THE GREATEST THREAT AMERICA HAS EVER FACED IS THE DEMOCRAT PARTY! I can no longer remain in today’s Dem Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith, demonize the police, and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders. TULSI GABBARD
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
TIME TO END THE SQUANDERING OF AMERICA? CALLS TO END UNAUTHORIZED WARS.... AND PROTECT AMERICAN BORDERS AGAINST NARCOMEX
American Conservative Conference Calls for Restraint in U.S. Foreign Policy, End to Unauthorized Wars
The following post is sponsored by The Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy (CRFP).
Lawmakers and foreign policy experts gathered in Washington, DC, on Thursday for a day-long conference to discuss the need for a more restrained American foreign policy.
The conference, which took place in the Hart Senate Capitol Building, featured Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as the keynote speaker, and panels discussing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and East Asia, defense spending, and military readiness. It was hosted by The American Conservative magazine.
Watch Rand Paul’s Keynote Address:
“I’m convinced that there is a majority of American people who believe as I do and as many of you do that we’ve been at war too long, and in too many places. I think there is a possibility for changing things, and I will continue to agitate for that,” Paul said during his remarks.
The American Conservative Editor Jim Antle began the conference by noting that two consecutive presidents — Trump and former President Barack Obama — had questioned U.S. foreign policy post-9/11. Yet, he said, the same wars are still ongoing. He called for Congress to regain and reassert their constitutional powers over matters of war and peace. “Will they rein in the executive branch in this area as the constitution requires it?” he asked.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Ken Buck (R-CO), who spoke on a bipartisan panel, called for more members of Congress to take back control over declaring war, particularly in Yemen. The U.S. has since 2015 supported a Saudi-led coalition fighting against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Watch Congressman Khanna and Buck:
“I don’t think our founders would have imagined the extent we have abdicated our influence on foreign policy,” Khanna said.
He slammed administrations going back to former President George W. Bush, calling foreign interventions “one blunder after another.” He said when presidents have campaigned on a message of peace, Americans “seem to like the message. … But presidents don’t make the changes they promise when they campaign.”
Buck said his fellow Republicans failed to take tough votes on authorizing wars, out of concern of keeping their majority. “I have more faith that the Democrats will raise this issue in the Congress and force this debate,” he said. Khanna said Democrats have also been unwilling to raise the issue out of concern over looking weak on foreign policy.
Buck called on the American people to force Congress to make tough decisions, saying, “I have no faith that Congress will move in a direction that puts members at risk until the Americans forces us to.”
Defense experts, who also served in the military, discussed how much foreign policy has been militarized today, and how that has affected troops.
Gil Barndollar, director of Middle East Studies at the Center for the National Interest and a Marine veteran, criticized putting young U.S. troops in foreign countries expecting them to engage in nation building.
“They’re out there in the front lines, they are not trained, selected or prepared to be ambassadors of America,” he said. “If you ask them to be ambassadors, one, that’s not going to happen. If you try to make it work, you’re going to compromise the lethality of the force.”
Watch the panel Veterans and the Forever War: Recent Vets on Military Reform and U.S. Foreign Policy:
Dan Grazier, the Jack Shanahan military fellow at the Project for Oversight of Government and a Marine veteran, argued that the U.S. military is being used to fight wars that have no military solution. “There is no military solution for a political problem in Afghanistan. Definitely not one in Syria, Yemen,” he said. “We have absolutely proven that.”
Jeff Groom, author of American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show and a Marine veteran, discussed how continuous wars combined with the desire to maintain an oversized military has hurt the nation’s ability to fight and deter adversaries.
He said flying military aircraft past their service life and outside of their intended purposes has contributed to aviation mishaps, and last year, more troops dying in aviation mishaps than war. He said the concept that the military had to be large enough to fight two wars simultaneously was to justify military largesse after the Cold War, and as a result, the U.S. has a hollow military where a fraction of its units are combat ready and a sizable portion of the budget is going to personnel costs.
“We just don’t have enough bread to feed all the mouths,” he said. “Something has to give.”
Former National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton, who is now a lecturer at Hillsdale College, said President Trump would rather be the president known for solving the North Korea problem rather than the “guy who turned places into glass or parking lots.”
He said other than the two strikes in Syria after the regime’s use of chemical weapons, Trump has gone against interventionist ideas. He said the establishment “really, really wanted to get boots on the ground in the Syria civil war. He resisted all along.”
Watch the panel Trump Politics and Foreign Policy Realism: A Media View:
However, Antle noted that Trump’s anti-war instincts “have not yet broken with the foreign policy status quo” in Washington.
Experts also slammed the U.S.’s foreign policy in the Middle East. Joshua Landis, author of Syria Comment and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said the U.S. is trying to make Syria under the Assad regime and Iran so poor that they collapse.
“Beggar your enemies to the point where they collapse” is the abandonment of the “most American principles,” Landis said, that ultimately people will buy into the values of the U.S. He said this policy would condemn the region to poverty, which would only increase terrorism over the long run. Furthermore, he said, squeezing Iran would lead to more dependence on Russia and China, and less dependence on Europe.
Watch the panel Middle East (In)stability: Telling the Difference Between Friends and Enemies:
Abbas Kadhim, non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at John Hopkins University, said there is no Iraq policy. The Iraq policy is really the Iran policy, he said.
Paul Pillar, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and a contributing editor to The National Interest, called American foreign policy in the Middle East too black-and-white.
“It’s unfortunate that we have this uber Manichean approach…all the good guys are on one side of the line, the bad guys are on the other side of the line,” he said.
On East Asia, experts argued for a realistic, non-militaristic approach to North Korea.
Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, argued that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons. “If you have a more realistic approach, there’s a lot of things we can do.”
Kazianis said one problem with foreign policy is that there is a bias towards action. “Action is praised,” he said. “Doing something is praised … . Everything’s about doing something, pushing back.”
He said there needed to be a way to “operationalize” the idea of restraint. “Make them as sexy as action, because action is what everyone respects.”
Watch the panel The Future of Asian Power Politics: Is Trump Gaining or Losing Ground for the U.S.?
The Committee for Responsible Foreign Policy is a 501(c)(4) organization with the mission of pursuing a more restrained foreign policy that adheres to the Constitution. The organization aims to increase awareness of Congress’ Article I responsibility to oversee war. For more information on CRFP, please visit http://responsibleforeignpolicy.org.
MEXICO VOWS A NEW INVASION HAS BEGUN, FINANCED BY U.S.
THE NEXT MEXICAN INVASION IS AT HAND:
"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."
"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed granting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."
"Many Americans forget is that our country is located against a socialist failed state that is promising to descend even further into chaos – not California, the other one. And the Mexicans, having reached the bottom of the hole they have dug for themselves, just chose to keep digging by electing a new leftist presidente who wants to surrender to the cartels and who thinks that Mexicans have some sort of “human right” to sneak into the U.S. and demographically reconquer it." KURT SCHLICHTER
Billionaire Mexicans tell their poor to JUMP U.S. OPEN BORDERS and LOOT THE STUPID GRINGO… and loot they do!
Billions of dollars are sucked out of America from Mexico’s looting!
1) Mexico ended legal immigration 100 years ago, except for Spanish blood.
2) Mexico is the 17th richest nation but pays the 220th lowest minimum wage to force their subjects to invade the USA. The expands territory for Mexicans, spreads the Spanish language, and culture and genotypes, while earning 17% of Mexico's gross GDP as Foreign Remittance Income.
Donald Trump Hits a Congressional Wall on Border Wall Funding
GOP senators are nudging President Donald Trump to give up hopes for a $5 billion down-payment on a border wall in 2019.
Bipartisan panel: US must prepare for “horrendous,” “devastating” war with Russia and China
A bipartisan commission appointed by Congress issued a lengthy report Tuesday backing the Pentagon’s plans to prepare for a “great-power” war against Russia, China, or both, making clear that the Trump administration’s belligerent policies are shared by the Democratic Party.
Safe in the knowledge that its findings will never be seriously reported by the mass media, the authors of this report do not mince words about what such a war will mean. A war between the United States and China, which according to the report might break out within four years, will be “horrendous” and “devastating.” The military will “face greater losses than at any time in decades.” Such a war could lead to “rapid nuclear escalation,” and American civilians will be attacked and likely killed.
U.S. B-52 Stratofortress aircraft [Credit: US Air National Guard]
It is impossible to understand anything in American politics without recognizing one fundamental reality: the events and scandals that dominate political discourse, which make it onto the evening news and into headlines on news sites and social media feeds, have precious little to do with the considerations of those who actually make decisions. The media talking heads play their assigned roles, knowing that the most important topics can be discussed only within very circumscribed limits.
Those who actually make policy—a select group of high-ranking members of Congress, Pentagon officials, and think-tank staffers, as well as White House aides—speak an entirely different language among themselves, and in publications they know the general public will not read, and the media will not seriously report.
These people all accept as plain, self-evident fact, statements that, if they ever made the evening news, would be dismissed as “conspiracy theories.”
The latest example of such plain speaking comes in the form of a new report published by the National Defense Strategy Commission, a body set up by Congress to assess the Pentagon’s new National Security Strategy, issued early this year, which declared that “great-power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus” of the US military.
The findings of the panel, pubblished as a report titled “Providing for the Common Defense,” can be summarized as follows: The US military is entirely correct to prepare for war with Russia and China. But the Pentagon, which spends more each year than the next eight largest national military forces combined, requires a massive expansion in military spending, to be paid for with cuts to bedrock social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
The report is, in other words, a congressional rubber-stamp on the Trump administration’s military build-up, putting into words what the Congress did in deeds this year when it passed, with overwhelming bipartisan support, the largest military budget increase since the Cold War.
But beyond the recognition that the United States should prepare for an imminent, “whole-of-society” war with “devastating” impacts on the American population, the document is a stark warning of another basic reality: The United States could very well lose such a war, which requires, in effect, the military conquest of the entire planet by a country with less than five percent of the world’s population.
The United States “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia,” it declares. These wars would not just be fought overseas, but would likely target the American population: “it would be unwise and irresponsible not to expect adversaries to attempt debilitating kinetic, cyber, or other types of attacks against Americans at home while they seek to defeat our military abroad.”
It adds, “Should war occur, American forces will face harder fights and greater losses than at any time in decades. It is worth recalling that during the Falklands War, a decidedly inferior opponent—Argentina—crippled and sank a major British warship by striking it with a single guided missile. The amount of destruction a major state adversary could inflict on U.S. forces today might be orders of magnitude higher.”
To drive the point home, the report outlines a number of scenarios. The first involves Taiwan declaring independence from China in 2022, prompting Chinese retaliation. “The Pentagon informs the President that America could probably defeat China in a long war, if the full might of the nation was mobilized. Yet it would lose huge numbers of ships and aircraft, as well as thousands of lives, in the effort, in addition to suffering severe economic disruptions—all with no guarantee of having decisive impact before Taiwan was overrun ... But avoiding that outcome would now require absorbing horrendous losses.”
The solution, the report concludes, is a much bigger army, funded by consistent, multi-year increases in spending. “There is a need for extraordinary urgency in addressing the crisis of national defense,” it writes.
The army needs “More armor, long-range fires, engineering, and air-defense units.” The Air Force needs “more stealthy long-range fighters and bombers, tankers, lift capacity, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms.” The nuclear forces need more missiles. And so on and so forth.
To pay for all this, social services are to be gutted. “Mandatory entitlement programs drive spending growth,” the report complains, demanding that Congress address these programs, which include Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It warns that “such adjustments will undoubtedly be quite painful.”
And finally, all of society must be mobilized behind the war effort. A “whole-of-nation” approach must be adopted, including “trade policy; science, technology, engineering, and math education.” Everything from private corporations to academic institutions must be brought to bear.
In listing the various challenges to the United States fighting and winning a war against Russia or China, none of the distinguished members of the committee arrived at the seemingly obvious conclusion: that maybe the United States should not fight such a war.
But in this they represent the overwhelming consensus within American policy circles. In his last days, Adolf Hitler was reported to have declared over and over again that if the German nation could not win the Second World War, it did not deserve to exist. The American ruling class is entirely committed to a course of action that threatens the obliteration of not only much of the world’s people, but of the American population itself.
This is not the madness of individuals, but the insanity of a social class that represents an outlived and bankrupt social order, capitalism, and an equally outlived political framework, the nation-state system. And it can only be opposed by another social force: the world working class, whose social interests are international and progressive, and whose very existence depends on opposing the megalomaniacal war aims of American capitalism.
Border Patrol Catches 654 Illegal Aliens Who Entered Through 'Outdated Border Wall Infrastructure'
(CNSNews.com) -- On Nov. 12 and 13, U.S. Border Patrol agents captured 654 illegal aliens in Yuma, Arizona who had illegally entered the United States through "outdated border wall infrastructure," reported U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Wednesday.
The illegals were mostly Guatemalan nationals, family units and unaccompanied juveniles. They are not believed to be part of the large caravan of people heading for the border, said the CBP.
(Getty Images.)
"The groups illegally entered on both sides of the San Luis Port of Entry where there is outdated border wall infrastructure," reported the agency. "Larger numbers have started to illegally cross shallow portions of the Colorado River near Yuma."
In addition, "a group of 55 Central Americans waded across the [Colorado] river near County 9th Street and surrendered to agents after walking around vehicle barriers," said the CBP. "The area lacks infrastructure that would deter pedestrian entries."
The agency reported that year-to-date apprehensions in the Yuma Sector "are up over 150% compared to this date in Fiscal Year 2018." Also, total FY 2018 numbers were "more than double total" FY 2017 numbers.
(Getty Images.)
Are we looking at some real DHS incompetence at the Tijuana line?
Up until about now, I've been against the idea of firing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. She's said the right things and any hampering of her duties seems to have been largely been the work of leftwing lawyers and mob protestors.
I'm not so sure of that anymore.
The news has been out for days, that the caravan migrants making their way up from Mexico would be entering the U.S. illegally through Tijuana. Not just any place from Tijuana, but a very specific place, Playas de Tijuana, where the land touches water so it's exceptionally easy to pinpoint on the vast 1,954-mile stretch of the U.S. Mexico border. It's where the organizers of the caravan, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, have a known base of operations. They used it for the April operation and now they are using it for the current one. You can read all about it in the San Diego Union-Tribune's report three days ago, describing how Tijuana was "bracing" for the caravan, and where outraged Tijuana locals are rather unhappyabout the caravan setting up camp in their upscale neighborhood again.
It was right at that point that the caravaners put on a show, climbing the U.S. border fence as U.S. Border Patrol agents watched, waving their arms, yelling victory. And at least one jumped over before jumping back, consequence-free, having his fun as the U.S. agents stood by. We all know who won in that one.
Here is the entire Fox News-San Diego Union-Tribune video.
What they did, for them, was Mission Accomplished. They were able to demonstrate that the U.S. is a paper tiger as far as the border goes, and there is no reason to fear jumping the border illegally. The border in fact, remains a joke and the U.S. in fact is powerless. That was the purpose of the show. They demonstrated for the TV cameras that they can jump the border any time they like and there's not a thing the U.S. can do to stop it.
Which is what we saw.
Two big pieces of incompetence stand out for me: Where was the much-reported razor wire the U.S. military was supposedly installing? I watched television programs and looked at news photos and I could not find any. The Department of Homeland Security had days of intelligence, printed right there in the newspapers and news broadcasts, that the caravaners were headed to Playas de Tijuana, which would be the most logical place to string the wire.
Yet they didn't string the wire. Oh, there was some belated stringing of wire, done by neither the military nor the DHS, but the news videos said it was done by contractors. And it was done late, reactively, after the first news accounts of the border spectacle made the news. No strategic estimates there about exactly where such wire would be needed, apparently it might've just been strung up in Arizona, where Gen. Mattis and DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made a show of visiting troops a couple days earlier. Talk about being caught flatfooted.
Here's another thing: The Department of Homeland Security's website doesn't seem to think the caravan's arrival is a big event, either. Their last notation about it, posted two weeks ago, posts 'myth and fact' about the caravan. That's a little old. Their Operation Faithful Patriot link goes to what it calls 'b-roll' which is background news, not 'a-roll' headline news. The border security link features a big item on security at the U.S.-Canadian border. This doesn't sound like they consider this whole matter any big thing.
As for the concertina or razor wire that was belatedly strung, look at how bad it is - this is a DHS screengrab: It goes right to the beach water level and stops right there. Afte that, no concertina wire and just a low level fence. If you were a caravan illegal trying to get through to San Diego, a fit young man of military age who had just swam a border river on Mexico's south, and walked and hitched truck rides thousands of miles from Honduras, would that fence be much of a physical problem for you? The only thing you'd do is walk over to the beach side with your feet in an inch or two of beach water and jump over to the U.S. from that point because it's a no-brainer. You'd land in the soft sand and get your feet wet which would be a heckuva easy thing given the border fence you busted through, the bridges you jumped down and the rivers you swam back in Mexico.
I just don't see any seriousness from the U.S. about this, despite the big press buildup about troops to the border and increased security as the caravaners announce their intention to break in in mass numbers. Apparently, it doesn't bother anyone, other than President Trump, that the migrants are making a big show of U.S. incompetence.
Now let's go to the border visit, which got a big buildup in the press, what with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visiting the troops. The press accounts that ran in San Diego never quite mentioned where this visit was, but if you listen closely to one of the longer videos, the soldier explains to Mattis that the border reinforcement at Nogales in Arizona was the priority, even as he seems to know that the illegals may "punch through" to Tijuana. From this video, I simply don't understand how with that knowledge the two U.S. agencies had, they didn't put two and two together and reinforce the Tijuana end.
Mattis almost beclowns himself by making a reference in this video here about all of these ineffective border actions being 'environmentally' correct, focusing on that instead of whether the entire operation was effective, which doesn't speak well for a general who up until now has been known as "mad dog" for his focus on results. He seems more interested in process than results. As for Nielsen, there she is, in a big huge black coat with an old lady pin attached and aviator glasses, looking for all the world like Teresa May, and just as ineffective, largely saying nothing, passive and afraid to engage because it didn't seem to be her show. She looks grim most of the time and then manically laughs at one point.
All I can say is I'm unimpressed. I'm totally open to other explanations as to what went on in that border visit, perhaps they were reinforcing Arizona because the cartels were looking to take advantage of the migrant attention in Tijuana as a good opportunity to move their "loads" without lawmen attention, but if so, someone should have said something. This looks like incompetence and the migrants are flashing the victory sign because they have changed the terms of battle to the propaganda front, they have gotten the camera attention and the message they wanted out and the U.S. is incapable of stopping them.
That concertina wire should have been up.
I think it's time for Nielsen and maybe Mattis to go.
Video: Advance Wave of Migrant Caravan Reaches US Border, Several Scale Border Fence
Several hundred members of the lead migrant caravan have reached Tijuana, Mexico, and some scaled the fence on Nov. 13, crossing illegally into the United States before running back, according to Ralph DeSio, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
DeSio said the individuals ran back “without needing any intervention” from Border Patrol agents.
The incident occurred at the Mexican park adjacent to Border Field State Park on the U.S. side of the border, which is a popular site for gatherings and protests, DeSio said.
CBP has deployed additional resources to ensure the continued security of the border, and safety for everyone in the area,” he said. “Agents remain alert.”
DeSio said CBP is monitoring the movement of caravan members in Mexico.
“At this time, we believe that at least some of those individuals currently gathered in this area are from the caravan,” he said.
An estimated 5,000 migrants are in the lead caravan currently heading to the U.S. border, according to the San Diego-based open border group, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which is assisting the migrants.
Central American migrants heading for the United States wait for buses at La Concha phytosanitary station in the State of Sinaloa, Mexico, on Nov. 13, 2018. (ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images)
The caravan has been meeting some hurdles along the way, with some cities requesting they leave. The caravan arrived at the city of Guadalajara late Nov. 12, but were asked to move on early on Nov. 13 and were provided transport out of the city. However, Pueblo Sin Fronteras said in a Facebook message, the buses dropped the group off around 90 km (56 miles) from their next pick-up point.
“We call on the governments of the states of Jalisco, Nayarit, and Sinaloa and the civil society to solve this serious problem in order not to leave drift and insecurity to vulnerable families who trusted the word of the state of Jalisco,” the group wrote on Facebook.
CBP has warned travelers that wait times along the southwest border will likely increase “indefinitely” as the caravans reach the border.
“The deployment of our officers to support migrant processing and border security efforts in Arizona and California will have an impact on CBP’s trade and travel facilitation locally,” El Paso director of field operations Hector Mancha said in a statement.
“Cross-border travelers should expect lanes to be closed and anticipate processing times to increase. We suggest reducing or consolidating your cross-border trips, and if you must cross the border, build extra time into your schedule to accommodate these expected delays.”
On Nov. 12, several northbound vehicle lanes at San Ysidro and one lane at Otay Mesa were closed so the U.S. military could install razor wire and other measures to harden the entry point in preparation for the migrant caravan.
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — The first members of a caravan of Central Americans to reach the U.S. border slept in overcrowded shelters and in tents with a view of armed U.S. Border Patrol agents, with many saying they will wait for other migrants to join them before making their next moves.
Hundreds of migrants have arrived by bus in Tijuana since Tuesday, occupying the little space still available in the city's shelters and spilling onto an oceanfront plaza sandwiched between an old bullring and a border fence topped with recently installed concertina wire.
Some men climbed up on the fence to take a look at the other side Wednesday. Women and young children sleeping in tents on the plaza could see Border Patrol agents carrying machine guns in camouflage gear with San Diego's skyline in the distance.
The Juventud 2000 shelter squeezed in 15 women and their children, bringing occupancy to nearly 200, or double its regular capacity. Others were turned away. Several dozen migrants, mostly single men, spent the night at a beach that is cut by the towering border wall of metal bars
The first arrivals generally received a warm welcome despite Tijuana's shelter system to house migrants being at capacity. Migrants lined up for food while doctors checked those fighting colds and other ailments.
Some migrants said they would seek asylum at a U.S. border crossing, while others said they might attempt to elude U.S. authorities by crossing illegally or perhaps settle in Tijuana. But all of about a dozen people interviewed Wednesday said they would first wait for others from the migrant caravan to arrive and gather more information.
"We have to see what we're offered, just so they don't send us back to our country," said Jairon Sorto, a 22-year-old Honduran who arrived by bus Wednesday.
Sorto said he would consider staying in Tijuana if he could get asylum from Mexico. He said he refused to consider Mexico's offer of asylum in the southern part of the country because it was too close to Honduras and he felt unsafe from his country's gangs.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, meanwhile, visited U.S. troops posted at the border in Texas and said the deployment of military personnel ordered by President Donald Trump provides good training for war, despite criticism that the effort is a waste of taxpayer money and a political stunt. Most of the troops are in Texas, more than 1,500 miles from where the caravan is arriving.
On Wednesday, there was no evidence of caravan members at Tijuana's main border crossing to San Diego, where asylum seekers gather every morning. The San Ysidro port of entry, the busiest crossing on the U.S.-Mexico border, processes only about 100 asylum claims a day, resulting in waits of five weeks even before migrants in the caravan began to arrive.
The first wave of migrants in the caravan, which became a central theme of the recent U.S. election, began arriving in Tijuana in recent days, and their numbers have grown each day. The bulk of the main caravan appeared to still be about 1,100 miles (1,800 kilometers) from the border, but has recently been moving hundreds of miles a day by hitching rides on trucks and buses.
Mexico has offered refuge, asylum and work visas to the migrants, and its government said Monday that 2,697 temporary visas had been issued to individuals and families to cover them during the 45-day application process for more permanent status. Some 533 migrants had requested a voluntary return to their countries, the government said.
The Central Americans in the caravan are the latest migrants to arrive in Tijuana with the hope of crossing into the United States. Tijuana shelters in 2016 housed Haitians who came by the thousands after making their way from Brazil with plans to get to the U.S. Since then, several thousand Haitians have remained in Tijuana, finding work. Some have married local residents and enrolled in local universities.
Claudia Coello, a 43-year-old Honduran, said she was exhausted after four days of hitchhiking and bus rides from Mexico City with her two sons, two daughters-in-law and 1-year-old grandson. As she watched her daughter-in-law and grandson lying inside a donated tent, she said she would wait for caravan leaders to explain her options.
A few people pitched tents at the Tijuana beach plaza while most, like Henry Salinas, 30, of Honduras, planned to sleep there in the open. Saying he intended to wait for thousands more in the caravan to arrive, Salinas said he hoped to jump the border fence in a large group at the same time, overwhelming Border Patrol agents.
"It's going to be all against one, one against all. All of Central America against one, and one against Central America. ... All against Trump, and Trump against all," he said.
On Wednesday, buses and trucks carried some migrants into the state of Sinaloa along the Gulf of California and farther northward into the border state of Sonora. The Rev. Miguel Angel Soto, director of the Casa de Migrante in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan, said about 2,000 migrants had arrived in that area.
Small groups were also reported in the northern cities of Saltillo and Monterrey, in the region near Texas.
About 1,300 migrants in a second caravan were resting at a Mexico City stadium where the first group stayed several days last week. By early Wednesday, an additional 1,100 migrants from a third and last caravan also arrived at the stadium.
Like most of those in the third caravan, migrant Javier Pineda is from El Salvador, and hopes to reach the United States. Referring to the first group nearing the end of the journey, Pineda said, "if they could do it, there is no reason why we can't."
___
Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat reported in Tijuana, Mexico, and AP writer Maria Verza reported from Escuinapa, Mexico.
U.S. B-52 Stratofortress aircraft [Credit: US Air National Guard]
Image credit: Fox News / San Diego Union-Tribune video screengrab
Here is the entire Fox News-San Diego Union-Tribune video.
What they did, for them, was Mission Accomplished. They were able to demonstrate that the U.S. is a paper tiger as far as the border goes, and there is no reason to fear jumping the border illegally. The border in fact, remains a joke and the U.S. in fact is powerless. That was the purpose of the show. They demonstrated for the TV cameras that they can jump the border any time they like and there's not a thing the U.S. can do to stop it.
Which is what we saw.
Two big pieces of incompetence stand out for me: Where was the much-reported razor wire the U.S. military was supposedly installing? I watched television programs and looked at news photos and I could not find any. The Department of Homeland Security had days of intelligence, printed right there in the newspapers and news broadcasts, that the caravaners were headed to Playas de Tijuana, which would be the most logical place to string the wire.
Yet they didn't string the wire. Oh, there was some belated stringing of wire, done by neither the military nor the DHS, but the news videos said it was done by contractors. And it was done late, reactively, after the first news accounts of the border spectacle made the news. No strategic estimates there about exactly where such wire would be needed, apparently it might've just been strung up in Arizona, where Gen. Mattis and DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made a show of visiting troops a couple days earlier. Talk about being caught flatfooted.
Here's another thing: The Department of Homeland Security's website doesn't seem to think the caravan's arrival is a big event, either. Their last notation about it, posted two weeks ago, posts 'myth and fact' about the caravan. That's a little old. Their Operation Faithful Patriot link goes to what it calls 'b-roll' which is background news, not 'a-roll' headline news. The border security link features a big item on security at the U.S.-Canadian border. This doesn't sound like they consider this whole matter any big thing.
As for the concertina or razor wire that was belatedly strung, look at how bad it is - this is a DHS screengrab: It goes right to the beach water level and stops right there. Afte that, no concertina wire and just a low level fence. If you were a caravan illegal trying to get through to San Diego, a fit young man of military age who had just swam a border river on Mexico's south, and walked and hitched truck rides thousands of miles from Honduras, would that fence be much of a physical problem for you? The only thing you'd do is walk over to the beach side with your feet in an inch or two of beach water and jump over to the U.S. from that point because it's a no-brainer. You'd land in the soft sand and get your feet wet which would be a heckuva easy thing given the border fence you busted through, the bridges you jumped down and the rivers you swam back in Mexico.
I just don't see any seriousness from the U.S. about this, despite the big press buildup about troops to the border and increased security as the caravaners announce their intention to break in in mass numbers. Apparently, it doesn't bother anyone, other than President Trump, that the migrants are making a big show of U.S. incompetence.
Now let's go to the border visit, which got a big buildup in the press, what with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visiting the troops. The press accounts that ran in San Diego never quite mentioned where this visit was, but if you listen closely to one of the longer videos, the soldier explains to Mattis that the border reinforcement at Nogales in Arizona was the priority, even as he seems to know that the illegals may "punch through" to Tijuana. From this video, I simply don't understand how with that knowledge the two U.S. agencies had, they didn't put two and two together and reinforce the Tijuana end.
Mattis almost beclowns himself by making a reference in this video here about all of these ineffective border actions being 'environmentally' correct, focusing on that instead of whether the entire operation was effective, which doesn't speak well for a general who up until now has been known as "mad dog" for his focus on results. He seems more interested in process than results. As for Nielsen, there she is, in a big huge black coat with an old lady pin attached and aviator glasses, looking for all the world like Teresa May, and just as ineffective, largely saying nothing, passive and afraid to engage because it didn't seem to be her show. She looks grim most of the time and then manically laughs at one point.
All I can say is I'm unimpressed. I'm totally open to other explanations as to what went on in that border visit, perhaps they were reinforcing Arizona because the cartels were looking to take advantage of the migrant attention in Tijuana as a good opportunity to move their "loads" without lawmen attention, but if so, someone should have said something. This looks like incompetence and the migrants are flashing the victory sign because they have changed the terms of battle to the propaganda front, they have gotten the camera attention and the message they wanted out and the U.S. is incapable of stopping them.
That concertina wire should have been up.
I think it's time for Nielsen and maybe Mattis to go.
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