Tuesday, August 17, 2021

DEBACLE ON THE OPEN BORDER WITH NARCOMEX - Biden's Second 100 Days

 

Biden's Second 100 Days

A look at continuing immigration policy changes

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By Robert Law on August 16, 2021

Download a PDF of this Backgrounder.


Robert Law is the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. He would like to thank Adam Morys for his research contributions for this Backgrounder.


A new president’s first 100 days has become an unofficial benchmark for measuring accomplishments since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term. Media outlets and policy organizations, including the Center for Immigration Studies, routinely issue 100-day reports for a new administration. Rarely does the president receive a subsequent comprehensive analysis of his administration’s actions until the midterm elections. With August 7 having marked President Biden’s 200th day in office, the Center takes a renewed look at what has transpired since April 29 (Biden’s 100th day). Consistent with the Center’s 100-day report, this report does not grade or score the Biden administration’s performance. Instead, it analyzes the impact of policy changes in the following areas:

Border Security

Record-Level Apprehensions. The Biden administration has overseen a historic, and worsening, crisis at the southern border that it continues to refuse to take responsibility for. In February 2021, the president’s first full month in office, there were 101,095 U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encounters at the Southwest border (revised up from the initially reported 100,441), a 15-year record high for the month of February. Instead of being alarmed by this bucking of historical trends of decreased border-crossing attempts in the winter, the Biden administration attempted to deflect by claiming the numbers reflect a seasonal trend. Led by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration refused to call the border situation a crisis, instead opting to call it a “challenge” in an attempt to downplay what was happening on its watch. In the first 100 days, President Biden tapped Vice President Harris and former Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson as co-border czars. Illegal aliens kept coming in droves, as CBP encountered 173,265 aliens in March and 178,850 in April. Jacobson subsequently quit on Biden’s 100th day.

Remarkably, the crisis has worsened during Biden’s second 100 days in office. In fact, CBP encounters at the Southern Border have continued to climb each month of the Biden presidency. In May, CBP encountered 180,641 aliens, with Border Patrol apprehending 172,011 aliens within that total. As the numbers continued to skyrocket, and buck another historical trend of decreased crossing attempts after May, the Biden administration delayed publishing the June figures. Once they were finally released, the American people learned that CBP encountered just under 189,000 aliens at the Southern Border, with 178,416 apprehensions. In July, CBP encountered about 212,000 aliens, the highest number in more than 20 years. Within this total, about 19,000 are unaccompanied alien children (UACs), reflecting yet another record high (the Biden administration held the previous high, from March 2021, at 18,877 UACs). Family units (FMU) accounted for nearly 83,000, up from 55,805. The only “good” news for the Biden administration is that the FMU apprehensions are slightly lower than the record 88,857 from May 2019.

Elimination of Tools to Combat the Border Crisis. As covered in the Center’s 100-day report, the Biden administration’s swift actions to undo policies of the Trump administration created the environment that caused the historic surge of illegal aliens coming across the border. In short order, President Biden stopped the construction of any physical barrier along the southwest border; suspended new enrollments in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, or also known as “Remain in Mexico”); terminated Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; and ended streamlined, expedited credible fear screenings known as “Prompt Asylum Case Review” (PACR) for non-Mexicans, and “Humanitarian Asylum Review Program” (HARP), for Mexicans. And, despite continued concern about stopping the spread of Covid-19, the Biden administration is not fully utilizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency health authority under Title 42 of the United States Code to turn away all aliens at the border. While the administration claims it is expelling all single adults, it is allowing in most family units (only 10,000 out of 83,000 in family units were expelled under Title 42 in July) and all UACs. Biden’s DHS recently resumed removing some FMUs through expedited removal proceedings, but still the majority are allowed into the country while they await immigration court hearings that are many years down the road.

In the second 100 days, the Biden administration continued to eliminate tools that would help secure the southern border. On June 1, DHS Secretary Mayorkas formally ended MPP and even declared that previous MPP enrollees who were ordered removed in absentia are now eligible “for processing into the United States”. The Biden administration has yet to explain how admitting aliens ordered removed is not a violation of Section 140 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which stipulates that those who receive orders of removal shall be removed from the United States within 90 days. The effect of these moves is that all illegal aliens apprehended at the border, except for single adults being turned away under Title 42, are being processed inside the United States. As the border apprehension data discussed above shows, removing these tools encouraged more economic migrants to make the journey to the U.S. southern border. Instead of acknowledging that the border crisis is policy-driven, the Biden administration continues to put responsibility elsewhere. On August 2, Secretary Mayorkas went so far as to blame former President Trump for the border crisis, despite Trump having been out of office since January 20, 2021.

As previously covered, President Biden ended the national emergency at the southern border declared by President Trump to allow for the reprogramming of certain Department of Defense (DOD) funds to help build the border wall. Recently, Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management found that the Biden administration is wasting $3 million a day in taxpayer dollars to not build the wall. In less than 200 days, the Biden administration has wasted at least $2 billion paying contractors not to work. In addition to spending money to not construct the wall, the Biden administration does not even want to increase manpower to deal with the border crisis. Remarkably, DHS’s FY 2022 proposed budget contains no request for funding for additional border patrol.

Expanded CAM to Avoid Border Optics. Back in 2014, when the Obama-Biden administration had its own border crisis to deal with, they created the Central American Minors (CAM) refugee/parole program to deter the (then) record high numbers of unaccompanied alien children arriving at the southern border. Under CAM, lawfully present parents who were nationals of a Northern Triangle country could petition to have their children brought to the United States by the government instead of paying coyotes to smuggle them across the border. The program was unsuccessful because most parents who would want to take advantage of CAM are illegal aliens and those who were here lawfully already had legal immigration avenues to bring family to the U.S. In 2016, the Obama-Biden administration expanded sponsor eligibility beyond minor children, to include adult children, married children, biological parents, and “caregivers”. The Trump administration terminated CAM because aliens from the Northern Triangle generally do not meet the statutory definition of “refugee” and the parole aspect of the program was an unlawful categorical use of the parole authority.

In his first 100 days, President Biden announced that he was reviving and expanding CAM in two phases: first, processing eligible applicants that were closed when the Trump administration terminated CAM, and second, accepting new applications with updated guidance. Phase one (restarting CAM) occurred on March 10. The "updated guidance" was released on June 15, which the Center analyzed and found that it significantly expanded CAM. The increased eligibility was two-fold: first, legal guardians in addition to parents are allowed to sponsor, and second, illegal aliens who simply had filed a U-visa or asylum application by May 15, 2021, were also eligible to sponsor, in addition to those lawfully present (i.e., with TPS, deferred action, parole). The expansion of CAM is the Biden administration’s attempt to avoid the optics of a flood of illegal aliens being apprehended at the border, sending a clear signal to those in the Northern Triangle: Don’t come here illegally because we will come get you in “legally”.

Harris Focuses on “Root Causes”. Rather than directly dealing with the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, Border Czar and Vice President Kamala Harris rewrote her job description to address the so-called “root causes” of citizens of the Northern Triangle countries heading north to the United States without a legal immigration status. Throughout the Biden administration’s first 100 days, Harris refused to visit the southern border and did not even hold a press conference detailing her plan to solve root causes. In the second 100 days, in early June, Harris traveled to Guatemala, her first international trip as VP, to make the (unconvincing) case for why Central Americans should not come to the U.S. In an effort to do damage control from the consistent negative media coverage and polling that was hurting the new administration, Harris sat down for a one-on-one interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. The interview backfired, as Harris was unable to articulate a sound explanation for her steadfast refusal to visit the southern border. When Holt pressed Harris if she had “any plans to visit the border”, a clearly annoyed Harris dismissively responded, “at some point”. Harris then claimed “we’ve been to the border”, but Holt shot back that while other administration officials had indeed gone to the border, Harris had not. Harris’s response of “and I haven’t been to Europe either” went viral. Finally, after former President Trump announced that he was going to visit the border, the Harris team scrambled to get her down there ahead of the 45th president. However, Harris visited El Paso, Texas, when she should have gone to the Rio Grande Valley instead if she wanted to learn about the border crisis hotspot.

Over the past 200 days of the Biden administration, it has become clear that the plan for Central America is to send taxpayer dollars to those corrupt governments in the hopes that this will deter future flows of economic migrants surging across the border. Specifically, President Biden has pledged to send $4 billion in American taxpayer money to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This “investment”, even if successful, is a long-term strategy for bringing about change in the Northern Triangle and will do nothing to stop the current flood of economic migrants.

Additionally, the focus on the “root causes” of Central America leaves unaddressed the fact that the border crisis has become increasingly global. In June, more than a quarter of all apprehended aliens were from non-Mexico, non-Northern Triangle countries. Ecuadorians, Venezuelans, Brazilians, and Haitians were among the top nationalities of these extra-continental migrants. More aliens from non-Western Hemisphere countries are entering as well. The increasing diversity of nationalities comprising the border surge indicates that the pull factors of the Biden administration’s non-enforcement policies are stronger than any push factors limited to the Northern Triangle.

At the end of July, the Biden administration issued a “blueprint” and a “strategy” to address root causes. The Center analyzed both and found that they largely mirror previous documents that are more aspirational in language than they are substantive in problem solving.

Interior Enforcement

From the start of his administration, President Biden made it clear that he only intends to enforce U.S. immigration law in the narrowest of situations. On Day One, he rescinded President Trump’s enforcement priorities (every illegal alien is a priority) and ordered a 100-day deportation freeze. While a federal district judge enjoined the deportation freeze, it was a mostly symbolic victory for the rule of law because it did not order the Biden administration to actually remove any aliens. ICE’s Acting Director Tae Johnson followed this up with new enforcement priorities that the Center found limit the ability of ICE officers to arrest and remove aliens from the interior of the country, waste ICE resources it claims to be conserving, and generally create a chilling effect on ICE enforcement.

During the second 100 days, DHS instituted policies that drastically reduce the likelihood that an illegal alien released into the U.S. will ever be removed. Specifically, CPB is releasing many illegal aliens apprehended at the border into the United States without a Notice to Appear (NTA), a document that initiates removal proceedings. Instead, these illegal aliens are ordered to report to an ICE office within 60 days of entry to obtain an NTA. The practical impact of this policy is that immigration proceedings are not initiated against those who do not show up at ICE offices and they cannot be ordered removed in absentia. Thus far, at least 80 percent of those released without NTAs are not reporting to ICE offices. Taken together, there has been a huge decline in the percentage of aliens ordered removed during FY 2021, even with the Trump administration accounting for roughly three-and-half months of this period (October 1, 2020, to January 20, 2021).

ICE Discretion Policy. As has been stated, the Biden administration’s policies on the border have created a situation in which tens of thousands of aliens are able to enter the United States without being encountered and placed in removal proceedings. Even many aliens who are encountered are not placed in removal proceedings, but are instead released into the United States without NTA’s, the charging document that initiates removal proceedings. Under new guidelines issued to attorneys in ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), who represent DHS in immigration proceedings before DOJ immigration courts within the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), even those aliens placed in removal proceedings will receive increased extra-legal leniency.

The guidance applies to enforcement decisions within the purview of OPLA: filing or canceling an NTA, moving to administratively close or continue proceedings, moving to dismiss proceedings, pursuing appeal, joining in a motion to grant relief or to reopen or remand removal proceedings and entering stipulations, and taking a position in bond proceedings. The policy’s stated purpose is to implement “faithful and just execution of the immigration laws, consistent with DHS’s and ICE’s enforcement and removal priorities.” However, with enforcement priorities that exempt nearly all illegal aliens from removal and waste limited ICE resources, it is questionable how “faithful” the Biden administration is in enforcing our immigration laws.

The OPLA guidance sets out a list of aggravating and mitigating factors. Any request for prosecutorial discretion must be documented in PLAnet, an OPLA database, and even without a request from an alien, ICE attorneys are required to make an affirmative determination whether a favorable exercise of discretion is appropriate. An example of how enforcement priorities established by Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson in his February 18 memo apply to the immigration enforcement process is that ICE attorneys are now authorized to agree to a continuance for “good cause shown” when an alien falls outside presumed enforcement priorities regarding national security, border security, and public safety grounds. Similarly, the Tae Johnson memo says appeals should generally be reserved for those cases the administration deems priorities. Other cases, including those involving aliens likely to be granted relief, compelling humanitarian factors, or legal permanent residents, are to be generally dismissed.

The legal permanent resident provision, which encourages dismissal absent serious aggravating factors, is particularly noteworthy. Under the INA, aliens with LPR status are permitted to reside permanently in the United States unless they commit an offense that renders them removable. For example, under INA Section 237(a)(2), any alien, including an LPR, convicted of two or more crimes involving moral turpitude, an aggravated felony, or a federal or state drug offense is removable. INA Section 241(a)(2) treats these cases very seriously, even mandating that aliens placed in removal proceedings and detained because of deportability under 237(a)(2) shall be “[u]nder no circumstance during the removal period” be released from detention. In practice, the new OPLA guidance deviates from the plain letter of the law and will allow LPRs convicted of all but the most heinous crimes to remain in the U.S.

There has been a large decline in the number of aliens ordered deported in 2021, and the OPLA guidance will only serve to exacerbate this trend. The guidance claims that “The size of the court backlog and extraordinary delays in completing cases ... undermine public confidence in this important pillar of the administration of the nation’s immigration laws.” Instead of focusing on how to streamline removals, ICE under the Biden administration has opted to just not add certain removable aliens on the docket.

Immigration Benefits

With the Biden administration’s mass amnesty bill stalled in Congress, DHS continues to misapply its statutory authority to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. According to section 244 of the INA, the DHS secretary may designate a foreign country for TPS due to (1) ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of aliens returning home; (2) an environmental disaster, because of which the home country requests TPS as it is unable, temporarily, to handle adequately the return of its nationals; or (3) extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent aliens from returning home in safety. TPS is amnesty-lite because it affords illegal aliens a reprieve from removal and, more importantly, a work permit, Social Security number, and the ability to get a driver’s license. And there's nothing as permanent as a temporary immigration status.

In the Biden administration’s first 100 days, DHS extended and unlawfully "redesignated" Syria for TPS (adding 1,800 illegal-alien beneficiaries to the existing 6,700 population), and newly designated Venezuela (320,000) and Burma (1,600) for TPS. The Venezuela designation alone far surpassed the previous high designation of 262,500 Salvadorans. In the second 100 days, the Biden administration has continued its unlawful practice of extending and “redesignating” TPS designations when renewal decisions are required. On the smaller scale (but still unlawful), Secretary Mayorkas has added 500 Yemenis and 100 Somalis to the TPS population. On the larger scale, in May Secretary Mayorkas extended and “redesignated” Haiti's TPS designation, adding 100,000 illegal alien Haitians to the existing population of 55,000. Curiously, DHS slow-walked the publication of the TPS Haiti decision in the Federal Register despite timely publishing for all of the other notices. More than two months after the initial Mayorkas decision, where he said the cutoff date for eligibility is an (illegal) alien in the country by May 21, 2021, DHS finally published the notice in the Federal Register. In that notice, Mayorkas unilaterally and in clear violation of the law advanced the eligibility cutoff date to July 29. DHS failed to update its population estimate, so it is currently unclear how many additional Haitians will receive amnesty-lite having found a way into the United States since May 21. Combined, in a little more than six months, the Biden administration has handed out work permits to nearly 500,000 illegal aliens.

In July, more than nine years after President Obama unilaterally created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive amnesty program, federal district judge Andrew Hanen ruled it unlawful. While the Biden administration had indicated it was developing a regulation to “preserve and fortify” DACA, Hanen’s ruling makes clear that the Executive Branch lacks the authority, even under the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment rulemaking, to create an immigration benefits program absent congressional action. DHS subsequently revealed in a court document that it approved some DACA requests in violation of the court order (blaming human error) and President Biden has vowed that his administration will appeal the decision.

Conclusion

There has been a sustained, and worsening, crisis at the southern border since Joe Biden entered the Oval Office. The six full calendar months encompassed within the Biden administration’s first 200 days have included record high apprehensions for particular months and ever recorded in any month. While advocates of unlimited immigration have complained about the limited application of the Title 42 expulsion authority that the Biden administration has kept in place, this is the only tool preventing a truly unfettered open border. Vice President Harris’s focus on root causes in the Northern Triangle cannot solve the current border crisis and fails to address the fact that an increasing share of illegal aliens apprehended at the border are not from Mexico or Central America. Interior enforcement has been limited to the rarest of scenarios and the recent policy decision to release apprehended aliens into the interior of the country without an NTA increases the likelihood that these illegal aliens will never be returned home. DHS Secretary Mayorkas has turned USCIS into a work permit printing operation for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens benefiting from amnesty-lite. The Biden administration does not seem to see the American people as stakeholders in U.S. immigration policy and views numerical limits, processing times, and screening and vetting as “barriers” to aliens obtaining immigration benefits. Polling continues to show that immigration is the issue President Biden is weakest on, but through 200 days his administration has not pivoted its policy stance. A new fiscal year will begin just before President Biden’s 300th day in office, and it is no longer a question of whether this past year will set a record for border apprehensions, but how high above the previous record will it be?

From a regulatory standpoint, the Biden administration has spent its first 200 days withdrawing rules from the Federal Register that the Trump administration failed to complete. In the coming months, the Biden administration is expected to start publishing its own proposed rules, which will change the regulatory landscape of immigration policy if these regulations are finalized. According to the Unified Agenda, DHS, through USCIS, will drastically change asylum law, including what qualifies as a “particular social group”, which agency in the government has primary jurisdiction over defensive asylum claims (those raised by illegal aliens apprehended at the border in an effort to stop their removal), and the criteria for getting a work permit while an asylum application is pending. The rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedure Act is time-consuming, so it could take over a year before any of these changes are finalized.


“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and  Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy  approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This  is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” --- Karen McQuillan 


Chris Hedges | NAFTA, Clinton, and Obama, Joe Biden BETRAYED Americans... and Joe Biden was right there with the worst of them!


Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.


I was sitting next to the CEO of one of the largest hotel chains in the world. He said ‘Look, President Trump’s immigration policies are forcing me to raise wages for my workers’ and he was complaining about this

Exclusive–J.D. Vance: Ruling Class ‘Actually Enjoys Plundering the Greatest Country in the World’

J. D. Vance speaking with attendees at the 2021 Southwest Regional Conference hosted by Turning Point USA at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona.
Gage Skidmore/Flickr
5:38

J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, says the nation’s ruling class “actually enjoys plundering the greatest country in the world” rather than investing in American communities.

In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Saturday, Vance said a “fundamental problem” in the U.S. is that economic and political elites have no obligation to America’s working and middle class.

LISTEN:

“I think a lot of these people have unfortunately convinced themselves that they don’t owe anything to the country that gave them so much wealth and so much power,” Vance said:

It’s not just the bad policies of the Biden administration that we have to push back against, that’s obviously important, it’s the entire leadership class in this country in the government, in the bureaucracy, in the private sector … these people do not see themselves as Americans first, as owing an obligation to the country that gave them all the incredible opportunities. And that is maybe the fundamental problem in this country: The ruling class that instead of investing in this country — building institutions, making the people who live here wealthier, happier, more prosperous — it actually enjoys plundering the greatest country in the world because it doesn’t see that it owes anything to the people who live here, to the previous generations that actually built this country. [Emphasis added]

On immigration, for instance, Vance said economic elites are stripping investment from middle America and sending that money to the coasts as a result of their desire for mass illegal and legal immigration to drive down U.S. wages.

Vance said:

I was at a dinner in 2017, 2018 with a lot of corporate leaders. I was sitting next to the CEO of one of the largest hotel chains in the world. He said ‘Look, President Trump’s immigration policies are forcing me to raise wages for my workers’ and he was complaining about this. And I said ‘Okay, well explain this to me.’ And he said ‘Look, in the past, if I wanted workers, I could just go across the southern border and get a bunch of Central American foreigners to do this job for poverty wages but now because I can’t tap into those people, I have to go to Americans and I have to give them higher wages to do it.’ And again, this guy was talking about this like it was a bad thing but this is what the elites do with immigration is they use it to undercut the wages of American workers. [Emphasis added]

The other problem is that it actually takes investment away from our own communities. The whole way that our economy grows is by investing long-term in the American worker and American productivity. But if you can just get cheap people at poverty wages anyway, you’re not going to invest in your own communities, you’re not going to invest in your own country and that makes us poorer over the long term. It’s no surprise that maybe the biggest competitor to the United States right now is China — a very low immigration society that has generated its economic gains by investing in its own economy, not foreign workers. [Emphasis added]

Vance also railed against President Joe Biden and the national security establishment for their botched withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan after former President George W. Bush launched the war in October 2001.

“I’m sick of sending our people to that country to die and to bleed and to suffer, to spend our money for a country that clearly doesn’t want the things that our leaders want them to have,” Vance said.

“This should be a national scandal. We have been told for 20 years that if we just invest a little more in this far-fledged region of the world that we’re going to turn this place into a flowering democracy,” Vance continued:

We have been gone for a few weeks and Afghan army has revealed itself to be a total farce … why isn’t it a national scandal that this army that we built for 20 years folded in the face of the Taliban in a matter of a few weeks. Heads should roll over this. This is the biggest problem with our country. When our leadership screws up, there’s no accountability. Why is there no accountability for the people who told us that Afghanistan was heading in the right direction? Clearly, it wasn’t and they should suffer the consequences for lying to us. [Emphasis added]

On inflation, Vance said he is “so sick” of Biden and elected Democrats proclaiming themselves to be defenders of the working class when they are attempting to drive up federal spending at the risk of raising prices on working and middle class Americans, and specifically, senior citizens.

“This is a disaster for middle class Americans and you know who it’s really a disaster for is seniors who live on a fixed income,” Vance said. “This inflation, which is really just a tax on the middle class, is the biggest tax on our seniors that you could imagine.”

“I think about the Democrats, they have this self-confident assurance that they stand for working people and I get so sick of it,” Vance continued. “Let’s go talk to the grandparents who are raising their grandbabies in southeast Ohio and tell them that you stand for working people when the basic essentials that they depend on are going up 5, 10, 15 percent. It makes me sick and these people, our people, need somebody to fight for them.”

Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Eastern.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

Rio Grande City Station agents apprehend 1,000 migrants in a few hours. (U.S. Border Patrol Video Screenshot)
U.S. Border Patrol Video Screenshot
4:55

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Rio Grande City Station apprehended more than 1,000 migrants in a few hours last week. This occurred as Rio Grande Valley Sector agents apprehended more than 4,000 in a single day.

Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings tweeted a video showing Rio Grande City Station agents taking a large group of migrants into custody on August 12. The chief said the agents apprehended 1,000 migrants in just a few hours.

Hastings added that agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended more than 412,000 migrants so far this fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2021.

The sector chief also tweeted a photo showing nearly 60 migrants found in a human smuggling stash house. None of the migrants wore personal protection equipment.

Agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended a record 4,000 on Thursday as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited the sector, Breitbart Texas’s Randy Clark reported.

While the secretary made some public comments, reporters were not allowed access to the briefings being provided by Border Patrol officials.

In his public comments, Mayorkas failed to address the inhumane conditions that migrants being detained face, Clark stated. Instead, the secretary described the months-long border crisis as a “serious challenge.”

Clark continued:

The record apprehensions noted in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in South Texas, break established historical figures for an agency that dates to May 28, 1924. On that date, then-President Calvin Coolidge established the United States Border Patrol. The agency was established to enforce immigration law between established ports of entry along the southwest border. The record-breaking number of apprehensions today has as much to do with Calvin Coolidge as it does with Donald Trump.

Unlike the overwhelmed humanitarian care organization of today, the primary mission of the Border Patrol, when it was established, was to enforce immigration laws. It was not to welcome, receive, and care for thousands of migrants illegally entering the country daily at the invitation of a new presidential administration. The current administration forced the agency to neglect its responsibility to the American public to safeguard its borders as a national security agency.

In Secretary Mayorkas’ political deflection of who might possibly be responsible for the deplorable conditions wrought upon border communities and the migrants themselves, he chooses to target the previous administration’s handling of immigration affairs. Rather than acknowledge the current border crisis is quickly getting out of control, Mayorkas chooses to engage in political deflection that is self-serving and protective towards an out-of-touch administration.

Agents assigned to the five Texas-based Border Patrol sectors apprehended more than 73 percent of all migrants apprehended in the nine southwest border sectors in June, Breitbart reported. The agents apprehended 146,212 migrants in the month of June alone.

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Del Rio, Big Bend, and El Paso Sectors apprehended 146,212 migrants in July, according to the Southwest Border Land Encounters report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection late last week. These include the apprehensions of 61,779 family unit aliens, 15,267 unaccompanied alien children, and 68,666 single adult aliens.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

Toddler Found in 100+ Degree Rail Car near Border in Texas

Del Rio Sector agents find a mother and her toddler-age child locked inside a 100+ degree rail car with no food or water. (Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Del Rio Sector)
Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Del Rio Sector
2:46

A Border Patrol K-9 team carrying out train inspections in the Del Rio Sector found a toddler and his mother locked inside a grain-hopper rail car. The mother and son were without food or water in triple-digit temperatures.

Del Rio Sector Border Patrol officials tweeted photos of a rail car inspection that led to the prevention of a potential tragedy. Agents came upon a mother and a toddler locked inside the hopper.

A Border Patrol K-9 alerted to the presence of “human cargo” inside the rail car. Upon inspection agents found the toddler wearing only a diaper. Officials said the mother and child had no food or water.

Apprehensions of migrants in the Del Rio Sector skyrocketed this fiscal year as agents took nearly 183,000 migrants into custody, according to the July Southwest Border Land Encounters report released late last week by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. This represents an increase of 533 percent over the same period last year and moved the Del Rio Sector to the position of second-busiest sector in the nation.

Agents in the Laredo and Del Rio Sectors frequently find migrants stashed in grain-hopper rail cars. One month ago, Laredo Sector agents found another child locked inside a similar rail car, Breitbart Texas reported.

“This dangerous method of traveling further into the United States after illegal entry is strongly discouraged as it often results in serious injury or death,” Laredo Sector officials said at the time. “Many times, undocumented individuals choose this grueling method of transportation without realizing the consequences of their actions until it is too late.  Fortunately, in this case, agents detected the individuals and were able to apprehend them before any fell victim to a heat-related injury.”

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

146,000 Migrants Apprehended in July in Texas-Based Border Sectors — Up 16 Percent from June

Another large group of nearly 300 migrants apprehended near La Grulla, Texas. (Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Rio Grande Valley Sector)
Photo: U.S. Border Patrol/Rio Grande Valley Sector
4:55

Border Patrol agents in the five Texas-based sectors apprehended 146,212 migrants in July who illegally crossed the border from Texas. This represents more than 73 percent of all migrants apprehended last month in the nine southwest border sectors. It also represents an increase of percent over June’s 126,485 apprehensions.

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, Del Rio, Big Bend, and El Paso Sectors apprehended 146,212 migrants in July, according to the Southwest Border Land Encounters report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection late last week. These include the apprehensions of 61,779 family unit aliens, 15,267 unaccompanied alien children, and 68,666 single adult aliens.

July Southwest Border Land Encounters by Sector -- U.S. Customs and Border Protection

July Southwest Border Land Encounters by Sector — U.S. Customs and Border Protection

While Texas is host to five of the nine southwest border sectors, the apprehension of migrants in these sectors accounts for 73 percent of the total apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border. The July apprehensions also show an increase from one month earlier of 16 percent.

Breitbart Texas reported last month that during the first nine months of Fiscal Year 2021 (which began on October 1, 2020) the Texas-based border sector agents apprehended more than 732,573 migrants. That number now stands at 878,785 apprehensions in ten months.

Agents in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in southeast Texas continue to lead all Border Patrol sectors with the apprehension of 80,306 migrants. These include 48,464 family units,20,803 single adults, and 11,036 unaccompanied children.

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The Del Rio Sector jumped into second place with the apprehension of 33,517 migrants including 21,079 single adults, 11,567 family units, and 881 unaccompanied minors.

During a visit to the Rio Grande Valley Sector last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters, “The situation at the border is one of the toughest challenges we face. It is complicated, changing, and involves vulnerable people at a time of a global pandemic,” Breitbart reported. He attempted to blame the Trump administration for the surge in what he called the “cruel policies of the past administration.”

Breitbart Texas’ Randy Clark, a 32-year Border Patrol veteran, responded to Mayorkas visit, saying, “Mayorkas failed to address the impact of thousands of migrants being detained in inhumane conditions due to the sheer volume of traffic crossing the southern border — a level that has overwhelmed available resources at all levels of government.”

Mayorkas also appeared to ignore recent reports showing that 20 percent of the migrant children being released into Texas under his administration are testing positive for COVID-19 — after being released by Border Patrol. Additionally, 18 percent of the migrant families being released are testing positive.

Many of the migrants being released by the Border Patrol are being placed on buses without being tested for the coronavirus and transported to major cities across Texas.

“What we’re doing is coordinating with the EMC, the emergency management coordinators, in Austin and Houston, and I believe even Dallas, too,” Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz, a Democrat, told reporters. “Then, it’s really up to them to continue offering PPEs, masks, hygiene, whatever they require.”

“The reason why we don’t do testing is that once you test, there’s an obligation,” Saenz explained. “If they’re positive, we’re told that you have to quarantine. We don’t have the infrastructure for that.”

“Border Patrol was very clear that they were just going to put them out in the street, in our plazas. And, of course, we couldn’t have that,” Saenz told reporters.

“I know some people may say, ‘you’re basically transporting untested people to other cities.’ And the answer is ‘yes,’ the border mayor concluded, “But what alternative do we have here, locally?”

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday-morning talk show. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.


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