‘Untenable’: Illinois Gov Joins List of ‘Sanctuary’ Dems Who Don’t Love Migrants So Much Anymore
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) sent a letter to President Joe Biden calling the migrant crisis in his state "untenable" and slamming the president for his lack of help.
"Unfortunately, the welcome and aid Illinois has been providing to these asylum seekers has not been matched with support by the federal government," Pritzker wrote on Monday. "Most critically, the federal government's lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation for Illinois."
Pritzker asked the federal government to centralize coordination of border management and take greater accountability for overseeing where migrants go once Customs and Border Protection authorities release them into the country. He also requested that the federal government eliminate fees for temporary protected status applications and expedite work permits for migrants.
Pritzker also attacked Republican politicians who have been sending busloads of migrants to Illinois and other blue states.
"For my state which has been targeted with busloads of asylum seekers by the border politicians seeking to increase the partisan divide, this crisis has strained the already stretched human services network we have attempted to rebuild in our recovery from the pandemic," Pritzker wrote.
Pritzker's letter represents a shift in his previously welcoming attitude toward migrants. In 2021, he signed an executive order to make Illinois the "most welcoming state in the nation," requiring local officials to end partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities.
"Throughout my governorship I've directed my administration to adopt policies that make Illinois a welcoming state for immigrants, and I'm proud to sign these accountability measures into law to advance our cause," the governor said in a press release announcing the order.
Pritzker is not the only Democrat to shift away from a previously welcoming attitude toward illegal immigrants. The day before Pritzker sent his letter, New York governor Kathy Hochul called for securing the border and quadrupling the number of Border Patrol positions.
Hochul in 2021 told migrants that "you’re welcome with open arms, and we’ll work to keep you safe."
DESTROYING AMERICA: THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AT WORK
NY Gov Blames Republicans for Border Being “Too Open Right Now”
Hochul is stupid, but even she isn't this stupid.
New York’s Gov. Hochul is stupid, but even she isn’t this stupid. The trouble is that no New York Democrat can actually state the obvious which is that the Biden administration’s policy of keeping the border open and shipping illegal invaders across the country is behind this disaster. NYC’s Mayor Eric Adams has come closest to saying it and come under fire for it. Gov. Hochul is further away from the crisis and she can’t afford to be less popular.
So Hochul can suggest that the border needs to be controlled, but that it’s the fault of Republicans that it isn’t.
“Well, we want them to have a limit on who can come across the border. It is too open right now,” Hochul said. “People coming from all over the world are finding their way through simply saying they need asylum. And the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York. And that is a real problem for New York City, 125,000 newly arrived individuals. And we are being taxed.”
“We are always so proud of the fact that New York has the Statue of Liberty in our harbor. We are one of the most diverse places on Earth because of our welcoming nature, and it’s in our DNA to welcome immigrants. But there has to be some limits in place. And Congress has to put more controls at the border and not in this budget threat, shutdown threat, talk about eliminating positions for Border Patrol when we actually need to double or quadruple those numbers. So, get back to work and do your jobs,” the governor added.
The Border Patrol is worse than useless when its job has been redefined as welcoming in illegal alien migrant invaders and handing them court dates in 2035 so that meanwhile they can, as Gov. Hochul and every Democrat wants, to give them quasi-legal status enabling them to work here. Long before their court dates, they’ll have kids here and will become undeportable.
Gov. Hochul has come around to the idea that there needs to be some limitations on open borders now that her state is a border state, but the only thing she can do is repeat a mantra blaming Republicans for the mess.
The Biden administration fought to dismantle Title 42, it has sued Arizona and Texas to force them to dismantle any border security that inhibits the migrant invaders, and it has opened the border as wide as possible.
This isn’t a budget problem. The problem is that the Biden administration keeps drilling a hole in the boat while Democrats try to blame Republicans for not working with Republicans to fix the hole.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
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Biden’s Intentional Crisis
The great invasion of the USA.
The continuing incursion of illegal border crossers into the United States is the most astonishing story in American politics. There have been days recently in which 10,000 people crossed illegally into the country — and remember, in a long-ago era, when Barack Obama was president, a tenth of that was considered a crisis.
The current emergency can be attributed entirely to President Joe Biden. In word and deed, from the 2020 campaign on, Biden sent a message to would-be illegal border crossers around the world: If you come to the United States, you will be allowed to stay. And millions have.
Lately, though, Biden’s welcome-to-illegal-crossers policy has become a burden on some important Democrats. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is screaming about the arrival of an estimated 110,000 new asylum seekers in his city. The cost of caring for the new residents will “destroy New York City,” Adams said. And even though Adams tried to blame Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for sending illegal border crossers to New York, the fact is that Abbott has sent just 13,000. In any event, the presence of all 110,000 in New York is the result of Biden policies.
Now that some Democrats are complaining, news reports say Biden is beginning to feel some pressure. Can he do something to lower the heat? In response, Biden has come up with a way to address the problem: Rush more inadmissible migrants into the United States.
It seems crazy, and it is. But it is more than that. It is also perhaps the best indicator we have of Biden’s intentions in the border crisis. Look at the 10,000-a-day flow of illegal crossers over the border. The president of the United States has the authority and means to protect the U.S. border. The only way a president would allow this to go on for years is if the president wanted this to happen. And it appears that Biden does, in fact, want this to happen.
Early in the border crisis, I wrote, “The president is not trying to stop the flow of illegal crossers. Instead, he is trying to accommodate the flow, scrambling to find housing and living arrangements for those coming in. The message has gotten out to the world, and the world is coming.”
And now Biden is going one step further. With the flow at historic levels, he will use U.S. government resources to speed it up, not to slow it down. This is an entirely intentional crisis.
The New York Times reports that nearly half a million migrants from Venezuela will “be allowed to immediately apply for work authorization.” The purpose of the move, the Times said, is this: “By allowing them to legally earn income, the change could alleviate the costly burden of housing the refugees in major cities across the country. The migrants also will be protected from deportation for at least the next 18 months.”
Maybe that will mollify Mayor Adams for a while. It will certainly increase the incentive for Venezuelans to come to the U.S. as soon as possible. But how, one might ask, did the migrants arrive in the United States from Venezuela in the first place? The answer lies with a Biden administration program known as CBP One. It is what is called a “parole” program, that is, it is designed to release migrants into the United States quickly and without public scrutiny. This is from the Center for Immigration Studies: “A little-known part of the Biden administration’s CBP One parole program permits inadmissible aliens to make an appointment to fly directly to airports in the interior of the United States, bypassing the border altogether.”
The Biden program “allows migrants to take commercial passenger flights from foreign countries straight to their American cities of choice.” The program applies to migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. The migrants, according to the Center, “request ‘advance travel authorizations’ through the CBP One mobile app and take commercial flights (‘at their own expense’) directly into U.S. airports, where U.S. Customs officers parole them into the nation, sight unseen, and in numbers publicly unknown.”
The numbers are big. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports stricter immigration laws, got information on the flights so far in 2023. The administration has allowed in 221,456 migrants through the program this year. There were 29,120 in May, 29,506 in June, 28,669 in August, and so on. The flow continues.
Where are they going? The administration would not disclose which airports have received the migrants. If any local leaders want to know how thousands of new people are arriving in their towns virtually overnight, courtesy of the U.S. government — well, if they want to know that, they can’t find out.
Now the White House is offering immediate work authorization, not just to migrants who crossed the land border illegally but to those who took part in the administration’s secretive flight program. That will surely lure more to come, whether by foot over the border or to an undisclosed airport. If you ever hear an administration official say that President Biden is trying to get the border situation under control — don’t believe it.
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Gov. Kathy Hochul Looks to Fill 18,000 New York Jobs with Border Crossers
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) is looking to fill more than 18,000 jobs across New York with newly arrived border crossers and illegal aliens, as about 385,000 New Yorkers remain unemployed.
Hochul held a press conference on Monday, touting that her administration had worked with employers across New York to identify more than 18,000 unfilled jobs that could be taken by border crossers and illegal aliens.
“We have a two-for-one solution here. Now we have all these people here and all these jobs that are open, marry these two together, and we can solve these problems,” Hochul said, celebrating illegal immigration as a victory for business.
Most jobs identified by Hochul’s administration are in food service, healthcare, manufacturing, administrative support, construction, retail, and business service, among other industries.
The announcement comes more than a month after Hochul said she was creating the jobs program for border crossers and illegal aliens, even as hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers remain on the labor market sidelines.
Last month, President Joe Biden caved to lobbying from Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) by announcing that his administration would work to expedite work permits for border crossers and illegal aliens released into the United States interior.
More than 125,000 border crossers and illegal aliens have arrived in the sanctuary state since the spring of last year. This is a fraction, though, of the total released into the U.S. interior from the border by the Biden administration.
Monthly, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) releases more than 60,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into American communities.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
NYC Hospital Official: Dealing with Migrant Surge ‘Hardest Work that I’ve Ever Done’
During portions of interviews with NBC News aired on Monday’s broadcast of “NBC Nightly News,” Senior Vice President of Ambulatory Care and Population Health at New York City Health + Hospitals Dr. Ted Long, who was also part of New York City’s Test & Treat Corps during the COVID pandemic, stated that caring for the surge of migrants in the city “has been the hardest work” he’s ever done, and Randye Retkin, Director of New York Legal Assistance’s LegalHealth division stated that the surge has filled up legal clinics and forced clinics to turn people away.
NBC News Homeland Security Correspondent Julia Ainsley began her report by stating that officials told NBC News that “over 200,000 illegal crossings at the southern border last month, and a record 3 million migrants crossed the border in the last year.”
She added, “Across public hospitals in New York City, a quarter of the patients are now migrants. Over the last year, nearly 30,000 visits by migrants and 300 new babies born to migrant moms.”
She then played a clip of Long stating, “This has been the hardest work that I’ve ever done, but it’s been the most impactful work that I’ve ever done.”
Ainsley then said, “And most of the visits to the taxpayer-funded legal clinic here are by migrants.”
She then played a clip of Retkin saying, “Our clinics are full and there are waiting lists and people are turning people away or referring them to other places.”
Ainsley then added, “Randye Retkin from New York’s Legal Assistance Group says so many migrants are asking for legal help on asylum representation and healthcare access, now she says American citizens who need legal assistance with issues like eviction and insurance have to wait up to ten weeks.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Exclusive: Biden Admin Moves 2K Migrants from Packed Border Facility to Release Elsewhere in Texas
EAGLE PASS, Texas — The Biden administration is in the process of moving 2,000 migrants from an overcrowded Border Patrol processing facility in Eagle Pass, Texas, according to a CBP source. The mass transfer of detainees began early Monday and is aimed to alleviate the strain on Border Patrol facilities and a non-government shelter overwhelmed by the influx of more than 1,000 migrants into Eagle Pass daily.
As reported by Breitbart Texas, the sudden surge of migrants began two weeks prior as more than 1,500 migrants crossed the Rio Grande within six hours. The migrants traveled to the border area from southern and central Mexico by freight train. Within days, single groups of mostly Venezuelan migrants numbering more nearly 3,000 strong arrived almost daily in the same manner.
Although the pace of the entries has slowed in recent days to, at times, 1,000 to 1,500 migrants daily, the surge has brought detention numbers to record levels. At the height of the current migrant surge on Thursday, more than 20,000 migrants were being detained by the Border Patrol nationwide, according to the CBP source. The soft-sided processing facility in Eagle Pass, commonly referred to by Border Patrol agents as “Firefly,” is meant to accommodate 1,000 migrant detainees. It has been holding roughly 5,000 migrants of late.
Photos provided to Breitbart Texas by Congressman Tony Gonzales (R-TX) showed hundreds of migrants cramped into the facility during a recent border visit to the beleaguered border city to examine the situation. During a post-visit press conference, Gonzales spoke about the latest large influx of migrants into his district. Gonzales said, “My message is clear – end catch and release, stop using asylum as a hall pass, and put our Border Patrol Agents back on the frontlines.”
As the transfers proceeded, Breitbart Texas posted at the bank of the Rio Grande, where a continuous flow of migrants into the city continues. The overwhelming surge of almost 20,000 migrants into the city in two weeks resulted in the closure of the Eagle Pass International Bridge 1 after CBP Office of Field Operations personnel were redirected to assist the Border Patrol with migrant processing and security.
The OFO officers redirected to assist the Border Patrol normally inspect legal travelers engaged in cross-border commerce and legitimate travel, resulted in excess traffic levels at the Camino Real Port of Entry, the only other entrance into Piedras Negras, Mexico, that straddles the border with Eagle Pass. That city’s population is slightly more than 200,000 residents.
The latest spike in migrant entries into the small border town of Eagle Pass began as the fiscal year approached its end on September 30. As reported by Breitbart Texas, the end of 2023 fiscal year total for migrant encounters along the southwest border with Mexico was more than 2 million. The total does not account for northern border and coastal border migrant encounters or those migrants apprehended at ports of entry nationwide.
The total also excludes the 1,400 migrants granted humanitarian parole by DHS daily through land ports of entry utilizing the CBP-One Application or the up to 1,000 mostly Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Cuban migrants admitted daily to pursue asylum at airports across the United States.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
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