Joe Biden is on record that illegals are “already Americans,” and under Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden Department of Homeland Security is effectively the Department of Human Trafficking. John Fonte of the Hudson Institute makes a strong case that “operational control of the border is no longer in American hands,” and under the control of Mexican cartels. These are criminal organizations but behind the scenes, a more powerful dynamic is in play. Lloyd Billingsley
Many Democrats understand that the welfare checks for foreign children will encourage more illegal immigration, he said:
They know what’s going on. But they know that they can’t say what their true goal is, which is actual open borders with open, uncontrolled migration both ways. And this is a step toward getting rid of borders.
“It’s a globalist mindset and it welcomes anything that moves toward open borders,” he concluded. NEIL MUNRO
Many Democrats understand that the welfare checks for foreign children will encourage more illegal immigration, he said:
They know what’s going on. But they know that they can’t say what their true goal is, which is actual open borders with open, uncontrolled migration both ways. And this is a step toward getting rid of borders.
“It’s a globalist mindset and it welcomes anything that moves toward open borders,” he concluded.
Beto O'Rourke's Mysterious Woman
Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke recently announced his candidacy for governor of Texas against incumbent Greg Abbott after the former's failed campaigns for U.S. Senate in 2018 and president in 2020. One issue that has followed him was his arrest report of a DUI hit-and-run in 1998, released in August 2018 by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express. Up until that time, he had admitted to the DUI without mentioning the accident and fleeing the scene.
During a debate in September with eventual victor Ted Cruz, a moderator brought it up, and O'Rourke said, "I did not try to leave the scene of the accident." Then he repeated a familiar comment before the report had been released: that he was given a "second chance" only because he was a white man. Days later in the Washington Post, fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave O'Rourke "Four Pinocchios," which qualifies as a "whopper." Just four days later, during friendly questioning by the Texas Tribune, O'Rourke was asked again whether he had fled the scene of the accident. "I did not flee," he replied, and the "police report is wrong." O'Rourke then added that he had recently "reached out to a passenger who was in the car," and "she" said that "we did not try to flee." O'Rourke was not asked and did not volunteer who "she" was.
Then, in 2019, soon after his loss to Cruz, when O'Rourke had announced he was running for the White House, he was asked again by Vanity Fair about whether he had fled the accident. He now claimed that the mystery woman was "Michelle" and added that after he was arrested, police took him and his mystery passenger to a gas station and dropped her off (which would have been about three in the morning), and he gave her money so she could go home. He spent the night in jail and was bailed out the next morning by his father, former El Paso County judge Pat O'Rourke, who before his death suggested that the young O'Rourke, then going by "Rob," go back to using his childhood nickname of "Beto" if he wanted to succeed in politics in Hispanic-dominated El Paso. After completing a diversion program, O'Rourke's driver's license was eventually returned.
There are several problems with O'Rourke's changing explanations. When arresting officer Richard Carrera wrote his report in 1998, he mentioned that O'Rourke was traveling on Interstate 10 at a high rate of speed west from El Paso in Anthony, Texas when he struck a truck and careened across the grass median and began to flee east on the other side of the interstate. A good Samaritan motorist whom O'Rourke had nearly struck followed him across the median and honked his horn and blinked his lights and finally got O'Rourke to stop. When Carrera arrived, he talked to the unnamed witness/reporter first and wrote that he was accompanied by a passenger.
Then he spoke to O'Rourke, who was extremely drunk and "almost fell to the floor" when asked to leave the vehicle. O'Rourke told him he had had two beers, failed several sobriety tests, and was arrested. Carrera made no mention of a passenger with O'Rourke as he did with the witness. O'Rourke's next stop was a substation in west El Paso, where the breathalyzer showed that he had had at least six beers. He was booked and spent the night in jail.
I recently attended an event in Corpus Christi, billed as a town hall, that featured O'Rourke. I intended to ask him about "Michelle" and his ever changing stories and about what the record clearly showed. When he arrived and made his way to a stage on a patio of a local restaurant and was walking past me, I asked him who "Michelle" was — who was this woman who could verify that he did not flee the scene of the accident fueled by the DUI? He said, "I'll talk to you afterwards" and got up on the podium. After speaking for about ten minutes, he walked off into the crowd and posed for selfies and took brief questions one-on-one. I worked my way back up to him, and when I approached a nervous O'Rourke, I said I was still waiting for an answer about who "Michelle" was.
I asked him if the police had dropped her off in the middle of the night at a gas station. "Who is she?" "She's a friend of mine," he replied, "a private person" and couldn't say any more than that. I noted that the police report said that he’d fled and that another driver had flagged him down. He again denied that he had fled. I asked again if the police had let "Michelle" out in the middle of the night, and he said, "They did, they did." I said they would never do that, and then his staff moved in, and I was done.
I later contacted former officer Gary Hargrove, who was Carrera's supervisor at the time. I asked him if any officer would have dropped off a passenger with a DUI suspect at a gas station in the middle of the night. He's never heard of anything like that and insisted that it would never have happened. I asked him if Officer Carrera would have ever filed a false police report, and he said he did not and would not. I then mentioned that, looking at the available facts, it appeared that O'Rourke was not being honest, and Hargrove agreed with me.
When the issue came up with Vanity Fair in 2019, the magazine noted that it would likely come up again. It should, now, in his campaign for governor. With O'Rourke's ever evolving stories against what the record clearly shows, it remains a serious issue, and it should until he finally admits the truth.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
80 Migrants Found in Texas Border City Stash House
Border Patrol agents in Laredo, Texas, discovered more than 80 migrants crammed into a single residential home on Monday. The agents, responding to a report of suspicious activity in the area, found the migrants scattered throughout the scene. The migrants were arrested and removed from the unsanitary conditions and were processed for removal from the country.
Although Laredo Sector ranks much lower than most in the southwest in the apprehension of migrants, traffic in the area is distinct from others. Laredo is the busiest port of entry in Texas, according to the Texas Comptroller. Due to the high volume of legitimate commercial tractor trailers, the Border Patrol encounters a significant number of tractor-trailer migrant smuggling schemes.
The stash houses are used by human traffickers to hide the migrants while transportation away from the border area is coordinated.
According to the Border Patrol, the number of migrants being held in this home is cause for concern. They consider stash houses a national security threat due to the criminal activity and the unsanitary conditions during a pandemic.
Within the first two months of this fiscal year, the Border Patrol in Laredo discovered six total stash houses in the city. During the month of November, nearly 160 migrants were removed from stash houses. In October, two homes containing nearly 50 migrants were discovered. Monday’s discovery involved the highest number of migrants discovered in a single home this fiscal year.
Despite the significant number of high-volume smuggling events interdicted and the number of migrant stash houses discovered within the city, there is some promising news. According to the Border Patrol, the Laredo Sector is the only area along the southwest border that reported a decline in migrant apprehensions thus far this fiscal year.
In October, the sector reported 7,443 apprehensions, compared to 9,373 in October 2020.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
Beto O'Rourke's Path to Governor Runs Through Latino Voters, But They're No Sure Thing
Beto O'Rourke's first two weeks on the campaign trail have featured rural roundtables and raucous rallies, with an undercurrent of celebrity-like energy not often seen in politics. But they've also included a sober assessment from analysts and the candidate himself that he faces long odds in unseating Governor Greg Abbott a year from now.
An issue that has thus far gone under the radar represents a microcosm of the race itself.
The votes O'Rourke needs in order to run up his numbers and shock the country are available in Texas — among Latino voters. But just when he needs them most, the electorate appears to peeling off in favor of Republicans at the worst possible time for Democrats.
In 2018, with Hispanics making up more than one-quarter of the Texas electorate, O'Rourke garnered 64% support from Latinos, while his opponent Ted Cruz netted 35% support. But Abbott fared better in his 13-point drubbing of Lupe Valdez, gaining 42% of the Latino vote.
A consistent theme then and now from organizers who worked on the 2018 campaign was that O'Rourke seemed somewhat shocked by the level of attention and support his candidacy received, and supporters acknowledge that Latino engagement was too little and too late to be decisive.
Four years and a failed presidential campaign later, O'Rourke's campaign and supporters insist they will prioritize Latinos.
Texas State Senator Cesar Blanco says he's known O'Rourke since he was a city councilman a decade ago, and is advising the campaign as a senator and as a friend. He argues that campaigns have two forms of currency, time and money, and at the outset the campaign is devoting O'Rourke's valuable time on the trail to South Texas and speaking to Latino voters on the ground.
"It matters, particularly in Texas, where a candidate first stops, and when you look at where Beto kicked off his campaign, the first places he went were to the border," Blanco told Newsweek. "I think he understands the path to election is really through the Democratic base and independents, and the growth in the electorate is minorities, particularly Latinos."
Early on O'Rourke held events in Hidalgo county with health care leaders, McAllen with organizers and Brownsville with law enforcement leaders, all areas with more than 92% Hispanic residents.
O'Rourke, whom Blanco says grew up in the Latino community and is fluent in Spanish, is telling Latinos "you matter," while courting their vote and spending time in their communities. He also nodded to an oft-repeated refrain from Democrats, that O'Rourke now has data from 2018 and knows which counties he did well in and where he needs to improve.
"He's not starting from scratch, he spent time building infrastructure, and now he's starting with that infrastructure," he said.
But Abbott is fighting for the Latino vote, too. He met with Nueces County Republicans in Corpus Christi to rally Hispanics on November 7, delivered tamales to law enforcement and military members last week in the Rio Grande Valley, and returned to hold a meet-and-greet in Edinburg on Tuesday, where he talked up his past Latino support and pledged to do even better in 2022.
"Every year that I have run for governor, I have gotten about 45% of the Hispanic vote," he said.
"This election year I will get more than 50% of the Hispanic vote in the state of Texas," the governor added.
Abbott could also be buoyed by changes along the Rio Grande Valley, where Donald Trump won Latino support in five border counties in 2020.
Abbott's former spokesman John Wittman told Newsweek the governor's investment with those south Texas Hispanics is often missed, and argued their values are not Beto O'Rourke's values.
"They want tougher border security and support conservative family values," he said. "Beto's message of defunding police, not enforcing laws along border and taking people's guns away is not going to play well in Texas."
A CNN fact check found that the Abbott campaign, which preempted O'Rourke's announcement with clips of the candidate speaking on issues like guns and immigration, deceptively edited O'Rourke's statements on defunding the police to make it seem like he gave the issue his full-throated support.
But beyond policing, Hispanic Republicans believe O'Rourke's statement at a debate that "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47," will hurt him in courting Latinos who they say support gun ownership.
"A lot of Texas voters who are of Mexican heritage or Hispanic think the gun issue is a huge deal," Artemio Muñiz, the chairman for the George P. Bush campaign's Tejano committee, told Newsweek. "I'm from Houston, all of my buddies, even the Democrats, are pro-gun. It's the gun culture in Texas, it's self defense, and can be traced back to the struggles we had at the Alamo."
While many supporters point to O'Rourke's adopted nickname of Beto as a signal that he's one of them and has life experiences that lead to empathy and compassion for others, Muñiz said many Hispanics question the "Beto" name.
"He uses Beto like he's our Mexican tÃo, but you're not," he said. "Just because you put the name out there doesn't mean I'm going to invite you to my house like you're my tÃo."
"What do you stand for?" Muñiz concluded.
One longtime Texan who has been a Democrat for more than three decades agreed that a challenge for O'Rourke and his party is in how Democrats are viewed statewide, particularly among small business owners. The source recalled a recent chat with a childhood best friend who said, "the truth is I vote Democrat because we love you, you are our friend, but nothing you guys are selling is anything we want to buy."
The friend juxtaposed Democrats who "talk to me like I'm this helpless Latino, always in the fetal position, and has a hard time voting because I don't carry an ID, when all I want to do is make more money with my business and hire more people."
But organizers who worked on O'Rourke's campaign in 2018 say that while then he had a lack of enough Spanish-language ads and campaign literature, it won't be a problem this time, and he can win over Latinos by listening to them and the issues they care about.
Amanda Salas is the kind of organizer who doesn't have a high profile outside of Texas, but is worth their weight in gold to Democrats who dream of a blue Texas somewhere over the horizon. She has registered voters for Battleground Texas, the Bloomberg presidential campaign and for O'Rourke in 2018, and is involved in his campaign once again.
Her lived experience — a former Republican who received scholarship money from Republicans and comes from a conservative family, and as a "regional organizing director," which she says means she was basically responsible for half the state's voters in previous campaigns — enables her to communicate effectively with Texas Hispanics.
The numbers for Latinos to serve as the decisive force in the gubernatorial race are there, she said, with new citizens in Harris and Hidalgo counties alone since 2018 comprising more than the 215,000 votes O'Rourke lost by three years ago.
Following the path created by Stacey Abrams, who lost her Georgia governor's race before making it her mission to register enough voters to foster the environment that led to the election of two Democratic U.S. senators earlier this year, O'Rourke created Powered By People.
His organization has worked to make it easier for Texans to register to vote, helping to register 260,000 Texans in a year and a half, but like many like-minded organizations it switched gears during the pandemic.
Salas recalled her birthday on April 5, 2020, when she was on the phone with O'Rourke coordinating food banks across the state and in Laredo. That type of expansive work has given O'Rourke data he didn't have in 2018, but Salas says it's about more than that.
"The data should always back relationships," she told Newsweek. "Too many times data is just data. It's just votes. It's not people, it's not households, it's not impact. But Beto has done something our state Party and county Party hasn't been able to do."
Salas said Latinos have "jobs on their minds, lack of resources, the freeze again when the cold comes, and flooding when the rain comes. Basic necessities is what Latinos care about the most."
The pandemic also revealed that internet access is as important a necessity as air conditioning in Texas, she said.
Cristina Tzintzun, a former Texas candidate for U.S. Senate who serves as the executive director of NextGen, said the Latino vote is not monolithic, "which Beto understands."
"The Latino population is very young in the state, and there are clear gender differences," she told Newsweek. "Latinas and young people are sizable but underinvested in. If you invest in them, you win."
Victor Leal, who served as the mayor of Muleshoe, Texas, and as finance commissioner for former Republican Governor Rick Perry, also owns Leal's Mexican Restaurant, which was founded in 1957 as a tortilla factory to provide Mexican farm workers with their beloved foods.
He told Newsweek he was impressed when O'Rourke visited his hometown of Muleshoe in 2018.
But Leal also said not being a monolithic community cuts both ways, and Hispanic Texans "want more vetting and security" when it comes to the border, because "in this day and age there is human trafficking, cartels, and fentanyl coming across the border."
As did other Republicans who spoke to Newsweek, he said O'Rourke will be dragged down by President Joe Biden's approval rating, which doomed previous presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in the midterms.
But he noted that while he's a Republican, the same can not be said for the rest of his family.
His two sons, one who is an engineer for Soundcloud, and another who is a Yale law school graduate, along with his wife, are "Beto fans."
The same way Biden is struggling due to his performance, Leal said Texans will remember the power grid failure under Abbott that left millions without power in a deadly winter chill that killed hundreds, a fact that O'Rourke has taken to mentioning early and often during his remarks crisscrossing the state.
"Beto will make some inroads with folks pointing that out and using it as one of his talking points," he said, calling O'Rourke a "charismatic, handsome, articulate campaigner" who may be able to neutralize Abbott's war chest.
"The biggest challenge to Abbott is changing demographics," Leal said. "New Yorkers, Coloradans and others are moving to Texas to establish their businesses and bringing their politics with them."
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