Once again, Woke clearly does not equate to Awake. [US Patriot]
The flood of illegal immigrants and drugs coming over the U.S.–Mexico border constitutes an “invasion,” a majority of respondents to a new poll say.
Respondents were asked to label the statement, “The U.S. is experiencing an invasion at the southern border” as completely or somewhat true, completely false, or don’t know.
More than half, or 54 percent, said it’s true. Republicans were much more likely to say the statement is true, with 76 percent agreeing compared to 40 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of respondents.
Democrats were most likely to say the statement was completely false, and independents were most likely to say they don’t know.
Under Joe Biden, the United States has recorded unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. Due to relaxed immigration enforcement policies, many illegal aliens have been released into the U.S. interior, while deportations have plunged.
Amid the immigration crisis, a number of Texas counties have declared the situation an “invasion,” including Parker County. Officials also cited drugs being brought across the border.
Seven out of 10 Republicans in the new poll said the drugs being brought over the border are responsible for the increase in drug overdoses in America, along with 35 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of independents.
‘Open Border Policy’
A majority of Republicans also agreed with the statement the United States is implementing “an open border policy” along the border.
A person’s main source of news impacted their choices, pollsters found. Republicans who watched Fox News, for instance, were more likely to describe the border crisis as an invasion than those who have a different primary source.
Fox regularly reports from the border, including showing footage of migrants crossing the border between ports of entries, which makes them illegal immigrants.
The most cited source of news for Democrats and independents was ABC/NBC/CBS, while Republicans were most likely to source from Fox.
Respondents were also divided by political affiliation when answering whether there are enough immigrants in America already.
Six out of 10 Republicans agreed, versus 30 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of independents.
Democrats were the most likely to say immigrants are an important part of the American identity. Seventy-four percent agreed, compared to 49 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of independents.
Most Republicans, meanwhile, agreed with the statement that there is a “deep state,” or embedded political class, working to open the borders to more immigrants. Compared to 19 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of independents, 58 percent of Republicans agreed.
The NPR-Ipsos poll (pdf) was conducted online on July 28 and July 29. The sample of 1,116 adults included 516 Democrats, 317 Republicans, and 141 independents. (Now we know the reasons the poll only came up with 54% [US Patriot])
The margin of error was plus/minus 5.1 percentage points.
For a damning picture of the modern left, it doesn’t get much clearer than this.
The Democratic Party, which spent the 2020 presidential election year trashing the police and cheering on rioting mobs wreaking havoc on American cities is now desperately trying to rebrand itself for the midterm election year as the party of loyalty to federal law enforcement agencies hellbent on pursuing former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
But as a Twitter post published Wednesday by a member of the previous Democratic administration shows, all it’s really proving is basic ignorance, or utter contempt, for the foundations the country was built on.
The post was published by Tommy Vietor, now a co-host of the blasphemously liberal podcast “Pod Save America,” but a man who rose to public attention as one of the more abrasively juvenile members of the Obama administration.
The tweet included a link to a CNN report (of course) about the surveillance footage that was taken of last week’s FBI raid on Trump’s home in South Florida’s Mar-a-Lago Club, and a comment from Vietor that probably said more about the mindset of the modern left than Tommy ever intended.
The staff at the Trump household had refused an FBI request to turn off surveillance cameras in the home, which would have left the agents free to do anything they chose without fear of exposure.
“Very confused about how you can refuse a direct order from the FBI while they are in the process of executing a search warrant, especially given the context here when the concern is about unauthorized release of highly classified information,” Vietor wrote.
Very confused about how you can refuse a direct order from the FBI while they are in the process of executing a search warrant, especially given the context here when the concern is about unauthorized release of highly classified information. https://t.co/J6l1gtMpMc
He’s “very confused” about an American household disobeying an order from the FBI? And a “direct order” at that?
It’s a good bet he wasn’t at all confused by the George Floyd rioters failing to follow the orders of local police as they set about looting and torching businesses in the name of “social justice” in the summer of 2020.
For many Democrats, anarchy in the streets, theft and destruction of property, even outright murder are completely acceptable (just ask the gangsters who benefited from the bail organization Vice President Kamala Harris supported).
But failing to fall into lockstep obedience with the feds when they show up armed with a search warrant and plenty of weaponry? That passes Vietor’s comprehension.
Naturally, being a blue-checked liberal, Vietor has plenty of simpering sympathizers in the social media world (even the Twitter bots Elon Musk talks about have more brains than that herd), but fortunately for the future of the republic, there were more than a few responses to set Vietor straight:
You say, “No thank you, I prefer to film my home during your official duties.” The official duties of the officer are not private, and first amendment permits filming officers.
Now, it’s easy to dislike Vietor and the rest of the coterie of sophomoric arrogance that surrounded the Obama White House. (The State Department’s Marie Harf was another, along with Harf’s old boss Jen Psaki.)
With Obama administration posts that included membership in the National Security Council and special assistant to the president, Vietor helped saddle the country with the bogus Iran nuclear deal that even Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor to the Obama White House, admitted had been sold in an “echo chamber” of mainstream media ignorance. (And to New York Times Magazine, no less.)
But he’s worth paying attention to, if only to see where the leftists of the Obama years are leading their party and — regrettably — the country today.
His podcast is an influential voice in leftist politics — the DigitalTrends website ranked it as the third-best political podcast for 2022. (No. 1 was NPR’s “The NPR Politics Podcast,” which says everything that needs to be said about DigitalTrends’ political preferences.)
To his marginal credit, Vietor appeared to learn something from his Twitter post, as one respondent explained a search warrant does not give law enforcement — even the big, bad FBI — powers to do more than search the premises involved.
“A search warrant authorizes…a search, per 4th Amd. It does not create other powers or cancel out civil liberties,” the user wrote.
“I remember when people used to be skeptical of the police, *especially* when they were dealing with someone we thought was a criminal.”
Vietor seemed to get the message — or maybe he’d just finally realized how cringingly submissive his initial tweet came off and remembered that he’s supposed to be a man.
“Interesting — thank you. Wonder if they made this ‘order’ because of the risk of exposing the information, but that does seem a little ridiculous,” he wrote.
Interesting — thank you. Wonder if they made this “order” because of the risk of exposing the information, but that does seem a little ridiculous.
“A little ridiculous” should have been a first reaction to the blatantly political operation. “Outrageous!” “Infuriating!” “Totalitarian BS!” would have been even better.
But for the leftist mindset of 2022, steeped in the openly anti-American tradition birthed by the disastrous Obama years, the initial reaction is not to defend American freedoms but to question why Americans can refuse a “direct order.”
This is a man who served in the Obama White House, remember, where the abuse of power at federal agencies — such as the IRS, with the likes of Lois Lerner; the FBI with the “leadership” of James Comey; and the Justice Department under political grifters like Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch — had to have been considered almost commonplace.
It’s a basic distortion of the country’s foundation of law and order, pervasive among leftists in the mainstream media, in popular culture and in the Democratic Party from local governments through the House, the Senate and the White House:
They have nothing but contempt for the law; they worship orders.
There are many sorry countries, with many sorry histories, where that attitude is the norm. The United States isn’t one of them.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that 20 serious felons will face arrest for allegedly illegally voting in the state’s elections.
“The state of Florida has charged and is in the process of arresting 20 individuals across the state for voter fraud,” DeSantis said at a news conference.
DeSantis and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are identifying those charged as convicted murderers and sex offenders who voted without receiving restoration of voting rights from the governor.
A 2018 ballot amendment restored the voting rights of Florida felons who serve their sentences.
However, this amendment made an exception for those convicted of murder and felony sexual assault.
Criminals in those categories don’t automatically get their voting rights back.
“They are disqualified from voting because they’ve been convicted of either murder or sexual assault, and they do not have the right to vote. They’ve been disenfranchised under Florida law.”
A majority of the alleged illegal voters cast ballots in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, according to the governor.
DeSantis did not specify whether the charges stem exclusively from the 2020 election or subsequent state or local contests.
They’re facing a charge of voter fraud — a third-degree felony punishable by five years in prison in the state.
DeSantis alluded to the possibility of more charges for election crimes.
The governor referenced ongoing investigations into illegal aliens voting in elections, as well as voters who cast more than one ballot in multiple jurisdictions.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the cases of alleged fraud.
DeSantis is touting his state’s commitment to election integrity and pointing to the charges as a warning to those who would exploit the system.
The governor signed a bill to strengthen voter ID requirements in April, as well as creating an entity to investigate and prosecute violations of the state’s election laws.
“Today’s actions send a clear signal to those who are thinking about ballot harvesting or fraudulently voting. If you commit an elections crime, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Employees at Google’s parent company are urging the search engine to suppress results for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, according to a petition sent Monday by the company union to Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, more than 650 employees at Alphabet Inc. signed the petition, which demands that Google remove “results for fake abortion providers” and what the union considers “misleading information” about reproductive health care services. The petition also demands that Google stop collecting users’ data on abortion-related searches, saying that users’ data would be “used against them” in states that have banned or restricted abortion.
Abortion providers often vilify pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, which provide counseling, resources, and often medical services to pregnant women. Planned Parenthood calls such centers “fake clinics” that have the “shady, harmful agenda” of talking women out of getting abortions.
The petition, circulated by the Alphabet Workers Union, urges Google to institute data privacy controls for “health-related activity,” such as searches for “reproductive justice, gender-affirming care, and abortion access information.” These data, according to the petition, “must never be saved, handed over to law enforcement, or treated as a crime.”
Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Google have faced political challenges on data disclosure since a draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was leaked in May. Twenty-one congressional Democrats in June urged Google in a letter to “limit the appearance” or add “user-friendly disclaimers” to search results for pro-life pregnancy centers.
Google states in its Privacy Policy that it must respond to a government subpoena, court order, or search warrant but pushes back on requests for information it deems too broad.
A Nebraska police department this month used legally acquired information from Facebook to prosecute 17-year-old Celeste Burgess for violating Nebraska’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks, the Nebraska Examinerreported.
Google stated in July it will automatically erase visits to abortion facilities from a user’s location history, the Wall Street Journalreported.
Alphabet executives have not yet responded to the petition.
Why? Because one of the above headlines is unlike the others. The first two stories reveal the nature of the Iranian regime—a gang of criminal theocrats that since 1979 has spread chaos and murder throughout the world. The third headline reveals the gullibility of Western politicians and diplomats who, despite never-ending reminders of the Islamic Republic’s aims and capacities, persist in trying to appease it.
Negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal have been taking place in Vienna since April 2021. They have gone nowhere. Yet the Biden administration insists on playing a starring role in this diplomatic farce. Nothing that happens in the outside world penetrates the bubble where the diplomats reside.
Some history:
• Iran refused to speak to the United States directly. We obliged. The talks are indirect—a sign of American weakness.
• Ali Khamenei ensured that his potential successor, Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric sanctioned by the United States, was “elected” president last summer. Not only did we continue negotiations. We are also now debating whether to provide Raisi an entry visa so he can spout regime propaganda at the U.N. General Assembly next month.
• America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, one year old this week, seriously undermined our credibility and our security. It weakened our influence in the Greater Middle East. Yet Biden didn’t change his foreign policy. He doubled down on his Iran gambit.
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February was a hinge of history—a moment when, we have been told, “everything” changed. Everything but the Iran negotiations. Russia, despite its outlaw status on the international stage, continues to serve as Iran’s intermediary. Maybe we should take the hint?
All this happened in the months before the Bolton assassination plot and the attack on Rushdie. And those violations of U.S. sovereignty and rule of law are related to Iranian malfeasance. The Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for attempting to hire a hit man who would target the former U.S. national security adviser. Rushdie’s assailant may have been in contact with the IRGC, as well, and was unquestionably inspired by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s first Supreme Ruler, Ayatollah Khomenei, who called for the British-American novelist’s death in 1989.
And what, you ask, does Iran continue to demand of the United States as a condition for reentry into the nuclear deal? In a piece for CNBC headlined, “A renewed Iran nuclear deal appears closer than ever. Here are the final sticking points,” Natasha Turak writes, “Iran wants the Biden administration to remove its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from its [i.e., America’s] designated terrorist list, which so far Washington seems unwilling to do.”
Imagine that.
Biden would be committing political seppuku if he removes the IRGC from the terror list. Even he can see the danger there. He’d be handing the beleaguered Republicans an issue in the final months before the midterms. It has the potential to taint media coverage of his supposed diplomatic triumph.
The IRGC “sticking point” is politically troubling. Another sticking point is impossible. Iran wants the United States to guarantee that future presidents will abide by the deal. However, the only constitutional way to do this would be to submit the nuclear agreement to the Senate for treaty confirmation. Of course, Biden can’t do that, because the treaty would fail. Leaving Biden at an impasse.
One he refuses to acknowledge. Perhaps the Biden team is now so full of themselves after a string of legislative victories at home that they are ready to make additional concessions to get what they mistakenly believe will be a victory abroad. The press will love this narrative, of Biden going from strength to strength and win to win, no matter the costs to U.S. security and stability in the Persian Gulf and Shiite Crescent.
Another scenario is that, while neither Iran nor America agrees to this latest proposal, the talks continue intermittently because they serve each party’s goals. Iran is using this time to build its nuclear infrastructure. America doesn’t want to face the hard choices that follow from a recognition that diplomacy has failed.
That is why all peace processes or arms control negotiations continue despite the evidence that they achieve nothing. The process itself becomes an end for the West. Meanwhile, the process serves as cover for the West’s enemies.
“We have a miserable, bipartisan track record of not responding to Iranian aggression and terrorism,” Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies observed the other day. Biden has an opportunity to correct the record by demonstrating American strength in response to Iranian outrages. It’s an opportunity he won’t take.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reacting to the recording-breaking number of illegal immigrants walking through the southern border.
The world’s richest person was replying to reporting from Fox News’s Bill Melugin, who posted on Twitter drone footage of a group of hundreds of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border at Eagle Pass, Texas, into the United States.
In his post, Melugin cited Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics showing border agents to have encountered 400,000 illegal immigrants so far in the Del Rio sector in fiscal year 2022 (since October 2021), a number that’s already more than double the total number of encounters in fiscal year 2021. This number doesn’t include “gotaways”—illegal crossers who evaded apprehension.
Strange that this receives very little attention in the media
“Strange that this receives very little attention in the media,” Musk wrote in response to Melugin on Aug. 14.
Musk, a self-portrayed political moderate and a design engineer by trade, has shared his perspective with his 100 million-plus followers on a wide range of issues beyond cars and rockets.
The billionaire’s comments on the border crisis, for example, were the latest in his series of criticism of the current administration and the Democratic Party in general; others include his comments on the influence of labor unions on the Democratic party, the Spygate collusion scandal involving Clinton-affiliated Democrats, and the Biden White House’s alleged sidelining of Tesla’s role in the electric vehicle market.
The Bigger Picture
The backstory to the exchange between Musk and Melugin features an ever-increasing surge in illegal immigration, overextended Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resources, and an administration that actively strives to undo Trump-era “America First” immigration policies.
Eagle Pass is only one of the regions along the southwest border where hundreds of illegal immigrants pour into the United States. From the beginning of fiscal year 2022 on Oct. 1, 2021, to early August this year, border patrol agents apprehended 1.8 million illegal crossers. That’s more than the population of Phoenix, Arizona, the fifth-most populous city in the country, and about 40 percent higher than the total number of apprehensions in the previous fiscal year.
BORDER: Border Patrol agents organize hundreds of illegal immigrants who have streamed across the border from Mexico near Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 20. pic.twitter.com/ftZyyhfTc0
— Charlotte Cuthbertson (@charlottecuthbo) May 21, 2022
The head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), meanwhile, insists that the border is secure, while the Biden administration is kept busy by legal disputes with border states about key Trump migration policies.
One of the policies that the Biden administration began pulling back—following a Supreme Court decision that ruled in its favor—was the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which required non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico for processing.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration will continue to enforce the Trump-era immigration and public health policy known as Title 42, a policy instated as a COVID-19 countermeasure that allowed the United States to quickly expel migrants who unlawfully entered the United States and bypassed health screening in the process. A judge blocked the Biden administration’s attempt to lift Title 42 in May.
A Border Patrol agent organizes a large group of illegal immigrants near Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 20, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Another legal battle that will be consequential to border security will play out in the Supreme Court in the fourth quarter of this year, when the highest court will hear a case on whether Biden’s immigration enforcement guidelines constitute executive agency overreach. In July, the Supreme Court allowed a federal judge in Texas to block the Biden administration’s immigration guidelines that, according to the border states’ prosecutors, limit the ability of border agents to detain and deport illegal aliens.
“The Biden Admin’s border record is an absolute failure,” Chad Wolf, former acting DHS secretary in the Trump administration, wrote on Twitter on Aug. 17, following reports of anonymous CBP sources saying that a record-setting 2 million illegal crossers were apprehended since the beginning of fiscal year 2022.
“I encourage Republicans next year to enact strong oversight in this area – specifically how DHS leadership executed an intentional plan to endanger migrants and American communities by refusing to enforce the law,” Wolf wrote.
Border security group supports Republican over Dem challenger Mandela Barnes
A leading border security advocacy group is throwing its support behind Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) in his reelection bid, citing the lawmaker’s “unique insight into the root cause of the out-of-control flood of illegal immigrants and deadly drugs into our country.”
The National Border Patrol Council, an advocacy group comprised of some 18,000 Border Patrol agents, said Johnson—a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee—”has devoted more time and attention to securing our border than virtually any other member of Congress,” according to a statement by the group provided to the Washington Free Beacon.
Johnson is facing a tough reelection battle in Wisconsin as Democrats try to flip the seat for challenger Mandela Barnes, the state’s far-left lieutenant governor, who is being bankrolled by anti-police groups. In an election cycle where the porous southern border is likely to galvanize voters, Johnson’s endorsement by the National Border Patrol Council could help tip the scales in his favor.
“The National Border Patrol Council has personally witnessed Senator Johnson’s dedication to and care for all Wisconsinites,” the group said in its statement. “Wisconsin and America need Senator Johnson’s strong voice, caring spirit, and leadership in the U.S. Senate, which is why we are proud to endorse Senator Johnson to continue to be your advocate.”
Johnson, the group said, was instrumental in Operation Safe Return, a bipartisan federal program initiated in 2019 that humanely deported illegals back to their countries of origin. The program was used as a model by the Department of Homeland Security when it developed its own programs to reduce the flow of undocumented children and families into America.
“By reducing the number of illegal border crossers, Senator Johnson was instrumental in allowing law enforcement to target criminal cartels and their profit,” the group said.
Johnson is one of the most vocal proponents for increased border security and policies that will help stem the flow of undocumented migrants into the United States. Apprehensions at the border have crossed 4,000 per day on Biden’s watch, according to figures published by Customs and Border Protection. The crisis has spiraled as drug cartels exploit children and families seeking to illegally enter America, leading to an increase in rape, crime, and other instances of abuse. Nearly 8,000 illegals are believed to be crossing the border each day, according to Johnson.
Experts expect two million illegal immigrant encounters in this fiscal year, according to research published Tuesday by the Republican National Committee.
“President Biden completely dismantled the very policies that had ended the surge. The border is now in a crisis that far exceeds anything during the previous administrations and the media is silent,” Johnson’s office said in an analysis published on his website.
Johnson has organized congressional trips to the border, most recently in July. The senator met with law enforcement officials to discuss the challenges they face, and he also spent time with local landowners to discuss the fallout they are facing due to the rising number of illegals.
“Open borders, a flood of illegal immigrants, a flood of deadly drugs, 40-year high inflation, record gasoline prices—these things didn’t just happen,” Johnson said during a press conference at the time. “These are the direct result of [Biden’s] policies. But if you look very closely at this chart, we pretty well had the border solved. That’s just another tragedy here. We had this problem fixed until Democrat presidential candidates started talking about the fact they would not deport and they would offer illegal immigrants free health care.”
Gone are the days when most illegal border crossers are easy-to-return single, male Mexicans looking for work.
Almost three-quarters of the nearly 200,000 people apprehended along the southern border in July were foreign nationals from countries other than Mexico, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.
Of the 200,000 illegal aliens encountered, 99,000 were from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador.
CBP only provides data on some nationalities, so it’s not clear how many countries are represented in the numbers, but officials have previously noted it’s more than 160.
In the first 10 months of this fiscal year, Border Patrol agents along the U.S.–Mexico border have arrested more than 1.8 million people after they crossed illegally between ports of entry. A further 800,000 are known to have evaded Border Patrol after entry. It’s impossible to estimate how many more weren’t detected or apprehended.
Border Patrol agents apprehended 66 individuals on the terrorist screening database between ports of entry on the southern border in the past 10 months.
In 10 months, more than 1 million illegal aliens have been released into the United States while they await their immigration court proceedings, according to CBP data.
“While the encounter numbers remain high, this is a positive trend and the first two-month drop since October 2021,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus in an Aug. 15 statement.
“DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has been executing a comprehensive and deliberate strategy to secure our borders and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” the statement reads.
The agency also said it anticipates illegal immigration to increase further.
Illegal immigrants gather by the border fence after crossing from Mexico into the United States in Yuma, Arizona, on Dec. 9, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Other Nationalities Surging
Cuban nationals have flooded across the southern border since the beginning of the 2022 fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2021 and ends on Sept. 30.
Border Patrol agents have arrested more than 175,000 Cubans during the past 10 months. It’s equal to about 580 Cubans entering illegally every day and a 359 percent increase on the 2021 fiscal year when just more than 38,000 Cubans were apprehended.
Nicaraguans are also crossing in droves, with 133,702 apprehended so far this fiscal year—a 168 percent increase on the prior year and a 6,000 percent increase on fiscal 2020.
Venezuelans are the next largest group to cross the border, with border agents apprehending 128,376 in the past 10 months. The increase over fiscal year 2020, when just 1,262 Venezuelans were apprehended, is a remarkable 10,000 percent.
Significant numbers of illegal aliens from other nations have also crossed the U.S.–Mexico border in the past 10 months, including Haitians (28,634), Turks (12,559, compared to 1,373 in fiscal 2021), Indians (14,636, compared to 2,958 in fiscal 2021), and Russians (3,975, compared to 511 in fiscal 2011).
There has been an increase in the number of Ukrainians without legal entry papers presenting themselves at ports of entry, rather than crossing in between. In the past 10 months, 64,348 Ukrainians have sought entry, compared to fewer than 10,000 in the previous two years.
Chinese nationals are the same—preferring to enter at ports of entry without legal entry papers.
The DHS says its border strategy is “based on six pillars: surge resources; increase efficiency to reduce strain on the border; employ an aggressive consequence regime; bolster the capacity of NGOs and partner with state and local partners; go after cartels and smugglers; and work with our regional partners.
“This comprehensive plan leverages a whole-of-government approach to prepare for and manage the current and anticipated increases in encounters of noncitizens at our Southwest Border.”
An illegal alien has been charged with first-degree kidnapping, three counts of capital murder, and two counts of abuse of a corpse, after a gruesome discovery in rural Alabama on Aug. 1.
José Paulino Pasceul-Reyes, 37, who had previously been deported, is accused of murdering Sandra Vasquez Ceja, and her son, who was under the age of 14, as well as kidnapping Ceja’s 12-year-old daughter in Tallapoosa County, Alabama.
The complaint alleges that Reyes killed Ceja by smothering her with a pillow and her son “by bludgeoning him with his hands or feet” on or about July 24. Reyes is also accused of cutting both bodies into “small pieces at the joints in order to hide evidence.”
Reyes then allegedly tied Ceja’s 12-year-old daughter to the bedposts for about a week, plying her with alcohol to keep her in a drugged state, and abusing her. The girl eventually chewed through her restraints and escaped from the house.
A passerby called 911 after seeing the girl wandering down a road early on Aug.1.
“The information she provided us was that she had been bound and held at the residence that’s located near where she was at,” Tallapoosa Sheriff Jimmy Abbett told The Epoch Times.
“As we proceeded through it, a warrant was issued for [Reyes] on that offense—the kidnapping in the first degree—and then as our investigation continued, we determined that there were two decomposed bodies in the residence.”
Abbett said the bodies are still with forensics for formal identification and cause of death.
He said Reyes and Ceja were a couple and had moved into the residence in February.
Abbett said the young girl is now in state custody and “she’s protected and, and she is being provided all the needs.”
He’s calling her a hero. “What she had to endure and also provide us enough information where we could actually arrest this individual,” he said.
She’s doing as well as can be expected, he said. “No life-threatening injuries but you know, you got the anguish and the mental part she’s got to deal with.”
The sheriff said he hasn’t had border-related issues in his county prior to this. Tallapoosa has a population of about 41,000.
“This is really our first one. We’ve had some minor stuff, traffic stuff and things of this nature, but not to the magnitude of this,” he said.
Reyes is being held in custody without bond and had his first court appearance on Aug. 3, when he was provided attorneys.
He ended up with three capital murder charges due to Alabama laws adding an extra charge for killing two or more persons.
ICE didn’t respond by publishing time to a request for more information on Reyes.
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.
A smuggler paddles his raft back to Mexico after dropping two illegal aliens on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande near McAllen, Texas, on April 18, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
A map shows Goliad County in relation to the U.S.–Mexico border and Houston. (The Epoch Times)
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.
Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd in his office in Goliad, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd checks a site used by cartels to smuggle illegal immigrants through Goliad County, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
A warning sign to cartels at the Goliad County boundary line, written in Spanish. (Goliad Sheriffs Office)
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.
Michael Shapiro joins Blackstone from the Department of Transportation
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s son-in-law has joined private equity giant Blackstone as a “managing director of government affairs,” the latest addition to the New York Democrat’s family lobbying empire.
Michael Shapiro, who recently served as Joe Biden’s deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Department of Transportation, will focus on infrastructure investments and projects at Blackstone, according to the firm. Shapiro lands the new gig as Schumer is poised to decide the fate of legislation on infrastructure spending and tax loopholes of interest to Blackstone. The move was first reported by Capitol Account, a newsletter founded by two former Bloomberg reporters devoted to covering the intersection of Wall Street and Washington.
Schumer is already under fire for blocking a vote on legislation opposed by companies that employ other members of his family. Progressive groups and Republicans have unsuccessfully pressured Schumer to schedule a vote on antitrust legislation that would rein in Big Tech firms. Schumer’s daughters, Jessica and Alison, are lobbyists for Amazon and Facebook’s parent company Meta, respectively. Shapiro married Jessica Schumer in 2016, after meeting at the Obama White House. The New York Times described their courtship as a “real West Wing romance.”
Blackstone said Shapiro, who advised Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, will not lobby his father-in-law on issues related to the firm. But the private equity behemoth, which manages nearly $900 billion in assets, has lobbied the Senate on the Build Back Better Act, the massive infrastructure spending program. Blackstone also lobbied the Senate on carried interest, the loophole by which private equity firms obtain lower tax rates for income. Schumer is leading negotiations on the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes language to close the carried interest loophole.
Schumer has ties to other lobbyists for Blackstone. Steve Elmendorf, a prominent Democratic donor who runs the firm Subject Matter, in the past has defended Schumer over the senator’s ties to Wall Street. “In working with him for 25 years, he very aggressively represents the state of New York. Sometimes that means he’s representing one interest over another,” Elmendorf said in 2015.
Schumer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
NEW YORK CITY—An email recently sent from New York City’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) to all names on its distribution list, and obtained by The Epoch Times, urged all staff who can work overtime to do so, to deal with a “drastic influx of asylum seekers” in Manhattan and the outer boroughs.
The internal request came about a week after the city’s Mayor Eric Adams described the growing stream of illegal aliens coming into the Big Apple as a “real burden on New Yorkers,” adding that the city already had “an overburdened shelter system.”
Dated July 28, the email stated: “Dear DSS/HRA Leadership and Staff, In recent weeks, we have seen a drastic influx of asylum seekers coming to our shelter intake sites. As a result, DHS is standing up several emergency shelters to ensure we have the capacity for these individuals.”
The Department of Social Services (DSS) is charged with administering public assistance programs in the city, and is composed of the HRA and the Department of Homeless Services (DHS).
The email showed urgent internal efforts by social services agencies to grapple with the surge in illegal aliens arriving in New York City amid an ongoing border crisis that is vexing the Biden administration.
It continues with a plea for staff of the agency to commit to working overtime in order to help deal with the massive influx. “While we implement a longer term solution, there is a critical immediate need for Agency staff members to volunteer to work overtime to help manage these sites. Eligible employees who volunteer for this opportunity may earn cash overtime in accordance with contractual guidelines,” it stated.
“If you have availability to assist outside of your regularly scheduled hours, please speak with your supervisor to confirm and then enter your information via the link below. Participation is subject to final approval by Agency senior staff,” the email continued.
On July 29, the day after the email, the HSA and DSS declared an emergency, noting in a letter (pdf) to Comptroller Brad Lander and the city’s top lawyer Sylvia Hinds-Radix that as of July 28, some 4,000 asylum seekers had entered New York’s shelter system in the past three months, driving up the DHS census by roughly 10 percent.
A homeless person sleeps along Wall Street on April 28, 2022 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Influx
For some experts and advocates, the developments suggest that not even recent public statements by Adams, in which the mayor acknowledged the problems resulting from the huge influx of asylum seekers south of the border, have provided a full and accurate measure of the strain that local authorities are experiencing.
On July 19, the mayor’s office issued a plea for federal help, issuing a statement that read: “New York has experienced a sharp increase in asylum seekers from Latin America and other regions, with more than 2,800 individuals entering New York City’s shelter system.”
“In some instances, families are arriving on buses sent by the Texas and Arizona governments, while in other cases, it appears that individuals are being sent by the federal government,” Adams said in the statement.
The mayor then issued an urgent plea: “In order to meet both the legal mandate as a right-to-shelter city and provide high-quality shelter and services for those who enter our system, New York City needs additional federal resources immediately. If we do not get these urgently needed resources, we may struggle to provide the proper level of support our clients deserve.”
Mayor Eric Adams speaking on the New York homeless situation at City Hall on July 19, 2022 (Epoch Times/David Wagner)
Criticism
Adam’s response has not satisfied some local advocacy and social services organizations, who have sharply criticized the mayor for what they characterize as his lack of preparedness and for trying to deflect blame for the situation to the federal level.
The Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless released a joint statement on July 21 addressing what they called Adams’s “misleading and problematic comments” on the surge.
“The Mayor isn’t speaking the whole truth. We spoke to eight families with children this morning who slept on the floor last night at the City’s shelter intake center in the Bronx, in addition to the four families the Mayor acknowledged who had slept there Sunday night. This humanitarian crisis shows no sign of abating anytime soon regardless of how many press conferences the Mayor holds to conceal this reality.”
The mayor and his officials knew what was brewing on the southern border and could have taken action months ago to avert the crisis, the advocates alleged.
“As City officials just acknowledged, they have known about this influx of families, a portion attributable to those seeking asylum, for months. But, despite this knowledge, the Administration still lacks a plan to ensure safe shelter placement, and officials failed to detail any specifics for a viable path forward at today’s press conference, opting instead to heap praise on each other,” the statement continued.
“The City is also failing to use its resources to move people into permanent housing,” it added.
Conflicting Priorities
Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute think tank who studies the homelessness issue, told the Epoch Times that the Adams administration has struggled to fulfill the terms of the right-to-shelter mandate in the midst of the unexpected arrivals.
The impact has been particularly acute for people who were already homeless on the streets of New York, Eide said, pointing to comments that a few residents of the Bellevue Men’s Shelter made recently to the New York Post. One of them told the Post: “You gotta take care of the home first. This is our home first.”
In Eide’s view, it will require further investigation to establish just how much federal policy contributed to the current situation, but it is unusual for normal levels of immigration to fuel a crisis like the one that the city is now grappling with.
“I think the federal role in how these adults and families wound up in New York’s shelter system remains murky. But, normally, this would not require much coordination. Immigration, normally, does not contribute much to New York’s homelessness challenge, at least not in a direct way,” he said.
For 2,800 immigrants to enter the shelter system so abruptly in just a few weeks is an “unsustainable” situation, Eide continued.
“Affordable housing—often seen as the exit strategy from shelter—is even scarcer than shelter. There are native New Yorkers who have been waiting for years for affordable housing units,” he added.
In other cities, the directors of organizations overseeing efforts to alleviate homelessness have complained about the lack of coordination between local and federal approaches to the issue and the chaos resulting on the streets, though they do not necessarily hold the current administration responsible.
“There is a disconnect between local and federal housing policy. The federal government played a major role in creating homelessness by cutting tens of billions of dollars from affordable housing programs beginning in the early 1980s,” Tyler Kyser, policy director of the San Francisco-based Coalition on Homelessness, told The Epoch Times.
“Even in San Francisco, as we have made really great strides by investing in housing, we have not seen these efforts matched on a federal level. I think municipal, state, and federal officials could fund more affordable housing,” Kyser said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the mayor’s office, and to HRA and DSS for comment.
Commentator Dan Bongino held nothing back Saturday as he excoriated Joe Biden over Biden’s failure to put a dent in the flood of illegal drugs corroding lives across America.
Bongino said Biden’s deliberate action to allow drugs to flow across the border by refusing to put in place barriers to illegal immigration is a root cause of the spread of illegal drugs such as fentanyl.
“Listen, I had a bad week, and I’ve had it with the Biden administration. I’m done. My goose is cooked here,” he began.
“Joe Biden is a disgrace to humankind. He is — he’s completely turned his back on the disastrous crisis on our southern border,” he said.
“And because of that, he is a direct accomplice to the mass murder of thousands of American citizens,” Bongino said.
WATCH: @dbongino has an explosive message for Biden on his disgraceful handling of the deadly border crisis👇
“Joe Biden is a disgrace to human kind. He is. He has completely turned his back from the disastrous crisis at the southern border” pic.twitter.com/uwCppixKXg
— Unfiltered with Dan Bongino (@UnfilteredOnFox) July 31, 2022
Bongino said he was being accurate, not slinging mud.
“Listen, I use my words carefully and very deliberately, and I mean every single word of that. Before you say, ‘Hey, slow down,’ let’s take a look at the definition of the word accomplice,” he said.
“According to Merriam-Webster, an accomplice is, quote: ‘One associated with another, especially in wrongdoing.’ Keep that in your head as I go through the rest of this here,” he said.
Bongino then linked the lack of border security with the spread of illegal, deadly drugs.
Biden’s open border policy is turning every state into a border state.
The fentanyl crossing the border is coming to your community.
Tennessee now ranks top five in the country for drug overdoses.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 27, 2022
“It’s a fact, our kids are being intentionally killed and poisoned, intentionally using fentanyl brought in through the border by drug cartels in Mexico, and it originates with the Chinese Communist Party, the chemicals for the fentanyl,” he said.
“Listen, the stats don’t lie, folks. They don’t lie. U.S. overdose deaths in the year ending in February of 2022 surged nearly 20 percent in just one year. And the number’s going up, it’s not going down,” he said.
“But what happens when thousands of these same migrants are put on busses at the border and sent to blue cities like Washington, D.C.? Suddenly it’s a crisis so overwhelming, the Democrats demand federal intervention,” he said.
Bongino said the crisis is not limited to the illegal immigrants seeping through America.
“The drugs brought in by the cartels are poisoning thousands of Americans,” he said, citing Denver, Nashville and Chicago as cities where overdose deaths are ”skyrocketing.”
Noting the deaths due to fentanyl, Bongino doubled down on his bottom line: “Biden is an accomplice to mass murder.”
Speaking of parents who have been pleading for action to stop the fentanyl crisis, Bongino said, “This disgraceful administration has the nerve to spit in their faces and lie to us as our children are dying.”
Former President Donald Trump chided Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser after she requested that the National Guard be mobilized to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants being transported from southern states.
“The Mayor of Washington, D.C., wants the National Guard to help with the thousands of Illegal Immigrants, coming from the insane Open Border, that are flooding the City, but refused National Guard help when it came to providing Security at the Capitol Building for a far larger crowd on January 6th,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account on July 29.
“Figure that one out?” Trump asked.
Bowser’s government has sent two separate letters to the White House and the Pentagon seeking federal help, describing the situation at the nation’s capital as a “humanitarian crisis.” In one of the letters, Bowser added that the arriving immigrants had brought her city to a “tipping point.”
Bowser, a Democrat, blamed Arizona and Texas in the other letter, saying the migrant crisis is “cruel political gamesmanship from the Governors of Texas and Arizona.”
The D.C. mayor has also claimed that immigrants are “being tricked” into opting to take buses to the nation’s capital.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser attends March for Our Lives 2022 in Washington on June 11, 2022. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for March For Our Lives)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, both Republicans, announced transportation programs to send illegal immigrants on free rides to Washington, D.C., following Joe Biden’s decision to lift a pandemic-era immigration policy to expel illegal aliens. The first bus carrying immigrants from Texas arrived in D.C. in April, with Arizona sending its first bus in May.
Since then, Washington has received some 6,100 immigrants on 155 buses, Stars and Stripes reported on July 28, citing data from Abbott’s office.
Responding to Bowser’s request for the National Guard, Abbott wrote on Twitter that the problem that D.C. is experiencing is small compared to what Texas has been dealing with.
“D.C. is experiencing a fraction of the disastrous impact the border crisis has caused Texas,” Abbot stated. “Mayor Bowser should stop attacking Texas for securing the border & demand Joe Biden do his job.”
Two GOP lawmakers also suggested that Bowser should take up her troubles with Biden.
“Mayor Bowser now understands what it feels like to be a border state. How do you think folks in Texas feel?” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) wrote in a post.
Weber added, “She should knock on Biden’s door and tell him that there is a crisis at our southern border and every state is a border state.”
“Mayor Bowser should call the White House instead and tell them to secure the southern border,” Rep. Fred Keller (R-Pa.) wrote on Twitter.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, flanked by state and local law enforcement officials, speaks to media in Eagle Pass, Texas, on June 29, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
On July 29, Abbott’s office released a press release detailing what it had accomplished with the state’s Operation Lone Star, a program launched in March 2021 to prevent criminal activity along the border, including drug smuggling and human trafficking.
“Since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the multi-agency effort has led to more than 287,000 migrant apprehensions and more than 17,700 criminal arrests, with more than 15,100 felony charges reported,” the press release stated.
“In the fight against fentanyl, DPS [Texas Department of Public Safety] has seized over 325 million lethal doses throughout the state,” it added.
“Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps left by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border,” it stated. “Every individual who is apprehended or arrested and every ounce of drugs seized would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and the nation due to Biden’s open border policies.”
Biden’s administration has confirmed a plan that would give identification cards to illegal immigrants.
The pilot program from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is aimed at modernizing “documentation provided to some noncitizens,” an ICE spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email on July 29.
“Currently, noncitizens receive paper documents from the federal government about their immigration status. Paper documents pose a security risk, are easily lost, and degrade rapidly in real-world use, creating inefficiencies for the government and noncitizens. Moving to a secure card will save the agency millions, free up resources, and ensure information is quickly accessible to DHS officials while reducing the agency’s FOIA backlog,” the spokesperson said.
“For provisionally released noncitizens, the digital modernization will provide ongoing access to important immigration documents through the secure card and connected portal.”
DHS is the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency. FOIA refers to the Freedom of Information Act.
The program is being described as a concept, with specifics still being decided.
Illegal immigrants who cross the border are supposed to be deported or detained until they appear in court, but that’s increasingly not the case.
A recent ICE program, called Alternatives to Detention, colloquially known as “catch and release,” sees many immigrants released before having a hearing. Many, but not all, are given a Notice to Appear, or a notice to show up at court on a certain date.
The Biden administration said in April it was going to release up to 600,000 illegal immigrants in the coming months amid the unprecedented surge in illegal immigration while a watchdog report released in June showed that the government is utilizing the program more as time goes on.
Concerns
Some Republicans are expressing worries about the program, saying that the Biden administration should work on cracking down on illegal immigration instead of making it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain identification.
“We are concerned that this pilot program is yet another Biden Administration move encouraging illegal immigration by rewarding illegal immigrants for breaking our laws,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) wrote to acting ICE Director on July 29.
Under Joe Biden, the United States has relaxed or reversed a number of Trump-era immigration policies.
The congressmen cited reports that said the card could let illegal immigrants travel by plane and receive benefits through certain aid programs, writing that the issuance of the cards “raises the possibility that illegal aliens will use these identification cards to improperly access benefits such as housing, healthcare, and transportation.”
Comer and Grothman asked for a briefing on the program as soon as possible and for documents and communications concerning the pilot by Aug. 12.
The ICE spokesperson said that the card “will not be an official form of federal identification” and “would be provided only after national security background checks have been performed.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) is also worried about the program.
He said on Newsmax on Friday that he is working on a bill that would block the Biden administration from issuing the cards.
“They’re illegal, undocumented. The only thing they should be able to access is a trip back across the border,” Van Drew said.
“So I’m doing legislation that is saying not one American tax dollar, or for that matter, any American dollar, can be spent for these cards,” he added.
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.”
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol agent patrols after sunset along a gap in the border wall at the Morelos Dam between the U.S. and Mexico in Yuma, Arizona, on May 31, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
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.”
Illegal immigrants wait in line to be processed by the U.S. Border Patrol after crossing through a gap in the U.S.-Mexico border barrier in Yuma, Ariz., on May 21, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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.
A Border Patrol agent drives a van between a gap along the border wall between the United States and Mexico in Yuma, Arizona, on June 1, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
Two more Texas counties confirmed they have declared an invasion at the U.S.–Mexico border in recent days amid historically high illegal immigration.
The Parker County Commissioners Court unanimously voted this week to invoke a law to say that the United States and Texas are under invasion, local media reported.
Because of the significant presence of illegal immigration and drug trafficking, the declaration says it is “an invasion of Parker County, Texas, as the term ‘invasion’ is used in Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution and in Article 4, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution.”
“I think we all know the border is a mess,” Parker County Sheriff Russ Authier told commissioners during the meeting ahead of the vote. “We see different aspects of it other than our partners who are on the border seeing the human side of the smuggling, trafficking of people. A lot of what we’re seeing here is the drug smuggling.”
The Atascosa County Commissioners Court also separately declared the surge of illegal immigration an invasion on Monday. Judge Russell Wilson signed a disaster declaration affirming the invasion at the border.
Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith told The Center Square that with the declarations from Parker and Atascosa counties, “the significance … cannot be overstated.” Kinney County and several other Texas counties issued a similar declaration earlier in July.
Goliad, Edwards, Jeff Davis, Terrell, and Presidio counties also declared an invasion this month.
More Details
A large group of illegal immigrants crowd under a shady tree as Border Patrol agents organize transport near Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 20, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
“It clearly establishes that the border crisis impacts every county in the state and is not limited to those communities near the Rio Grande,” Smith also told the outlet. “The safety and security of every Texan is threatened by the federal government’s abandonment of its constitutional duty. I encourage every county in the state to acknowledge the crisis is an invasion. If Texans don’t save Texas, no one will.”
Earlier in July, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an order authorizing the Texas National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety to apprehend illegal immigrants who cross the Mexican border into Texas and return them back to the border. Unlike the counties, the Republican governor didn’t declare an invasion.
“While resident Biden refuses to do his job and enforce the immigration laws enacted by Congress, the State of Texas is once again stepping up and taking unprecedented action to protect Americans and secure our southern border,” he said at the time.
A section of the Texas Constitution allows the governor to declare an invasion to protect the state.
“He shall be Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the State, except when they are called into actual service of the United States. He shall have power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the State, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions,” the state Constitution says.
Along the border, apprehensions have surged past 1.7 million so far in the fiscal year—with three months to go, July data shows. Border Patrol agents between Brownsville, Texas, and San Diego, California, apprehended 232,628 illegal border crossers in May, the highest monthly total in 23 years, officials have said.
As more voters across the country turn toward the Republican Party, retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc is closing the margin of an expected Democratic victory in the New Hampshire Senate race.
In the 2020 Republican Senate primary, Bolduc carried almost 60,000 votes as the runner-up. According to a poll taken in April, only one point separated incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Bolduc, one of 11 candidates for the Republican primary scheduled for Sept. 13.
Bolduc says he’s very concerned about the future of the United States.
“Currently, there is a plan for top-down governance and the abandonment of America’s values and principles,” he told The Epoch Times, describing it as a plan to “undermine” the United States.
Bolduc said “America is weak” at the moment, and there are a variety of issues it must continue to confront if the nation ever wants to recover its strength. These include, but aren’t limited to, abortion, gun control, the southern border, and the economy.
Abortion Violence
On the issue of abortion in the United States, Bolduc said, “The Supreme Court made the right decision by sending it back to the states.”
Regardless of which side of the issue women find themselves on, he said that “[they] have more control at the state level than they would ever have at the federal level.”
As a pro-life candidate, he considers the narrative that many on the left are pushing to be “very dangerous.”
While resident Joe Biden calls upon “pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe as federal law,” Hassan and colleagues are urging the president to “defend Americans’ rights to abortion” by executive order. In a recent 30-second television ad, she also said she would “fight and never back down” to protect the “personal freedoms” of women seeking an abortion.
Bolduc said the position of Biden and Hassan not only devalues life but has also created a climate for violence by claiming the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional. To that end, Heidi Matzke, executive director of the Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento, shared at a Senate hearing on July 12 that “pregnancy care centers from coast to coast are being targeted for violent assaults of vandalism and hateful attacks online and in the media.”
For example, “fund abortion; abort God” was recently spray-painted on the Pathways Pregnancy Care Center in Littleton, New Hampshire. Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
According to Bolduc, violent assaults and vandalism are “just indicative of the divisiveness and the disunity promoted by the left.” These issues are “at the heart of why we have the problems that we have here in this country.”
Gun Control Confusion
Bolduc said the number of shootings across the country is also an indicator of an increasingly disgruntled and violent society.
“That’s not a problem with guns,” he said.
For example, Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, yet Chicago is one of the deadliest U.S. cities.
“It’s less about gun laws, and more about securing vulnerable areas, allowing police to do their jobs and have a good response, and being able to go after people who are the threat,” Bolduc said.
According to Bolduc, the culture of violence can be attributed to the U.S. justice system, which increasingly releases violent criminals back onto the streets while hamstringing and defunding the police. Support for police and community involvement are important to ensuring crime stays low, according to Bolduc. Rather than allowing divisiveness to creep in, people need to be brought together to solve the problem, he said.
The Southern Border
The ability to provide safer communities across the nation extends beyond the local community, Bolduc said. The southern border of the United States is out of control, as the country is currently failing to control the flow of drugs—particularly opioids such as fentanyl—and illegal weapons across the border.
“The southern border is now the most dangerous border in the world, and it’s essentially wide open under the Biden administration—it’s hurting America,” he said.
Bolduc said it has to be ensured that border patrol has what it needs to protect the country, such as adequate personnel, air and technology assets, a border wall, the enforcement of immigration laws, and more. Without these things, “America has vulnerabilities.”
“No country in the world would mimic what the United States is doing right now on its southern border,” he said, calling the Biden administration’s border policies “a disaster.”
“The sheer insecurity of America is frightening.”
The Economy Crunch
In addition to the security issues of the country, Bolduc said, “We are witnessing the worst economy in our nation’s history in terms of inflation, in terms of energy dependence, in terms of how it’s hurting Americans.”
Inflation has caused Americans to spend an extra $5,000 per year, as the cost of fuel, food, and other basic essentials climb to historic levels, he said.
“And while government spending is out of control,” many Americans “are cutting into their medical costs, cutting into their groceries, and just simply trying to make ends meet,” Bolduc said.
“It’s a dangerous place to be, and it has to change.”
Hassan has referred to her Republican challengers as “a group of really extreme opponents.” She didn’t respond to multiple inquiries from The Epoch Times to share her views on the issues facing the country. White House officials also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
When the first bus carrying illegal migrants from Texas arrived in the District of Columbia on April 13, an official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said those who had no family to pick them up would be “put on a train” to Florida, according to a newly surfaced email.
The Oversight Project, an investigative arm of conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, obtained the email from the D.C. government via a Freedom of Information Act request regarding its response to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s initiative to bus illegal immigrants apprehended at the nation’s southern border to the nation’s capital.
Abbott launched the border bus mission in April to give the Washington community a taste of what has been experienced by Texas border towns as a result of the Biden administration’s border policy. He pledged to send cooperating migrants to the U.S. Capitol, where “the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”
In the email dated April 13, a FEMA official told a group of Washington health officials that Abbott “made good on his promise” to drop migrants off on the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.
The FEMA official appears to be disappointed that the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which was tasked to arrange the buses, didn’t keep its Washington counterpart informed of the buses’ whereabouts.
“DC was in contact with Texas EM [Emergency Management] and they said they would alert DC when a bus was leaving and provide a manifest. They did not do that,” the official writes.
The official goes on to describe a plan to rely on Catholic Charities of Arlington, Virginia, for support, although the religious charity network indicated that they didn’t have “a huge bandwidth” if buses kept coming from Texas. The official also said that FEMA has held meetings with Washington officials, Customs and Border Protection, non-governmental organizations from the border towns, and border town officials for advice on how to handle the situation.
“For this first drop, some were picked up by family members and the rest will be put on a train to Miami,” the email states.
The message was relayed by Patrick Ashley, senior deputy director of the D.C. Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Administration, and was introduced as “a quick update from FEMA.”
Destination: Miami
Some illegal immigrants who voluntarily accepted the one-way bus ticket to Washington told news outlets they wouldn’t be staying there. A young man from Venezuela, who was among the very first batch of arrivals, told Newsmax that his final destination was Miami. The Daily Beast spoke to the same group of people and reported that they were planning to travel either to New York or Miami, with the help of Catholic Charities.
When asked about their travel plans, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned the illegal immigrants not to try to come to the Sunshine State, where they wouldn’t be welcomed.
“To those who have entered the country illegally, fair warning: Do not come to Florida. Life will not be easy for you, because we are obligated to uphold the immigration laws of this country, even if our federal government and other states won’t,” the Republican governor’s office told Fox News in a statement.
“Florida is not a sanctuary state, and our social programs are designed to serve the citizens of our state. The governor will protect the sovereignty of the state of Florida.”
The Mayor’s Response
Meanwhile, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser continued to condemn Abbott for “tricking” people into accepting his bus ride offer.
Appearing July 17 on CBS News, Bowser said her administration has called on the federal government “to work across state lines to prevent people from really being tricked into getting on buses.”
“We think they’re largely asylum-seekers who are going to final destinations that are not Washington, D.C.,” the mayor said.
“I worked with the White House to make sure that FEMA provided a grant to a local organization that is providing services to folks. But I fear that they’re being tricked into nationwide bus trips when their final destinations are places all over the United States of America.”
FEMA and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment by press time.
The U.S. Supreme Court gave Texas and Louisiana a temporary legal victory in the border states’ attempt to strike down a September 2021 Biden administration immigration guideline.
The Supreme Court, in a ruling without explanation on Thursday, allowed a federal judge in Texas to block the Biden Administration’s immigration guideline that, according to the border states’ prosecutors, limits the ability of border agents to detain and deport illegal aliens.
The ruling is a political setback for the Biden administration as it tries to juggle an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration, overburdened Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and an agenda to replace the Trump administration’s more stringent border policy amid bipartisan criticism.
Dissenting justices include Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—marking Jackson’s first vote since the start of her tenure last month.
DHS Guidelines
The DHS issued the new immigration enforcement guidelines in late September 2021, directing immigration authorities to exercise “discretion” and prioritize detaining or deporting illegal aliens who “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security.”
Put into practice, the September 2021 guideline designates that an illegal alien’s lack of legal authorization to stay in the United States “should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”
This guidance is in direct contrast with the Trump-era DHS policy, which guides immigration authorities to detain and deport illegal aliens in a non-discriminatory manner, except in certain limited cases, such as those who came to the United States as children or are parents of U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
The high court’s ruling, which upheld a federal court’s ruling in June 2022 vacating the Biden administration’s September 2021 DHS guidance, gives Texas and Louisiana a temporary victory, at least until the Supreme Court hears the case in the December 2022 argument session.
‘Uncontroverted Evidence’
According to Trump-nominated Judge Drew Tipton from the Texas District Court for the Southern District, it is “difficult to deny” that the DHS’s September 2021 memo inflicted harm on the state of Texas.
Tipton sided with the border states in saying that “uncontroverted evidence” shows that the September 2021 memo led to an increase in the flow of illegal immigrants into Texas, with the state needing to spend more money on prosecution, detainment, healthcare, and administration.
The district court continued by saying that while the DHS argues that some immigration data showed an increase in the number of arrests and expulsions following its guidance to “prioritize” criminally convicted aliens, the increase is disproportionate considering the “unprecedented surge of illegal aliens pouring over the border.”
“Given that the number of encounters with illegal border-crossers is ten times what it was in April 2020 … an increase in arrests and expulsions is far from impressive, especially if … roughly three-fourths of the illegal aliens that cross the border go undetected by DHS entirely,” Tipton wrote.
Border States Sue
The ever-escalating legal clash between the border states and the Biden Administration began two days after Biden took office.
Texas, on Jan. 22, 2021, sought a court injunction on a January 20 DHS memorandum that the state attorney general said suspended the deportation of the “vast majority of illegal aliens without any consideration for individual circumstances.”
As the case spiraled in the courts, the DHS issued a new set of immigration guidelines in February 2021 and yet another in September 2021—the last of which Texas and Louisiana sued in Texas’s District Court for the Southern District.
Tipton sided with the border state attorneys general and ruled in June 2022 that the federal government may not “require its officials to act in a manner that conflicts with a statutory mandate imposed by Congress.
Texas and Louisiana showed that the DHS’s September 2021 guidance, Tipton continued, is “contrary to law,” “arbitrary and capricious,” and “failed to observe” necessary government procedure.
“Using the words ‘discretion’ and ‘prioritization,’ the Executive Branch claims the authority to suspend statutory mandates,” Tipton wrote. “The law does not sanction this approach.”
Split Courts
After Tipton’s ruling, the Biden administration appealed to a three-judge panel—unsuccessfully.
The judges at the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an unsigned opinion dated July 6, 2022, wrote that some of the Biden administration’s concerns advanced in its September 2021 guidelines—particularly those replacing “Congress’s statutory mandates—are “extralegal” and “plainly outside of the bounds of power” conferred to Congress by the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“For example, it provides that the guidelines ‘are essential to advancing this administration’s stated commitment to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality,’” the panel wrote.
The Fifth Circuit ruling came a day after a polar opposite ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on a similar case, in which Arizona, Ohio, and Montana sued the Biden administration on the same grounds.
Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a Bush-appointed judge, sided with the Biden administration, opining in the ruling that the Biden administration, like previous governments, is given “considerable authority” by federal law to shape immigration policy and, therefore, guidelines for detention and removal of illegal immigrants.
The Fifth Circuit court, in explaining its differing opinion with the Sixth Circuit, said that precedent supports its conclusions and that “fulsome fact-findings” from the lower court support Texas’s and Louisiana’s standing.
In an email statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson from the DHS said it “is obligated to and will continue to abide” by the Texas District Court’s decision regarding its September 2021 guidelines “as long as the decision remains in effect.”
“In the interim, ICE officers will make enforcement decisions on a case-by-case basis in a professional and responsible manner, informed by their experience as law enforcement officials and in a way that best protects against the greatest threats to the homeland,” the spokesperson added.
The Texas attorney general celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling as “another win” for Texas and border security.
“Yesterday the Supreme Court made clear that, while we prepare for oral argument this winter, the Biden Administration must detain illegal aliens with criminal convictions,” Paxton said in a July 22 press release.
“It’s the right legal decision, and it’s what’s best for Texas and our nation.”
A Milwaukee security guard will not be charged in a fatal shooting that took place after the man he eventually killed shot and killed a fellow security guard.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office cleared Enoch Wilson in the July 9 death of Luis Lorenzo, who was killed in the parking lot of a grocery store, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The incident began when Lorenzo, 36, became embroiled in a dispute with security guard Anthony Nolden, 59.
The district attorney’s office said that Nolden told Lorenzo he could not bring a shoulder bag into the store because store policy prohibits them. Lorenzo entered the building with the bag anyway.
After an argument, Wilson was called to help Nolden remove Lorenzo from the store.
Believing he was going to fight, Nolden pepper-sprayed Lorenzo, who then ran into the parking lot. Nolden followed.
Wilson, who had just arrived to intervene, grabbed Lorenzo and, as the DA’s office put it, tried to “direct him to the ground.”
After a struggle, Wilson got Lorenzo face-down and straddled him.
At that point, Lorenzo reached into his bag and grabbed a gun. He blindly fired one shot upwards, killing Nolden.
Lorenzo fired one shot at Wilson as well but missed. Wilson then stood and shot Lorenzo, killing him.
“Under these circumstances, Wilson’s conduct fell within the scope of the law of self-defense and defense of others,” a statement from the district attorney’s office said.
BREAKING: A grocery store shootout outside El Rey on Cesar Chavez Drive in Milwaukee has left two people dead and one injured.
According to police, a man entered the store, causing a disturbance, and two security guards chased him into the parking lot. pic.twitter.com/ANz5ALqUfX
William Sulton, an attorney representing Lorenzo’s family, said the guards were at fault.
“These folks are not police officers,” Sulton said. “They’re attacking him. Mr. Lorenzo responds by trying to save himself and that has tragic consequences for he and Mr. Nolden.”
Lorenzo was a convicted felon and was not allowed to own firearms, according to the Journal Sentinel.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services, Wilson’s gun permit expired less than two weeks before the shooting.
Sulton said that was a major issue because “misuse of firearms is such a problem in our community that we should aggressively prosecute these crimes.”
Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern said the lapse did not bar Wilson from owning a gun and that “under the circumstances created by Lorenzo’s actions, Wilson’s use of force was necessary.”
A would-be robber was shot dead by the very man he was evidently trying to rob on Saturday.
The intended victim was at an ATM in Houston around 10:30 p.m. when the would-be robber walked up and pulled a gun on him, KPRC-TV reported.
In a quick turn of fate, the man then pulled out a gun of his own, shooting and killing him.
Both men fired their weapons, but only the suspect was harmed, according to Fox News.
The name of the man who shot the would-be robber has not been released, but he remained after the incident to cooperate with police questioning, Fox reported.
The case will go through a grand jury, according to KPRC.
It seems it was a busy but victorious weekend for armed citizens.
On the same night in St. Charles, Missouri, another would-be robber was shot and killed before he could carry out his plans.
A customer with a concealed pistol was walking out of a QuikTrip gas station when he saw a black SUV pull up and park without using a parking space.
The man in the SUV — later identified as 26-year-old Lance Bush — walked into the store, grabbed the clerk by her wrist and dragged her to the counter. The armed citizen, who remains anonymous, said she was screaming.
The customer went back into the store and saw that the would-be robber had a knife to the clerk’s throat.
He asked if everything was OK. The robber said yes. The crying clerk said no.
The customer then asked again, but this time with his pistol drawn.
“I pulled my gun up and I asked him, ‘Are you sure everything is OK?’ And that’s when the suspect said, ‘No, it’s not OK, but I got something for you,’ and he grabbed his bag, ran from around the counter and started running towards me, and that’s when I fired shots,” the customer told KSDK-TV.
He shot Bush four times.
“I don’t think I honestly had a choice,” he said. “He already had a knife at her throat, he could’ve pulled out something bigger than what I had. Then you would’ve had two people dead instead of one.”
A man who allegedly attacked at least four different households in Lincoln County, Mississippi, on Tuesday morning was stopped thanks to the decisive action of one responsible gun owner.
According to WLBT, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office originally responded to a call around 4 a.m. Tuesday morning about a man threatening people inside a home.
By the time deputies arrived at the scene, the man had fled. However, deputies received a call about a man allegedly breaking into another home and assaulting two people there.
Deputies arrived at the second house to find in addition to the two reported victims of assault, a neighbor had also been attacked. Once again, the suspect was no longer at the scene.
As they were gathering information about the second alleged attack of the night, deputies received a call from a third household about a man who allegedly tried to break into the home, WLBT reported.
Soon after arriving at the third house, where the suspect was nowhere to be found, deputies heard one gunshot ring out from a nearby house.
They finally made their way to the fourth house, where they found a man had been shot while allegedly attempting to run over someone with his vehicle.
The suspect was transported to the hospital, but he was soon pronounced dead, WLBT reported.
After an investigation, deputies determined this same suspect had been involved in all four Tuesday morning incidents. Two victims were treated for injuries at the hospital, and the man who shot the suspect was not facing charges as of Tuesday.
This story appears to be yet another example of a responsible gun owner using his firearm to protect others from an alleged criminal.
If the homeowner had not stepped in and shot the suspect, there is no telling how much more damage the suspect could have caused.
Police said he was attempting to hit someone with a vehicle at the time he was shot, and he very well may have planned to carry out further crimes if he was not stopped.
The story comes on the heels of the heroic actions from 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken in Greenwood, Indiana.
As a shooter opened fire on shoppers in the food court of Greenwood Park Mall, Dicken reportedly drew his 9mm handgun and returned fire from about 40 yards away, hitting the shooter with his first shot.
The gunman still tragically took three lives in the attack before Dicken killed him in defense, CNN reported. If not for Dickens heroic actions, the death toll could very well have been much higher.
As the left continues its push for strict and oftentimes unconstitutional gun control, it is important to recognize law abiding citizens who use their Second Amendment rights to protect both themselves and others.
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.
Sheriffs search and recovery deputy Don White finds a cap during a search for the dead bodies of illegal immigrants in Brooks County, Texas, on May 13, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
An emergency beacon in the desert near the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Ariz., on May 25, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
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.
PUNTA GORDA, Fla.—The Florida Supreme Court agreed to impanel a statewide grand jury in response to a petition filed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in June to investigate immigration-related criminal offenses, including child endangerment.
“We were able to get the Florida Supreme Court to approve our request to impanel a statewide grand jury. … So, we’re gonna be doing really significant investigation about anybody, any organizations, particularly in Florida, who may be a part of facilitating some of the illegal migration that we see,” DeSantis said on July 19 in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.
“And I think that that’s something that’s very, very significant.”
The petition outlined the governor’s ultimate goal of prosecuting parents for child endangerment as they utilize “transnational criminal organizations or other illicit actors to smuggle their unaccompanied alien children into the U.S., subjecting them to serious dangers.”
The petition states that in the first six months of fiscal 2021, 91 percent of the unaccompanied minors were released to a “sponsoring family member.” However, the petition goes on to state how treacherous a journey it is for the children who are often “assaulted, raped, kidnapped, and/or killed, especially young girls who are sexually exploited.” They’re often used to traffic drugs and weapons and launder money, the petition notes, and the terrain exposes the children to “harsh environmental conditions.”
The petition estimated the number of unaccompanied minor children who entered the United States and were placed with a sponsor in 2021 was 107,686, and so far in fiscal year 2022, that number is 61,143. More than 11,000 were brought to Florida in fiscal year 2021 and so far, almost 7,000 in fiscal year 2022.
“As a mother, protecting children is close to my heart,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a statement. “We cannot turn a blind eye to traffickers and smugglers exploiting the border crisis to subject children to extremely dangerous conditions.”
The Florida Supreme Court that granted the petition issued an order to impanel a statewide grand jury for a period of 12 months to investigate crime, return indictments, and perform all functions of a grand jury with regard to offenses listed in section 905.34 of the Florida Statutes.
This decision provides examples of the offenses as “(a) parents, guardians, or other family members of unaccompanied alien children who have conspired with transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) or other illicit actors to smuggle, and thus endanger, their children;” and “(c) persons and organizations who are involved, directly or indirectly, in transacting with TCOs, their members, or other illicit actors to smuggle or traffic unaccompanied alien children or other illegal aliens to Florida.”
The Cornell Law School website describes a grand jury as an “investigative body, acting independently of either prosecuting attorney or judge. Criminal prosecutors present the case to the grand jury. The prosecutors attempt to establish probable cause to believe that a criminal offense has been committed.”
The Department of Homeland Security reported during fiscal year 2020 that 4.3 percent of the 290,000 unaccompanied minor children who came here between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2019 were returned to their home countries while 95.7 percent were still in the United States. A total of 28 percent of them were granted some kind of relief, while the rest will “live in the shadows of society with the fear of being deported,” according to the report.
“The easiest thing would be for the federal government to just adopt good policies here,” DeSantis said in his statement. “But I think we’ve seen over the last year and a half, that’s not something that they’re typically prone to do. So, we’re gonna continue to fight hard on all these fronts and make sure that we’re vindicating the best interest of the state of Florida.”
A local government official in a Pittsburgh suburb is facing an assault charge after police say she attacked an officer who responded to a complaint at her home.
Bellevue Borough councilwoman Sabreena Miller faces charges of aggravated assault and resisting arrest, according to WPXI-TV.
Police went to Miller’s home on Saturday after a 3:47 a.m. report of a stabbing.
Upon arrival, they found John Miller, Sabreena’s husband, with a wound to his right leg that was bleeding onto the floor. John Miller told police he dropped a knife, leading to the cut.
Police took a look around and came upon two knives on the kitchen floor, as well as pools of blood.
An officer encountered Sabreena Miller, who asked why he was there and ordered him to leave.
After explaining the circumstances, the officer said Sabreena Miller began to scream at him and tell him he had no right to be there. He said he smelled alcohol on her breath.
head during a stabbing investigation in her home over the weekend. officer told her that he was called there and said her husband was bleeding from a stab wound at the front door, the station reported. The officer also said he smelled alcohol on Sabreena Miller’s breath as she
Police also noticed that Sabreena Miller had scratch marks on her neck.
Miller is accused of punching an officer in the back of the head and struggling with him to the point where both officers responding needed to subdue her prior to arresting her, according to court documents.
John Miller told police he and his wife quarreled because she wanted to mix narcotics with the alcohol she had consumed and he “did not what her to mix the two for her safety,” according to CBS.
Police said John Miller denies he was stabbed despite the wound that required hospital treatment at Allegheny General Hospital.
Sabreena Miller was sent to Allegheny County Jail.
John Miller also faces assault charges for the scratches found on Sabreena.
Kathy Coder, a former council member, said she was “saddened to hear about Sabreena’s behavior and the altercation,” according to WTAE-TV.
“Sabreena is a talented young woman who has been highly engaged in the community and has made many positive contributions to Bellevue. Hopefully, she and John will use this as a learning experience and will seek help, as needed, so these types of issues will not plague them and impede their bright future. Many people believe in them and will always be there to support them,” Coder said.
In running for office, Miller said part of her platform was “applying accountability in a way that avoids blame culture, and instead encourages improvement and collaboration.”
At Charlestown High School in Boston, certain teachers instructing students learning English who have recently arrived in the United States may be indoctrinating these children to incite violence as a form of resistance to their alleged oppressors, according to experts.
The “classroom files” of three of the school’s teachers in the Sheltered English Immersion Program are currently available for download on the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) website. These teachers teach Humanities to ninth- and 10th-grade students who have recently arrived in the country from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and China, the website states.
One part of the curriculum profiled on the website involves “notes and assignments around oppression, resistance, and narrative structure.”
“It includes detailed note-taking sheets and powerpoints on institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression,” the BTU website reads. “Students are invited to critically examine when certain forms of resistance might be appropriate.”
A worksheet dubbed “Forms of Resistance” is included as an example of what’s taught in the course.
The first page of the worksheet identifies three types of oppression as “Instituional [sic],” “Interpresonal [sic],” and “Internalized,” and then lists examples of each. One example of oppression at the institutional level listed is, “Trump builds a wall on the border so it is harder for Latinos to enter the US.” At the interpersonal level, an example given is, “A husband tells his wife she must stay home to cook and clean.” An example of oppression at the internalized level used by the worksheet is, “An Asian girl hates her eyes, she thinks she is ugly so she gets surgery to change them.”
Students were next asked to “list different forms of resistance for each level of oppression.”
The following pages of the worksheet with the heading “Forms of Resistance Notes” contains 11 rows identifying 11 types of resistance that could be employed to end certain forms of oppression. The column on the far left contains pictures identifying each type of resistance and students are made to name the type of resistance in the next column. Next, students are meant to fill in the blanks in the column that provides the “explanation” for each form of resistance. In the last section, students are to choose which of the three levels of oppression—institutional, interpersonal, or internalized—that the type of resistance was “most effective at ending.”
Alongside peaceful protest methods, such as boycotts, sit-ins, and petitions, the worksheet also contains three images that appear to portray violent forms of revolt: riots, shown by masked protestors wearing all black throwing projectiles, including what appears to be a flare; fights, depicted by a cartoon image of two people brawling; and political assassinations, shown by an image of President Richard Nixon as a target of crosshairs.
‘Indoctrination’
Parental rights advocates expressed alarm at what was apparently being taught to English as a Second Language students at the Boston high school.
Rebecca Friedrichs, founder of advocacy group For Kids & Country and author of “Standing up to Goliath: Battling State and National Teachers’ Unions for the Heart and Soul of our Kids and Country,” said that as a teacher for 28 years and a parent of two children, she was “disgusted” by the worksheet that she described as “damaging and dangerous.”
“These English language learners [in these classrooms] are likely new immigrants to the country, coming to this country to experience freedom. [But in Boston], they’ve run smack dab into Marxist indoctrinators posing as educators,” Friedrichs said. “Schools are meant for educating children, not indoctrinating them in radical ideology.”
The worksheet is “full of lies,” she said, noting that teachers are using these lies to indoctrinate children.
Alex Newman, award-winning international journalist and executive director of the advocacy group Public School Exit, agrees.
“The material was clearly designed to indoctrinate children into seeing themselves as victims of oppression,” he said.
Newman was most alarmed by the worksheet’s examples of violent resistance that he said implied a need to “overthrow” anyone who’s allegedly responsible for the oppression.
“They seem to be promoting revolt and resistance to legitimate forms of authority,” he said.
Newman is also a contributor to The Epoch Times.
The goal of such teachings is to prime children to accept illegitimate forms of authority and encourage them to engage in violence to achieve those ends, he said.
“Legitimate authorities must be brought down if they want to impose new authorities,” Newman said.
And this “indoctrination program” is “an extension of that same lawless agenda.”
Justifying Violence
The worksheet’s attempt to justify violence could be seen through the picture of three individuals dressed in black throwing various objects, including a flare. Both experts noted that the image alludes to groups such as Antifa, a far-left anarchist movement that seeks the overthrow of capitalism.
The explanation listed alongside the picture on the worksheet reads, “Protesting or marching with [blank].” Friedrichs took issue with the characterization.
“They’re clearly engaged in violence, throwing bottles and more,” she said.
In a second example, depicting crosshairs on the chest of President Nixon, Friedrichs said this type of image is “extremely dangerous in the mind of a child.”
“When children are being encouraged to view assassination as a legitimate form of resistance, we’ve entered into some very, very dangerous territory,” Newman said. “The blatant encouragement of assassination as a tactic of resistance to oppression is how this image needs to be understood.”
Images such as this are “paving the way to more widespread violence in society,” he said, noting that “there are very, very powerful forces that want to see America break out into some very significant violence.”
“In America, there’s a centuries-old tradition of tolerance for peaceful protest, for peaceful assembly, [and] for peaceful seeking of redress of grievances that’s being lost,” Newman said. “A lot of these children are being indoctrinated to believe that the alleged oppression they are facing is so severe that violent rebellion is not only justified, but necessary.”
Teachers Taught to Radicalize
Both Friedrichs and Newman said there have been great efforts to radicalize children against lawful and legitimate authority for quite a long time.
“Part of the problem is that [U.S. education] has gone through a multi-generational process of indoctrination that has resulted in a situation where each generation is more indoctrinated,” Newman said. “As these teachers continue to accept even more extreme and more destructive ideas than the previous generation, they’re not realizing that they’re actually being subjected to the indoctrination programs.”
After a K–12 education, Newman said that “they are further radicalized, [as] the indoctrination is often turbocharged at a four-year college, where they are brainwashed even more to believe that not only are these ideas legitimate, but that they are the correct pedagogy, and this is the way children should be educated.”
“They are made to believe that their education is for justice, education is for social justice, [and] their education makes the world a better place,” he said. “Many of these teachers are so brainwashed that they have a feeling of self-righteousness about this—and it’s very sad to see.”
Friedrichs also noted that “a small amount of activist union teachers have been planted in our schools who quietly push this type of nasty agenda.”
“Teachers unions have made gains in the political arena, and they’ve gotten people into key places of power, which often allows them to get away with this nightmare,” she said.
Friedrichs also pointed out the “glaring” misspellings on the worksheet. On the first page, it reads “INSTITUIONAL” and “INTERPRESONAL.” With three people using the document, she considers this “a dead giveaway that these are not truly professional teachers, but union activists masquerading as teachers.”
She said the misspellings are “a huge embarrassment to professional teachers.”
“People are masquerading as teachers and unions all across the country so they can push a very radical agenda,” Friedrichs said.
Potentially Criminal
The advocates called for those responsible for the worksheet to be investigated.
“Those involved in putting together this worksheet need to be removed immediately and disciplined over this,” Friedrichs said.
Had she presented a worksheet like this to her students in the past, she said she would have been fired.
“It was out of the realm of possibility that anyone would have ever done this until recently, when the teachers unions opened the floodgates of their evil agenda,” she said.
Newman said, “Somebody who thinks this is appropriate to teach to children has absolutely no business teaching children; that much is clear; they should not be in a classroom.”
Both Friedrichs and Newman believe that the document warrants a criminal investigation.
“There’s a fine line between free speech and advocacy for violence, and this document appears to cross over that line,” Newman said.
The responsible person or party for this document needs to be questioned, he said.
“If it is determined that this was actually intended to encourage children to use violence as a political tool, I think serious measures and accountability are going to be justified.”
At the very least, Newman is calling for “a full investigation that results in a strong measure of discipline from education authorities.”
Free Speech Exception
Attorney Daniel Schmid, senior litigation counsel for Liberty Counsel, agrees with Friedrichs and Newman. He told The Epoch Times that while the First Amendment allows for free speech, “there are certain well-delineated exceptions—one of which is incitement to violence.”
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court established in 1969 that the First Amendment doesn’t protect speech that incites people to violence or to imminent lawless action.
“Encouraging people to commit an act of violence against political leaders, that’s not protected speech,” Schmid said regarding the worksheet. “It probably falls under fighting words [according to the court case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire] or incitement to violence.
“Assassinating a political leader and committing acts of violence is not to be celebrated and encouraged. It’s a crime, and it ought to be punished as so.”
While he said there’s always a question of intent, U.S. law, 18 U.S.C. Section 373, makes it a crime to solicit people to commit an act of violence. According to the law, “it’s a felony to encourage people to commit an act of violence.”
These teachers should be held accountable, Schmid said.
The Epoch Times contacted the Boston Teachers Union to determine if some of the “classroom files” were meant to incite violence. Neither BTU President Jessica Tang nor Professional Learning Director Paul Tritter have returned a comment. Representatives for Charlestown High School also didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
The Biden administration dramatically reduced migrant prosecutions by nearly 80 percent in the 2021 fiscal year, even as illegal crossings skyrocketed.
Just 2,896 migrants apprehended on the southwest border were transferred into U.S. Marshals Service custody in the 2021 fiscal year, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. In the 2020 fiscal year, 13,213 migrants were transferred to federal authorities for prosecution.
Internal DHS memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon
The precipitous drop in migrant prosecutions illustrates resident Joe Biden’s break from prior administrations’ policies toward illegal immigration. Refraining from bringing criminal charges against the vast majority of individuals entering the country illegally also provides evidence for critics who say the White House is exacerbating the migration crisis on the southern border.
The decline in prosecutions for illegal border crossings also happened amid the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Migrant encounters on the southern border exceeded two million in 2021.
Under federal law, it is a misdemeanor crime to illegally cross the border. A second arrest for illegally crossing the border can be prosecuted as a felony. According to federal law, those found guilty of an illegal border crossing face fines and up to two years in prison.
“The lack of accountability from this administration encourages the worst people flooding our borders, criminals, to keep violating our laws until they finally commit a crime so egregious that the Department of Justice is forced to prosecute,” a senior DHS official told the Free Beacon.
In the 2019 fiscal year, 20,604 migrants were transferred to Marshals Service custody for prosecution. The previous year, former president Donald Trump halted prosecutions of parents who crossed into the country illegally with children.
Defenders of the White House will likely say the drop in prosecutions can be almost entirely attributed to Title 42—a public health regulation that allows authorities to rapidly expel migrants who enter the country. With Title 42 in effect, law enforcement does not need to process migrants in a typical manner and instead works to expel them as quickly as possible.
But Trump instituted Title 42 in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and still prosecuted far more migrants than in Biden’s first year of his presidency. Moreover, illegal border crossings in 2020 were much lower than in 2021, which saw the most migrant apprehensions in U.S. history.
Biden ordered an end to Title 42 in April, although legal challenges from Republicans have temporarily kept it in place. The Biden administration has not yet released border crossing prosecution data for the 2022 fiscal year.
Beyond attempting to eliminate Title 42, the Biden administration has worked to undo immigration policies from the Trump administration. Last month, the Supreme Court authorized Biden to terminate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces many migrants to wait in Mexico before their asylum court hearing in the United States.
The Free Beacon in December reported on deportations plummeting to the lowest number in decades under Biden. The White House has also stonewalled congressional investigations into where DHS is placing illegal immigrants after they are released into the U.S. interior.
The office of Indiana’s attorney general says he didn’t defame the Indianapolis doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim in June.
“No false or misleading statements have been made,” a spokesperson for Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, told The Epoch Times via email.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist with the Indiana University School of Medicine, carried out the abortion on June 30, according to records obtained by The Epoch Times. She reported it to state health authorities within three days, as state law requires, although it remains unclear if she followed other mandatory reporting requirements by notifying the Indiana Department of Child Services.
Prior to the records being released, Rokita had said that he was investigating Bernard for potential failure to report.
“The failure to do so constitutes a crime in Indiana, and her behavior could also affect her licensure. Additionally, if a HIPAA violation did occur, that may affect next steps as well. I will not relent in the pursuit of the truth,” Rokita said in an earlier statement.
HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is a federal law that prohibits the disclosure of some details about patients.
Indiana University said a review concluded that Bernard didn’t violate any laws, and the doctor’s lawyer subsequently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Rokita.
“Please immediately cease and desist making any false or misleading statements about Dr. Bernard,” Kathleen DeLaney, the lawyer, told the attorney general.
She said that Rokita’s initial comments made during a Fox News appearance “cast Dr. Bernard in a false light and allege misconduct in her profession,” and criticized the statements made after the record release that the investigation into the doctor was still ongoing.
The statements “have the potential to incite harassment or violence from the public which could prevent Dr. Bernard, an Indiana licensed physician, from providing care to her patents [sic] safely,” DeLaney wrote.
Rokita’s spokesperson said that the letter, like any correspondence, “will be reviewed if and when it arrives.”
Gerson Fuentes in a mugshot dated July 12, 2022. (Columbus Police Department via The Epoch Times)
Man Arrested
The man arrested for allegedly raping the 10-year-old girl, meanwhile, remains jailed in Franklin County, Ohio, according to jail records. Gerson Fuentes, described as an illegal immigrant by local and federal authorities, confessed to raping the minor, according to court documents. Testing of DNA taken from the suspect is pending.
The public defender’s office in the county, which is representing Fuentes, hasn’t responded to requests for comment.
Fuentes is 27. Bernard had listed the age of the father of the unborn child as 17. Her lawyer hasn’t responded to requests for comment.
Fuentes was charged with raping a person under the age of 13 years and faces life in prison if convicted.
His next court appearance is scheduled for July 22.
Washington’s mayor is criticizing two border states for busing illegal immigrants to the nation’s capital, which bills itself as a sanctuary city.
For months, Texas and Arizona authorities have been offering free rides to illegal aliens who have claimed asylum, citing a lack of resources in dealing with the immigrants and the hope that sending them to Washington will help convince Resident Joe Biden to increase immigration enforcement amid a record number of arrests at the border.
But Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is a Democrat, isn’t on board.
“This is a very significant issue. We have, for sure, called on the federal government to work across state lines to prevent people from really being tricked into getting on buses. We think they’re largely asylum-seekers who are going to final destinations that are not Washington, D.C.,” she said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on July 17.
“I worked with the White House to make sure that FEMA provided a grant to a local organization that is providing services to folks. But I fear that they’re being tricked into nationwide bus trips when their final destinations are places all over the United States of America.”
Ranae Eze, press secretary for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, told The Epoch Times via email that “the only lie is the Biden Administration telling the American people that our border is closed.”
“With our nation’s capital now experiencing a fraction of the disaster created by resident Biden’s reckless open border policies that our state faces every single day, maybe he’ll finally do his job and secure the border,” she wrote.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, another Republican, wrote on Twitter: “Welcome to our world, @MayorBowser. Now work with your party, your Congress, and your President to do something about it.”
Complaints
Thousands of illegal aliens have been sent to Washington from the two states this year, beginning in April. Getting on the buses is a choice, according to officials in the states. But some of the immigrants complained to WUSA-TV that promises made by officials before getting on the buses weren’t fulfilled.
Ana Karina Arce Polano, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, told the broadcaster that she was told her family would be transported to Colorado via Washington, but that they didn’t end up being offered transportation to Colorado.
“We arrived here with faith to give them a better life, and it turns out that we do not even have a place to sleep and no way to get where we want to go,” Polano said.
Another illegal alien said she was told that her family would be given a ride to Chicago after arriving in Washington, but that hasn’t happened.
“If anyone is being misled, we certainly want to know about it,” Ducey spokesman CJ Karamargin told WUSA-TV.
Sister Sharlet Wagner, executive director of the Catholic Charities-run Newcomer Network, told NTD previously that most of the illegal immigrants were traveling to places beyond Washington.
“Most of them do have family or friends in the place where they really want to go. We’re happy to help them if they want to stay here. Most are choosing to move on,” she said.
Federal authorities have said that states aren’t “adequately coordinating” with them or local authorities. They also said that most immigrants who aren’t expelled via Title 42, a pandemic-era order, are released into the U.S. interior with notices to appear in court.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman told The Epoch Times, “Through its Southwest Border Coordination Center, DHS is executing carefully designed plans to manage the processing and transport of noncitizens arriving at the border.”
The new district attorney in San Francisco fired at least 15 employees from the prosecutor’s office after her left-wing predecessor Chesa Boudin was recalled last month.
“Today, I made difficult, but important changes to my management team and staff that will help advance my vision to restore a sense of safety in San Francisco by holding serious and repeat offenders accountable and implementing smart criminal justice reforms,” DA Brooke Jenkins said in a statement about the firings.
Jenkins added in a statement that she “promised the public that I would restore accountability and consequences to the criminal justice system while advancing smart reforms responsibly”
“My new management team … with decades of prosecutorial experience at the highest levels, will help our office deliver on that promise. I have full faith and confidence that these women will promote and protect public safety while delivering justice in all of its various forms,” she said.
Among those who were fired include former San Francisco Managing Attorney Arcelia Hurtado, who headed the city’s Innocence Commission. Hurtado expressed her disappointment on Twitter, invoking her ethnicity and sexual orientation.
“After over 2 years of tireless and devoted service to the City and Cty of SF, I was unceremoniously fired without cause via phone by the Mayor’s appointed DA,” she wrote. “I am the highest-ranking Latina/LGBTQ member of the management team at that office. I will continue the fight 4justice.”
Other staffers to lose their jobs at the district attorney’s office included Rachel Marshall and Simin Shamji, reported KRON-4.
Recall
Boudin was recalled on June 7 amid criticism of a citywide surge in crime, homelessness, and drug usage in public. Jenkins quit Boudin’s office in 2021 after joining in 2014.
And last month, Boudin told San Francisco Chronicle he became a scapegoat for the spike in crime.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin looks on during an election-night event in San Francisco on June 7, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“A lot of my supporters and endorsements and donors and Democratic clubs that were behind me are urging me to run now, or in 2023,” Boudin said. “I’m committed, as I always have been my entire life, to doing the work to support our communities, to fight for a fairer system of justice.”
Controversial billionaire investor George Soros’ network of left-wing organizations provided Boudin with $600,000 for his 2019 election, according to the Washington Times. However, after he was recalled, a spokesperson for Soros said that he never contributed to Boudin.
“We disagree with any analysis that labels any prosecutor as a ‘Soros prosecutor’—each candidate stands on their own,” a spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon. “Justice & Public Safety PAC, the political action committee through which Mr. Soros supports prosecutor candidates, has not supported—in the past or in the present, directly or indirectly—Boudin.”
But according to the Free Beacon report, Smart Justice California Action Fund donated about $180,000 to oppose Boudin’s recall. That group got funding from the California wing of the Justice & Public Safety PAC.
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.
Activists and with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) march in Washington on Feb. 23, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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.
The Indiana doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old Ohio girl properly reported the procedure to authorities but listed the age of the father as 17 despite the man allegedly being 27, according to documents made public on July 14.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Indiana University, performed the abortion at the university’s hospital on June 30, according to the documents, which were obtained by The Epoch Times.
Bernard correctly listed the pregnant mother’s age as 10 but placed the father’s age as 17, the forms show.
The man arrested in Columbus for the rape of the girl is actually 27 and is in the country illegally, according to local and federal authorities.
Bernard’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All contact information for Bernard has been removed from her university profile and the university has not responded to inquiries.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, had said this week that he was investigating whether Bernard complied with state law governing reporting by health care providers.
Any abortions performed on a girl younger than 16 in Indiana must be reported by the abortionist to the Indiana Department of Health and child services within three days of the abortion.
Bernard complied with the requirements, according to the documents. She filed the terminated pregnancy report on July 2.
It’s unclear whether Bernard reported the suspected abuse with the Indiana Department of Child Services. The agency declined to comment and has not filled a public records request.
“As we stated, we are gathering evidence from multiple sources and agencies related to these allegations. Our legal review of it remains open,” Rokita told The Epoch Times in an email.
‘Followed All Relevant Policies’
Kathleen DeLaney, a lawyer representing Bernard, told news outlets that the doctor “took every appropriate and proper action in accordance with the law and both her medical and ethical training as a physician.”
“She followed all relevant policies, procedures, and regulations in this case, just as she does every day to provide the best possible care for her patients,” Delaney said, adding that Bernard did not violate any laws and has not been disciplined by her employer.
Rokita had also said that Bernard has a history of failure to report. Indiana Right to Life, a pro-life group, in 2018 filed complaints against Bernard and other doctors who perform abortions for alleged failure to report. It’s unclear if any action was taken. The attorney general’s office declined to say whether it investigated the complaints.
Dr. Caitlin Bernard. (Indiana University School of Medicine)
Bernard first spoke about performing the abortion on the 10-year-old to the Indianapolis Star, which included it in a July 1 story about patients from other states needing to go to Indiana to get an abortion.
Ohio law prohibits abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy but contains an exception for abortions “to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, has said the case would fit within the exception.
The girl’s mother reported the rape to child services in Franklin County, which alerted the Columbus Police Department, a police detective said during the arraignment for Gerson Fuentes, the man accused of raping the girl.
Fuentes is an illegal immigrant, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official told The Epoch Times. He is reportedly from Guatemala.
There are questions about the man’s identity, the police detective said, with no indication Fuentes is in the country legally.
Police say the girl identified Fuentes as the man who impregnated her and that Fuentes confessed.
Federal prosecutors have indicted a violent convicted drug trafficker for fentanyl distribution after a Virginia prosecutor boosted by the left-wing billionaire George Soros released the felon without bail just a day after his arrest.
Alpha Kamara last week was charged and taken into federal custody for conspiracy to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, according to a Justice Department filing unsealed on Monday. The indictment supersedes charges brought by Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano (D.), who on June 27 filed charges against Kamara for the same case, only to release the offender without bail one day after his arrest.
The Justice Department’s decision to charge Kamara ensures Descano’s office won’t mishandle the case. Descano has a history of releasing offenders before trial, dropping charges, and reducing sentences—sometimes with deadly consequences. His office last year dropped felony charges for a man who was charged later for killing two homeless men and wounding three others in New York City and Washington, D.C. In June, the prosecutor released on probation a violent repeat offender who went on to beat an elderly homeless woman to death at a bus stop.
Descano’s soft-on-crime approach is typical of Soros-backed prosecutors, who have in the past decade received more than $40 million in donations from the Democratic megadonor. Soros contributed more than half-a-million dollars to Descano’s campaign, along with fellow far-left Virginia prosecutors Buta Biberaj in Loudoun County and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti in Arlington County, dwarfing any other donation amounts in the races and helping to oust veteran prosecutors. Fueled by citizens’ concerns over rising crime and lenient prosecution, recall efforts have spawned in each of the three Virginia counties, as well as in major cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles. In the Bay Area, city residents in June voted out far-left prosecutor Chesa Boudin by double digits. Top Democrats in Virginia are similarly courting candidates to challenge Biberaj.
Virginia State Police arrested Kamara on June 26 following a high-speed chase involving a stolen vehicle that ended in a crash on a highway interstate. State troopers seized a loaded 9 mm handgun and more than two kilos of fentanyl pills from the wrecked car, and Kamara was charged with driving without a license, failing to stop at the scene of an accident, resisting arrest, eluding police, grand larceny auto theft, and possession with intent to distribute a schedule I substance. He had been out of federal prison and on supervised release for just three days before his June joyride, having served slightly less than the length of his five-year sentence.
Descano’s decision to release Kamara before his trial surprised prosecutors who spoke with the Free Beacon, given his criminal record. Virginia Republican attorney general Jason Miyares said the release was “just another example of the criminal-first, victim-last mentality pushed by far-left prosecutors.”
“Fentanyl has rapidly become one of the most dangerous opioids to infect neighborhoods across our country,” Miyares said. “Nationally, we’ve lost 105,000 Americans to overdoses from opioids, most commonly fentanyl. Continually letting repeat offenders get back onto the street only encourages more crime and creates even more victims. I am grateful for our partners in the DOJ stepping up when these local prosecutors fail to do their jobs.”
The 25-year-old felon’s first brush with law enforcement came in 2018, when he was sentenced to five years in prison as part of a major federal crackdown on Blood gang members and violent drug dealers in Northern Virginia. Operation Tin Panda, a joint effort between the FBI and ATF, resulted in 36 convictions and seized scores of firearms and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and assets, as well as hundreds of pounds of drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin. The federal agencies greenlighted the operation following a series of murders and violent incidents in Prince William County.
It is unclear whether Descano will pursue the charges he initially filed against Kamara. The Virginia prosecutor would have to wait until federal prosecution is completed. A preliminary hearing for the county charges is scheduled in August. Descano’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Descano during his tenure has abolished cash bail, told his attorneys to avoid mandatory minimum jail sentencing, and declined to prosecute many misdemeanors. A policy memo he distributed in his first year as Fairfax County’s top prosecutor urged assistant commonwealth’s attorneys to seek misdemeanor charges over felonies whenever appropriate. He has reportedly told his staff that they “will never get in trouble for prosecuting light.” In one fraught meeting, Descano reportedly told one of his prosecutors to reduce a 20-year sentence by 5 years and to not “listen to victims” because they tend to be “overly dramatic.”
In Fairfax, Virginians for Safe Communities has gathered more than half of the roughly 30,000 signatures necessary to trigger a special election.
“It is stunning that Steve Descano would cut loose a fentanyl-dealing gun felon after Kamara endangered the lives of the public and law enforcement,” said Sean Kennedy, the president of Virginians for Safe Communities. “The citizens of Fairfax need to know that the single biggest threat to public safety is the chief prosecutor and his disregard for the laws and lives of this commonwealth.”
Drug overdose deaths have risen nationwide since 2019, driven by new synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the CDC. The Drug Enforcement Administration reported synthetic opioid-related deaths shot up 56 percent from 2020 to 2021.
Fairfax County has yet to release its annual police report. Preliminary data show homicides were up 40 percent last year and are on pace to be higher in 2022.
Kamara is in the custody of the U.S. Marshals and being held without bond pending trial.
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 Postreported 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.
A man suspected of being in the country illegally has been arrested for the rape of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio.
Gerson Fuentes, 27, was arrested on July 12 for rape of a person under 13 years old, according to court records reviewed by The Epoch Times. The offense took place on May 12.
Fuentes confessed and the girl he raped, who just turned 10, received an abortion in Indianapolis on June 30, the Columbus Police Department said in Franklin County court, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Det. Jeffrey Huhn said that the girl identified Fuentes as the father of the child and that Fuentes, through an interpreter, admitted having sexual contact with the girl, the paper reported.
A probable cause statement said that detectives collected a saliva sample from Fuentes and Huhn said testing is pending.
A bond of $2 million was set.
Fuentes is in the country illegally, according to a government official. He was provided a translator during the hearing, video footage showed.
Fuentes is currently being held in the Franklin County Jail, according to jail records.
Police Decline to Share Information
Reached after the hearing, the Columbus Police Department declined to share any information.
“Out of compassion for the victims, the Columbus Division of Police will not comment on any rapes/sexual assaults of juveniles,” Sgt. Joe Albert, an aide to Police Chief Elaine Bryant, told The Epoch Times.
The Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office said it was conducting a legal review of The Epoch Times’ request for documents on the case.
The Franklin County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Gershon, did not respond to a request for comment.
The story of the rape was first reported by the Indianapolis Star, based on an account from pro-abortion doctor Caitlin Bernard.
No other evidence was provided in the initial report, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had cast doubt on whether it happened.
“My heart aches for the pain suffered by this young child. I am grateful for the diligent work of the Columbus Police Department in securing a confession and getting a rapist off the street. Justice must be served and BCI stands ready to support law enforcement across Ohio putting these criminals behind bars,” Yost said in a statement on Wednesday. BCI refers to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Resident Joe Biden cited the story in a speech on July 8 before signing an executive order aimed at ensuring women can get abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade.
“Some of the states don’t allow for exceptions for rape or incest,” Biden said. “Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim in Ohio—10 years old—and she was forced to have to travel out of the state, to Indiana, to seek to terminate the [pregnancy] and maybe save her life.”
Ohio legislators passed an abortion ban on pregnancies over six weeks that was signed into law by Gov. Mark DeWine, a Republican, in 2019. It took effect in June after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest, though it does allow abortions if they are deemed necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life.
Starbucks announced Monday it is closing 16 stores across the country, citing crime and safety concerns at the locations, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The company is shuttering locations in Seattle,Los Angeles,Portland, Ore.,Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Each city is governed by Democratic mayors and is undergoing a spike in crime. In a message to employees, Starbucks executives said the company has been getting “a lot” of incident reports of criminal activity, including drug use in stores. “We cannot serve as partners if we don’t first feel safe at work,” they said.
Starbucks, which has lost roughly a third of its value over the past year, also announced it will give managers more leeway with store policy to deter criminals. Managers will be able to close bathrooms to deter drug use and limit customer seating. Starbucks said it will also offer baristas additional training in deescalating conflicts.
Starbucks’s move comes two years after the company downplayed violence amid rioting following the murder of George Floyd. In May 2020, Starbucks released a public statement praising racial justice activists and quoting Martin Luther King Jr.’s remark that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Kevin Johnson, the company’s CEO, stressed the importance of the “courageous conversations” going on at the time.
Starbucks has worked to quash unionization efforts across the country, and two of the Seattle locations the company is closing are unionized. A Starbucks union leader when interviewed by the Journal said the company should have involved employees in the decision to close the stores.
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.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection mounted officers attempt to contain illegal migrants as they cross the Rio Grande from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, into Del Rio, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. (Felix Marquez/AP Photo)
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.
Illegal immigrants take supplies back and forth between Acuña, Mexico, and the United States (far side) across the Rio Grande, the international boundary with Mexico, in Acuña, Mexico, on Sept. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
Resident Joe Biden’s administration cannot ignore federal law that says authorities must arrest, detain, and remove illegal aliens convicted of certain crimes and/or aliens who are ordered deported, an appeals court has ruled.
Federal law says the attorney general “shall take into custody,” “shall detain,” and “shall remove” illegal aliens convicted of certain crimes and aliens who are ordered deported. But the Biden administration has attempted to prevent the holding and removal of some illegal immigrants convicted of those crimes.
“The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Biden appointee, said in a memorandum in September 2021 outlining new guidance that narrowed immigration enforcement priorities.
Mayorkas also said that immigration agents should not “rely on the fact of conviction … alone” when deciding to take action against an alien.
That has led to a sharp drop in criminal aliens detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said. The memo and others like it has led to a spike in the rescinding of criminal detainers, or orders to local authorities to detain aliens, court documents show. One hundred and seventy aliens had detainers rescinded in Texas between Jan. 20, 2021, and Feb. 15, 2022, with at least 17 failing to comply with their parole conditions and four committing fresh crimes.
“The data show that the Final Memo ‘increases the number of aliens with criminal convictions and aliens with final orders of removal released into the United States,’ and Texas has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the cost of that reality has fallen on it and will continue to do so,’” the panel said in a ruling dated July 6.
DHS is trying “to claim it acts within the bounds of federal law while practically disregarding that law,” it added.
The panel upheld an earlier ruling from U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee who said the policy had resulted in criminal aliens “roam[ing] free” and ordered the department not to follow the memo.
The Biden administration had appealed, arguing that the lower court order should be overturned because the states lack standing, because they have not suffered any injury, and because any injury that the speculative injury was not traceable to the Mayorkas memo. The appeals court panel disagreed.
Response
Biden “tried to throw out immigration law, saying DHS didn’t have to detain criminal illegals. The court now says he must,” Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
“Had the administration won its stay, it would have gone on releasing criminal aliens while its appeal of the district court’s ruling wound through the courts,” added Dale Wilcox, executive director of the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which filed a brief in the case. “We are pleased that didn’t happen, and applaud the Fifth Circuit for denying the administration the extra time it sought to violate the law and endanger Americans.”
The administration is expected to appeal, which could send the case to the full Fifth Circuit or to the Supreme Court, which recently ruled the administration can end the Trump era “Remain in Mexico” policy while explicitly avoiding weighing in on whether the detention requirement outlined in federal law is “subject to principles of law enforcement discretion” and whether the administration’s current approach to immigration enforcement violates the provision.
The panel consisted of Judges Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee; Edith Clement, a George W. Bush appointee; and Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee.
Its ruling diverged from an opinion from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in a similar case brought by the states of Arizona, Montana, and Ohio that in April overturned (pdf) a lower court’s nationwide preliminary injunction that blocked the same guidance.
The Fifth Circuit panel said its divergence is explainable by the benefit of bench trial and precedent in other cases brought before the court. “Until there is a contrary ruling from the Supreme Court, we adhere to our precedent and the facts found by the district court,” it said.
Two men arrested for plotting a mass shooting at a Fourth of July fireworks show in Richmond, Va., were illegal immigrants.
Police arrested the men earlier this month following an anonymous tip that the two were planning an attack at the Dogwood Dell Amphitheater. During the arrests, Richmond police seized two assault-style rifles, one handgun, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Both men were charged with possession of firearms by non-U.S. citizens, according to court records. A Richmond police spokeswoman said at a press conference that the two suspects are from Guatemala.
The incident is the second high-profile crime by illegal immigrants in recent weeks. Two illegal immigrants were arrested in Texas for their alleged role in the deaths of more than 50 migrants left in a semi-trailer.
The weapons possessed by the Virginia suspects also raises questions about how gun control laws could prevent such attacks in the future. Both men were not allowed to purchase any firearms under federal law. Richmond authorities said they are working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace where the suspects’ weapons and ammunition came from.
The two suspects were roommates in the Richmond area. At least one of the men was living in the United States on an expired visa, and the Associated Press reported that court filings show both are living in the United States illegally.
The motivation behind the attack is unknown. Police say there is no reason to believe there was any connection to previous mass shootings. At least one man was offered $15,000 bail.
“We know their intent. Their intent was to conduct a mass shooting at our Fourth of July celebration,” Richmond police chief Gerald Smith said at the press conference.
The amphitheater targeted in the alleged plot seats more than 2,000 people. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R., Va.) called the anonymous tipster a “hero” who helped prevent a “potential massacre.”
Senator Raphael Warnock might have broken campaign finance rules
Democratic Georgia senator Raphael Warnock might have violated federal law by paying campaign lawyers to represent him in a personal lawsuit, Politicoreported Wednesday.
Warnock last year paid his campaign’s lawyers, the Elias Law Group, to represent him in a personal lawsuit involving actions before he became a senator. That decision might have breached federal election law, experts say.
This is far from the first time Warnock, who this year will square off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a closely watched campaign, has faced legal trouble. Warnock’s ex-wife says the Georgia senator harassed her and neglected their children. As the senior pastor of a Maryland church in 2002, Warnock repeatedly disrupted an investigation into child abuse at a church-sponsored summer camp, leading to his arrest.
Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias, whose law firm represents Warnock’s campaign and received the campaign funds, called the payment “completely legal,” saying the FEC has ruled that spending campaign money on personal expenses is permissible.
None of the FEC rulings that Elias cited, however, says anything about lawsuits in which the events occurred before the officeholder held office, Politico found.
Political law attorney Charlie Spies, a Republican, disagrees with Elias.
“If Warnock is using campaign money to pay for a lawsuit that predates his running for office,” Spies told Politico, “then by definition it existed irrespective of his candidacy and would be impermissible to use campaign funds on.”
“I don’t think his donors are giving for him to fund personal lawsuits,” Spies said.
SAM BRINTON, RECENTLY HIRED BY THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, HAS A NUMBER OF DEEPLY CONCERNING VIEWS ABOUT YOUNG PEOPLE AND SEX WORK.
A recent, high-level hire at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy defended a controversial gay prostitution website with a track record of allowing children to be promoted for sexual services on the platform, The National Pulse can reveal.
The revelations, from unearthed op-ed, follow The National Pulse exposé of appointee Samuel Brinton’s past as a drag queen, LGBTQ+ activist who has “lectured” on kink at college campuses and participated in interviews about fetish roleplay.
In an article published on September 15th on the pro-LGBT+ website Advocate, Biden’s latest top nuclear hire dives into a defense of the “Rentboy.com” website, which shuttered following an August 2015 illegal prostitution raid. “Rentboy” is a colloquial term for young men who have sex with older men in exchange for money, often under dubious circumstances.
“…the dissolution of Rentboy is more dangerous than the website ever was.”
– Biden appointee Sam Brinton.
Brinton, who now serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy, defended “Rentboy.com” in a September 2nd, 2015 op-ed in Advocate magazine: “The Real Ramifications of the Rentboy Raid.”
The article followed Department of Homeland Security officials raiding Rentboy’s Manhattan offices and arresting chief executive Jeffrey Hurant and six employees on charges of promoting prostitution. The following year, the CEO of the site, which connected male prostitutes and escorts with potential clients, was indicted on a charge of promoting prostitution which he ultimately pleaded guilty.
The U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York’s indictment also revealed the site’s negligence regarding underage sex work, particularly across Asia.
It detailed how Rentboy employees described the age verification process as a “gray area,” as they “did not always remove advertisements when the advertisers failed to provide identification.”
“In one case, after an escort agency failed to provide photo identification for an escort, a RENTBOY.COM employee advised the escort agency that he had deleted photographs with the face of the subject escort, but left the advertisement online and left photographs that showed only the escort’s body,” explained the indictment.
PLEASE SUPPORT OUR WORK EXPOSING THE ESTABLISHMENT.
“In another case, after a different escort agency refused to provide identification for several escorts who appeared underage, the same RENTBOY.COM employee “suggested to [him] to crop the faces of those super young escorts,” continued the indictment, which also noted that the company never reported the cases to law enforcement agencies.
Concerning posts in Asia, Rentboy “failed to comply with its own standards requiring age verification,” even ignoring “employees [who] complained to RENTBOY.COM management about the quantity of underage escort advertisements.”
INDICTMENT.
Despite the deeply concerning developments, Brinton wrote in defense of the website:
“…sex work disproportionately affects the LGBT community. Transgender people engage in sex work at a rate 10 times that of cisgender (nontrans) women. And many LGBT youth engage in sex work just to survive. A 2013 Center for American Progress report suggests that LGBT youth are more than three times as likely to have engaged in survival sex.”
“In another email, another RENTBOY.COM employee speaking about the Asia-market ads said “Christ … talk about copyrighted and underage pies! TONS in that area … ALWAYS,” detailed the indictment, which also revealed that company executives never acted on these concerns.
Instead, “RENTBOY.COM employees reviewing Asia advertisements were also told by the defendant JEFFREY HURANT and other RENTBOY.COM managers to apply lesser standards in doing age verification of Asia-market advertisements.”
“As was summarized in one email, “In Asia ok to approve them … unless you see a baby … : ),” continued the indictment.
BRINTON’S OP-ED.
Brinton firmly defended the company, claiming that “the dissolution of Rentboy is more dangerous than the website ever was,” and concluding:
The rent boys weren’t harming anyone. But now these young men might have to return to communities and homes which have rejected who they are. And that’s when the real danger begins.
“The federal government’s recent attack on Rentboy.com is a devastating assault on some of the most vulnerable members of our community — young adults who, for the first time in their lives, were able to earn a secure living safely through Rentboy after surviving family rejection and homelessness because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” begins the article.
“Rentboy.com may or may not have broken the law. I don’t know,” concedes Brinton, adding “but I do know, from the frantic emails filling my inbox, that the raid on its headquarters has thrown many gay, bisexual, and transgender young adults into turmoil as their main source of income has been ripped away due to irresponsible and archaic views of sex work.”
Brinton is also an active member of the Washington, D.C. chapter of a drag queen society known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” which lists him as the principal contact on its 2016 and 2018 tax forms. During the group’s “Lavender Mass 2021,” Brinton can be seen referring to Anthony Fauci, who was declared a “saint,” as “Daddy Fauci.”
The new Biden-Harris nuclear official has been involved in LGBTQ+ activism since college and was interviewed by Metro Weekly about the group, where he emphasized he is the “slutty one”.
“The Sisters mission is in complete alignment with my passion for removing the guilt people feel every day (unjustly placed on them, let your freak flag fly!) and the joy the Sisters bring is so, so, so beautiful,” he added.
In a separate interview, Brinton explains how he roleplays as a “pup” handler.
“I actually have trouble when we transition from pup play to having sex,” Brinton explained.
“Like, ‘No, I can’t have you whimper like that when we’re having sex,’ because I don’t want to mix that world. It’s interesting, because he doesn’t have to come out of pup mode to have me fuck him. I personally have to bring him out of pup perception for me. But then I’m still treating him as a submissive to me.”
Bee Nguyen called immigration enforcement agency ‘rogue,’ ‘cruel’
A Georgia Democratic nominee repeatedly called to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and argued that carrying out the country’s immigration laws is rooted in “white supremacy” and “xenophobia.”
Bee Nguyen, Georgia Democrats’ nominee for secretary of state, has a long history of anti-ICE rhetoric. From September to October 2020, Nguyen called to abolish ICE on fiveseparateoccasions—in one instance, the Democrat called to “shutdown the detention centers,” where illegal immigrants—many of whom have a criminal record—are housed ahead of removal proceedings. In another, Nguyen called ICE “rogue” and “cruel” and contended that illegal immigrant enforcement is conducted “in the name of power, white supremacy, money, xenophobia, and political pandering.” Roughly 30 percent of ICE agents are Latino.
Nguyen’s calls to abolish ICE continued into January 2021, when resident Joe Biden took office. The United States went on to experience a surge in illegal immigrant encounters. In 2021, for example, the country hit a record-high 1.73 million illegal immigrant apprehensions. That number is on pace to exceed 2 million this year.
Nguyen’s anti-ICE activism could prompt political peril as voters sour on Democrats’ immigration policies, which critics say have emboldened cartel-connected smugglers. On Tuesday, police arrested two illegal immigrants over their alleged role in the deaths of more than 50 migrants in San Antonio, which marked the worst migrant death incident ever recorded in the United States. Those Mexican nationals never left the country after their travel visa expired and possessed an assault-style rifle, multiple handguns, and a shotgun.
According to a July 2021 Federation for American Immigration Reform poll, 61 percent of Georgia voters hold the Biden administration responsible for the ongoing “border crisis,” while 54 percent say that mass amnesty proposals pushed by Democrats would “encourage more people to enter the country illegally and make an already difficult situation worse.” Roughly 50 percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they would be less likely to vote for Georgia’s Democratic senators should they support mass amnesty.
Nguyen’s campaign did not return a request for comment.
In addition to Nguyen’s abolish ICE push, the Democrat vocally opposed the 287 (g) program, which enables state and local law enforcement to assist federal immigration authorities. Atlanta’s Gwinnett County participated in the program for years but ended its involvement after Democrats won the county’s sheriff race. The program has allowed local law enforcement to take violent criminals off the streets—in 2020, for example, the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office encountered a Guatemalan national charged with felony murder and a Mexican national charged with rape and aggravated child molestation, according to ICE reports.
Nguyen’s statewide run in Georgia comes roughly five years after the Democrat joined the state legislature, replacing Stacey Abrams, who resigned in favor of a failed gubernatorial campaign. Nguyen won a primary runoff by 54 points in late June and will face Republican incumbent Brad Raffensperger in November. Her candidacy is backed by both Abrams and Rep. Hank Johnson (D., Ga.), who has compared Jewish settlers to termites and expressed concern that stationing thousands of Marines on the island of Guam would cause it to “tip over and capsize.”
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.”
Goliad County Sheriff Roy Boyd checks a site used by cartels to smuggle illegal immigrants through Goliad County, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
in Goliad County, Texas, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
A sign depicts the Goliad County line in Goliad, Texas, on Nov. 23, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday said his department will continue to warn migrants to not show up at the U.S.-Mexico border, as the current “Remain in Mexico” policy is not going away for “several weeks.”
Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Mayorkas was asked whether the border enforcement agencies have the manpower and resources needed to handle “thousands of people who departed on Friday and are moving towards the U.S. border.” He responded by blaming “exploitative smugglers” who use “false information” to motivate migrants to illegally cross the border.
“We have said repeatedly and we continue to warn people not to take the dangerous journey,” Mayorkas told CBS’ Margaret Brennan, noting that his department is working with “our partners to the south” to “break up very often” migrant caravans. “We continue to enforce immigration law, as is our legal responsibility.”
“These migrants receive false information from smugglers,” he added. “They put their lives, their life savings, in the hands of these exploitative organizations, these criminal organizations that do not care for their lives and only seek to make a profit.”
Brennan pressed Mayorkas about the effectiveness of the Biden administration’s methods, pointing out that even last week’s tragedy, during which 53 illegal immigrants were found dead in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, didn’t seem to deter people from coming to the border en masse.
“Those words are not being heard—people are moving right now, so the efforts to stop the root causes are not stopping them,” she said, referring to resident Joe Biden’s strategy to “address the root causes of migration in Central America.” “Are you predicting that this is only going to get more significant from here, that we’re going to go beyond the record surge in migrants?”
“No, I’m not predicting that at all,” the secretary replied. “We’re working with our partners to the south because this is a regional challenge that requires a regional response.”
Mayorkas was also asked about the fate of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which requires foreign nationals who claim to be asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases are being processed. On Thursday, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration has the authority to end MPP, which is commonly known as “Remain in Mexico.”
According to Mayorkas, MPP will continue to be enforced for now because it takes time for the lower court to lift its injunction that prevents the Biden administration from ending the protocol.
“In light of the favorable Supreme Court ruling, we have to wait for that ruling to reach the district court that issued an injunction preventing us from ending ‘Remain in Mexico,’” he told Brennan. “So we have several weeks to go before the district court lifts its injunction and until then, we are obligated by the district court’s ruling to continue to implement the ‘Remain in Mexico’ program, and we will do so in accordance with law.”
In a 5–4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled against Texas and Missouri, which had argued that the Biden administration violated the federal immigration law by rescinding MPP. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberal justices in the majority.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the case was “wrongly decided” and will only “make the border crisis worse.” He said he agrees with the dissenting opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito, who said the government can’t guarantee that those who have already been released into the United States for later processing will show up for their scheduled asylum hearing to decide if they qualify for asylum.
“In fiscal year 2021, the Border Patrol reported more than 1.7 million encounters with aliens along the Mexican border,” Alito wrote. “When it appears that one of these aliens is not admissible, may the Government simply release the alien in this country and hope that the alien will show up for the hearing at which his or her entitlement to remain will be decided?”
“Congress has provided a clear answer to that question, and the answer is no.”
KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—Kinney County sheriff’s deputies responded to a suspected smuggling vehicle on a county road early in the morning on June 29. During the ensuing pursuit, the fleeing driver lost control of the vehicle and flipped it.
The driver, a Mexican national wearing a cartel-related medallion, was taken into custody and is facing at least seven felony charges, according to Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe.
Of the five passengers, all illegal immigrants, one female was taken to the hospital in Del Rio for non-life threatening injuries, while the remaining four declined medical treatment.
Coe said Border Patrol told him they could take the four uninjured illegal aliens into custody for processing only if they had been checked medically first.
“Well they had declined any type of medical help,” Coe told The Epoch Times. “So I can’t let them walk the streets. I can’t say, ‘Hey, go, be free.’ Because I still have to protect the Constitution and protect the people in the county.”
Coe said he loaded the three males and one female into his truck and drove to Eagle Pass, about an hour away, and dropped them off at the port of entry between the United States and Mexico.
In response to a question by The Epoch Times about the sheriff’s move, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the sheriffs in Texas play a “vital role” up and down the border.
“I applaud all of our sheriffs for having to respond in unprecedented conditions. And that’s causing all of us to use unprecedented action,” Abbott said during a press conference in Eagle Pass on June 29.
“And so whether it’s doing what that sheriff in Kinney County is doing, or what we’re doing, such as turning back more than 20,000 people, we all have our own tools and strategies that we use to either turn back or to return people across the border.”
Coe said he agrees with Abbott that local law enforcement shouldn’t have to be tying up so many resources on the border issue.
“But to let them go, undocumented, unaccounted for, just go because of a policy—I couldn’t do it. It’s going to be the exception rather than the rule. But at the same time, if Border Patrol won’t take a group for whatever reason, I don’t have a choice.”
He said he’s not sure if there will be any legal ramifications—”We’ll see what happens.”
Kinney County deputies have arrested 66 smugglers so far in June as the county remains a thoroughfare from the U.S.–Mexico border to San Antonio.
Why not start using the border for munitions testing; waste disposal (especially nuclear); etc.? [US Patriot]
The Supreme Court gave the Biden administration the green light on June 30 to end the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy that requires non-Mexican asylum-seekers arriving at the southern border to wait in Mexico for processing.
Resident Joe Biden’s decision to nix the program didn’t violate a 1996 migrant detention law, the court held, noting that the administration’s memorandum rescinding the program should have been examined by the lower courts.
The 5–4 opinion (pdf) in Biden v. Texas, court file 21-954, was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and comes as record numbers of illegal aliens are streaming across the U.S. border with Mexico, overwhelming the capacity of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deal with them.
Roberts’s opinion was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett Kavanaugh. Breyer, 83, retired from the court at noon on June 30 and was replaced by Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kavanaugh also filed a separate concurring opinion. Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett both filed separate dissenting opinions.
Texas and Missouri had argued that Biden broke the law by ending the program.
Upon taking office, Biden cut off enrollments in the program, part of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) created by Congress under then-President Bill Clinton. In 2018, the Trump administration said it would enforce the program to crack down on the practice known as catch-and-release, in which individuals would make fraudulent asylum claims knowing they would be released into the United States and be able to stay for years before their court appearance.
Under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a memorandum on Jan. 20, 2021, saying it would “suspend new enrollments in the [MPP] pending further review of the program.”
“Aliens who aren’t already enrolled in MPP should be processed under other existing legal authorities,” it reads.
Days later, Biden signed three new executive orders aimed at undoing Trump-era immigration policies. One of them, Biden said, “orders a full review of the previous administration’s harmful and counterproductive immigration policies, basically across the board.”
But in August 2021, at the urging of the two states, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, ordered the government to enforce the MPP policy until “lawfully rescinded.” The Biden administration had failed to properly justify ending the policy and to uphold a 1996 law requiring the detention of certain migrants, the judge held. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit affirmed Kacsmaryk’s ruling.
On May 2, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of asking the attorneys involved in the case to provide post-hearing submissions to the court. Both the Biden administration and the two states opposing it in the high-stakes litigation filed briefs arguing that the court does have the power to decide the central legal questions in the case, The Epoch Times reported.
In his new opinion, Roberts wrote that “the Government’s rescission of MPP did not violate” section 1225 of the Immigration and Nationality Act” and reversed the decision of the lower court, remanding the case “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
By incorrectly interpreting the section as a command, the appeals court needlessly injected itself into administration affairs and “imposed a significant burden upon the Executive’s ability to conduct diplomatic relations with Mexico,” Roberts wrote.
The district court would force the administration “to the bargaining table with Mexico, over a policy that both countries wish to terminate, and to supervise its continuing negotiations with Mexico to ensure that they are conducted ‘in good faith.’” The law doesn’t allow the lower court “to tie the hands of the Executive in this manner,” the chief justice wrote.
In his dissent, Alito wrote that even though Congress gave the administration the option of returning “inadmissible aliens to Mexico while they await proceedings in this country,” the Biden DHS instead violated the law by releasing in the United States an “untold numbers of aliens who are very likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearings.”
“This practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the Court looks the other way,” he wrote.
Christopher Hajec, director of litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), a nonprofit public interest law firm that filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, shared his views on the new ruling.
“We are certainly disappointed with the Court’s decision today,” Hajec told The Epoch Times by email.
“We think it was wrong on the merits and wrong on jurisdiction. Nevertheless, there are two silver linings. On the merits, the Court made clear that the lower courts in this case have yet to decide, and should decide, whether Biden’s extreme parole policies are lawful. We think they clearly are not. Also, on jurisdiction, the Court still left open a path for states and other parties to get relief from Biden’s disastrous immigration policies, though that path is narrower than before.”
Judy Rabinovitz, special counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, praised the ruling.
“The Supreme Court was right to reject the spurious argument that this cruel policy is statutorily required,” Rabinovitz said in a statement. “While, as noted in the decision, the case will return to the district court, the Biden administration can and should move forward swiftly to finally terminate ‘remain in Mexico’ for good—a result that has been long, and unjustly, delayed.”
The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
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.
President Donald Trump said the Supreme Court should keep an eye on the reporter who unveiled the potential ruling that it would criminalize abortion in the United States.
A leak to the press in early May appeared to show the Supreme Court’s draft majority opinion striking down Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision that made abortion a constitutional right nationwide in 1973.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the leak shortly after and directed the court marshal to investigate the rare breach.
“The U.S. Supreme Court must find reveal and punish the leaker,” Trump wrote in a June 22 post via his social media site Truth Social. “Go to the reporter who received the leak,” he said, calling it “a tremendously serious matter that has never happened, to anywhere near this extent, before.”
The former president appointed three conservative justices to the high court during his presidency.
Although a final opinion from the Supreme Court is expected soon, the scoop, co-written by Politico reporters Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, set off a political earthquake across the nation.
Congressional Republicans have decried the unknown leaker and demanded that they are found and punished, while resident Joe Biden and Democrat leaders blasted the attempt to overturn legal protections for abortion.
Pro-abortion activists have since rallied at the court’s doorstep, Catholic churches, and judges’ home addresses. A recent report reveals more than 40 attacks against pro-life individuals and organizations have been recorded since the leak of the draft opinion.
Trump previously denied the revelation, which he said “cheapens the court,” will have a major impact on the 2022 midterm elections.
And despite his assertion that authorities should “go to the reporter,” disclosing the identity of a confidential source without his or her consent can subject a journalist to civil liability. Most states also have shield laws in place to protect journalists against the compelled disclosure of confidential information, including anonymous sources and unpublished notes.
The draft opinion almost runs to 100 pages, including 67-page opinion along with a 31-page appendix.
Resident Joe Biden’s pick for a top spot at the U.S. Agency for International Development praised Saudi Arabia’s “exciting, productive, inspiring” social progress after her employer received a large grant from the kingdom—and did an about-face months later when the financial agreement was cut off after Riyadh’s assassination of activist Jamal Khashoggi.
Tamara Cofman Wittes, a longtime fellow at the Brookings Institution, is seeking Senate confirmation for her nomination as assistant administrator at USAID. During her time at the think tank in 2018, Wittes received as much as $499,999 from Saudi Arabia, according to its annual report. Brookings told the Washington Post the Saudi grant was intended to fund an analysis of the “Saudi think tank sector,” which is relatively small compared with other countries in the region. Saudi Arabia has 13 think tanks, according to an unrelated 2020 global study by the University of Pennsylvania, compared with 87 in Iran, 47 in Egypt, and 29 in Yemen. At the time of the grant, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud was trying to rebrand the country as modernizing and progressive.
Wittes visited Saudi Arabia in February of that year, posting a slideshow on the Brookings website that highlighted an alleged increase in women’s freedom and a growing tourism industry.
“The pace of change is really notable compared to my previous visits to the kingdom where there was a sense that the leadership of the country moved very slowly and cautiously. … It is clear that’s not the case now,” she toldWashington Jewish Week in a glowing article headlined “Saudi expert eyes changing kingdom.”
While the nation said it would loosen restrictions on women’s attire and driving in 2018, Saudi Arabia faced allegations of far-reaching war crimes in Yemen and crackdowns on dissidents and women’s rights. Wittes published a mild criticism of the arrest of a Saudi female driving activist in May 2018, calling it “deeply sad and ironic” and a contrast with the “swift pace of change” she witnessed in the country.
Her comments could add to concerns from Republicans that Wittes helped bolster the reputations of Gulf state countries that donated to Brookings. Senate Republicans already raised questions during a confirmation hearing last week about Wittes’s praise for Qatar, which donated at least $22 million to Brookings during her employment. The think tank is facing scrutiny after its president, Gen. John Allen, stepped down last week amid a federal investigation into allegations that he worked as an unregistered lobbyist for Doha.
After Brookings terminated the Saudi funding in response to Khashoggi’s assassination, Wittes gave a much bleaker assessment of the country’s leadership—arguing that Khashoggi’s murder “catalyzed concerns that had already been growing about the young crown prince and his policy choices on other issues as well,” and praising the U.S. Senate’s decision to cut off funding for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.
“President Trump’s [supportive] behavior toward the Saudis and his statements make it look more like he’s the one being used. Like he’s being Mohammed bin Salman’s [son of a bitch] if you will,” Wittes said on a Brookings podcast. “He doesn’t mind their gross violations of international norms, whether it’s murdering a journalist, hitting civilians with bombs, or other moves in regional policy.”
Wittes also called for the United States to take a tougher stance against Saudi Arabia, telling the New York Times after Biden’s election that the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia has “a lot of value” but “it simply cannot continue in the way it has for the last four years.”
Wittes did not respond to a request for comment.
Republicans raised concerns at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week about Wittes receiving funding from the Qatari government—a country with a record of human rights abuses and anti-Israel terror financing—and for posting criticism about the historic peace accords between Israel and Arab states.
“The president of Brookings has resigned over [his financial ties with Qatar], but you ran the Middle East Center at Brookings,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). “Should the American taxpayers be concerned that President Biden wants to put in charge of distributing millions of dollars of taxpayer money someone who has spent years being funded by a foreign nation who is not our friend?”
The Free Beacon first reported last week that Wittes described Qatar’s capital city Doha as a “global gathering place for dialogue” and amplified Qatari leaders’ claims that they support human rights and oppose “extremists who exploit religion to incite violence,” while Brookings was raking in millions from the government.
She also posted articles on Twitter decrying the Abraham Accords, Israel’s normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates, as misogynistic, a “new Naksa”—referring to the Palestinian word for “setback”—and as a “triumph for authoritarianism.”
Wittes denied that she opposed the accords, telling Cruz that she was “skeptical when the Emiratis made their announcement, which was breathtaking, in August 2020. I was skeptical that other Arab states would join them, and I was proven wrong.”
Martin Indyk, the former vice president of Brookings who helped raise the funds from Doha, denied that the Qataris exercised any influence over the think tank’s work.
“They never showed any interest in what we wrote, the content,” Indyk, who also served as former president Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, toldPolitico in an article last week. “What they were interested in was the cachet.”
If confirmed, Wittes wouldn’t be the first Biden administration official who received funding from the Qataris. Robert Malley, the special envoy for Iran and Biden’s point man for the nuclear negotiations, ran the International Crisis Group when it took in $4 million from the Qatari government.
Hady Amr, the administration’s special envoy to the Palestinians, was the founding director of the Qatari-funded Brookings Doha Center. Senior administration adviser Erin Pelton was previously a registered lobbyist for Qatar.
On the 10th anniversary of the implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a law that gives illegal aliens who were brought to America as children immunity from deportation, Arizona’s Democrats are calling for a permanent solution.
Today marks the 10th anniversary of #DACA, Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-03) tweeted. “It’s a reminder that we have a moral obligation to protect Dreamers in AZ and across the nation. We must guarantee certainty for those who have known no other home but this one.”
It’s a reminder that we have a moral obligation to protect Dreamers in AZ and across the nation.
We must guarantee certainty for those who have known no other home but this one. #HomeisHere 1/3— Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) June 15, 2022
DACA recipients are commonly known as “Dreamers.”
“Despite the House’s best efforts, we continue to see xenophobic attacks and inaction,” he said. “The Senate must immediately pass the Dream and Promise Act. Anything less would shamefully neglect our values.”
Grijalva also said that DACA “remains the floor, not the ceiling, when it comes to protecting immigrant communities,” suggesting that Democrats may pursue citizenship for other illegal aliens.
“For the 60,000 DACA recipients who call Arizona home, pursuing their American Dreams by going to college or working has helped grow our state’s economy, culture, and community for the better,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-07) said Wednesday on Twitter. “We owe it to our Dreamers to repair our broken immigration system.”
For the 60,000 DACA recipients who call Arizona home, pursuing their American Dreams by going to college or working has helped grow our state’s economy, culture, and community for the better.
“Ten years ago today, I stood by President Obama as we carried out one of our proudest accomplishments,” Biden said. “On this 10th DACA Anniversary, we celebrate the transformational impact it’s had on hundreds of thousands of young people. It’s time for Congress to make this permanent now.”
Ten years ago today, I stood by President Obama as we carried out one of our proudest accomplishments. On this 10th DACA Anniversary, we celebrate the transformational impact it’s had on hundreds of thousands of young people.
The calls to make the program permanent are being made as the United States sees a record-setting spike in illegal alien crossings at the Southern Border.
In April, more than 234,000 illegal aliens were encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the most in history, as foreigners continue to pour across the open border.
Recent reports suggest that CBP’s morale is virtually non-existent, and that many of its agents harbor contempt for the Biden administration, which has stood by idly amid the crisis.
This article originally appeared in The Arizona Sun Times . The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. Republished with permission.
At least 31 people were shot, including six fatally, in Chicago over the past weekend, officials said on Monday morning.
In the latest fatal shooting, a woman who was not identified was shot and killed in the West Lawn neighborhood on Sunday night at around 7:35 p.m., officials told ABC and the Chicago Sun-Times. Two females were arguing on the sidewalk of South Kilbourn Avenue when a male suspect approached them and fired several shots, hitting the woman in the head and body. The woman was later pronounced dead at the Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
On Sunday morning at around 4 a.m., a 23-year-old man was shot and killed and a woman was critically injured in Grand Boulevard on the South Side. Officers found the man and the woman on South State Street with a gunshot wound to the chest. The man was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, and the woman, 32, was shot in the lower back. Officials said she is hospitalized at the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition.
At around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, a 34-year-old man was shot dead inside a car in South Commons on the South Side, officials told the two outlets. He was found with wounds to his torso. When he was taken to Stroger Hospital, he was later pronounced dead, authorities said.
Hours before that, a woman was shot and killed while she was inside a car on the West Side near East Garfield Park, officials said. The 37-year-old was struck by gunfire by someone who shot into the car. She was taken to Stroger and was later pronounced dead from her injuries, said police.
In a similar incident on the Lower West Side at around 11 p.m. on Saturday, a 26-year-old male was struck by gunfire as he was a passenger inside a vehicle. Someone pulled up next to the car he was in and opened fire on the man’s car, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital and was later pronounced dead, police said.
A man—25-year-old Vaugh Sivels—was shot and killed on Friday afternoon in Englewood on the South Side, said police. He was outside on Justine Street on Chicago’s South Side someone shot him in the head and torso, officials said. Sivels was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead sometime later.
In the reports, no suspects were listed in connection to the shootings and homicides.
Illegal alien residents of Massachusetts have won their long-waged bid for driver’s licenses from the Bay State.
On June 9, the Senate followed a vote by the House two days earlier to override Gov. Charlie Baker’s recent veto of a bill to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.
The Massachusetts law, entitled the Work and Family Mobility Act, will go into effect on July 1, 2023. Under it, illegal aliens living in Massachusetts will still have to pass both a written and road test before obtaining a license.
Baker, a Republican, said in a statement that he opposed the measure out of concern that it could potentially lead to noncitizens registering to vote.
In a statement explaining his veto, Baker also said he was concerned with tasking the state’s registry of motor vehicle workers with the job of deciphering foreign documents and their authenticity.
“The RMV does not have the expertise or ability to verify the validity of many types of documents from other countries,” Baker said.
Five Senate Democrats joined the three Senate Republicans who voted against the override. State Sen. Bruce Tarr, one of the Republicans to vote against it, said he sees giving illegal residents driver’s licenses as a message that not only is it okay to come to America and break the law, but that anyone who does so will be rewarded for doing so.
But the concerns weren’t enough to thwart the Democratic-nominated state Legislature. The House voted 119–36 and the Senate 32–8 to override Baker.
The measure garnered the backing of the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police and a majority of the state’s sheriffs and district attorneys. They and the bill’s supporters hail the move to give illegal citizens driver’s licenses a move towards making roadways safer throughout America.
Massachusetts state Sen. John Keenan, a Democrat, said he’s hoping that as more states grant driver’s licenses to their “undocumented residents,” it will lead to a nationwide movement.
There are already 16 states that issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
The passage of the bill is historic even for a liberal state such as Massachusetts.
For 15 years, immigration advocates unsuccessfully pushed Massachusetts to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. In the course of the last year, the residents themselves have held large, bold protests demanding driver’s licenses, many holding signs outside of the statehouse bearing messages written in a foreign language.
Last year, at a protest outside of the state capital in Boston, Yamila Ruiz, a native and legal resident of Argentina, spoke about the trauma she experienced when she was 12 of watching her father being arrested for driving without a valid U.S. license.
“We had to live through the agonizing fear he was going to be deported and that we would never see him again,” she said.
There are an estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants currently living in Massachusetts.
In February, 19 mayors from around the state, including Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, signed a letter endorsing licenses for what the letter referred to as undocumented workers.
“All Boston and Massachusetts adults deserve access to driver’s licenses regardless of immigration status,” the mayors said in a joint statement. “I support the Family Mobility Act because it will make all of us safer.”
More than one-third of state attorneys general have come out in defense of Florida’s ban on sanctuary cities.
After a federal judge halted enforcement of the Florida legislature’s ban, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R.) signed into law in 2019, the state appealed the decision, and 17 attorneys general filed an amicus brief on the Sunshine State’s behalf.
“Sanctuary cities have become havens for illegal aliens and all the social, economic, and criminal costs that illegal immigration entails,” Texas attorney general Ken Paxton (R.), one of the brief’s signatories, said Tuesday in a statement. “The Florida law simply required local law enforcement officials to comply with federal immigration law.”
At least a dozen states have banned cities from impeding immigration enforcement against undocumented immigrants. Nearly half of voters see illegal immigration as a critical threat to U.S. interests in the next 10 years, according to a poll conducted by Morning Consult and Politico. Illegal immigration has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. Customs and Border Patrol encountered a record 1.6 million illegal immigrants during the 2021 fiscal year, and officials expect that number to rise to 2.3 million in 2022.
DeSantis in 2019 said he was proud to “uphold the rule of law and ensure that our communities are safe” by keeping sanctuary cities out of Florida.
Democratic megadonor funneled more than $40 million to elect 75 prosecutors in the last decade
George Soros spent more than $40 million in the past decade to elect scores of liberal prosecutors in half of America’s largest jurisdictions, many of which are now roiled by crime.
The Democratic megadonor has backed 75 so-called justice reform prosecutors through direct contributions, PACs, and other third-party entities, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund revealed in a June report. Though many had little prosecutorial experience when elected, they represent 72 million Americans in some of the nation’s most populous municipalities. Ten Soros prosecutors, including Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner (D.) and Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon (D.), received $13 million in just the last four years, going on to win races where they had vastly outraised their competition—sometimes by as much as 90 percent. In each race, Soros was the single greatest donor to the campaign.
“Our study shows for the first time, Soros’s funding and installation of these district attorneys is fundamentally dismantling the criminal justice system as we know it,” Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund president Jason Johnson told the Washington Free Beacon.
The report discloses the power progressive criminal prosecutors wield in the American justice system—and the potential effects of that influence on crime. The FBI in 2020 reported its highest single-year increase in homicides—a 30 percent jump from the previous year. A year later, 12 cities, including Krasner’s Philadelphia and Soros-backed district attorney José Garza’s Austin, Texas, broke their all-time homicide records. According to the report, more than 40 percent of homicides and a third of all violent and property crimes in 2021 occurred in jurisdictions run by Soros prosecutors.
From cities like Seattle and Los Angeles, to wealthy suburbs near Washington, D.C., to provincial counties in Mississippi and Wisconsin, the prosecutors have radically overhauled bail laws and pursued lightened sentencing in an effort to reduce incarceration. Soros began his quiet effort to remake America’s criminal justice system in 2014, donating $50 million to the ACLU for justice reform activism. He followed up in 2016 by funneling more than $3 million into seven local campaigns, including to Cook County district attorney Kim Foxx (D.), the controversial Chicago prosecutor known for dropping charges against Jussie Smollett, who committed a hate crime hoax.
Johnson told the Free Beacon career prosecutors are becoming a thing of the past as former tax attorneys and ACLU lawyers have ascended to top prosecutorial positions on Soros’s dime.
Soros’s network of justice reform groups includes more than 500 PACs, dark money groups, and nonprofits, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund report notes. Some, such as the Drug Policy Alliance, where Soros serves as chairman, are open about their affiliation. Others, like the Tides Center, are “donor pass-through organization[s],” which launder donations from Soros’s philanthropic juggernauts, including the Open Society Foundations, to subentities and political PACs.
Through a cluster of statewide public safety PACs, Soros donated more than a million dollars each to Krasner, Gascon, Foxx, and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg (D.). He also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Virginia prosecutors Buta Biberaj (D.) and Steve Descano (D.), both of whom have received scrutiny in office for failing to prosecute violent criminals and allowing repeat offenders to victimize others. In a New York Times op-ed last week, Descano also pledged not to prosecute illegal abortions if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this month.
Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares (R.) told the Free Beacon the ascent of Soros prosecutors has changed criminal law in many jurisdictions overnight and made communities less safe.
“Instead of trying to change the law through elected officials, these groups are electing prosecutors who simply ignore it,” Miyares said. “They’ve replaced DAs that follow the law with radical extremists with an agenda that makes our communities less safe and emboldens criminals.”
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund cited a Free Beacon report in March that revealed Descano’s office had dropped felony charges against a man who attempted to abduct and rape a hotel maid in 2020. One year later, the same man was charged for killing two homeless men and wounding three others during a nine-day shooting spree in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The looming threat to public safety has inspired recall efforts against Descano, Biberaj, and Soros-funded Arlington County commonwealth’s attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (D.) in Virginia.
“Soros prosecutors now preside over 20 percent of Americans with the same disastrous results we have seen in Virginia—violent criminals and sexual predators roam the streets victimizing innocents,” Sean Kennedy, the president of Virginians for Safe Communities, which fielded a recall effort against the prosecutors, told the Free Beacon. “As San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin faces his fate in a recall today, VSC knows that Northern Virginia’s Soros prosecutors will face the same public reckoning soon as the American people want safety first.”
Other prosecutors have participated in junkets, symposiums, and even lavish retreats put on by Soros-funded entities. More than 20 Soros prosecutors, including Gascon, Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby (D.), and St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner (D.), traveled with Fair and Just Prosecution, a Tides Center subentity, in 2019 to Germany and Portugal, where they learned about “drug decriminalization and harm reduction approaches.” The Vera Institute of Justice, a think tank funded by millions from Soros’s Open Society Foundation, treated Mosby and Foxx the same year to an all-expenses-paid spa retreat during work days.
The Vera Institute and other think tanks funded by Soros also promote these progressive prosecutors’ tactics while shielding them from bad press. New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice has the public relations firm BerlinRosen on retainer for district attorneys it works with, according to the report.
The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund anticipates Soros will spend millions more to reelect Gascon and to install other candidates in Raleigh, N.C., and Alameda County and Orange County, Calif., this year.
Voters in San Francisco issued the first check against Soros prosecutors during a recall election Tuesday, with 60 percent ousting San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin (D.) after a little more than two years in office.
Update 7:09 a.m.: This piece has been updated with the result of the San Francisco recall election.
REVIEW: ‘An Abolitionist’s Handbook’ by Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Cullors does not care what you think about her slush fund, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. “Even an anti-capitalist organization will still have to deal with money—sometimes quite a bit of it,” the self-described Marxist writes in An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World. “Be as transparent as possible—but make no apologies for salaries and other expenses.”
Unfortunately, this is the extent of the BLM cofounder’s financial advice in her new book, a how-to guide for aspiring abolitionists. If you’re looking for tips on how to raise tens of millions of dollars in charitable donations and funnel $970,000 to an LLC owned by the father of your child and $840,000 to your brother’s security firm, you will have to look elsewhere. Ditto for readers eager to learn how they can leverage their activist careers to accumulate $3.2 million in real estate, including a $1.4 million Malibu compound and an Atlanta-area “custom ranch” fitted with a private airplane hangar.
Instead, much of Cullors’s advice could readily fit in a self-help book on the discount rack at a Barnes & Noble: “Say Yes to Imagination,” “Allow Yourself to Feel,” “Forgive Actively, Not Passively.” While the injunctions might seem anodyne, Cullors believes these practices will help activists usher in a future without prisons, police, and courts. “Mind, body, and soul should be calibrated before you take over the world,” as Cullors puts it. In a way, the book is reminiscent of Jordan Peterson’s bestseller 12 Rules for Life, except it’s for people who want the country to burn.
While Cullors’s charitable self-dealing has made her a controversial figure, her abolitionist movement is still a big tent. Worried about pollution? Ecologist magazine says the U.S. military is one of the world’s largest polluters. Concerned about so-called animal rights? Uncle Sam subsidizes the meat and dairy industries. Think Spotify is making too much money off the hard work of garbage indie rock bands? U.S. courts protect the predatory behavior of record labels and streaming services, so you should be an abolitionist, too.
Ultimately, for Cullors, the United States is a “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” and incapable of reform, so abolitionists must resist its hold on every aspect of society, including your morning coffee. “Start your day by making your own free-trade pour-over in a handmade coffee pot?” Cullors asks her readers. “It’s still connected to white supremacy.”
Before you accuse Cullors of speaking in abstractions, though, she makes clear that her hatred of America is grounded in facts. We lead the world in arms exports. We have the largest prison population. We fight wars. We enslaved people. That’s all on top of the United States’ “active genocide of the indigenous people of Turtle Island” (the BLM term for North America). To put it simply, we’ve had “400 years of sadism.”
Speaking of sadism, did I mention Cullors’s prose? In a section about the power of incisive writing, she points to James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni’s “hot knife of words continually slicing through the butter of ideas like racism, white supremacy, and social justice.” There’s a line about how if you’re careful with the “fire” of conflict, “the heat can nourish you.” “Center” is her favorite verb, so on every other page someone or something is centering something else.
There’s also the typical therapeutic and social justice language that a reader with a trained eye can navigate, but I invite anyone to figure out what this means:
Our practice toward grounded responsiveness offers a model for both our personal and our movement relationships. We can choose to center our values over our reactive vitriol. We can choose to be in community and model a new approach toward naming requests.
Readability aside, the book’s biggest weakness is the dissimilarity between Patrisse Cullors the wise abolitionist educator and Patrisse Cullors the hack political activist.
The author who calls on readers to fight the U.S. government is the same person who hosted a party at BLM’s $6 million L.A. compound, which the organization secretly purchased with an influx of cash after George Floyd’s death, to celebrate Joe Biden’s election victory in 2020. The writer who advises activists to “respond” rather than “react” called New York magazine’s coverage of her organization’s profligate spending “right-wing disinformation” and said black media outlets that picked up the reporting were not “actually black.” And the author who says abolitionists should “practice accountability” failed to file her organization’s federally mandated 990 tax documents and called charity transparency laws “triggering” and “unsafe.”
In other words, she’s no Nancy Brophy, the 71-year-old author of How to Murder Your Husband,who was convicted last month of murdering her husband. But maybe that’s an unfair standard—most writers can’t live up to all their guidance. And on the issue of accountability, at least, maybe Cullors practices it in less publicized ways:
There are multiple times in my life where I have been accountable for the harmful conditions that were created in a dynamic. The moments when I have been accountable are the moments when I feel more present for connection. It is a truly amazing moment when you hold yourself accountable and find the peace on the other side.
Here’s to hoping Cullors continues to hold herself accountable for the harmful conditions that were created in a dynamic, feels more present for connection, and finds peace on the other side.
PORTLAND, Maine—Facing an impending humanitarian crisis, Portland Family Shelters Director Mike Guthrie has a simple message to anyone who will listen, “We need help!”
Guthrie, a hands-on, frontline worker in the effort to feed, clothes, and house a continuous flow of foreign nationals arriving in Portland by airplane or bus from the U.S. southern border, told The Epoch Times, “Our family shelter facilities, our warming room, and even area hotel space is at capacity. We have maxed out our community resources.
“The time is coming when I’m going to have to look a dad in the face and tell him and his family that I don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight.”
The Portland Family Shelter is a complex of four rented buildings in various states of renovation located in the heart of downtown.
Some of the structures are gradually being converted into small apartments where up to four families will share a single kitchen and bathroom.
All four buildings are overflowing their present capacity.
“The intake is greater and faster than we can process,” Guthrie said.
Mike Guthrie, director of the family shelter in Portland, Maine, on May 25, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
To accommodate the stream of new arrivals, the family shelter program has in recent months placed 309 families (1,091 people) in eight hotels located in five neighboring municipalities spread over three counties of southeastern Maine’s prime tourist and vacation region.
Those moves, with their attendant complications and problems, have resulted in some pushback from the local Mainers who fear their prized relaxed lifestyle may never be the same.
And they resent not having a voice in any of it.
“It’s just part of the state government’s plan to bring the slums to the suburbs,” said a Mainer from the resort and tourist community of Kennebunkport, a small town about 28 miles down the Atlantic coast from Portland.
“The United States cannot rescue Africa.”
Coming out of the Kennebunkport post office, long-time Mainers Virginia and Robert shared their opinions on what the locals see as the “invasion” of Maine by immigrants.
Virginia commented, “We have sympathy for the asylum seekers, but resources are over-extended and now it’s going beyond Portland.”
“Eventually, it’s going to impact our quality of life,” Robert said.
A view of Dock Square in Kennebunkport, Maine, on May 25, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
Pressures on Portland’s homeless shelter capacity last year inspired a York County community action group to obtain a federal grant to help house the city’s regular homeless population.
The plan included renting half a dozen large motels in a three-mile corridor in the heart of southeastern Maine’s Atlantic-shore tourist region.
Motels within walking distance of shopping opportunities were selected.
The motels close in the off-season, so it appeared to some people to be a win-win arrangement.
Included in the plan was the small, quiet, resort town of Wells, located about six miles from Kennebunkport.
Though the program sheltered hundreds of individuals from the brutal Maine winter, the resulting wave of never-before-seen vandalism, burglaries, and other property crimes in the commercial district forced the city of Wells to evict every tenant for violations of several municipal ordinances.
It is unclear where the evicted people were relocated.
Homeless Victimized and Intimidated
A motel in Wells, Maine, that was used to shelter the homeless of Portland on May 26, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
According to Captain Gerald Congdon of the Wells Police Department, the crimes were not committed by foreign asylum seekers, Wells residents, or by the many legitimate, disadvantaged, and debilitated people housed in the motel.
“The perpetrators arrested were mostly ‘couch-surfers’ spending time with homeless friends staying legally at the motel. However, the bulk of grant-qualified motel dwellers had drug problems,” Congdon said.
One small business operator, whose sweetshop was burglarized, told The Epoch Times, “The thieves were druggies in need of a fix. They came in through a window, stole the cash from the register, and took our digital scales.
“These people were brought in around Christmastime. It was like an invasion. We never had a crime at our store before they came in and ruined things.
“It’s not fair. We now think differently. They changed the whole landscape of how we do business. We don’t want to see them come back.”
Congdon told The Epoch Times, “There was shoplifting at the bigger chain stores and car break-ins going after loose change in the strip mall parking lot.
“A small bike shop was burglarized twice, losing thousands of dollars-worth of high-end bicycles—never happened to them in 42 years of business.
“Our officers spent a lot of time on disturbance calls and enforcing warrants. We made quite a few arrests and recovered some stolen property.
“The management of the area’s motels got tired of seeing us there. They were tired of their legitimate businesses being associated with crime.
“The nice tenants, many of whom are truly deserving of help, were being victimized and intimidated. They were afraid to call us.”
Congdon said his department was not consulted and was given no advance notice on the plan to bring hundreds of homeless people—including many known drug-addicts—into their city.
The City of Wells was not compensated for the additional hours of policing.
A broad, sandy, beach in the tourist region of southeastern Maine, on May 26, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
‘Feeder Sources’
On May 1, a hotel in the resort town of Old Orchard Beach, located about halfway between Portland and Kennebunkport, evicted all of its residents for a different reason.
This time, they were asylum seekers evicted in order to make room for the arrival of legally permitted temporary seasonal workers to lodge there.
These special visa-holders make up the majority of the workforce needed by the region’s thriving hospitality industry.
The asylum seekers were relocated to motels in three other southern Maine communities, according to Portland city officials.
In Portland, 500 single asylum seekers are housed in a municipal shelter separate from the family shelter, according to a spokesperson for the city. It too is at capacity.
Guthrie told The Epoch Times that city authorities have publicly notified what he calls “the feeder sources” at the southern border and in Washington D.C. about the immigration crisis unfolding in Portland.
The city administration asked Border Patrol, Health and Human Services, and participating non-profits to stop sending asylum seekers to Portland until sufficient resources become available to adequately care for them.
But the force of the city’s request was blunted when it announced immediately after the notification that it would not turn anybody away, acknowledged Guthrie.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills in 2019. (Rebecca Hammel/U.S. Senate/Public Domain)
Guthrie stated that the city asked Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, to call out the National Guard to set up emergency shelters and feeding stations but has not yet received an answer.
On June 2, in remarks before the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, Mills committed the state to building a new emergency shelter in the city and said she was working to create additional housing for asylum seekers in the area.
She also spoke of the desirability of the in-migration as a source of labor to fill many existing job openings.
Speaking of the migrants, Mills said, “We need the workforce here. We want them to be available for work. Some of them come with incredible skills and experiences that we can employ.”
One long-time Maine resident, who visited the Portland Family Shelter to see the situation for himself, told The Epoch Times, “Mike Guthrie is like a man frantically trying to bail out a sinking rowboat, while his superiors continue to drill holes in it.”
During the month of May, the family shelter took in 79 families consisting of 262 individuals with no slowdown in sight, Guthrie said.
“220 people turned up in just 20 days. We’re trying to help anybody that comes to the door. Thus far, nobody coming to us has had to sleep outside but we can no longer guarantee shelter upon arrival,” he said.
“We need the state of Maine to step in and create safe places for these people. We need a facility to be created and run like a FEMA camp.
“Our legislators are talking about buying and renovating older apartments throughout the region that could house 140 families. That’s great in the long-term, but the problem is now!
“At the rate things are going, we’d have those places filled in two months. Then what?” Guthrie asked.
Portland’s pastors, church members, and its citizens have been stepping forward to do what they can.
“Local churches and those in Cumberland are offering space for people to sleep and some Portland residents have even opened up their homes,” Guthrie said.
A surge in asylum seekers crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley has put a strain on the immigration system. Here, migrants are on the move, in Mission, Texas, on March 17, 2021. (Los Angeles Times via TCA)
Where Are the Asylum Seekers Coming From?
The vast majority of the new arrivals at the family shelter in Portland have come from Angola and the Congo in Africa, with some coming from Haiti in the Caribbean.
They make the arduous and often dangerous journey any way they can—largely on foot.
Guthrie told of a father and child who recently showed up at the shelter.
“The man said that his wife, the young child’s mother, died on the way. She was swept away while crossing a river.”
Guthrie explained that the route to Portland for most of the asylum seekers begins in chaos-torn western equatorial Africa.
“They cross the Atlantic to South America. They go up through South America and then north through Central America, ending up in northern Mexico, from which they cross the southern border into the United States.
“At that point, they present themselves to Border Patrol.
“A new arrival tells Border Patrol ‘I am here to seek asylum. If I go back home, I will be killed. I fear for my life.’ That’s the difference between an asylum seeker and an immigrant,” he said.
Those three short sentences guarantee a person’s admission for a lengthy stay in the United States as his or her claim is adjudicated.
Guthrie went on to explain, “After some additional questioning, the individual is issued minimal paperwork by immigration authorities and told they will be contacted about a formal hearing on their asylum plea. They are then turned over to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”
Most are given cell phones.
Public servants with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and representatives of various American non-profit, philanthropic organizations, ask the asylum seekers where they want to go in the interior of the United States to await their asylum hearing.
For many, their answer is “Portland.”
“They are then put on buses or airplanes and sent on their way,” Guthrie said.
Lobsterman Tucker Soule unloads a trap at Cape Porpoise near Kennebunkport, Maine, on May 23, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
Why Portland?
Guthrie said that Portland is often recommended to people enroute to the United States by relatives who are already living in the city.
“Once they get here, the majority of the new arrivals want to stay in Portland. They tell their relatives and friends about us,” he said.
Jessica Grondin, the city’s director of communications and media, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview, “Portland is happy about and proud of our good reputation as a ‘Welcoming City.’ We presently have a large Somali population, as well as many Iraqis and Afghans who arrived here previously.”
Grondin said that several busloads of asylum seekers recently shipped off to Washington D.C. by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, ultimately made their way to Portland.
She stated that, along with the lack of housing, one of the biggest problems facing the city is a shortage of staff to care for the volume of new arrivals.
Guthrie said that the influx asylum seekers has exceeded the city’s ability to offer basic services.
“As we outgrow our past limits, we are being forced to prioritize what we are doing for these people. We are no longer able to help them connect with local immigration attorneys, nor help them learn English,” he said.
Effective May 7, a policy change took effect forbidding the shelter’s staff from assisting asylum seekers in finding an apartment.
“Instead, these folks, who are complete strangers to this community and speak no English, are being qualified for a state General Assistance housing voucher.
“They are given a sample lease, a rental form, and an explanation of the GA process, and are then sent out on their own to find a place to live,” Guthrie said.
While most of the new arrivals speak Portuguese, some speak French, Lingala, or another tribal language. Many are bilingual, but none speak English.
Weary of waiting around, some of the French-speakers asked to be sent to Quebec, but the strict Canadian rules concerning COVID-19 prevented them from entering, Guthrie stated.
Condition and Needs of Asylum Seekers
Guthrie described the migrants’ situation, saying, “Understand, the majority of these people arrive here with no money. They spent their life savings during their trip and have to start over. They need everything.
“They come from hot climates wearing summer clothes. We have given away about 97 percent of our clothing stock to help them cope with the colder weather here in Maine.
“We have to keep many people outside during the day and then pack them into our warming room for the chilly Maine nights, or on rainy days,” he said.
Fathers, mothers, and their numerous small children are kept outside all day long. They stand on the sidewalk across the street from the shelter or sit in an alley between two old houses passing the time until the next meal.
The grimy concrete and stony gravel of the alley serve as furniture. There are no chairs or tables. They sit or recline on whatever is at hand, or on the bare dirt.
The shade formed by the receding shadow of the walls of the surrounding old buildings is their only comfort.
Antsy and bored small children have no toys with which to amuse themselves, except for one little boy who rides a plastic big-wheel tricycle around the alley.
A small bathroom is available to people upon request in one of the shelter’s buildings, or at a nearby city-owned singles’ shelter around the block.
“For showers, we team up with a local church that comes by with a bus and offers showers to any of them that want to go,” Guthrie said.
When asked if the asylum seekers are Christians, Guthrie answered that many ride a bus to church services on Sunday morning.
The shelter provides families with three meals a day, prepared off-site by “community partners.”
“We pick up the meals and bring them here and serve them indoors. The food is decent. A typical lunch is a sandwich, salad, soup, granola bars, snacks, milk and water,” Guthrie said.
Guthrie told The Epoch Times that the family shelter is providing standard baby formula for the young children, but one baby is intolerant to it.
This infant requires a specialty brand that is hard to get—a fact that is upsetting to the mother and her child.
The Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition (MIRC) is providing asylum seekers residing in hotels and motels with some culturally appropriate foods such as fufu (an African staple), goat meat, greens, chicken, and rice, he said.
A lot of the accommodations do not have kitchens.
According to Guthrie, the cost per motel room is between $250 and $350 dollars per night and rising as the tourist season begins.
MIRC is part of a network of 85 statewide organizations involved in the care of the thousands of asylum seekers already here and those that are arriving daily.
Guthrie said the state is footing 70 percent of the family shelter’s expenses, with the city making up the remaining 30 percent.
But Guthrie says that getting the children into school is among the best assistance that can be provided.
“The schools offer all kinds of different programs. They have community resource officers. They keep the kids busy while giving them two meals a day,” he said.
More than 60 different foreign languages are spoken by students at Portland area schools, further complicating every task associated with education.
When asked about the overall health condition of the asylum seekers, Guthrie replied, “They are exhausted and scared. They haven’t travelled a safe route. Though clearly traumatized, very few will talk about the details of their experience. Counselling is available if requested.”
Teams of health care workers are performing what Guthrie calls “health outreach.” They have set up clinics at some of the motels to perform triage and make any necessary medical referrals.
The city of Portland has a busy public health clinic helping to provide treatment, but some people with more serious conditions end up in emergency rooms.
To overcome the language barrier, the city provides interpreters, and health care workers make use of cell phone translation apps.
On the whole, Guthrie said most of the people under his supervision are physically “very healthy.”
“Pregnancy is the families’ most urgent medical concern, and their most pressing medical need is OBGYN (obstetrics and gynecology) care,” he said.
He also said there is some sickle cell disease among them.
A young Angolan mother and child outside the family shelter in Portland, Maine, on May 25, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
City Hall allowed The Epoch Times access to several families being warehoused outdoors and a number of parents were eager to talk about their current plight.
Speaking through an interpreter provided by the shelter, and in the presence of shelter director Guthrie, Samantha, a young Angolan woman with a 10-month-old baby on her hip and a toddler in tow, was not shy about sharing her dissatisfaction.
When asked if her family’s basic needs were being met, Samantha replied, “We just need a place to sleep. We stay outside in the sun and the elements because there is not enough space for us indoors. There are not enough clothes for my family.
“Being outside all day is not good for my baby. Some of us have caught colds. Some had fevers. Some were so sick they went to the hospital.
“My son eats a special baby formula. I have to ration his feeding.
“What we are fed is very different than what we are used to. We are receiving no culturally appropriate food. There was no way for us to take a shower for five days.
“We endured a seven-month journey to come to this! We are not happy. Conditions are not good! We really need help.”
When asked if she felt welcome, Samantha said with a look of disbelief, “No! I do not feel welcome. Look at us. We are outside.”
A Congolese family seeking asylum in Portland, Maine, on May 25, 2022. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)
Landry, a housepainter and electrician’s helper, brought his wife Sylvie, two-year-old daughter, and 12-month-old son to Portland from the Congo.
When asked why he risked the journey, Landry answered, “I left my country because of political issues and insecurity. There we could be sure of nothing. Here, it’s different.”
Sylvie said, “We came from Texas unprepared for this Maine weather. I am not happy for how I am living here. I don’t feel welcome!”
Illegal immigrants account for two-thirds of growth in foreign-born population, study shows
The foreign-born population of the United States has reached its highest level in more than a century under President Joe Biden, a surge driven by the record number of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.
The country’s foreign-born population reached 47 million by the end of April, compared to 44.7 million when Biden was elected in November 2020, according to data compiled in a new paper from the Center for Immigration Studies, meaning the immigrant population has grown at a rate of 132,000 per month. Two-thirds of that growth, the paper’s authors estimate, can be attributed to illegal immigration.
The paper sheds light on the rapid demographic changes taking place under the Biden administration that are largely a consequence of a border crisis with little end in sight. The rate of growth of the foreign-born population on Biden’s watch is shattering levels during previous administrations—in former president Barack Obama’s first term, the foreign-born population grew at a rate of 59,000 per month, and 76,000 per month in his second term. That rate shrunk under former president Donald Trump, when the foreign-born population grew by an average of 42,000 a month before the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down migration into the United States.
Over the last 22 years, the foreign-born population has jumped by 51 percent and now makes up a total of 14.3 percent of the U.S. population. In 1970, the foreign-born population made up just 4.7 percent of the country, a third of what it is today.
Under Biden, the foreign-born population has grown at twice the rate of the native born population. Such a large discrepancy in growth rates between the two populations has not been observed in the United States since 1910, when the foreign-born population approached 14.7 percent before dramatically dropping for the next 50 years. The paper’s authors attribute the historic growth to a number of factors relating to the current administration’s weak immigration posture.
“The administration’s suspension of nearly all interior deportations and the resulting dramatic decline in immigration enforcement, including deportations, plus its refusal to automatically take custody of non-citizens released from jails and prisons have all likely made illegal immigrants feel safer, reducing emigration of those already here and encouraging new illegal immigration,” the authors write.
According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. population will reach an all-time high of 14.9 percent foreign-born by 2028. The authors of the study believe that projection is conservative and fails to take into account the spike during the Biden administration—the paper projects the foreign-born share of the U.S. population will hit 14.9 percent by next September. By the conclusion of Biden’s first term, the authors write, the total number of immigrants in the United States will reach 51.3 million.
“It seems clear that something has fundamentally changed and the illegal immigration population has grown dramatically after being relatively stable for a number of years,” the authors write.
Biden has presided over the worst border crisis in recorded American history. Border officials encountered 234,000 migrants on the southern border in April alone, the most ever on record.
Of those 234,000 migrants, nearly 118,000 were released into the U.S. interior. Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last month that he expects future migrant encounters to be even higher should the administration be successful in ending Title 42, a public health measure that allows for the rapid deportation of anyone seeking entry into the United States.
More than 1.3 million migrants have been encountered on the southern border in the 2022 fiscal year so far, and a vast majority of them did not face immediate deportation. The 2021 fiscal year saw 1.7 million migrant encounters, the highest in more than 60 years.
The immigration crisis is one of Biden’s largest electoral liabilities. Polling consistently shows a majority of voters disapprove of his handling of the border, including a Harvard-Harris survey released last month that found immigration was the third most concerning issue to voters.
In the past two weeks, more than 60,000 migrants have amassed in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, directly across the border from El Paso, Texas, in anticipation of Title 42 being lifted from the border.
“And we can only imagine it growing even further,” Mario D’Agostino, El Paso deputy city manager, told the El Paso City Council on May 23.
About a month ago, the number of migrants in Ciudad Juárez was about 15,000, D’Agostino said. He said state and federal officials keep him updated on the numbers.
Title 42 is an emergency public health order that allows for quick expulsion of nonessential travel across U.S. borders to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden administration had planned to lift it on May 23, but a federal judge blocked that move, keeping it in place for now.
The El Paso City Council met on May 23 to discuss invoking local emergency measures—including increasing capacity for shelter, food, and transport—to deal with an anticipated influx of illegal immigrants into the city.
The call came after Border Patrol apprehended more than 1,200 illegal immigrants on May 14 and subsequently released 119 at a charter bus station because of space constraints.
“Busy times! Just today, #ElPaso #USBP agents have encountered over 1,200 migrants & counting entering the border illegally,” El Paso Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez wrote on Twitter on May 14. “Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Turkish nationals to name a few.”
On most days, Border Patrol drops between 400 and 500 illegal immigrants per day at local nongovernmental organizations (NGO), which then assist with food, lodging, and transport out of El Paso, according to Chief Jorge Rodriguez, emergency management coordinator for the city of El Paso.
“If and when Title 42 … is eliminated, we can anticipate that the numbers that we are seeing now (which is about 400 to 500 per day), conservatively speaking, will double to at least 1,000 per day,” Rodriguez said. “Almost zero percent of migrants remain in El Paso. The choice of travel—which has changed from what we saw in 2019—is primarily through the airlines.”
If the airplanes and buses are full, illegal immigrants are forced to stay an extra 24 to 48 hours in the city, which jams up city and NGO resources, D’Agostino said.
During the first four months of 2022, Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than 94,000 illegal immigrants in the El Paso area, up from 63,000 during the same period in 2021.
D’Agostino said the city’s emergency team has temporary housing options in place, but they can’t be accessed and staffed without an emergency ordinance in place.
An emergency ordinance is part of the council’s police powers to respond to local emergencies, and it suspends the bidding process requirement when procuring goods and services during an emergency.
It has to be passed unanimously and with the consent of the mayor.
On May 23, the seven city council members voted on the ordinance and it failed by one vote. Councilmember Claudia Rodriguez said she would be more inclined to give her affirmative vote if the mayor signed a local disaster declaration first.
El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said he rejected a call last week to invoke a local disaster declaration, saying it would trigger an unwanted state response.
“We were really worried that the governor would get the [disaster declaration] … and he would send the National Guard down to the border or the DPS [Texas Department of Public Safety] to the border and create a scene that was not welcome in our community,” Leeser said.
D’Agostino said the disaster declaration proposal last week was a more extreme option in anticipation of Title 42 being lifted.
Councilmembers took a second vote and passed the ordinance, which goes into effect immediately and expires in 30 days.
A 15-year-old boy in New York City is facing murder charges in connection to the fatal shooting of Kyhara Tay in the Bronx earlier this week, authorities said.
Keechant Sewell, the commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD), confirmed during a news conference that the teen, identified as Matthew Godwin, was arrested for murder, manslaughter, and possession of a weapon just before 2 a.m. on Friday.
Godwin was seen in surveillance footage on the back of a scooter as he opened fire on a 13-year-old boy, the intended target. The bullet missed the teen boy and instead hit Tay in the stomach.
“Instead of hitting his intended target … [Godwin] ended the life of a totally innocent, completely uninvolved 11-year-old girl,” Sewell said. “I won’t say she was in the wrong place, because why shouldn’t an 11-year-old child be able to stand outside in broad daylight?”
“The teenagers who took Kyhara’s life, a sixth-grader who, as her father said, didn’t even have the chance to grow up, … have devastated a family, while at the same time ending their own lives as they know them,” she added.
Authorities have launched a citywide manhunt to arrest a second suspect, identified as 18-year-old Omar Bojang. He is believed to be the driver of the scooter.
A reward of up to $10,000 was being offered in connection with the case for information leading to an arrest. It is unclear if Godwin’s arrest came from a community tip.
This is Omar Bojang.
He is wanted in connection to the homicide of 11-year-old Kyhara Tay. Someone knows him.
???? $????????,???????????? ???????????????????????? is now being offered for information leading to the arrest and indictment/conviction of the individual(s) who shot and killed an 11-year-old girl near Fox Street and E. 165 Street in #TheBronx. Call #800577TIPS.
Bojang is no stranger to law enforcement officials and was arrested in June 2020 for gun possession and was also wanted for a robbery pattern. He is known to Bronx police in connection with gang activity.
In April 2020, Bojang and another male, identified as a “27-year-old Blood gang member,” were involved in a shooting. He was shot in the leg that day, an NYPC detective said during Friday’s press briefing. In November 2020, he got shot in the leg again during “an exchange of gunfire between Bojang and rival gang members,” the detective added.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams expressed frustration on Friday over a “flow of guns” and a surge of gun violence incidents in the city, saying the number of youth shooting victims is increasing as “younger and younger” children are obtaining firearms.
“This is what we’re dealing with over and over: kids killing kids—illegal guns are as easy to buy as candy and comic books. They are everywhere,” Adams said, adding that he has never witnessed anything like this before in his professional career.
NYPD officers made 410 gun arrests in March, bringing the total number of such arrests in the first quarter of 2022 to 1,207, according to an April 6 NYPD press release. This is the highest number of gun arrests on a quarterly basis since early 2021, when 1,385 arrests were reported. Arrests in March 2022 were 28.2 percent higher than in March 2021.
Shooting incidents in the city rose by 16.2 percent during this period, while homicides dropped by 15.8 percent. In 2021, there were nearly 4,500 gun arrests, and 470 of those suspects were people under the age of 18, according to the NYPD.
The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement about potential violence against members of the Supreme Court and clergy following the leak of a Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
A memo from the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, first reported by Axios but obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, outlines the “potential for threats to public safety in response to abortion debate.”
“Domestic violence extremists (DVEs) and criminal actors have adopted narratives surrounding abortion rights to encourage violence, likely increasing the threat to government, religious, and reproductive health care personnel and facilities and ideological opponents,” the memo reads.
DHS states that the agency identified “at least 25 violent threats on social media” that included “burning down or storming the US Supreme Court and murdering Justices and their clerks, members of Congress, and lawful demonstrators.”
Other threats mentioned include members of the anarchist “Boogaloo Boys” encouraging violence against pro-abortion protesters in hopes that it will spark a civil war.
The Free Beaconpreviously reported on efforts by House Democrats to stall bipartisan legislation to boost security for the families of Supreme Court justices. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on Congress to pass the bill, citing the DHS memo outlining the security threats against the Supreme Court.
DEL RIO, Texas—U.S. Border Patrol has started to use, on a mass scale, a special “parole” exception that was previously used sparingly to allow tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States for at least a year, The Epoch Times has learned.
Under parole status, illegal immigrants don’t have to provide Border Patrol with evidence of credible fear for asylum and are permitted entry without any preconditions, except a quick background check in the U.S. crime database.
A Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the parole designation allows for overwhelmed Border Patrol stations to process large numbers of illegal aliens “significantly faster” and release them into the country much faster than the more involved current system—which releases an illegal alien with a notice to appear that includes a court date for their first immigration hearing.
Parole should be a “very, very boutique thing,” said Andrew Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at Center for Immigration Studies and a retired immigration judge.
“This is the exact opposite of what Congress said. This is a misuse and abuse of that immigration authority that borders on malfeasance,” he said.
Through the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), Congress mandated that all inadmissible and illegal aliens be detained until their status is determined, after which they are either deported or granted entry with a legal status.
Parole is an exception and, although it’s not a legal status, it permits entry on “a case-by-case basis” for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” according to the INA.
The status allows foreign nationals “who may not otherwise be admissible to the country under the immigration laws” to live and work in the United States temporarily “without being formally admitted to the country and without having a set pathway to a permanent immigration status,” according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report.
Arthur said parole should be used, for example, when a family member needs entry into the United States to donate a kidney to his brother, or if a witness to a criminal case is needed to testify. As associate general counsel in the former federal immigration agency, he would see a handful of parole cases a year.
However, in the first seven months of this fiscal year, CBP has mass-released more than 120,600 illegal aliens under the new “Parole+ATD” category. ATD is an Alternatives to Detention program, which is acting as a workaround of the legal requirement to detain illegal aliens.
Under ATD, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issues the illegal alien a trackable cell phone (or sometimes an ankle bracelet) that he or she can use to check in with the agency on a regular basis.
Two Nicaraguan nationals hold up the cell phones they received from Border Patrol before being released into the United States, in Kinney County, Texas, on April 29, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
The CBP spokesman told The Epoch Times that overwhelmed Border Patrol stations are shifting to processing more illegal aliens as parolees.
“It’s more a functionality of the processing conditions at the location where they are giving out the parole-ATD,” he said.
“It’s a functionality of: How do we deal with the people that we’re encountering and how do we keep our population low for people that we cannot Title 42 back to Mexico? That’s the underlying issue.”
The spokesman said, aside from discovering a criminal record, whether an illegal alien is paroled depends on whether detention or transport space is available, the demographic of the person, as well as if the agent thinks the person is likely to abscond.
CBP didn’t provide historical data on parole numbers, or information on the nationalities of current parolees. A Border Patrol agent in Texas told The Epoch Times, on condition of anonymity, that his station is paroling Venezuelans, Cubans, and Nicaraguans.
Border Patrol agents are currently apprehending more than 7,000 illegal aliens on average per day along the southern border, and the Department of Homeland Security has warned agents to expect up to 18,000 per day in the coming months.
Failure to Show Up
The use of the parole category replaces the notice to report, which wasn’t a legal designation, but an ad hoc designation used heavily last year as Border Patrol stations were overwhelmed. The notice to report was a request to illegal aliens to report to their nearest ICE office within 60 days.
More than 104,000 notices to report were issued in the five months between the end of March and the end of October in 2021. Of those, 47,705 individuals failed to report to ICE by January this year, according to official data received by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
“It was an honor system [and] we got beat over the head with that. So they went back and they looked at the Title 8 law,” a CBP spokesman told The Epoch Times.
“One thing you can do is you can parole somebody who is coming into the United States as an arriving alien, and you can parole them for a year, so that they can take care of whatever humanitarian issue or whatever issue that they have to deal with.”
Parole status effectively kicks the can down the road to ICE, which issues a notice to appear once the illegal alien reports to the agency.
“The thing about parole is it gives them that year to go in and get that done,” the spokesman said.
If no contact is made, at the end of that year, the alien would revert back to the status he or she had upon arriving as an illegal alien and would be removable, he said.
Haitians and others who crossed the U.S. border illegally are seen boarding a bus after being released by federal authorities, in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 22, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Almost one-third of parolees released between July and December last year have failed to show up to ICE, according to Homeland Security data received by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).
“Mayorkas’s DHS has refused to detain migrants—as required by law—has failed to remove innumerable people who have no right to be here, and are abusing their parole authority to continue to release tens of thousands of migrants,” Roy told The Epoch Times on May 4.
ICE’s stated priorities are such that field agents, when considering an illegal alien for removal, must obtain permission from supervisors, as well as weigh up if the individual “might be suffering from serious physical or mental illness,” or if they have ties to the community, or family members in the United States.
The agency’s available detention space for illegal immigrants has decreased in recent years, going from 51,379 detention beds in 2018 to 30,000 currently. President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget asks for Congress to shave a further 5,000 detention beds in ICE facilities, as well as eliminate all 2,500 family beds.
Risks of Mass Parole
Arthur said the mass use of the parole designation is “a huge vulnerability.”
“The likelihood that you are going to release somebody who poses a danger to national security is extremely high. The risk that you are releasing somebody who poses a danger to the community is extremely high,” he said.
“You can run their [fingerprints], but are you going to run their criminal record in San Pedro Sula [in Honduras]? Are you going to be able to run their activities in Yemen? The vetting is only as good as the intel, and the intel isn’t that good.
“But here’s the biggest issue. This becomes a vicious circle. Because the more people who come in, the more overwhelmed you are, the more that you release, the more people are going to come in.”
During April, Border Patrol agents released more than 40,000 illegal aliens as parolees and an additional 21,769 with a notice to appear, according to CBP statistics. That’s 15,000 more parolees released than in March and the first month the parolee number has exceeded the number of those who received a notice to appear.
An amendment published in the Federal Register that will go into effect on May 31 argues the case for parole when detention space is lacking.
“Individuals placed in expedited removal proceedings would be eligible for consideration for parole from custody in accordance with section 212(d)(5) of the Act, if DHS determined, in the exercise of its discretion and on a case-by-case basis, that parole is warranted because, inter alia, detention is unavailable or impracticable (including situations in which continued detention would unduly impact the health or safety of individuals with special vulnerabilities),” the rule states.
Arthur said that interpretation isn’t how Congress intended parole to be used.
“You’re basically allowing the population to drive how you apply the law. That’s not how it works. The law determines how you handle the population,” he said.
A Border Patrol agent organizes illegal immigrants who have gathered by the border fence after crossing from Mexico into the United States in Yuma, Arizona, on Dec. 10 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
The Trump administration used parole as a stop-gap measure before the “Remain in Mexico” program was implemented in January 2019, which then acted as a solution to the lack of detention space.
Remain in Mexico, or the Migration Protection Protocols, allowed for DHS to send illegal immigrants back to Mexico to await their immigration court proceedings—after which they’d either be denied entry or granted legal status in the United States. About 70,000 illegal immigrants had been enrolled in the program by the end of 2020.
Biden paused new enrollments in the program when he took office and, in June 2021, his administration axed the program altogether, despite being sued by Texas and Missouri in April 2021 to keep it in place.
The states argued that the program can’t be rescinded because it’s the only solution that meets the congressional requirement that illegal aliens must be detained until their cases are resolved.
The Supreme Court ruled in August 2021 that the program must continue, at least until the justices make a final ruling. In its deliberations, which began in April this year, the high court is addressing the mandatory detention aspect of immigration law, which may also ultimately determine if mass parole can continue.
Since November 2021, when the administration was forced to resume enrollments, 1,795 illegal aliens have been sent back to Mexico to await their cases, according to CBP data. The DHS has remained vocal about its intention to ultimately end Remain in Mexico.
In May, a group called Accountable Tech, which calls itself a “small nonprofit taking on Big Tech companies,” organized a corporate boycott to protest Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. In the midwest, a group called Opportunity Wisconsin, which bills itself as a “coalition of Wisconsin residents,” ran a deluge of TV ads slamming Republican senator Ron Johnson for his tax policies. And in Arizona, an organization of “grassroots racial justice” activists called Just Democracy released a video blasting Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema for failing to support the Biden administration’s legislative agenda.
None of these groups actually exist. They are all registered trade names for the North Fund, a shape-shifting nonprofit group that uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes from a shell office in Washington, D.C., according to corporate records.
Political watchdogs say the fund, which isn’t required to disclose the donors behind its $66 million budget, is gearing up to be one of the most consequential dark-money players of the midterm elections. And while “astroturf” groups are nothing new in politics, critics say the North Fund is part of a new breed—moving away from specific policy advocacy and delving into electoral politics.
“North Fund has said screw it,” said Hayden Ludwig, a senior investigator with the Capital Research Center. “They’ve just decided to be as partisan as they can.”
“Their money has been pretty much exclusively focused on Senate races, on ballot initiatives, and a few things kind of related to that,” Ludwig added. “The general theme there is cementing permanent Democratic majorities in Congress.”
The North Fund, which was founded in 2018, is helmed by a handful of Democratic operatives, including former Clinton aide Jim Gerstein. It operates under at least eight trade names, according to D.C. corporate records, including “51 for 51,” a group pushing for statehood for the heavily Democratic District of Columbia, and the “Voting Rights Lab Action,” which advocates for voting policy reforms favorable to Democrats.
Under the guise of “Opportunity Wisconsin,” the group has poured $4 million into negative TV advertising against Johnson, making it one of the top-spending outside groups in the state. Through another alias, the “Democracy Docket Action Fund,” the nonprofit has helped finance state-level redistricting lawsuits that favor Democrats across the country. And the “Accountable Tech” boycott campaign, which seeks to pressure Twitter to restrict speech from conservative outlets and Republican politicians, has received international news coverage.
“From trying to make D.C. a state to funding [Democratic operative] Marc Elias’s politicized lawsuits, North Fund’s presence is often felt but their very existence is virtually unknown,” Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of the Americans for Public Trust watchdog group, told the Washington Free Beacon. “If untraceable money is flooding the latest policy or legislative fight under the guise of grassroots activism, chances are, North Fund is behind it.”
Critics say organizations like the North Fund can also have an outsized impact on the private sector, because corporations have a hard time discerning its work from bona fide grassroots groups.
“Corporations rarely understand that a vast majority of these boycott campaigns are organized and run by hyper-partisan political hacks instead of thoughtful and experienced policy experts,” one tech industry insider familiar with these boycott campaigns told the Free Beacon. “They disguise themselves in idealistic sounding group names while structuring their organizations in such a way that hides the true motivations and identity of their large donors.”
The North Fund received $66 million in 2020, according to its public tax disclosures, nearly all of it from large contributors. Over 93 percent came from donors giving over $1 million.
While the North Fund doesn’t disclose the names of its contributors, it is required to report the donation amounts. Americans for Public Trust was able to trace some of the funding using grant data from other nonprofits.
Sutherland found that the North Fund received $19.3 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and over $11 million from the New Venture Fund, two organizations that share an address in D.C. Similar to the North Fund, the groups operate under at least 50 trade names—including “Fix Our Senate,” “Floridians for a Fair Shake,” and the “Voter Engagement Fund.”
However, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund don’t disclose their donors either, leading to a dead end in the money trail.
The North Fund declined to comment on its funding relationships or its use of trade names. The group told the Free Beacon that it “follows all disclosure requirements related to the disclosure of individual donors and grantees.”
“The North Fund is a nonpartisan social impact organization that partners with community leaders and organizers to help make our society a more just, fair, and equitable place to live, work, and raise families,” said the North Fund in an emailed statement. “As a fiscal sponsor, the North Fund provides operational and administrative support to projects, including legal and compliance, HR, accounting and payroll, and grantmaking support.”
Despite its large budget and impact, the North Fund has almost no physical footprint. When the Free Beacon visited its office in downtown D.C.—a co-working rental space managed by the company Carr Workplaces—the front desk manager said the North Fund uses the address but doesn’t maintain a presence there. “I’m not sure where they’re actually located,” he said.
The North Fund is managed by a Democratic consulting firm called Arabella Advisors, which also keeps the copies of the fund’s public financial documents, according to the fund’s tax disclosure records. Nonprofit groups are required to provide physical copies of these records to members of the public who request them in person, a spokesperson for the IRS told the Free Beacon.
But at Arabella’s office building in D.C., the lobby receptionists told the Free Beacon they were under strict orders from the firm to turn away all outside visitors.
When the Free Beacon stopped by the listed D.C. address for the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund—the North Fund’s primary donors—their cavernous, full-floor office suite was deserted.
The groups had recently moved out, leaving just a couple of office chairs, the logo for Arabella Advisors emblazoned on the floors, and a piece of paper taped to a radiator that read, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”
Update 10:55 a.m.: This piece has been updated to include comment from the North Fund.
This week, we learned that the Biden administration is doubling down on one of its greatest failures, even as Americans make their disapproval so unequivocal that establishment media outlets are struggling to mask it.
The administration has such little fear of blowback that it is working with nonprofit organizations to give a warm welcome to illegal immigrants while some Americans are having to choose between warm homes and stocked refrigerators this winter.
According to whistleblower documents obtained by a Texas lawmaker, these Biden-backed nonprofits are providing comprehensive welcome packets to illegal aliens to help them navigate the interior of the United States.
As American citizens suffer from inflated gas, energy and grocery prices, border hoppers are receiving free hotel stays, plane tickets and coaching on sidestepping TSA photo ID checks.
These services are subsidized by American taxpayers.
The illegal immigrants are supported by the San Diego Rapid Response Network. Jewish Family Services, a partner organization, is providing travel assistance, according to Just the News, which got the whistleblower documents from Republican Rep. Lance Gooden.
JFS told Just the News that it works with the Department of Homeland Security. The group’s most recent financial statement shows that it received $16 million in government support.
This is bad optics for the Biden administration and its progressive Democratic allies, especially considering their insistence that the borders are not open.
According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 38 percent of registered voters approve of President Joe Biden’s job performance, with 57 percent disapproving. On a generic congressional ballot, an indicator of how the 2022 midterms will play out, Republicans lead by 10 percentage points, 51 to 41.
The poll was conducted from Nov. 7 to Nov. 10 among 1,001 adults with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
Inflation was to be expected as a natural consequence of the reopening of the economy. But unhinged Biden administration spending has exacerbated the issue, and Americans are feeling it in the pocketbook despite White House claims that rising prices are a “high class” problem.
The administration has made no effort to explain how forcing trillions of dollars into circulation won’t make the problem worse.
It has, however, made an effort to reward immigrants for illegally entering the country. Why would Biden practically escort illegal aliens around the country other than to stack swing states with new Democratic votes?
Everyone who lives in the U.S. understands why migrants are so determined to get here.
It might even be true that illegal immigrants have surpassed leftists in their appreciation for what America means. After all, the crisis at the southern border gives the lie to the progressive claim that this country is rigged against the people who have it the worst.
Nevertheless, coming here illegally is unacceptable. And the Biden administration is rolling out the red carpet for those who do so while making life harder for citizens.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Americans can stand up and demand their interests be prioritized at the polls next year.
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.
A Border Patrol agent picks up four illegal immigrants from Haiti who have just crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into Del Rio, Texas, on July 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
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.
General Motors, set to welcome Biden to Michigan factory, has paid Jeff Ricchetti nearly $200K to lobby White House and Congress
After paying the lobbyist brother of a top White House aide nearly $200,000 this year, auto giant General Motors has won an official visit from the president to showcase its new electric vehicle factory.
Jeff Ricchetti, the brother of Biden’s longtime political consigliere Steve Ricchetti, has disclosed $160,000 in payments from General Motors since President Joe Biden took office to lobby the White House and Congress on electric vehicle tax incentives, according to his firm’s lobbying disclosure forms. The investment appears to have paid off—on Wednesday, Biden will attend the grand opening of the company’s new electric vehicle factory as part of his push for Congress to “approve big tax incentives for zero-emission vehicles,” precisely what Ricchetti was paid to push for.
Steve Ricchetti has been one of Biden’s closest advisers for nearly a decade and played a leading role in framing the administration’s infrastructure negotiations. Neither the White House, Jeff Ricchetti, nor General Motors responded to requests for comment on Jeff Ricchetti’s role in arranging the visit.
Ricchetti has cashed in on his family ties to the administration. Ricchetti has already brought in $2.4 million in lobbying fees this year, double his 2020 haul of $1.2 million, according to numbers compiled by OpenSecrets. Ethics experts have criticized the Biden administration for allowing Steve Ricchetti to work on issues his brother is being paid to lobby the administration on.
“Steve Ricchetti ought to completely recuse himself from any part of the legislation that his brother’s firm is lobbying on, and then have the White House not take calls from his brother,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics chief and Democratic candidate for office.
The lobbying disclosure forms show General Motors paid Ricchetti’s firm, Ricchetti Incorporated, to lobby on “issues related to tax incentives for electric vehicles and charging stations,” “the availability of semiconductors,” and “climate policy that affect the automobile industry.”
General Motors has received outsized attention from the Biden administration since bringing on Ricchetti. After the company hired Ricchetti in February, the president hosted its CEO for an April summit on semiconductors. One month later, the company met with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo about semiconductors. Ricchetti’s lobbying disclosures show he was paid to lobby the Department of Commerce for General Motors in the weeks prior to those meetings.
Three of Steve Ricchetti’s children work in the Biden administration, prompting Politico to label Biden’s White House “the Ricchetti administration.” Walter Shaub, White House ethics chief during the Obama administration, said the Biden administration’s decision to permit nepotism amounts to a “f— you” to ethics experts.
General Motors said it was “excited to welcome” Biden for the opening of its Factory ZERO in Detroit. The longtime company factory has been repurposed to focus entirely on electric vehicles and will be used as the backdrop for Biden to promote tax incentives for electric vehicles included in his spending plan, according to Reuters.
Biden’s visit to General Motors is his latest trip to companies with close ties to his administration. Biden has also visited electric battery manufacturer Proterra, where his energy secretary Jennifer Granholm was on the board of directors.
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.
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’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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Texas State Troopers complete paperwork after arresting illegal immigrants for criminal trespass on a local ranch, at the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office in Brackettville, Texas, on Aug. 8, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
Illegal immigrants wait to be magistrated on trespassing charges in Kinney County outside the Sheriff’s Office in Brackettville, Texas, on Aug. 6, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
Recent trail camera photos of illegal aliens provided by ranchers in Kinney County, Texas. (Courtesy of ranchers)
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.
Defense lawyer Sylvia Delgado (bottom-right) speaks during an arraignment hearing for an illegal alien charged with criminal trespass in Kinney County, on Oct. 28, 2021. (Screenshot/The Epoch Times)
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.
A total of 52 illegal immigrants from Mexico and Honduras wait to be booked for criminal trespass after being arrested by Texas State Troopers on local ranches, at the Kinney County Sheriffs Office in Brackettville, Texas, on Aug. 8, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe sets up a pop-up vehicle checkpoint near Brackettville, Texas, on Aug. 16, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.”
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
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 Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
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.
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.”
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Wednesday threatened to send illegal immigrants to President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware following reports the White House has directed dozens of flights of migrants to Florida in the dead of night.
Amid the ongoing border crisis, 70 flights filled with foreign nationals were flown into the city of Jacksonville in the middle of the night with no notice given to city or state officials, a Florida official told the Washington Examiner on Saturday.
“On average, there’s 36 passengers on each of these flights. And that has been going on over the course of the summer through September,” said Larry Keefe, DeSantis’ public safety czar.
Florida Republican Rep. Maria Salazar was among those to scorch the White House over the flights.
“It’s very embarrassing that this is happening … no one really asks us, the brown community, the representatives of the Latinos in this country, how do we feel about this?” she said Monday during an interview with Fox News.
“And I’m going to tell you that this is extremely embarrassing because do you know where those people wind up at? In our barrios, in neighborhoods and we do not know if those people are child sex traffickers, if they’re drug dealers, if they’re coyotes,” she said.
Salazar called for “immigration reform,” but that might be too late for one family.
According to police, a 24-year-old Honduran man named Yery Medina Ulloa lied about his age to get into the country this year and then stabbed a man to death, WJXT-TV reported Nov. 4.
The Associated Press reported that witnesses found Medina Ulloa covered in blood near a pond in Jacksonville on Oct. 7 after police say he killed Francisco Cuellar, a 46-year-old father of four who had taken in the immigrant.
Do you think DeSantis would be a great president?
Citing the case, DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw told the AP that border agents should have known Medina Ulloa “was not a minor, was dishonest about his real identity, and should not be free to move around our country.”
The governor said in a statement to WJXT last week that the “horrific crime is the latest example of how unfettered illegal migration costs Floridians’ lives. If not for the Biden Administration’s unlawful ‘catch and release’ policy, Francisco Cuellar would still be alive today.”
On Wednesday, DeSantis was asked about the immigrant flights during a news conference in Jacksonville — and responded by threatening to send illegals flown to his state to Biden’s home state.
“We’re going to get together and figure out what we can do in the immediate term to protect folks in Florida,” the Republican governor said, noting that because the federal government has jurisdiction over the air, his options are limited.
If the federal government isn’t going to protect Floridians, he said, “then clearly, I think, the state should be able to come in and provide protections, and so that’s what we’re going to be looking to do.”
What might DeSantis have up his sleeve? Buses headed north, he said.
“If they’re going to come here, you know, we’ll provide buses … I will send them to Delaware,” the governor said.
“If he’s not going to support the border being secured, then he should be able to have everyone there,” DeSantis said of Biden.
According to the New York Post, he was not joking. Pushaw told the paper that while the governor’s reference to Delaware was tongue-in-cheek, the idea of busing migrants out of Florida is being considered.
“To the extent that the federal government is paying for them to go all over the country and resettling them in Jacksonville, would it be against the law for us to send them somewhere else? … That’s something that I think we would want to look into,” she said.
“The big question is, how many more people can get through and what are the holes in this vetting process?” Pushaw added. “The Biden administration has not shared any information with us regarding how that vetting takes place.”
The governor’s remarks were met with a harsh backlash from leftists on Twitter.
DeSantis is also working with Republican Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, who this week tweeted his ire about planes full of migrants landing in his city.
2. To be specific, this is happening in Jacksonville without any communication with us. We hear about it after they land.
The Biden administration all year has failed border communities. Now, people as far away as Florida are being asked to absorb a never-ending influx of illegal migrants, at least one of whom has allegedly killed someone.
If a state is going to be asked to house and pay for people who don’t belong in the country, and some of them might be violent, why not send them straight to Dover or Wilmington?
Delaware is not your average blue state. Delaware elected Biden to the Senate and then kept on electing him for decades until he eventually wandered his way into the White House. Shouldn’t those voters be the ones feeling the consequences?
Apprehensions along the U.S.–Mexico border in October set a new record for the month, unpublished data obtained by The Epoch Times show.
Border Patrol logged about 163,000 arrests of illegal immigrants at the northern and southern borders, according to preliminary data that doesn’t include Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations (OFO). While arrests at the U.S.–Canadian border are typically less than 100 each month, the OFO has recently recorded at least 5,096 arrests per month.
While the total apprehensions are down from the previous month, they established a new record for October, easily clearing the 91,410 arrests recorded in October of 1999 and well above the figures seen during recent administrations.
“It’s an improvement, but it’s still four or five times the level that we saw during the Obama or Trump administrations,” Steven Kopits, president of the Princeton Policy Advisors, told The Epoch Times.
Arrests under former President Donald Trump averaged 45,000 per October and arrests under former President Barack Obama averaged 33,000 per October.
The new October record isn’t the only one set by the Biden administration. The arrests last month mean the administration has presided over the year with the most arrests, with two months still left to go.
For the full year, Princeton Policy’s forecast stands at 1.87 million apprehensions, up from the prior record of 1.61 million set under the Clinton administration in 2000.
A chart shows the number of border apprehensions at the southwest border in recent years. (Courtesy of Princeton Policy Advisors)A chart shows the annual number of border apprehensions at the southwest border in recent years and the projection that 2021 will set a new record. (Courtesy of Princeton Policy Advisors)
Most of the October apprehensions took place in the always-busy Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol sector in Texas. But agents in other areas also made significant arrests, with the number breaching 22,400 in the Yuma, Arizona, sector.
Illegal border crossings have exploded since President Joe Biden took office in January. The Democrat quickly reversed or altered key Trump-era border security and enforcement policies, including halting the construction of the border wall and stopping the “Remain in Mexico” program. The administration also ended the expulsion of many illegal immigrants despite the COVID-19 pandemic and released hundreds of thousands into the U.S. interior, some without official papers to appear in court.
The Biden administration, which has called Trump-era policies “inhumane” and “cruel,” has said its immigration system overhaul will take time to complete.
Vice President Kamala Harris was tapped in March to address the border issue and has said her focus is on the “root causes” of illegal immigration.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has said the agency’s three-part plan is to invest in countries that people are leaving, to build “safe, orderly, and humane pathways” for immigration, and rebuild the asylum system and refugee program.
Thousands of illegal immigrants amass in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 16, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Scores of illegal immigrants have said they’ve traveled to the United States because of Biden’s policies. Mexico’s government also appears to have become more lenient with illegal immigrants transiting through since Biden took office.
Many Haitians who crossed into a primitive camp under the international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, recently told The Epoch Times that now was the time to come because it was easier to get in and stay in under Biden. The majority had been living in Chile or Brazil for years.
In addition to the apprehensions in October, there were roughly 50,000 “gotaways,” or illegal immigrants who were recorded as evading arrest, according to the unpublished data. An untold number of other illegal immigrants enter the country without being arrested or recorded as having gotten away.
“Those gotaway numbers are higher than I’d have expected—they’re equivalent to 30 percent of apprehensions,” Mark Kirkorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Epoch Times in an email.
The decline in arrests from September may stem from a decrease in the number of U.S. job openings, Kopits said.
“There are a number of factors. One is that you may be running out of migrants right now—the number of people who wanted to come. It could just be a monthly blip, that happens sometimes. It could be the enforcement’s a little bit better than it was. Or it could be that the job market’s a little softer,” he said. “There’s a little bit less opportunity for migrants and so they’re slowing down a little bit.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated when the Biden administration would set a new yearly record. It already has. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
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.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley blasted a new report that revealed a provision in the Democrats’ budget reconciliation bill would allow illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes to remain in the U.S., calling the legislation “insane.”
The proposed bill would reportedly give undocumented residents who have committed crimes, including manslaughter and domestic violence, the ability to remain in the country rather than be deported.
“Immigration provisions in the legislation shield all illegal immigrants who have been in the country for at least 10 years from deportation unless they have been convicted of a ‘crime involving moral turpitude’ (CIMT), a vague legal category of crimes that involves ‘intent,’ ‘vicious motive,’ or ‘culpable mental state,’” the report said.
“An analysis of the provision by Senate Republicans determined it would shield illegal immigrants with a variety of criminal backgrounds,” it added.
The news comes just days after reports that the Biden administration is considering legal settlements of up to $450,000 per person who were separated by family members after illegally crossing the border during the Trump administration.
President Joe Biden said the report was “garbage” after the news was initially released.
For the millionth time, Joe Biden appears completely unaware of what his administration is doing – in this case, paying illegal immigrants https://t.co/KtCQR1SLQn
The White House then appeared to change its view following the president’s comment, claiming during a media briefing last week that Biden is “perfectly comfortable” with paying $450,000 to illegal immigrants.
So now the White House line is that Biden “perfectly comfortable” with paying illegal immigrants $450,000 https://t.co/SJCo8kFfk8
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton released a statement condemning the report.
“It would be unthinkable to pay damages to a burglar who broke into your home for the ‘psychological trauma’ they endured during the crime. And yet the Biden administration wants to reward migrants who illegally entered our country with up to $450,000 each for just that reason,” Cotton said in the statement.
It’s unthinkable to pay a burglar who broke into your home for the ‘psychological trauma’ they endured during the crime. Yet the Biden admin wants to reward migrants who illegally entered our country with up to $450,000 each for just that reason. Insanity. https://t.co/XNTFs9KkLo
“The Biden administration’s promises of citizenship and entitlement programs have already caused the worst border crisis in history — a huge cash reward will make it even worse. This is the height of insanity,” he added.
The concern regarding criminal illegal immigrants has also grown as the border crisis has spiked under Biden’s leadership.
A reported 70,000-plus illegal immigrants were released into the country between Aug. 6 and mid-October on parole, a status allowing temporary legal status and the ability to obtain a work permit.
Deleted webpages reveal Bill Gates praising a controversial Chinese Communist Party-backed influence group – the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries – for its efforts to build “friendship.”
Gates, who has a long history of collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party in his personal and professional capacities, visited the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) in June 2014 to deliver a speech on philanthropy.
The CPAFFC has been dubbed the “public face” of the United Front Work Department – a billion-dollar effort executed by the Chinese Communist Party seeking “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign individuals and the policies of foreign states to serve Beijing’s interests,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission.
GATES.
Also referred to as “avowedly an arm of the party-state,” CPAFFC has been flagged by the U.S. State Department for its campaigns to “directly and malignly influence” American officials and business leaders.
Despite the CPAFFC’s known efforts to malignly influence Americans, archived webpages from a subsidiary of the CPAFFC, the China Friendship Foundation For Peace And Development, reveal Gates speaking at the association’s headquarters.
Gates’s speech was titled “Invent For The Poor,” and a CPAFFC summary of the event reveals the association’s president was in attendance:
Under the auspices of President Li Xiaolin, Mr. Bill Gates, dressed in a red short-sleeved T-shirt with a smile and confidence on his face, shared his personal experience in philanthropy and called on people to pay attention to the world, especially in Africa.
“He emphasized the non-negligible role played by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries in the world’s friendship and mutual assistance,” noted the CPAFFC’s summary of Gates’s speech.
GATES.
In 2017, Gates also sent a congratulatory letter to the CPAFFC amidst its World Philanthropy Forum, jointly hosted alongside Tsinghua University. The school is the alma mater of regime leader Xi Jinping and hosts a “Marxist” journalism school, training the next generation of Chinese state-run media propagandists with the assistance of the New York Times, CNN, and others.
Fake news isn’t just a meme; it could be the undoing of our legal system.
If that sounds far-fetched, consider the warning of Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is presiding over the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.
The 18-year-old is charged with homicide and reckless endangerment for shooting three men, two of them fatally, during the Kenosha riots in August 2020. Rittenhouse says he fired in self-defense as the men attacked him.
Schroeder has been under fire from the establishment media simply for doing what he can to provide the fair trial Rittenhouse is entitled to under the U.S. Constitution, though the media have twisted proceedings into what the judge called “the most divisive trial in the country.”
That decision, coupled with a recent ruling to allow video evidence of the men’s involvement in those illegal activities prior to being shot by Rittenhouse, led to an uproar in the courtroom Wednesday — and Schroeder halted proceedings to respond with a sober warning.
“Anything that undermines public confidence in what happens here is very important,” he said to the defense and prosecution but away from the jury, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“It’s important for this town. It’s important for this country to have people have confidence in the result of this trial,” the judge added.
“Whatever it is — and I don’t care what it is — but people have to be confident,” Schroeder said.Do you think Kyle Rittenhouse is getting a fair trial?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The judge then shifted into criticism of the establishment media for its role in continually undermining the justice system in the eyes of the public.
“There are people in the media, on reputable sites, that are saying things that are totally bizarre,” Schroeder said.
Shilling for the radical left, CNN had mischaracterized the judge’s first decision as “incomprehensible” despite its sound legal reasoning for not painting the men shot — who may have been the aggressors — as victims.
The network’s disgraced legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin also referred to that ruling as a “really unnecessary and unfortunate beginning to this really important case.”
The media had immediately painted him as a bloodthirsty white supremacist in a sea of peaceful protestors — even though the men he shot were all white and participated in the rioting that night.
As with many of these high-profile cases where the media are heavily invested in a guilty verdict, the facts on the ground or even in the courtroom seemed to be irrelevant to the liberal outlets.
Rather than present events from a position of disinterested neutrality, they pick the winners and losers in these cases before the bodies are even cold.
They disseminate their version of the facts as the indisputable truth and then record the public’s outrage when the justice system rules as it should rather than kowtowing to public opinion — and maybe that’s the whole point.
“The case against Rittenhouse is so incredibly weak, his innocence so glaringly obvious, that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they did all of this in order to intentionally provoke more riots once he’s inevitably exonerated,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh pointed out Thursday.
The case against Rittenhouse is so incredibly weak, his innocence so glaringly obvious, that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they did all of this in order to intentionally provoke more riots once he’s inevitably exonerated
Justice doesn’t seem to be the order of the day based on how the media have treated Rittenhouse and then Schroeder, so the explanation has to be something more.
Riots are good for ratings, and the constant divisiveness they usher in presents an us-against-them mentality that keeps people tuned into the outlets they believe are on their side.
Whether it’s ratings or simple bias that creates this environment, it has the same damaging effect — the public won’t trust the justice system if it’s repeatedly set up to be on the wrong side of a verdict.
He sat down with The Epoch Times at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, shortly before delivering his speech at the event, “Mass Immigration vs. Modern Society.”
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Epoch Times: I’ve written a few times about the environmental impact of immigration, and particularly illegal immigration. I’ve focused on carbon emissions in their home countries versus the United States. You’d expect this to not be controversial, but this is something it seems to me you can’t discuss without being immediately accused of xenophobia or bigotry. What do you think that’s about—because I get the sense that’s changed over the past few decades.
Mark Krikorian: Immigrants come specifically to increase their carbon footprint. And I don’t mean [anybody’s] saying, ‘Boy, I’m gonna increase my carbon footprint.’ What they’re doing is they want to come and have a decent house, and maybe be able to own a car and have a more prosperous life, which translates inevitably into increasing their carbon footprint.
If you’re a peasant farmer in Honduras, you’re not having much of an impact on the environment. If you’re living in a modern society, even as a lower-middle-class working stiff, you’re having a hugely greater impact on the environment.
That was not controversial in the past, when the population issue was mainly a matter of domestic fertility—in other words, when most population growth was driven by Americans having kids, then it was okay to be concerned about population growth on the Left, because that was, in a sense, a way of being anti-American.
The Epoch Times: If you look at the response to countries that have adopted pro-natalist policies, I think that’s a very consistent theme.
Say what you will about the Club of Rome and some other groups, but at least there was more consistency there on immigration—but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Mr. Krikorian: I think the reason there was that consistency—it’s not so much because the people making those arguments hated America or hated the West, necessarily—although I think probably a lot of them did—it’s that they weren’t forced to confront the contradictions in their own worldview.
In other words, that non-whites are inherently superior to whites—morally, objectively superior—which is kind of a starting point for much of the Left. [As] an inversion of an older, pro-white racism, this is anti-white racism.
That was there even in the older sixties and seventies-era discussions of populations. But the conflict between that worldview and concern about population wasn’t really in their face when they [were] talking about at least American population issues, because we still had relatively robust population growth, most of which was driven by domestic fertility. It’s when immigration became the driver of population growth that you could no longer talk about population growth as a problem.
Personally, I’m not a population or environment alarmist, but if you’re worried about carbon emissions, one of the things you have to be worried about is large-scale immigration. How can you not? And yet, people aren’t.
That’s the companion sentiment to giving China a pass as a country for building coal plants and all the rest of it, is because you can’t really criticize China, because they’re a non-Western country.
Even though the economies of the West have become much less harmful to the environment, you still have to focus on that, because focusing on China as the biggest driver of further problems for the environment is somehow racist, just as talking about the Wuhan virus is racist, even though that’s obviously where that came from.
They’re different versions of the kind of pathological self-hatred of the elites in the West. And one of the ways that shows up is this attenuation—really, disappearance—of concern about immigration driving increased carbon emissions.
The Epoch Times: You can see this same sort of strange reaction even in the context of how the Left responds to Christian immigrants from the Middle East versus Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.
Mr. Krikorian: It’s the same idea—pathological self-hatred. Christians from the Middle East are still seen as somehow more like us, and therefore bad, even though they’re the ones getting the [expletive] end of the stick in the Middle East.
Mass immigration and de facto open borders are a non-negotiable value for the Left now. So, if you’re an environmental group, open borders has to trump environmentalism. If you’re a labor union, open borders has to trump the interests of workers.
The Epoch Times: Are there any other clear-cut environmental hazards or threats to ecosystems that are related to mass immigration?
Mr. Krikorian: The big [issue] is the carbon emissions and, generally speaking, water use and all the rest of it. The other is the on-the-ground, immediate impact that illegal flows in a fragile ecosystem like the Southwest have. It devastates the flora. You’ve got smugglers knocking over saguaro cactuses that took two hundred years to grow. You don’t just plant a new saguaro cactus, you know what I mean?
That kind of devastation could be avoided, the Left would say, by just opening the borders so nobody has to do that, and they could all come through ports of entry. But in the real world, there are going to be limits, and there are going to be people who want to skirt those limits, and they’re going to try to do it in environmentally destructive ways.
The mass illegal flows of people are much more damaging [to the Southwest] than they would be anywhere else.
The Epoch Times: One thing I often think about is, beyond what’s happening just across our borders, when you have massive numbers of people traveling, often on foot, across thousands of miles, you’d expect that to have an impact.
Mr. Krikorian: Especially where there are bottlenecks.
The Darién jungle of eastern Panama—it’s called the Darién gap, because there’s a gap in the road system. You could drive from Anchorage, Alaska, almost to Tierra del Fuego, expect for the Darién gap, where there’s no roads.
The Epoch Times: It’s lawless.
Mr. Krikorian: Completely lawless. And people are pouring through there, laying waste to the environment there. So it’s a similar phenomenon.
The leader of one of the Indian groups, the chief who lives down there, is screaming bloody murder because people are just overrunning their turf. It damages their way of life and ability to earn a living.
The Epoch Times: I’m also wondering about your remarks today: “Mass Immigration vs. Modern Society.” What do you mean by that?
Mr. Krikorian: What I mean by that is that’s sort of my unified field theory for immigration restriction. Everybody comes to immigration from a different angle. Some people are worried about security issues. Other people are worried about workforce or environment or government services or assimilation. My point is they’re all the same thing. They’re all ways that mass immigration is incompatible with the goals and the characteristics of a modern society.
We’re in a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy, and yet we’re importing a 19th century workforce. We’re importing poor people into a welfare state that never existed in the past. We have an elite that doesn’t believe in assimilation, and yet we’re importing a million-plus people a year who have to be assimilated. And we have different environmental and quality of life values than we did in the past, and yet we’re importing people who are undermining those objectives of environmental stewardship.
The immigrants aren’t the problem, because the immigrants really aren’t particularly different from anyone a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years ago. What’s different is us. Modern society is different in kind from anything that’s existed in the past. We are running a 19th century immigration policy in a 21st century country, and it doesn’t work.
Immigration is just a federal government program that we can upsize or downsize or change any time we want. It’s just like farm subsidies or small business loans or something else.
The Epoch Times: And yet we spent the last few years discovering that despite what the federal program may be, individual cities can apparently declare themselves sanctuaries and operate independently.
Mr. Krikorian: There is that. They can’t formally amnesty anybody, but by not cooperating with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], ironically, what they’re really doing is protecting criminals, because the only people that ICE picks up from non-sanctuary cities are people who were arrested for local crimes.
Editor’s note: in its Fiscal Year 2020 report on enforcement and removal operations, ICE reported that 68 percent of its administrative arrests were of convicted criminals, while 22 percent were of people with pending criminal charges and 10 percent were of other immigration violators.
Florida’s newly appointed public safety czar says he is frustrated with the Biden administration’s border policies and the fact that hundreds of illegals are being “dumped” onto Florida soil.
Larry Keefe says the illegal aliens are a burden to taxpayers and, if they commit crimes, to state and local law enforcement.
Keefe was appointed in September as Florida’s public safety czar. He told The Epoch Times that the federal government is flouting the law and is “making immigration policies because they couldn’t enact them legislatively.”
He said there is not an “official count”, but more than 70 private charter flights have been reported coming into the Jacksonville airport with at least 36 passengers aboard each flight.
“This is not haphazard that these people are coming here this way,” Keefe said. “This is a precision, military-like operation where they are coming in a covert and clandestine way.”
Keefe said that the flights land “in the middle of the night” and the people are met by “handlers” who escort the unaccompanied minors on to chartered buses and are “dispersed throughout the I-10 and I-95 corridor and go as far down as Miami.”
“This number [70] is what we currently know, not counting what we don’t. It’s very frustrating,” he said. “Because only the feds can take action against immigration.”
Keefe said he is trying very hard not to call this an “investigation”, because immigration is a federal act not a state one, but the federal government leaves the states no choice but to “defend and protect themselves.”
He said that he is “receiving reports” and cannot open an investigation until “you have proof of a crime.”
It is Keefe’s belief that Jacksonville was not randomly chosen, but targeted because of its central location and its close proximity to the two interstate systems.
“These flights are “secret and stealth” and the state of Florida has no warning that they (illegal immigrants) are being resettled here, because private non-profit, sometimes religious agencies, are being utilized—and are paid in grants funded by the federal government—to take the immigrants and resettle them throughout the state of Florida,” he said.
The governor’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, estimated that border patrol agents have encountered approximately 1.7 million illegal aliens this year.
“Border patrol is overwhelmed,” Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “There is no effective vetting as to who these people are coming into our country.”
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has reacted with an executive order and appointing Keefe.
DeSantis blames the border crisis on the “Biden administration’s failed immigration policies.”
The borders are overwhelmed and “cannot properly vet these immigrants,” he said recently. “They have no identifying papers when they get here, so there is no way to tell who someone is, or how old they are.”
The governor explained that this is how some of the immigrants get past border security, such as in case of the man who told authorities that he was 17 and was processed as an unaccompanied minor.
He later turned out to be 24 years old and is currently facing a murder charge over the death of his benefactor, who was trying to help him build a new life in Florida.
“The federal government is the curator of information where the illegals are concerned,” Keefe continued. “The state of Florida only know what the feds will tell them and what the illegal alien is willing to tell them.”
Keefe said that often illegal immigrants will “stay under the radar” to the point that they become “victims” of other illegal cartels. This puts undue hardship on state and local law enforcement agencies, he said.
“This is only going to be bad for law enforcement morale,” Keefe said. “They can’t deport them, because they have no power to do so, they have to stand down and let it happen.”
DeSantis signed an executive order in September to help combat the wave of illegal immigrants entering the state without warning.
The governor said he initiated the order because the influx of illegals is taking its toll on taxpayer dollars and overwhelming state agencies.
“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,” he said in September.
The executive order addresses several things:
It directs the Department of Children and Families to refuse to renew licenses to facilities that house unaccompanied minors;
It asks the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to conduct audits of companiesto verify they do not employ illegal aliens;
It requires the FDLE to “lawfully gather information on the number and identities of illegal aliens being transported from the border to Florida,”;
Encourages state law enforcement to “detain any vehicle transporting illegal aliens if there is reason suspicions it is being used for human or drug trafficking,”;
and it requests information from state officials “on the number of illegal aliens who are pending criminal prosecution or have been convicted of a crime.”
Keefe said: “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.
“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.”
Keefe said if “people are illegally in the state, and they have broken (state) laws” they will be punished.
The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but phone calls and emails were not returned by press time.
Republican lawmakers are demanding answers from President Joe Biden’s administration on reported massive payments to be made to illegal immigrants, a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal shows.
“Recent reports indicate that the Biden administration, as part of negotiations with a left-wing activist group, is considering paying $450,000 per person to aliens who entered the United States illegally with their children,” the letter said, referring to the American Civil Liberties Union. “Each family of illegal aliens could reportedly receive nearly $1 million, for a total potential payout of $1 billion or more from U.S. taxpayers.”
The letter is directed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and signed by 19 Republicans, including Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Louie Gohmert and Chip Roy of Texas, and Matt Gaetz of Florida.
“If accurate,” the letter continued, “these reports show how the Biden administration is once again putting the interests of illegal aliens above the interests of U.S. citizens and continuing to incentivize illegal immigration into the United States.”
Reporters asked Biden Wednesday to address reports that his administration was considering payments of about $450,000 per person to illegal immigrant parents and children who had been separated.
“That’s not gonna happen,” the president told reporters.
But on Thursday, White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that though the $450,000 figure is higher than what will be offered, the president is still “perfectly comfortable” with the Justice Department settling with families separated at the border.
“If it saves taxpayer dollars and puts the disastrous history of the previous administration’s use of zero tolerance and family separation behind us, the president is perfectly comfortable with the Department of Justice settling with the individuals and families who are currently in litigation with the United States government,” Jean-Pierre said.
“This is coming from the last administration’s cruel, inhuman, immoral policies against just people,” Jean-Pierre continued. “It’s separating children from their families. … how we got here is because of the last administration. This is what we’re trying to deal with here in this administration.”
The administrations of former President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush also separated families at the border at a reportedly lower rate than the Trump administration. But the Department of Homeland Security (which did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal) reportedly did not track how many children the Obama administration separated.
The American Civil Liberties Unionalso suggested Wednesday that Biden “may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department,” saying that the DOJ “carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy.
“We respectfully remind President Biden that he called these actions ‘criminal’ in a debate with then-President [Donald] Trump, and campaigned on remedying and rectifying the lawlessness of the Trump administration,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement. “We call on President Biden to right the wrongs of this national tragedy.”
The Friday House Judiciary Committee letter maintains that the Biden administration has already “rewarded” illegal aliens for violating United States law by allowing them to stay and work in the U.S. legally.
“Now the administration plans to reward these illegal aliens again with hundreds of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars,” the letter said. “Notably, at least one [Department of Homeland Security] lawyer expressed concern that the administration’s proposed $450,000 payments could be higher than payments made to some of the families of Sept. 11 victims.”
The Republicans warned Garland in the letter that the Biden administration’s actions are sending “exactly the wrong message” on illegal immigration, demanding that Garland provide documents and communications on payments to illegal aliens found on the southern border in 2017 and 2018.
The letter also questions whether the Biden administration may make payments to illegal aliens who presented threats or dangers to children, suggesting that the Biden administration decision may open the door to paying dangerous individuals.
“Is the Department considering payments to alien parents or legal guardians whose child was removed from their custody after a determination by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the parent or legal guardian presented a danger to the child?” the letter asks.
The letter also asks Garland: “Is the Department considering payments to alien parents or legal guardians whose child was removed from their custody after a determination by U.S. Customs and Border Protection that the parent or legal guardian had a conviction for an offense relating to child abuse or neglect?”
The Republicans also questioned whether the DOJ is considering payments to parents or legal guardians whose child was removed because the parent or guardian had a “conviction for an offense relating to sexual abuse of a minor,” and whether the DOJ is considering payments to individuals who chose to leave their child in U.S. custody rather than take their child with them when returning to their home country.
“Out of what fund(s) will the payments to aliens be paid?” the letter asks. “For how many aliens who are outside the United States is the Department considering payments pursuant to the litigation described above? For how many aliens inside the United States is the Department considering payments pursuant to the litigation described above?”
The Judiciary Committee Republicans asked that Garland provide them with the requested information by Nov. 19.
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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.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva speaks at a press conference in downtown Los Angeles on Nov. 2, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
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.
National File’s reporting is confirmed by the New York Times and, strangely enough, the FBI
Last year, National File published the entirety of Ashley Biden’s diary, in which she revealed she had inappropriate showers with her father, Joe Biden. Today, the diary has been confirmed as real.
While the vast majority of the media ignored the bombshell revelations, perhaps dismissing their verifiability, The New York Times on Friday reported that the FBI had engaged in two raids on addresses as part of an investigation into how Ashley Biden’s diary was obtained.
Despite naming both National File’s reporter Patrick Howley and the legal name of the company that owns National File, the article does not name National File at all, nor does the article discuss anything that was contained within the diary itself.
Similarly, mainstream journalists when tweeting about the New York Times article, also fail to mention National File, or any of the bombshells themselves:
NEW: FBI executed search warrants at locations tied to people who worked w/Project Veritas as part of SDNY investigation into how a diary stolen from Biden’s daughter Ashley was publicly disclosed days before ’20 election. She was burglarized in ‘20. https://t.co/pnDYg4FQ6L
Whoa. Bill Barr opened an investigation into the theft of Ashley Biden’s diary right before the 2020 election. Pages were published online (with little notice). Now the feds are looking into potential ties to Project Veritas https://t.co/9wPvPqCP9u
The F.B.I. carried out search warrants in New York as part of a Justice Department investigation into how pages from Ashley Biden’s journal came to be published by a right wing website. https://t.co/uCDBZ7t3vf
The article claims that the federal investigators are comprised of FBI agents and “federal prosecutors in Manhattan who work on public corruption matters” on behalf of the Southern District of New York. The investigation was seemingly opened by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, after a Biden family representative allegedly reported in October 2020 that the diary, along with “several” of Ashley Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary.
This is contrary to the information provided to National File by a Project Veritas whistleblower, who explained that the diary was left at an address where Joe Biden’s daughter used to stay.
According to the article, the FBI would not comment on the investigation, saying only that agents had “performed law enforcement activity related to an ongoing investigation” at two locations.
In a video posted to social media, Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe notes that Ashley Biden’s father’s FBI may be setting a dangerous precedent by, apparently, pursuing criminal charges against reporters for the crime of gathering information from sources.
National File has no business relationship with Project Veritas and any circumstantial geographical overlaps are purely convenient.
A key prosecution witness in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse on Thursday indicated that a man Rittenhouse shot was aggressive and reaching for the then-17-year-old when the shooting took place.
Testimony from a prosecution witness that painted Rittenhouse as responding to aggressions rather than being the aggressor was characterized by the website Legal Insurrection as an “absolute train wreck” for the prosecution’s case against Rittenhouse. “This is NOT how it’s supposed to be done,” author Andrew Branca noted.
Richard McGinniss — who was recording video on a cell phone for The Daily Caller on the night of the shootings with which Rittenhouse is charged — indicated Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man Rittenhouse shot, tried to grab the rifle the teen was holding.
Rittenhouse had gone to Kenosha in response to rioting that took place in the Wisconsin community.
“So your interpretation of what [Rosenbaum] was trying to do … is complete guesswork,” prosecutor Thomas Binger said at one point when questioning McGinniss, according to a video posted on Twitter.
“Well, he said ‘f*** you’ and then he reached for the weapon,” McGinniss testified.
In a video posted on Legal Insurrection, McGinnis says that as the confrontation began, Rittenhouse was holding the gun at a 45-degree angle with the barrel pointed toward the ground.
McGinnis said that when Rosenbaum “lunged” for the gun, Rittenhouse “dodged around,” adding “that’s when it was leveled at Mr. Rosenbaum and fired.”
McGinnis continued to use the word lunge to characterize Rosenbaum’s effort to grab the gun.
Binger and McGinniss sparred over words, with the prosecutor wanting the witness to characterize Rosenbaum as falling when he was shot.
“He was lunging, falling. I would use those as synonymous terms in this situation because basically, you know, he threw his momentum towards the weapon,” McGinniss said.
Rittenhouse, now 18, is charged with reckless and intentional homicides in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and with attempted homicide for wounding Gaige Grosskreutz.
McGinniss said during his testimony that Rosenbaum was “grabbing for the front portion of it,” referring to the rifle Rittenhouse held.
Binger asked if Rosenbaum’s momentum after he missed and his grab at the gun meant he was no longer a threat.
McGinnis said the two men were “extremely close” and he was uncertain “what would have happened if those shots hadn’t been fired,” according to Reuters.
“I think it was very clear to me that he was reaching specifically for the weapon,” McGinniss added, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Do you support Kyle Rittenhouse?
Ryan Balch, a veteran who was patrolling the streets of Kenosha that night, said Rosenbaum was “hyperaggressive and acting out in a violent manner,” including throwing rocks and trying to start fires.
Balch said that earlier on the night of the shootings, Rosenbaum had been involved in an altercation and said, “If I catch any of you guys alone tonight I’m going to f***ing kill you!”
A group of Republican senators wants President Joe Biden to drop his administration’s reported plan to pay more than $1 billion to illegal immigrants whose families were separated by federal immigration authorities under then-President Donald Trump.
The payments would be made by the federal government to settle litigation filed on behalf of hundreds of such illegal immigrants by the American Civil Liberties Union, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the proposal.
The proposed payments could be as high as $450,000 per individual, meaning a family of four could receive up to $1.8 million from U.S. taxpayers. Most of the affected families are reportedly made up of one adult and one child. Officials from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are involved in the legal negotiations.
The proposal has sparked a growing wave of protests in Congress and elsewhere, including from Republican Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and John Kennedy (R-La.), along with nine of their Senate GOP colleagues. who wrote a Nov. 1 letter to Biden.
“The government is now seeking to financially reward aliens who broke our laws. The previous administration already took action to ensure that DHS could maintain custody of family units apprehended along the border and charged with criminal improper entry, rather than separate the family and transfer the parents to criminal detention,” reads the letter, which was made public on Nov. 2.
“The government also already signed a settlement agreement in 2018 to address concerns about family separation. Yet the new agreement that DHS is considering would have the government pay out potentially more than $1 billion to illegal immigrants based on allegations that DHS intentionally caused them emotional harm.
“However, these illegal immigrants disregarded our immigration processes, cut in front of those seeking to legally enter our nation, and put children at risk of great personal injury or death by placing them in the hands of abusive smugglers.
“Not only would these settlements be breathtakingly unjust and unwise, but they reinforce the conditions that make it easy for the cartels to recruit more people to undertake the treacherous journey to our southwest border, and serve only to encourage more illegal immigration.”
Also signing the letter with Hawley and Kennedy were Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is the ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); John Cornyn (R-Texas); Ted Cruz (R-Texas); Michael Lee (R-Utah); Ben Sasse (R-Neb.); Thom Tillis (R-N.C.); Tom Cotton (R-Ark.); and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
Not among the signers is Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. He told The Epoch Times on Nov. 3 that he supports “reunifying families who were wrongly separated and following due process to right any harm that was caused, but I do not support the administration’s reported proposal to direct federal bureaucrats to make lump sum payments of $450,000.”
“Americans are a kind and generous people who welcome a diverse array of immigrants from around the world,” the letter reads. “Our nation has been made stronger by the generations of legal immigrants that have contributed to our country and achieved the American Dream. But rewarding illegal immigration with financial payments runs counter to our laws and would only serve to encourage more illegal immigration.”
A White House spokesman referred a request for comment to the DOJ, which didn’t immediately respond.
The senators crafted the letter as the Biden administration continues to maintain what amounts to an open border with Mexico, as a record numbers of illegal immigrants cross into the United States in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Biden reversed Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that required border crossers to return south of the border until their applications for entry could be processed by federal immigration authorities. Under Biden, hundreds of thousands of such illegal entrants have been transported, many unannounced and under the cover of darkness by the federal government to points across the interior of the country.
Congressional Democrats have twice been turned back by the Senate Parliamentarian in their efforts to include new immigration laws that would effectively codify the changes Biden has made since taking office in January.
The Parliamentarian ruled the changes couldn’t be included in the President’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation spending plan because they aren’t primarily budget measures. That bill only needs 50 votes (along with the vice president’s tie-breaking vote) to be approved. Otherwise, the changes to immigration law would need 60 votes.
Earlier this week, the Democrats announced that they’re making a third attempt at including the immigration law changes with a “Plan C.” As The Epoch Times reported earlier this week, the Democrats’ new plan would tweak the law to allow illegal immigrants who came into the country after 1972 and before 2010 to be eligible for amnesty.
The power to award such amnesty to illegal immigrants who have become de facto residents is vested in Congress, but Congress hasn’t moved up the date to allow illegal immigrants to be eligible for a pathway to citizenship since President Richard Nixon was in the Oval Office in 1972.
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.
Leaders of a migrant caravan consisting of thousands of migrants have rejected humanitarian visas for some travelers as they continued the march towards the United States or Mexico city.
The Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) said that it offered humanitarian visas to pregnant women and children in the caravan but was rejected by leaders of the caravan, which set off from southern Mexico last week, according to Fox News.
The visas last a year and grant migrants access to public services like healthcare, as well as the ability to work, Reuters reported.
The caravan of migrants mainly consisted of South Americans, Central Americans, and Haitians. It left the town of Huehuetán in the south of Mexico on Oct. 23.
Organizers Luis Rey García Villagrán and Irineo Mújica had migrants sign up with QR codes to join the convoy.
In an interview with Reuters, Mújica said that many caravan members were distrustful of the migration officials due to what he described as broken promises in the past, such as arrests and deportations.
Garcia told Fox News that the caravan was approximately 4,000 strong with more than 400 children between the ages 7-18, and 100 babies under the age of one. In addition, 65 pregnant women (three being more than eight months pregnant) and four wheelchair bound migrants had joined the caravan.
Having travelled 60 miles, many caravan members have reportedly developed foot injuries, respiratory problems, and infections.
Volunteer doctor Kabir Sanchez told Reuters that “more than 50 percent of the people in the caravan are sick.”
The INM had also reported six cases of dengue amongst members of the caravan, including five children.
Sanchez also said that caravan members had possible cases of COVID-19 but were not confirmed with tests.
The Biden administration had blamed root causes in Central and South America as factors causing the recent influx in illegal immigrants.
Republicans, on the other hand, blamed the border-crisis on the Biden administration’s decision to halt the border wall construction, and to reinstitute the Obama administration’s catch-and-release policy.
Just last month, The Washington Times reported that catch-and-release numbers increased a whopping 430,000 percent from August 2020 to August 2021 at the US-Mexico border.
Catch and release allows illegal aliens to be released into the country after being arrested by border patrol agents. Under the conditions of their release, these illegal immigrants are expected to appear for a court hearing at a later date.
However, the Center for Immigration Studies, which describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit research organization,” found that about half of these released illegal immigrants failed to appear to court between 2015 and 2017 (pdf). In 2017, 43 percent did not show up to their court date.
The Supreme Court decided Oct. 29 to hear two cases that the Biden administration did not want the court to hear—one, aimed at reviving a rule that screens out potentially government-dependent immigrants, and another that could roll back the reach of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The court decisions came as migrants continue to stream illegally across the increasingly porous southern border and the Biden administration develops a strategy for dealing with the scientifically contentious phenomenon of manmade global warming. The decisions also came as the court prepares to hear high-profile cases in coming days dealing with a Texas law strictly regulating abortions and a New York law that strictly regulates gun use.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Arizona v. San Francisco, court file 20-1775, which concerns the so-called public charge rule.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, was pleased the high court will hear the case.
“When other federal officials won’t defend the law, I will,” Brnovich said in a statement. “The Public Charge Rule is a commonsense policy based on a real inconvenient truth. Overrunning our welfare programs right now would be like pulling back the last safety net for Americans who need it most.”
In the case, the Republican attorneys general of Arizona and 12 other states asked the high court to be allowed to defend in court a Trump-era rule designed to screen out would-be immigrants unable to support themselves. Enforcing the immigrant self-sufficiency rule could save states billions of dollars each year.
A federal appeals court struck down the public charge rule and the Biden administration refused to defend it in court. Separately, President Joe Biden also rescinded the rule. Among the respondents in the case are the U.S. government and the states of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.
Arizona and the 12 other states accused the governments on the other side of colluding to prevent this important case from being heard by the nation’s highest court.
“Without any prior warning, the existing parties sprung an unprecedented, coordinated, and multi-court gambit,” Arizona and other states said in their petition (pdf).
“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.”
Over vehement opposition, the Trump administration breathed new life into the rule, which had fallen into disuse. Although critics say the extensively litigated 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.
The Supreme Court also decided to hear West Virginia v. EPA, court file 20-1530, which it consolidated with three other appeals.
Energy-producing states and coal companies accuse the EPA of a power grab, claiming it exceeded its authority to limit carbon emissions, which environmentalists allege contribute to climate change. A ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit gave back to the EPA some of the authority the Trump administration took away from it.
According to petitioners, the appeals court “held that a rarely used, ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act grants an agency unbridled power—functionally ‘no limits’—to decide whether and how to decarbonize almost any sector of the economy,” the petition states (pdf).
Five years ago the EPA “claimed to find similar powers in the same provision—authority to reshape the nation’s utility power sector by mandating standards impossible for coal and natural gas power plants to meet without limiting operations, shutting down, or subsidizing investment in alternate electricity generation that EPA preferred.”
The Supreme Court “took the extraordinary step of staying EPA’s ‘Clean Power Plan’ rule even before the lower court finished its review, strongly signaling that EPA (and by extension the court below) were wrong.”
The agency repealed the rule in 2019 but the appeals court “insisted that EPA had more statutory power than the agency had originally claimed,” and gave it “new and wildly expansive authority.”
The agency now “can set standards on a regional or even national level, forcing dramatic changes in how and where electricity is produced, as well as transforming any other sector of the economy where stationary sources emit greenhouse gases. Power to regulate factories, hospitals, hotels, and even homes would have tremendous costs and consequences for all Americans.”
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, welcomed the decision to hear the case.
“This is a tremendous victory for West Virginia and our nation,” Morrisey said in a statement. The decision “indicates a significant portion of the court realizes the seriousness of this case and shares our concern that the D.C. Circuit granted EPA too much authority.”
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.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday ended the “Remain in Mexico” program despite being ordered by a court to move in good faith to restore it.
“I am hereby terminating MPP,” Mayorkas wrote in a memorandum.
The program is formally known as the Migrant Policy Protocols (MPP). Started during the Trump administration, it forced many asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their claims to be heard.You May Also Like
Mayorkas ended it earlier this year, claiming it had “mixed effectiveness” and “does not adequately or sustainably enhance border management in such a way as to justify the program’s extensive operational burdens and other shortfalls.”
But a federal judge in August found his memo lacked an exploration of the benefits of the program, which were outlined by the very department he heads. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, ordered the memo vacated and the Biden administration “to enforce and implement MPP in good faith until such a time as it has been lawfully rescinded.”
Kacsmaryk’s injunction ruling was upheld by an appeals court and the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the parties are scheduled for oral arguments before an appeals court in the case next week.
In his new memo, Mayorkas continued promoting twin messaging. He said the administration is working in good faith to restore the policy. But he also said he was terminating it.
“The department will continue complying with the Texas injunction requiring good-faith implementation and enforcement of MPP. But the termination of MPP will be implemented as soon as practicable after a final judicial decision to vacate the Texas injunction,” he wrote.
Mayorkas said he reached the conclusion after a fresh review of all the information relating to the program, including court filings, departmental assessments, and news reports.
“I recognize that MPP likely contributed to reduced migratory flows. But it did so by imposing substantial and unjustifiable human costs on the individuals who were exposed to harm while waiting in Mexico. The Biden-Harris Administration, by contrast, is pursuing a series of policies that disincentivize irregular migration while incentivizing safe, orderly, and humane pathways,” he wrote.
The Biden administration is facing an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration that critics say is fostered by its lax enforcement policies, including the ending of MPP and the curtailment of Title 42, which is used to expel illegal immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stephen Miller, a top immigration adviser during the Trump administration, wrote on Twitter that the administration should be held in contempt of court.
“It’s been almost 3 months since a federal judge ordered Biden to reinstate MPP (which could be done with a single phone call) & not only has Biden never reinstated MPP they’ve instead poured their energy into trying to abolish it,” said.
The memo follows three recent updates.
In late September, the states of Texas and Missouri, which brought the suit that led to Kacsmaryk’s ruling, asked the court to force the administration to reinstate MPP. About a week later, Mayorkas’ department said it planned to scrap MPP even though the Supreme Court upheld Kacsmaryk’s ruling. Finally, the administration said it expected to be in a position to re-implement the program in mid-November, pending cooperation from Mexico.
Does the Biden administration want to foment a civil war, a mass taxpayer rebellion, or are they simply crazy?
Those were the thoughts that flew through my head like the swallows to Capistrano the minute I read the Oct. 28 report in the Wall Street Journal under the headline “U.S. in Talks to Pay Hundreds of Millions to Families Separated at Border.” Needless to say, it is currently their most read article.
“WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is in talks to offer immigrant families that were separated during the Trump administration around $450,000 a person in compensation, according to people familiar with the matter, as several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who say the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma.
“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.”
$450,000 a person? This when millions of actual taxpaying American citizens are suffering, barely able to make ends meet during the pandemic, and inflation is on a record pace. Not even Anthony Fauci, allegedly the highest paid government official, makes that much, at least in salary.
Psychological trauma? How about causing psychological trauma to a whole country at once? Never in my life have I heard anything so insane.
And I thought nothing could top the Afghanistan debacle.
For once, well twice—the first time was during the Kavanaugh hearings—I found myself in complete agreement with Lindsey Graham who tweeted
I just about fell out of my chair when I read this.
For the sake of our country, I hope this reporting is in error.
To put it mildly. Rep. Doug Lamborn pointed out $450,00 was more than the 9/11 victim’s fund—and this new proposal is for people who entered our country completely illegally.
Can you imagine how many more are now making a beeline for our open border after hearing about this incredible largesse.
If you want to get some laughs, or maybe vengeance, take a look at the comments section on the Daily Mail’s coverage of the story that ranges from “I’m a Democrat and this is the dumbest thing I ever heard” to Sen. Tom Cotton tweeting, “It’s unthinkable to pay a burglar who broke into your home for the ‘psychological trauma’ they endured during the crime.”
Well, maybe that’s not funny. In fact, the whole thing isn’t very funny, when you think about it. Biden is actually president of the United States, the supposed leader of the free world. And we’re theoretically stuck with him until 2024.
And now this strange, befuddled individual is in Glasgow pretending to understand climate science. Good luck to those of us who want to have heated homes this winter.
The only one who should be pleased by all this is James Buchanan, previously thought of as the worst president of all time for his role in preserving slavery, who must be sitting up in his grave, smiling in relief.
Of course, what appeared in the WSJ might be some kind of “trial balloon” number meant to be negotiated down to a still ridiculous $300,000 per person/ $600,000 a family, figures that still dwarf the $1200 or so given to our own people at the height of the pandemic.
(That reporters allow themselves to be used for this game by authorities would be no surprise since it is consistent with the behavior of the entire mainstream media in recent years, acting as a slavish adjunct of government. Hence, the phrase “people familiar with the matter,” as used here, has become something of a modern cliché.)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)—a once-honorable (decades ago) organization that at one time actually worked for Americans’ civil liberties but now works to undermine them at every turn—is apparently one of the main sponsors of this proposal.
They should consider changing their name to the American Republic Destruction Union (ARDU) with the slogan “Ben Franklin was right. We can’t keep it!”
Of final note, the New York Times does not have this astounding story on its front page this morning. Has shame finally set in? Or is it just the old game of hiding the bad news?
Whatever it is, this is bad news indeed for Biden and the Democrats as well. They’ve not just jumped the shark, as they used to say in show biz. They’ve jumped a thousand of them. This is not going to sit well with most decent Americans. And we shouldn’t let them forget.
The Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security issued a memorandum Friday announcing its plans to end the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols.
“After carefully considering the arguments, evidence, and perspectives presented by those who support re-implementation of MPP, those who support terminating the program, and those who have argued for continuing MPP in a modified form, I have determined that MPP should be terminated,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote.
“In reaching this conclusion, I recognize that MPP likely contributed to reduced migratory flows. But it did so by imposing substantial and unjustifiable human costs on the individuals who were exposed to harm while waiting in Mexico,” Mayorkas added.
It’s not the first time the Biden administration has announced plans to end the Remain in Mexico policy. An attempt in June was thwarted in federal court.
“The Department of Homeland Security intends to issue in the coming weeks a new memorandum terminating the Migrant Protection Protocols,” DHS said in a September statement.
“Although the Department issued a June 2021 memorandum that terminated MPP, a Texas district court vacated that prior termination determination and issued an injunction that requires the Department to work in good faith to re-start MPP. The Department has appealed that injunction,” it said.
The Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration’s effort to end the policy in August as it declined to block an order from a Texas federal judge requiring the policy to be put back in place.
“The applicants have failed to show a likelihood of success on the claim that the memorandum rescinding the Migrant Protection Protocols was not arbitrary and capricious,” the Supreme Court’s order said.
The ruling forced the DHS to make a “good faith” effort to restart the program, despite the administration’s plans to again attempt to rescind it.
Should illegal immigrants be stopped from crossing the border?
“In the meantime, while the court injunction remains in effect, the Department has been working in good faith to re-start MPP in compliance with the order, and it will continue to do so,” the DHS said in a September memo.
“To that end, the Department, working with the Department of State, is engaged in ongoing and high-level diplomatic discussions with Mexico,” it added.
“Remain in Mexico, also known as MPP (Migrant Protection Protocols), was not only a historic foreign policy triumph but one of the most successful border security programs anyone has ever put into effect anywhere,” Trump said.
“Along with our Central America Safe Third agreements, asylum reforms, and expedited removal procedures we drove border numbers to record lows and we ENDED the horrendous practice known as Catch-and-Release,” he said.
“No American President had ever done more to defend the border and safeguard the whole immigration system.”
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.
“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
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.
Members of the Patriots for America militia in Kinney County, Texas, in Oct. 2021. (Courtesy of Sam Hall)
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.”
Recent trail camera photos of illegal aliens provided by ranchers in Kinney County, Texas. (Courtesy of ranchers)
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.
Kinney County Sheriffs deputies search a vehicle after arresting a U.S. citizen smuggler who was transporting four illegal aliens to San Antonio, in Kinney County, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
Texas State Troopers arrest two U.S. citizens who were transporting three illegal aliens to San Antonio, in Kinney County, Texas, on Oct. 20, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
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.
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.
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.
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 Denver attorney who was once the co-chair of the Clinton Global Initiative is now being sought by the Denver District Attorney’s office.
Steve Bachar, 56, is now the subject of a warrant issued on Oct. 18, charging him with securities fraud and theft. A criminal complaint against him accuses him of stealing between $100,000 and $1 million and lying to an investor, according to the Denver Post.
This is not the first legal issue, Bachar has faced. Last year he was accused of misusing $2 million earmarked for personal protective equipment and lost two lawsuits.
Former Clinton Global Initiative Co-Chair Steve Bachar has been indicted on felony theft and securities fraud counts. https://t.co/OXRvKtRFHO
The new warrant says the alleged crimes took place between Oct. 13, 2017, and Aug. 8, 2018.
“Steven Charles Bachar, in connection with the offer, sale or purchase of a security, directly or indirectly, unlawfully, feloniously and willfully made an untrue statement of material fact or omitted to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made … not misleading,” states the complaint obtained by the Post.
Bachar texted a statement in his defense.
Is there a scandal in everything the Clintons touch?
“These are outrageous, unfounded and false accusations,” he wrote. “I am pleased that we are now engaged in a process that will let the facts come to light.”
Bachar is currently under investigation by the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, which oversees attorney discipline in Colorado.
Earlier this year, Bachar had been ordered to pay two companies $4.5 million in connection with two civil lawsuits, the Post reported.
Bachar has been sued by DaVita Inc., which claims it paid Bachar $604,000 toward providing 4,200 cases of N95 masks in what would have been a $2.4 million deal but never received anything.
Bachar was also sued by The Future Health Company, which said Bachar never paid it the $1.2 million it was owed for 3 million medical gowns.
The company said it has never been paid anything owed it under the court judgment against Bachar.
In 2015 Steve Bachar raised concerns to John Podesta when then-VP Biden began to explore a presidential bid against Hillary Clinton, who was in the midst of her email scandal. #copoliticshttps://t.co/hZbII9rmcj
Bachar worked with the advance team of former President Bill Clinton and once boasted that he was “joined at the hip” with him. Bachar also worked for the Treasury Department.
He also co-founded a firm called Empowerment Capital Management that said it was focused on “socially responsible investing,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.
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.
