restarting MPP due to a Supreme Court order. However, it stressed via a September memo that it is still trying to end the program.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/2000-person-caravan-surges-past-mexican-riot-police-near-guatemala-border_4065478.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) of Texas arrested 21 suspects for sex offender-related offenses during an operation earlier this year, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday.

Between August and September of 2021, the Houston Fugitive Apprehension Unit (FAU) participated in operation “Lucky Charm” which focused on the arrest of suspects who have failed to register as sex offenders and who had sex offender registration violation warrants originating from the Houston metro area.

“This operation, funded by the US Marshals Office, allowed Houston FAU investigators to work tirelessly to target sex offenders,” the OAG said.

The 21 suspects arrested were named as William Nicks, Luis Ovall, Jimmie Culton, Richard Trahan, George Wynn, Felipe Ramon Corona, Kenneth Doyle Elms, Daniel Castillo, David Garcia, Ronald Peeples, Charles Wayne Sherrill, Garry Dwayne Davis, and Jonathan Kurt Young; all of whom are from Harris country.

Stephen Jay Cooke from Matagorda county, Edgar Lee Walker from Angelina county, Randall Jay Perry from Hidalgo county, Jason Mathew Bulgier from Brazoria county, Larry Elton Clark from Galveston county, Garland Dwain Cavit from Dallas county and Richard Filcher and James Dean Martin from Montgomery county were also among those arrested.

Last week one of the top 10 wanted sex offenders in Texas was arrested in Canyon, the Texas Department of Public Safety announced.

Cory Lee Reed, 30, was located and arrested by members of the U.S. Marshals North Texas Fugitive Task Force, including DPS Special Agents, at his home address on Oct. 14. Dalhart PD assisted in the fugitive investigation.

In 2010, Reed was convicted of two counts of sexual assault of a child following incidents involving a 14-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 10 years probation. In 2011, Reed was convicted of failure to comply with a sex offender’s duty to register and received five years probation. But in 2012, his probation was revoked for Sexual Assault of a Child (X2) and Failure to Comply with Sex Offender’s Duty to Register, and he received two 8-year sentences and a one-year sentence to be served concurrently. Reed was released on parole in March 2019.

Reed is one of two of Texas’ Most Wanted now in custody following their arrests. On Oct. 13, one day prior to his apprehension, Alberto Mendoza, 21, of Dallas, was arrested by Dallas Police officers at a home on the south side, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

Mendoza was added to the Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitives List on Sept. 7 and had been wanted by authorities since December 2020 for engaging in organized criminal activity and a parole violation.

In 2016, he was convicted on four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to eight years in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) prison. Mendoza was released on parole in November 2018.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had also issued a Parole Violation warrant for his arrest on Dec. 23, 2020.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-operation-lucky-charm-results-in-21-sex-offender-related-arrests-attorney-general_4064639.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

In a comment The Washington Post mocked as “almost like counting a refueling stop as a visit to a country,” President Joe Biden told a CNN town hall Thursday night that he had been to America’s southern border.

During the event, Biden was asked, “Given that it’s nearly been a year into your campaign, why haven’t you been to the southern border of our country?”

After host Anderson Cooper nudged Biden into giving an answer, Biden offered one that sent the fact-checkers into overdrive, according to CNN.

“I’ve been there before, and I haven’t — I mean, I know it well. I guess I should go down.  But the — but the whole point of it is: I haven’t had a whole hell of lot of time to get down,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of his comments.

WATCH: Joe Biden says he hasn’t had “time” to visit the southern border, says “I guess I should go down” pic.twitter.com/mqxgWGgrfb

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 22, 2021

“I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion worth of damage done by — by hurricanes and floods and — and weather, and traveling around the world,” he said.

“But I plan on — now, my wife, Jill, has been down.  She’s been on both sides of the river.  She’s seen the circumstances there.  She’s looked into those places,” he said.

When the Post fact-checked the claim, it noted that in 2008, Biden released a long list of people he had met with in various places, “But despite that long history, we cannot find evidence that Biden at one point made a visit to the southern border.”

Do you think Joe Biden has no idea if he was ever at the border?

“But after digging some more, we discovered that Biden briefly drove past the border while on a campaign swing in 2008,” the Post reported, describing an October 2008 trip from El Paso, Texas, through New Mexico.

“The drive took Biden along a route that for a few minutes hugs the border of the United States and Mexico,” the Post reported, eventually deciding not to rate the claim false.

Biden says he hasn’t had time to go to the border.

He’s had time to go to Delaware almost every weekend.

He had time to go for a maskless dinner last week.

Can someone tell him there are kids at the border so he will go?

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) October 22, 2021

White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to go with that story and build upon it.

Washington Post Slaps Biden with 4 Pinocchios for His Lie About the Second Amendment

“He did drive through the border when he was on the campaign trail in 2008. And he is certainly familiar with the fact — and it stuck with him — with the fact that in El Paso, the border goes right through the center of town,” Psaki said during her media briefing, according to CNN.

Psaki denigrated a visit by Biden to the border as a “photo op.”

“There is a focus right now on a photo op. The President does not believe a photo op is the same as solutions,” she said.

Joe Biden said he’s too busy to visit the border.

But he wasn’t too busy to take a beach vacation in the middle of his chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) October 22, 2021

CNN’s fact-checking of Biden’s town hall performance noted that Jill Biden’s border visit was in December 2019 as part of the campaign for the White House.

CNN further noted that although Biden cited foreign travel as a reason not to visit the border, he has made only one trip abroad.

Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 1,666,167 illegal immigrants along the southwest border in fiscal 2021—breaking all records since 1925 after the agency was formed (when 22,199 illegal aliens were arrested).

An additional 294,352 were stopped after trying to enter at a port of entry without legal papers, bringing the total to almost 2 million (1,956,519) for fiscal 2021, according to new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics.

The CBP doesn’t officially release the number of “gotaways”—illegal aliens who are detected by Border Patrol, but evade capture. However, former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan told a congressional Republican roundtable on Oct. 20 that the gotaway number hit at least 400,000 illegal aliens this year.

The Biden administration has faced growing criticism for the crisis at the southern border, which started to ramp up a year ago in tandem with election rhetoric.

However, the number of illegal crossings shot up once Biden took office and promptly dismantled many of President Donald Trump’s border security measures.

In January, Biden paused deportations, stopped border wall construction, halted the Remain in Mexico program, repurposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement priorities, and reversed the ban on travel from terror-prone countries.

In December 2020, Trump’s last full month in office, Border Patrol agents arrested almost 74,000 illegal immigrants on the southern border. By July, that had almost tripled to 213,500.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expelling most single adults under the Title 42 health directive policy issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March 2020 that calls for immediate expulsion of all illegal immigrants and non-essential travelers.

However, under Biden, the DHS stopped applying Title 42 to any unaccompanied children, most family units, and some adults.

The administration has been faced with record levels of unaccompanied minors and family units entering illegally—most of whom are subsequently released into the United States.

The number of unaccompanied children apprehended by Border Patrol in fiscal 2021 (146,925) exceeded last year’s total by four times. At one point in April, more than 20,000 unaccompanied minors were being held in Health and Human Services custody.

The White House confirmed on Oct. 20 that it has been flying unaccompanied children from the southern border to New York in the middle of the night.

“It is our legal responsibility to safely care for unaccompanied children until they can be swiftly unified with a parent or a vetted sponsor,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. “And that’s something we take seriously. We have a moral obligation to come to do that and deliver on that.”

She confirmed that unaccompanied children are also being transported to other parts of the country.

Haitian Crisis

September presented a new challenge for DHS when 15,000 mostly Haitian illegal immigrants formed a primitive encampment under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

The administration subsequently released at least 12,400 of them into the interior, with the expectation that they will check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or turn up at their immigration court hearing.

Tens of thousands more Haitians and other migrants are currently heading toward the U.S. border, according to reports.

During the Haitian crisis, Border Patrol was forced to close nearby highway checkpoints, and state and local law enforcement surged to the bridge to provide security.

In general, drug seizures at the border and highway checkpoints have been consistently lower in fiscal 2021 than in the past three years, with September hitting a low point.

Other issues are facing the Border Patrol agency, with morale hitting an all-time low and agents facing a Nov. 22 deadline to get vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine or get fired.

Administration Response

The Biden administration has been consistent in its response to questions about its handling of the border, saying it’s focusing on the “root causes” of illegal immigration and that it is seeking a “fair, orderly, and humane” immigration system.

Administration officials have avoided calling the border issue a crisis, but DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was caught on leaked audio telling border agents that the situation is “unsustainable.”

“A couple of days ago I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” Mayorkas said on Aug. 5, according to audio a Border Patrol source leaked to Fox News.

“We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue and our system isn’t built for it.”

On Oct. 21, Biden was asked by Anderson Cooper during a CNN town hall if he plans to visit the southern border.

“I guess I should go down. But the—but the whole point of it is: I haven’t had a whole hell of lot of time to get down,” Biden said.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited El Paso, Texas, in June, but was criticized for avoiding the two busiest sectors in the nation, also in Texas.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/border-patrol-arrests-shatter-all-records-at-southern-border_4064208.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-10-23&mktids=e583a94a1d6b08faf26ad49157baae5e&est=ieHUxtMLT%2FTh4kEIFdplApT7iW9fBS4hAENbqZ8BYrnqEBlWUFHXx1QVeolC0KX33w%3D%3D

The Department of Homeland Security will spend nearly a half-million dollars for a Delaware construction company to build a fence around President Joe Biden’s beach house.

The New York Post reported Friday that the department awarded Turnstone Holdings LLC a $456,548 contract to purchase and install security fencing at the president’s Rehoboth home. The Secret Service will be the subagency for the contract.

Construction of Biden’s security fence comes as the president faces a record-high surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border. Border Patrol agents this year detained more than 1.7 million migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border, the highest total ever recorded, according to the Washington Post.

One of Biden’s first actions in office was halting construction of former president Donald Trump’s border wall. Homeland Security this month canceled remaining contracts for building the wall.

Biden, who has not been to the border since he was elected president, said Thursday that “I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down.” Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Biden in March appointed border czar, visited the border in June after bipartisan pushback.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/dhs-spends-half-million-on-biden-beach-house-fence/

The attorneys general of Texas and Missouri teamed up to sue the Biden administration on Thursday, seeking to resume construction of the wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit (pdf) against President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in the U.S. district court in Victoria, challenging the administration for refusing to spend money appropriated to continue construction of the border wall amid a worsening “border crisis.”

They argue that the president’s refusal to use the more than $1.3 billion appropriated for “construction of barrier system along the southwest border” is a violation of the separation of powers and the Take Care clause of the Constitution.

“[It] is arbitrary and capricious, and fails to spend appropriations mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020 and 2021,” the attorneys general, both Republicans, said in a news release.

“Time and again, the Biden administration has refused to take concrete action to quell the worsening border crisis, inviting the cartels and human drug smugglers to take advantage of our porous border,” Schmitt said in a statement. “Without a border wall, illegal immigrants, coyotes, and bad actors can simply march across our southern border and into the interior. The border wall needs to be built, the funds have been appropriated to continue to build the wall, and yet the Biden Administration outright refuses to do so.”

Schmitt noted that the same amount of funds was also appropriated by the FY2021 DHS Appropriations Act.

“The Biden Administration’s flat refusal to use funds that have already been set aside by Congress to build the border wall is not only illegal and unconstitutional. It’s also wrong, and it leaves states like Texas and Missouri footing the bill,” Paxton said in a statement.

He added, ”I will not sit idly by while this Administration wreaks more havoc on our state.”

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House and DHS for comment.

Since taking office in January, Biden has signed dozens of executive orders rescinding President Donald Trump’s policies, including border wall construction and the “remain in Mexico” protocols.

In issuing an order suspending border wall construction—a project that has been long championed by Trump—Biden described it as wasteful and ineffective, although DHS has spent funds on repairing some areas along already-built wall sections.

The Biden administration in recent weeks has faced mounting criticism for its handling of border security and a surge in illegal immigration along the southern border.

Late last month, thousands of illegal aliens of Haitian origin created a makeshift encampment underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Later, Mayorkas said that about 12,000 of the Haitians were released into the interior United States with pending court dates.

The crisis triggered calls from Republicans and even some Democrats to restart the construction of the border wall, which was a major campaign promise of Trump’s during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Biden’s pick to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Chris Magnus, acknowledged during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday that the influx of illegal immigration at the southern border is an urgent matter.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-missouri-ags-sue-biden-admin-to-resume-border-wall-construction_4062501.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Federal officials “have lost complete control” of the southwest border under President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, three former high-ranking immigration enforcement officials told a panel of Republican senators on Oct. 20.

“We have lost complete control of the border. I’ve talked to several Border Patrol chiefs who tell me they have lost operational control of the border under this president,” former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan told three Republican senators during a roundtable discussion of the situation on the U.S.–Mexican border.

“They’ve also lost respect for the commander-in-chief and the [DHS] secretary,” Homan told Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Rick Scott of Florida.

Johnson said in his opening statement that he convened the roundtable discussion after Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, declined to convene a hearing on the border crisis.

A committee spokesman for Peters didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment on Johnson’s claim. Johnson had preceded Peters as committee chairman prior to Democrats’ gaining control of the chamber in the 2020 election.

Homan’s intense criticism of Biden and Mayorkas was affirmed by Mark Morgan, who was chief of the U.S. Border Patrol during the Obama administration, and Rodney Scott, who served in the same role under both Biden and his predecessor, President Donald Trump.

Morgan told the senators that “what happens at the southwest border does not stay at the southwest border.”

“Every town, city, and state in this country is a border town, city, and state. If you have a drug overdose from fentanyl, take it to the bank that the fentanyl came from the southwest border,” he said.

“Almost every day I get up, as an American, angry. Why? Because I know because I’ve been there, this administration is way beyond not being transparent. They are lying to the American people.”

With “400,000 ‘gotaways’ this fiscal year, 1.9 million total enforcement encounters, an all-time record high, so if the secretary were sitting in front of me right now, I would say ‘Mr. Secretary, stop lying to the American people,’” Morgan said.

Morgan was referring to Mayorkas’s comment to a House committee in September that “the border is secure. We’re executing our plan,” and that the border today “is no less secure than it was” under Trump. “Gotaways” are illegal immigrants who come into the United States and are not apprehended by U.S. law enforcement officials.

A White House press office representative didn’t immediately respond to request for a response to Morgan’s comment.

Scott said he agreed to appear before the panel because he wanted “to bring attention to the irresponsible and reckless policies that are being implemented by the current administration on the border despite being advised otherwise by professional border security personnel that have been involved in this for decades.”

The immigration aspect of the issues involved in border security is only one area of a broader scope of issues that involve national security, he said.

“It’s just like your home; it’s exactly like your home. If we don’t know and can’t control who and what is in our home, we have no security. If we don’t know who and what are in our country, then we have no homeland security,” Scott said.

“When I left as [Border Patrol] chief, there were 15o nationalities mixed in. It’s not just the Haitians you hear people talking about, or just the South Americans, it’s 150 different nations, many of which are directly involved in or ignoring terrorism threats.”

The Biden transition team was briefed “by border security professionals … that if they rescinded the commonsense policies that were put in place recently, if they stopped building the border wall, we all predicted that there would be a mass migration,” Scott said.

The roundtable also heard testimony from two mothers, one of whom lost a daughter to fentanyl and the other who lost a son in a traffic accident caused by an illegal alien driving without a license.

Virginia Krieger of Cleveland, Ohio, president of the Fentanyl Awareness Coalition, told the senators that her 27-year-old daughter, Tiffany, died in 2015 as a result of ingesting what she thought was a Percocet capsule but, in fact, was a highly toxic dose of fentanyl.

“Tiffany didn’t seek to use fentanyl. Tiffany didn’t really have any issues at all before that day,” Krieger said. “And now, we have an entirely new population of young people dying, being affected by the fentanyl crisis that we have never before seen in this country. And they are the non-addicted victims.”

Krieger said young people “are getting counterfeit pills, either given to them by a friend or being purchased from an online platform like Snapchat that make these pills available to anyone with a smartphone, including children as young as 12.”

Mexican drug cartels smuggle billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs, including fentanyl, into the United States every year, with 95 percent of it coming across the southwest border, Morgan said.

Similarly, Sabine Durden-Coulter of Riverside, California, said her son, Dominic, was on his way to work as a 911 communications officer when he was killed in 2012.

“He was killed by an illegal alien, repeat offender, a felon with armed robbery convictions, no driver’s license, and two DUIs he received that he received probation for,” Durden-Coulter told the panel.

“The man made a deal with the judge and was charged with vehicle manslaughter without gross negligence and received nine months, with five years probation. And he served 35 days.

“If the immigration laws that were on the books would have been upheld the first time they had him, the second time, the third time, I wouldn’t be here and my son would still be enjoying his beautiful life and thousands of other families like mine wouldn’t know this grief and pain.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-has-lost-operational-control-of-southwest-border-senate-gop-panel-told_4061287.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Border Patrol agents in Texas arrested three criminal illegal aliens on Oct. 20, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). All three are gang members.

One man, from El Salvador, is an MS-13 gang member with pending charges for homicide, fraud, and trespassing in New York. He was encountered about 60 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border.

Another Salvadoran man was found in the brush, ostensibly trying to skirt the Border Patrol highway checkpoint in Falfurrias, about 80 miles north of the border. He’s an MS-13 gang member with a criminal arrest for homicide in El Salvador.

Closer to the border, on the same day, an 18th Street gang member from El Salvador was arrested after being discovered among a group of 61 illegal aliens near Hidalgo. The man had been removed from the United States last month.

Border Patrol personnel have arrested 325 illegal alien gang members in fiscal year 2021 through August, according to CBP statistics. Border Patrol is the law enforcement arm of CBP within the Department of Homeland Security.

Border agents have encountered more than 12,000 illegal alien criminals and those with outstanding warrants in the same time period, according to CBP. A further 4,474 illegal alien criminals were encountered at U.S. ports of entry.

CBP commissioner nominee and former Tucson, Arizona, Police Chief Chris Magnus refused to say the border was in a crisis during a nomination hearing in front of the Senate on Oct. 19, despite preliminary numbers showing 1.7 million apprehensions at the border—breaking all previous records.

In response to a question about the record volume of drugs entering the United States, Magnus said: “Of course, if there was a ready-to-go plan to address all the problems that you’ve just described, my guess is that not only CBP, but you all as a body would have seen to it that it was implemented.”

He said a key part of his strategy as commissioner would be to build relationships and collaborate with policymakers.

Former CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan said at a congressional Republican roundtable on border security on Oct. 20 that Border Patrol had detected but not caught at least 400,000 illegal aliens this year.

“If you open up your borders to one threat or one crisis, you’re opening your borders up to the vast, complex set of threats,” Morgan said.

“If you expand illegal immigration, you’re pulling essential resources off the line, opening those borders up to criminal aliens, to gang members, increased human smuggling, human trafficking, and drugs pouring into this country.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/border-patrol-arrests-ms-13-gang-member-wanted-for-homicide-in-new-york_4061414.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spoke out Thursday against President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection, calling him the “perfect choice” for open borders advocates.

Tom Homan, who led ICE during part of the Trump administration, shared his remarks during an interview on “Fox & Friends,” following a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing for Chris Magnus, Biden’s pick for CBP commissioner.

“I was a little disappointed in the hearing. I thought he should have gotten hammered more. If it were the Trump nominee, they would have been all over them,” Homan said.

Homan also revealed that Magnus, currently chief of police in Tucson, Arizona, has not cooperated with ICE officers and agents in the past.

“He is pro-sanctuary cities, refused to work with ICE when he was the chief in Tucson when I was the director, he refused to work with a lot of special agents and officers and even though his officers wanted to and they tried to behind the scenes, he ordered them not to assist immigration authorities,” Homan added.

NIH Confirms It Funded Wuhan Gain-of-Function Research, Now Fauci Could Spend 5 Years in Jail

Homan noted Magnus remains an avid critic of former President Donald Trump who has called the former president’s policies “inhumane.”

“He went against Donald Trump from day one, said his policies were inhumane, and bottom line, he fails to recognize that Donald Trump created the most secure border in my lifetime,” Homan said.

He sarcastically noted that Magnus is ideal for the Biden administration if it intends to push for open borders.

Is a nominee who supports open borders automatically unfit to lead the CBP?

“He is the perfect choice for this administration if this administration wants open borders. He’s the worst choice for the men and women of CBP who simply want to do their job and secure the border,” Homan said.

The Magnus nomination process comes as CBP data obtained by The Washington Post showed that 1.7 million people were detained along the border during the federal 2021 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. Arrests by Border Patrol agents hit their highest level ever recorded, according to the report.

The data set includes the final months of the Trump administration.

Since President Joe Biden took office, 1.3 million illegal immigrants have been detained, the report said.

On Tuesday, Magnus responded the spike in immigration numbers represented a “significant challenge” and “the numbers are very high.” He repeatedly avoided characterizing the surge at the border as a “crisis” despite persistent questioning, Fox News reported.

Biden White House Officially IDs New Culprit to Pin His Biggest Failure on

In response to the illegal immigration crisis and the Biden administration’s lack of action, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has drafted what he called the “Stop the SURGE Act,” legislation that would open up new ports of entry in Democratic strongholds, so those areas could share in what Texas border towns are experiencing.

The locations are in Delaware, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and California.

“For the past ten months, President Biden and his administration have willingly surrendered the United States’ southern border to dangerous criminal cartels, with no thought given to the South Texas border communities like McAllen and Del Rio, which are running low on resources from dealing with this massive influx of illegal immigrants,” Cruz said in a statement released Tuesday.

“That’s why today I am introducing this crucial legislation to alleviate the massive overload at the southern border by establishing new ports of entry in Democrat-led communities such as North Hero, Vermont, where Bernie Sanders spends his summers, and Martha’s Vineyard, where Democrat elites host their cocktail parties.

“If Washington Democrats had to endure even a fraction of the suffering South Texas families, farmers, ranchers, and small businesses have had to face, our nation’s immigration laws would be enforced, the wall would be built, and the Remain in Mexico policy would be re-implemented. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stop ignoring the plight of South Texas communities and act swiftly to end this horrific humanitarian crisis.”

If President Joe Biden isn’t going to do his job, there are plenty of hardworking Americans out there willing to do it for him.

Perhaps the most neglected of Biden’s many presidential responsibilities has been his duty to protect the country’s southern border.

The problem has deteriorated exponentially, with detention facilities filled to the brim and large caravans of migrants continuing to cross over.

Sam Hall, the founder and president of a militia group called Patriots for America, has decided to take it upon himself to right Biden’s border wrongs.

According to a Tuesday report from The Epoch Times, Hall will be dispatching his militia of roughly 100 men to Kinney County, Texas, in order to “operate as a deterrent in areas of high traffic.”

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Kinney County shares a mere 16 miles of the border with Mexico, but — given its location between Del Rio and Eagle Pass — it serves as a prime destination for migrants to cross over illegally.

The Times reports that over the past several months, ranchers in the county have been faced with “a relentless stream of illegal aliens traversing their property, cutting fences, breaking into their homes, and threatening them.”

“What we’ve seen is an invasion of this county,” Hall said, according to The Times. “What we’ve seen is residents that are scared to death right now, and they don’t feel like they have support from the state.”

Is Biden to blame for the crisis at the southern border?

As the militia sets up in Kinney County, reports indicate as many as 85,000 migrants — reportedly made up of mostly Haitians — are on their way to the border.

“As a militia, we can’t detain or arrest people. We can disrupt and frustrate until the county or DPS can get there,” Hall said.

Hall further stressed that his men aren’t there to hurt anyone, but rather to simply “keep people safe.”

“We’re not leaving as a militia until we know that this county is safe,” Hall said.

Hall isn’t the only American that has taken it upon himself to help curb Biden’s border crisis.

On Monday, Sheriff Brad Coe — also of Kinney County — announced he would be putting together a small team to help tackle the problem.

Texas Sheriff Will Deputize Local Citizens to Fight Border Crisis, Plans to Build Fence Around County

“As far as taking it into our own hands, the border patrol … we didn’t have much a choice,” Sheriff Coe said, according to The Gateway Pundit.

“The border patrol was completely overwhelmed at the time, thousands of people coming, just turning themselves in, that wanted to get caught, created this problem.”

Americans aren’t going to stand by any longer — as Biden neglects his presidential duties.

Instead, they’re going to do what any good American should do. Rather than rely on big government, they’re going to find a solution themselves.

The attack on America’s southern border has reached a level never before seen, according to a new report.

Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Washington Post shows that 1.7 million people were detained along the border during the federal 2021 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, meaning arrests by Border Patrol agents hit their highest level ever recorded, according to the report.

This data includes the final 3.5 months of the Trump administration.

Since President Joe Biden took office, 1.3 million illegal immigrants were detained, the report said.

According to Border Patrol data, that would mean that in the first 8.5 months of the Biden administration, more illegal immigrants were detained than in the final two full years of the Trump administration.

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In the final full year when former President Donald Trump was in office, 405,036 illegal immigrants were arrested.

The Post noted that President Joe Biden had said one of his goals as president was to avoid having “2 million people on our border.”

Although Biden gave Vice President Kamala Harris the job of dealing with root causes of illegal immigration from Central American countries, the data implies that any effort Harris makes would miss the real target.

The 2021 data, according to the Post, shows that of those detained, 608,000 were Mexican nationals.

Will we ever regain control of the southern border?

A catch-all group that included “Haitians, Venezuelans, Ecuadorans, Cubans, Brazilians” and others made up 367,000 of the total arrests.

Then came Honduras, 309,000; Guatemala, 279,000; and El Salvador, 96,000.

The report said that 61 percent of those entering illegally were expelled, which would mean about 650,000 illegal immigrants have entered the country to stay.

On Tuesday, Chris Magnus, the police chief from Tucson, Arizona, who has been nominated to run Customs and Border Protection, said the numbers represented a “significant challenge” and “the numbers are very high.”

In response to the illegal immigration crisis and the Biden administration’s lack of action, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas drafted what he called the “Stop the SURGE Act” that would open up new ports of entry in Democratic strongholds, so those areas could share in what Texas border towns are experiencing. The locations are in Delaware, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and California.

The Man Accused of Raping a Woman on Philadelphia Commuter Train Is an Illegal Immigrant with a Criminal Record: Report

“For the past ten months, President Biden and his administration have willingly surrendered the United States’ southern border to dangerous criminal cartels, with no thought given to the South Texas border communities like McAllen and Del Rio, which are running low on resources from dealing with this massive influx of illegal immigrants. That’s why today I am introducing this crucial legislation to alleviate the massive overload at the southern border by establishing new ports of entry in Democrat-led communities such as North Hero, Vermont, where Bernie Sanders spends his summers, and Martha’s Vineyard, where Democrat elites host their cocktail parties,” Cruz said.

“If Washington Democrats had to endure even a fraction of the suffering South Texas families, farmers, ranchers and small businesses have had to face, our nation’s immigration laws would be enforced, the wall would be built and the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy would be re-implemented,” he continued.

“From my time this year on the ground in Laredo and Del Rio, it is abundantly clear that President Biden has all but abandoned our border patrol agents and processing facilities, and left Texas communities to fend for themselves. President Biden and Democrats need to step up to defend our southern border and support our heroic Customs and Border Protection officials,” he said.

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd on Wednesday addressed a disturbing report about migrants with terrorist ties, calling it a “worst-case scenario” for the country due to President Joe Biden’s open-border policies.

In a Republican National Committee podcast posted to YouTube on Monday, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales said he’d met recently with Panama’s foreign minister, Erika Mouynes, and was told that the country had detained 52 migrants linked to the al-Qaida terrorist group.

The Biden administration is not doing its job, Gonzales said.

“She goes, ‘There’s no one home. I’m here talking to you because the administration is just absent,’” Gonzales said, according to The Washington Times.

(The podcast interview can be seen here. The terrorism discussion starts about the 18:55 mark.)

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In a “Fox & Friends First” interview Wednesday, Judd explained what that kind of news could mean.

“This is the worst-case scenario because we just don’t know the number of people who are getting away,” Judd said.

“This is the worst-case scenario”:

National Border Patrol President Brandon Judd speaks on the potential for terrorists to enter the U.S. because of President Biden’s open border policies.https://t.co/GACKIdh2Kh

— Fox & Friends First (@FoxFriendsFirst) October 20, 2021

“And when you consider that that many people have already been spotted in another country with ties to terrorism, and then you look at the number of people who are crossing our border with ties to countries like Russia, Romania, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Gambia, Senegal, these countries generally tend to have animosity towards the United States and they’re coming in,” he added.

Are the Biden administration’s policies leaving the country open to a terror attack from the southern border?

The number of illegal immigrants encountered by the Border Patrol this year is already on a record-setting pace, but Judd noted that with the number of those who get through without being caught, neither the government nor anyone else can know for sure who is entering the country.

“Then you look at the number of got-aways and the people that have been able to cross our border illegally… We just don’t know what’s coming across the border and that is scary,” he said.

“It needs to be a point of emphasis for this administration in order to protect the American public, but they just don’t seem to have the will to do what is necessary, to secure our borders, to make it safe for the citizens of this country,” Judd added.

When Judd was asked if he considered the border situation a national security crisis, he didn’t hold back.

Leaked CBP Data Shows Biden’s Border Surge Has Hit Numbers Never Seen Before: Report

“It is, and it always has been, when you look at what we deal with and what we face on a daily basis. Regardless of whether you consider it just people from countries of special interest or countries that want to do us harm, when you look at drugs on top of that as well, this has always been a national security interest,” Judd said.

“It needs to be something that is looked at very, very hard,” he added.

Last week, illegal migrants from at least eight different nations, including Uzbekistan, crossed the southern border at Yuma, Arizona, in a single day as the migration crisis continues to escalate in the area.

Jorge Ventura, a reporter with the Daily Caller, shared a video of a family from India illegally entering the U.S. through a route known as “The Gap.”

My first time encountering migrants from India crossing illegally into Yuma at ‘The Gap’. So far I’ve encountered migrants from 8 different countries today in Yuma pic.twitter.com/IujT57ACTu

— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) October 15, 2021

“Group of 80 migrants from Georgia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uzbekistan and El Salvador apprehended by [Border Patrol] in the Yuma sector,” Ventura tweeted.

Group of 80 migrants from Georgia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uzbekistan and El Salvador apprehended by border patrol in the Yuma sector pic.twitter.com/2fsKPqVOJZ

— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) October 15, 2021

Ventura also reported that Colombian migrants had illegally crossed the border at Yuma earlier the same week.

One sex crime didn’t result in much more than a slap on the wrist for this illegal immigrant.

And now, Fiston Ngoy, 35, is accused of raping a woman last week on a Philadelphia commuter train — as other passengers did nothing to stop it.

A report from Fox News after an investigation by “Tucker Carlson Tonight” revealed that Ngoy has been in the country illegally since 2015 when the student visa he used to enter the U.S. from the Congo was terminated.

Fox reported that Ngoy had “multiple arrests and two misdemeanor convictions, one for controlled substances and one for sexual abuse.”

Police say the suspect, 35-year-old Fiston Ngoy, is facing rape and several other charges. Investigators say the sexual attack happened while others were standing around on the train and “did nothing.” @MattPetrillo reportshttps://t.co/DnKjTMxNfO

— CBS Philly (@CBSPhilly) October 15, 2021

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In 2017, according to Fox, Ngoy pleaded guilty to sexual assault in Washington, D.C., and was sentenced to six months in prison followed by 90 days probation.

Ngoy was put in immigration detention in January 2018, which meant he would have been deported.

But the system ground on in its inscrutable fashion and in March 2019, the Board of Immigration Appeals decided that a misdemeanor sex offense was not a “serious crime,” Fox reported.

Have the open borders activists made life in America unsafe?

The Board of Immigration Appeals then decided Ngoy could stay in the country as long as he reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement under an order of supervision.

He is now accused of raping a woman Wednesday night as other passengers either watched the attack or recorded it on their phones.

“He should have been deported. This should never have happened. He should not have been here. And the only reason he was is because he had a lot of people like him have been invited here and allowed to stay by the people who run the country, but who don’t ride the train,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a commentary Tuesday night.

“So why aren’t the people who allowed him to remain here in jail themselves? They certainly should be,” Carlson said.

“So to recap, you can walk into our country at the invitation of our leaders at public expense. You can overstay your visa and in so doing, mock our laws. Then you can get busted for drugs and a sex crime, not deported, allowed to stay. And then you go on — probably inevitably at this point — to rape a woman on a train in full view of a crowd that does nothing to stop it,” he said.

Leaked CBP Data Shows Biden’s Border Surge Has Hit Numbers Never Seen Before: Report

Police said the crime was witnessed by multiple riders who did nothing.

“As many as 10 people actually saw some part of the attack on this rider,” said Thomas Nestel III, Transit Police chief for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, according to the Daily Mail.

Nestel said authorities reviewed video surveillance cameras.

“We were watching to see if somebody put a phone up to their ear indicating they might be calling 911. Instead, what we saw was people holding their phone up as if they were recording or taking pictures,” he said.

The attack was reported by an off-duty SEPTA employee.

Ngoy was charged with rape, sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault without consent, and other crimes, according to The New York Times.

He was being held at the Delaware County Jail on $180,000 bail, the Times reported.

Cuts proposed as southern border faces a decades-high surge of illegal immigrants

Senate Democrats are moving to slash the budget for Customs and Border Protection by half a billion dollars in the midst of an immigration crisis, putting more strain on an agency with nearly exhausted resources.

The appropriations bill, released Monday by Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), allocates just $14.5 billion to CBP for the 2022 fiscal year, down from $15 billion the year before and $80 million less than what President Joe Biden requested in his budget. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would receive $7.9 billion, a cut of $40 million from the previous year and $58 million less than what Biden asked for.

Democrats also proposed reduced funding for family detention centers, while pumping more money toward constructing new migrant processing centers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The measure indicates that Democrats don’t see the surge ending anytime soon. The new processing centers, they say, will reduce migrant time in custody. The bill forbids Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from enforcing immigration laws. It instead directs the agency to only focus on “the disruption of transnational crime,” such as drug trafficking or money laundering.

The proposed cuts come as the southern border faces a decades-high surge of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the United States. Immigration authorities expect to report nearly two million migrant encounters at the border this fiscal year, the first time the number has exceeded one million since 2006. 

“It’s time for the Department of Homeland Security to make investments in what protects us, not what divides us,” Murphy said in a statement. “The ineffective and inhumane border policies and political vanity projects of the Trump Administration didn’t make our nation safer, and it’s time to turn the page to fund policies that meet the actual threats presented to this nation.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats in a summary of the bill said cuts to detention centers were warranted by “lower overall detention numbers due to the pandemic and related-litigation.” Between January and August, however, the number of illegal aliens detained by ICE increased by 70 percent, according to data provided by the agency.

The Senate Democrats’ proposal represents another blow to an agency already frustrated by the White House’s apparent lack of interest in funding border security and migrant processing measures. A senior DHS official who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon sounded the alarm on the president’s initial budget request to Congress, citing inflation and lack of manpower at CBP as challenges that need to be addressed.

“We were already going to have less money next year under Biden’s plan,” the official said. “This is not a party serious about enforcing immigration law.”

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/dem-budget-bill-would-slash-border-protection-budget-by-half-billion-dollars/

For most of 2021, the border crisis has owned the political spotlight. Not long after Joe Biden took office in January, the numbers of encounters and arrests at the border quickly skyrocketed.

Since then, the situation has evidently worsened. The Del Rio bridge mess represents the most recent failure of policy, but border authorities say the crisis is a daily problem.

But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has a solution — and it’s bound to annoy Democrat leaders.

Given the seemingly endless flood of migrants simply walking into our country, the question now becomes: where do we send them all?

If we’re not willing to deport or even detain them, and we refuse to enforce existing border and immigration laws, we have to figure out how to house them. And that’s where Cruz’s idea comes in.

He’s proposing a new bill that would send migrants directly into Democrat playgrounds.

He first slammed President Biden’s administration for “willingly surrendering the U.S. southern border to dangerous criminal cartels.” And of course, Cruz’s home state of Texas bears the brunt of the onslaught.

So, the Senator believes Democrats should feel what Texas feels every day.

From Fox News:

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced a bill to bring processing centers for illegal immigrants to where the ‘Democrat elites host their cocktail parties.’

Fox News exclusively obtained a press release announcing Cruz’s new bill, the Stop the Surge of Unsafe Rio Grande Encampments (SURGE) Act.

The bill not only makes a strong point, it also takes an obvious jab at leftist elites in D.C.

Cruz is saying that so many of them live in wealthy communities, all of which are a long way from the Texas-Mexico border. As a result, they have no idea just how much the migrant surge damages the country.

That’s where this bill comes in. According to Sen. Cruz, it’s designed:

…to alleviate the massive overload at the southern border by establishing new ports of entry in Democrat-led communities such as North Hero, Vermont, where Bernie Sanders spends his summers, and Martha’s Vineyard, where Democrat elites host their cocktail parties.

Cruz cited the “families, ranchers, and small businesses” in South Texas that suffer due to the extreme border failure.

And he believes that if the D.C. Democrats “had to endure even a fraction of the suffering,” maybe they’d realize just how dangerous the situation really is.

Cruz said that if they did experience it, they’d be quick to build the wall and re-implement former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which border officials said was effective.

The Republican leader also wanted to make it clear that Democrats have talked about amnesty, while “completely ignoring the crisis.”

The SURGE Act would open 13 new immigration processing centers around the nation, and that does include high-end locales like Martha’s Vineyard and Governor’s Island in New York.

On top of that, the undocumented travelers would be “transferred to these new ports for processing,” and the “insulated communities” will have to help deal with the crisis.

As far as Cruz concerned, it’s only fair.

Democrats seem to think there’s nothing wrong with countless unregistered foreigners flooding into the country, and that it’s just “racist” to claim there’s a problem.

Except states like Texas know exactly how big of a problem it is — and Sen. Cruz simply wants rich Democrat elites to experience it for themselves.

Key Takeaways:

• Sen. Ted Cruz has introduced the “SURGE Act,” which would open 13 new processing centers for undocumented travelers.
• This brings those unregistered migrants to several Democrat playgrounds, including Martha’s Vineyard.
• Cruz believes the Democrat elites should help “shoulder the burden” of the crisis, which has caused a lot of strife and suffering in Texas.

Source: Fox News

Sheriff Brad Coe of Kinney County, Texas, has taken it upon himself to handle President Joe Biden’s border crisis — a crisis that continues to spiral out of control.

The United States’ southern border has indeed seen an unprecedented surge in traffic, mostly due to illegal aliens attempting to cross over in record numbers.

Coe has decided if Biden’s not going to put together a team to handle the crisis, the sheriff will do it himself.

During an interview with The Gateway Pundit on Monday, Coe announced he would be deputizing 10 local citizens to help rescue his county from the crisis.

To fill out the 10 spots, Coe is looking for “those that have some kind of either police or military experience.”

Woman Endures Horror on Philadelphia Train as Bystanders Watched and Did Nothing, Police Say

Coe further pointed out that the federal government’s failures have left local law enforcement at the border with no choice but to take the matter into their own hands.

“As far as taking it into our own hands, the border patrol … we didn’t have much a choice,” Sheriff Coe told The Gateway Pundit.

“The border patrol was completely overwhelmed at the time, thousands of people coming, just turning themselves in, that wanted to get caught, created this problem.”

The last few months have seen the border crisis continue to deteriorate.

In August, the use of catch-and-release policies used for illegal immigrants under the Biden administration was up 430,000 percent from the previous year.

In August of 2020, the Trump administration caught 47,000 migrants at the southern border and released only 10 of them into the United States immediately.

Conversely, in August of 2021, the Biden administration detained 195,000 migrants and released 43,941 of them into the United States.

The increase from 10 to 43,941 is staggering and fails to account for the many illegal immigrants the Biden administration fails to catch due to its lax border enforcement policies.

Biden’s border crisis has also allowed drugs to filter over into the United States from Mexico.

Biden Vowed to End Trump’s ‘Dangerous, Inhumane’ Policy; Now He’s Begging to Reinstate It

According to Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, “This fiscal year we’ve had 10,000 pounds of fentanyl, 180,000 pounds of meth, 86,000 pounds of cocaine, 5,000 pounds of heroin and 311,000 pounds of marijuana” enter the country through the southern border.

With his empty words and inaction, Biden has made it clear his administration will not be stopping this border catastrophe any time soon.

If there is any hope in stopping this crisis, that hope lies with Sheriff Coe and other local officials doing their best to protect their people.

Morale among Border Patrol agents has plummeted to an all-time low as they struggle to process unprecedented volumes of illegal immigrants, while knowing they’re unable to secure the border against cartel activity. Many blame their own leadership for enabling it.

“Day after day, they just look like they want to eat their gun,” an agent told The Epoch Times, referring to some local agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, who he says are bearing the brunt of it. “They just look like hell. It’s hard to put it—you just start seeing the life leaving people’s faces.”

The agent, Jose (not his real name), spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

U.S. authorities have apprehended more than 1.5 million illegal immigrants since January, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

“It’s a very, very hopeless feeling for the Border Patrol,” Jose said. “Of course, we’re all still doing our jobs as best we can. Nobody is giving up, but it’s definitely more of a hopeless feeling just in general.”

During August, the average daily number of illegal immigrants in Border Patrol custody along the southwest border was just shy of 10,000, according to CBP. Agents are spending most of their time processing illegal immigrants rather than being on the front line along the border.

“None of us signed up to be secretaries for these family units coming in,” Jose said.

Border Patrol agents have been especially overwhelmed in the two busiest sectors—the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio in Texas.

In one week in September, border agents scrambled to deal with an influx of nearly 15,000 mostly Haitian illegal aliens in Del Rio alone. The effort left highway checkpoints closed and hundreds of miles of the U.S.–Mexico border unpatrolled.

“If we went back to actually doing our jobs, it would be amazing,” Jose said. “But right now, the common thought on this is that we’re just aiding and abetting illegal aliens—furthering their illegal activity. Many border agents are spending the majority of their time taking care of the humanitarian needs of illegal aliens rather than out on the border stopping criminal activity.

“And that’s not what any of us signed up for.”

Leadership

The Biden administration has said it’s concentrating on the “root causes” of illegal immigration and views it as a race issue.

“Immigration, we consider, is part of racial equity—which is a broad issue, but that’s how the president has spoken about that crisis over the past several months,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in the early days of the Biden presidency.

President Joe Biden was quick in January to dismantle many of former President Donald Trump’s border security measures, which, along with his campaign rhetoric, has resulted in record surges of illegal crossings this year.

The president tapped Vice President Kamala Harris in March to address the growing border crisis, and she has since traveled to Central America and Mexico to discuss the issue with leaders from those nations.

Harris was outspoken against Border Patrol and ICE agents (comparing them to the KKK) in 2019 during the last surge of illegal immigrants, and again in 2020, when specialized border agents were deployed to Portland, Oregon, to defend a federal courthouse from Antifa and other rioters.

And Border Patrol agents haven’t forgotten.

“We knew Kamala Harris didn’t like us in the very beginning. She attacked us, called us storm troopers … in Portland, and she hated us and we knew it,” another agent, Alex, told The Epoch Times, on condition of anonymity.

“So then, she becomes our vice president and is now a border czar of the very agency she hates.

“From top down, when you have complete leadership that fundamentally does not like you; when you have agents that you don’t know if they’re working for the cartel; if you have half of America that thinks you’re the enemy and you put kids in cages and kill them, all because of propaganda, it weighs on you.”

Alex said his children are bullied at school because he’s a Border Patrol agent.

“They’re asked if I kill kids, put kids in cages,” he said. “The border encompasses everything. So that’s why it weighs down. Because I have to think my choice to be a Border Patrol agent is negatively impacting my family’s emotional state and well-being as well. So that’s also a pretty heavy weight.”

He said it’s not a simple fix to find another job. He’s not prepared to get the COVID-19 vaccine at this stage and federal agencies are mandating it. Border Patrol agents have until Nov. 22 to be fully vaccinated or else face being fired. Several agents The Epoch Times has spoken to fall into that category. Some are submitting their retirement paperwork, while others are counting the days until they’re eligible. Agents can retire at age 50, but often stay on until mandatory retirement at 57.

“We’re not making any difference. Zero, nothing. I always say, today’s turnback is tomorrow’s gotaway,” Alex said, referring to illegal aliens that turn back to Mexico before being apprehended and those who get away from Border Patrol and enter the United States.

Then-head of the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector Austin Skero said on June 24, as illegal immigration continued to escalate: “None of us really feel good about the current situation we’re in. So it has taken a toll on morale. Our agents are frustrated. They’re frustrated, but they’re highly motivated.”

Focus

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s three-part plan to address illegal immigration is to invest in the countries that people are leaving, to build “safe, orderly, and humane pathways” for migration, and to rebuild the asylum system and refugee program. So far this year, illegal immigrants have hailed from more than 160 countries.

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said in a June 24 community meeting in Del Rio that the agency’s focus is to streamline the processing of illegal immigrants.

This year, the administration released hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants into the United States with a notice to appear, which indicates the scheduled date of their immigration court case.

However, the border agencies got so swamped that agents were directed to speed things up by handing out a “notice to report,” which is a request for the illegal immigrants to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within 60 days.

It’s unclear how many subsequently reported to ICE. The Epoch Times has submitted a freedom of information request for that data, but hasn’t received a response.

On Oct. 8, the Biden administration announced its intention to cancel existing border fence contracts in the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio border sectors. Harris, in 2019, had called Trump’s border wall project his “vanity project” and the surge of illegal aliens an “emergency of his own creation.”

During the last crisis in 2019, Border Patrol agents were accused of running state-sanctioned concentration camps and putting “kids in cages” at the overwhelmed facilities along the border.

The Border Patrol agency took a hit in morale at the time, but this year is much worse, agents say.

“It’s definitely much more profound,” Jose said.

“We’re not securing the border anymore. We’re not fighting the incursion, we’re just rolling over and taking it. It’s just being a secretary. It’s not fixing anything, it’s not helping America.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/border-patrol-morale_4041518.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A year after presidential candidate Joe Biden attacked then-President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy, President Joe Biden will be putting it back into action.

“This is the first president in the United States of America that said anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country. That’s never happened before in America,” Biden said last October in the second debate between him and Trump, according to U.S. News and World Report.

“They’re shaking in squalor on the other side of the river,” he said.

Now, however, Biden, who tried to end the policy but has been stymied by the courts over the way he went about it, is going to embrace it beginning next month, according to CNN.

The action comes amid waves of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.

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In August, 208,887 illegal immigrants were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection agents, according to ABC News. It said that was more than three times the August 2020 level of 62,707.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy, known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols, required migrants seeking asylum to await their hearings in Mexico.

The order came in response to the reality that many illegal immigrants who claimed asylum and were given court dates would never appear, instead drifting into the United States never to be found and deported.

Biden tried to end the policy, but in August, in response to a lawsuit from Texas and Missouri, a U.S. district judge ruled the administration did not lay sufficient administrative groundwork to end the program, according to The Washington Post.

The Biden administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court but lost.

Ah, it appears the Biden Admin is realizing that telling migrants to come to the US then having no plan to screen them, process them, house them, covid test them, etc doesn’t work. Governing is hard. https://t.co/6hP0F8UGPT

— Alyssa Farah (@Alyssafarah) October 15, 2021

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement late Thursday that it is “taking necessary steps to comply with the court order, which requires us to reimplement MPP in good faith,” the Post reported.

The statement blamed any delays in implementation on Mexico.

Migrants from 8 Countries, Including Uzbekistan, Cross Border in Single Day at Arizona Crossing: Report

“Mexico is a sovereign nation that must make an independent decision to accept the return of individuals without status in Mexico as part of any reimplementation of MPP,” DHS said. “Discussions with the Government of Mexico concerning when and how MPP will be reimplemented are ongoing.”

The “Remain in Mexico” policy faded after the COVID-19 pandemic began as the Trump administration used Title 42 of the public health law to send illegal immigrants back without an asylum hearing.

The Biden administration has continued to use Title 42 to expel those illegal immigrants it does not admit.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 938,000 illegal immigrants were expelled under the policy from October 2020 through August 2021.

As the Biden administration works to comply with the courts and restore the Migrant Protection Protocols, other parts of the president’s team are laying the administrative groundwork so that he can ax the policy.

A DHS memo outlining the basis for ending the policy will be “finalized shortly,” CBS News reported Friday.

However, for now, the administration is still bound to implement the policy under terms of the court ruling.

An Arizona sheriff said “the war on drugs is back” in America as the growing border crisis overwhelms local law enforcement.

Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels shared the strong words about drugs crossing the nation’s southern border during an interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on Friday.

“They’ve set us up for failure here on the southwest border, completely,” Dannels told host Bill Hemmer.

“This fiscal year we’ve had 10,000 pounds of fentanyl, 180,000 pounds of meth, 86,000 pounds of cocaine, 5,000 pounds of heroin and 311,000 pounds of marijuana come through the southern border,” he added.

Report: Judge Judy Ditches Longtime Bailiff Because of Cost Concerns – But She Makes $47 Million Per Year

Dannels declared the “war on drugs is back,” blaming the open border for allowing the large flow of illegal substances into the U.S.

“The war on drugs is back, and until America steps up on this and secures this border, it’s only going to get worse.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection tweeted Wednesday about one of many recent large drug seizures.

“On Saturday, CBP officers working at the Pharr International Bridge Cargo Facility seized $16.5M of meth. In total, nearly 1,180lbs of meth was concealed inside a trailer,” CBP tweeted.

On Saturday, CBP officers working at the Pharr International Bridge Cargo Facility seized $16.5M of meth. In total, nearly 1,180lbs of meth was concealed inside a trailer.

Learn more: https://t.co/Xnac7sGzrp pic.twitter.com/44AIP9eVFa

— CBP (@CBP) October 13, 2021

“CBP officers assigned to the Pharr International Bridge cargo facility encountered a commercial tractor trailer, arriving from Mexico,” CBP said in a statement. “A CBP officer referred the conveyance for further inspection, which included utilizing non-intrusive imaging (NII) equipment and screening by a (canine team). After physically inspecting the conveyance, officers discovered 468 packages of alleged methamphetamine weighing 1,179.47 pounds (535kg) concealed within the trailer.

“CBP OFO seized the narcotics and vehicle, and the case remains under investigation by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI).”

The agency reported another seizure earlier this week that included $5.9 million worth of illegal drugs.

Merck Submits COVID Treatment Pill for FDA Approval After Study Yields Promising Data

@CBP #Officers at the Port of #Nogales working in the Commercial Facility seized approximately 467 lbs of cocaine concealed within boxes of produce. The total est. value of the narcotics was $5.9 MILLION!” CBP tweeted Monday.

COCAINE LOAD: @CBP #Officers at the Port of #Nogales working in the Commercial Facility seized approximately 467 lbs of cocaine concealed within boxes of produce. The total est. value of the narcotics was $5.9 MILLION! pic.twitter.com/HVHujMyV7D

— Port Director Michael W. Humphries (@CBPPortDirNOG) October 11, 2021

By April, the border had already experienced an 800 percent increase over the previous year in fentanyl seized by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

“We have obtained enough fentanyl coming across the border to kill every single person in the state of New York,” Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said in May.

Abbott called the flow of drugs “a very deadly situation.”

Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan blasted Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the Biden administration’s border crisis, declaring he is “lying to the American people.”

Documents leaked to Fox News this week revealed 160,000 migrants have been released into the United States since March. Homan offered his perspective on that during a “Fox & Friends First” interview on Thursday morning.

“The numbers show that the secretary has been lying to the American people,” Homan said.

Former acting ICE Director, Tom Homan, sounds off as we learn 160,000 migrants have been released into the U.S. under the Biden Administration.https://t.co/0aujDkzXx9

— Fox & Friends First (@FoxFriendsFirst) October 14, 2021

Report: Judge Judy Ditches Longtime Bailiff Because of Cost Concerns – But She Makes $47 Million Per Year

The Fox report also said that since Aug. 6, the Biden administration has released about 32,000 immigrants into the U.S. via parole — which gives migrants a temporary legal status and the ability to apply for work permits.

“Why are they using paroles?” Homan said. “Because they’ll be eligible for a work visa when they get here.”

“Again, here is the secretary not taking any enforcement posture, not doing anything to slow the flow,” he said.

“They’re calling their friends and neighbors back home, saying, ‘Not only did I get released. I got a job.’ This is just another enticement,” Homan said.

“This is just open borders gone wild.”

The border crisis led nearly three dozen Republican House members to send a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday to demand action.

“The recent surge of illegal aliens entering the United States in Del Rio, Texas, demands that you finally give the border crisis that you created the attention it deserves,” the letter read.

“The American people are fed up with false reassurances that the border is closed,” it said.

The House members said Biden’s open border policies were the cause of the crisis.

Rep. Biggs Visits Wasted Border Wall Materials, Demands Biden Restart Construction ‘Now’

“There is one main driver for the current surge of illegal immigration: your policies have left the border open,” the letter said.

The lawmakers wrote that the border crisis is “directly linked” to Biden’s refusal to follow border laws.

“The surge of aliens into Del Rio and the accompanying lawlessness that developed because of the surge is directly linked to your refusal to comply with [District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s] order,” the letter read.

Arizona Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, one of the signers, released a statement along with the letter.

“It is well past time for President Biden to acknowledge the border crisis that he has created and enforce laws to secure the border,” Biggs said.

“Biden has worked overtime to erase Trump administration policies and programs, like Remain in Mexico, that were securing our border and discouraging illegal immigration,” he said.

“We are demanding that the President provide Congress with accurate information about the extent of the border crisis so that we can understand the full impact of his open border policies.”

BRACKETTVILLE, Texas—Locals fed up with groups of illegal immigrants trespassing on their land and breaking into their homes and vehicles attended a town hall meeting to share their frustration with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his staff on Oct. 11.

The first questions from the audience reflected the boiling point many have reached and the prevailing feeling that they’re being left to fend for themselves: “Can we shoot back if shot at from Mexico?” “When can a property owner use force?”

“If you’re in imminent danger, I think the answer is probably yes,” said Joshua Reno, Paxton’s deputy attorney general for criminal justice, in response to the first question.

“You still have the same rights to defend yourself. This is a really difficult question, though. … The consequences, I think, are something that’s going to be very dire—we’re talking about shooting across the border to another country.”

As for using force against intruders, Reno said there’s a myriad of scenarios, but when it comes down to it, “you can defend yourself with the equal amount of force that’s being used against you—that’s the easiest way to put it.”

Brent Webster, first assistant attorney general to Paxton, put it more succinctly: “If someone’s invading your home, you have a right to defend your home with deadly force. I want to be clear about that.”

The town hall occurred just weeks after nearly 15,000 mostly Haitian illegal immigrants entered the United States and camped out under an international bridge in Del Rio, 30 minutes down the road. More than 12,400 of the Haitians were subsequently released into the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

During that time, Border Patrol highway checkpoints in the area were closed and Texas state troopers were pulled off the roads to beef up law enforcement numbers under the bridge.

Kinney County, in which Brackettville sits, shares 16 miles of international border with Mexico, and it’s a main thoroughfare for human smuggling—by foot, train, or by vehicle—from the border to San Antonio.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has arrested more than 1,100 illegal aliens trespassing in Kinney County in the past several months, according to Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe.

In early October, state troopers stopped a human smuggling attempt in Kinney County that involved four cars and included a Syrian driver who was carrying a Glock 19 and five magazines. The Syrian had a green card and was subsequently released by Border Patrol, but will likely face state charges brought by the DPS, Coe said.

A Cuban national with a green card who was residing in Houston was stopped and arrested on Oct. 13 while driving four illegal immigrants from Mexico, Coe said.

Pushing for Action

At the town hall, several audience members were clearly dissatisfied with hearing that they may have to wait until after the 2022 midterm elections for the possibility of tightened border security. Many had attended a town hall meeting in May that covered the same issues, and by all accounts, illegal immigration and cross-border crime has escalated over the past five months.

“We don’t have time for an election. We really don’t. We have time to act,” said Uvalde rancher Mike Miller. “We want to live in our homes with no fear. They’re coming with weapons and the Zeta cartel is running our border right now.”

Ray Salness, who has been in Kinney County looking at private security options for ranchers, said: “We’ve got three weeks before the [next] 60,000 hit the border. Which means if we don’t get something done in two weeks, there’s not going to be a Kinney County.”

Salness implored Paxton’s team to defend Coe if he uses militia members along the border, should the state deny him the use of Texas National Guard troops.

In its latest local disaster declaration, filed on Oct. 6, Kinney County requests Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to “immediately deploy 2,000 state military personnel to Kinney County to repel an invasion and protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Texas.”

Coe said he spoke to the governor’s office on Oct. 13 and doesn’t expect any National Guard troops in Kinney County, but 1,500 personnel are being deployed to the border cities of Eagle Pass and Del Rio.

“We’re getting zero. So that tells me if they block off Del Rio and they block off Eagle Pass, where are they coming? In between. The point of least resistance,” Coe told The Epoch Times. Kinney County sits between Del Rio and Eagle Pass.

Meanwhile, Coe said he’s preparing to meet with Salness to sign an agreement to allow a “defensive security force” to come in and set up camp in the county and work the ranches for illegal activity. He’s hoping to get donations to help offset the cost through the county’s new border security website.

“We’ll try to get them deputized or something to get the ball rolling because the governor’s not going to help us,” Coe said, adding that some legal issues need to be ironed out first. He’s hoping for around 600 volunteers, but expects 100 to start.

“It’s going to be a combined effort—we’ll get intel from DPS, get intel from Border Patrol where the biggest groups are coming through, which cameras are seeing the most activity—and get them set up in those areas,” Coe said. “And then we’ll start processing them [illegal aliens], charging them, and see what happens.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/emotions-run-high-as-texas-border-residents-feel-abandoned-fear-for-their-lives_4047807.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Border? What border? [US Patriot]

Britain’s Home Office says more than 12,500 migrants have broken the law to get into the UK so far this year. Compare this to the nearly 200,000 migrants who have crossed the nearly nonexistent southern border just in July of this year. The count is estimated by the overwhelmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a name that is almost contradictory given the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce the law and secure the border. It helps that Britain has a natural channel separating it from the continent, while our border resembles Swiss cheese.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words are necessary to express alarm when one looks at the “dozens of stacked columns of steel” worth $100 million dollars lying at the border? This is material that was supposed to finish a portion of the wall to reduce the flow and discourage new migrants from coming. In another spiteful move, the Biden administration has canceled all contracts with companies selected during the Trump years to build the wall. That’s taxpayer money going to waste.

No one should consider this “invasion” a happenstance. If these were soldiers coming into the country from other nations, presumably even this administration might do something about it. These are soldiers of another kind, who are untested for COVID-19, harming our economy by sucking up “benefits,” bringing crime and in some cases possible terrorism.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS.org) makes a point I have not seen elsewhere. It contends that several countries, supposedly allies of the United States, are complicit in enhancing the migrant flow: “… the United States has never seen fit to publicly acknowledge that Colombia, Panama, and Costa Rica are doing this to the American people. The American public hardly knows of it. Nor has the United States sought to diplomatically leverage any of the governments to instead disrupt, slow, or outright halt the flows of people long before they reach Mexico. This strange state of tolerance and American public ignorance, even during the Trump administration, endures, despite the fact that all three of these nations are ideally positioned as trail-route bottlenecks where new U.S. strategies can significantly attenuate the problem if all involved simply acknowledge that it is happening and there is a political will to press for a solution.”

Here’s what one federal law says about immigration (8 U.S. Code § 1325): “Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.”

Is this not what is happening at the border? Did not the president (and his attorney general) take an oath to uphold the laws of the United States?

As CNN reported in 2019, “Joe Biden once spoke about jailing employers who hire ‘illegals,’ said sanctuary cities shouldn’t be allowed to violate federal law, and argued a fence was needed to stop ‘tons’ of drugs coming into the country from ‘corrupt Mexico.’” Nothing has changed in the last two years, except Biden’s position.

If you are watching the right TV channels, you are seeing how a country is destroyed. History—depending on who writes it—will rightly blame President Biden.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/words-and-pictures_4048828.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Critics of President Joe Biden’s non-defense of the southern border have emphasized his constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3).

This is a good point, but it has some weaknesses. The duty to “take Care” is inherently discretionary, rendering it unlikely that the courts would enforce it. Almost certainly, a “take Care” lawsuit would be held not justiciable.

Some have suggested impeachment for failure to “take Care,” but this wouldn’t work, either. Remember that a linchpin of President Donald J. Trump’s successful impeachment defense was that conviction requires proof of a serious crime. Any Republican efforts to backpedal from that position would be met with public derision.

Moreover, that position is the correct one. The Constitution’s grounds for impeachment are “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and [high] Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4). The first three are all serious crimes, and new research findings tell us that the phrase “high misdemeanors” signifies heinous crimes not meriting the death penalty (pdf). Mere neglect of duty, no matter how egregious, is not a high misdemeanor unless it meets traditional standards of criminality.

But there is another constitutional provision relevant to the Biden administration’s conduct—less noticed, but just as important. It is Article IV, Section 4:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

This provision is known as the Guarantee Clause.

What the Guarantee Clause Does

The Guarantee Clause both imposes obligations and implicitly grants the federal government power to meet those obligations. Although constitutional law courses often underplay the Guarantee Clause, it is one of the Constitution’s most important provisions. It stabilizes the Union. It is the chief source of the federal power of national defense. It sometimes authorizes military action without a declaration of war: all facts lost on many constitutional writers.

The Guarantee Clause imposes three specific obligations on “The United States”—which, in this context, means the U.S. government. They are:

• to guarantee every state a republican form of government;
• to protect every state from invasion; and
• when a state requests help, to protect that state against domestic violence.

Republican Form of Government

The obligation to ensure that states are “republican” enables the federal government to stabilize the Union by preventing states from slipping into monarchy or anarchy.

Many people think “republican” means excluding direct democracy in favor of wholly representative institutions. That is incorrect: It is a myth derived from a political dispute in the 1840s. Founding-era records show that a “republican form of government” is one that follows the rule of law and is ultimately responsible to the citizenry rather than to a monarch (pdf).

The “republican form of government” portion of the Guarantee Clause is not relevant to the present crisis. None of our states are monarchies or anarchies. The crisis is the Biden administration’s flagrant disregard for the rule of law.

Invasion

The Guarantee Clause’s second obligation is to protect states against invasion. The Founding-era record confirms that, as the Constitution uses the term, invasion does not mean an incursion by a pandemic or by killer bees. It means a human invasion from a foreign country.

Nowadays, we usually think of an invasion as a military operation. But the Constitution sometimes uses words differently than we do. To determine the Constitution’s true meaning, you often must examine Founding-era sources. For example, scholars and Supreme Court justices commonly consult 18th century dictionaries (pdf) for guidance on how to understand the Constitution’s words and phrases.

Those dictionaries tell us that invasion frequently referred to incursions other than military attacks. Thus, Nathan Bailey’s 1783 English dictionary described it as “a descent upon a country, an [sic] usurpation, or encroachment.” (Founding-era dictionaries usually separated alternative definitions by punctuation alone, rather than by numbers.) Bailey defined usurpation as “a taking wrongfully to one’s own use that which belongs to another.” No actual violence was necessary.

“Usurpation” and “encroachment” certainly describe what illegal immigrants are doing at the border.

Here is the entry for the invasion in Francis Allen’s 1765 dictionary: “the entrance or attack of an enemy on the possessions or dominions of another; an encroachment, or unlawful attack of the rights of another.” (Italics added.) The latter two definitions clearly describe what is happening at the border today.

Similarly, in Frederick Barlow’s compilation (1772–73), to invade was “to enter into a country in a warlike manner. To attack; to assail or assault. To make the first attack. To seize on like an enemy. To encroach.” (Italics added.)

Whether or not swarms of illegal immigrants are actually attacking, assailing, or assaulting, they certainly are encroaching.

In defining invade and invasion, some 18th century lexicographers added the adjective “hostile.” Thomas Sheridan’s 1789 dictionary defined invasion as “Hostile entrance upon the rights or possessions of another, hostile encroachment.” The compilations by John Ash (1775) and William Perry (1789) also inserted “hostile,” as did the Samuel Johnson’s much-celebrated dictionary (multiple editions; first published in 1756).

However, in 18th century usage, hostile did not necessarily imply a military-style attack. It often meant “adverse to” or “without permission.” Johnson, for instance, gave three definitions of hostile: (1) adverse, (2) opposite, and (3) suitable to an enemy. Only the last sounds anything like a military operation. The entry in Ash’s dictionary was similar.

This non-military use survives in the law of adverse possession of land. When the courts say an adverse possessor’s use of land must be “hostile,” they don’t mean the possessor must march in with ensigns spread. They mean only that he must take possession without the permission of the title owner.

Here’s the point: The current situation at the southern border—both massive and apparently coordinated—is an “invasion” as the Constitution uses the term. Biden’s failure to stop it is a violation of the Guarantee Clause.

Domestic Violence

The third obligation imposed by the Guarantee Clause is to protect the states against domestic violence when formally requested to do so. Although illegal immigrants have committed a fair amount of violence, none of the state legislatures has demanded protection under this portion of the Guarantee Clause. If a state does so, that will trigger another presidential obligation.

However, in view of the administration’s flagrant authoritarianism, states may well be wary about asking for federal troops to come into their territory.

Are These Obligations Enforceable?

The Supreme Court has held that issues pertaining to the republican form of government are for congressional determination, not for the judiciary. Such cases are non-justiciable. However, for the other two obligations, the case for court review is much better. If a state sues the federal government for failure to defend it against invasion or domestic violence, then there are two adverse parties—state and federal government—each strongly motivated to present the judges with the information they need to decide the case. This is an important criterion for justiciability.

Even if the courts refuse jurisdiction, a state making a formal charge thereby presents its case to the court of public opinion: “We are being invaded. We have asked for help. The president is obligated to provide it but refuses to do so. Hold him accountable.”

All the states on the southern border should make those formal charges. Loud and clear.

Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor and senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, has published a leading scholarly article on the Guarantee Clause (pdf), wrote the entry on the Guarantee Clause in the “Heritage Guide to the Constitution,” and is the author of “The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant” (3rd ed., 2015).

https://www.theepochtimes.com/immigration-how-biden-is-violating-the-constitution_4048191.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Former President Donald Trump released a statement Tuesday blasting the Biden administration for its failures regarding the border crisis, calling the border a “disgusting wreck.”

“Our Border has gone from the safest and most secure in history, by far, to a broken, dirty, and disgusting wreck with thousands of unknown people from unknown countries, including from their now emptied prisons all over the world, unsustainably pouring in,” Trump said.

NEW!

President Trump:

“Our Border has gone from the safest and most secure in history, by far, to a broken, dirty, & disgusting wreck…No country has ever seen anything like what is happening on the Southern Border…no country is stupid enough to allow such a thing to happen” pic.twitter.com/At6tQzSeQ3

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) October 12, 2021

Trump referred to the border crisis as unprecedented.

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“No country has ever seen anything like what is happening on the Southern Border of the United States—and no country is stupid enough to allow such a thing to happen,” he added.

The former president also spoke out against growing crime, predicting terrorism will be “the next big wave.”

“Crime will go up at levels that the U.S. has never seen before (it is actually already there), and terrorism will be the next big wave to lead the way,” Trump said.

The statement followed news this week from Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin appearing on the network Monday morning to reveal that stockpiles of steel beams remain near the U.S.-Mexico border in south Texas.

Melugin said he had been told by a federal official that enough steel was purchased to build more than 100 miles of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo, Texas, but very little of it was used.

“Live with @BillHemmer & @DanaPerino this morning discussing the Biden admin’s decision to cancel the border wall contract. A federal source tells me steel for over 100 miles was purchased for wall in RGV & Laredo, but only about 14 miles were completed before Biden stopped it,” Melugin tweeted.

Live with @BillHemmer & @DanaPerino this morning discussing the Biden admin’s decision to cancel the border wall contract. A federal source tells me steel for over 100 miles was purchased for wall in RGV & Laredo, but only about 14 miles were completed before Biden stopped it. pic.twitter.com/pseT3kUo6A

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 11, 2021

“What does it look like to not build the border wall? Our drone is overhead in Pharr, TX at one location where steel for the border wall has been baking in the sun & going to waste since January,” Melugin said.

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“Tens of millions of dollars worth of steel here already paid for,” he added.

NEW: What does it look like to not build the border wall? Our drone is overhead in Pharr, TX at one location where steel for the border wall has been baking in the sun & going to waste since January. Tens of millions of dollars worth of steel here already paid for. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/RTdiMTyqAh

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 11, 2021

President Joe Biden’s former Border Patrol chief, Rodney Scott, said last week that the administration was paying up to $5 million per day to contractors to not complete former President Donald Trump’s southern border wall.

Scott recounted to Fox News anchor Bret Baier that on his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order halting construction on the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Many of those projects today are just still on hold, so we’re paying contractors. For a while, it was almost $5 million a day between [the Department of Defense] and [the Department of Homeland Security] to not build the border wall,” Scott said.

“There are stacks and stacks of border wall panels,” he added, along with “hundreds of miles of fiber optic cabling” and “hundreds of cameras” that are “just sitting. There is no action being taken.”

“That money is just trickling away to those contractors for not doing work each day,” Scott said.

America’s “border czar” played bingo and bought cupcakes on Friday instead of joining a high-level meeting on border security in Mexico City.

Vice President Kamala Harris was dispatched to New Jersey for a photo op at a daycare center at Montclair State University and at a vaccination site in Newark, according to Fox News. While in Newark, she also made a pit stop at a local bakery, according to the New York Post.

@KamalaHarris playing Bingo while the Adults are in Mexico City trying to help the Crisis at the border (that they caused ) – can’t make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/p6gqaFkNnc

— Thomas Wirthlin (@bigfoothunters) October 9, 2021

During her trip to the vaccination site, she said the Biden administration is winning the fight against COVID-19, according to NJ.com.Trending:Pharma Company Behind Miracle COVID Pill Is Marking Up Price 4,000%

“There will be an end to this,” she said. “We really feel we are starting to get in front of this.”

As Harris posed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland were in Mexico City for meetings with Mexican officials about the illegal migration crisis that has overwhelmed the southern border.

In March, Harris was tasked with managing the Biden administration’s response to the crisis.

Since then, she has made one foreign trip to Central America and Mexico. In June, several hundred thousand illegal immigrant arrivals ago, she made a brief trip to the border.Should Harris be replaced as America’s ‘border czar’?Yes No
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This week, 11 Republican senators led by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio sent President Joe Biden a letter saying the border crisis needs to be in different hands.

“We write to ask that you appoint a new Border Czar to replace Vice President Harris, who completely failed to work with neighboring countries to stem the flow of illegal migrants into our country and secure the border. In fact, things have only gotten worse since her appointment as Border Czar,” the letter read.

The letter noted that “from August 2020 to August 2021, there has been a 317 percent increase in encounters at the border. The current surge is the largest in 20 years as illegal border crossings have increased substantially since you took office.”

“Despite these alarming numbers, the Vice President only visited the southern border once, and that visit was hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the surge.

“Even her trip to Guatemala and Mexico intended to address the ‘root causes’ of illegal immigration into America was a public relations disaster with absolutely no substantive policy commitments from neighboring countries,” the senators wrote.Related:Kamala Harris Flies to California Resort Town, Media Not Allowed to Watch Departure

“Many of these migrants — despite originally being from Haiti — reported they came from South and Central America. Many stated that they made the dangerous journey because you, and Vice President Harris, promised to open America’s borders,” the letter continued.

“Vice President Harris has done absolutely nothing to help secure our border, develop a strategy to partner with our neighbors, or even talk to the American people about the border crisis.

“It is stunning that America’s Border Czar was silent as thousands of Haitian migrants illegally crossed the border, and set up a de facto refugee camp in America.

“Now, with estimates that tens of thousands of additional migrants are headed toward the southern border, it is essential you replace Vice President Harris as Border Czar with someone more qualified and engaged for this important role,” the letter read.

Noting that the border has been an “unmitigated disaster” under Biden and that “many of your policies are making the situation worse,” the senators said America needs a border czar “who is prepared, and willing to engage, to address the crisis at the southern border.”

Can’t walk away from the #BorderCrisis, President Biden & @VP Harris pic.twitter.com/fldaqulQ1n

— Senator Rubio Press (@SenRubioPress) October 8, 2021

In comments to Fox News on Thursday, Rubio said the situation at the border is the Biden administration’s fault.

“If you talk to people at the border, people that have crossed, they will all tell you the same thing: They expect to get into the United States, they expect to enter, they expect to be released pending an asylum hearing that many have no intention to show up for,” he said.

“No nation on earth can have the open border we basically have now and just tell anyone who wants to come to please show up. You can’t do it. But that’s what this administration thinks they are going to do. And if Kamala Harris is the one in charge of this, they need to find somebody else and fast.”

(CNSNews.com) – Never mind the hundreds of thousands of unvetted foreigners breaching the southwest U.S. border, leaving environmental degradation in their wake.

The Department of Homeland Security is worried about climate change. And all DHS employees are expected to fall in line with those concerns. In fact, they’ll be educated about the “climate crisis.”

On Thursday, DHS released a new Climate Action Plan that presents five “priority actions,” including a “DHS-wide climate education plan to raise awareness among our employees about the climate crisis.”

DHS admits that getting all employees to buy into the left’s version of climate change will be a challenge: “The Department must reach all employees to foster a workforce of understanding and compassion and ensure climate literacy is accepted and embraced,” the plan says.

And it sounds like there may be a test: “The Department will monitor progress in climate literacy through employee training and will measure employee understanding of climate change impacts and environmental justice,” the plan says.

The DHS Climate Action Plan runs 25 pages and is full of government-speak.

Priority Action #5, the climate “literacy” effort, indicates that DHS employees are expected to accept climate change dogma, as presented by leftists, without question or exception:

“Understanding, mitigating, and adapting to climate change and its impacts require cooperation across every level of DHS,” the plan says.

“DHS is committed to creating and growing a climate literate workforce that understands the principles of climate change, can assess scientifically credible information about climate, can communicate about climate change in a meaningful way, and is able to make informed decisions about climate change impacts on mission activities.”

DHS says it will create a “National Security and Climate Honors Program” to give students and recent graduates an opportunity to help DHS adapt to climate change. “DHS will aggressively pursue strategies to ensure a diverse applicant pool, to include applicants from underserved communities…”

The plan says: “Without adequate climate literacy training for employees and stakeholders, the Department risks developing infrastructure, management decisions, and project designs that do not sufficiently integrate climate resilience, environmental justice, and gender and racial equity considerations.”

The phrase “environmental justice” crops up several times, as follows: “The climate literacy curriculum will be innately tied to environmental and climate justice.”

And: “The DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will collaborate with Department subject matter experts and stakeholders to enhance climate literacy and its intersections with environmental justice in DHS federally assisted programs.”

At a time when government schools are forcing critical race theory on unwilling students and parents, this DHS “climate literacy” effort bears watching.

Here are the other four “priority actions” identified by DHS in its Climate Action Plan:

— Ensuring climate-ready services and supplies…to secure supplies of food, medicine, energy, and other vital resources.

— Creating climate-resilient facilities and infrastructure, including by aiming to electrify 50 percent of the DHS vehicle fleet by 2030.

— Making sure “climate change considerations are appropriately incorporated” in all DHS planning and processes and mission areas;

— Incorporating climate adaptation into national preparedness and community grants and projects…to provide incentives for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments to adopt modern, disaster-resistant building codes.

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hots were fired from the Mexican side of the border toward National Guard troops in Texas on Friday morning, new video footage reportedly shows.

“We witnessed tracer rounds from a suspected cartel machine gun being fired from Mexico into the U.S. early this morning while we were embedded with the TX National Guard in Roma, TX. Soldiers tell us the rounds went above one of their observation posts,” Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin tweeted with the video of the shots fired.

NEW: “Holy sh*t!”
We witnessed tracer rounds from a suspected cartel machine gun being fired from Mexico into the U.S. early this morning while we were embedded with the TX National Guard in Roma, TX. Soldiers tell us the rounds went above one of their observation posts. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/wJrcDF885r

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 8, 2021

“It’s unclear if this was from a cartel gunfight, a form of intimidation to the soldiers, or just indiscriminate shooting,” Melugin added in another tweet.

Video: Biden Humiliates Himself Again, Refers to ‘Everyone in This Room’ While Delivering Outdoor Speech

“There was a larger volley before this one, but I didn’t get my phone out in time. Soldiers believe it was a M240 machine gun or potentially a PKM. Thoughts?”

It’s unclear if this was from a cartel gunfight, a form of intimidation to the soldiers, or just indiscriminate shooting. There was a larger volley before this one, but I didn’t get my phone out in time. Soldiers believe it was a M240 machine gun or potentially a PKM. Thoughts?

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 8, 2021

Melugin posted another video shared with him that noted the shooting was not an isolated incident.

At least one other gunfight had been documented recently on the Mexican side of the border.

“Soldiers told us there have been cartel gunfights in Ciudad Miguel Aleman, the Mexican city across from Roma, TX, frequently in recent days and weeks,” Melugin tweeted.

“The soldiers heard gunfire and explosions two days ago and showed us this video of smoke billowing after the gunfight.”

Soldiers told us there have been cartel gunfights in Ciudad Miguel Aleman, the Mexican city across from Roma, TX, frequently in recent days and weeks. The soldiers heard gunfire and explosions two days ago and showed us this video of smoke billowing after the gunfight. pic.twitter.com/yow1pPvJS8

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 8, 2021

The Biden Admin Knew Months Ago That Masses of Haitians Were Headed Toward US But Did Nothing: Report

Despite the shootings on the Mexican side of the border, Melugin reported the situation would be far worse without the National Guard’s presence.

“It’s unimaginable what the situation would be like if Texas DPS and the National Guard weren’t deployed,” Melugin tweeted.

“The Feds do not have even remotely close to the manpower needed to handle this surge.”

After having covered the border for about 5 months straight now…an observation.

It’s unimaginable what the situation would be like if Texas DPS and the National Guard weren’t deployed.

The Feds do not have even remotely close to the manpower needed to handle this surge.

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 8, 2021

Melugin added that Texas resources have been critical in responding to incidents at the border.

“In many areas, like Roma last night, Border Patrol has to rely on Texas resources to apprehend migrants first, then hand them off to federal custody for processing. There were zero BP agents we saw on the front line at the river’s edge. Not their fault. They are overwhelmed,” he tweeted.

In many areas, like Roma last night, Border Patrol has to rely on Texas resources to apprehend migrants first, then hand them off to federal custody for processing. There were zero BP agents we saw on the front line at the river’s edge. Not their fault. They are overwhelmed.

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 8, 2021

The reports of shots fired follow widespread migrant crossings, including up to 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants illegally crossing into Del Rio, Texas, in September.

President Joe Biden’s former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said this week that the administration was paying up to $5 million per day to contractors to not complete former President Donald Trump’s southern border wall.

What a shameful example of government waste and emblematic of the incompetency of the 46th president.

In a Tuesday interview, Scott recounted to Fox News anchor Bret Baier that on his first day in office Biden issued an executive order halting construction on the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Many of those projects today are just still on hold, so we’re paying contractors. For a while, it was almost $5 million a day between [the Department of Defense] and [the Department of Homeland Security] to not build the border wall,” Scott said.

“There are stacks and stacks of border wall panels,” he added, along with “hundreds of miles of fiber optic cabling” and “hundreds of cameras” that are “just sitting. There is no action being taken.”

Video: Biden Humiliates Himself Again, Refers to ‘Everyone in This Room’ While Delivering Outdoor Speech

“That money is just trickling away to those contractors for not doing work each day,” Scott said.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZnyyhTUh74I?feature=oembed

A report released by Republicans serving on the Senate Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management in July put a firmer number on the cost of Biden’s order to end construction.

The minority staff report determined the president’s decision has cost taxpayers between $1.837 billion and $2.087 billion since Jan. 20.

“In January 2021, DOD contractors in charge of overseeing wall construction along the southern border received $10 billion in taxpayer money, which had been obligated toward wall-related projects,” a news release from subcommittee ranking member Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said.

“By the end of June, the Biden Administration has wasted roughly 20 percent ($2 billion) of the $10 billion meant to build the wall to pay contractors to watch steel rust in the desert.”

The report says the cost stood at $3 million per day at the end of June.

Trump was able to successfully have 453 miles of new primary and secondary border wall built before Biden took office and was in the process of constructing 211 more miles in the Border Patrol’s San Diego, El Centro, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, Del Rio, Laredo and Rio Grande Valley sectors.

Of course, some of those areas — like Del Rio and Yuma — have seen the greatest influx of migrants since Biden took office.

‘We Are Ready for War’: Leader of Migrant Caravan Says Nothing Will Get in His Way of Making It to US

Scott told Baier that the Biden administration was made aware of what the catastrophic results of ending Trump’s policies would be.

“We made it very clear that if we dropped all of the initiatives that have been put in place over the last several years, that we would get an influx of mass migration that we would not be able to control,” he said.

Nonetheless, Biden ended Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for those making asylum claims and signaled in his rhetoric and his administration’s actions a more lax border policy.

“The result of that is the message goes out. And then instead of having a couple of hundred encounters a day, we quickly went up to about 6,000 encounters a day,” Scott said.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/KqOV3U0JITc?feature=oembed

The number of those apprehended crossing the southern border illegally during fiscal year 2021 exceeds the population of 11 American states.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, so far there have been over 1.5 million encounters of people crossing the southwest border through August, a 21-year high.

That number will go up by 200,000 or more when September’s numbers are included, if recent trends continue.

By comparison, there were just 458,000 encounters in all of 2020.

CBP Encounters, Southwest Land Border. (Check out those 2021 ‘single adult’ numbers.)

No need to travel to see it ‘first hand’… It’s right there on the freaking website! pic.twitter.com/7G7q1sbaOn

— John Bundick (@DesperadoPro) September 23, 2021

Biden is mistaken if he thinks the American people don’t really care or take notice of the chaos at the border.

A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday found that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration and the border.

In new Quinnipiac poll, President Biden’s approval rating drops to 38%, the lowest of his presidency, and his lowest marks come at the border.

23% approve of Biden’s handling of the border.
67% disapprove.

25% approve of Biden’s handling of immigration issues.
67% disapprove.

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 7, 2021

Last month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki chastised Republicans for “giving speeches about how outraged they are about the situation at the border. Not many who are putting forward solutions or steps that we could take.”

“So we’re a little tired of the speeches,” Psaki said.

.@PressSec Jen Psaki: “There are a lot of Republicans out there giving speeches about how outraged they are about the situation at the border. Not many who are putting forward solutions or steps that we could take. So we’re a little tired of the speeches.” pic.twitter.com/ujqfcJOrOX

— The Hill (@thehill) September 24, 2021

Here are two proven solutions: Stop wasting money and finish building the wall, and reinstate the remain in Mexico policy.

Trump showed the way.

Biden just has to be humble enough and care about the country enough to do his job and secure the border.

When what seemed to be a flash mob of Haitian illegal immigrants turned up on the U.S.-Mexico border in September, the sudden appearance probably came as a surprise to most Americans.

In the months since the Biden administration started its disastrous de facto policy of opening the nation’s southern border, the country had gotten regrettably used to the daily outrage of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from Central and South American countries crossing the border with virtual impunity.

But tens of thousands of “asylum-seekers” from an island country far from the Rio Grande was unexpected to civilians — even if agencies in President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security had been aware it was coming for months.

According to a report Wednesday by NBC News, DHS agencies including Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the department’s own Office of Intelligence Analysis were all aware that a huge number of Haitians were headed to the U.S. border from Central and South America — but took no action on it.

Biden administration knew in July that thousands of Haitians were headed toward border: report https://t.co/G3LgPXmB8z pic.twitter.com/FYqDGS2QfH

— The Hill (@thehill) October 7, 2021

Video: Biden Humiliates Himself Again, Refers to ‘Everyone in This Room’ While Delivering Outdoor Speech

Citing DHS officials it did not name, NBC reported that the intelligence was not shared widely enough for top officials to come to a consensus on how fast the latest crisis would arrive or department.

“I don’t think we expected the rapidity of the increase that occurred,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told NBC in a Sept. 20 interview publicized by Breitbart News.

But since security for the homeland is basically what Americans are paying the Department of Homeland Security to accomplish, “we didn’t expect it” isn’t much of an excuse as a rule. In this case, judging by the NBC report, it’s simply insulting.

As USA Today reported on Sept. 21, Haitians have fled their benighted Caribbean country by the hundreds of thousands in the decade since a devastating 2010 earthquake.

Many landed in Brazil, where labor was needed in preparation for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Others went to Chile where, according to USA Today, the Haitian population more than doubled between 2017 and 2018, from about 65,000 to about 150,000.

Now, with Biden’s decision to reverse the policies of former President Donald Trump, policies that had established some law and order on the southern border, circumstances had changed.

“The end goal is always the United States,” Eduardo Gamarra, professor of political science at the Florida International University, told USA Today.

“And the pattern is one that wasn’t really begun by the Haitians, it was begun by the Cubans. They’re the ones who set this trail.”

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It might be true that Cuban emigres have set an example for those seeking asylum in the U.S. But it’s also true that they’re fleeing a communist regime with a longstanding political and military rivalry with the United States. (It’s the kind of communist dictatorship, of course, that Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders love.)

No one has ever denied that there are poorer countries than the U.S. — capitalism has lifted more of humanity out of poverty than collective economy ever will.

But as Donald Trump knew and proved, a nation must have control over its own borders.

In the months since Biden replaced Trump, his administration has deliberately abdicated that primary responsibility of the federal government — as the Haitian invasion shows.

According to NBC, part of the reason for the administration’s paralysis during the months before the crisis forced itself into public awareness was disagreement on what exactly to do to deter it. One group wanted to increase deportations of Haitians in the U.S. illegally as a signal to dissuade those planning a northern migration.

Others, NBC reported, thought that would be inhumane in light of the earthquake that struck Haiti in August (and were no doubt well aware of how deporting black Haitians would play in the identity-politics-obsessed left wing of the Democratic Party).

So, essentially, a combination of poor communication between federal agencies and political cowardice set up the elements for Americans to wake up to the news that a veritable army of illegal immigrants had set up camp on the southern border, and their country’s president had no means of stopping it.

It’s not a big jump from there to call to mind the feckless situation of the federal government prior to the 9/11 attacks, when the U.S. lost the lives of thousands of citizens thanks to an inability to share information between intelligence agencies and law enforcement. That inability was a deliberate product of the Clinton administration, as conservative commentator and author Andrew McCarthy wrote in a 9/11 anniversary piece for the website The New Criterion.

“The wall had its catastrophic effect in August 2001, when the intelligence agents learned that al Qaeda — affiliated terrorists had probably entered the United States but FBI headquarters refused to permit those agents to work in tandem with criminal investigators to find them,” McCarthy wrote. “A few weeks later, those terrorists were part of the suicide-hijacking team that crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon.”

Two decades on, if the NBC report is true, we have agencies within a single department in the Biden administration apparently not pooling information enough to forestall what amounts to an alien army gathering on the border.

The political impact of that Haitian encampment has been bad enough — the hoax of border agents allegedly “whipping” migrants from horseback has given leftist liars ammunition that will last for years.

The actual impact remains to be seen. Mayorkas has been dodgy about actual numbers, but at least 12,000 of those who ended up on the border have been released into the United States with an order to appear in court, he told Fox News in late September. (Cynics might think those orders are going to be utterly disregarded.)

But the impact on the future is easy to guess. Another surge of almost 30,000 Haitian migrants is expected on the U.S. border by the month’s end, Panama’s foreign minister Erkica Mouynes told the website Axios in an interview last week.

The incompetence and political cowardice that marked the Biden administration’s response to the last Haitian surge doesn’t bode well for its handling of the next one.

And as to the national security implications, it was a similar combination of incompetence and political cowardice that kept American security officials from sharing information with each other in 2001 that helped foster the single deadliest attack on the country in history.

Now, thanks to Biden and his Democratic Party, hundreds of thousands of strangers — including known criminals and potential terrorists — are crossing into the States.

If the Biden administration’s bungling leads to anything similar, Americans, no matter what their politics, will have no excuse for being surprised.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton revealed U.S. Border Patrol has experienced a major spike in criminal alien crossings of the border as the crisis continues to escalate.

Paxton shared the concerns during an interview on “Fox & Friends First” Wednesday morning. When asked, “How many are getting in?” he responded with concern.

“I don’t even think we know. I think my state isn’t told much about what’s actually happening. We’re not given the statistics. We’re given broad statistics, but we don’t know exactly how many people are escaping,” the attorney general said.

As Republican governors head to the southern border, Texas Attorney General @KenPaxtonTX sounds the alarm as the border patrol nabs gang members and sex offenders coming into the United States.https://t.co/pY61XYHeBz

— Fox & Friends First (@FoxFriendsFirst) October 6, 2021

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He said the number of criminal alien crossings is reportedly up “about 400 percent” from last year.

“We do know that the numbers are up supposedly about 400 percent from just a year ago for criminal aliens coming into our country. So it’s a significant increase. The Biden administration knows it and they support it,” Paxton added.

Paxton also responded to the question, “How much worse could this get before something is done about it?”

The attorney general’s words offered little hope for a response from the Biden administration.

“I don’t think they have any intention, the Biden administration has no intention of stopping it even if it gets worse. The numbers are so significantly more than they’ve ever been, yet there’s no effort on their part to follow federal law or to even follow court orders,” said Paxton, a Republican and outspoken critic of the Biden administration.

“They’re allowing it. They’re inviting it. They’re wanting it,” he added.

The news comes as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to join 10 additional GOP governors for a news conference at the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday to address the growing crisis.

The media briefing will be held in Mission, Texas, and will also include the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, according to WOLF-TV.

The announcement comes after 26 Republican governors sent a letter last month to President Joe Biden to request a meeting to address the crisis.

11 Republican Governors Announce They’re Taking Border Crisis Into Their Own Hands and Going Directly to the Border

“As chief executives of our states, we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders,” the governors requested in the letter.

“The months-long surge in illegal crossings has instigated an international humanitarian crisis, spurred a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states.

“A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens,” the letter added.

NEW 🚨 26 GOP Governors Demand Biden End The Border Crisis

GOP Govs led by @dougducey and @GregAbbott_TX issued a joint letter to Joe Biden requesting a meeting within 15 days to discuss the crisis at the southern border. pic.twitter.com/tVnvw5q5lw

— The RGA (@GOPGovs) September 20, 2021

No meeting with Biden has yet been announced. Abbott and his fellow governors are now taking matters into their own hands.

The governors expected to visit on Wednesday are Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, according to Border Report.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will join 10 additional GOP governors for a news conference at the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday to address the growing border crisis.

The media briefing will be held in Mission, Texas, and will also include the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, according to a news release from the governor’s office shared with WOLF-TV.

The announcement comes after 26 Republican governors sent a letter last month to President Joe Biden to request a meeting to address the border crisis.

“As chief executives of our states, we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders,” the governors requested in the letter.

“The months-long surge in illegal crossings has instigated an international humanitarian crisis, spurred a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states.

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“A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens,” the letter added.

NEW 🚨 26 GOP Governors Demand Biden End The Border Crisis

GOP Govs led by @dougducey and @GregAbbott_TX issued a joint letter to Joe Biden requesting a meeting within 15 days to discuss the crisis at the southern border. pic.twitter.com/tVnvw5q5lw

— The RGA (@GOPGovs) September 20, 2021

No meeting has yet been announced. Abbott and his fellow governors are now taking matters into their own hands.

“Texas National Guard is gearing up at the border for increased caravans attempting to cross the border caused by Biden’s open border policy,” Abbott tweeted Saturday.

“They are working with the Texas Dept. of Public Safety to seal surge locations at the border & arrest trespassers,” he added.

Texas National Guard is gearing up at the border for increased caravans attempting to cross the border caused by Biden’s open border policy.

They are working with the Texas Dept. of Public Safety to seal surge locations at the border & arrest trespassers.

⁦@TexasGuard⁩ pic.twitter.com/VAKGoHak0G

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) October 2, 2021

The governors expected to visit on Wednesday include Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, according to Border Report.

Texas Making Preparations for What Will Likely Be the Largest Migrant Border Surge in US History

In June, Abbott met with former President Donald Trump in Texas to discuss the ongoing border crisis. Biden has yet to visit the border, while Vice President Kamala Harris made only a brief appearance in El Paso without meeting with the governor.

WATCH LIVE: Former President Donald Trump is meeting with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at the Texas-Mexico border. https://t.co/jVlJLDyREs

— NBC DFW (@NBCDFW) June 30, 2021

The border crisis reached a new level in September as nearly 15,000 Haitian migrants gathered under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz visited Del Rio in September, calling the scene a “direct result” of Biden’s political decisions.

“Being briefed by @CBP on the escalating #BidenBorderCrisis while yards away from over 10,000 illegal aliens,” the Texas Republican tweeted.

Being briefed by @CBP on the escalating #BidenBorderCrisis while yards away from over 10,000 illegal aliens.

This is a manmade disaster. And it is a direct result of Joe Biden’s political decisions. pic.twitter.com/gLUFq4LTjw

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) September 17, 2021

“This is a manmade disaster. And it is a direct result of Joe Biden’s political decisions,” Cruz added.

President Joe Biden’s border crisis has been no secret since March, and the data about how disastrous it is continues to flow in.

A recent Washington Times analysis compared how many illegal immigrants the Biden administration released into the United States after being detained by Border Patrol with the number released under the Trump administration in August 2020.

Unfortunately, the numbers are concerning, but not shocking.

Last August, the Trump administration “caught” 47,000 migrants at southern border, but only released 10 of them into the United States immediately.

This was a result of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, in which migrants were required to wait in Mexico while awaiting their immigration hearing.

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By contrast, the Biden administration detained 195,000 migrants and released 43,941 of them into the United States.

The outlet reported that this is an increase of more than 430,000 percent.

“If you tell the migrant they’re not going to be released, they’re not going to come. If a migrant knows they will not be released into the United States awaiting their immigration process, they will not come,” said Mark Morgan, the former acting head of Customs and Border Protection under Trump, according to the Times.

Morgan is correct that this figure is the result of Biden scrapping the “Remain in Mexico” policy almost immediately after taking office, with the change going into full effect back in June, CNN reported.

The opposite of “Remain in Mexico” is commonly referred to as “Catch and Release,” which raises numerous concerns about everything from crime to an unexpected population spike in communities across America.

The Supreme Court ordered the policy to be put back in place at the end of August, saying that the White House likely broke federal law by getting rid of it, the Associated Press reported.

However, the executive branch plans to scrap the policy for a second time once the court’s injunction is over, according to The Hill.

“A new memorandum terminating MPP will not take effect until the current injunction is lifted by court order,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

“In issuing a new memorandum terminating MPP, the Department intends to address the concerns raised by the courts with respect to the prior memorandum.”

Biden Can’t Secure Border, But Abbott’s Operation Lone Star Has Caught Thousands of Criminal Migrants

MPP is a reference to Migrant Protection Protocols, which is the formal name for “Remain in Mexico.”

Title 42 is one of the few bold policies that remains in place from the Trump era that allows for migrants to be quickly removed from the U.S. if there is a serious health risk in the migrants’ home country.

Of course, that serious health risk is currently COVID-19, but that measure has done little to prevent the crisis from escalating.

The Washington Times’s comparison of just two months shows the stark contrast between conservative and liberal immigration policies, and Americans should take note.

In the Texas city that was ground zero for the latest surge of Haitian illegal immigrants, residents know who to blame.

“I feel that it’s the fault of the president,” one local resident of Del Rio, Texas, told Fox News.

Illegal immigrants “felt that they had been promised by the president that they would become United States citizens,” a resident said.

The 35,000-person city was deluged with illegal immigrants last month as a mass of roughly 15,000 Haitians gathered under the Del Rio International Bridge.

Although the mass of migrants has moved on, the town is left with the scars and costs.

A resident named Diane said she had to install security cameras and lights because illegal immigrants wandered into her yard.

She said America should focus on the needs of Americans.

“We need to take care of our own people. We need to take care of our poor people, we need to take care of the vets,” she said, apparently adding harsh words for the Biden administration.

“They’ve done nothing, zero, zilch,” she said.

“It’s been mounting bit by bit,” a woman named Laura said. “It’s not just a thing that happened, like, over the course of one week.”

Miguel Chavez, a local restaurant owner, said feeling sympathy with illegal immigrants is one thing, but dealing with thousands is another.

“Yeah, you know, I welcome immigrants, but not to that point. It’s hard being here as it is,” Chavez said. “I see their problems and I try to feel for them, but we have our own problems.”

Del Rio is not alone. A few hours down the road in Laredo, Texas, Customs and Border Protection built a 100,000 square-foot tent for processing the illegal immigrants who were bused there from Del Rio, according to Fox News.

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Robert Eads, Laredo’s city manager, said Laredo has to divert resources to deal with the flood of illegal immigrants.

“What we’re going to have to do is take resources from our community that we’ll have to apply somewhere else,” Eads said. “If it’s an EMT, fire department, police department, traffic control — whatever it may be — we’re going to have to suspend that so we can address this.”

“Our health system cannot support those volumes,” Eads said. “Even if a migrant themselves, God forbid, gets sick, it’s the same resource that we’re going to lack, so they may not get the services that they need.”

The Laredo Police Department is now battling an upsurge in human trafficking.

“We have stash houses that are popping up everywhere,” said Investigator Joe Baeza of the police department’s public information office. “In one particular house we had close to 100 people. Three bathrooms for 100 people. It’s going to be messy.”

“The department always has its hands full but more so now with these issues related to immigration.”

The federal government won’t secure the border — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t governors who are picking up the slack.

Take Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The Republican’s Operation Lone Star has been running for seven months now to combat the border crisis. According to USA Today, hundreds of state troopers, Texas Rangers, National Guard soldiers and other authorities have backed up the Border Patrol, arresting more than 4,600 border crossers as of late August.

That might not compare to the hundreds of thousands of border crossings during the crisis brought on by President Joe Biden, but it’s an example for the rest of the country — an example illegal immigrant activists are furious about.

“The crisis at our southern border continues to escalate because of Biden Administration policies that refuse to secure the border and invite illegal immigration,” Abbott said a statement in March, while launching the operation, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

“Texas supports legal immigration but will not be an accomplice to the open border policies that cause, rather than prevent, a humanitarian crisis in our state and endanger the lives of Texans. We will surge the resources and law enforcement personnel needed to confront this crisis.”

After Deputy Stops to Help Her, 96-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak with His Supervisor

Texas National Guard Soldiers identify & apprehend illegal immigrants on land and in water crossing into Texas from Mexico.

Through Operation Lone Star, the State of Texas is working night and day to combat Biden’s border crisis & secure our border. pic.twitter.com/3wa6bgDsQQ

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 29, 2021

Texas National Guard Soldiers deploy tactical vehicles to the border in support of Operation Lone Star.

As Biden does nothing, the Lone Star State continues to surge manpower & equipment to put an end to the chaos at our southern border. pic.twitter.com/IrDH8fN3AO

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) September 23, 2021

Granted, the program has seen some pushback from left-wing activist groups who have hoped to challenge the legality of Operation Lone Star in court. They say since the Constitution delegates immigration enforcement to the federal government, the plan is unconstitutional. Critics have also charged the plan leads to racial profiling.

“Whenever you ask untrained law enforcement officers to engage in immigration enforcement efforts, they are going to revert to racial profiling,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “That’s exactly what an initiative like this invites.”

The program has also faced problems in court.

On Tuesday, charges of criminal trespassing against two illegal immigrants arrested as part of Project Lone Star, Ivan Nava and David Muñoz, were dismissed by a Texas district court judge because prosecutors were “unprepared to present probable cause,” USA Today reported. Both men remained in custody as of late last week, however, and immigration activist groups were concerned the two could still be deported.

Both had crossed into the U.S. illegally in June, according to USA Today. (In USA Today terminology, they “crossed without permission.”)

DHS Leak Shows Mayorkas Fears Border Crossings About to Be Higher Than You Can Imagine

“Operation Lone Star relies on racial profiling and systemically violates due process,” Kevin Herrera, the men’s attorney, said in a statement, according to USA Today.

He wanted President Joe Biden’s administration to allow the men to stay in the United States pending a hearing on their immigration case — and more: “We demand … that [Department of Homeland Security] cease any collaboration with this unconstitutional program.”

The same day the charges against Nava and Munoz were dismissed, the same judge ordered 243 more illegal aliens arrested under Operation Lone Star to be released under “no-cost bonds,” USA Today reported.

However, proponents of border security contend programs like Operation Lone Star could be a blueprint for other governors to enforce border laws when the federal government is unable or unwilling to do so.

Jessica Vaughn of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter controls on immigration, said Operation Lone Star mostly picks up illegal immigrants who want to sneak past Border Patrol and who aren’t turning themselves in to seek asylum.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out,” Vaughn told USA Today. “We could end up with a blueprint from the courts on exactly what can be done by states to address illegal immigration.”

Whatever the case, it gives a whole new meaning to “don’t mess with Texas.” And if any actor is going to address illegal immigration, it’ll have to be in state governments for now — especially since last month’s crisis involving an encampment of Haitian migrants that swelled to over 15,000 individuals at Del Rio, Texas proved how quickly the Biden administration will capitulate on border security when faced with the slightest breeze of opposition from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

After footage showed Border Patrol agents using horses to prevent Haitian migrants from entering the United States via the Rio Grande — with some lawmakers and social media pundits erroneously stating they were using whips or lassos — administration officials quickly condemned the agents, foreswore the use of horses at the border and promised an investigation that could lead to the agents’ termination.

Abbott responded by telling Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace on Sept. 26 that the Biden administration was “in dereliction of duty” because they have “abandoned any pretense of securing the sovereignty of either Texas or the United States by having these open border policies.”

Abbott on Biden’s investigation into Border Patrol agents: “I want them to know something. If they are risk of losing their job by a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.” pic.twitter.com/gzVtv5iKgt

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) September 26, 2021

For instance, Abbott said, the crisis at the Del Rio flashpoint was brought under control only after Texas surged state troopers to the area, with hundreds of vehicles creating a “steel barrier” aimed at keeping out illegal immigrants.

“That’s exactly what the Biden administration could do if they wanted to,” Abbott said. “But, Chris, it’s the kind of thing that Texas is going to have to continue to do in addition to the other policies that you did not announce and that is, as opposed to catch and release, Texas has imposed a policy where we are going to arrest and jail people who come across the border for trespassing into areas into the state of Texas.”

The Biden administration has made it clear it won’t enforce immigration law at the southern border. In fact, it’s more likely to come down hard on Border Patrol agents who were trying to enforce the law — which is why Gov. Abbott has an offer for anyone who suffers the consequences for simply doing their job.

“I have worked side by side with those Border Patrol agents,” Abbott said. “I want them to know something, if they are at risk of losing their job, got a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.”

Why not? After all, I’m assuming those who joined the Border Patrol did so to enforce the law.

If they lost their job for doing it at the federal level, they could always get a job doing it for the state that has the longest border with Mexico.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-cant-secure-border-abbotts-operation-lone-star-caught-thousands-criminal-migrants/?utm_source=telegram&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_campaign=telegramfeed&utm_content=2021-10-04

Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill gives migrants same child benefits as Americans

President Joe Biden’s budget includes a provision that provides billions of dollars in cash to illegal aliens with children.

The $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill extends the Child Tax Credit to anyone in the United States who provides an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, overturning a crucial safeguard against fraud. Federal law required a valid Social Security number to receive the cash transfer from the federal government. The potential payout for illegal immigrants is massive, with each family receiving a monthly payment of $250 to $300 per child.

A survey from the Pew Research Center found that roughly 675,000 children are not eligible for a Social Security number, making the tax credit expansion for illegal aliens cost between $2.025 billion to $2.43 billion a year. Other estimates put the total number of illegal children residing in the United States at more than 800,000.

Families, regardless of their legal status, would be eligible to receive checks of $3,600 per year per child. The Democratic bill would amount to a universal basic income for parents residing in the country. Under U.S. law, illegal immigrants are barred from enjoying the benefits of federal entitlements.

Democrats are trying to advance an amnesty provision into the budget reconciliation bill, a process reserved for budgetary matters. Congressional Democrats have argued that granting legal status to millions of illegal aliens would add $139.6 billion to the budget deficit by 2032 due to their increased use of welfare programs. The Senate parliamentarian ruled in September that Democrats cannot include a road to citizenship for illegals in their bill, although party leaders have vowed to keep fighting for its inclusion.

Welfare policy expert Samuel Hammond said the potential payout for illegals under the expanded Child Tax Credit exceeds the per capita income of many migrants’ home countries.

“Consider that the value of the CTC for an infant child is now $3,600 per year. That alone represents 40 percent of Colombia’s per capita income, and nearly 120 percent of Haiti’s. This is why countries with unconditional welfare benefits also tend to have relatively restrictive immigration laws,” Hammond wrote in American Compass. “America’s historical openness to immigration, in contrast, has in large part been enabled by rules and program structures that minimize the fiscal cost of lower wage migrants.”

The White House did not return a request for comment on the Child Tax Credit provision.

As the country faces a historic surge of migrants applying for asylum, the Biden administration risks compounding the crisis by offering a greater financial incentive to those willing to make the trip to the southern border. One 2015 study commissioned by the Institute of Labor Economics concluded that expanding Norway’s welfare benefits to poorer European countries generated “substantial (expected) costs for the welfare state” and a distorted labor market.

“For families with children, [the cash benefit] entails that a job in Norway may be attractive even if the offered wage is extremely low. For example, the Norwegian cash‐for‐care subsidy for a one‐year-old child now amounts to NOK 6,000 per month, which … corresponds to 629 Euros, or around 80 percent of average earnings in Poland,” the researchers wrote. “Such features give employers and prospective immigrant employees incentives to agree on very low wages and poor working conditions.”

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/dems-tuck-multibillion-dollar-handout-to-illegal-immigrants-into-reconciliation/

What appears to be a killing field used by a Mexican drug cartel has been discovered just south of Mexico’s border with Texas.

“The characteristics of the place allow the inference that it is an extermination site that has been used for years and until very recently, which will have to be confirmed by experts,” said a statement by Mexico’s National Search Commission, according to the Associated Press.

“This is the first site of these dimensions found in Nuevo Laredo,” the statement said.

The body dumping site was used by the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas, according to Breitbart.

The area is near the Nuevo Laredo-Monterrey highway, which has been the site of numerous “disappearances since 2012,” the commission said.

After Deputy Stops to Help Her, 96-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak with His Supervisor

In June, three members of a Texas family were kidnapped in the region, according to Breitbart.

Gladys Cristina Perez Sanchez, 39, was traveling with her 16-year-old son, Juan Carlos Gonzales, and her nine-year-old daughter, Cristina Duran when they disappeared.

The three had been returning to Laredo, Texas, after visiting a sick relative in Sabinas Hidalgo.

Israel Garza, a relative of the family, said cartel gunmen had been stopping travelers along the highway, with reports of at least 71 people who have gone missing along this highway in recent months.

The FBI sought information about the missing family, according to Spectrum Local News.

Officials in Mexico say they have found an apparent long-running “extermination site” outside the northern border city of Nuevo Laredo, near the border with Texas. https://t.co/0LyQ8khMUs pic.twitter.com/My2hkjwaXa

— CBSDFW (@CBSDFW) September 30, 2021

Karla Quintana, the head of the Mexican National Search Commission, said a “clandestine crematorium of considerable size” was found along with charred bone fragments, according to the AP.

Quintana said the facility had been set up many years ago but showed signs of recent use.

Confidential Document Shows Even Larger Surge of Haitian Migrants Is Headed Toward US: Report

“The characteristics of the place allow the inference that it is an extermination site that has been used for years and until very recently, which will have to be confirmed by experts,” the commission said, according to the News & Observer.

Angelica Orozco, of the group United Forces for Our Disappear, which includes families of those who went missing, said it was  “very worrisome for us that the commission has come out with such alarmist statements without informing us.”

The group said, “these statements totally re-victimize, and cause anguish and torture for the relatives of the disappeared,” because many assume the bodies of their family members may have been burned after death.

Quintana has said that turf battles between cartels could be linked to the disappearances, according to the AP.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough recently dashed Democrats’ hopes of securing immigration amnesty for millions of persons here illegally (PHIs) by declaring that amendments to the current federal immigration law could not be attached to the $3.5 trillion spending bill.

Republican lawmakers, in turn, hailed MacDonough’s ruling.

What remains both baffling and alarming is that we have to rely on parliamentary loopholes to halt transnational trespass. Instead, that practice ought to be overwhelmingly condemned regardless of party politics.

Democrats and Republicans can have legitimate differences of opinion about the size of government; America’s role in international military conflicts; whether abortion, marijuana and same-sex marriage ought to be legal; and what if any limitations should be placed on the right to keep and bear arms.

But when it comes to crossing our border illegally, or entering legally and unlawfully remaining past the allotted time, the response should be an absolute rejection, from liberal San Francisco to conservative Tulsa, just as if the question were, say, whether we ought to support murder and armed robbery.

After Deputy Stops to Help Her, 96-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak with His Supervisor

Plain and simple, the United States is private property, open only to U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents (LPRs) and legal nonimmigrants (such as visitors, students and temporary workers).

Granted, those within our nation’s borders are free to move about from state to state, but they need to be eligible to be here in the first place. Much like fans at the stadium can visit the restrooms and concession stands, but only if they entered the stadium legitimately with an admission ticket.

Persons who crossed the border illegally or overstayed unlawfully are not “immigrants” – they’re PHIs. If music legend Paul McCartney touring the United States and basketball superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo playing for the Milwaukee Bucks are not immigrants, then surely border-jumpers aren’t either.

As I wrote in my book “Stop Calling Them ‘Immigrants,’” far too many Americans erroneously refer to any foreign-born person in the United States as an immigrant. In many instances, it’s just an honest mistake, but don’t be fooled into thinking that much of the time ulterior motives aren’t at play.

Enablers of transnational trespass often tout that “immigrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born Americans.” When referring to actual immigrants — who are either naturalized U.S. citizens or LPRs — that makes a great deal of sense. After all, real immigrants have been fully vetted, unlike hundreds of millions of people born here who are left to their own devices.

When including PHIs, however, that statistic is no longer true. But amnesty advocates want to conflate the numbers so that we get used to calling all foreign-born persons physically in the U.S. “immigrants” in order to legitimize all of them, no matter how they got here and regardless of them remaining unvetted.

For several decades, both major parties turned a blind eye to illegal entry and stay. Democrats because they realized that if these folks gain the right to vote someday, they’d surely vote Democrat, and because many want to expunge our nation’s Western European heritage. Republicans because nothing boosts the economy quite like cheap and easily exploited labor.

Then came Donald Trump. Like no president since Theodore Roosevelt more than a hundred years ago, Trump railed against our porous borders. Immediately, the establishment — and their media messenger boys — struck back.

First, they insisted that Trump categorically called Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals.” As I pointed out in my book “Trumped-Up Charges!” that simply isn’t true. Next, they accused not only Trump but practically any supporter of strong border security of being racist against “brown people.”

Mike Huckabee: Red Cross Disappoints, Helps Migrants Break the Law

Think about it: If you’re out to dinner and your neighbor texts you that three guys are breaking into your house right now, are you going to think, “Gee, I really hope they’re Swedish or Norwegian burglars, because I’d be OK with that”? Of course not. All you’ll care about — and will try to stop — is their criminal trespass; their nationality, skin color or religion won’t be a factor.

Similarly, those of us who care about transnational trespass onto our private property of the United States couldn’t care less about the trespasser’s demographics. But those who dream of an open-border utopia often try to silence us with false and inflammatory rhetoric.

There is also a great deal of confusion about asylum. First, it must be based on a well-founded fear of persecution, not simply because living conditions in a particular country aren’t optimal. Second, asylum seekers should apply to the next-closest country to their own where conditions aren’t dire.

The United States is that next-closest country only for citizens of Canada or Mexico, neither of which faces a national crisis that renders living conditions categorically unsafe.

If, say, the Taliban seized power in those countries, then their citizens — more specifically, ones whose lives might be endangered because they supported the previous government — would be eligible for asylum in the United States. Absent that type of situation, no one is eligible.

I am the son of immigrants, grew up surrounded by immigrants, and as an immigration attorney helped secure rights for countless individuals from numerous countries and of various races and religions.

I am not anti-immigration. I’m anti-trespass.

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd blasted the Biden administration’s response to the border crisis during a Friday interview, as 85,000 migrants reportedly approach the nation’s southern border.

Panama has warned that up to 85,000 migrants are traveling to the border of the U.S. Responding to Vice President Kamala Harris and her role to address the root causes of migration, Judd offered strong words against her lack of leadership.

“She’s pandering to her open border base,” Judd said during the “Fox & Friends First” interview on Friday, regarding Harris. “That’s what this administration does.”

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd slams the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis, as 85,000 migrants approach the U.S.https://t.co/QmoTKIxIFc

— Fox & Friends First (@FoxFriendsFirst) October 1, 2021

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Judd added that the response has more to do with Democratic supporters than border security and enforcing immigration laws.

“They look at what does their base want and they go out and they give it to them. When we look at 65,000 people coming up to our borders — and this is just one group. It’s not like these are the only people coming up to the borders.”

Judd also addressed the recent Del Rio, Texas, migrant movement that saw up to 15,000 people living under a bridge along the southern border in September.

“This administration wasn’t prepared. They knew they were coming. They weren’t prepared. Now you have 65,000 in the month of October. Next month, we’re probably going to have 150,000.Should Biden close the southern border?Yes No
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“This administration doesn’t really care about enforcement at the border. And as this group is coming up, they just made this announcement, that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] now can’t deport people just because they’re here in the United States illegally.”

Judd believes the ICE judgment will be legally challenged and overturned but warns we should expect to continue to see large groups coming up to the southern border.

“Again, this administration — when you look at enforcement at the border — this administration is a complete dumpster fire. It really doesn’t care what’s coming across our borders.”

The Border Patrol leader also published an Op-Ed on Sept. 22 for Fox News that addressed the driving forces behind the large caravans headed toward the U.S.

“Catch-and-release is the single biggest driver of illegal immigration right now. If we reward people for crossing our borders illegally, they will continue to come,” Judd wrote.

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“More than 40 years of evidence proves this. And the staggering catch-and-release figures this year show why more people than ever are crossing our borders illegally.”

During an interview on “Mornings with Maria” earlier this week, Judd also addressed the concern of COVID-19 among illegal immigrants.

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd: “We are absolutely not testing migrants nor are we giving vaccines to migrants.”

He tells @MariaBartiromo the border will become more unstable once non-vaccinated agents are removed from their posts. pic.twitter.com/gGaDPFilSj

— Mornings with Maria (@MorningsMaria) September 30, 2021

“We are absolutely not testing migrants, nor are we giving vaccines to migrants,” he said.

He added that the border will become more unstable once non-vaccinated agents are removed from their posts.

Better late than never.

Fox News host Chris Wallace, the moderator of last year’s first presidential debate last September, appeared to advocate for a wall on the country’s southern border on “Fox News Sunday” when speaking to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Wallace, who teamed up against former President Donald Trump during the debate with then-candidate Joe Biden, asked Mayorkas, point-blank, why the federal government isn’t interested in using a physical barrier, such as a “wall,” to stop the flow of illegal immigrants entering the country.

“Why didn’t you stop them from coming into the country?” Wallace said Sunday during a conversation about thousands of migrants huddled under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, earlier this month.

“We — we did. We encountered them, they gathered — they assembled in that one location in Del Rio, Texas, and we applied the laws,” Mayorkas claimed. “We applied the public health law under the CDC’s authority, and we applied immigration law.”

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Wallace, a Democrat, then found himself in the uncomfortable position of suggesting a border wall could have been effective — something Trump spent years both talking about and working to get built.

“My question is why did you allow them in the country in the first place?” he said. “Why didn’t you build — forgive me, a wall or a fence to stop them from walking in — this flood of people coming across the dam, it looks like a highway that allows them to cross the Rio Grande.”

Fox News’ Chris Wallace to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Haitian migrants:

“Why did you allow them in the country in the first place? Why didn’t you build, forgive me, a wall?”pic.twitter.com/k6APdhntHc

— Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) September 26, 2021

Wallace appeared to understand the irony of his question as he was asking it.

Mayorkas, for his part, responded: “It is the policy of this administration. We do not agree with the building of the wall. The law provides that individuals can make a claim for humanitarian relief. That is actually one of our proudest traditions.”

Mayorkas is proud of presiding over an open border, but the odd part of this interview was seeing Wallace seemingly suggest one of Trump’s key positions before, during and after his term in the White House may have worked to prevent the border crisis.

Wallace in January of 2019 was vocal in his opposition to a border wall while speaking with former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders during an interview.

Wallace at that time was of the opinion that an open border was not a national security threat, which Sanders disagreed with.

“I studied up on this”: @FoxNewsSunday fact checks @PressSec on terrorism and border security: pic.twitter.com/2j1edlDbsx

— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) January 6, 2019

Chris Wallace Discovers the Truth About Biden Administration as Psaki Stonewalls Him: ‘You Are Being Less Transparent Than the Trump Administration’

“We know that … nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally,” Sanders told the Fox host. “It’s by air, it’s by land and it’s by sea. It’s all of the above.”

“[T]he most vulnerable point of entry that we have into this country is our southern border, and we have to protect it,” she added as she advocated for strict application of the country’s immigration laws.Do you think Democrats are intentionally allowing immigrants to flood across the border?Yes No
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Wallace, who opposed a physical barrier on the border, fired back.

“[Suspected terrorists are] not coming across the southern border,” Wallace claimed. “They’re coming and they’re being stopped at airports.”

Nine months into the Biden administration’s border crisis, and Wallace has seemingly now seen the light.

He apparently never held any strong personal beliefs against a border wall. It’s looking more and more like he simply opposed the man who wanted to build and maintain it.

A week after Sept. 11, 2001, I spoke with a disaster-response expert about terrorist targets in Texas. The Houston Ship Channel, “with all those refineries,” was his first reply. How to protect it? He said: “You tell me.”

In December 2020 Forbes magazine published an article by David Blackmon addressing the vulnerability of offshore oil and gas infrastructure to criminal and terrorist attack.

Worldwide pirates and terrorists routinely attack tankers and oil facilities. Nigeria is an example. Drug cartels have seized platforms in Mexican waters. Their thugs demand ransom to return the platforms to production and free the crews.

Blackmon is an expert in offshore vulnerabilities. “For Americans,” he wrote, “ … tankers and facilities being damaged or coming under attack seem like someone else’s problems … the fact is that these key assets and infrastructure are vulnerable to water-borne and airborne assault.” Airborne includes drone strikes.

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon offshore platform debacle cost BP around $70 billion and threatened the entire Louisiana coast. Terrorists and crooks could intentionally cause a Deepwater Horizon disaster.

So could an enemy nation-state. My 2001 Houston Ship Channel expert made that point.

In 2020, despite pandemic production drops, Corpus Christi, Texas, handled 55 percent of market share of U.S. crude exports. The canal from Corpus to Port Aransas to the Gulf of Mexico can be blocked in several places. Close Houston’s or Corpus Christi’s connecting channel and American energy and chemical supplies suffer an instant blockade, without the enemy risking naval forces. The entire U.S. economy suffers. The May 2021 Colonial Pipeline cyberhack’s economic costs would pale in comparison.

Who perceives our vulnerability? Communist China does. China doesn’t need an Atlantic navy to conduct the operation, just saboteurs with position.

So, what do we do?

Some American leaders have real answers. At the moment, the most demonstrable reside in Texas.

This is legislative and executive fact, not Hollywood Texan brag: Texas has begun shouldering a defense burden that Biden Administration Beltway Washington (BABWA) has refused to bear.

Exhibit 1: The Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act, SB 2116, authored by Republican Sen. Donna Campbell (mother of four and M.D. physician, of Texas Senate District 25) and Rep. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound). The bill became law June 18.

Bureaucrat lingo: “Relating to prohibiting contracts or other agreements with certain foreign-owned companies in connection with critical infrastructure in this state.”

Beyond jargon, there’s serious national defense energy. About three years ago a Chinese energy company purchased around 130,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base, located near Del Rio, Texas. Thanks to the Biden administration’s Haitian migrant border fiasco, Del Rio has national visibility. Laughlin is a U.S. Air Force Air Training Command field. That makes nearby land an intelligence-gathering site.

But there’s more! The Chinese company, fronted by billionaire Sun Guangxin (with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party), also wanted to build a wind farm. War bingo: The wind farm would have access to the U.S. power grid.

Would the CCP hack the Texas electrical grid? I ask you.

When the bill became law, Parker said it sent “a clear message that we will not allow hostile foreign actors to access these vital elements of our great state.”

I read recently that mainland Chinese actors are trying to acquire land near Yuma, Arizona. That’s land in the vicinity of both weapons-testing and big-league intelligence training sites.

Exhibit 2: Gov. Greg Abbot’s Operation Lone Star. The official description: “directing state military and police resources to the border to aid local and federal authorities in fighting the smuggling of people and drugs across the border.”

Texas has a 1,254-mile border with Mexico.

On Sept. 17 Abbott secured $2 billion more in state border defense funding.

After signing the bill Abbott said: “It is the federal government’s job to secure our border, but the Biden administration has failed to do its job, so Texas is stepping up to do what the federal government is supposed to do.”

For the record, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has written a national bill very similar to the Campbell-Parker bill. Good on you, Congressman Roy.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-decides-to-defend-america-fact-not-brag_4024980.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The Texas Secretary of State’s office is carrying out a forensic audit of 2020 election results in four large counties, including Dallas and Harris counties.

The office announced the audit last week but declined to provide more details until Sept. 28.

Phase one of the review is already underway, the office says. This phase involves verifying the accuracy of voting machines, assessing cybersecurity, and pinpointing and removing from voter rolls any people who cast votes illegally in 2020.

State officials have received reports from the Electronic Registration Information Center regarding voters who may have voted twice or who illegally voted in Texas despite living in another state. In addition, officials have identified votes they say were potentially cast by non-U.S. citizens and alerted counties to review each case. Once that’s done, any instances of possible illegal voting will be referred to the state Attorney General’s Office for investigation.

Phase two of the audit, estimated to take place in the spring of next year, is centered on examining the election records from various counties, including Tarrant and Collins counties.

The Secretary of State’s office plans to examine all chain-of-custody forms concerning equipment and all logic and accuracy-testing records for voting machines.

Depending on the results of the examination, there could be a full manual recount in the affected precincts or polling locations.

“The purpose of this audit is to ensure all Texas voters can have confidence in the elections systems in our state, and to address any outstanding issues county election officials may face that undermines the integrity of our elections,” the office said in a statement.

A spokesman said in an email that the office won’t be hiring or contracting with any outside firms to conduct the audits. The position of Texas secretary of state is currently vacant.

Election offices in the four counties didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat, told reporters last week that “the sensational announcement of an audit by the state is nothing more than a political ploy by a former president and someone who’s trying to curry favor.”

“I’m working to do everything in my power to stop this not only because complying with a sham audit will take us away from serious work we have to do but also, and most importantly, because it will take trust away from our election systems here in Harris County and here in Texas,” she said.

The review was announced shortly after former President Donald Trump called on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to carry out a forensic audit of the 2020 election, and shortly before an audit in Arizona was announced to have uncovered multiple inconsistencies.

Trump won Texas in the 2020 election by about 630,000 votes but said in a letter to Abbott that he heard Texans want an audit.

“Your citizens don’t trust the election system,” he wrote. “Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties.”

Abbott defended the audit over the weekend.

“There are audits of every aspect of government. We have a state auditor. There’s a federal auditor for the way that government operations work. Businesses that are public companies are subject to an annual audit,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Why do we audit everything in this world, but people raise their hands in concern when we audit elections, which is fundamental to our democracy?”

He also said the audit began months ago, although that hadn’t been previously disclosed.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-launches-audit-of-2020-election-results_4023621.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

WESLACO, Texas (ValleyCentral) — The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) held a briefing on Operation Lone Star Thursday morning.

At the briefing, DPS Regional Director Victor Escalon and TMD Lt. Colonel Rodney Kelley will provide an overview of last week`s migrant numbers in Del Rio and the operations that were used to secure the area.

The first briefing was held on September 16.

Operation Lone Star was put in place by Gov. Greg Abbott in March, and it allows Texas DPS and the Texas National Guard to team up and patrol high-risk areas along the southern border, including the Rio Grande Valley.‘

Historic numbers:’ Texas DPS gives update on Operation Lone Star 

“Troopers that work along the border they deal with this day in and day out,” said Lieutenant Christopher Olivarez. “But the numbers that we are seeing this year have been historic, just the surge of migrants that have been coming across, the criminal activity, the increase in vehicle pursuits, we have never seen that before in prior years.”

To watch the previous briefing click here.

Former President Barack Obama is getting sick of the Biden administration’s border crisis, even though he will not admit his former vice president is at fault.

In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Obama called for the reform of the “dysfunctional” system that allows serious incidents like the one in Del Rio, Texas, to occur.

“It’s no secret that we don’t have that. It’s the reason I proposed comprehensive immigration reform. It’s the reason [President] Joe Biden proposed it during his administration, and it’s something that is long overdue,” he told anchor Robin Roberts on Tuesday.

Of course, he gave credit to Biden for his nearly nonexistent efforts to mitigate the crisis at the border, adding that it “is a painful reminder that we don’t have this right yet and we’ve got more work to do.”

“As big-hearted as he is, nobody understands that better than Joe Biden,” the former president said.

World-Class Athlete Says He Regrets Getting COVID Vaccine, Now Has Serious Problems

“And the question is now: Are we gonna get serious about dealing with this problem in a systemic way, as opposed to these one-offs where we’re constantly reacting to emergencies? And I think that that’s something that every American should wanna put an end to.”

“It is heartbreaking,” he continued, “and it is, I think, one of those situations in which if you have a system that overall is dysfunctional, you are going to get episodes in which what’s happening right in front of you is something that nobody wants.”

Obama said that the reason immigration reform is difficult to discuss is due to Americans’ predisposed compassion towards immigrants.

“Immigration is tough,” he said. “It always has been. Because, on the one hand, I think we are naturally a people that wants to help others.”

The most notable quote from the interview, and one that is sure to frustrate the far-left, was when Obama admitted a nation needs borders.

“At the same time, we’re a nation-state. We have borders. The idea that we can just have open borders is something that, I think, as a practical matter, is unsustainable. The way we solve this problem is to have a smarter, more efficient, more effective immigration system.”

Obama got a mix of issues right and wrong in the interview, and it’s all a result of partisan politics.

He was correct that the United States cannot have open borders, and that humane immigration reform is necessary.

‘Such a Level of Ignorance’: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee Scorched for Making Laughable Claim About ‘Secure’ Border

What he got wrong, however, was his conviction that Biden is the right leader to be in charge as the border crisis rages on.

Biden repealed most Trump administration policies and efforts that were effective in deterring migrants from coming across the border illegally, including “Remain in Mexico” and the construction of the border wall.

Obama will never admit it has been the Biden White House’s poor leadership that has perpetuated the border crisis for several months.

Migrants interested in coming to the United States deserve better information and a clear-cut system to make a safe decision for themselves, and Americans are entitled to be in a country with a secure border.

That understanding should cut across party lines.

Texas mayor Pete Saenz: ‘It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working’

The Democratic mayor of Laredo, Texas, slammed President Joe Biden’s immigration policy, alleging that his party has no plan to fix the southern border and has abandoned local communities in favor of massive spending proposals for other interest groups.

Mayor Pete Saenz says that for months many of his city’s public services have been forced to focus on providing humanitarian aid, medical services, and transportation for thousands of migrants who pass through Laredo. Those are jobs, he says, the federal government should handle—particularly as the Biden administration loosens immigration restrictions.  The added threat of COVID-19 has led Saenz to admit reluctantly that former president Donald Trump’s policies benefited Laredo residents.

“We need to truly secure the border,” Saenz told the Washington Free Beacon in an exclusive interview. “It was working under Trump, call it whatever you want to call it, but it was working.”

As Democrats scramble to pass $3.5 trillion in federal spending on programs ranging from free community college to “achieving a carbon pollution-free power sector,” Saenz notes how little of that money will be used to support Customs and Border Protection. The president’s budget allocates virtually no additional funds to the agency, which since is dealing not only with inflation but also with record numbers of illegal immigrants since Biden took office.

“We’re spending billions of dollars on alternative things but immigration isn’t given priority. Border Patrol isn’t being funded to the extent that Border Patrol has to be funded,” Saenz said. “Their workload has increased to three times or four, and yet they’re not funded. So, that kind of leads me to think the Democrats have the same mentality [toward the Border Patrol] as defunding law enforcement generally.”

Laredo, which has a population of 260,000, is 95-percent Hispanic, making it one of the least diverse cities in the country. The city’s concerns over Democrats’ immigration politics challenge the conventional wisdom that strong border policies serve the anxieties of a dwindling white population. Republicans in 2020 doubled their turnout in the county in which Laredo sits, a pattern that continued in districts throughout southern Texas.

Biden’s immigration policy, Saenz contends, serves neither Americans nor migrants well. He pointed to the squalid Del Rio bridge under which thousands of Haitian migrants lived and the outbreaks of COVID-19 and other diseases in Laredo as evidence that a de facto open borders policy is far from the humanitarian solution. Instead, he said, the Biden administration should work on processing overseas asylum claims—the principle that guided the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.

“The key, ultimately, is removing the incentive to come to the border and file for asylum. I believe in the asylum process. It needs to be followed or changed. If we don’t like the way people are attempting to come, we can have them apply remotely or from either the country of origin or some other place that is close to the country of origin,” Saenz said. “No person wants to spend their last penny giving it to the cartels, then risking life and limb travel to try and get all the way to the border. And then there’s still the uncertainty that they may not even be granted asylum. At some point, they’ll be fugitives.”

The border crisis has caused Saenz to reevaluate his own politics. The mayor in 2015 told then-candidate Donald Trump that a large wall across the southern border was not practical. He told NPR in 2019 that Trump’s proposal to order the Pentagon to construct fencing in Laredo would be less effective than the “virtual wall” backed by Biden. But, Saenz says, Laredo residents are growing tired of empty promises from Democrats, particularly as the city’s fire department is forced to serve as shuttle service for migrants who get dropped off by charities and federal agencies. Saenz has not heard from the Biden administration on any plans for a “virtual wall” or any other measure to stem the tide of illegal immigrants.

“If Biden doesn’t come out with implementing a virtual wall, people here will be begging for a wall, a physical structure, simply because of his lack of attention to the border and especially the size of these surges,” he said. A wall would “deter or at least buy time, so to speak, for law enforcement.”

The Biden administration did not return a request for comment.

A Federal Emergency Management Agency grant for Laredo has eased the burden of paying city employees overtime to relocate migrants. That money came only after the city filed a federal lawsuit that accused the administration of negligence. Customs and Border Protection began transferring hundreds of migrants to the city after processing stations in other parts of Texas reached capacity. The number of migrants who have tested positive for COVID-19 led to targeted shutdowns in Laredo and a lack of hospital beds for city residents—in other words, a government-caused health catastrophe.

For now, the federal government has spared Laredo from facing the ongoing brunt of the migrant crisis. The city’s policy of busing out migrants has proven a temporary salve, but no community withstand the constant influx Laredo has seen.

“The border’s not secure and hasn’t been for a while,” he said. “We can’t continue this way, and I really haven’t seen any measures yet from Washington to remedy this.”

Federal immigration authorities are trying to alleviate the pressure on Laredo by redirecting the surge of migrants to other Texas towns. Customs and Border Protection announced the opening of a temporary processing facility 15 miles south of Laredo. Twenty-four hours earlier Saenz had to dispatch local police to assist federal authorities to break up a pair of stash houses in which smugglers had crammed dozens of people. Authorities were shocked to find that one of the locations was allegedly run by a teenager.

Situations like these, Saenz said, are entirely avoidable. “It’s really an embarrassment for us as a country now. You know we can do so much better.”

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/a-border-towns-democratic-mayor-has-had-enough/

Governor Greg Abbott today announced that the State of Texas will appeal the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) denial of Texas’ Federal Emergency Declaration request as a result of the escalating crisis at the Texas-Mexico border. Earlier today, the Biden Administration denied the state’s emergency declaration request related to the border crisis. Specifically, the Biden Administration denied Texas’s request for supplemental federal assistance to respond to the thousands of illegal crossings along the border.
 
The Governor sent a letter to President Biden on September 20 requesting this declaration, noting that the federal government’s failure to enforce immigration laws, and in particular, its failure to halt illegal crossings on federal property, which is the sole jurisdiction of the federal government, led to substantial burdens on local and state resources. The failure of the federal government to intervene led to a surge of more than 16,000 migrants at the Del Rio International Bridge for several days.  
 
“President Biden has turned his back on Texans living along the border, and FEMA’s refusal to declare a federal emergency at the border puts their health, safety, and property at risk,” said Governor Abbott. “The State of Texas is appealing this detrimental decision by FEMA because the Biden Administration’s refusal to solve the crisis at our border has led to a strain on local, state, and federal resources. The surge of over 16,000 migrants at the Del Rio International Bridge is just one of the most recent examples of the federal government’s failure to take action. A member of the United States Customs and Border Protection said that order was only maintained thanks to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas National Guard, and local stakeholders, and the President of the National Border Patrol Council estimated that troopers outnumbered federal agents by three to one.
 
“This crisis has not ended and will only get worse if the Biden Administration continues to turn a blind eye to the reality at the border. Texas will continue to step up and address this crisis in full force, but supplemental federal assistance should be granted to further protect Texans and halt the influx of drugs, people, and contraband into our state. I respectfully urge FEMA to reconsider this decision and provide the crucial support the State of Texas needs to secure the border and keep our communities safe.”
 
Governor Abbott made border security funding a priority for the first and second special legislative sessions. The Governor launched Operation Lone Star in early March to help secure the border and combat the smuggling of people and drugs in Texas. There are currently thousands of state personnel, including DPS troopers, agents, and Rangers, and National Guard soldiers who are engaged in the mission and working with local law enforcement. The Governor expanded the mission shortly after its launch to include anti-human trafficking efforts. Governor Abbott’s plan to secure the border also includes the construction of a border wall, in addition to the use of strategic fencing and other barriers. A project manager for the initial stage of building the wall was announced September 16. Earlier this month, the Governor signed House Bill 9 which appropriated $1.8 billion to Texas border security efforts. Among other things, the funding will add more National Guard and additional resources to better secure the border.

https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-intention-to-appeal-fema-denial-of-federal-emergency-declaration-in-response-to-border-crisis

President Joe Biden isn’t the only delusional Democrat in Washington, D.C.

In a party known for mixing hardball politics with blatant dishonesty, outright liars are easy to come by — from Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff in the House to Chuck Schumer and Richard Blumenthal in the Senate.

But for sheer disassociation from reality, for Biden-level oblivion to the obvious, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas has proved again that she’s difficult to beat.

Jackson, a Houston Democrat who’s spent a quarter-century in Congress — God help us — has a well-deserved reputation for spewing nonsense.

Her remarks can be merely stupid — like when she called for gun control while displaying her utter ignorance about what Democrats love to call “assault weapons.” They can be stupidly dangerous – like when she spread an unfounded story that a white man had murdered a young black girl in Houston two years ago.

World-Class Athlete Says He Regrets Getting COVID Vaccine, Now Has Serious Problems

But on Wednesday she veered into the land of lunacy during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, making a statement about the Biden administration’s border crisis that literally any thinking American knows to be flat false.

“Let me pronounce to my friends that the border is both sovereign and secure,” Jackson Lee said. “It is obviously subjected to biased and unfair narratives for political purposes.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee says that the southern border is actually “sovereign and secure,” claiming that it is “subjected to biased and unfair narratives for political purposes.” pic.twitter.com/QSVLccryFj

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 29, 2021

If Jackson Lee considers the southern border secure, it’s difficult to imagine what insecure would look like.Will the border disaster hurt Democrats in the 2022 midterms?Yes No
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Would a secure border be witnessing month after month of record numbers of illegal crossings? (The year’s total is projected to be about 1.85 million, according to the Washington Examiner, eclipsing a 20-year record set in 2000.)

Would a secure border require a state government to begin building a wall to defend its own territory because the Democrat in the White House has abdicated his responsibility to the country?

Would a secure border see thousands of illegal immigrants camping out under a bridge until a politically impotent administration allows them into the country — with a wink and a nod and the legal fig leaf of a future court hearing that all parties know will likely be ignored?

Obviously, the answer to those questions is no.Related:Watch: Obama Comes Out Firing Against Biden’s Border Crisis, Says ‘Open Borders’ Are ‘Unsustainable’

More importantly, just about any American with a modicum of interest in the matter would be well aware of the conditions at the border. Just as any American interested in the truth of the matter would be well aware that if there’s anyone using the illegal immigration crisis for political purposes, it’s Jackson Lee’s own Democrats.

(Just ask the Border Patrol agents being railroaded for doing their jobs on spurious accusations of “racism.”)

Jackson Lee clearly doesn’t have much interest in the truth. But it’s entirely possible, given her long record of dubious statements, that she simply lacks the ability to grasp what the rest of the country is seeing.

Regardless, her comments were met with a blizzard of scorn on social media. Rarely has that kind of scorn been so well deserved.

We gotta do some drug testing….

— Rob Winters (@Rob_Winters) September 29, 2021

So the pictures are not real…

— ASG (@ASG_ison2nite) September 29, 2021

“It’s a shame that people with such a level of ignorance get elected to the US Congress,” one Twitter user lamented.

It’s a shame that people with such a level of ignorance get elected to the US Congress.

— criteriologo (@criteriologo) September 29, 2021

Sounds like she is the one spewing “biased and unfair narratives for political purposes.”

— Anti-Machiavellian (@Boerneman) September 29, 2021

It would be easy to just brand Jackson Lee a liar. After all, she’s a prominent member of a political party that has spent the entirety of the 21st century building its power on lies.

But her brand of untruth goes far beyond the usual Democratic dissembling to nearly being divorced from reality.

Baselessly accusing Border Patrol agents of “racism” is garden-variety leftist lying. It’s doubtful anyone truly believes it, but Democrats keep spitting it out and the establishment media keeps lapping it up. If some innocents happen to get hurt in the process, well, there’s a news cycle to “win.”

Claiming that a border plagued by chaos thanks to Biden’s embrace of illegal immigration is actually “sovereign and secure” is a distortion worthy of the doddering president himself.

A Democrat is going to be in the White House for the next three years. Fortunately, voters have a chance to kick Jackson Lee’s party out of power on Capitol Hill in next November’s midterms.

The entire border debacle — and Democratic lies and delusions about it — should be near the top of the list of targets for Republicans trying to retake Congress.

Jackson Lee’s seat is almost certainly safe, of course. She won re-election in 2020 with 73 percent of the vote. But it shouldn’t be.

Most of her Democratic colleagues aren’t nearly as safe. And they shouldn’t be, either.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers apprehended nearly 100 illegal aliens inside two stash houses in Laredo, Texas, during a 24-hour span last week, the agency announced on Tuesday.

Officers nabbed more than 50 illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras in a stash house discovered on Ligarde Street on Sept. 23. The next evening, CBP officers followed a tip about illegals being housed on Philadelphia Street to discover another stash house. Inside, the authorities found more than 40 illegal aliens from Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico.

CBP noted that all of the illegals were given face masks prior to being processed.

“The substandard conditions typically encountered when stash houses are found can foster a breeding ground for illnesses or other communicable diseases,” the CBP said in a press release on Sept. 28.

Border patrol agents have discovered and dismantled 400 stash houses this fiscal year, resulting in the apprehensions of 7,400 illegal aliens in the Rio Grande Valley. The illegals tend to be from  Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. A stash house disrupted in August was run by two U.S. citizens with extensive criminal records, the CBP said at the time.

In late May and June, CBP dismantled six stash houses over the course of less than a week, leading to the capture of 173 illegal aliens.

U.S. authorities have apprehended more than 1.2 million illegal border crossers this year, a number unseen in years. Many more evade capture.

Border Patrol agents have arrested 8,691 criminal aliens coming across the southern border in the past 10 months. Between them, the aliens have committed 12,685 crimes.

On Aug. 14, border agents in south Texas arrested two MS-13 gang members. One, a convicted murderer from El Salvador, was apprehended after illegally crossing into the United States with a group near Mission, Texas. The 44-year-old man spent three years in prison for a murder in California in the late ’90s and was imprisoned again in 2005 for “re-entry of a deported alien,” according to CBP.

Many criminal aliens are arrested while trying to evade Border Patrol, or as they attempt to blend into large groups crossing the border. While Border Patrol agents are tied up dealing with large groups, the cartels and criminal organizations smuggle contraband and people through unpatrolled areas nearby.

Several Border Patrol agents told The Epoch Times that agents estimate they’re apprehending between 10 percent and 20 percent of all illegal border crossers, although it’s impossible to estimate how many have avoided detection and capture.

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/nearly-100-illegal-aliens-nabbed-in-two-stash-houses-in-texas_4022304.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Take all of the imagery you have seen of the over 14,000 Haitian migrants camped under an international bridge in the small Texas border town of Del Rio and add the complications of disease, public excrement, unbearable heat, and heightened frustrations. It has led to violence that has injured Border Patrol officers.

Now close your eyes and imagine it is 100 times worse.

Because that’s what it is, said Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, the freshman Republican who represents 42 percent of the border. The overwhelmed city of Del Rio had been in a rapidly deteriorating crisis situation when illegal immigrants first began surging into the community in January, but Gonzales now says the situation here is a “Category 5” and that the environment is unlike anything he has ever seen before.

“I arrived here today to pure chaos,” he said. “I’ve never seen it in this environment. There literally is no border left.”

Gonzales said Del Rio is in dire straits. “There’s no doubt there’s COVID here, there’s measles, tuberculosis, all kinds of diseases,” he said. “You’ve got kids running around in nothing but diapers. A handful of port-a-potties—my God, the stench is terrible. This is not good for the migrants. It is not good for the residents. It’s not good for wherever our government is sending them in the interior of the country.”

Despite the Department of Homeland Security insisting repeatedly the Haitians would be deported, as of Tuesday, it had only removed 1,000 of the estimated 15,000 under the bridge. Multiple news organizations including CNN reported that buses have been escorting them to a nonprofit organization in town where they purchase bus or plane tickets. They are then moved to a gas station where buses pick them up and take them to other parts of the country.

The Washington Post reported that the number is in the thousands of those released to parts unknown in the interior of the country.

“My takeaway after I walked through it all, I look over at the sector chief, and I go, ‘Man, I just feel sad.’ He goes, ‘I know. Everyone just feels beaten here,’” Gonzales said.

Del Rio residents have seen their lives turned upside down. The international bridge has been closed—a lifeline bringing tens of millions of dollars to the local economy. If you’re a small-business owner and your business has somehow survived COVID-19, something like this could easily wipe you out.

Everybody has been sucked into this chaos.

“The worst thing is that we are not even talking about the other places where this is happening,” Gonzales said. “Today, we’re talking about Del Rio, but tomorrow, it’ll be Laredo or Brownsville or Eagle Pass or El Paso. This problem is not going away.”

Gonzales said he asked the chief of Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, at a Homeland Security Committee hearing about its surge of agents to Del Rio. “Those agents are coming from somewhere,” he said. “And my worry is other sectors are going to be weakened, thus creating a national security crisis, putting us at risk in other sectors, because everyone is focusing on Del Rio.”

Ortiz agreed. He also confirmed that reports were true that migrants had assaulted Border Patrol agents—five of them, to be exact.

It is hard to imagine that this scene is playing out in America. It is also hard to imagine that our government has failed to secure the border or address this crisis with the seriousness it deserves.

Which is what makes the other part of this crisis political: Until a photo of a Border Patrol agent on horseback herding migrants back over the Rio Grande to Mexico was circulated on Twitter, Democrats, journalists and the White House had almost completely ignored or downplayed the 15,000 people who had been living in squalor under the bridge.

Blue-check Twitter cried foul, claiming that the agent’s long reins were whips and absurdly likening the image to that of a white overseer whipping a slave. Suddenly, not only did press secretary Jen Psaki and the vice president notice, but they along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House press corps fabricated a story about Del Rio—not about the appalling migrant crisis, but about how racist the Border Patrol is.

That story has been debunked, and to date, there are no reports that any migrant was ever “whipped” by agents.

It irks Gonzales that Border Patrol agents, who risk their lives and are coming under immense pressure right now, are having their actions and motives unfairly impugned. “They see their jobs as patriotic,” the former Navy cryptologist said. “They know they are both protecting their community as well as their country.”

The Biden administration and Washington Democrats’ blind eye to this crisis have already had an impact politically. Hints of the future may have cropped up in last year’s election, when majority-Hispanic areas rejected the Biden campaign’s rhetoric that former President Donald Trump’s handling of the border was racist.

Texans pummeled President Joe Biden in several border counties, with large numbers of Hispanic voters going for Trump. That shift away from Democrats may grow given the handling of the border. Already this summer, Republicans unexpectedly won two big mayoral elections in border towns that are overwhelmingly Hispanic and historically Democratic.

And it is not just South Texas Hispanics who are running away from Biden and by default from the Democrats. It is all Texas Hispanics. Last week, a Dallas Morning News/University of Texas-Tyler poll showed that Biden’s approval rating with Hispanics in Texas is 19 points underwater, with only 35 percent approving of the job he is doing and a whopping 54 percent disapproving. There may be a realignment in the works.

In short, while white liberals in Washington think that using words like “Latinx” matters to the Hispanic community or connects them with its values, they are ignoring a crisis that deeply affects middle-class Hispanic families. They justifiably worry about their safety and their ability to pursue prosperity. The Democrats’ oblivious lack of concern for their real-world concerns is already backfiring.

Maybe if one of them, any of them, spent a few days living in a border town, the party would understand just how dire and dangerous life there has become.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/life-along-the-border-collapses_4020969.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-09-29&mktids=cfd9ba0d5a1cea6c8d4be663921c6b70&est=8X%2Fs3%2Bm7BZ6uudBk9VeJtAHGGtmbghEhMxKpcfKmZejZjdGwSdJZDFwD%2BmK4ixsHnQ%3D%3D

The Biden administration’s repeated release of illegal immigrants has drawn a legal challenge from the state of Florida.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, sued the federal government over its “catch-and-release” policy, which has led to the freeing of over 225,000 illegal immigrants this year.

The lawsuit primarily concerns the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, which is granted in cases where authorities rule they have a legitimate fear of persecution based on their race, religion, or several other reasons.

Federal law requires the government to detain the asylum seekers until authorities rule on their case. But under President Joe Biden, it has released at least 225,000 illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, so far, according to Customs and Border Protection data.

“Releasing this many arriving aliens into the interior necessarily means that the government is violating congressional commands in the immigration laws,” the 23-page suit, filed in federal court in Pensacola, states.

“We are seeing dramatic effects at our border. It is an unmitigated crisis based on this president’s refusal to follow federal law. It’s in black and white folks, and it’s not a president’s responsibility to decide whether he agrees with the law. In fact, the head of an executive branch must follow the law,” Moody told reporters during a briefing in Lee County.

Florida has been negatively affected through elevated costs to hold illegal immigrants, officials say.

Florida is asking the court to find the Biden administration’s “catch-and-release” policy unlawful and require defendants to stop enforcing the policy while coming into alignment with requirements set by federal law.

The Biden administration did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials have defended the widespread release of illegal immigrants, claiming the law is being followed because they’re being given notices to appear in court or at an immigration office.

“We remain in touch with them. We monitor them to ensure their appearance in court at the designated time of appearance,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters in Washington last week after the administration released over 12,000 illegal immigrants who were clustered in Del Rio, Texas.

But fewer than 6 in 10 illegal immigrant asylum seekers show up in court, according to Department of Justice data.

Florida officials say the Biden administration’s policies are designed to boost immigration numbers and illegal immigration has skyrocketed since the Democrat took office.

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration has been bypassing what previous administrations did, which was only releasing illegal immigrants when detention facilities were full.

One way the administration is doing that is by using its parole power, which was designed to be used for a small number of cases and only for “urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit.”

“The policy of releasing immigrants into the country on parole is vast, widespread, and historic in its scope,” Bensman told The Epoch Times.

The new suit asks the judge to stop the Biden administration from paroling immigrants without engaging in a case-by-case review.

Also on Tuesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, announced an executive order that bars all Florida agencies under his purview from facilitating illegal immigration and requires state officials to collect information on the costs and scope of illegal immigration in the state.

“Since President Biden took office—which has been less than one year—the Border Patrol has released nearly a quarter-million illegal aliens into the United States,” DeSantis said in a statement. “This executive order makes it clear that Florida resources will not be used to prop up the failed open border agenda enacted by this administration.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/unmitigated-crisis-florida-sues-biden-administration-over-release-of-illegal-immigrants_4020891.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on Tuesday to protect Floridians from the “dangerous” impact of the Biden border crisis.

Executive Order 21-223 prohibits all Florida agencies from “facilitating illegal immigration into Florida, unless otherwise required by federal or state law, and require the collection of information from state officials on the scope and costs of illegal immigration in Florida.”

Live Now: Governor DeSantis is in Lee County to sign the Biden Border Crisis Executive Order.https://t.co/SBVH0clNJ6

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) September 28, 2021

“Since President Biden took office – which has been less than one year – the Border Patrol has released nearly a quarter million illegal aliens into the United States,” DeSantis said in a statement.

“This executive order makes it clear that Florida resources will not be used to prop up the failed open border agenda enacted by this administration.”

The order also appointed Larry Keefe, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, as public safety czar to ensure the actions in the executive order are implemented.

“Attorney General Ashley Moody has also filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration challenging its policy of catching and releasing the staggering number of illegal aliens apprehended at the border into the United States,” DeSantis said.

The state attorney general addressed the need for the executive order due to the Biden administration’s “brazen disregard” for immigration laws.

“The Biden Administration’s brazen disregard for federal immigration law is jeopardizing the safety and security of our state and nation, all while costing Florida taxpayers,” Moody said in the statement.

“Biden’s lax border policy is an open invitation to dangerous criminals, human traffickers and drugs traffickers to enter the United States — creating a crisis at the Southern Border like we have never seen.”

Keefe noted the state of Florida has often been impacted more directly during times of increased illegal immigration.

“As a former U.S. Attorney, I saw illegal aliens that would get deported and come back, and then get deported and come back in an endless cycle,” Keefe said in the statement.

Florida Just Sued the Biden Administration, Alleging ‘Illegal’ Policies That Violate Federal Law

“The states, including Florida, bear the brunt of this cycle. Over the coming weeks and months, our state agencies will be addressing the impacts illegal immigration has had on our state. I want to thank Governor DeSantis for appointing me to lead these efforts.”

In July, DeSantis visited the southern border of Texas where Florida law enforcement assisted with the apprehension of over 2,800 undocumented immigrants in 23 days and over 100 criminal arrests, according to a news release.

“They’ve made over 2,000 apprehensions, over 100 felony arrests, and they say that almost 70 percent of everybody that they have interdicted said their ultimate destination was the state of Florida,” the governor said at a media briefing, Fox News reported.

“If you think that having a wide-open border 1,000 miles, however far it was, away doesn’t affect here, you’re wrong.”

An illegal immigrant teenager from Mexico was arrested for allegedly setting wildfires in California, said Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials.

Agents with the CBP’s El Centro Sector apprehended the illegal alien, who was not identified, and accused him of setting fires in the Jacumba Wilderness last week.

When Border Patrol agents responded, “they located an unknown individual in the vicinity of the reported fire, attempting to start another fire,” according to CBP in a news release. “Agents attempted to extinguish the second fire but had little success.”

Then, the Bureau of Land Management provided dispatched an aircraft with firefighting capabilities to stop the wildfire, and the “combined resources and firefighting efforts were able to control the fires” the next day, the agency said.

The accused arsonist was identified as an 18-year-old male Mexican national who was arrested for illegally entering the United States and was transported to the El Centro processing location. The teen was “caught in the act” of trying to start a wildfire, the agency said.

The Bureau of Land Management will now be investigating the wildfires as arson, according to the news release.

“Our environment and natural places are national interests that all Americans hold dear,” Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino said in a statement. “I would like to thank our partners at Bureau of Land Management as they work tirelessly to conserve and protect the fragile Jacumba Mountains Wilderness area; the location where this undocumented migrant purposefully set fire to endangered Big Horn Sheep habitat.”

The Jacumba Wilderness, which spans about 31,000 acres and is managed by the bureau, is located in California’s Imperial County, which is located along a remote stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a release issued earlier this month, Border Patrol said that about 9,728 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions have been apprehended in the United States during the fiscal year 2021 to date. That represents a sharp increase over the past three years, while during the fiscal year 2020, only 2,438 illegals with criminal convictions were arrested.

The arrest of the alleged Mexican arsonist comes as the Biden administration faces criticism of how it struggled to contain a surge of Haitians who amassed underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, prompting concerns of the spread of transmissible diseases.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday said that some 12,000 of 17,000 Haitian illegal immigrants were effectively released into the interior U.S. in recent days with court dates.

“Approximately, I think it’s about 10,000 or so, 12,000,” Mayorkas told “Fox News Sunday” when asked how many have already been released.

Illegal Immigrant Mexican Teen Arrested for Setting Wildfires in California: CBP (theepochtimes.com)

Former President Donald Trump released a statement on Monday attacking the Biden administration for releasing “17,000 illegal immigrants” from Del Rio, Texas, into America as part of a twin debacle alongside failure in Afghanistan, arguing, “Our Country is being destroyed!”

“All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are,” Trump began in his statement posted to Twitter by spokeswoman Liz Harrington.

NEW!

President Donald J. Trump:

“All 17,000 illegal immigrants who entered our Country from Haiti and other places unknown have now been released into our Country with no vetting, checking, or even minimal understanding of who they are. pic.twitter.com/BiqEkdthNa

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 27, 2021

Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a briefing on Friday that approximately 30,000 mostly Haitian migrants had been encountered in Del Rio since Sept. 9, with only about 2,000 deported to Haiti.

Cutter Spots Chinese Fleet Near Americas, Third Officer Looks at Radar and Instantly Sees the Red Flags

Many were given a notice to appear for an asylum hearing and were released after being removed from a camp under the Del Rio International Bridge that included about 15,000 people at its height.

Trump also criticized the Biden administration for releasing the Haitian migrants without COVID-19 testing or other health checks.

“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation,” he said in the statement.

“Some are very sick with extremely contagious diseases, even worse than the China Virus. They are not masked or mandated, but just let free to roam all over our Country and affect what was just a year ago, a great Nation.

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 27, 2021

The former president argued that the Biden administration’s open border policies have resulted in America being “humiliated like never before.”

In addition to the border crisis, he also noted President Joe Biden’s “embarrassing” withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!” Trump said.

“Now we are a Nation humiliated like never before, both with the historically embarrassing “withdrawal” from Afghanistan, and our Border where millions of people are pouring in. Our Country is being destroyed!”

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) September 27, 2021

Arizona AG Makes Big Announcement on Eye-Opening Election Audit: ‘I Will Take All Necessary Actions’

The Biden administration withdrew all U.S. military personnel on Aug. 31, leaving hundreds of Americans behind under the rule of the Taliban.

In addition, the military departure included leaving behind vast amounts of military equipment, providing tremendous resources to arm the Islamic extremist group.

Further, 13 U.S. military personnel were killed during a suicide bombing in August outside the Kabul airport.Should Trump run for president in 2024?Yes No
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In response, the Biden administration authorized a drone strike, originally reported to have taken out an Islamic State group leader.

A later report revealed the drone strike accidentally hit an innocent target, killing 10 people, including seven children.

An unknown number of Americans and allies remain in Afghanistan nearly a month after the Biden administration’s military departure.

Trump: Biden’s Twin Debacles Have Made Us ‘A Nation Humiliated Like Never Before’ (westernjournal.com)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would hire any Border Patrol agent fired by the Biden administration after several top White House officials said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would investigate images of agents on horseback blocking Haitian illegal immigrants from entering the United States.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said his agency would probe claims that the agents whipped Haitian aliens with the horse’s reins, despite Border Patrol union officials and the Getty photographer who captured the images saying they didn’t whip anyone.

Those agents, Abbott said, “wouldn’t have been in that situation had the Biden administration enforced the immigration laws.”

If President Joe Biden “takes any action against them whatsoever—I have worked side by side with those Border Patrol agents—I want them to know something,” Abbott said. “If they are [at] risk of losing their job by a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.”

During a news conference on Sept. 24, Mayorkas dedicated a significant amount of time answering questions about the images of agents on horseback, while White House press secretary Jen Psaki previously said that horseback patrols would be suspended. The agents were responded to a surge of illegal immigrants from Haiti who had amassed in Del Rio, Texas, and camped underneath a bridge before DHS moved them elsewhere.

“I promise you, those people will pay,” Biden told reporters at the White House hours before Mayorkas held his press conference. “There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment. But beyond an embarrassment, it’s dangerous. It’s wrong.”

In describing the scene near a river crossing area in Del Rio, Getty photographer Paul Ratje said that Haitian men were running and “trying to go around the horses.”

“I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” he told KTSM, referring to the agents. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

Brandon Judd, an official with a Border Patrol agent union, told The Epoch Times in an interview last week that the agents “did not use those reins in any way, shape, or form to try to strike anybody.”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has received significant criticism from progressive and pro-immigration activists, who claim that DHS’s plan to deport some illegal immigrants back to Haiti violates U.S. protocols on refugees. However, Republicans and local elected officials who represent municipalities along the Texas border have said the Biden administration’s messaging and policies are confusing and are triggering the surge in illegal immigration.

Mayorkas, during an interview with Fox News on Sunday, confirmed that more than 12,000 Haitian illegal immigrants who have been moved from the bridge area were relocated to other parts of the United States for processing.

Texas Governor Vows to Hire Any Border Patrol Agent Fired by Biden Administration (theepochtimes.com)

Former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said President Joe Biden was “absolutely wrong” to condemn Border Patrol agents without waiting for the facts.

Gabbard was interviewed Saturday by Fox News host Jesse Watters on the show “Watters’ World.”

Last week, a photo of a Border Patrol agent on horseback showed the agent using what appeared to be a whip as Haitian illegal immigrants accumulated near the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas.

However photographer Paul Ratje said that what many eyes thought was a whip was in fact the rein of the horse the agent was riding.

“I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” Ratje said, according to Fox News. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

Biden, however, condemned the agents in a White House news conference.

“[I]t was horrible what — to see, as you saw — to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay. They will be — an investigation is underway now, and there will be consequences. There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment. But beyond an embarrassment, it’s dangerous; it’s wrong,” he said.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nA8N7oXU5DU?feature=oembed

For comments that were based on anything but the facts, Gabbard said, “He’s absolutely wrong and he needs to apologize to the American people for saying what he said.”

“What he essentially did was act as judge, jury and executioner for these Customs and Border [Protection] agents on horseback,” she said.

“How can they expect to have any kind of fair outcome to an investigation when the president of the United States has already declared their guilt and that they will be punished?” she said.

Gabbard said the incident is troubling because it is part of a larger problem of issuing judgment before the facts.

“If we are no longer a country of laws, if we are no longer a country where we know we will be presumed innocent unless proven guilty, then we don’t have a democracy,” she said.

“That’s the increasing feeling that a lot of us have, is that we are losing our democracy and moving closer and closer to what essentially is an autocracy,” she said.

Tulsi Gabbard: Schiff and Big Tech ‘Oligarchs’ Are Much More Dangerous Than Capitol Mob

I was hoping that Biden would keep his promise to try to unite our country, but instead this admin has used race and identity politics to divide us, our freedom of speech and civil liberties are under assault, inflation is going through the roof, and we’ve got open borders. pic.twitter.com/uFOxutndho

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) September 24, 2021

Gabbard said snap judgments that become media dogma are dangerous, noting that those who condemn police officers and others when it fits a political narrative “are getting away with it.”

“They are unwilling to sacrifice their interests for the interests of the country,” she said.

“They have no business being in positions of leadership at any level in our society because who suffers as a result of this? It’s the American people. It’s our democracy. And they don’t care about the cost and the toll that that takes,” Gabbard continued.

“And this is why leadership that puts service above self, that puts the interest of the American people in our country first, is so critical and essential — especially now.”

Tulsi Gabbard Savages Biden Before Issuing a Warning: ‘He’s Absolutely Wrong and He Needs to Apologize to the American People’ (westernjournal.com)

With the recent flood of Haitian illegal immigrants a constant reminder of the precarious nature of border safety in Joe Biden’s America, Texas is calling for volunteers to help secure its border.

Officials of the Texas Military Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety have issued a call for National Guard members to volunteer to protect Texas through Operation Lone Star, a state-funded effort launched this spring by Gov. Greg Abbott to pick up the slack when federal officials allowed the border to become a sieve.

“We are still looking for Texas Guardsmen to support Operation Lone Star. Please help us stop human trafficking, smuggling, and illegal border crossings while we are #securingtexas Lodging and per diem included,” the department wrote in a Twitter post last week.

We are still looking for Texas Guardsmen to support Operation Lone Star. Please help us stop human trafficking, smuggling, and illegal border crossings while we are #securingtexas
Lodging and per diem included.

Click here for more information https://t.co/F3itNkXZar pic.twitter.com/bUZuZ6uc2S

— Texas Military Dept (@TXMilitary) September 23, 2021

“Texas continues to work diligently to secure our southern border under the leadership of Governor Abbott,” DPS Director Steven McCraw said, according to a news release posted on the department’s website.

He said that there is “tangible evidence of how combined local and state operations being conducted are protecting communities across the nation.”

McCraw said, “Operation Lone Star is preventing crime despite the federal government’s failure to provide the brave men and women of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection [with] the infrastructure, technology and personnel needed to secure the border.”

Through Operation Lone Star, Texas forces are “confronting the crisis and cracking down on the cartels and human traffickers daily. Texas Guard soldiers provide boots on the ground, and other valuable assets, to help identify illegal activity and apprehend illegal immigrants,” he said.

“The Texas Military Department is made up of Texans who come from communities across our great state; we are always ready and always there to support our partner agencies in protecting our home and preventing criminal elements from entering Texas,” Maj. Gen. Tracy Norris, the adjutant general of Texas, said in the news release.

“We have a long history of enduring relationships with local, state and federal agencies in conducting Homeland Security missions that dates back more than 100 years and we are proud to continue this legacy as Texans serving Texas.”

Through early September, Operation Lone Star referred  64,900 illegal immigrants to federal officials, according to Breitbart.

Texas law enforcement has also made more than 5,000 criminal arrests and seized more than four tons of illegal drugs, Breitbart reported.

DPS Lt. Christopher Olivarez said the work is not easy, according to KVEO-TV in Brownsville, Texas.Rela

Biden Admin Has Released 12,000 Haitians Into US with Thousands More in Processing

“Troopers that work along the border, they deal with this day in and day out,” Olivarez said.

“But the numbers that we are seeing this year have been historic, just the surge of migrants that have been coming across, the criminal activity, the increase in vehicle pursuits, we have never seen that before in prior years.”

Texas DPS Regional Director Victor Escalon told KVEO that children are often used by smugglers.

“The adults were getting away with driving the narcotic but more so driving the human smuggling, the migrants,” Escalon said.

“And we’re seeing juveniles, we’re still seeing juveniles being more aggressive and wanting to fight with our personnel.”

Olivarez said Texas needs help.

“The federal government needs to help Border Patrol and provide them with more resources because right now they are being stretched thin,” Olivarez told KVEO.

“We’re the ones filling those gaps along the border because they are being taken away from the field and processing all the migrants that are coming across.”

Escalon said constant vigilance is essential.

“We’ve got to be out there every day, we have to be visible, they’ve got to see us in those areas of interest,” Escalon told KVEO.

“The airplanes, your helicopters, your boats that are in the water, that is a great deterrence, and having fencing, that is a great deterrence.”

Operation Lone Star: Texas Calls for Volunteers to Hold the Line at Southern Border (westernjournal.com)

To WOAI-TV in San Antonio, Texas, the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge’s appearance at the Del Rio International Bridge migrant camp in order to hand out food to illegal immigrants, mostly from Haiti, was a sob story.

Headline: “EXCLUSIVE: Group of Americans go through extreme measures to help Haitian migrants.” The outlet mentioned that some people call the group controversial, but the majority of the report focused on Border Patrol turning them away at Del Rio.

The group’s 12-vehicle caravan ended up going into Mexico through Eagle Pass.

“We got together in San Antonio went to Costco and Sams, got food, water, diapers, and toiletries. We went to Del Rio, when we got there, Border Patrol told us we could only give it to a church,” group member Yatazaq Ban Yahawadah said. “We told them we did not want to do that because the people are not at a church, they are under a bridge.”

“We came around through the Mexico side, now we are in Mexico to give our brothers the resources we have for them,” he added.

The report from WOAI’s Yami Virgin again mentioned that the group was controversial, but not why. That’s somewhat important, because the ISUPK is considered an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, among others.

The ISUPK is one of a number of groups that believe black people and other people of color are “true Israelites” and that Jews are imposters. Unless you live in a major city and have been subject to the group’s incessant sidewalk proselytizing, the last time you probably thought about the movement was the Nick Sandmann case, where a black Israelite’s hate-preaching was a catalyst for the events of that day.

As Breitbart noted, the SPLC — usually considered the gold standard in determining hate groups by the media despite its raging leftist bias — deems the ISUPK and similar groups to be anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist.

“The [Black Hebrew Israelite] hate groups listed by the SPLC believe in ideas of black supremacy and bigotry against Caucasians, Jews and members of the LGBTQ community. They believe that, as members of the 12 Tribes of Israel — consisting only of African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans — they are God’s ‘chosen people.’ Jews are considered ‘imposters,’” the SPLC’s write-up reads.

“Caucasians and members of the LGBTQ community are deemed ‘devils.’ Extreme Black Hebrew Israelites believe that individuals outside the movement are deserving of slavery or death. The most numerous of the BHI groups in the United States are under the banners of Israel United in Christ, the Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge and Great Millstone.”

The ADL also notes the “ISUPK sells clothing under the brand UPKFRESH. Their products include a t-shirt depicting a slave ship and the Middle Passage of the slave trade with the words ‘True Holocaust.’”

Black ‘Extremist’ Group Appears at Texas Border Bridge Camp with Food for Migrants https://t.co/cYqoVHQOxh via @BreitbartNews

— Bob Price (@BobPriceBBTX) September 24, 2021

Charming. That’s more than just generic-label “controversial,” as WOAI’s report indicated.

Photographer Behind Photos of Border Agents on Horseback Blows Massive Hole in Establishment Media, Biden Narrative

They may look like street preachers dressed in outfits professional wrestlers would turn down for being too outlandish, but keep in mind this is can be an extremist ideology that spreads hate. Lest we forget, Black Hebrew Israelites were behind a 2019 anti-Semitic shooting spree in Jersey City, New Jersey, which killed four people, three of them in a kosher supermarket.

The WOAI report, meanwhile, did little but lionize the ISUPK.

Here’s another quote from Yahawadah, when asked about traveling through an area of Mexico that’s subject to a level 4 warning for violence by the State Department: “Being in a dangerous situation that is being black, Hispanic or Native American. Our lives are dangerous, we live in the most dangerous communities, we live in the worst dangerous conditions.”

There were no questions about motives involved. There’s been a border crisis going on for months now. You would think it might occur to local media to ask a black nationalist group known for hate-preaching why its members decided to show up for Haitian migrants when they hadn’t gotten involved previously.

Rest assured, if the Proud Boys showed up with supplies for anyone, no matter what their race, the headline wouldn’t be “EXCLUSIVE: Group of Americans go through extreme measures to help [insert group here].” This isn’t a complaint, mind you; that’s what media is supposed to do.

An extremist group known for aggressive proselytizing shouldn’t be given a chance to use the chaos at the border as an opportunity to spread its message under the auspices of providing food and supplies to migrants. If it is, local media shouldn’t be amplifying it. Period.

Report: Black Extremist Group Seizing Opportunity Amid Chaos at Southern Border (westernjournal.com)

The tragic mess on the Texas border and the huge influx of Haitians (FYI: who aren’t fleeing Haiti; they left Haiti quite a while ago for Latin America) has created a dangerous and unhygienic situation that has been compared to the third world.

Events are moving so fast, it’s impossible for us to track them all in a newsletter, but here are some of the most recent reports from Fox News’ Bill Melugin.

Melugin is doing a great job of covering this story that the White House is outright lying about while much of the mainstream media studiously ignores it.

One of the more striking revelations is that despite the White House’s toothless claims that the border is closed and every illegal crosser will be sent home, Melugin reports that they’re actually being given “requests” (not orders) to appear at an ICE office within the next 60 days.

I’m sure they’ll all comply with those requests.

When called out in the Senate for his disastrous handling of the border, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas got snippy, and instead of answering the question, he snapped that he works 18 hours a day (imagine how bad the crisis would be if he worked 24/7 at it!).

His latest move that suggests a sleep-deprived mind is to take the mounted Border Patrol agents off their already impossible duty and put them on desk jobs, despite the woeful lack of personnel we’re already suffering and the fact that the wild accusation against them is both bogus and idiotic.

The left needs a constant stream of fake news to make their opponents look racist because otherwise, Americans might focus on real news and realize these people should never be trusted with any public office above the rank of assistant dog catcher.

The latest example is the continuing brouhaha over photos they claim showed the Border Patrol whipping Haitian illegal immigrants when those were actually their leather reins flying.

They don’t carry whips, and they didn’t strike anyone with their reins, which they spin to keep people back for their own safety and to prevent anyone from grabbing the reins and taking control of their horses.

This is standard procedure for cops on horseback.

But never mind that: Leftists who know even less about cowboy skills than they do about math skills are continuing their outrage fest even after the “whipping migrants” narrative was debunked all the way to the bunkhouse.

Leave it to Rep. Maxine Waters to have the craziest take on the story, not only accusing the agents of using (nonexistent) whips on migrants but saying, “What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery.”

“I’m unhappy, and I’m not just unhappy with the cowboys who were running down Haitians and using their reins to whip them. I’m unhappy with this administration,” Rep. Maxine Waters says at a news conference on the situation at the U.S. southern border. https://t.co/tUeqoESHTP pic.twitter.com/BuWTMs8ilf

— ABC News (@ABC) September 22, 2021

Exclusive from Gen. Flynn: We Are in the Midst of a Fascist Power Grab, But We the People Still Have Options

That’s as offensive as downplaying the Holocaust by claiming your political opponent is “literally Hitler,” which is also something the left does regularly. But supposedly more responsible officials were almost as bad.

Even the president and vice president, desperate for any distraction from their cascade of tragic disasters, pointed fingers at the Border Patrol cavalry, with Biden calling the (false) accusation disturbing, Jen Psaki declaring it “obviously horrific” and Kamala Harris saying it’s “horrible” and demanding a “thorough investigation.”

Uh, Vice President Harris? If you really want a thorough investigation of what’s happening on the border, might I suggest you start by actually going there?

Mike Huckabee: Biden’s White House Is Outright Lying About the Situation on Our Border (westernjournal.com)

Fox News on Wednesday ran a scroll listing the many controversies plaguing the Biden administration during its eighth month, and the moment really put things into context.

We’re n deep trouble.

Not that we didn’t already know our country has descended into complete chaos. That much has been obvious for some time. It’s everywhere you go, actually.

Grocery stores, gas stations, airports and the passable portions of the country’s southern border are all reminders of how terrible President Joe Biden has been for America.

Walk by a TV, though, and the larger picture comes into focus.

That was especially true on Fox News when “America Reports” anchors Shannon Bream and John Roberts rolled out a list of the ongoing crises, tragedies and other disasters plaguing the country and its inept leadership.

“It’s been eight whole months, but it looks like the honeymoon is over,” Bream said while Fox viewers were reminded of the many failings of the Biden administration.

A graphic displaying “current controversies” scrolled upward as the pair commented on the 18 different issues the network had keyed in on. Bream declared that not even the “mainstream media can ignore” all the trouble.

Those troubles include reports that thousands of Haitian migrants who have been camped out along the border in Texas are being released into the country. That occurred after the White House assured that no such thing would happen.

Roberts then noted that Biden was “getting called out for not calling out China by name at the United Nations” when he addressed the global body this past week and managed to make no mention of the world’s largest human rights abuser.

Fox’s scrolling Biden crisis graphic reminded viewers that while they face being treated as second-class citizens if they’re not vaccinated against the coronavirus, no such mandates exist for people who are literally breaking the law by being in the country.

It also pointed out Biden’s mixed messaging about COVID-19 booster shots, which are now not being recommended for the general population by the Food and Drug Administration. Biden sure stopped talking about that subject quickly.

The adults are back in charge, right?

The current administration has managed to anger France, the country’s oldest ally, while also moving to leave the Israeli people vulnerable to attacks from Hamas terrorists.

Landowners Fight Back Against Biden Plan to Control Americans’ Property

In case anyone had forgotten that the U.S. military surrendered full control of Afghanistan to the Taliban last month, Fox’s crisis meter reminded them.

That’s all going on, and we can expect, any day now, a capitulation to Iran over nuclear weapons. It feels like a matter of time before pallets of cash start landing in Tehran.

There was also present on Fox’s list the fact that not one single person in the White House or the president’s Cabinet has claimed responsibility for a drone strike in Kabul that killed seven children. There has also been no accountability over the fact that the Pentagon left American citizens behind in Afghanistan as troops were ordered out.

Labor shortages, rising prices on basic commodities and high gas prices are all still with us as domestic issues to remind everyone just how bad the Democratic Party’s ideas are.

The opening segment from Bream and Roberts on Wednesday served as a sobering reminder of just how much trouble this country is in. Simultaneously, it somehow also failed to capture the magnitude of the situation.

The good news: There are just under three and a half years left of this madness — if we’re lucky.

Fox News Runs Devastating List of Every Single Current Biden Controversy, It’s Worse Than You Think (westernjournal.com)

Facebook Inc. has been revealed to be an enabler in the humanitarian crisis at the southern border by permitting information about illegally crossing the border to spread on WhatsApp.

Roughly 14,000 Haitian migrants arrived at the border this month, coming through Mexico into the Rio Grande Valley community of Del Rio, Texas, according to the Associated Press.

The outlet reported that since President Joe Biden took office, migrants had been informed through social media to arrive in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, before coming to the United States.

The community borders Del Rio and is generally considered safer than other nearby towns.

The AP highlighted the story of a Haitian migrant named Fabricio Jean, who is now in the migrant encampment along the Del Rio International Bridge, and how he was able to arrive in the U.S.

“You will need about 20,000 pesos (about $1,000 U.S. dollars) for the buses. You need to take this bus to this location and then take another bus,” Jean said, citing tips sent to him by his brother through WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook.

Another woman who arrived with her two teenage children told the outlet her cousin sent her audio messages on the app, which guided them to the U.S.

“Wait in Mexico until this month is over. They will pick up everyone under the bridge. After that, they will give me the contact to enter Miami,” her cousin said in the recording.

According to the report, Facebook’s current policy does allow for information about migration to be communicated through its platforms, even if it is information about illegal immigration.

The Big Tech company does draw the line when it comes to sending information requesting money for human smuggling activities and bans all posts of that nature.

Last week, instructions on getting through Mexico, including routes to avoid and specific bus companies to use, were posted by a member of a Facebook group for Haitians in Chile.

“Good luck and be careful,” a translation of the post said.

Migrants have also been using YouTube to share information on how to get into the U.S.

The AP also highlighted the story of Robins Exile, who left Brazil after losing his job, and his pregnant wife. On their way to Ciudad Acuña, the couple changed course and went to Tijuana, Mexico, after other migrants shared warnings on YouTube and WhatsApp.

“A lot of Haitians are advising now not to come to Acuña,” he said. “They say it’s no longer a good place.”

In the spring, temporary protections were offered to Haitians escaping social unrest, however, those protections were limited to those in the U.S. before July 29.

Many of the social media posts did not include that information, leaving many Haitians still seeking to enter the U.S. with the impression that they would also be eligible for the protections.

“[W]e are very concerned that Haitians who are taking the irregular migration path are receiving misinformation that the border is open,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said this week.

The administration also worried the migrants believed “they qualify for protected status despite the expired deadline.”

“I want to make sure it is known that this is not the way to come to the United States,” Mayorkas said.

Those who made it to Del Rio are facing a variety of outcomes, drawing bipartisan criticism.

Many conservatives are frustrated that migrants are being released into the U.S. and given court papers, whereas liberals are furious about some migrants being deported back to Haiti via repatriation flights.

Daniel Lewis Foote, who the Biden administration appointed in July to be the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, resigned from his position Wednesday due to the decision to deport the refugees.

“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life,” he said in his letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”

SCOOP: Special Envoy for Haiti, Amb Daniel Foote, a career member of foreign service, has RESIGNED. In his letter of resignation, he says he will not be associated with the U.S.’s “inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees.” Letter attached. pic.twitter.com/KlW5GoTF3u

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) September 23, 2021

The Biden administration’s immigration policies have been primarily responsible for the crisis, and it has now been revealed that Big Tech added fuel to the fire by allowing people to get details about the dangerous and often illegal journey across the southern border.

‘Good Luck and Be Careful’: Infuriating Report Shows Facebook’s Role in Texas Border Emergency (westernjournal.com)

Texans are doing the job America won’t do. At least, what the Biden administration won’t do.

The state Department of Public Safety and the National Guard used hundreds of state-owned vehicles — most of them apparently SUVs — to create a barrier to help stop the surge of illegal immigrants into Texas, according to the KXAS-TV in Fort Worth.

Gov. Greg Abbott said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that Texas must use “unprecedented” measures to stop the influx. The SUV barrier appeared outside Del Rio, where about 15,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, have entered the U.S. from Mexico in recent days.

“They have created a steel barrier preventing people from being able to cross the border,” the Republican said, according to KXAS.

“One day there were countless people coming across the border, then the DPS put up all these DPS vehicles, and suddenly, in an instant, people stopped crossing the border in this location,” he said. “That strategy is working.”

Trump’s Surgeon General Says He Tried to Refinance His Mortgage, But Biden Admin Pulled a Dirty Move to Stop It from Happening

Abbott was critical of the Biden administration for not securing the border and said Texas is putting up $2 billion more for border protection, The Washington Post said.

“When you have an administration that is not enforcing the law in this country, when you have an administration that has abandoned any pretense of securing the border and securing our sovereignty, you see the onrush of people like what we saw walking across this dam that is right behind me,” the governor said in Val Verde County, according to KTVT-TV in Dallas.

Initially, there were 14,600 Haitians in Del Rio, according to Abbott, the number eventually declining to about 8,600.

The Daily Mail, citing a Department of Homeland Security source, said 1,083 of them had been returned to Haiti and more deportation flights were scheduled Wednesday.

Up to 5,000 Haitians were released into the United States, Abbott said. That’s contrary to a Biden administration pledge to prohibit Haitian entry into the U.S. from Mexico.

“If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned, your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a Monday news conference, according to The Associated Press.

Despite the statement that the migrants would immediately be deported, many were released and told to report to an immigration office within 60 days, according to Abbott.

Officials Blow the Lid on Biden Admin’s Lie, Reveal Haitians Are Being Released Into US on Large Scale

Of course.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s desire to project a kinder-gentler image regarding immigration (especially against the profile of its villain, former President Donald Trump) hit a snag with pictures of Border Patrol agents on horseback using whips to round up migrants — according to many establishment media outlets, at least.

The “whips” were actually long reins on the horses.

HORSE LESSON FOR NOVICES: The horse-mounted Border Patrol guys down in Del Rio are riding “western” style so they are using what’s known as a “split rein” to control the horse. It’s where the reins are attached to the bit but aren’t attached to each other. (1)

The reins are held in the rider's hands. They are usually long enough to perhaps APPEAR whip-like and occasionally a rider will use it to spur the mount a bit. But reins are not whips. Border Patrol doesn't carry whips. (2-END)

Originally tweeted by Mike Glenn (@mrglenn) on September 20, 2021.

But image is everything with some people, and some Democrats were aghast that while their party is in charge, border agents could be seen acting like … acting like … well, Republicans or something.

Actually, border agents were just doing their jobs, using horses, long known to law enforcement as effective in crowd control.

And nobody was being whipped.

Except the sovereignty of the nation.

Republicans, by the way, expressed some sympathy toward the Haitians, according to the Daily Mail, because the migrants were led to believe they would receive asylum in the U.S.

And why not?

In May, the Department of Homeland Security announced that Haitians could receive Temporary Protected Status in the country, meaning they wouldn’t be deported and could apply for authorization to work.

In July, Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated, and in August, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti killed some 2,000 people.

Late last week, 12,000 migrants showed up at Del Rio; some had been refugees in Brazil and Chile following a 2010 earthquake.

On Monday, the Biden administration said they couldn’t come in. Some were deported, but by Wednesday — no surprise — there were reports that thousands had been released into the U.S.

The great tragedy of U.S. immigration policy — such as it is — is its ongoing inconsistency. Obey our laws, we say, but if we need Democratic votes, or cheap labor, or whatever, we can always (wink, wink) make some special arrangements.

Oh, and no matter what the Biden crew says, it’s always wise to trust your lyin’ eyes.

That’s just what Abbott’s people did.

Which is why they created a steel barrier to protect the southern border.

Thank you, Texas. Well done.

The following is an installment in a weekly series of commentary articles by Cameron Arcand, founder of the conservative commentary website Young Not Stupid and a contributor to The Western Journal.

Are you shocked by the flood of Haitian refugees at the border? You might not be.

In fact, 14,000 illegal migrants camped out underneath a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, hardly even feels newsworthy anymore.

These people made the perilous journey through Mexico to escape the poverty and political instability in their own country, and the Biden administration was not up to the challenge.

Local law enforcement described the conditions at the encampment as “third world-like,” according to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin.

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“Really hard to believe this is the United States of America,” Melugin added.

Fox News’s @BillFOXLA: “Local law enforcement out here are on-the-record describing this [migrant] camp as ‘third-world-like conditions'” and “really hard to believe this is the United States of America.”

Originally tweeted by RNC Research (@RNCResearch) on September 21, 2021.

That’s a major problem, yet President Joe Biden’s handling of the border has numbed the public to chaos and tragedy.

There is a humanitarian crisis happening on American soil, and it’s nothing more than we’ve come to expect.

Illegal migrant encounters are at a 21-year high, with nearly 200,000 in July alone, according to Pew Research Center.

That is unacceptable. The Biden administration has clearly lost control of the border despite having had several months to get this “seasonal uptick” under control.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is saying there will be “dramatic results” in Del Rio in the coming days, Politico reported; but don’t hold your breath.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=cameron_arcand&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-

The President just addressed the UN— not one mention of the crisis at the border where roughly 15,000 people surged into the US (mostly Haitians) from Mexico.

More than 9,000 remain here in Del Rio waiting to be processed by @CBP

Originally tweeted by Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) on September 21, 2021.

Biden Admin Assigns Border Agents Who Were Doing Their Job to Desk Duty

He and other officials have known for months that the Rio Grande Valley is extremely vulnerable, and have done little to mitigate the problem.

The Biden administration has been playing the “at least we aren’t Trump” card from the beginning while ushering in a crisis at the southern border.

Our leaders have not acted with true humanity and conviction.

Instead, they are wearing the old, false guise of compassion. It is a disgrace to this country and those who seek a better life here.

Haitian immigrants being deported back to the Caribbean nation bit Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on a flight bound for Port-au-Prince from Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, according to the Washington Examiner.

The Monday incident saw two Haitian immigrants leave their seats as the aircraft taxied to the runway and attack ICE agents by biting them, forcing takeoff to be delayed, the report said.

Federal assault charges will be brought against the two Haitian attackers, the Examiner reported.

“[The Haitians] all realized they were going back to Haiti and lost it,” a senior federal law enforcement officer told the newspaper.

Last month, Haiti was hit by a powerful earthquake resulting in thousands of deaths.

Trump’s Surgeon General Says He Tried to Refinance His Mortgage, But Biden Admin Pulled a Dirty Move to Stop It from Happening

The devastating temblor came just weeks after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

A second deportation flight was reported canceled by the U.S. government because Haitian migrants on board were “being disruptive and not complying” while the plane was on the tarmac, the Examiner reported.

Meanwhile, in another incident, three ICE officers were injured during a Tuesday assault at the Port-au-Prince airport when a group from a plane carrying single adult men stormed another recently arriving flight carrying deported families, according to NBC News.

The three ICE agents suffered non-life-threatening injuries, the report said.

CNBC video from the scene showed the chaotic incident at Haiti’s main airport, with returnees reacting angrily to spending large sums of money on arduous journeys attempting to reach the United States after learning the Biden administration had stopped deporting Haitians.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/cgmu0ZGbjSc?feature=oembed

“On Tuesday, Sept. 21, some adult migrants caused two separate disruptions on the tarmac after deplaning in Port-au-Prince, Haiti,” a Department of Homeland Security representative said in a statement, according to NBC News.

“Haitian crowd control officers responded to both incidents and resolved the situations. ICE fully respects the rights of all people to peacefully express their opinions, while continuing to perform its immigration enforcement mission consistent with our priorities, federal law and agency policy.”

President Joe Biden, already facing criticism for his overall handling of the immigration situation at the southern U.S. border, has seen things become even more complicated recently.

Horseback Border Patrol Agents Accused of Whipping Migrants with Reins Reassigned to Desk Duties

Some 10,000 migrants, mainly Haitians, have set up an impromptu camp under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, after wading across the Rio Grande separating Mexico and the United States.

NEW: This is what it looks like under the international bridge in Del Rio this morning. Latest numbers as of 6 AM.

6,722 migrants
4,742 family units
1,489 single adult men
418 single adult females
73 family “groups”

300+ pregnant women here as of yesterday.
@FoxNews

Originally tweeted by Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) on September 22, 2021.

Border agents have begun expelling planeloads of mostly Haitian migrants from the sprawling makeshift camp.

Optics for the Biden administration worsened on Monday after viral footage from the U.S.-Mexico border showed officers on horseback trying to push Haitians back across the border.

Despite the backlash over the incident, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told a Senate panel on Tuesday there are no plans to cease flights.

“We are increasing the frequency and number of the repatriation flights each day,” he said. “And we’re hoping that what we are doing now serves as a deterrent because it backs up the words that we have spoken since the very outset: that irregular migration is not the way to enter the United States. It will not work.”

Security at the United States’ southern border has fallen sharply since President Joe Biden took office, the former chief of the U.S. Border Patrol says.

Rodney Scott was part of the border enforcement agency for nearly 30 years before being ousted in June. In a new letter penned to top senators, Scott said he witnessed an “unprecedent[ed] seismic shift in border security and immigration policy” after Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20.

“I believe this policy shift and the associated public statements created the current border crisis. Of greater concern, I also witnessed a lack of any meaningful effort to secure our borders,” he added.

The United States made advances in border security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks after finding out that some of the attackers illegally entered the country from Mexico. But Scott said this year, under Biden, that security has rapidly disintegrated.

Biden administration officials are ignoring common-sense recommendations and seem “laser-focused on expediting the flow of migrants into the U.S.” while downplaying “the significant vulnerability this creates for terrorists, narcotics, smugglers, human traffickers, and even hostile nations to gain access to our homeland,” Scott wrote.

He accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of providing factually incorrect information to Congress and letting illegal immigrants who, by law, should be expelled from the country remain here. He urged top senators, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), to request detailed information on the situation from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as part of their oversight responsibility.

Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, declined to comment. DHS, which includes both, did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter was written in mid-September and released this week by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

“It’s a devastating letter. It should be a bombshell,” Johnson told The Epoch Times.

Johnson quoted from the letter in a congressional hearing on Tuesday that featured, among others, Mayorkas.

Of the over 1.3 million apprehensions at the southern border this year, Johnson asked, “how many immigrants have been released into the United States?”

Mayorkas said he did not have those numbers but promised to provide them later to the senator.

Biden and his administration have radically altered immigration enforcement from the previous administration, which had cut down on illegal immigration through tools like the Migrant Policy Protocols, a program that forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their claims were heard. Mayorkas ended that program.

Mayorkas claimed that the administration’s strategy is working, pointing to a slight drop in apprehensions in August from July. He and other officials have said it will take time for the overhaul to show results.

Johnson, though, alleged that what’s currently happening is what Democrats want to happen.

“They’ve got a plan. It’s called completely open borders, and they’re executing that plan, and from their standpoint, he was working swimmingly well,” he told The Epoch Times. “I’m hoping the rest of America realizes what an unmitigated disaster and the serious consequences [and] the homeland and national security impact of this.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/former-border-patrol-chief-says-border-security-rapidly-disintegrated-under-biden_4010590.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram