Washington, D.C. (May 17, 2022) – A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies highlights the ineffectiveness of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, also known as the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). The analysis is based, in part, on a draft report recently obtained by Fox News, which provides transparency into a significant part of immigration enforcement that deserves greater attention as the Biden administration expands the use of ATD amid the significant influx of illegal immigration along the southwest border. Congress must consider whether funding alternatives to detention should continue in light of high absconding rates and harm to public safety; Congress must significantly increase funding for detention beds and support staff; and If Congress decides to continue funding detention alternatives, it should create significant criminal penalties for aliens who violate the terms of the program.
WATCH: Steady Stream of Migrants Cross Texas Border River Fox News Video Screenshot/Getty Photo 4:59
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents continue to report the crossings of thousands of migrants from Mexico into Texas. Videos show multiple streams of migrants illegally crossing the Rio Grande, hundreds at a time.
Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens tweeted a video report where he said nearly 3,000 migrants crossed the border over the weekend. Included in the groups were 67 unaccompanied alien children and 608 family units.
The agent encountered five large groups and interdicted 29 human smuggling attempts. They also carried out 7 rescue operations.
Fox News journalist Bill Melugin tweeted multiple videos showing groups of migrants streaming across the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas.
“The biggest group we’ve seen so far just crossed illegally into Eagle Pass, TX,” Melugin stated. “Several hundred. Many had already crossed before I started recording.”
An hour later he tweeted another video showing migrants crossing in an area where Texas National Guard soldiers report more than 2,000 crossed in the past eight days.
The Biden administration’s response is not to find ways of stopping the crossings or returning the migrants to Mexico. Rather, the president’s team continues to construct more detention centers to more quickly process the migrants and release them into the United States.
At some point during the day, a Border Patrol agent captured images of a large alligator moving through the area where migrants cross the Rio Grande.
Journalist Ali Bradley tweeted a video from one of her sources showing a group of more than 250 migrants crossing the border from Mexico into Texas near Eagle Pass.
“This area has been a major breach point in the Del Rio Sector since last week,” she reported.
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 41,000 migrants during the month of April, according to unofficial statistics obtained on May 2 by Breitbart Texas. The official report confirms the apprehension of 40,855 migrants — an increase of nearly 90 percent over April 2021.
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 Face .
JOE BIDEN: AMERICA’S DRUG DEALER!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/05/joe-biden-americas-drug-dealer-but-then.html
From April 2020 to April 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. An overwhelming majority of those deaths came from opioids, and fentanyl smuggling has surged at the southern border since the start of Joe Biden's presidency. Joseph Simonson and Collin Anderson
The Five’ react to America's fentanyl crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJzAsnWni6A
SHOCKING VIDEO!
They Need Counseling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGirVlyrUQ
" Along with Obama, Pelosi and Schumer are responsible for incalculable damage done to this country over the eight years of that administration." PATRICIA McCARTHY
Lawrence Jones follows bus of migrants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv0HaWimrxs
Biden administration truly a total dumpster fire: Rep. Cammack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18W_YpbgXiE
1700-Foot Drug Tunnel Found Connecting Tijuana with San Diego Homeland Security Investigations 2:42
Federal authorities announced the discovery of a 1,700-foot sophisticated narco-tunnel running from Tijuana to a California warehouse. Officials also seized a large volume of drugs and arrested six suspects.
This week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office from the Southern District of California announced the discovery. During a streamed news conference, U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman revealed the tunnel went to a warehouse about 300 feet north of the border, east of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry.
Authorities revealed the tunnel stretched 1,744 feet long, is 61 feet deep, and 4 feet at its widest segment. The structure had reinforced walls and electricity for lighting and ventilation.
On May 12, federal agents were carrying out surveillance at a house in National City, California, where they had previously seized 28 kilos of cocaine. From that house, authorities followed two women identified as Luz de Luna Olmos and Vanessa Ramirez, who drove to a store to purchase hand carts and then made their way to the warehouse in San Diego. The women drove inside the warehouse and out a few minutes later. Authorities followed and arrested them.
During a search, they found the entrance to the tunnel, which had been carved out on the floor. Federal authorities did not identify the cartel responsible for the tunnel.
Other agents surveilling the warehouse spotted vehicles driving in and out of the location. Agents followed and arrested the other suspects and seized a total of 1,762.15 pounds of cocaine, 165 pounds of methamphetamine, and 3.5 pounds of heroin.
Court documents identified the other drug couriers as Juan Cruz, Mario Jaramillo, Manuel Perez Herrera, and Adrian Enriquez.
All six suspects live in or near the San Diego area and face drug conspiracy charges.
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 .
900 Pounds of Meth Seized at Texas Border Crossing U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Laredo OFO 2:32
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to a border crossing in Laredo, Texas, seized more than 900 pounds of methamphetamine. The officers found the $18 million worth of drugs in a tractor-trailer attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico.
CBP officers assigned to the World Trade Bridge in Laredo on May 6 observed a 2013 International trailer carrying a load of stainless steel scrap metal approach for entry inspection into the United States, according to information obtained from CBP officials in Laredo. An officer identified the driver as a 33-year-old male from Mexico. The officers referred the driver to a secondary inspection area.
During the secondary inspection, a CBP K-9 alerted to the possible presence of drugs in the load of scrap steel. A non-intrusive inspection scan of the load revealed containers hidden in the load.
A physical inspection of the trailer led to discovering 25 buckets containing 913 pounds of methamphetamine, officials stated. The street value of the load of drugs is estimated to be approximately $18,253,206.
“Officers assigned to CBP cargo facilities ensure effective border security by preventing and countering the flow of suspected narcotics entering the country,” Port Director Alberto Flores, Laredo Port of Entry, said in a written statement. “Large-scale seizures, such as this one, provide an excellent example of border security management and how it helps prevent illicit contraband from reaching our communities.”
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 Face .
The Silent Invasion and War at Home
It has been chilling to watch the steady number of deaths, the territory invaded, the executions and rapes, the fear and the flight. It is especially shocking because we had peace for so long, but now we see all the possibilities of evil coming out.
I'm not talking about Ukraine — I'm speaking of an invasion right here in the United States. Migrants, mostly Hispanic, are entering the U.S. at the rate of at least 2 million per year — or 20 million in the next decade — and with them come hundreds of thousands of violent gang members. Meanwhile, our own inner-city gangs are spreading out into affluent suburban areas, invading high-end shopping areas and stealing from stores and individuals, often at gunpoint and with deadly consequences.
I am not being alarmist or racist. I am simply describing what is happening and pointing out the future state of affairs if we do nothing. If anything, my numbers are low, and my words cannot describe the horror of what is happening.
The most numerous victims of this invasion are blacks and Hispanics who are attacked by young men of their own race. These are the forgotten men and women in our society, and this is a topic that mainstream news won't cover because the killers are mostly black and Hispanic. Just in 2020, the year of the "defund the police" protests, murders of blacks soared by 32%, and they're only continuing.
We're seeing an explosion in the number of carjackings and car thefts, along with murders, home invasions, rapes, assaults, and other violent crimes, not just in our cities, but in suburban areas as well. And authorities cannot or will not do anything to stop it. There has always been violent crime in Chicago, but now there seems to be a crime wave , and it includes the murder of children, police officers, and the elderly. The authorities mumble about "root causes," but social work won't reduce the numbers. We are at war, and war requires the use of force.
The perpetrators are largely the same in every location: young black and Hispanic men, heavily armed and with no apparent conscience or morality. They prey on the weak and take what they want, which seems to be money, sex, drugs, and a certain kind of street cred that they mistake for status.
These thugs now control the streets, even in many smaller cities. Mayors like Lori Lightfoot seem to have given up. They attempt to change the subject and ignore the problem, just as the Biden administration does.
Biden ignores the fact that we have been invaded by a powerful army of young men of similar backgrounds and natures — ruthless gang members and repeat offenders with the same teardrop tattoos signifying their having committed murder, the same cold, haughty stare, the same hostile swagger and domineering speech. These criminals have become so familiar that even some middle-class whites, through popular culture and rap music, have mistaken them for Robin Hood–type heroes.
They are anything but heroes. They inflict suffering and death on everyone around them. Like half-starved lions released into the Coliseum, they exist only to murder and prey on the weak.
More Americans have died in this war over the past decade (some 200,000) than Ukrainians who have died in their war (13,000 according to a recent count), and American cities are beginning to resemble the bombed out shells of civilization we see in Mariupol and Kharkiv. The difference is that everyone notices the destruction in Ukraine, but few understand the magnitude of violent crime in the U.S. If the media coverage were honest and proportional, Americans would demand change.
We have been invaded by an army that is worse than that of Russia. Unlike the hapless conscripts who constitute those Russian forces, the thugs who roam America are remorseless. If anything, they enjoy killing since it inflates their sense of power, especially their power over whites, and particularly white police officers, though black victims are hardly exempt. They are lean, muscled, and street-tough, and they are not afraid of getting caught since in most places there is no real punishment for "common" crimes like stealing cars or home break-ins, and little punishment for violent crime as well.
The invaders we face are violent and lack all compunction, but they are not all that numerous. They fit a similar profile — a certain type of young minority drop-out, stealing or selling drugs — but according to several estimates, they constitute at most one quarter of their demographic and a smaller percentage of Hispanics. Indeed, most blacks and Hispanics live in fear of these invaders, just as most whites do.
The Ukrainian army has repelled Russian forces in many areas. If the Ukrainians had been properly armed, they might have turned back the Russians at the beginning and saved their country so much suffering and destruction. In America, we don't even realize we have been invaded, or else we refuse to admit it. It's not "woke" to say that young black men commit murder at 18 times the rate of the general population. Not woke to say, as is true, that twice as many whites are murdered by blacks as are blacks by whites. Not woke to point out that fully one quarter of black men "end up in the criminal justice system," as Bernie Sanders has it .
One does not defeat an enemy by allowing it to murder, steal, and rape without resistance. The only way is to recognize that we have been invaded, and we are at war. War requires its own way of thinking and its own tactics and strategy. At present, we arrest criminals (a few of them, since 54% of reported violent crimes and more than 75% overall go unsolved ), charge them with a lesser offense, release them (in many places without bail), and watch them go right back to committing crimes. That is the wrong strategy for a state of war.
It is possible to defeat our enemy, but it will take a change of attitude. We must be willing to fund our police at maximum levels, support our police in their dangerous work, and indemnify them against unreasonable prosecution in their use of force, and we must elect prosecutors who actually prosecute this army of invaders. The recall of L.A. district attorney George Gascón might be a good start.
We are under attack, and the situation is getting worse. The only way to defeat an invading army is with greater force. We need to provide that force so that we can live safely once again.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Five Large Migrant Groups Cross into One Texas Border Sector U.S. Border Patrol/Del Rio Sector 5:06
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents encountered five large groups of migrants who illegally crossed the border during a 31-hour period over the weekend. Three of the groups crossed within 10 hours of each other.
“Hundreds at a time. That is what agents of the Del Rio Sector are seeing almost daily,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens tweeted. “This adds to the already record number of apprehensions.”
Border Patrol officials define a “large group” as more than 100 migrants crossing the border in a single incident. So far this fiscal year, which began October 1, 2021, the sector’s agents encountered 108 large groups. This accounts “for approximately half the large groups encountered by Border Patrol nationwide.”
Beginning on the morning of May 14, agents encountered a group fo 129 migrants who crossed into Texas from Mexico. The group included migrants from six unique nations including Colombia (28), Cuba (78), Mexico (1), Nicaragua (1), Peru (13), and Venezuela (13). The group included 76 single adult males, 32 single adult females, and seven family units, officials reported.
As darkness approached, another group of 126 migrants crossed the border and were taken into custody. This group consisted of 40 Colombians, 61 Cubans, 13 Peruvians, and 12 Venezuelans. The group included 69 single adult males, 27 single adult females, 29 family unit migrants, and one unaccompanied child.
The following morning, Del Rio Sector agents encountered a group of 107 migrants — 89 Cuban nationals, 14 Venezuelan nationals, two Ecuadorians, and two from Peru. The group consisted of 67 single adult males, 28 single adult females, and 12 family unit migrants.
A few hours later, another group crossed. This time, consisting of 122 migrants including 60 Cuban nationals, 19 Venezuelans, 38 Colombians, two Peruvians, two Nicaraguans, and one Dominican. The group’s demographics included 61 single adult males, 27 single adult females, 33 family unit migrants, and one unaccompanied child.
Finally, another group crossed the border from Mexico and entered Texas. The group of 147 migrants included 22 Cuban nationals, 21 Venezuelan nationals, 52 Colombians, 28 from Peru, 23 from Nicaragua, and one Honduran. The group consisted of 90 single adult males, 21 single adult females, and 36 family unit migrants.
Breitbart Texas reported over the weekend that another unaccompanied minor, a two-year-old girl, was placed into the hands of a migrant by human smugglers and told to take the child across the river where dozens of people, including small children, have drowned during the past two months.
In total, the agents apprehended 631 migrants in the five large groups.
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 Face .
Washington, D.C. (May 19, 2020) - In this week’s episode of
Parsing Immigration Policy , guest Phillip Linderman discusses the history of the Cuban migrant program and provides policy recommendations. Linderman, a retired State Department Foreign Service Officer, served in Trinidad, Chile, Cuba, and post-communist East Germany before returning to Washington, D.C. to work at the Organization of American States. During his time abroad, Linderman worked in the consular sector of the State Department, which was primarily charged with helping American citizens abroad and issuing visas and passports.
The Cuban migrant program began with the Mariel boatlift orchestrated by Fidel Castro in 1980, allowing over 100,000 Cubans to flee to the United States. Castro had long used this tactic to rid Cuba of those hostile to the regime and to clear out prisons and mental institutions. Castro returned to this strategy again in the early 1990s, during the collapse of regimes in Soviet-bloc countries. The Clinton administration reached an agreement with the Castro government to grant Cubans at least 30,000 visas a year - an agreement that still stands today.
In his conversation with Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of
Parsing Immigration Policy , Linderman argues that this policy has allowed the regime to survive. Rather than fight the regime in Cuba, many disillusioned and anti-communist Cubans instead obtain visas to the United States. He contends that terminating this agreement would enable regime change in Cuba and promote democracy.
Sen. Johnson blasts DHS's new misinformation board as 'Orwellian' Congressman Tells DHS Secretary Mayorkas During Testimony: ‘You Have Repeatedly Lied’ … HE’S A LAWYER. HE IS INCAPABLE OF BEING HONEST IF YOU BRIBED HIM! Former Vice President Joe Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), despite his role in creating huge Latin American migration and his involvement in several visas-for-sale scandals. Title 42 and Chaos on the Border Mayorkas is not America’s guardian -- he's its innkeeper.
Thu May 19, 2022 On May 15, 2022 Fox News reported, The end of Title 42 will create ‘chaos all across the border,' former ICE director warns . That report began with the following:
Former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan warned on Sunday that the Biden administration's move to end the use of the Title 42 public health order to expel migrants at the border will create "chaos all across the border."
The policy, used since March 2020 under both Presidents Trump and Biden, provided the ability for American officials to bar migrants from entering the country during a health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last month, the Biden administration confirmed it will terminate the policy at the end of May despite objections from both Democrats and Republicans warning that it would trigger a massive migrant wave.
Those very serious concerns are well founded, nevertheless, the Biden Administration appears determined to go forward with its plan of ending Title 42.
Under Title 42 illegal aliens who apply for political asylum can be turned around at the border out of public health concerns. Once Title 42, which was imposed by the Trump administration I terminated, the Biden administration will welcome all illegal aliens into the United States even though there is no way to properly vet these aliens. Consider this warning contained in the official report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel :
Terrorists in the 1990s, as well as the September 11 hijackers, needed to find a way to stay in or embed themselves in the United States if their operational plans were to come to fruition. As already discussed, this could be accomplished legally by marrying an American citizen, achieving temporary worker status, or applying for asylum after entering. In many cases, the act of filing for an immigration benefit sufficed to permit the alien to remain in the country until the petition was adjudicated. Terrorists were free to conduct surveillance, coordinate operations, obtain and receive funding, go to school and learn English, make contacts in the United States, acquire necessary materials, and execute an attack.
Because of the huge numbers of illegal aliens who have been welcomed into the United State, most will not be required to go before an immigration judge for many years. And, if they fail to show up for their hearings years from now, what resources will the U.S. have to search for them? We are talking about millions of illegal aliens.
The obvious question is why the hell would the Biden administration refuse to secure our borders against the entry of record number of illegal aliens and refuse to enforce our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States- thus endangering national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of Americans?
My recent article, Mayorkas Lives Up to Expectations as Zealous Opponent of Immigration Law Enforcement was predicated on his checkered past and his recent Congressional testimony about how DHS released terrorists who were apprehended recently attempting to enter the United States along with his policies to permit and not deter illegal aliens from entering the United States.
This lunacy not only runs contrary to the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and our laws and the Constitution (Article IV Relationships Between the States- Section 4 Obligations of United States to States ) which states:
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
The actions and policies of the Biden administration also run contrary to the findings and concerns provided at numerous Congressional hearings in both the House and Senate. Consider, for example a hearing that was conducted on April 17, 2018 by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence on the topic: State Sponsors Of Terrorism: An Examination Of Iran's Global Terrorism Network . Here is the Link to YouTube Video and a Link to the video provided on Congressional website .
Here is an important and chilling excerpt of the prepared testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:
In recent years, Hezbollah’ s Latin American networks have also increasingly cooperated with violent drug cartels and criminal syndicates, often with the assistance of local corrupt political elites. Cooperation includes laundering of drug money; arranging multi-ton shipments of cocaine to the United States and Europe; and directly distributing and selling illicit substances to distant markets. Proceeds from these activities finance Hezbollah’ s arms procurement; its terror activities overseas; its hold on Lebanon’ s political system; and its efforts, both in Lebanon and overseas, to keep Shi’ a communities loyal to its cause and complicit in its endeavors.
This toxic crime-terror nexus is fueling both the rising threat of global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into the United States. It is sustaining Hezbollah’ s growing financial needs. It is helping Iran and Hezbollah consolidate a local constituency in multiple countries across Latin America. It is thus facilitating their efforts to build safe havens for terrorists and a continent-wide terror infrastructure that they could use to strike U.S. targets.
Shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, following my appearance before numerous Congressional hearings to provide expert testimony about the nexus between immigration and national security, I was a frequent guest on most of the major news program on many networks.
During one of my first appearance on Lou Dobbs program on CNN Lou asked me to explain what what going on that convinced so many illegal aliens to head for the United States borders. My off the cuff answer became one of my most frequently plagiarized statements, “No one would break into the amusement park if they could not get to go on the rides. Today American taxpayers are paying for them to get on those rides, so why should anyone be surprised that they are coming?”
Today the Biden administration is so absolutely determined to provide for the needs of illegal aliens that includes baby formulas when Americans are unable to find it on the store shelves in their neighborhoods.
On May 12, 2022 Fox News reported: GOP rep says illegal migrants sent ‘pallets’ of hard-to-find baby formula .
The issue is not that the administration is providing formula for alien infants- but that there is an abject shortage of vital nutrients for American infants. Parents are expected to care for their own children before providing for others. Governments are similarly compelled prioritize their own citizens before they help others.
Clearly the Biden administration and the radicals who now control the Democrat Party seek to “fundamentally change America” as I previous observed, For Dems to Succeed, Americans Must Fail
But there may well be another motivation. My recent article, Biden Administration Providing the Best Government Money Can Buy may help to explain an additional motivation by this administration to undermine national security, public safety and the future of our nation and our citizens- good, old-fashioned CORRUPTION!
Here is an excerpt from my article:
There are many potential reasons the administration is eager to remove one of the barriers to unfettered illegal immigration. Judicial Watch Corruption Chronicles recently published an article that may explain at least one of the motivations for this impending betrayal of America to be launched by the Biden administration.
Here is how the Judicial Watch report began:
A nonprofit that hired a Biden administration official received a huge no-bid government contract that wasted $17 million on unused hotel rooms for illegal immigrants, a federal audit reveals. The politically connected group, which had no experience providing the services covered by the sole source federal contract, also failed to meet COVID-19 health protocols required by the government when the deal was signed. The highly questionable arrangement was executed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Homeland Security agency responsible for housing migrant families in detention. The agency typically uses Family Residential Centers (FRC) to house family units, but in early 2021 ICE anticipated increased apprehensions of illegal immigrant families along the southern border and awarded a contract to harbor them in hotels while completing intake processing, auditors from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General explain in a recent report.
The group that received the lucrative no-bid award, Endeavors, had never provided beds or all-inclusive emergency family residential services when ICE hired it to do so, auditors found. Formerly known as Family Endeavors, the Texas based nonprofit claims to passionately serve vulnerable people in crisis through its innovative, personalized approach. Last year a national news outlet reported that Endeavors won a colossal $530 million government contract just months after it hired Biden administration official Andrew Lorenzen-Straight as its senior director for migrant services and federal affairs. The contract is by far the largest ever awarded to the nonprofit, according to the article, and is potentially worth more than 12 times the group’ s most recently reported annual budget. Lorenzen-Strait, a former ICE official who also advised the Biden-Harris transition team on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policy and staffing matters, must have pulled some strings.
The report was predicated on a report issued by the Office of Inspector General on April 22, 2022.
It has been estimated that termination of Title 42 could result in at least the doubling of the number of illegal aliens who would flood across the border. Imagine how much more money would be given to the “non-profit” NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) turning DHS into America’s “Inn Keeper!” I used to refer to DHS as the Department of Homeland Surrender under Biden and Mayorkas- perhaps DHS also stands for Department of Hospitality Services!
The Biden administration needs a new cabinet level official- the Official Auctioneer!
SW Border Encounters: Cubans Up 939% Over Last April; Nicaraguans +308%; Colombians + 4,837%
Illegal immigration at the border in San Luis, Arizona. (Photo by Nick Ut/Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) – With five months of the fiscal year yet to go, the number of migrants encountered at the southwest border from countries other than Mexico and the “northern triangle” is already 33 percent higher than the number encountered in the entire fiscal year 2021.
The number of all migrants trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, is expected to rise even more – and significantly so – if Title 42 is terminated, according to Republican critics.
The public health authority, which since 2020 has allowed the expulsion of illegal migrants without a court hearing due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19, is set to expire on May 23, unless federal court action delays or prevents the move.
Overall, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a new record-high 234,088 encounters in April with migrants of all nationalities trying to enter the U.S. illegally on the southwest border, stopped either by U.S. Border Patrol agents or by the Office of Field Operations officers at a port of entry. That’s 30.9 percent more than in April 2021, when a total of 178,795 encounters were reported.
Leaving aside encounters with migrants from Mexico and the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the CBP recorded 108,555 encounters in April with individuals from the rest of the world.
(Graph: CNSNews.com/Data: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
That figure is also a new record-high, an increase of 23 percent from the 88,327 reported one month earlier, and a jump of 220 percent from April 2021, when 33,897 encounters were recorded.
The April figure for this cohort – everyone not from Mexico and the northern triangle – brings the year-to-date total for FY 2022 to 502,743, compared to 378,043 for all of FY 2021.
Migrants originating from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Colombia have accounted for especially large increases in the number of encounters over the past year.
--34,821 encounters with Cubans were reported in April, compared to 3,288 in April 2021, an increase of 939 percent.
--12,563 encounters with Nicaraguans were reported in April, compared to 3,074 in April last year, up by 308 percent.
--12,837 encounters with migrants from Colombia were reported in April, compared to just 260 in April 2021, an increase of 4,837 percent.
(Graph: CNSNews.com/Data: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
Mexico accounted for the largest number of encounters along the southwest border last month – 81,784, up from 65,597 in April 2021.
For each of the three northern triangle countries of Central America, however, the April figures were down from the same month last year: Guatemala 19,841 (down from 30,053 in April 2021), El Salvador 8,327 (down from 11,043 a year earlier), and Honduras 15,581 (down from 38,205 a year earlier).
The CBP tallies “encounters” with illegal migrants since it says many individuals are stopped more than once. Of the total of 234,088 southwest border migrant encounters in April, it said 28 percent were with people who had been involved in at least one previous encounter over the past 12 months.
Of the total 234,088 encounters in April, 96,908 (41 percent) of the individuals stopped were processed for expulsion under the pandemic-related Title 42, and 137,180 were processed under the traditional Title 8 authority.
Title 8 allows for the speedy removal of anyone who attempts to enter without authorization, and who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain, such as a valid asylum claim.
Joe Biden Tosses Cuba Regime a Financial Lifeline After Mass Jailing of Child Political Prisoners Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images 6:11
The administration of leftist President Joe Biden announced late on Monday that it would undo measures implemented under his predecessor Donald Trump to keep American money from enriching Cuba’s communist regime and would expand travel to the country and remove limits on cash flows to the regime in the form of remittances.
The move came on the same day that the Communist Party implemented a new penal code that allows the state to imprison a Cuban national for three years for the crime of “insulting” a regime official. The Castro regime previously imprisoned Cubans for insulting officials but typically had to resort to imprisoning citizens on shaky legal grounds, accusing them of “crimes” like “desacato ” (“disrespect”) or public disorder. The new penal code, which created 37 new “crimes,” eliminates the need for the regime to attempt to justify or whitewash its political repression.
The Biden administration’s move also follows a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents – some of whom protested the Castro regime by waving American flags – who participated in the mass national protests on July 11, 2021.
An estimated 187,000 people took to the streets of nearly every municipality on the island of Cuba that day to demand an end to communism, resulting in widespread arrests and human rights abuses such as violent door-to-door raids on suspected protesters. In one case, Cuban regime agents shot a man suspected of having protested in his own living room – in front of his toddler twin sons.
Following the protests and door-to-door raids against peaceful protesters, Cuba’s legal system conducted mass trials of up to 30 people at once, often sentencing them to decades in prison for “vandalism,” “sedition,” and other crimes like “disrespect.” Many of those sentenced are children. In March, the Castro regime sentenced two 16-year-old boys to ten years in prison and a 17-year-old boy to 19 years in prison for opposing communism.
Despite the repression, protests have continued consistently on the island, now far from the spotlight of American corporate media.
Cuba is a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism. For its egregious human rights violations, the State Department announced a series of rewards to the Castro regime on Monday that it masked as “measures to support the Cuban people.”
“We will authorize scheduled and charter flights to locations beyond Havana. We also will implement regulatory changes to reinstate group people-to-people and other categories of group educational travel, as well as certain travel related to professional meetings and professional research,” the State Department announced, “including to support expanded Internet access and remittance processing companies and to provide additional support to Cuban entrepreneurs.”
“Group people-to-people” is an exemption to travel restrictions – allegedly in place to prohibit Americans from engaging in tourism in Cuba – that essentially allows tourism but is defined as “education” for authorized organizations with the White House’s blessing, like universities . The most egregious abuse of “group people-to-people” to allow tourism by Americans was the granting of licenses under that exemption to luxury cruise lines to access Cuban ports.
President Trump eliminated the “group people-to-people” exception in 2019. An analog created by President Barack Obama – “individual people-to-people,” which essentially legalized tourism and made it possible for a parade of Hollywood celebrities to flood Havana and enrich the regime during the Obama era – also disappeared under Trump.
The State Department also announced it would “ensure that remittances flow more freely to the Cuban people while not enriching those who perpetrate human rights abuses. Specifically, we will remove the current limit on family remittances of $1,000 per quarter per sender-receiver pair and will authorize donative (i.e., non-family) remittances, which will support independent Cuban entrepreneurs.”
The State Department did not explain how it would ensure that lifting limits on remittances – a core source of revenue for the Castro regime – would not enrich “those who perpetrate human rights abuses” or if it had implemented any measures to fulfill that promise.
“We will make it easier for families to visit their relatives in Cuba and for authorized U.S. travelers to engage with the Cuban people, attend meetings, and conduct research,” State Department spokesman Ned Price claimed . “We will encourage the growth of Cuba’s private sector by supporting greater access to U.S. Internet services, applications, and e-commerce platforms.”
As a communist country, Cuba does not have a legal “private sector.”
Cuba’s Foreign Relations Ministry (Minrex) celebrated the measures in a statement late Tuesday, calling them “positive but of very limited reach.” Minrex applauded Biden for “alleviating [the effects] of inhuman decisions taken by the government of President Trump.”
Minrex helped sell the Biden administration’s spin that the new measures, which will aid the Castro regime tremendously, “do not modify the blockade in any way absolutely, or the principal economic measures taken by Trump,” but conceded that Biden had taken “a limited step in the right direction” in the eyes of the communists.
“The government of Cuba reiterates its disposition to initiate a respectful dialogue on equal footing with the government of the United States,” the regime agency said.
Cuba regularly interrupts international diplomatic events with mob attacks and interrupts discussion panels featuring political dissidents with disruptive shouting until event organizers give up and cancel the event.
The Biden team had campaigned on reversing Trump’s Cuba policies – a move that likely contributed to Democrats’ catastrophic collapse in support among Hispanic Americans – but officials admitted that rewarding the Castro regime after the repression of July 11 protesters was too politically toxic, so they “hit the pause button ” last year.
WH: DHS Disinformation Board Paused for Assessment, But Work Will Continue
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre arrives for the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 18, 2022. (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) - White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that DHS is pausing its Disinformation Governance Board so that there can be an “assessment” by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, but “DHS is still going to continue the work.”
The Five’ react to America's fentanyl crisis They Need Counseling Biden administration truly a total dumpster fire: Rep. Cammack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18W_YpbgXiE
High rates of absconding and significant criminality strongly suggest the ATD program is undermining immigration enforcement
Washington, D.C. (May 17, 2022) – A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies highlights the ineffectiveness of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, also known as the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). The analysis is based, in part, on a draft report recently obtained by Fox News, which provides transparency into a significant part of immigration enforcement that deserves greater attention as the Biden administration expands the use of ATD amid the significant influx of illegal immigration along the southwest border. Congress must consider whether funding alternatives to detention should continue in light of high absconding rates and harm to public safety; Congress must significantly increase funding for detention beds and support staff; and If Congress decides to continue funding detention alternatives, it should create significant criminal penalties for aliens who violate the terms of the program.
WATCH: Steady Stream of Migrants Cross Texas Border River Fox News Video Screenshot/Getty Photo 4:59
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents continue to report the crossings of thousands of migrants from Mexico into Texas. Videos show multiple streams of migrants illegally crossing the Rio Grande, hundreds at a time.
Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens tweeted a video report where he said nearly 3,000 migrants crossed the border over the weekend. Included in the groups were 67 unaccompanied alien children and 608 family units.
The agent encountered five large groups and interdicted 29 human smuggling attempts. They also carried out 7 rescue operations.
Fox News journalist Bill Melugin tweeted multiple videos showing groups of migrants streaming across the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas.
“The biggest group we’ve seen so far just crossed illegally into Eagle Pass, TX,” Melugin stated. “Several hundred. Many had already crossed before I started recording.”
An hour later he tweeted another video showing migrants crossing in an area where Texas National Guard soldiers report more than 2,000 crossed in the past eight days.
The Biden administration’s response is not to find ways of stopping the crossings or returning the migrants to Mexico. Rather, the president’s team continues to construct more detention centers to more quickly process the migrants and release them into the United States.
At some point during the day, a Border Patrol agent captured images of a large alligator moving through the area where migrants cross the Rio Grande.
Journalist Ali Bradley tweeted a video from one of her sources showing a group of more than 250 migrants crossing the border from Mexico into Texas near Eagle Pass.
“This area has been a major breach point in the Del Rio Sector since last week,” she reported.
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 41,000 migrants during the month of April, according to unofficial statistics obtained on May 2 by Breitbart Texas. The official report confirms the apprehension of 40,855 migrants — an increase of nearly 90 percent over April 2021.
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 Face .
The Five’ react to America's fentanyl crisis They Need Counseling Biden administration truly a total dumpster fire: Rep. Cammack 1700-Foot Drug Tunnel Found Connecting Tijuana with San Diego Homeland Security Investigations 2:42
Federal authorities announced the discovery of a 1,700-foot sophisticated narco-tunnel running from Tijuana to a California warehouse. Officials also seized a large volume of drugs and arrested six suspects.
This week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office from the Southern District of California announced the discovery. During a streamed news conference, U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman revealed the tunnel went to a warehouse about 300 feet north of the border, east of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry.
Authorities revealed the tunnel stretched 1,744 feet long, is 61 feet deep, and 4 feet at its widest segment. The structure had reinforced walls and electricity for lighting and ventilation.
On May 12, federal agents were carrying out surveillance at a house in National City, California, where they had previously seized 28 kilos of cocaine. From that house, authorities followed two women identified as Luz de Luna Olmos and Vanessa Ramirez, who drove to a store to purchase hand carts and then made their way to the warehouse in San Diego. The women drove inside the warehouse and out a few minutes later. Authorities followed and arrested them.
During a search, they found the entrance to the tunnel, which had been carved out on the floor. Federal authorities did not identify the cartel responsible for the tunnel.
Other agents surveilling the warehouse spotted vehicles driving in and out of the location. Agents followed and arrested the other suspects and seized a total of 1,762.15 pounds of cocaine, 165 pounds of methamphetamine, and 3.5 pounds of heroin.
Court documents identified the other drug couriers as Juan Cruz, Mario Jaramillo, Manuel Perez Herrera, and Adrian Enriquez.
All six suspects live in or near the San Diego area and face drug conspiracy charges.
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 .
900 Pounds of Meth Seized at Texas Border Crossing U.S. Customs and Border Protection/Laredo OFO 2:32
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers assigned to a border crossing in Laredo, Texas, seized more than 900 pounds of methamphetamine. The officers found the $18 million worth of drugs in a tractor-trailer attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico.
CBP officers assigned to the World Trade Bridge in Laredo on May 6 observed a 2013 International trailer carrying a load of stainless steel scrap metal approach for entry inspection into the United States, according to information obtained from CBP officials in Laredo. An officer identified the driver as a 33-year-old male from Mexico. The officers referred the driver to a secondary inspection area.
During the secondary inspection, a CBP K-9 alerted to the possible presence of drugs in the load of scrap steel. A non-intrusive inspection scan of the load revealed containers hidden in the load.
A physical inspection of the trailer led to discovering 25 buckets containing 913 pounds of methamphetamine, officials stated. The street value of the load of drugs is estimated to be approximately $18,253,206.
“Officers assigned to CBP cargo facilities ensure effective border security by preventing and countering the flow of suspected narcotics entering the country,” Port Director Alberto Flores, Laredo Port of Entry, said in a written statement. “Large-scale seizures, such as this one, provide an excellent example of border security management and how it helps prevent illicit contraband from reaching our communities.”
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 Face .
The Silent Invasion and War at Home
It has been chilling to watch the steady number of deaths, the territory invaded, the executions and rapes, the fear and the flight. It is especially shocking because we had peace for so long, but now we see all the possibilities of evil coming out.
I'm not talking about Ukraine — I'm speaking of an invasion right here in the United States. Migrants, mostly Hispanic, are entering the U.S. at the rate of at least 2 million per year — or 20 million in the next decade — and with them come hundreds of thousands of violent gang members. Meanwhile, our own inner-city gangs are spreading out into affluent suburban areas, invading high-end shopping areas and stealing from stores and individuals, often at gunpoint and with deadly consequences.
I am not being alarmist or racist. I am simply describing what is happening and pointing out the future state of affairs if we do nothing. If anything, my numbers are low, and my words cannot describe the horror of what is happening.
The most numerous victims of this invasion are blacks and Hispanics who are attacked by young men of their own race. These are the forgotten men and women in our society, and this is a topic that mainstream news won't cover because the killers are mostly black and Hispanic. Just in 2020, the year of the "defund the police" protests, murders of blacks soared by 32%, and they're only continuing.
We're seeing an explosion in the number of carjackings and car thefts, along with murders, home invasions, rapes, assaults, and other violent crimes, not just in our cities, but in suburban areas as well. And authorities cannot or will not do anything to stop it. There has always been violent crime in Chicago, but now there seems to be a crime wave , and it includes the murder of children, police officers, and the elderly. The authorities mumble about "root causes," but social work won't reduce the numbers. We are at war, and war requires the use of force.
The perpetrators are largely the same in every location: young black and Hispanic men, heavily armed and with no apparent conscience or morality. They prey on the weak and take what they want, which seems to be money, sex, drugs, and a certain kind of street cred that they mistake for status.
These thugs now control the streets, even in many smaller cities. Mayors like Lori Lightfoot seem to have given up. They attempt to change the subject and ignore the problem, just as the Biden administration does.
Biden ignores the fact that we have been invaded by a powerful army of young men of similar backgrounds and natures — ruthless gang members and repeat offenders with the same teardrop tattoos signifying their having committed murder, the same cold, haughty stare, the same hostile swagger and domineering speech. These criminals have become so familiar that even some middle-class whites, through popular culture and rap music, have mistaken them for Robin Hood–type heroes.
They are anything but heroes. They inflict suffering and death on everyone around them. Like half-starved lions released into the Coliseum, they exist only to murder and prey on the weak.
More Americans have died in this war over the past decade (some 200,000) than Ukrainians who have died in their war (13,000 according to a recent count), and American cities are beginning to resemble the bombed out shells of civilization we see in Mariupol and Kharkiv. The difference is that everyone notices the destruction in Ukraine, but few understand the magnitude of violent crime in the U.S. If the media coverage were honest and proportional, Americans would demand change.
We have been invaded by an army that is worse than that of Russia. Unlike the hapless conscripts who constitute those Russian forces, the thugs who roam America are remorseless. If anything, they enjoy killing since it inflates their sense of power, especially their power over whites, and particularly white police officers, though black victims are hardly exempt. They are lean, muscled, and street-tough, and they are not afraid of getting caught since in most places there is no real punishment for "common" crimes like stealing cars or home break-ins, and little punishment for violent crime as well.
The invaders we face are violent and lack all compunction, but they are not all that numerous. They fit a similar profile — a certain type of young minority drop-out, stealing or selling drugs — but according to several estimates, they constitute at most one quarter of their demographic and a smaller percentage of Hispanics. Indeed, most blacks and Hispanics live in fear of these invaders, just as most whites do.
The Ukrainian army has repelled Russian forces in many areas. If the Ukrainians had been properly armed, they might have turned back the Russians at the beginning and saved their country so much suffering and destruction. In America, we don't even realize we have been invaded, or else we refuse to admit it. It's not "woke" to say that young black men commit murder at 18 times the rate of the general population. Not woke to say, as is true, that twice as many whites are murdered by blacks as are blacks by whites. Not woke to point out that fully one quarter of black men "end up in the criminal justice system," as Bernie Sanders has it .
One does not defeat an enemy by allowing it to murder, steal, and rape without resistance. The only way is to recognize that we have been invaded, and we are at war. War requires its own way of thinking and its own tactics and strategy. At present, we arrest criminals (a few of them, since 54% of reported violent crimes and more than 75% overall go unsolved ), charge them with a lesser offense, release them (in many places without bail), and watch them go right back to committing crimes. That is the wrong strategy for a state of war.
It is possible to defeat our enemy, but it will take a change of attitude. We must be willing to fund our police at maximum levels, support our police in their dangerous work, and indemnify them against unreasonable prosecution in their use of force, and we must elect prosecutors who actually prosecute this army of invaders. The recall of L.A. district attorney George Gascón might be a good start.
We are under attack, and the situation is getting worse. The only way to defeat an invading army is with greater force. We need to provide that force so that we can live safely once again.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Five Large Migrant Groups Cross into One Texas Border Sector U.S. Border Patrol/Del Rio Sector 5:06
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents encountered five large groups of migrants who illegally crossed the border during a 31-hour period over the weekend. Three of the groups crossed within 10 hours of each other.
“Hundreds at a time. That is what agents of the Del Rio Sector are seeing almost daily,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens tweeted. “This adds to the already record number of apprehensions.”
Border Patrol officials define a “large group” as more than 100 migrants crossing the border in a single incident. So far this fiscal year, which began October 1, 2021, the sector’s agents encountered 108 large groups. This accounts “for approximately half the large groups encountered by Border Patrol nationwide.”
Beginning on the morning of May 14, agents encountered a group fo 129 migrants who crossed into Texas from Mexico. The group included migrants from six unique nations including Colombia (28), Cuba (78), Mexico (1), Nicaragua (1), Peru (13), and Venezuela (13). The group included 76 single adult males, 32 single adult females, and seven family units, officials reported.
As darkness approached, another group of 126 migrants crossed the border and were taken into custody. This group consisted of 40 Colombians, 61 Cubans, 13 Peruvians, and 12 Venezuelans. The group included 69 single adult males, 27 single adult females, 29 family unit migrants, and one unaccompanied child.
The following morning, Del Rio Sector agents encountered a group of 107 migrants — 89 Cuban nationals, 14 Venezuelan nationals, two Ecuadorians, and two from Peru. The group consisted of 67 single adult males, 28 single adult females, and 12 family unit migrants.
A few hours later, another group crossed. This time, consisting of 122 migrants including 60 Cuban nationals, 19 Venezuelans, 38 Colombians, two Peruvians, two Nicaraguans, and one Dominican. The group’s demographics included 61 single adult males, 27 single adult females, 33 family unit migrants, and one unaccompanied child.
Finally, another group crossed the border from Mexico and entered Texas. The group of 147 migrants included 22 Cuban nationals, 21 Venezuelan nationals, 52 Colombians, 28 from Peru, 23 from Nicaragua, and one Honduran. The group consisted of 90 single adult males, 21 single adult females, and 36 family unit migrants.
Breitbart Texas reported over the weekend that another unaccompanied minor, a two-year-old girl, was placed into the hands of a migrant by human smugglers and told to take the child across the river where dozens of people, including small children, have drowned during the past two months.
In total, the agents apprehended 631 migrants in the five large groups.
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 Face . Warning Shot: DeSantis Plans to Use Funds to Bus Illegal Immigrants Dumped in Florida to Biden’s Delaware No one has “done more to help the cartels” than President Biden with his embrace of radical open-border policies, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Wednesday, noting that Americans are “bracing” for the administration’s repeal of Title 42 and warning that his administration plans to bus illegal immigrants dumped in Florida to Biden’s Delaware.
Americans are “bracing” for the Biden administration to end the Trump-era Title 42 at the southern border, which allowed agents to more easily turn illegal immigrants away. Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana extended the temporary restraining order preventing the Biden administration from ending the rule.
DeSantis said “almost 2.5 million people” have illegally crossed the southern border since Biden became president, emphasizing how that impacts quality of life for the American people.
“What does that mean in terms of the quality of life for Americans? Well, we know we’ve seen record human trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking such that now the number one cause of death for people 18 to 45 in the United States of America is fentanyl overdose,” he explained.
President Joe Biden speaks during an event in the East Room of the White House, Monday, May 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
“They may be making it in China, but they are bringing it all right across the southern border because of what he’s doing now. Even as bad as those numbers are, that has all been done with this Title 42 in place,” he said, predicting an even greater wave of illegal immigrants once Title 42 is removed.
Migrants make their way toward a bus after being apprehended near the border between Mexico and the United States in Del Rio, Texas on May 16, 2021. (SERGIO FLORES/AFP via Getty Images)
“You’re gonna see a major flood of people going across the southern border, and we’ve taken action,” he said, recalling how Florida sent assistance last year to Texas as they dealt with the migrant crisis in their own backyard.
Officials walk past images of illegal drugs outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, May 13, 2021, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
DeSantis also criticized Biden’s embrace of Catch and Release, noting that Florida took legal action over it. The governor said he plans to sign a bill in the next few weeks that will continue to fight the Biden administration’s open-border policies.
“I’m also going to sign a bill here in the next couple of weeks that any of if there’s contractors that the federal government hires to dump illegal aliens in Florida, then those contractors forfeit the ability to do business with the state or with local communities. And we’re just not gonna do it,” he said, adding his administration will bus illegal immigrants to Delaware and elsewhere if Biden attempts to dump illegal immigrants in the Sunshine State.
I have “money from the Legislature which will be available starting in June so that if Biden is busing illegal aliens into our state, we’re taking those buses and rerouting them to Delaware and other jurisdictions,” he said. “So stay tuned on that.”
“You know, those border communities are just getting killed down in southern Texas,” DeSantis said. “Biden should be given an honorary membership in the Mexican drug cartels because nobody has done more to help the cartels than Biden with his open-border policies.”
“It’s been a disaster. I fear with Title 42, if they do repeal it, I think things are fixing to get even worse,” he added.
WATCH:
EXCLUSIVE – Biden’s Concessions to Venezuela, Cuba Regimes Frustrate, Baffle Hispanics Scott Eisen / Spencer Platt / Carolina Cabral / Getty Images 9:53
The administration of President Joe Biden, both formally and via anonymous reports, announced twin policies to ease the financial misfortunes of the communist government of Cuba and its proxy socialist government in Venezuela, leaving leaders in both communities dismayed and confused.
The State Department announced a series of measures on Tuesday that would create a cash windfall for the Castro regime: the return of an exemption to the barely existent embargo known as “group people-to-people” travel – effectively legalizing tourism in groups to the island if disguised as “educational” – and the lifting of caps on sending remittances to the island set in place under former President Donald Trump. Tourism and remittances are key sources of revenue for the communist regime, whose military maintains a stranglehold on everything from money wiring enterprises to luxury hotels .
Later that day, multiple reports quoting anonymous Biden administration sources revealed that the White House would soon allow the oil corporation Chevron to resume business talks with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the Venezuelan regime-run oil company, and that it would lift sanctions on one person: socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s nephew, a former PDVSA official.
Both announcements preceded widely derided talks with both regimes. In March, Biden sent a delegation to Caracas to discuss, reports claimed, potentially resuming the purchase of Venezuelan oil to offset sanctions on Russia. Since Venezuela’s regime is heavily indebted to Russia, any payment for Venezuelan oil would likely go directly to Moscow, anyway. A month later, Biden’s team held a meeting with the Castro regime, reportedly to discuss refugees fleeing the island in droves after the violent repression of suspected political dissidents — including the shooting of suspected supporters of democracy at point-blank range in their own homes — and heading to the southern border. After President Barack Obama ended the “wet foot/dry foot” policy that allowed Cubans who made the 90-mile sea voyage to Florida to stay in the country legally, Cubans began using visa-free travel to countries like Guyana and Nicaragua to take the routes human traffickers control out of South America to Texas.
Activists, community leaders, and analysts from both countries told Breitbart News this week they expected no benefits to either Cubans or Venezuelans from the new pro-regime policies.
“The Biden policies are based on false premises,” Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, co-founder and spokesman for the Cuban Democratic Directorate (Directorio ), told Brietbart News on Tuesday. “(1) That with these measures they will regularize Cuban immigration to the US. They won’t. Cubans will continue fleeing a repressive tyranny they despise. And the Biden Administration has shown the Communist dictatorship in Cuba that it can once again blackmail the US by weaponizing immigration.”
The second premise, he continued, is “that these measures will help create an independent economic space in Cuba. They won’t. In a tightly controlled economy like Cuba, these measures will only aid the Cuban military dictatorship in settling up parasitic crony capitalism that will enrich their webs of patronage in Cuban society and not help the average Cubans.”
The third false premise, he added, was “that these measures will foster political freedoms. They won’t.”
“As the Regime’s statements following the policy announcements show, the dictatorship will not cede an inch,” he continued. “The Biden Policy statements came only hours after the Regime instituted an even more Draconian legal code which strictly formalizes punishment of dissent and international support for that dissent.”
The Communist Party had announced the creation of 37 new “crimes” on Monday, before the Biden administration’s announcement, including “insulting” regime officials, now punishable by three years in prison. Prior to the creation of the new penal code, the Castro regime still criminalized political dissent, but used a vague law known as desacato (“contempt”) against anyone suspected of not supporting the regime, or fabricated evidence that the victims of persecution were guilty of actual crimes like assault or robbery.
Daniel Llorente Miranda, a Cuban dissident who made international headlines in 2017 by interrupting Havana’s communist May Day parade and waving an American flag – prompting a gang beating by regime operatives – told Breitbart News that the new policies made him feel that “Biden does not respect the opinion and the position of the Cuban opposition.” Llorente, now based in Florida after a harrowing journey that began with his forced expatriation from Cuba at gunpoint, also lamented, however, that the Cuban opposition as a whole needed to improve “how to organize” in a way that would result in better policies, without elaborating.
Cuban dissident Daniel Llorente Miranda, an anti-communist, pro-American protester, was placed in one of the nation’s most notorious mental institutions following his interruption of the annual May Day parade, where he ran down the parade route waving an American flag in 2017. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Cuban activists similarly used social media to condemn the concessions to the regime.
“Yesterday, the Cuban regime approved one of the most severe penal codes against dissidents and civil society,” Cuban LGBT activist Magdiel Jorge Castro wrote on Twitter. “Today the U.S. government announces a package of measures to change its policy towards Cuba. Someone advise Joe Biden, he’s doing this very badly!”
Biden has faced pushback even from high-raking Democrats in the Cuban community. U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, lamented on Tuesday that the policy change “risks sending the wrong message to the wrong people, at the wrong time and for all the wrong reasons.”
“I am dismayed to learn the Biden administration will begin authorizing group travel to Cuba through visits akin to tourism,” Menendez lamented. “To be clear, those who still believe that increasing travel will breed democracy in Cuba are simply in a state of denial.”
Rubén Chirino Leañez, the CEO of the Venezuelan polling firm Meganálisis, told Breitbart News on Wednesday that the Biden policies for his country would likely meet with similar disgust as that of the Cubans. While a “mere political action” that Chirino said would likely result in no meaningful changes for the daily life of Venezuelans, Chirino highlighted that the Biden administration insisted, through anonymous senior officials, that Venezuela’s establishment opposition approve of the sanctions relief. The latest Meganálisis poll on the opposition, released in March, found that about 80 percent of respondents in the country believed the opposition was made up of “sellouts” or earnest socialists who supported the Maduro regime.
“The perception is strengthened of the opposition, like in the March Meganálisis poll, as an accomplice opposition, a sellout political opposition,” Chirino explained, “so much so that the very Biden administration almost, in a Pontius Pilate-style turn of phrase, washes its hands saying that everything it is doing is being done in coordination with the interim government of [President Juan Guaidó], which it continues to recognize, and of Guaidó as the leader of the opposition.”
By the rules of the Venezuelan constitution, Guaidó is the president of Venezuela. Dictator Nicolás Maduro maintains full control of the military, law enforcement, the courts, and every other practical government entity, rendering Guaidó de facto powerless. Guaidó has expressed support for dialogue, again, between Maduro and the opposition – the dialogue the Biden administration claimed the sanctions relief was meant to encourage.
“For the Biden government to confirm that it is acting in coordination with the Guaidó government is confirming that Guaidó and his interim government, that highly rejected group, validates the lifting of these two sanctions,” Chirino concluded. “As we know already, that group is seen as [by] over 80 percent of Venezuelans as a sector with no moral quality that sold out to the interests of socialism, that sold itself … it is a false opposition for the majority of Venezuelans.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido gestures during a rally in the framework of a demonstration heading to the National Assembly, at Las Mercedes district, in eastern Caracas, on March 10, 2020. (CRISTIAN HERNANDEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
The sanctions relief also gives the Venezuelan public the impression, Chirino observed, that the Biden administration is “a weak government [with] an absolute lack of strength.”
“Biden is a man who, from the moment that he assumed power, in no moment did he inspire hope in Venezuelans as a possible leader of the most powerful nation on earth,” Chirino said. “On the contrary, today he reasserts himself as a timid president, erratic, weak.”
Chirino also lamented that the policies will not improve the dire humanitarian state of most Venezuelans under socialism.
“That Chevron will do business with PDVSA will have no impact on the daily life of the Venezuelan that has difficulties, has to wake up every morning with the pressure of knowing they will not have a way of bringing a plate of food home,” Chirino observed to Breitbart News.
Disgust with Biden policies among Cubans and Venezuelans will likely do little to improve the dire circumstances Democrats are facing with regards to the Hispanic vote in the United States. A poll published in December found that 40 percent of Hispanic Americans had concerns regarding “Democrats embracing socialism,” and the concern was not limited to heavily Cuban and Venezuelan communities in Florida. Biden personally hit a record low approval rating with Hispanics in April, down to just 26 percent. For comparison, 31 percent of non-Hispanic white Americans approved of Biden in the same poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
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