When Jose Antonio Ibarra of Venezuela first crossed the United States-Mexico border in September 2022 near El Paso, Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had about 8,100 detention beds available. Instead of holding Ibarra in its available detention space, ICE released him into the U.S. interior.
A year and a half later, Ibarra was arrested and charged with 22-year-old Laken Riley‘s murder in Athens, Georgia.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, during a Senate hearing on Thursday, suggested that Ibarra’s release into the U.S. interior was justified because the agency had no reason to detain him — even as thousands of ICE detention beds were available at the time of his release.
“There was no derogatory information of which we were aware in our holdings to compel the detention of this individual,” Mayorkas told Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), a ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee.
Laken Riley was murdered allegedly by Jose Antonio Ibarra in February in Athens, Georgia. Ibarra was released at the border instead of being detained by DHS. (Facebook/CCSO)
In a separate case unveiled this week, President Joe Biden’s DHS was found to have released 48-year-old Mohammad Kharwin of Afghanistan into the U.S. interior in March 2023. At the time of his release, ICE figures indicate there were about 7,000 detention beds available.
Kharwin was later discovered to be a member of the terrorist group Hezb-e-Islami and on the federal government’s “Terrorist Watch List.”
Experts told Breitbart News that the Biden administration has continuously sought to gut ICE detention in favor of a mass release policy at the border that even cuts out monitoring of migrants post-release.
For instance, in Biden’s latest Fiscal Year 2025 budget request, Mayorkas asks for just 34,000 ICE detention beds — a decrease from the 41,500 detention beds funded by Congress in spending packages approved last month and far below the 50,000 detention beds that the administration agreed to accept in legislation proposed by Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and Democrats.
RJ Hauman with the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) told Breitbart News that Biden and Mayorkas only agreed to the 50,000 detention beds in the Lankford bill because the provision was “in exchange for codification of crisis levels and millions for non-governmental organizations and sanctuary jurisdictions.”
“A mass-migration extortion attempt,” Hauman called the Lankford bill, saying that the Biden administration’s seeking to massively reduce detention beds as part of its latest funding request “proves that the Senate saga was nothing more than a political charade.”
The House Homeland Security Committee issued a report late last year that chronicled the Biden administration’s reduction of detention beds:
In fact, ICE is not using many detention facilities to their full capacity, despite the record number of illegal aliens crossing each month. For example, by December 2023, the Adelanto ICE facility in Southern California, with a detention capacity of nearly 2,000 illegal aliens, is currently holding just six, because the Biden administration refuses to actively fight a court order that prohibited new intake to the facility in 2020 due to COVID-19 spacing and distance requirements. [Emphasis added]
…
All told, 25,000 ICE beds at the ceiling of $142.44 per day, for 365 days a year, totals around $1.3 billion, and $1.43 billion at $157.20 per day. Regardless of whether those beds are used to full capacity, they are still paid for by the American taxpayer. However, instead of using that detention capacity to hold and deport illegal aliens, Mayorkas has stifled interior enforcement and implemented his policy of “catch and release,” whereby hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are being released into the interior. This mass wave off illegal aliens subsequently making its way throughout the country, but especially major cities, who are then forced to pay to house them. This leads to outcomes in which state and local governments are forced to unnecessarily shoulder new costs to house illegal aliens, often asking the federal government to reimburse them for those costs—on top of the expenditures DHS has already made for thousands of ICE beds. [Emphasis added]
US Border Patrol agents prepare to transport migrants for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Like ICE detention beds, the number of migrants enrolled in ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program has also failed to grow alongside a record number of border crossings and mass releases under Biden.
For instance, data suggests that in March 2021, about 2.7 percent of the 3.3 million migrants on ICE’s non-detained docket — who reside in the U.S. while awaiting immigration hearings — were enrolled in the ATD program to ensure they were properly monitored.
By March 2024, Biden grew ICE’s non-detained docket to more than 6.2 million migrants. Still, fewer than three percent are enrolled in the ATD program to be monitored amid their release into the U.S. interior, despite an almost doubling of the non-detained docket population.
While still using the ATD program, the Biden administration has helped greatly tilt its use toward providing services like mental health evaluations and cultural orientation via the Case Management Pilot Program (CMPP) and Young Adult Case Management Program (YACMP).
The CMPP and YACMP help shift huge sums of American taxpayer dollars away from the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), which tracks migrants through GPS monitoring, and towards offering services to migrants.
Though it has failed to come to fruition, the Biden administration had wanted to eventually put billions toward the Release and Reporting Management (RRM) program — designed to have released migrants make annual “check-ins” rather than being monitored through ISAP.
US Border Patrol agents prepare to transport migrants for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
At a House hearing this week, Reps. Michael Guest (R-MS) and David Joyce (R-OH) questioned Mayorkas about his seeking to reduce detention bed space amid sky-high illegal immigration, where last month more than 189,000 migrants arrived at the southern border.
“Does this request ask for enough resources to remove the more than 1.3 million aliens on the non-detained docket whose cases have already been adjudicated and no longer have a legal basis to remain in this country?” Joyce asked Mayorkas:
Does it ask for an appropriate level of detention beds to detain aliens who pose a national security risk or public safety risks? No, this administration instead asks for 7,500 less beds than Congress just funded in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. [Emphasis added]
In an exchange with Guest, Mayorkas said DHS is “committed to working with Congress to sustain the 41,500 beds that Congress funded” in its spending packages passed last month.
Guest questioned why Mayorkas officially asked for a decrease in detention beds, 34,000, if the agency wanted more bed space.
“If that’s the number, why didn’t you put that in your budget?” Guest asked Mayorkas. “… if those were the numbers you need … I would ask you to put those numbers actually in your budget and you asked Congress to fund that and you don’t just expect us to plus up those numbers.”
Migrants wait to be transported for asylum claim processing at the US-Mexico border in Campo, California, US, on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In her testimony, Britt noted a widespread number of criminal migrants continuously being released from ICE custody rather than remaining detained.
“There have been 4,700 with convictions for assault, 450 of whom have been released,” Britt detailed to Mayorkas:
There have been 5,200 with convictions for drug crimes, 261 of which have been released. There have been 1,100 with convictions for weapons crimes, 92 of which have been released. There have been 1,200 with convictions for sexual assault, 46 of whom have been released. And there have been 490 with convictions for homicide, 50 of whom have been released.
[Emphasis added]
“More detention beds lead to more removals which would, in turn, lead to a secure border and safer American communities,” Hauman told Breitbart News. “What will it take for the Biden administration and Democrats to finally realize this? Another college student’s murder? A terrorist attack? This is a sad, dangerous reality we’re in.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Unknown gunmen dumped the bodies of eight men along a highway in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua. The gory crime scene comes at a time when cartel violence continues to spread through most of Mexico while government officials claim security has improved nationwide.
The incident took place on Sunday morning along the highway that connects Chihuahua City with the border city of Juarez when authorities responded to calls of several bodies piled up in a field, the state Attorney General’s Office revealed in a statement.
Initial reports pointed to as many as 13 bodies, and some accounts pointed to nine bodies. However, Chihuahua state authorities revealed that it was eight bodies that had been left behind. Information from authorities points to the bodies likely having been killed in another location and then moved there since there were no ballistic remains in the area.
Local news outlets pointed to a series of messages scrawled on posterboards left behind at the crime scene. However, authorities did not reveal the content of the messages nor the criminal organization behind the mass killings.
The state of Chihuahua has a long history of cartel violence as various criminal organizations continue to fight for control of lucrative drug and human trafficking routes north. Several smaller organizations allied with the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, or Cartel Jalisco New Generation have a presence in the region and, at times, have waged turf wars.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.
Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and senior Breitbart management. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Mexican cartel violence is now spilling into San Diego -report
Plenty of people think Joe Biden's open borders is mainly about millions of illegals rolling into the U.S., while the billions rolling into Mexico's notorious crime cartels as a result is Mexico's problem, not ours.
But that's not quite what's going on.
Mexico's cartels have grown so big and so powerful from migrant and drug smuggling that they not only threaten Mexico, they are now taking their internecine warfare on the road into the U.S., which now faces a Tijuana-like future. If you recall the sight of all those Tijuana cars burning as that city shut down from cartel warfare, obviously it can happen here, too.
In a little-noted San Diego Union-Tribune frontpager from Sunday, headlined "Tijuana drug violence bleeds into San Diego County with recent cartel shootings":
Three shootings that left two people dead and three wounded over the past couple of months in San Diego County were linked to Mexican drug cartels and involved a drug cell embroiled in a vicious dispute with its rivals in Baja California, according to sources with knowledge of cartel activity and the ongoing investigations.
One of the shootings wounded James Bryant Corona, an alleged drug cell leader with dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, according to sources on both sides of the border with knowledge of the investigation. Baja California Deputy Attorney General Rafael Orozco Vargas described Corona as “one of the main generators of violence” in Tijuana and greater Baja California.
Another attack killed 35-year-old Christian Espinoza Silver, a reputed member of the same drug cell, after a gunman opened fire on him inside a BMW near the parking garage of a pricey high-rise apartment complex in University City.
University City is the wealthy area just east of ultra-wealthy La Jolla, and nowhere near the border badlands where such activity wouldn't be that surprising. These kinds of rubouts have been unheard of up until now, although there was a good report from investigative reporter Ioan Grillo at Crashout Media about cartel kidnapping and 'stewmaker' activity going on in Chula Vista just south of San Diego and closer to the Mexican border in the past couple years, writing at the time.
After strangling the two victims, the gangsters threw their bodies head-first into barrels of acid, using the techniques of an infamous Tijuana killer known as “El Pozolero” or “The Stewmaker.” They buried the remaining bones and flesh in arid ground under a horse ranch. The macabre burial site was not in Mexico however but north of the border in San Ysidro on the outskirts of San Diego.
I commented on that last month here.
The U-T report is long and interesting, but subscriber-only. (The U-T can be very left-biased, but does good work on Navy and some border issues and has some good subscription deals and trials that might be worth looking at.)
The story explains why the matter is important:
While Tijuana and Baja California have for decades been plagued by such violence related to organized crime, rarely in recent years has it bled over so publicly and brazenly into San Diego County, sparking concern among some U.S. authorities and those familiar with Mexican drug trafficking organizations.
To summarize, the cartel thugs who've terrorized Mexico are now openly operating here in San Diego, too, and that includes their gun battles and rubouts. Cartels have been known to recruit their worst triggermen from the San Diego side of the border. Some have dual citizenship or serve as anchor babies for their illegally present parents, which makes catching them harder. Worse still, the Mexican cops may be looking for them as the ringleaders for various murders, but as cartel kingpins, they aren't wanted for any trigger-pulling murders over here, so they skate easily.
Obviously, there are some legal things that need to be ironed out, based on that report, but anyone asking for it is probably going to be as lucky as the residents of Imperial Beach have been in trying to get the Biden administration to halt Tijuana sewage from fouling their U.S. beach. The Biden swamp doesn't pay much attention to what is going on so far away over here, we are just another Lahaina.
One official quoted, a former lawman named Steve Duncan, said that only the integrity of the U.S. courts kept this region from becoming a third-world hellhole.
“The only thing that’s keeping (the violence) from getting out of control here is we have integrity in our system,” Duncan said, adding that it’s important that investigators share information and solve the shootings. “It has to be investigated and prosecuted ... We have to set an example.”
Which is good food for thought. Anyone want to say the judicial system is as pristine as it used to be back when it was a two-party city?
Justice in fact is collapsing here, as it is in all blue cities, meaning, the cartels are going to feel increasingly comfortable operating here and taking their violence here, too as the quest for dominance over profits from the illegal drug trade and the illegal alien trade continue to drive cartel warfare.
Which means the cartel violence will get bolder and more brazen and more over here than ever. There could be headless bodies hanging from bridges and narco banners hung from overpasses as somehow nothing gets done about it, and there could be burning cars and gunfire raging through the city with very little done about it as this city gets bluer.
And there is no doubt that these kinds of crimes are happening that hadn't happened before:
According to the Union-Tribune:
Erubiel Tirado, a security expert and professor at Mexico’s Universidad Iberoamericana, said cartel violence in a U.S. border city would be a “huge change” in the pattern of how criminal trafficking organizations operate.
“Traditionally American cities ... were ... kind of sanctuaries (for) the kingpins and some important members of each dominant Mexican organization,” Tirado wrote in an email. “In that sense, the non written rule was do not ‘heat’ (those) territories with violence and criminal activities.”
All of that is a direct result of Joe Biden's open border and the spillover effects that follow just as surely as those busloads of illegals from China and 100 other countries.
It's not just illegals who are coming. It's what they are bringing with them as they come that stands to turn San Diego and every other blue city into cities with Tijuana-like violence driven by the quest for drug and illegals profits.
Image: Picryl // public domain
JOE IS ON THE CARTELS' SIDE. SOCIOPATH JOE IS ALWAYS ON THE OTHER SIDE. THE CARTELS CONVEY HIS UNRIGESTERED DEM VOTERS OVER THE BORDER AND INTO OUR JOBS AND VOTING BOOTHS
Mexican authorities have found several large groups of migrants at hotels or being moved in tractor-trailers in recent weeks. Officials are also seeing a spike in ransom kidnappings where cartel-connected human smugglers hold migrants to further extort their families.
Mexico's cartels have grown so big and so powerful from migrant and drug smuggling that they not only threaten Mexico, they are now taking their internecine warfare on the road into the U.S., which now faces a Tijuana-like future. If you recall the sight of all those Tijuana cars burning as that city shut down from cartel warfare, obviously it can happen here, too.
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