Centrist GOP lawmakers push back against border wall funding
BY CRISTINA MARCOS - 07/25/17 01:50 PM EDT
Two House Republicans want to water down plans to include funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall promised by President Trump in the spending package slated for a floor vote this week.
Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), whose district includes the largest section of the Mexican border of any House member, has long said building the wall would be impractical and ineffective.
House GOP leaders plan to add $1.6 billion to the spending package to begin construction on the border wall. The legislation will likely be blocked by Democrats in the Senate, but will serve as an opening salvo for the debate in September to avoid a government shutdown this fall.
Hurd has submitted an amendment that would prevent the use of funds to build any physical barriers, including walls or fences, along the border until the secretary of Homeland Security submits a comprehensive border security strategy to Congress.
Under Hurd’s amendment, the report would need to provide a justification for using a more expensive type of physical barrier or tool, as well as a cost estimate for protecting each mile of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) is so far the only other Republican to sign on to Hurd’s amendment. Like Hurd, Fitzpatrick is part of the House GOP’s centrist faction that represents a district expected to be targeted by Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections.
Three Texas Democrats who also represent districts along the U.S.-Mexico border have endorsed Hurd’s proposal: Reps. Vicente González, Henry Cuellar and Beto O’Rourke.
Rep. Filemon Vela (Texas), another border-district Democrat, told The Hill Tuesday he would not support Hurd's amendment because it lays out a path through which a border wall could eventually be funded.
"It's too much of a middle ground," said Vela.
But O'Rourke, who along with Vela has been one of the strongest opponents of the wall, said he would support any amendment opposing the wall, including Hurd's.
"It asks all the right questions," said O'Rourke, who is running for Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) seat in 2018.
A spokeswoman for Hurd didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The House Rules Committee is meeting Tuesday to determine which of the more than 300 amendments submitted to the spending package will be allowed votes on the floor.
The Rules panel is controlled by the majority party leadership and determines how legislation is considered by the full House.
All of the Republicans who represent part of the U.S.-Mexico border have expressed skepticism about building the wall as proposed by Trump. Like Hurd, Reps. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) and Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) have said the wall would be ineffective.
Pearce’s district is the only one along the Mexican border that Trump won in November.
In a statement back in January after Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to begin construction of the wall, Hurd said that it would be “the most expensive and least effective way to secure the border.”
“Each section of the border faces unique geographical, cultural, and technological challenges that would be best addressed with a flexible, sector-by-sector approach that empowers the agents on the ground with the resources they need,” Hurd said at the time.
The $1.6 billion for the border wall is expected to be added to the spending bill by the Rules Committee.
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, has submitted an amendment allocating the $1.6 billion specifically for physical barriers in the Rio Grande Valley and in San Diego. It reflects the amount included in a Homeland Security spending bill advanced by the House Appropriations Committee last week.
The Rules Committee could grant Carter’s amendment a vote on the assumption it would be adopted on the floor. But the Rules panel could also decide to unilaterally include the amendment in the spending package before it hits the floor, which means there wouldn’t be a standalone vote on wall funding.
—Rafael Bernal contributed.
Immigration Court Backlog:
Trump administration policies will, if properly implemented and supported by congressional appropriations, ease and begin to reduce the backlogs:
There is more that the administration can do, however:
Aliens Die in Smuggling Operation
American nightmare: Nine immigrants suffocate to death in trailer left in Texas parking lot
How many politicians got seven-figure jobs in the private sector after having pushed the project along? No one will ever know.
US squanders billions on new aircraft carrier
US squanders billions on new aircraft carrier
25 July 2017
In yet another massive squandering of public resources, the United States on Saturday commissioned the USS Gerald Ford, the country’s 11th supercarrier, at the cost of some $13 billion.
The combined price tag of the ship and its air wing of F-35c fighters, at $30 billion, is roughly equivalent to what the United Nations estimate for the annual cost of ending world hunger.
No doubt many defense contractor executives assembled to watch the ship’s christening had their private jets and country club memberships paid for with this monstrosity, which came in some $3 billion above budget. How many politicians got seven-figure jobs in the private sector after having pushed the project along? No one will ever know.
The Gerald Ford is just part of a major expansion of the US Navy, which was underway even before Trump announced his plans to increase US military spending by $54 billion each year and expand the size of the Navy by 75 ships. Over the next decade, the US military plans to field not only a new set of carriers, but a brand new class of ballistic missile submarines, destroyers, fighters, long-range bombers and nuclear missiles.
This expansion of military spending, under both Obama and Trump, has been met, on the part of the media, with either enthusiastic approval or silence.
By the time the carrier is operational in some three to four years, it will already be obsolete. When the United Kingdom commissioned its latest aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal United Services Institute noted that the vast ship was largely defenseless against the current generation of anti-ship cruise missiles fielded by Russia, China and other countries.
“Missiles costing (much) less than half a million pounds a unit could at least disable a British aircraft carrier that costs more than £3 billion,” it said.
Commenting on the report, the Russian Defense Ministry joked that the British aircraft carrier was “merely a large convenient naval target.” The same epithet could be applied to the Gerald Ford. This steel bathtub, housing some 4,300 sailors, airmen and officers, could be sunk within minutes if it wandered within 400 miles of the coast of Kaliningrad, Syria or, for that matter, China.
And yet, America has eleven of these dinosaurs, together with eight helicopter carriers that are as big as the aircraft carriers of other countries. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the US fields three quarters of the world’s carrier tonnage.
At Saturday’s commissioning ceremony, US President Donald Trump delivered a blustering, delusional speech, full of wild threats, in which he presented a picture of the United States arming itself to the teeth. He called the ship a “message to the world” that “American might is second to none, and we’re getting bigger, and better, and stronger every day.”
“Our enemies will shake with fear because everyone will know that America is coming,” he declared. Who these enemies are (one assumes they are not Islamists armed with Kalashnikovs) was never specified.
Trump added, “This ship also ensures that if a fight does come, it will always end the same way: we will win, win, win. We will never lose. We will win.”
In a clear breach of the principle of civilian rule over the military, he appealed to the sailors and officers gathered at the event to demand that the government expand military spending.
Summing up, the former real estate speculator said, "When it comes to battle, we don’t want a fair fight. We want just the opposite. We demand victory, and we will have total victory.”
Trump’s speech, showing the influence of his fascist-minded advisors Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller, did not invoke the word “democracy,” or even the principle of “self-defense,” within which the operations of US imperialism have traditionally been couched. All that was left was naked military force, threats and coercion.
While there exist significant differences between Trump and elements of the US military/intelligence apparatus, the US president, in his belief in violence as a solution to historical problems, exemplifies the thinking that pervades American policy circles, which seek to maintain US global dominance through the expansion of military power.
The USS Gerald Ford is the physical embodiment of the idea that the long-term historical decline of American capitalism can be offset by more guns, more ships, more wars and more deaths.
The “American Century” has been characterized by the overwhelming superiority of US air power. Despite the fact that the United States has been continuously at war since 1991, not a single US soldier has been attacked by enemy aircraft for over six decades.
And yet, as the US moves into increasingly sharp conflict with Russia, China and even its European allies, it is becoming increasingly clear that its most advanced weapons systems, including aircraft carriers and “stealth” aircraft such as the F-22, F-35 and B-2, would see substantial losses in the event of a shooting war with Russia, China or even some lesser, regional power such as Iran.
In recognition of this reality, Gen. Mark A. Milley noted that the US needs to prepare for conflicts in which “the levels of violence… would be immense and it would be the likes of what the world hasn’t seen since the Second World War.”
Despite the vast scale of US arms spending and the breathtaking scope of its military operations all over the world, it is increasingly undeniable that the period of US military, economic and geopolitical hegemony is coming to an end.
This was the conclusion of a study published by the US Army War College late last month, which asserts that American political hegemony is “not merely fraying,” but “collapsing.”
The report goes on to state that the order that “first emerged from World War II” was “transformed to a unipolar system with the collapse of the Soviet Union." It continues: "The 17-year period after the Cold War... was a unique time when American power was essentially unchallenged,” but “we have been moving into a new era.”
With the rise of “revisionist” powers like China and Russia, the United States has been so weakened that “it no longer can—as in the past—automatically generate consistent and sustained local military superiority at range.”
This is in line with an assessment by historian Alfred W. McCoy, who declares in a soon-to-be released book: “All available economic, educational, technological data indicate that when it comes to US global power, negative trends are likely to aggregate rapidly by 2020, and could reach a critical mass no later than 2030. The American Century, proclaimed so triumphantly at the start of World War II, may already be tattered and fading by 2025, and, except for the finger pointing, could be over by 2030.”
But the relative decline of the United States is, in some ways, the least of the US military’s worries. The Army War College report notes that, beyond the collapse of the US-dominated world order, “[A]ll states and traditional political authority structures are under increasing pressure.” It adds, “The fracturing of the post-Cold War global system is accompanied by the internal fraying in the political, social and economic fabric of practically all states.”
It cites an earlier report that warned of the "increasing chasm between governments and their governed over the basic right to rule.” It adds, “Today, all states are experiencing a precipitous decline in their authority, influence, reach and common attraction,” as populations are presented with “myriad alternative sources of political alignment or allegiance.”
It concludes that states “now all wrestle with one another over competing interests while standing on quicksand—threatened” not only by national rivals, but “the fragile and restive social order they themselves rest on.” In this case, the quicksand is a metaphor for the growth of popular opposition to war, social inequality and capitalism itself.
Confronting crisis at home and abroad, the US is lashing out everywhere simultaneously: against Russia, China, Iran, and now even its NATO allies. The same weekend that Trump commissioned his aircraft carrier, the House of Representatives reached a deal on a bill that would sanction European companies for economic dealings with Russia, a move that, according to a leaked EU memo, would bring retaliatory measures by the EU “within days.”
All of this presents a warning to the working class: The US ruling elite, faced with economic stagnation, geopolitical decline and a crisis of legitimacy at home, sees war, no matter how bloody and disastrous, as the solution to its problems.
Andre Damon
ZOGY POLL ON MEX RACISM AND VIOLENCE….. Half the murders in CA
are by Mex gangs, and 93% of murders in La Raza-Occupied Los Angeles are by
Mexicans.
ZOGBY
“In Mexico, a recent Zogby poll declared that the vast majority of Mexican citizens hate Americans. [22.2] Mexico is a country saturated with racism, yet in denial, having never endured the social development of a Civil Rights movement like in the US--Blacks are harshly treated while foreign Whites are often seen as the enemy. [22.3] In fact, racism as workplace discrimination can be seen across the US anywhere the illegal alien Latino works--the vast majority of the workforce is usually strictly Latino, excluding Blacks, Whites, Asians, and others.”
SICK OF THE MEX FLAG WAVERS?
An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture. That's not an immigrant. That's a future Democrat voter. ----- RICHARD F. MINITER – AMERICAN THINKER COM
HERITAGE FOUNDATION:
Amnesty would add 100 million more illegals and cost Legals trillions!
WE ALSO GET THEIR CRIMINALS! HALF THE MURDERS IN
MEXIFORNIA ARE NOW BY LA RAZA MEX GANGS…. 93% OF ALL
MURDERS IN MEX-OCCUPIED LOS ANGELES ARE BY MEXICANS…
THEY ARE THE MOST VIOLENT CULTURE IN THE WESTERN
HEMISPHERE… THEY DON’T JUMP OUR BORDERS, JOBS AND LAWS
TO BECOME AMERICAN… THEY DO SO AS LOOTERS.
Immigration Court Backlog:
Causes and Solutions
WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 24, 2017) – With 600,000 pending cases, the backlog in the immigration court system has become a matter of some urgency. A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies examines the reasons for its rapid growth and possible solutions.
Contrary to the claims of advocates, the backlog is not caused by an increase in cases. Andrew Arthur, the Center's resident fellow in law and policy and author of the report, pointed to data from a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showing that the "total case receipts" in 2015 was about the same as in 2006. But the number of cases actually completed declined 31 percent even as the number of immigration judges grew 17 percent.
View the full report at: https://cis.org/Massive-Increase-Immigration-Court-Backlog-Its-Causes-and-Solutions
Arthur identified a number of reasons that cases are taking so much longer to resolve, including:
Contrary to the claims of advocates, the backlog is not caused by an increase in cases. Andrew Arthur, the Center's resident fellow in law and policy and author of the report, pointed to data from a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showing that the "total case receipts" in 2015 was about the same as in 2006. But the number of cases actually completed declined 31 percent even as the number of immigration judges grew 17 percent.
View the full report at: https://cis.org/Massive-Increase-Immigration-Court-Backlog-Its-Causes-and-Solutions
Arthur identified a number of reasons that cases are taking so much longer to resolve, including:
- Resources. There are too few judges and support staff to do the job adequately.
- The "Surge". The growing number of Central American families and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) both swelled dockets and led to IJs being reassigned from already scheduled hearings to handing these expedited cases. Those surge cases were also more complicated than cases involving single adult males, requiring more courtroom time (and continuances) per case.
- Case Law. Recent federal court decisions have complicated IJs removal decisions, slowing proceedings and requiring additional continuances.
- Obama Administration Policies. Policies instituted in the last administration led to numerous continuances, as aliens sought counsel and applied for relief or discretionary closures, release, or termination based on those policies.
Trump administration policies will, if properly implemented and supported by congressional appropriations, ease and begin to reduce the backlogs:
- The attorney general has stated that he will hire significantly more IJs in the next two years, and streamline the hiring of IJs.
- Changes in border enforcement policies will limit the number of new cases that are added to the immigration courts' dockets.
- Changes to interior enforcement policies will reduce the incentives for aliens to remain in the United States and fight meritless cases.
- Rescission of Obama-era policies will also reduce the incentives for aliens to remain in removal proceedings.
There is more that the administration can do, however:
- The attorney general must use his certification authority to set stricter standards for IJs to follow in granting continuances.
- The Department of Justice must vigorously litigate cases in the federal circuit courts to provide the IJs with more "bright-line" rules to follow in deciding cases, and to limit variations in the law among circuits.
“WE’RE GOING TO TAKE OVER ALL THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN CALIFORNIA. IN FIVE YEARS THE HISPANICS ARE GOING TO BE THE MAJORITY POPULATION OF THIS STATE.... ANYONE THAT DOESN’T LIKE IT SHOULD LEAVE IT!” --- MARIO OBLEDO
President of Latino group: ‘La Raza’ name was 'a barrier to our mission'
© Getty
Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said Tuesday that the Latino advocacy organization made a tough decision to better reflect its mission last week when it dropped “La Raza” from its name.
The influential Latino civil rights organization changed its name to UnidosUS from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) at its 49th annual conference.
Murguía told The Hill the decision was made after three-and-a-half years of research, interviews and surveys on the organization's image.
"We really wanted to make sure what we were hearing was reflective of most of our community," she said.
"We knew this step would be a big one and that not everybody would be fully supportive, but it’s hard to ignore the data and the changes that have occurred in our community," Murguía added.
The NCLR name had come under criticism from groups on the right, who pointed out that "la raza" means "the race” in Spanish, a reference that was interpreted by some as having racist undertones.
The organization got its original name in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, a reference to an academic concept put forth by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos in the 1930s
Vasconcelos's original idea of "la raza" was meant to unite the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural peoples of Latin America as part of one post-colonial identity group.
But Murguía says that image no longer represents Latinos in the United States.
"We’re not the same Hispanic or Latino community we were in 1968," she said. "We are a younger community — six in ten [Latinos] are millennials or younger -- and we’re a more diverse Latino community."
Murguía said the old name "appeared to be outdated" and "to have no resonance with our community."
"More than anything, our name appeared to be a barrier to our mission," she said.
UnidosUS is the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, with interests in political advocacy and research on issues like tax reform, healthcare, housing and immigration.
Murguía said the organization and the Hispanic community as a whole have achieved real gains over time in many of those areas.
"Real progress is achievable, but it takes sustained engagement and it happens not in a moment, but over time," she said.
She pointed at issues like the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance coverage to nearly four million Latinos who previously didn’t have health insurance, and the earned income tax credit as tangible wins for Hispanics.
But Murguía said that progress is under threat.
"There’s no question that the stakes are very high for our community right now and we’re dealing with a very challenging environment," she said.
The short-term priorities for Latinos, Murguía said, include protecting those policies and counteracting the Trump administration's immigration policies.
"We want to make sure we can block the funding for a mass deportation force that Trump has called for, we can block the funding for a wall that is a waste of precious resources that will accomplish very little," she said.
"Right right now there’s no question that 'Dreamers' appear to be in the crosshairs of the Trump administration," she added, referring to so-called “Dreamers,” recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The program, which protects from deportation nearly 750,000 people who were illegally brought to the United States as children, is facing legal challenges from Texas and nine other states.
The Trump administration has not yet said whether it will defend the program through the Justice Department.
"There’s a real risk because we’re seeing more and more that this decision making is not in the hands of the president, but also in the Attorney General [Jeff Sessions] and he’s been antagonistic to any efforts around immigration reform or any efforts to try to promote long term relief for Dreamers and others," she said.
Ultimately, Murguía said, the challenge for Hispanics will be to encourage greater political participation to reap the demographic rewards as the country's largest minority group.
Roughly one million Latinos turn 18 every year, and Hispanics are a key voting bloc in states like California, Texas and Florida. Still, voter participation has traditionally been low in the community.
"We have got to continue to build on the rolls of voters, continue to encourage anyone who’s eligible to continue to vote. Beyond that, we have to make sure there are efforts underway for those eligible to become citizens to naturalize," said Murguía.
Murguía said Latino voters, widely expected to "surge" in the 2016 election, did just that, only to be "outsurged by others."
More Latinos voted in 2016 than ever before, but participation rates remained somewhat stagnant. Still, with consistent participation rates and natural demographic growth, Latinos played an important role in states like Arizona and Colorado.
"The stakes are extremely high for our community. For those of us who maybe didn’t understand how bad things could get before the election, now we know. The truth is they could get worse," she said.
"We have to take what we’ve learned and now use our ability to participate, to mobilize, to vote, very seriously, and we need to come together as we do that," Murguía said.
ZOGY POLL ON MEX RACISM AND VIOLENCE….. Half the murders in CA
are by Mex gangs, and 93% of murders in La Raza-Occupied Los Angeles are by
Mexicans.
ZOGBY
“In Mexico, a recent Zogby poll declared that the vast majority of Mexican citizens hate Americans. [22.2] Mexico is a country saturated with racism, yet in denial, having never endured the social development of a Civil Rights movement like in the US--Blacks are harshly treated while foreign Whites are often seen as the enemy. [22.3] In fact, racism as workplace discrimination can be seen across the US anywhere the illegal alien Latino works--the vast majority of the workforce is usually strictly Latino, excluding Blacks, Whites, Asians, and others.”
SICK OF THE MEX FLAG WAVERS?
An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture. That's not an immigrant. That's a future Democrat voter. ----- RICHARD F. MINITER – AMERICAN THINKER COM
WHY THEY KEEP COMING: 70% WILL GET WELFARE, ALL WILL GET JOBS AND ENJOY THE MULTI-BILLION TAX-FREE MEX UNDERGROUND ECONOMY, ALL WILL GET "FREE" MEDICAL AT ANY HOSPITAL, ALL WILL GET "FREE" EDUCATION FOR THEIR ANCHOR BABIES.
Aliens Die in Smuggling Operation
By Andrew R. Arthur
July 24, 2017On Sunday it was revealed that nine aliens died, and several more were in "dire condition", after they were discovered in the back of a "sweltering tractor-trailer" in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas. Seventeen of the 39 aliens rescued were reported to be in "critical condition".
At one point, it was reported, "more than 100 people" may have been packed into the truck, which was believed to have picked up its passengers on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico. According to the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan, "[f]our of the survivors appeared to be between 10 and 17 years old."
This is not the first such tragedy, or even the first in Texas. Early in the morning of May 14, 2003, a "milk trailer, piled with bodies" was discovered near Victoria, Texas, abandoned at a truck stop. Press reports stated that 19 died and 55 aliens were rescued in that incident; a five-year-old child was the first to succumb, and the driver eventually received a 34-year sentence for his role in that crime.
Nor was this the only incident that involved transported aliens in San Antonio this weekend. According to press reports:
15 people were detained at a home located at the 100 block of Westhaven Place on the West Side [of San Antonio] Sunday evening. Law enforcement sources tell us that those detained are believed to be human trafficking victims.
There are two important points that these cases underscore. The first is that smugglers are bad people. I am an educated man, and could use more flowery language, or more clinical terms, to make this statement, but that would be gilding a noxious lily. No evil compares to slavery, but if there were any group of individuals who would come close in their wretchedness to slavers, it would be smugglers. Their stock in trade is human flesh, and their hook is the human misery of those who are caught up in their predations. They objectify their customers, and are usually more than willing to cut and run, leaving their victims to their fates.
The second point is that smugglers are aided and abetted by well-meaning individuals in the United States. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick placed part of the blame for the Walmart incident on so-called "sanctuary cities", stating:
Sanctuary cities entice people to believe they can come to America and Texas and live outside the law. Sanctuary cities also enable human smugglers and cartels. Today, these people paid a terrible price and demonstrate why we need a secure border and legal immigration reform so we can control who enters our country. We continue to pray for the families and friends of the victims.
This may seem to be a cruel statement to some, but in my 25-years of immigration experience, it is 100 percent true. Such laws are likely enacted with the intent to "protect" those aliens who have already entered illegally, but they also send a signal to all who foreign nationals would come to the United States illegally that this country is not serious about its immigration laws, and that once an alien enters illegally, he or she will be "home free". It is not boastful to state as an American that we have a higher standard of living, better schools, and better healthcare than most of the world, and certainly those countries from which most illegal aliens come. These are strong inducements to take dangerous risks.
The same is true of other incentives provided to those aliens who have entered illegally. In-state tuition and driver's licenses for aliens here unlawfully send the same message. And, at the end of the day, for nine people in San Antonio, and 19 in Victoria, it is at the end of the day a cruel one.
There will always be immigration laws in the United States. Our institutions and social-welfare systems would collapse without them, crime would increase, and groups and nations that are adverse to our government and people would exploit open borders to harm us and our way of life.And, as long as we have immigration laws, there must be only one immigration policy, set by the federal government pursuant to the Constitution. States can't have a different policy, and cities can't either. Although the best argument for such a system is the rule of law, it is not the only one. Divergent policies create false hope, and encourage aliens to take the risk of placing their lives in the hands of the worst of criminals.
July 24, 2017On Sunday it was revealed that nine aliens died, and several more were in "dire condition", after they were discovered in the back of a "sweltering tractor-trailer" in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio, Texas. Seventeen of the 39 aliens rescued were reported to be in "critical condition".
At one point, it was reported, "more than 100 people" may have been packed into the truck, which was believed to have picked up its passengers on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico. According to the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Tom Homan, "[f]our of the survivors appeared to be between 10 and 17 years old."
This is not the first such tragedy, or even the first in Texas. Early in the morning of May 14, 2003, a "milk trailer, piled with bodies" was discovered near Victoria, Texas, abandoned at a truck stop. Press reports stated that 19 died and 55 aliens were rescued in that incident; a five-year-old child was the first to succumb, and the driver eventually received a 34-year sentence for his role in that crime.
Nor was this the only incident that involved transported aliens in San Antonio this weekend. According to press reports:
15 people were detained at a home located at the 100 block of Westhaven Place on the West Side [of San Antonio] Sunday evening. Law enforcement sources tell us that those detained are believed to be human trafficking victims.
There are two important points that these cases underscore. The first is that smugglers are bad people. I am an educated man, and could use more flowery language, or more clinical terms, to make this statement, but that would be gilding a noxious lily. No evil compares to slavery, but if there were any group of individuals who would come close in their wretchedness to slavers, it would be smugglers. Their stock in trade is human flesh, and their hook is the human misery of those who are caught up in their predations. They objectify their customers, and are usually more than willing to cut and run, leaving their victims to their fates.
The second point is that smugglers are aided and abetted by well-meaning individuals in the United States. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick placed part of the blame for the Walmart incident on so-called "sanctuary cities", stating:
Sanctuary cities entice people to believe they can come to America and Texas and live outside the law. Sanctuary cities also enable human smugglers and cartels. Today, these people paid a terrible price and demonstrate why we need a secure border and legal immigration reform so we can control who enters our country. We continue to pray for the families and friends of the victims.
This may seem to be a cruel statement to some, but in my 25-years of immigration experience, it is 100 percent true. Such laws are likely enacted with the intent to "protect" those aliens who have already entered illegally, but they also send a signal to all who foreign nationals would come to the United States illegally that this country is not serious about its immigration laws, and that once an alien enters illegally, he or she will be "home free". It is not boastful to state as an American that we have a higher standard of living, better schools, and better healthcare than most of the world, and certainly those countries from which most illegal aliens come. These are strong inducements to take dangerous risks.
The same is true of other incentives provided to those aliens who have entered illegally. In-state tuition and driver's licenses for aliens here unlawfully send the same message. And, at the end of the day, for nine people in San Antonio, and 19 in Victoria, it is at the end of the day a cruel one.
There will always be immigration laws in the United States. Our institutions and social-welfare systems would collapse without them, crime would increase, and groups and nations that are adverse to our government and people would exploit open borders to harm us and our way of life.And, as long as we have immigration laws, there must be only one immigration policy, set by the federal government pursuant to the Constitution. States can't have a different policy, and cities can't either. Although the best argument for such a system is the rule of law, it is not the only one. Divergent policies create false hope, and encourage aliens to take the risk of placing their lives in the hands of the worst of criminals.
24 July 2017
As President Donald Trump boasted of “American pride and prestige” in a speech to sailors in Virginia on Saturday, an American nightmare was playing out in San Antonio, Texas.
Nine immigrants are dead and 19 are in critical condition after being locked in a sealed semitruck trailer for 24 hours. The trailer was parked in the sun in a Wal-Mart parking lot in 100-degree weather.
Shortly before 12:30 am Sunday morning, one of the trapped immigrants managed to break out of the trailer to ask a Wal-Mart worker for water. The worker brought water and called 911 for help.
Police and immigration officials arrived at the scene and detained the immigrants as they stumbled out of the trailer and into the parking lot. Once those still alive had been captured, police dragged out the bodies of the eight who died of heat stroke or dehydration, including two children. Another individual died at the hospital on Sunday.
As investigators studied the scene in the parking lot Sunday, the Wal-Mart store remained open .
It is difficult to imagine the hell the migrants experienced, gasping for air in the stifling heat as death encircled them. San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told the press that the survivors “were very hot to the touch.” Their heart rates were all above 130 beats per minute.
Amid reports that some of the migrants had fled the parking lot, police and immigration authorities launched a manhunt, searching the surrounding area for escaped immigrants to arrest and jail. A helicopter shone a searchlight in nearby woods and continued its search for hours as dawn broke.
Only the bodies of the dead will be allowed to stay in the United States, for burial. The survivors will be thrown into detention centers and promptly deported, most likely without the right to appear before a judge to plead their case.
Thomas Homan, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), delivered the following statement:
“The horrific crime uncovered last night ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished… These networks have repeatedly shown a reckless disregard for those they smuggle… The men and women of ICE are proud to stand alongside our law enforcement partners” to “protect the public and those who would fall victim to their dangerous practices that focus solely on their illicit profits.”
This statement will serve as a key exhibit in a future trial for crimes against humanity. Prosecutors will point out that, yes, what took place was a horrific crime. Furthermore, it is true that the criminals, driven by their drive for profit, display a reckless disregard for the lives of their victims.
However, it is not the “smuggling networks” that are primarily responsible for what took place in San Antonio. It is ICE, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and the bipartisan policies of the US government that are to blame. Like the recent Grenfell fire in London which killed dozens, the San Antonio tragedy is a case of social murder, for which the ruling class is guilty.
In the 1990s, under President Bill Clinton, Democrats and Republicans enacted programs like “Operation Gatekeeper” and “Operation Hold-the-Line,” the aim of which was to militarize urban crossing zones and force migrants to cross in the uninhabitable deserts.
In 2006, under the Bush administration, Congress passed the Secure Fences Act, which facilitated the construction of hundreds of miles of border barriers and further militarized the border. Those voting “yes” for this law included then-Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and Charles Schumer. In 2010, Obama signed legislation that deployed a fleet of drones to the border and 1,500 National Guard soldiers to block or arrest immigrants. Thousands have been killed attempting to cross as a result of these policies.
Donald Trump is living up to his pledge to “unshackle” ICE and CBP and has hired fascist and white supremacist advisors to key positions in the immigration agencies. The Trump administration has already arrested over 60,000 immigrants in the first six months of 2017, roughly 40 percent more than Obama, who was known among immigrants as the “deporter-in-chief.”
The tragedy in San Antonio has gone practically unnoticed by the political establishment. The Democratic Party response consisted of statements denouncing the smugglers, including the declaration of Joaquin Castro, U.S. Congressman from San Antonio, who said, “The smugglers responsible for the incident, who showed no regard for the lives of the people they were transporting, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The fact that so many migrants still embark on such dangerous journeys is a testament to the depth of the social crisis in Mexico and Central America. Devastated by a century of imperialist exploitation and military intervention, countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have never recovered from the imprint left by US-backed dictatorships and death squads.
Cartel Gun Battles, Blockades Reach a ‘Safe’ Mexico City
By Kenric Ward
ICE chief praises Trump, plans to send more agents to sanctuary cities
BY JOSH DELK - 07/18/17 05:00 PM EDT 2,221
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Thomas Homan on Tuesday said he plans to further crack down on undocumented immigrants by sending more resources and agents to sanctuary cities.
Homan told Washington Examiner on Tuesday that he plans to address "ludicrous" sanctuary cities.
"In the America I grew up in, cities didn't shield people who violated the law," Homan told the publication. “What I want to get is a clear understanding from everybody, from the congressmen to the politicians to law enforcement to those who enter the country illegally, that ICE is open for business."
"We’re going to enforce the laws on the books without apology, we’ll continue to prioritize what we do,” Homan continued. “But it’s not OK to violate the laws of this country anymore, you’re going to be held accountable.”
During his interview with the Examiner, Homan also praised the Trump administration, saying it has "taken the handcuffs off law enforcement," allowing them to address immigration more thoroughly.
"You can like President Trump, not like him, like his policies, not like his policies, but one thing no one can argue with is the effect they've had," said Homan.
According to Homan, illegal border crossings have decreased by 70 percent under Trump and arrests inside the country have increased by 40 percent.
The 30-year immigration agency veteran also said he has gotten a green light to hire 10,000 new immigration agents, who will work to arrest illegal criminals sheltered in sanctuary cities and elsewhere.
Sanctuary cities are jurisdictions with policies limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents and include cities such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Austin.
President Trump campaigned on cracking down on illegal immigration and stepping up border security.
SANCHEZ! FUCK YOUR "COMMUNITY"... GO BACK AN LOOT YOUR OWN DUMPSTER OF A COUNTRY!
“WE’RE GOING TO TAKE OVER ALL THE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS IN CALIFORNIA. IN FIVE YEARS THE HISPANICS ARE GOING TO BE THE MAJORITY POPULATION OF THIS STATE.... ANYONE THAT DOESN’T LIKE IT SHOULD LEAVE IT!” --- MARIO OBLEDO
President of Latino group: ‘La Raza’ name was 'a barrier to our mission'
President of Latino group: ‘La Raza’ name was 'a barrier to our mission'
BY RAFAEL BERNAL - 07/18/17 06:50 PM EDT 77
© Getty
Janet Murguía, the president and CEO of UnidosUS, said Tuesday that the Latino advocacy organization made a tough decision to better reflect its mission last week when it dropped “La Raza” from its name.
The influential Latino civil rights organization changed its name to UnidosUS from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) at its 49th annual conference.
Murguía told The Hill the decision was made after three-and-a-half years of research, interviews and surveys on the organization's image.
"We really wanted to make sure what we were hearing was reflective of most of our community," she said.
"We knew this step would be a big one and that not everybody would be fully supportive, but it’s hard to ignore the data and the changes that have occurred in our community," Murguía added.
The NCLR name had come under criticism from groups on the right, who pointed out that "la raza" means "the race” in Spanish, a reference that was interpreted by some as having racist undertones.
The organization got its original name in 1968 as the Southwest Council of La Raza, a reference to an academic concept put forth by Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos in the 1930s
Vasconcelos's original idea of "la raza" was meant to unite the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural peoples of Latin America as part of one post-colonial identity group.
But Murguía says that image no longer represents Latinos in the United States.
"We’re not the same Hispanic or Latino community we were in 1968," she said. "We are a younger community — six in ten [Latinos] are millennials or younger -- and we’re a more diverse Latino community."
Murguía said the old name "appeared to be outdated" and "to have no resonance with our community."
"More than anything, our name appeared to be a barrier to our mission," she said.
UnidosUS is the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, with interests in political advocacy and research on issues like tax reform, healthcare, housing and immigration.
Murguía said the organization and the Hispanic community as a whole have achieved real gains over time in many of those areas.
"Real progress is achievable, but it takes sustained engagement and it happens not in a moment, but over time," she said.
She pointed at issues like the Affordable Care Act, which extended insurance coverage to nearly four million Latinos who previously didn’t have health insurance, and the earned income tax credit as tangible wins for Hispanics.
But Murguía said that progress is under threat.
"There’s no question that the stakes are very high for our community right now and we’re dealing with a very challenging environment," she said.
The short-term priorities for Latinos, Murguía said, include protecting those policies and counteracting the Trump administration's immigration policies.
"We want to make sure we can block the funding for a mass deportation force that Trump has called for, we can block the funding for a wall that is a waste of precious resources that will accomplish very little," she said.
"Right right now there’s no question that 'Dreamers' appear to be in the crosshairs of the Trump administration," she added, referring to so-called “Dreamers,” recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The program, which protects from deportation nearly 750,000 people who were illegally brought to the United States as children, is facing legal challenges from Texas and nine other states.
The Trump administration has not yet said whether it will defend the program through the Justice Department.
"There’s a real risk because we’re seeing more and more that this decision making is not in the hands of the president, but also in the Attorney General [Jeff Sessions] and he’s been antagonistic to any efforts around immigration reform or any efforts to try to promote long term relief for Dreamers and others," she said.
Ultimately, Murguía said, the challenge for Hispanics will be to encourage greater political participation to reap the demographic rewards as the country's largest minority group.
Roughly one million Latinos turn 18 every year, and Hispanics are a key voting bloc in states like California, Texas and Florida. Still, voter participation has traditionally been low in the community.
"We have got to continue to build on the rolls of voters, continue to encourage anyone who’s eligible to continue to vote. Beyond that, we have to make sure there are efforts underway for those eligible to become citizens to naturalize," said Murguía.
Murguía said Latino voters, widely expected to "surge" in the 2016 election, did just that, only to be "outsurged by others."
More Latinos voted in 2016 than ever before, but participation rates remained somewhat stagnant. Still, with consistent participation rates and natural demographic growth, Latinos played an important role in states like Arizona and Colorado.
"The stakes are extremely high for our community. For those of us who maybe didn’t understand how bad things could get before the election, now we know. The truth is they could get worse," she said.
"We have to take what we’ve learned and now use our ability to participate, to mobilize, to vote, very seriously, and we need to come together as we do that," Murguía said.
70% OF ALL ILLEGALS WILL AT ONE TIME COLLECT WELFARE.... THEY ALREADY GET OUR JOBS!
Gov’t Food Stamp Program Discriminates Against US Citizens, Favors Illegals: It's been nearly six months since Donald Trump took office, and some families with illegal aliens get food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) while identical all-citizen families of the same size and with the same income do not receive them.
Gov’t Food Stamp Program Discriminates Against US Citizens, Favors Illegals
By David North | July 11, 2017 | 2:14 PM EDT
It's been nearly six months since Donald Trump took office, and some families with illegal aliens get food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) while identical all-citizen families of the same size and with the same income do not receive them.
This is not a question of treating illegal aliens like other residents of this country, it is clear-cut discrimination against citizens and in favor of illegals.
This long-standing (and peculiar) arrangement is the sort of thing that one would expect to be corrected by the third, if not the first, month of a new get-tough-on-illegal-immigration administration, such as that of the campaigning Donald Trump.
I checked with the Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service this week, the $110 billion-a-year agency that runs food stamps and some other nutrition programs.
Two questions were on my mind: 1) does the food stamp program still, under a particular set of circumstances, operate with this anti-citizen bias, and 2) has the Trump administration made an appointment of one or more outsiders to help run the agency?
The answer to the second question came quickly: No, but there is a civil servant running the program on an acting basis who was placed in that job by the White House. Does an agency have to have a budget of, say, $200 billion a year before the administration notices its existence?
It took a little longer to get the answer to the first question, because the nature of the discrimination is subtle and a lot of professionals in the welfare business do not want to make the distinction between legal and illegal residents of this country.
Here's how the system works: Illegal aliens are not allocated food stamps, but if the family is mixed, with some citizens and some illegals, the mixed family still gets some benefits. States are allowed, to some extent, to pick and choose among benefit-determination methods. Most states have chosen a technique that does not record some of the earnings of illegal aliens, while always recording all the income of citizens.
Let's look at the system as applied to two similar families who live in adjacent houses; both have incomes of $2,400 a month, both have the same assets, both families consist of a working male, his stay-at-home spouse, and their stay-at-home toddler. The only difference is that one of the men is a native-born citizen and the other is an illegal alien. Everyone else in the two households is a citizen.
OK, so far. Now let's walk through Alice's special mirror, and see how the government handles the situation. It sees the three-citizen family as three people and says that $2,400 a month is too high an income for food stamps. It looks at the other family and sees it as a two-member family, because the man is an illegal, and then — here's the key — the government decides that only two-thirds of the family income should be counted, and that $1,600 is not too high for a family of two, hence the family with the illegal alien in it gets food stamps and the other family does not.
There are bands of income in which this situation plays out with different sized families, giving benefits to some mixed families, and denying them to all-citizen families of the same size and with the same income. For more on these strange arrangements, see the CIS report "An Aid Program that Routinely Discriminates in Favor of Ineligible Aliens".
That's the way it was under Obama, and after I explained the (admittedly bizarre) matter to the Food and Nutrition Service publicist, she told me that it remains that way under Trump.
This story is symptomatic of two larger realities. Both the Obama and Trump administrations managed to conduct big immigration operations to their own liking; think of DACA with Obama, and, under Trump, the way that enforcement people were given the freedom to do their jobs.
But Obama was much more successful in the minutia of immigration policy than Trump; for years I wrote about this little move to admit a small class of migrants, or that little move that prevented another subclass from being deported. We are not seeing that, or maybe not yet, with the Trump administration. You can't change policy, at least at the retail level, without people to write and push the new policies.
So an unknown but substantial number of mixed (illegals plus citizens) families are getting food stamps when equally poor neighbors, who happen to be in all-citizen families, go hungry.
David North, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, has over 40 years of immigration policy experience.
Editor's Note: This piece was originally published by the Center for Immigration Studies.
ZOGY POLL ON MEX RACISM AND VIOLENCE….. Half the murders in CA are by Mex gangs, and 93% of murders in La Raza-Occupied Los Angeles are by Mexicans.
ZOGBY
“In Mexico, a recent Zogby poll declared that the vast majority of Mexican citizens hate Americans. [22.2] Mexico is a country saturated with racism, yet in denial, having never endured the social development of a Civil Rights movement like in the US--Blacks are harshly treated while foreign Whites are often seen as the enemy. [22.3] In fact, racism as workplace discrimination can be seen across the US anywhere the illegal alien Latino works--the vast majority of the workforce is usually strictly Latino, excluding Blacks, Whites, Asians, and others.”
SICK OF THE MEX FLAG WAVERS?
An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture. That's not an immigrant. That's a future Democrat voter. ----- RICHARD F. MINITER – AMERICAN THINKER COM
Cartel Gun Battles, Blockades Reach a ‘Safe’ Mexico City
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/07/22/cartel-gun-battles-and-blockades-reach-a-safe-mexico-city/
Gun battles and cartel blockades finally reached Mexico City after authorities killed a local crime boss and a team of his top gunmen in one of the areas roughest suburbs. The violence came days after top government officials claimed that Mexico City is safe and that no cartels operate in the country’s capital.
The violence began this week as Mexican marines moved into the Tlahuac suburb in an effort to arrest a group of street level drug dealers led by Felipe de Jesus “El Ojos” (Eyes) Luna. When the military arrived at the Zapotitlan neighborhood they were met with heavy gunfire by a team of gunmen carrying machine guns. During the firefight, the Mexican marines killed El Ojos and seven of his gunmen.
As part of their efforts to escape, dozens of motorcycle taxi drivers and bus drivers set up roadblocks and torched vehicles, tactics similar to those used by the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas in the border state of Tamaulipas. Breitbart Texas has reported extensively on how drug cartels hijack buses and park them across main avenues in an effort to slow down military convoys during cartel gun battles.
Mexican intelligence officials revealed to Breitbart Texas that the man known as Ojos is suspected of being behind the disappearance of approximately 80 victims from the region. Officials described the victims as young men who refused to work for the criminal organization.
Just one day after the fierce gun battle, Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera claimed the group led by Ojos was not a cartel but just a gang of street level drug dealers, Milenioreported. Mancera along with various other Mexican politicians have been publicly claiming that Mexico City is free of cartels and is considered safe.
The wild gun battle that led to El Ojos death came just days after Mexico City’s Attorney General Edmundo Porfirio Garrido Osorio claimed that the security levels in Mexico City are considered “acceptable” as he touted a decrease in crime statistics, Mexico’s El Universal reported.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tamaulipas “M.A. Navarro” and Breitbart Texas’ Ildefonso Ortiz.
AMERICA THE ADDICTED: 1 in 7 are addicted
CAUTION: GRAPHIC IMAGES!
MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORTS TO
U.S.: Heroin, Criminals, Anchor baby breeders for 18 years of gringo-paid welfare.
U.S.: Heroin, Criminals, Anchor baby breeders for 18 years of gringo-paid welfare.
AMERICA’S BLUDGEONED YOUTH: Homeless, Hopeless and Addicted…. Will they start the revolution?
"Public education as a whole came under brutal attack as part of the Obama administration’s effort to shift the burden of the financial crisis onto the backs of the working class."
AMERICA THE ADDICTED: 1 in 7 are addicted
CAUTION: GRAPHIC IMAGES!
MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORTS TO U.S.: Heroin, Criminals, Anchor baby breeders for 18 years of gringo-paid welfare.
Congress Wades Into Sanctuary Cities, Again
By Kenric Ward
ImmigrationReform.com, July 5, 2017
. . .
Washington’s latest foray against sanctuary cities raises the stakes by threatening to withhold federal funding from non-compliant cities and states. One analysis estimates that the sanctuary jurisdictions of New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle could lose a combined $4.448 billion under HR 3003.
But any fiscal hit presupposes: 1) the Senate will pass the House bill and, 2) the law survives inevitable court challenges. With judges blocking President Donald Trump’s earlier effort to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities, does HR 3003 provide enough legal ammunition? Though Congress has clear constitutional authority over appropriation of funds, such facts have not always deterred activist judges.
Unwilling to wait around, Texas enacted Senate Bill 4 to strip sanctuary cities of state law-enforcement funds and hold local officials liable for non-compliance. SB 4 does not recognize localities’ right to flout state law.
. . .
SICK OF THE MEX FLAG WAVERS?
An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture. That's not an immigrant. That's a future Democrat voter. ----- RICHARD F. MINITER – AMERICAN THINKER COM
REPORT: ICE Planning Raids Against Illegal Alien Teen Gang Members
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are planning a nationwide roundup of teenage gang members who entered the country illegally. Some of those being targeted include teens who entered as Unaccompanied Alien Children.
Calling the targeted enforcement action an expansion of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, Reuters reported the action targets teenagers between the ages of 16- and 17-years-old.
Reuters cites an internal memo obtained from an unnamed source at ICE. The news service claims the move is an expansion of the deportation policy previously established under the Obama Administration where teens were only arrested for deportation if they had been convicted of a crime. The new action targets teens allegedly tied to criminal gangs.
The memo lists criteria for determining gang affiliation, Reuters stated. To be designated as a gang member the person must meet two of the following:
- Having gang tattoos
- Frequenting notorious gang locations
- Wearing gang apparel
The targeted enforcement operation is scheduled to begin on Sunday, the memo states. While the agency does not officially comment on pending law enforcement actions, an unnamed official told Reuters the operation is still scheduled to begin Sunday but could be rescheduled.
Immigration lawyer David Leopold of Ulmer & Berne told Reuters they are concerned that innocent teens could be arrested during the operations.
“In many cases, children don’t freely decide to join a gang. They are threatened by older gang members and forced to get a gang tattoo if they live in a certain neighborhood,” he told the news service.
The memo states the operation will also target parents who crossed the border illegally with their children and who are the subject of an order of removal from an immigration judge, along with people who originally crossed the border illegally as children without their guardian and have since turned 18.
Enforcement and Removal Operations officers have been directed to identify people in their specific areas of operation who meet the above criteria.
President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made the targeting of criminal gang members a priority. In April, Breitbart Texas reported Sessions sent a warning to MS-13 gang members, saying, “We are targeting you.”
“The MS-13 motto is kill, rape, and control,” Sessions said during a speech at the U.S. Courthouse in Central Islip, New York. “I have a message to the gangs that are targeting our young people: We are targeting you. We are coming after you.”
In June, an FBI official testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and called MS-13 the most violent and most organized criminal gang in America.
“MS-13 is not the largest street gang in the United States; it is increasingly the most violent and well-organized,” FBI Assistant Director for New York told the representatives.
On June 10, Breitbart Texas reported that the numbers of unaccompanied minors (UACs) being apprehended at our southern border with Mexico, particularly from El Salvador, was once again on the rise. Although there had been a six-month downtrend, 8,005 UACs from El Salvador have been apprehended after crossing the border illegally since October 1, 2016. There were 1,493 apprehended in May alone — nearly a fifty percent increase from the previous month.
MS-13 members frequently recruit children who are illegal immigrants. The FBI assistant director from New York told members of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence that MS-13 members are “typically much younger than those connected to other street gangs.” They take “cues from the gang instead of relying on a productive family structure. Also, those emigrating from El Salvador to the United States are known to be exposed and desensitized to extreme violence at an early age.”
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.
An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture. That's not an immigrant. That's a future Democrat voter. ----- RICHARD F. MINITER – AMERICAN THINKER.com
July 19, 2017
Can we stop with the 'nation of immigrants' mantra?
I have a strong stomach, but if I hear one more Democrat justify the government's importation of Syrian, Roma, Somalian, Afghan, and Libyan peoples, and their grandmothers, by mindlessly chanting that we're a "nation of immigrants," I'll retch.
An immigrant is my great grandmother trotting off a sailing ship in a snowstorm in Lower Manhattan with nothing in her purse, surprised that she couldn't walk the miles to where her aunt had a job for her in Brooklyn and having to spend a day hungry and freezing until a priest paid her ten-cent ferry fare. An immigrant is the very successful Chinese woman I did some business with who came over in the nineties with her extended family. She was on public assistance "two weeks," she told me proudly, before they founded "two corporations" making things by hand for the aircraft aftermarket in their tiny apartment. An immigrant is the Jew jammed into a tenement on Lower East Side (then the most densely populated place on Earth) at the turn of the last century – a worker in the "needle trade" who lived cheek by jowl with the other workers in order to save the few dollars necessary to bring his family over. These are families who, once they arrived, all went to work themselves. An immigrant is the Palatine German clearing a farm in the Mohawk Valley in the 1700s and starving until he and his wife and children could bring a crop in. It's the Cuban who fled Communism and labored sixty hours a week in the building trades in order to pay his son's freight in law school.
An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture.
That's not an immigrant. That's a future Democrat voter.
The American immigrant was never a burden – which is why we raised the lamp beside the golden door for them. They made us all richer with what they gave, with how they gave of themselves in America. But transporting a class of people here who believe we owe them a good living has nothing to do with what made America great. That's doubly true when so many of these "immigrants" despise our most closely held beliefs and insist we acquiesce to certain ugly practices.
So stop already.
They're not immigrants.
Richard F. Miniter lives and writes in the colonial-era hamlet of Stone Ridge, New York and may be reached at miniterhome@gmail.com. The acclaimed author of The Things I Want Most, his most recent book, What Sort of Parents Should We Be?: A Man's Guide to Raising Exceptional Children, is now available here.
Tenth immigrant dies in Texas trailer atrocity
By Genevieve Leigh
25 July 2017
25 July 2017
The death toll continues to rise among the 39 immigrants who were discovered in the sweltering trailer of a semitruck early Sunday morning in San Antonio, Texas. Nine were already dead when the trailer was opened, having succumbed to intense heat and lack of oxygen after being locked in the trailer for some 24 hours. Some survivors fled when the trailer, parked in a Walmart lot, was opened.
Federal authorities announced Monday morning that one of 20 survivors taken to the hospital in critical condition had died, bringing the number of fatalities to 10. They warned that others suffering from extreme heat stroke and dehydration might succumb.
New reports based on interviews with the immigrants in custody estimate that as many as 180 people may have been crammed into the sealed trailer as it made its way through Texas in a large-scale smuggling operation. One unidentified immigrant explained that people took turns gasping for air through a hole in the trailer’s side. Many passed out from the heat. Others shouted and banged on the walls to get the driver to stop.
After one immigrant entered the Walmart looking for water, a worker at the store called the police. Everyone inside the trailer had a heart rate of more than 130 beats per minute when the doors were opened. Their skin was hot to the touch.
At least 17 victims remain in critical condition as of this writing, with one source reporting that some may have irreversible brain damage from the high temperatures. The identities and nationalities of the passengers have not been confirmed but at least a portion are known to be citizens of Mexico and Guatemala, according to officials in those countries.
Jesus Romero, who directs the immigration service project ISAAC down the street from the Walmart, told the World Socialist Web Site that the incident was “a tragedy of colossal proportions.” Romero added, “There were actually women and children in this truck, and some of them died. And their only sin is to have broken our immigration laws in order to come to work. It is so horrendous that these things have to happen to people who mean us no harm and contribute so much to our society.”
Media coverage has focused on the truck driver, who has been arrested and faces charges that could bring life imprisonment or even the death penalty. This is a heinous crime. Yet the media is saying nothing about the government officials, business interests and politicians who bear the overriding responsibility for these deaths and the thousands more caused by their witch-hunting, persecution and exploitation of immigrant workers and youth.
Guilt begins with the Trump White House, Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly, those who run the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the border police, and their accomplices in both parties who have over the past several decades enacted a series of laws, under Democratic as well as Republican presidents, militarizing the border and imposing ever more vicious attacks on undocumented workers.
The criminalization of impoverished workers fleeing countries in Central and Latin America devastated by the depredations of US imperialism for more than a century has been carried out under increasingly onerous and antidemocratic laws backed and signed by presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, paving the way for Trump’s program of mass arrests and deportations.
The surviving victims of the San Antonio death trailer will be thrown into detention centers and promptly deported, most likely without being given an opportunity to plead their cases before a judge.
The 60-year-old Florida man who was driving the truck, James Matthew Bradley Jr., has been charged with knowingly transporting illegal aliens. He denies knowing that anyone was locked in the trailer.
Ruben Garcia, who runs the immigration service Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, told the WSWS: “It’s interesting as I listened to the news reports and I heard the various law enforcement officers, they want to single out the smugglers for this horrific act. But there isn’t a word, not a single word, about what pushes people to take these kinds of risks.”
Garcia added, “They have launched their investigations and they have arrested the driver and it will make it seem how righteous that we are going to go after these ‘bad people.’ And no one will ever say what it is about the policies that push people to have to work this way.”
Garcia has worked with immigrants for over forty years. He explained that nearly every immigrant who passes through his organization has been brought to the US by smugglers. The dangers posed by the drug cartels and the horrendous conditions that exist in countries such as Mexico compel immigrants to pay exorbitant amounts of money to be smuggled through in groups.
Garcia concluded, “This tragedy in San Antonio serves as a symbol of the present environment. If our system is incapable of acknowledging that these are the kinds of realities that drive people out of their country, if enforcement is the only solution offered, where we say, ‘They don’t belong here, kick them out, lock them up,’ then they are going to turn to the smugglers and you are going to have the San Antonio situation again and again.”
The deaths of the immigrants in San Antonio are a crime against the entire international working class, for which the American ruling class is directly responsible. Decades of imperialist aggression and plundering throughout the world, spearheaded by the United States, from the destruction of entire societies such as Iraq and Syria, to the 2009 ousting of the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, has left 66 million people displaced worldwide, the highest number ever recorded.
The same politicians who organize imperialist violence against the international working class carry out brutal policies of austerity and repression against the workers at home. The tools of oppression forged in the attack on immigrants are being used against the working class as a whole. The massive surveillance apparatus, ostensibly erected for “national security,” is illegally spying on the entire country, native-born and immigrant alike. The same police forces, armed to the teeth with military equipment supplied by the Pentagon, that are being empowered under Trump and Kelly to help round up and detain immigrants, brutalize and kill US citizens every day with impunity.
All of the problems exposed by the tragic deaths in San Antonio are produced by the capitalist system. In an age where money, commodities and the elites move with ease across national boundaries, there remain millions who are forced to risk their lives entering countries without documents, while thousands of armed men hunt them down.
The Socialist Equality Party stands for the unconditional right of workers of every country to live and work in whichever country they choose. We call for full democratic and citizenship rights for all immigrants, including the 12 million or more in the US now classified as “illegal.”
We call on workers of all nationalities to unite in defense of immigrants all over the world. This fight is an inseparable part of the defense of the rights and social interests of all workers and the struggle against the growth of militarism and war. It requires a common struggle against the capitalist system and all those parties and political forces that defend it.
GRAPHIC: Raped 12-Year-Old Girl Found Dead near Texas Border
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Coahuila — A week-long manhunt led authorities to arrest a man wanted for kidnapping, raping, murdering, and disposing the body of a 12-year-old girl in this border city.
The case began two weeks ago in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, when the parents of 12-year-old Yuliana Rubi Hernandez Barrera reported her missing. Mexican authorities issued an alert and searched for the girl for five days until authorities found her decomposing body in an open field. An autopsy carried out by Coahuila investigators revealed that the victim had been sexually assaulted prior to the murder.
During the investigation into the murder, Coahuila authorities were able to identify 24-year-old Cesar Manuel “El Yukero” Alegria Sanchez as a prime suspect. According to information from the preliminary investigation, Alegria stalked the victim and then began making contact by trying to befriend her. During the investigation, authorities were able to locate Alegria in the Mexican coastal state of Veracruz and arranged for him to be taken to Piedras Negras, where he is currently being held for a trial.
Piedras Negras is immediately south of Eagle Pass, Texas, and has a long history of drug and human trafficking use by Los Zetas cartel members. Over time, the city has seen an extremely high number of disappearances linked to the organization that kidnapped hundreds of victims, only to later murder them and incinerate the bodies, Breitbart Texas reported.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Coahuila’s “J.M. Martinez”.