America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Friday, June 25, 2021
GOV OF THE INVADED STATE OF TEXAS STANDS UP FOR AMERICA'S BORDERS AS NAFTA JOE BIDEN DAILY SABOTAGES HOMELAND SECURITY
More Than 500K Illegal Immigrants Crossed Southern Border Since Kamala Harris Named ‘Border Czar’
Vice President Kamala Harris finally visited the southern border, three months after being put in charge of solving the immigration crisis. In that time, more than half-a-million illegal immigrants were apprehended at the southern border.
Upon arriving in El Paso on Friday, the vice president continued to attack journalists for asking questions about why she waited so long to make the trip. "It's not my first trip, I've been to the border many times," Harris snapped, apparently referring to previous visits she made as a senator.
Since President Joe Biden made Harris his "border czar" on March 24, illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border at a record rate of nearly 180,000 per month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
CBP agents apprehended 178,854 illegal immigrants at the southern border in April, which at the time was the highest monthly figure since April 2000. At least it was until the following month, when CBP agents apprehended 180,034 illegal immigrants attempting to enter the country.
When the CBP data for June is reported next month, the total number of illegal crossings since late March is likely to surpass 500,000, which would mark a tremendous increase compared with last year. During that same three-month period (April-June) in 2020, CBP apprehended just 73,392 illegal immigrants. The 2020 numbers were likely deflated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but CBP reported just 146,210 illegal border crossings for that same three-month period in 2018, significantly below this year's figure.
Harris has come under fire for not taking the border crisis seriously. She has on several occasions laughed like a maniac in response to questions about her refusal to visit the border until now. During an interview with NBC's Lester Holt earlier this month, Harris falsely claimed "we've been to the border" and attacked the journalist for asking about it.
"This whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border," Harris said, contrary to the facts.
When Holt pointed out that she had not, in fact, been to the border, Harris lashed out in a manner unbecoming of an elected official. "I—and I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't—I don't understand the point that you're making," Harris said.
The vice president's decision to finally visit the border is unlikely to silence Harris's critics who contend that she is a terrible politician who has no idea what she's doing.
EXCLUSIVE: West Texas Border Sector Set to Break All-Time Apprehension Record
The Del Rio Border Patrol Sector has rarely been on the national radar for illegal immigrant apprehensions. Recently, an influx of Haitian, Venezuelan, and Central American migrants have pushed the sector to the third-highest rank for migrant apprehensions. With more than one quarter of the fiscal year remaining, the Del Rio Sector has now accounted for nearly 125,000 migrants put into custody.
The current number of apprehensions made by the Del Rio Sector is the highest in 20 years. The sector arrested more than 6,000 over the last seven days. If the pace continues, Del Rio will surpass any historical one-year record in its history.
Del Rio is in third place and slightly behind the Tucson Sector by only a few thousand migrants, according to CBP. At the current rate, Del Rio may sit only behind the Rio Grande Valley as the busiest area of the southwest border by the end of the reporting period.
At the Del Rio Station, where mostly Haitian and Venezuelan migrants have chosen to cross, the uptick in traffic is nearly a 1,000 percent jump over all of 2020’s figures. Recently, ICE Air Operations began flying Haitian and Venezuelan migrants to the interior of the United States to relieve overcrowding. The move also reduces the burden to the small community attempting to deal with large numbers of migrant releases.
Although the sector is receiving some support in the form of detailed Border Patrol agents from the northern border stations, the surge is still overwhelming. Processing and providing humanitarian care to the vulnerable population of migrants means less agents actually on patrol.
The traffic has frustrated residents and ranchers who are concerned about migrant releases and property damage caused by those looking to avoid apprehension. Local law enforcement agencies are encountering human traffickers on highways at a pace not seen in nearly two decades. 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.
El Paso, Texas, is the new Ellis Island, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) told Vice President Kamala Harris as Harris arrived for her border visit.
“Welcome to El Paso. Welcome to my community, to the new Ellis Island, to the capital of the border,” Escobar said.
Ellis Island was used as a reception center for millions of legal immigrants beginning in 1892. But Congress sharply reduced immigration in 1924 and 1925, and the island facility was closed in 1954 when immigrants compromised only about one in 14 Americans.
In the low-immigration years after World War II, Americans’ living standards, wages, and productivity rose hand-in-hand.
The post-war wealth was widely shared around the nation because job-creating investment flowed into poor heartland states, companies bought labor-saving machines to help Americans get more work done each day, and Americans moved from poor areas to booming cities.
But in 1965, Congress reopened the doors to mass migration. Then, in 1990, President George H. Bush, the establishment wing of the GOP, and the Democrats doubled immigration rates to roughly one million per year.
Since then, Americans’ wages have grown slowly while the stock market boomed as wages stalled and the government imported millions of new consumers. Housing prices also spiked as the new migrants competed for apartments and homes sought by Americans.
Also, U.S. politics changed as establishment politicians tried to cure domestic problems — poverty, education, housing, productivity, innovation — by importing more workers instead of reforming federal laws and regulations. Worse, Democrats have shifted their concern from blue-collar Americans as they try to maximize the number of imported voters.
President Joe Biden’s deputies are now trying to push immigration far above the one million per year number by widening many side doors for poor, government-dependent migrants to enter the southern border.
“This administration is working to establish lawful pathways for individuals to migrate or seek protection,” said a June 15 statement by the White House titled, “Action the Biden-Harris Administration Has Taken to Address the Border Challenge.”
The most important player is Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s chief at the Department of Homeland Security. He is using his bureaucratic and regulatory powers to open more doorways through the border for foreign workers.
Mayorkas is helping economic migrants get jobs by letting them file for political asylum in the United States. He is helping teenage economic migrants walk into jobs via a side door created in a 2008 law for victimized children. He is helping economic migrants stay in the United States by letting them use the same 2008 law — and rules for refugees — to pull their left-behind children and spouses up into the United States.
Mayorkas is also using his parole power to invite lawfully deported migrants to rejoin their left-behind migrant children who are applying for asylum. In addition, he is using the U Visa program to provide work permits and Social Security Numbers to migrants who say they were victimized by a crime in the United States.
The Department of Justice is also revising asylum rules so Mayorkas’s deputies can offer citizenship to migrants who claim their home-country governments do not protect them from spousal abuse or routine crime.
The new maximum migration policies may be delayed by court actions or even stopped by majorities in Congress. However, many establishment GOP leaders are closely tied to the business groups that want to import more consumers, renters, and workers.
Texas governor plans to resume construction of Trump's border wall with or without Biden's help
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a disaster in 34 counties in his state on May 31, allowing him to free up funds allocated by the Legislature to resume construction of a wall along the southern border started under former President Donald Trump and abandoned by President Biden.
“Texas will build a border wall in our state to help secure our border,” Abbott, a Republican, said at a press conference last week where he announced his unprecedented plan to use $250 million of state funds as a “down payment” on the new wall.
“The Biden administration has abandoned its responsibility to apply federal law to secure the border and to enforce the immigration laws and Texans are suffering as a consequence of that neglect by the Biden administration,” Abbott added. “In the federal government’s absence, Texas is stepping up to get the job done.”
The number of migrants arriving at the U.S. border has steadily grown since last spring. In the month of May, border patrol agents “encountered 180,034 people attempting entry along the Southwest Border,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said on its website. That figure represents about a 1-percent rise from the month before. In May of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was still in its first wave in the U.S. and Mexico, 21,593 migrants were encountered by CBP agents along the southern border, the agency’s records show. During the Trump administration, border encounters hit a high of 132,856 in May of 2019, according to CBP data.
The overwhelming majority of migrants who have attempted to enter the U.S. this spring have been turned away under Title 42, a health care provision utilized under Trump and continued during the Biden administration, that justifies the expulsion of migrants seeking asylum on the grounds that they represent a threat to public health.
Policy experts don’t believe Abbott, nor any governor, has the authority to supersede federal policy regarding immigration.
“Immigration authority largely falls under the federal government level and there has been legislation after legislation that has supported that framework,” Ariel Ruiz, a policy analyst for the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute told the Texas Tribune. “Even if there were legal avenues for Texas to do [this], it’ll end up in a number of legal issues for sure.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, the oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization in the country, has already threatened to sue Abbott if he goes through with his plan to continue construction on the border wall.
“We believe that the governor has no authority constitutionally, either under state law or federal law, to build a wall or to arrest immigrants for trespassing,” LULAC national president Domingo Garcia told Yahoo News. “The U.S. Constitution clearly says that only the federal government can do that, and that means President Biden and Border Patrol. ... He’s using children as political piñatas.”
Resumption of construction of the border wall isn’t the only action Abbott is taking to thwart a rise in border crossings. On June 10, he and Arizona’s Republican Gov. Doug Ducey penned a letter to the governors of the other 48 states requesting law enforcement manpower to help counter what they characterized as a rise in activity by drug cartels.
“Border states like Texas and Arizona are ‘ground zero’ for this crisis and bear a disproportionate share of those burdens," Abbott and Ducey said in the letter.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and staunch Trump ally, quickly stepped up to offer resources and manpower from his state.
“I’m proud to announce today that the state of Florida is answering the call,” DeSantis said at a press conference last week. “Florida has your back.”
DeSantis went on to blame Florida’s rising crime rate on a spike in immigration.
“We have problems in Florida that are not organic to Florida, that we’ve been forced to deal with over many years but particularly over the last six months, because of the failure of the Biden administration to secure our southern border and indeed to really do anything constructive about what is going on in the southern border,” DeSantis said.
Democratic lawmakers in Florida, meanwhile, were quick to criticize DeSantis for redirecting state resources to Texas.
“Another political stunt by Gov. DeSantis,” Democratic Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani tweeted last Tuesday. “Instead of perpetuating the attacks on immigrants & going after [the] Biden administration, why don’t you focus on the people who live in Florida! We’re dealing with a broken unemployment system & affordable housing crisis that you could be fixing!”
“Diverting state law enforcement to Texas and Arizona is a political stunt that makes our state less safe,” Democratic Rep. Charlie Christ tweeted.
The legality of Abbott’s plan to use funds allocated for disaster relief will almost certainly be decided in court.
Along the U.S.-Mexico border between San Diego and the Libertad neighborhood of Tijuana, Mexico. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
But Abbott, who is up for reelection next year, doesn’t appear fazed by threats of lawsuit. Construction of a border wall, after all, was a winning political issue in 2016 for Trump.
While 450 miles of metal barrier were constructed during Trump’s term using diverted military funds, the majority of effort went to replace sections of the 654 miles of fencing already in place before Trump took office. Moreover, the former president’s promise that Mexico would ultimately pay for the barrier did not materialize.
With eminent domain issues also complicating construction of the wall in certain parts of the state, Abbott is banking on donations of both land and money in order to realize his goal of sealing the Texas border with Mexico.
“My belief based upon conversations that I’ve already had is that the combination of state land as well as volunteer land will yield hundreds of miles to build a border wall in Texas,” Abbott said last week.
A outspoken critic of the border wall plan, Democratic activist Sawyer Hackett said Abbott’s plan shows he is concerned with reelection and “is willing to use his office and taxpayer dollars to shore up support from the base by building Trump’s useless pet project.”
“[Abbott] doesn’t care about border communities or about migrants — he cares about staying in office by whatever means possible,” Hackett said. “Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars on trying to take Texans’ land, he should focus on keeping the lights on.”
A Border Patrol agent surveils the U.S.-Mexico border. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Yet Abbott’s ambitions may extend beyond simply retaining control of his current position.
“When Greg Abbott last week unveiled plans to build a wall along the nation’s southern border with Mexico, he showed that his aspirations are much higher than being reelected as Texas governor,” Dallas Morning News political columnist Gromer Jeffers Jr. wrote Monday. “Abbott wants to be the heir apparent to former President Donald Trump and his political movement.”
Trump has already accepted an invite from Abbott to visit the border on June 30. If Trump doesn’t run in 2024, his supporters will be looking for someone to back. DeSantis is already on the short list of possible GOP contenders, and part of securing the support of Trump’s legion of fans is keeping the focus on the U.S. border with Mexico.
Abbott and Ducey’s office did not reply to Yahoo News’ request for comment.
Immigrants from Central America at the U.S.-Mexico border fence after crossing the Rio Grande River. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’s press secretary, told Yahoo News in an email that the push to secure the border in states like Texas would ultimately help Floridians by lowering crime rates.
“Even though Florida isn’t a border state, securing the southern border would help stop the flow of illegal drugs that end up in our state and ravage our communities,” Pushaw said. “Illegal immigrants have also committed crimes in Florida, which could have been prevented if our immigration laws were enforced.”
A 2018 study by the Cato Institute, however, found that “the criminal conviction rate for legal immigrants was about 85 percent below the native-born rate.”
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; Photos: Maury Phillips/Getty Images for Leigh Steinberg, Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images, Lynda M. Gonzalez-Pool/Getty Images, Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images
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