America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Monday, July 17, 2023
THE LAWLESS BIDEN REGIME - SUBSIDIZING SANCTUARY CITIES
N.A.F.T.A. JOE BIDEN'S RESPONSE TO AMERICA'S HOMELESS-HOUSING CRISES IS TO FLOOD AMERICA WITH MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS
Many Democrats understand that the welfare checks for foreign children will encourage more illegal immigration, he said:
They know what’s going on. But they know that they can’t say what their true goal is, which is actual open borders with open, uncontrolled migration both ways. And this is a step toward getting rid of borders.
“It’s a globalist mindset and it welcomes anything that moves toward open borders,” he concluded. NEIL MUNRO
Who Really Benefits From Illegal Immigration? | Victor Davis Hanson.... OTHER THAN NAFTA JOE???
More than five million illegal aliens have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border since Joe Biden took office, according to a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. With some exceptions, these migrants tend to be low-skilled, poor, and come from countries where violence is normal and women and certain minorities are degraded. By importing millions of foreign nationals who come from countries with cultures and values that are diametrically opposed to ours, American leaders are setting the stage for exactly the kind of strife and turmoil that is occurring in France.
Report Still Subsidizing Sanctuaries: DOJ sends millions to jurisdictions that undermine federal law and public safety By Jessica M. Vaughan and Nathan Desautels Excerpt: In 2021, the Department of Justice gave out approximately $300 million to sanctuary jurisdictions under three funding programs — the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program.
Commentary Turning Immigration Law on Its Head: Biden says he can let in anyone he wants By Mark Krikorian The American Conservative, July 13, 2023 Excerpt: Determining how many, and which, foreigners are allowed to move to the United States is a core responsibility of the legislature. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is constructed such that Congress has given the president broad authority to keep out anyone he thinks should be excluded, but he is authorized to let in only those who are eligible under a complicated set of rules.
U.S. Soldier Pleads Guilty To Terrorism, But The Full Story Is Far More Treasonous By Todd Bensman The Federalist, July 11, 2023 Excerpt: What puts this case over the top is what Bridges did with his fresh training and access after becoming a cavalry scout for the 3rd Infantry Division while stationed in Fort Stewart, Georgia, and briefly in Germany, an ISIS flag always secreted away in his duffel.
Podcast Washington Subsidizes Sanctuary Cities Host: Mark Krikorian Guest: Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies, Center for Immigration Studies Parsing Immigration Policy, Episode 113
Featured Posts Border Fear Claim Denials Spike Under New Border Rules — Kind Of By Andrew R. Arthur Excerpt: The Biden administration is still failing to fully employ expedited removal, even though it’s the main tool Congress gave DHS to deter illegal entries and bogus border asylum claims. So don’t expect things at the Southwest border to get better anytime soon.
Biden was 25 in 1967, and was attending Syracuse University College of Law, from which he graduated 76th in a class of 85 in 1968. By 1967, when he supposedly talking to the Egyptian government on behalf of Golda Meir, he had already embarked upon his career of lying. A Syracuse College of Law faculty report on December 1, 1965 stated that Biden “used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution,” and recommended that he fail a legal methods course because of his plagiarism.
Levin charged the Democrats with unbridled hypocrisy, accusing Biden of racism.
“This effort to try and turn conservatism into the KKK, into neo-Nazi ism is really amazing, especially considering the history of the Democrat Party and its embrace of the KKK and slavery and segregation and Jim Crow. Despite its history of filibustering the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, despite its current president, Joe Biden being a racist and segregationist early in his career opposing public school integration, calling it a jungle,” he said.
A NATION UNRAVELS AND THE DEMOCRAT PARTY CAN'T SPEED IT UP ENOUGH
Resident Tells How California's Famous Beach Town Is Getting Unsafe
This episode is sponsored by Midas Gold Group, the nation’s #1 veteran-owned gold dealer and most trusted source for gold & precious metals: https://www.midasgoldgroup.com/landin...
"Residents are seeing homeless in the alleys, dumpster fires, they're cooking drugs, cooking meth... Individuals are defecating, shooting up heroin... It's a matter of will from the city."
Siyamak sits down with John Alley, real estate owner and co founder of the Santa Monica coalition https://thesantamonicacoalition.org/ Today he's going to explain why this coalition exists and why the business owners in Santa Monica decided to put up a sign saying Santa Monica is not safe.
🔵Watch our documentary 'Leaving California: The Untold Story': https://ept.ms/LeavingCaliforniaCAI0712
🔵Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/YEmail_CAI
Why local businesses claim Santa Monica is not Safe | John Alle
#santamonica#crime#homeless
Many Democrats understand that the welfare checks for foreign children will encourage more illegal immigration, he said:
They know what’s going on. But they know that they can’t say what their true goal is, which is actual open borders with open, uncontrolled migration both ways. And this is a step toward getting rid of borders.
“It’s a globalist mindset and it welcomes anything that moves toward open borders,” he concluded. NEIL MUNRO
Who Really Benefits From Illegal Immigration? | Victor Davis Hanson.... OTHER THAN NAFTA JOE???
More than five million illegal aliens have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border since Joe Biden took office, according to a study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform. With some exceptions, these migrants tend to be low-skilled, poor, and come from countries where violence is normal and women and certain minorities are degraded. By importing millions of foreign nationals who come from countries with cultures and values that are diametrically opposed to ours, American leaders are setting the stage for exactly the kind of strife and turmoil that is occurring in France.
More than 7-in-10 households headed by immigrants in the state of California are on taxpayer-funded welfare, a new study reveals.
The latest Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that about 72 percent of households headed by noncitizens and immigrants use one or more forms of taxpayer-funded welfare programs in California — the number one immigrant-receiving state in the U.S.
Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of households headed by native-born Americans use welfare in California.
All four states with the largest foreign-born populations, including California, have extremely high use of welfare by immigrant households. In Texas, for example, nearly 70 percent of households headed by immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare. Meanwhile, only about 35 percent of native-born households in Texas are on welfare.
In New York and Florida, a majority of households headed by immigrants and noncitizens are on welfare. Overall, about 63 percent of immigrant households use welfare while only 35 percent of native-born households use welfare.
President Trump’s administration is looking to soon implement a policy that protects American taxpayers’ dollars from funding the mass importation of welfare-dependent foreign nationals by enforcing a “public charge” rule whereby legal immigrants would be less likely to secure a permanent residency in the U.S. if they have used any forms of welfare in the past, including using Obamacare, food stamps, and public housing.
The immigration controls would be a boon for American taxpayers in the form of an annual $57.4 billion tax cut — the amount taxpayers spend every year on paying for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs of the country’s mass importation of 1.5 million new, mostly low-skilled legal immigrants.
As Breitbart News reported, the majority of the more than 1.5 million foreign nationals entering the country every year use about 57 percent more food stamps than the average native-born American household. Overall, immigrant households consume 33 percent more cash welfare than American citizen households and 44 percent more in Medicaid dollars. This straining of public services by a booming 44 million foreign-born population translates to the average immigrant household costing American taxpayers $6,234 in federal welfare.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
California approves ‘shocking’ policy giving weekly checks to migrants: Report
Recently the Supreme Court put an end to Joe Biden’s efforts to give erstwhile college students almost a trillion dollars in “debt relief,” although the Biden administration is trying again. That’s a lot of money… But that’s actually a tiny fraction of the money the government has wasted on redistribution, aka social programs, over the last six decades.
Next year, the United States will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, which President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated in 1964. The War’s programs initially started on a modest scale but have expanded almost parabolically since. By the War’s 50th anniversary, the government had spent more than $22 trillion on various welfare and redistribution programs.
Is this massive expenditure justified by the results of the War on Poverty? Initially, one might suggest the results say yes. As of 2021, poverty in the United States hovered at approximately 11.6%, down from the approximately 18% rate in 1964 when the War on Poverty began. That’s a reduction of 6.6% or almost one-third.
Image by Vince Coyner.
A closer look, however, reveals that this 6.6% reduction after an expenditure of $30 trillion seems underwhelming, to say the least. To see the full picture of the failed War on Poverty one need only look at the poverty rate over the 15 years before this War began.
In 1949, the poverty rate in the United States stood at 34%, which was fully one-third of the nation’s population. Over the next 15 years, without significant government redistribution programs—indeed, without a War on Poverty—the poverty rate fell almost by half, dropping from 34% to 18%, a reduction of a full 16 percentage points.
So, without government spending significant money, poverty fell by 16% in a period of 15 years, or 1.08% per year. But with the government spending more than $30 trillion over the next 55 years, poverty fell by a total of just 6.4% or .12% per year! That means that, without government intervention, the poverty rate was falling 10 times faster than it did once government programs kicked in.
And that 11.6% itself deserves a closer look. In 2014, when the War on Poverty turned 50, the American poverty rate was still at 15%. That means that, after spending $20 trillion over the previous half-century, the government had successfully reduced poverty by a mere 3%.
When Barack Obama entered the White House in 2008, the poverty rate stood at 12.5%. It jumped up to 15% for four years before dropping back to 12.5% by the end of his presidency, which is where it stood when Donald Trump took the White House.
A mere three years later, Trump’s economic renaissance had reduced poverty by 2%, bringing it to its lowest level in history—10.5%, before the Covid scam derailed the prosperity engine. To put that in perspective, Donald Trump’s economy brought poverty down by 2% in 3 years, fully half as much as the government spending did in 50 years after spending $30 trillion!
In 1964, around 4% of American children were born to unwed mothers. By 2021, this percentage increased a full ten times to 40%. Under the heading of Unintended Consequences, one could observe that the welfare programs intended to save children from poverty have, by making it economically and socially viable for single-parent households to exist, effectively stranded many children in poverty and, worse, inflicted on them the coincident pathologies of poor education and crime, both of which, not coincidentally are also consequences of government failure.
From another perspective, let’s draw a comparison between the effects of government spending and the impact of private-sector investments. Let’s take just three companies, Apple, Amazon, and UPS, which together had about $1 trillion in revenue in 2022, approximately the same amount the government spent on welfare that same year. These companies—and many others like them—revolutionized industries; drove many trillions of dollars of business for customers and vendors and affiliates; directly and indirectly employ millions of Americans who are breadwinners for their families, and at the same time generated trillions of dollars of wealth for investors.
One can only wonder what might have happened if the more than $30 trillion the government wasted on its failed War on Poverty had, instead, been invested in startups similar to Apple and Amazon. Not that we want the government taking our money and investing it—WE DON’T—but imagine the impact that money might have had if it somehow had been targeted towards entrepreneurship and economic development.
The 2% reduction in poverty during Trump’s first three years demonstrated with crystal clarity that market-driven prosperity is a far more efficient vehicle for reducing poverty than government spending of any form. At a minimum, a market-driven solution would likely have fostered a far more empowered, economically vibrant, and dramatically more prosperous population than the generational dependency created by the government with its alphabet of aid programs.
Benjamin Franklin understood this more clearly than virtually any politician in America today, having commented:
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
Whether it’s student debt or the federal and state welfare perpetuation machines, America would be better off looking to the Founding Fathers for guidance than the grifters at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue…
Recently the Supreme Court put an end to Joe Biden’s efforts to give erstwhile college students almost a trillion dollars in “debt relief,” although the Biden administration is trying again. That’s a lot of money… But that’s actually a tiny fraction of the money the government has wasted on redistribution, aka social programs, over the last six decades.
Next year, the United States will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, which President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated in 1964. The War’s programs initially started on a modest scale but have expanded almost parabolically since. By the War’s 50th anniversary, the government had spent more than $22 trillion on various welfare and redistribution programs.
Is this massive expenditure justified by the results of the War on Poverty? Initially, one might suggest the results say yes. As of 2021, poverty in the United States hovered at approximately 11.6%, down from the approximately 18% rate in 1964 when the War on Poverty began. That’s a reduction of 6.6% or almost one-third.
Image by Vince Coyner.
A closer look, however, reveals that this 6.6% reduction after an expenditure of $30 trillion seems underwhelming, to say the least. To see the full picture of the failed War on Poverty one need only look at the poverty rate over the 15 years before this War began.
In 1949, the poverty rate in the United States stood at 34%, which was fully one-third of the nation’s population. Over the next 15 years, without significant government redistribution programs—indeed, without a War on Poverty—the poverty rate fell almost by half, dropping from 34% to 18%, a reduction of a full 16 percentage points.
So, without government spending significant money, poverty fell by 16% in a period of 15 years, or 1.08% per year. But with the government spending more than $30 trillion over the next 55 years, poverty fell by a total of just 6.4% or .12% per year! That means that, without government intervention, the poverty rate was falling 10 times faster than it did once government programs kicked in.
And that 11.6% itself deserves a closer look. In 2014, when the War on Poverty turned 50, the American poverty rate was still at 15%. That means that, after spending $20 trillion over the previous half-century, the government had successfully reduced poverty by a mere 3%.
When Barack Obama entered the White House in 2008, the poverty rate stood at 12.5%. It jumped up to 15% for four years before dropping back to 12.5% by the end of his presidency, which is where it stood when Donald Trump took the White House.
A mere three years later, Trump’s economic renaissance had reduced poverty by 2%, bringing it to its lowest level in history—10.5%, before the Covid scam derailed the prosperity engine. To put that in perspective, Donald Trump’s economy brought poverty down by 2% in 3 years, fully half as much as the government spending did in 50 years after spending $30 trillion!
In 1964, around 4% of American children were born to unwed mothers. By 2021, this percentage increased a full ten times to 40%. Under the heading of Unintended Consequences, one could observe that the welfare programs intended to save children from poverty have, by making it economically and socially viable for single-parent households to exist, effectively stranded many children in poverty and, worse, inflicted on them the coincident pathologies of poor education and crime, both of which, not coincidentally are also consequences of government failure.
From another perspective, let’s draw a comparison between the effects of government spending and the impact of private-sector investments. Let’s take just three companies, Apple, Amazon, and UPS, which together had about $1 trillion in revenue in 2022, approximately the same amount the government spent on welfare that same year. These companies—and many others like them—revolutionized industries; drove many trillions of dollars of business for customers and vendors and affiliates; directly and indirectly employ millions of Americans who are breadwinners for their families, and at the same time generated trillions of dollars of wealth for investors.
One can only wonder what might have happened if the more than $30 trillion the government wasted on its failed War on Poverty had, instead, been invested in startups similar to Apple and Amazon. Not that we want the government taking our money and investing it—WE DON’T—but imagine the impact that money might have had if it somehow had been targeted towards entrepreneurship and economic development.
The 2% reduction in poverty during Trump’s first three years demonstrated with crystal clarity that market-driven prosperity is a far more efficient vehicle for reducing poverty than government spending of any form. At a minimum, a market-driven solution would likely have fostered a far more empowered, economically vibrant, and dramatically more prosperous population than the generational dependency created by the government with its alphabet of aid programs.
Benjamin Franklin understood this more clearly than virtually any politician in America today, having commented:
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
Whether it’s student debt or the federal and state welfare perpetuation machines, America would be better off looking to the Founding Fathers for guidance than the grifters at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue…
According to news reports, Mexico is challenging Texas’ floating barrier plan on Rio Grande. This is the story:
Mexico’s top diplomat said Friday her country has sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. government expressing concern that Texas’ deployment of floating barriers on the Rio Grande may violate 1944 and 1970 treaties on boundaries and water.
Foreign Relations Secretary Alicia Bárcena said Mexico will send an inspection team to the Rio Grande to see whether any of the barrier extends into Mexico’s side of the border river.
She also complained about U.S. efforts to put up barbed wire on a low-lying island in the river near Eagle Pass, Texas.
I don't know if Mexico has a case. I'm not familiar with border treaties. At the same time, Texas claims that the barrier is on the Texas side of the water.
Mexico does not help its case when they allow more caravans to come north. This is the other story:
Nearly a thousand migrants that recently crossed from Guatemala into Mexico formed a group on Saturday to head north together in hopes of reaching the border with the United States.
The group, made up of largely Venezuelan migrants, walked along a highway in southern Mexico, led by a Venezuela flag with the phrase 'Peace, Freedom. SOS.'
The men, women, children and teenagers were followed by Mexican National Guard patrols.
So what is Texas supposed to do? On one hand, Mexico complains about Texas stopping people from crossing the river, a dangerous thing to attempt, by the way. Some have actually drowned. On the other hand, Mexico allows another caravan to form and head north. Why isn't Mexico stopping this problem at the source?
Add to this mess a Biden administration without a border policy and you have the definition of a "problema," a big "problema."
Maybe the Biden administration should call on Mexico to control its own border more efficiently before they take Texas to court. Of course, I'm not expecting the Biden administration to do a thing or the same nothing that we've seen for 30 months.
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at. MONICA SHOWALTER
President Joe Biden, his administration, and the corporate media tried their best over the last two and a half years to downplay the record number of illegal border crossings, but a majority of Americans aren’t buying into the lie that the ongoing border crisis is improving....
A new poll from Pew Research found that 73 percent of Americans think the Biden administration is doing a bad job at handling the U.S.-Mexico border. MONICA SHOWALTER
Who Really Benefits From Illegal Immigration? | Victor Davis Hanson
Jessica Vaughan is the director of policy studies and Nathan Desautels is an intern at the Center for Immigration Studies.
In 2021, the Department of Justice gave out approximately $300 million to sanctuary jurisdictions under three funding programs — the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. The awards to sanctuaries represented more than 40 percent of the available funding under these programs. Sanctuary jurisdictions are receiving this funding despite having adopted policies to hinder cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities. As a result, the federal government is subsidizing agencies that may be violating federal law and undermining public safety.
Key Findings:
Nearly $300 million was awarded to sanctuary jurisdictions in 2021, representing 43 percent of all of the funding awarded in the SCAAP, Byrne JAG, and COPS funding programs.
Eleven sanctuary state agencies and 86 localities that have sanctuary policies or are located within sanctuary states received funding in 2021.
State agencies in California, which has one of the most egregious state sanctuary laws, received $82 million in DOJ grants — not counting tens of millions in additional funding for individual cities and counties in the state.
Among localities, the biggest recipients were Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.
The majority of SCAAP and Byrne JAG program funding went to sanctuary jurisdictions in 2021; 58 percent of the SCAAP funding and 68 percent of the Byrne JAG funding went to sanctuaries, while 28 percent of the COPS funding went to sanctuaries.
The Center for Immigration Studies has identified nearly 300 states and localities that have adopted sanctuary policies.1 These cities, counties, and states have laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.
Certain of these policies have been found to be a violation of federal law (8 USC 1373 and 1644), which says that no state or local government may prohibit or in any way restrict local officials from communicating with federal immigration authorities about a person’s immigration status.2
Our analysis examines three DOJ grant programs: the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), the Edward M. Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne JAG), and the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The purpose of SCAAP is to reimburse state and local prisons and jails for a portion of the cost of incarcerating illegal aliens who were held on state and local charges.3 The Byrne JAG program is the leading source of federal justice funding that goes directly to state and local jurisdictions for a range of activities, including prosecution and law enforcement.4 The COPS grant program provides funding for community policing efforts in localities around the country.5
These DOJ programs are among the largest sources of federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies. Longstanding eligibility rules require that recipients must be in compliance with all federal laws. Beginning in 2016, congressional appropriators and Justice Department officials stipulated that this included the provisions in federal law that prohibit certain sanctuary policies, and took steps to block certain jurisdictions from receiving funds under these programs.6 Several jurisdictions moved to change their policies, including Miami-Dade County in Florida, and others refused to change, but were blocked from certain DOJ funding programs. A series of lawsuits ensued, with varying outcomes, resulting in an attempted appeal to the Supreme Court, which dismissed the cases as moot7 after the incoming Biden administration rescinded the rules barring sanctuaries.8
This report examines the distribution of SCAAP, Byrne JAG, and COPS funding to sanctuary jurisdictions in 2021, which are presented in Table 1. The award amounts and total available funds are compiled from publicly available award announcements on the Justice Department web site.9
SCAAP awards are granted to both state and county corrections agencies. In sanctuary states, both state and county totals are compiled. Those counties that have sanctuary policies above and beyond the state policy are itemized to show their totals, while all other counties within a sanctuary state are compiled under “All Other Localities”. In states that do not have state-wide sanctuary policies, only the unique sanctuary counties’ awards are itemized.
Byrne JAG grants are disclosed according to state allocations, which are then distributed within the state. Only sanctuary state totals are itemized here, as local allocations could not be readily determined.
COPS grants are awarded to municipal, county, tribal, and state entities, as well as to a few non-governmental organizations. Only state, county, and municipal grants were counted. Awards to unique local sanctuary jurisdictions and also municipalities within sanctuary states were counted, as were certain municipalities that are tied to county sanctuary policies.
Nearly $300 million went to sanctuary jurisdictions in 2021 from these three federal law enforcement grants alone. This total represents a substantial level of federal grant funding going toward jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with or deliberately hinder federal immigration enforcement. Considering that nearly all of the federal immigration enforcement within the country is directed at removing aliens who have committed crimes, and who are quite likely to re-offend if allowed to remain in the community, the sanctuary policies undeniably are undermining public safety and undercutting the effectiveness of the DOJ programs from which they receive funding. According to one government report, about 25 percent of criminal alien offenders who were released by sanctuary jurisdictions were subsequently arrested again within eight months of release.10
Sanctuary policies tend to attract illegal migration and provide a haven for illegal aliens involved in crime. Several drug dealers interviewed for a recent San Francisco Chronicle investigative story on the involvement of illegal aliens from Honduras in the city’s drug trade confirmed as much, telling the reporters that Honduran illegal migrants flock to the city in large part because they know that the city’s sanctuary policies will help them avoid deportation: “The reason is because, in San Francisco, it’s like you’re here in Honduras. The law, because they don’t deport, that’s the problem. ... Many look for San Francisco because it’s a sanctuary city. You go to jail and you come out.”11
Now, instead of requiring awardees to demonstrate that they are in compliance with the federal law on sanctuary policies, DOJ has begun requiring recipient agencies to provide information on their adherence to certain Biden administration policing policy preferences. For instance, to receive a Byrne JAG grant, since January 2022 law enforcement agency applicants must complete a questionnaire seeking attestations on matters such as the agencies’ use of force policies, “policies and/or procedures that incorporate best practices on officer hiring, recruitment, and retention to include diversity, equity, and inclusion”, and efforts to address racial, ethnic, gender, and LGBTQIA bias.12
While it may not be possible for the federal government to compel state and local governments to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, it is reasonable for the federal government to try to discourage sanctuary policies and penalize jurisdictions that choose to obstruct such a legitimate and vital federal activity. The limits on a president’s authority to do so have yet to be fully defined in the courts, but in the meantime Congress certainly has the authority to impose conditions on federal funding programs that could block access for sanctuary jurisdictions. In addition, the existence of sanctuary policies should be recognized by the federal government, citizens, and other stakeholders as a potential risk factor on the same level as other governance considerations, for example when issuing bond credit ratings or other assessments of a state or local government’s stability. Finally, state governments can take action to penalize or prohibit local sanctuary policies, as Texas, Florida, and eight other states have done.
A Democrat-run committee of the California State Assembly blocked a bill Tuesday that would have made trafficking a minor a “serious felony.” The Republican bill had already passed the State Senate unanimously.
Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) introduced the bill, SB 14, which also notes that California leads the nation in reported cases of human trafficking of minors. The inclusion of trafficking a minor as a “serious felony” would make that crime ineligible for plea bargaining in most circumstances and would require that the crime be included under the state’s 1990s-era “Three Strikes” law, allowing for life imprisonment after three felonies.
However, Grove noted Tuesday, the Public Safety Committee, led by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-South Los Angeles), declined to advance the bill.
Jones-Sawyer is also the author of a bill that would allow judges to use criminal sentencing to “rectify racial bias” in the criminal justice system.
After passing the Senate with a unanimous, bipartisan vote, I had hoped Democrats on the Assembly Public Safety Committee, led by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, would agree to make sex trafficking of a minor a serious felony. I am profoundly disappointed that committee Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to support the bill, with their stubborn and misguided objection to any penalty increase regardless of how heinous the crime.
Human trafficking of children is a growing tragedy that disproportionately targets minority girls, and California is a hotbed because of our lenient penalties. The sad reality is that trafficked children on Figueroa Street and across California will continue to be raped and victimized until Assembly Democrats take action. Since the bill was granted reconsideration, I will continue to work with the committee and fight for Californians who are outraged by their decision.
…
SB 14 was voted down in the Assembly Public Safety Committee with 6 Democrats abstaining and 2 Republicans voting aye. The measure was also granted reconsideration.
The bill is eligible for reconsideration, which means it could still pass.
The scourge of human trafficking is dramatized in the surprise independent box office hitSound of Freedom, which has drawn audiences across the nation, surpassing recent mainstream Hollywood studio releases.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
This will crack you up!
Mexican Presidents Deny They Took Bribes from El Chapo
Two former Mexican presidents publicly denied taking bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel. The statements came after the legal defense for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera made contrary claims this week.
The drug lord is facing several money laundering and drug trafficking charges at a federal trial in New York. In his opening statement, defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman spoke of bribes “including the very top, the current president of Mexico and the former.”
Soon after the statements became public, Mexico’s government issued a statement denying the allegations. Eduardo Sanchez, the spokesman for current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said the statements were false and “defamatory.”
El gobierno de @EPN persiguió, capturó y extraditó al criminal Joaquín Guzmán Loera. Las afirmaciones atribuidas a su abogado son completamente falsas y difamatorias
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon took to social media to personally deny the allegations, claiming that neither El Chapo or the Sinaloa Cartel paid him bribes.
Son absolutamente falsas y temerarias las afirmaciones que se dice realizó el abogado de Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán. Ni él, ni el cártel de Sinaloa ni ningún otro realizó pagos a mi persona.
Under Guzman’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel became the largest drug trafficking organization in the world with influence in every major U.S. city.
The allegations against Pena Nieto are not new. In 2016, Breitbart News reported on an investigation by Mexican journalists which revealed how Juarez Cartel operators funneled money into the 2012 presidential campaign. The investigation was carried out by Mexican award-winning journalist Carmen Aristegui and her team. The subsequent scandal became known as “Monexgate” for the cash cards that were given out during Peña Nieto’s campaign. The allegations against Pena Nieto went largely unreported by U.S. news outlets.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. 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 the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.
Mass Protests, Kidnappings, Blockades Erupt in Mexico After Arrest of Cartel Lieutenants
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets to block highways and riot against authorities to pressure Mexico’s government into releasing two cartel lieutenants. The government arrested the cartel leaders earlier this month. Unconfirmed information points to the protesters kidnapping 13 federal employees to pressure the government.
On Tuesday morning, Rosa Icela Rodriguez, Mexico’s top federal law enforcement official, revealed that members of the Ardillos criminal organization were behind a series of riots and protests in Guerrero to pressure the government.
Rodriguez said that authorities were ordered not to clash with the protesters despite provocations because the criminal organization had forced locals to attend.
— Rosa Icela Rodríguez Velázquez (@rosaicela_) July 11, 2023
Officials revealed that protesters took five members of Mexico’s National Guard, five state police officers, two local officials, and one federal employee. The kidnapping victims are reported to be in good health, officials said.
The protests began on Monday when hundreds of individuals took to the streets and even blocked one of the main federal highways in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. After 12 hours, the groups stopped by night time but resumed their activities on Tuesday morning.
On the day the protests began, a federal judge in Mexico denied bond to Jesus Echeverria Penafiel and Bernardo “C” on federal drug and weapons charges. Authorities arrested both men on July 5 as part of an investigation into the Los Ardillos Cartel in Guerrero.
That criminal organization controls several local “self-defense” groups, rural community police forces(UPOEG), and other civil organizations that allow them to operate under the radar.
During the protests, authorities identified two main organizers from Los Ardillos who controlled the crowds. One of them is 39-year-old Gilmar Jair Sereno Chavez, who Mexican authorities describe as the protest leader. Authorities claim that Sereno Chavez was responsible for a similar protest on February 16, where they kidnapped several military and police officers as a way to force the government to meet their demands.
Last week, a video went viral in Mexico where the mayor of Chilpancigo, Norma Otilia “Lady Pachangas” Hernandez, had met with Celso “La Vela” Ortega Jimenez, one of Los Ardillos’s top leaders. The mayor admitted that she had breakfast with Ortega but claimed there was no ill-intent or shady dealings.
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.
GRAPHIC: Mexican Army Kills 9 Gulf Cartel Gunmen in Border State Raids
Mexican military forces killed nine Gulf Cartel gunmen during a series of confrontations in the northern part of the border state of Tamaulipas.
The large-scale shootouts come at a time when rival factions of the Gulf Cartel have been waging a fierce turf war for control of lucrative drug and human smuggling routes in the northern part of Tamaulipas — particularly around the border city of Reynosa.
The raids began late last week when members of Mexico’s Army began tracking down cartel camps near San Fernando, Tamaulipas, and various rural communities such as Cruillas, Burgos, Mendez, and others closer to the Gulf of Mexico. Those areas have become highly relevant as rival factions of the Gulf Cartel gegan fighting for control of them in late April.
During raids on Thursday, military forces managed to seize various vehicles. On Friday, authorities raided some areas near the rural community of La Loma, Tamaulipas, where they found three armored vehicles and two other trucks. Soon after that raid, authorities received information about a group of gunmen stationed at a makeshift narco-camp in La Loma and moved to that location. As the military forces arrived at the camp, gunmen began shooting at them. The military forces fought back, killing nine gunmen and forcing the rest to flee.
In the aftermath of that shootout, authorities seized three trucks, weapons, and body armor with the letters CDG (Gulf Cartel) and the Roman numerals XIX, which is used by the group led by Jose Alberto “La Kena or Ciclon 19” Garcia Vilano, who is the current leader of the Matamoros faction. As Breitbart Texas reported, La Kena’s group went to war with the Reynosa faction of the Gulf Cartel, known as Los Metros, over their connections to Cartel Jalisco New Generation.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” and “J. C. Sanchez” from Tamaulipas.
Mexico's president calls out Alvin Bragg, saying his indictment is a scheme to keep Trump off the ballot
Whatever you think of Mexico's leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, there's no disputing he knows every dirty trick in the third world playbook, having been on the receiving end of at least some of it.
He's watching what's going on in the U.S. now, with Manhattan's "let-'em-all-out" district attorney, Alvin Bragg, seeking to indict President Trump on felony campaign finance charges, and smells the stench of 'banana republic' all over it.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday defended Donald Trump, saying a potential indictment of the former president could be a move to prevent him from seeking reelection.
"Right now, former President Trump is declaring that they are going to arrest him," López Obrador, who is also known by his initials AMLO, said during a press conference. "If that were the case...it would be so that his name doesn't appear on the ballot."
And it does have the stench of 'banana republic' all over it. A sudden epiphany of concern for rule of law, from a district attorney who let every crook out he could, is obviously about politics, not rule of law. Keeping Trump off the ballot is the obvious aim here and AMLO from abroad could see it from experience.
AMLO also pointed out that the U.S., which blew up the Nordstream II pipeline, had no business lecturing others on rule of law.
The Biden administration's response to that was predictably mealy mouthed.
That was wretched, given how little the Biden administration is doing to halt the fentanyl inundation with his open border.
What's more, it follows from AMLO's earlier statements that fraud had tainted the last U.S. presidential election. He experienced that himself in 2006, when he had been ahead in the polls, but ballot counting in the dead of night suddenly stopped, went dark -- and then resumed with the other candidate in the lead. Been there, done that. AMLO was one of the very last world leaders to recognize Joe Biden as president, while the likes of even presumed allies, such as then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, fell all over themselves to quickly congratulate Joe Biden.
Newsweek's writer, who is also a Reforma correspondent in Mexico City, knows the backstory well, adding AMLO's explanation for his statement:
As for why AMLO might be supporting Trump ahead of a possible arrest, the Mexican leader alluded to criminal accusations he has faced himself. In 2022, a veteran Mexican politician and an investigative journalist said López Obrador and his government had links to organized crime, which the president has fervently denied.
López Obrador, who became president in 2018, has said election fraud caused him to lose his attempts to gain the office in 2006 and 2012.
"I say this because I too have suffered from the fabrication of a crime, when they didn't want me to run," López Obrador said Tuesday while discussing Trump. "And this is completely anti-democratic.... Why not allow the people to decide?"
Which is all entirely true.
Three thing stand out there:
First, that this kangaroo clown show indictment is being closely watched internationally, and the message being sent is that U.S. politics is starting to resemble the politics of a third world country where opponents are jailed on invented charges quite contrary to what the law says in a bid to keep an inconvenient opposition leader off the ballot. We've seen it in Venezuela, in Russia, in Pakistan, and even in France; it goes on in any place where political standards are low and a ruling elite is more convinced of its divine right to rule than it is of representative democracy.
Second, AMLO's relations with Joe Biden must be abysmal. U.S.-Mexico relations must be at some kind of unannounced low point for the Mexican president to make that kind of statement about the U.S. when similarly situated politicians -- such as Brazil's President Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, and Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu -- could say the same thing from experience as AMLO did, but didn't. Lula also got railroaded on questionable charges as his first term ended, and then came back to win a second election, albeit apparently a fraud-tainted one. Netanyahu's experience was similar. But they haven't said anything, AMLO did, laying out what was going on and what everyone abroad could see what was going on.
Third, it signals that AMLO will always be there for Joe Biden whenever he or his Democrats engage in banana republic politics. What could be more fun for someone in a shambling democracy that's been held up to scorn for years in the past, to hold up the U.S. as no better than they have been, and oftentimes, actually worse. It's a way of saying 'cut the crap' on American exceptionalism, and AMLO is glad to do that.
AMLO may not be the sort of person a Trump voter would vote for if he were running for office in the U.S., he's basically the Bernie Sanders of Mexico, but he should be lauded and respected for his independence and courage all the same, even if it's motivated a tad by resentment of the U.S. There's no doubt he's right and speaking truth from experience.
The U.S. political scene is becoming Latinamericanized, as Eric Hoffer once put it. Now it's getting bad out there, and those who have been there and done that abroad are noticing, and like a doleful Greek chorus, delivering their reproach.
By weight, 86 percent of heroin that entered the United States in 2016 was of Mexican origin, according statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Why does it matter? Well, because the U.S. under President Trump is trying hard to get along with the new Mexican administration, run by the leftist Andrés Manuel López-Obrador. His followers are the top suspects in this mysterious helicopter crash, which, if the investigation leads anywhere, is likely to cast a Putinesque pall over López-Obrador just as it gets its grounding. Prepare for relations to deteriorate if that grows as a backstory.
Sometimes, the coincidences get just too...coincidental.
Now we have, in Mexico, the sudden helicopter crash of a newly elected governor, after an apparently very bitter election. Here's the Globe and Mail report:
A Mexican governor and her senator husband were killed on Monday in a helicopter crash near the city of Puebla in central Mexico, the government said, just days after she had taken office following a bitterly contested election.
Martha Erika Alonso, a senior opposition figure and governor of the state of Puebla, died with Rafael Moreno, a senator and former Puebla governor, when their Agusta helicopter came down on Monday afternoon shortly after take-off, the government said.
This seems to happen a lot in Mexico, quite unlike any comparable place in the region that I know of.
A number of Mexican politicians have died in aircraft accidents in recent years, including federal interior ministers in 2008 and 2011. The latter two were also members of the PAN.
Maybe it was just the wildest of coincidences, but given the savage character of Mexican politics, I think it's natural to be a little suspicious. In most of these incidents, the motive is suspected but not utterly obvious. This one is different: it came after a bitterly contested election that the rabid left says was stolen. It sounds like the sort of fury we saw from the left when Trump won – except that now we see Mexican politics at play, potentially a straight-up assassination, possibly by the embittered left.
Mexico sees a lot of these helicopter downings, and what's more, it sees a lot of full blown assassinations. A presidential candidate from before Mexico got into multi-party politics, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was straight-out assassinated in 1994, and his wife died under murky circumstances shortly after that. Other elected officials have been gunned down or else died in mysterious car crashes. There was definitely one of those in Michoacán. Yes, some probably were the work of drug-dealers. But others were far more likely to be Mexico's toxic politics. It does happen.
Yet the Mexican government can get real touchy when you bring up any suspicions about the helicopter crash phenomenon. I remember how furious Mexico City's response was to an actually sympathetic editorial I wrote for Investor's Business Daily, I think in 2008, when a Mexican official was similarly killed in a helicopter crash. At the time, they were obviously worried about the potential impact on foreign investment, but my thought was to praise the Mexicans for their resolve and sacrifice in fighting drug lords. That's not the way they think over there.
Why does it matter? Well, because the U.S. under President Trump is trying hard to get along with the new Mexican administration, run by the leftist Andrés Manuel López-Obrador. His followers are the top suspects in this mysterious helicopter crash, which, if the investigation leads anywhere, is likely to cast a Putinesque pall over López-Obrador just as it gets its grounding. Prepare for relations to deteriorate if that grows as a backstory.
Perhaps even more, it matters because Mexico's politics seems to be the model for Democratic Party politics these days as rage over Trump dominates. In California, ballot-harvesting has been adopted as a legal practice, in what's a straight-out cultural appropriation of Mexican politics. If the Democrats are planning to make themselves the "perfect dictatorship" along the PRI model of one-party rule, starting in California and taking that style national, well, the unhappy question is, what else are they borrowing from Mexican politics as they (without saying so, of course) borrow from the Mexican Model? Yes, it sounds far-fetched. But we also know how implacably angry the Democrats still are at the election of Donald Trump and how they like to get away with things.
Over the last few years, I've had conversations with friends in Mexico. We usually end up talking about the border. For us, the border is illegal immigration. For Mexicans, it's guns and cash corrupting a very fragile political system.
As a Mexican friend said recently, the cartels have the politicians in their pockets, especially in the small towns where many of these vans full of cash and guns drive through.
By weight, 86 percent of heroin that entered the United States in 2016 was of Mexican origin, according statistics from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"After 9/11 we shut down the border. When we shut down the border, drugs didn't come in," Bennett said. "If you shut down that border, if you close it off, if you build a wall, it can have a real and profound difference."
There is another reason, as any rational Mexican will tell you.
On a weekly basis, lots of cash and guns go south. They are the profits and rewards of the drugs going north. According to unofficial estimates:
Officials in Mexico believe the tide of laundered money could be as high as $50bn per year, a sum equal to about three per cent of Mexico's legitimate economy -- more than all its oil exports or spending on key social programmes. Internationally, money laundering represents between two and five per cent of global GDP, or between $800bn and $2tn annually, according to the UNODC.
It would be more difficult for money or guns to go south if you had a wall on the border.
So President Trump should pick up the phone and call President Lopez-Obrador. He should thank him for keeping the caravans in Mexico and discuss the benefits of the border wall. Why wouldn't the Mexican president support the wall? I'm sure that the Mexican army and police would love to see that wall go up.
No comments:
Post a Comment